Break the Chains

Chapter Thirty

Pelkaia showed a deft hand at the captain’s podium as she angled the ship toward the island, descent propellers heaving away to overcome the ship’s natural tendency to stay on a neutral plane. Detan had declined the crew’s offer to join them on the cranks for those particular propellers. He had, after all, a sore back from wrestling the ship through the storm and rather felt he deserved the rest.

He crowded the fore rail with a damp Tibs at his side as they dropped through the thick layer of cloud cover, following the faint wisps of selium leaking out from the watcher ship. Between cloud and rain and sleet, Detan’s clothes and hair were plastered to his body, a permanent shell of cold. He crossed his arms to huddle against the wind, but didn’t find the experience much better.

“Wish I had a hot whisky,” Tibs said, mirroring Detan’s hunkered posture.

“Wish I had a hot anything.”

“We’ll get a fire going on the island.”

“So our benevolent captain can roast us over it?”

“You know what? I’d be all right with that about now.”

The cloud peeled back and the island revealed itself. Little more than a thumbprint of land clinging to life amongst the waves, the rocky shore was dotted with wind-bent trees, clustering toward the center of the island in a great green mass. A narrow stretch of empty beach ringed the north end of the island, the only place large enough to anchor a ship the size of the Larkspur with any hint toward safety. Sure enough, the ship angled that way, even though the watcher craft was tangled up in the trees a good ways down the shore. Detan flinched, glancing away from the wreckage, and told himself the moans were the wind groaning through the trees.

The crew fired the anchor harpoons from the fore and aft, the ship jerking as the heavy bolts bit into the soil and held tight. Rope ladders were slung over the rail, the weary crew shimmying down them with what little medical supplies they had to spare strapped to their backs. Pelkaia’s crew was in poor enough shape to care for themselves, let alone the crashed watchers. But this was the least they could do for their fellow men and women. And maybe, just maybe, they could convince a few watchers they weren’t such monsters after all.

Stamping some semblance of warmth into his feet, Detan joined the crew at the ladders and dropped down to the rough rocks of the beach. His heels sunk in, squelching as he tromped across the sand. Hond Steading may have been a bit north and prone to a chill breeze on occasion, but Detan reckoned his bones weren’t bred for this kind of cold, and the sticky mist clinging to him wasn’t doing much to help the situation. Huffing breath into his hands to warm them up, he stomped circles on the beach as the rest of the crew spilled down the ladders. Jeffin stayed behind to work on repairs. Detan was grateful for that. The man’s simple presence irked him.

Something dark and lean nestled in the curve of the northern stretch of beach. Detan squinted, brought a hand up to shield his eyes, then realized there wasn’t any sun to shield them from.

“Hey, Tibs,” he called. “You see that?”

Tibs tipped up the brim of his hat to see better. “Looks like a shed. Or a boat.”

Detan snorted. “A real boat? Ridiculous.”

“Either way, we’re not alone on this island.”

Essi wandered over to them and peered at the structure. “Who’d want anything to do with this anthill?”

Detan and Tibs exchanged a look. “Someone wanting close proximity to the Remnant,” they said in unison.

Detan spun around and sought out Pelkaia, standing off to the side with Coss and Laella. He raised his voice to carry across the wind and distance. “Pelly, arm your people! We’ve got company on this pits-cursed island.”

Pelkaia raised the cutlass she had been fitting into her weapons belt. “Had you expected us to charge in after the watchers without protection?” She eyed him pointedly. “Although it occurs to me that, despite best efforts to the contrary, we are substantially under-armed.”

“Err, yes, of course. Carry on,” he said and kicked at a clump of seaweed.

“Going to tell her about the key?” Tibs asked, drawing a curious glance from Essi.

“When she doesn’t have something pointy in her hand, yes.”

“What key?” Essi asked.

“The key to that mouth of yours.”

She kicked sand over Detan’s wet boots and stomped off to join the rest of the crew.

“You got a way with kids,” Tibs said.

“I am a charmer.”

“Didn’t say it was a good way.”

They tromped across the beach, joining the back fringe of Pelkaia’s group, and followed the spearhead of her armed crewmembers along the rocky shore toward the last sighted location of the watcher craft. They didn’t have far to walk. The moans of pain reached them before the sight of the wreck did.

The airship had snagged in the treetops on its way down, spilling its crew in a heinous spiral across moss-covered boulders and the rocky shore. Tie-lines had snapped under the force of the crash. Those who escaped relatively unscathed were at work gathering their injured on softer ground, but Detan counted only three watchers on their feet. The rest were broken shades of themselves.

Detan had gone three steps before he noticed Tibs had halted. And then he realized his mistake in bringing Tibs here.

Watchers – men and women in uniform – strewn broken and weeping across the sands. The heady tang of iron-rich blood on the air, the eerie mist of selium escaping through the treetops. The twisted wooden wreckage. All things Tibs had seen before – must have seen before – in darker times when he served the empire. When he kept the machines of war breathing fire from above.

“Tibs, why don’t you go back to the ship and keep an eye on Jeffin? With strangers on the island, wouldn’t want the kid getting out of his depth.”

It was a weak excuse, and they both knew it, but Tibs took it like a rope thrown to a drowning man. He nodded, gaze glued on the damaged bodies, and sucked at his teeth.

“Reckon that’s a good idea.”

Detan waited until Tibs was a good halfway back to the ship before he turned his attention to the damaged watchers. He cursed himself for a fool for dragging Tibs out here at all. He should have known what the scene would look like. Should have known it’d hit Tibs as hard as rounding a corner into a whitecoat party would hit Detan himself.

Pelkaia’s cutlass was sheathed as she talked with the injured watch-captain, but Laella and Coss had their blades out. They held them low and at ease, but the threat was clear enough. Detan lingered behind the group and ignored their conversation. He had no stomach for the petty dance of threats they were playing.

A watcher woman lay on the sand not far from where he stood. She leaned against a dripping boulder, legs splayed out before her, swimming in pools of red. Her eyes were closed, but her chest rose and fell with ragged breath. She didn’t appear strong enough to have pushed herself up on her own, which meant her fellow watchers had propped her up. And then left her to die.

Detan ambled over and sat on the sand beside her, ignoring the salty wet seeping through his backside. He was already wet enough, he could handle a little more discomfort to see this woman through to the endless night.

“Hi,” he said. Her eyelids fluttered. “I’m Detan.”

She tipped her head toward him, lolled it against the rock. One eyelid was swollen shut, the other half-open, but the eye behind it bright. Alert. He shifted in the sand so that she could see him without having to crane her head.

“Alli,” she said. “Have you come to pick us off?”

“No.” He shook his head. “We’ve come to help, if we can.”

She swept him from his crossed legs to his ruffled hair with her one good eye. “I can’t say we would have done the same for you.”

“That’s all right. I don’t blame you.”

“You should.”

She coughed, her shoulders shaking. Detan waited until the fit had passed before he spoke again.

“You were just doing your job. Trying to keep Petrastad safe. I understand that more than you might think.”

She chuckled. “Do you, now? I didn’t realize you were an expert on municipal matters, though that explains the ease with which you infiltrated our tower.”

He grimaced. “I don’t mean to belittle what you do.”

She waved him to silence. “No. No. But I meant to belittle you. I’ve heard that some people get calm when they’re facing death. That they go into the dark with grace and dignity. Turns out I just get surly.”

He thought of Ripka, standing on the roof of a jailhouse in Aransa, wearing a coat much like the one Alli wore. Thought of her lifting her chin, facing the Black Wash and her impending death with pride and calm. He’d admired her for that. He found he admired Alli, too.

“There’s no good way to go,” he said.

“I suppose there isn’t.”

She fell quiet for a while, her good eye gazing out to sea. Detan wondered if his presence was a comfort or a hindrance. If he were bleeding his last in the surf, he’d want someone there to witness it. To sit with him while his blood mingled with the salt and the world drew in to nothing all around him. But he worried that he might be imposing. That maybe she’d sent her watcher fellows away, and that’s why she was all alone here. Could be she was only suffering his presence because she lacked the strength to tell him to get lost.

He shifted, making to rise and leave her to her peace, and her eye snapped open as far as it could. He stayed.

“I took this job for the money,” she said.

“Isn’t that why people take jobs?”

“Hah. You’re as cynical as I was. No. Lucky for the two of us, it isn’t. Some people don the blues because they want to help. They care. I came to, in time, but to start with… Well, my husband was a sel-miner, fell to bonewither earlier than most. Shuffles around the house like my grandpa used to, and he’s only forty. There’s the stipend for retired miners, but the good medicines… They cost.”

“So you didn’t take the job for the money.”

“Maybe not. But don’t mistake me, Detan, I’ve a taste for fruit pies the stipend just wasn’t covering.”

He laughed and rummaged through his trouser pocket. “It’s no fruit pie,” he said and pulled out a waxpaper-wrapped bar of sticky honey and crushed nuts. “And it’s probably wet and salty, but here.” He broke off a small corner and placed it on her tongue. She swished it around and smiled.

“Salt’s a nice touch.”

He took a bite and grimaced. “If you say so.”

They sat in silence for a while, sharing the ration bar while the pool around her legs got darker and her skin grew paler. When the bar was finished, he scrubbed his hands in the wet sand and wiped them pointlessly against his Fleetman’s coat. The sun sagged against the horizon, pink-crimson spears radiating through the sky. He looked away, not liking the color of the sky any more than he liked the color of Alli’s face.

“It was the bonus pay that did it,” she said.

He blinked. “Huh?”

“After Aransa fell. Every watcher district was promised a bonus for each deviant or rogue sensitive turned over to the empire. Petrastad never had many before, you know. We’re not a sel-city, which is why my husband and I moved out here. Thought being away from the source might help. But the city always had its fringe, weak sensitives who escaped notice. The watch looked the other way until Valathea started offering a premium per head. That’s why we chased you down. Whole ship full of rogue sensitives? It’d mean a fortune.”

He closed his eyes as his stomach sunk. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, Lord Honding.”

He winced. “You knew?”

“I guessed. Detan’s a common enough name, but the Larkspur is unmistakable. I hadn’t seen it before today, you understand, but the description got around. Valathea wants you something bad, you know. They’ve been sending delegates to every city with a watch presence to distribute your likeness and warn us all to take you in upon sight. I don’t know what you did, I doubt it’s what they’ve told us, but…” She licked her lips, lapped up a bit of the honey left there. “They’re hungry for you. Don’t let them catch you.”

“I’ve no intention of letting them.”

“Good.” She nodded firmly. “So that really is the Larkspur, then?”

He grinned. “Yes, it is. Beautiful, isn’t she?”

“I’ve never seen anything like her. It’s like a real, old ship sailing through the sky.”

“I suppose that was the idea when Thratia commissioned her. Now Pelkaia’s crew has to keep most of her lines masked so as to not give the game away.”

“The game,” she rolled the word across her tongue. “You and that crew really are picking up rogue sensitives all across the Scorched?”

“They do. I’m just aboard to call in a favor.”

“And what might that be?”

He chuckled. “Nosy, aren’t you?”

She winked at him with her good eye. “Who am I going to tell?”

“All right.” He crossed his legs and leaned in closer. “Answer me this, then: what are they saying I did in Aransa?”

“Ooh,” she whistled, a soft, thready sound. “Got that big of an ego, eh?”

“The biggest.”

“Well, they claim you tried to set off the firemount there, and that Watch-captain Leshe died stopping you.”

He snorted. “I’ll tell her that. Not only will she be offended she’s dead, she’ll be doubly offended my sorry hide managed to pick her off.”

“Your turn,” Alli’s voice dragged out into a rasp.

“I’m using the Larkspur to pick up a friend.”

“Vague,” she admonished.

“Captain Leshe herself. From the Remnant.”

She tried to raise her brows at him and winced. “I would have heard if she were working there.”

“She’s not.”

“Now that’s interesting.”

He held both hands toward the sky. “I aim to entertain, my dear.”

“I almost wish I could live a day or two longer, just to see how you plan to get her out of there.”

“I assure you, I can get up to all kinds of trouble in the time you have left.”

Her head rolled against the boulder, angling her vision toward the crew working with her watcher brethren. “They’re good people, the crew of the Larkspur?”

Detan licked his lips and eyed them. Pelkaia had reached some sort of agreement with the watch-captain and was helping him distribute the troops as it were, matching up her crew’s skill sets with complementary sets from the watchers. She’d forgone a face of selium, leaving her Catari blood bare to all who looked at her. Sandy hair, the same color as Ripka’s, fell around her cheeks in waves made frizzy by the rain and sea-winds. She looked harried, but focused. Determined to see this thing through, and to do it well. Detan smiled.

“They’re getting better. Better than me, at any rate.”

Alli’s hand flexed in the sand, trembling from lack of strength. He took it without asking, held it between both of his and stroked the back with care. She didn’t so much as glance his way. He suspected she’d run out of strength. He considered laying his sodden coat over her, but he knew full well her chill was coming from within. The warmest coat in the Scorched couldn’t hold it back.

“I want you to do me a favor.”

“Ask it.”

“My husband, Rei. He has a sister in Salsana, north of here, with a little boy about twelve. He’s started to show some sel-sense…”

“Strong?”

“Unusually.”

He nodded and squeezed her hand. “If Captain Pelkaia won’t get him out of there, I will.”

She swallowed. When she spoke again a soft rattle hissed in her chest. “Lovely sunset today.”

He freed one hand and reached to turn her head away from the crew, back toward the sinking sun. When his fingers curled around her chin, he found her skin cold and clammy. Her eyes, once turned toward the sun, were empty. Glazed with something like tears.

Detan folded her hand into her lap and arranged her with as much dignity as he could. He sat there awhile, holding vigil. Wondering why he couldn’t feel her presence anymore, though her body sat cooling beside him. Nothing had changed, not really. If he ignored the stillness of her chest he could tell himself she’d speak again. That the growing emptiness beside him was nothing but his own fear.

He’d never been a religious man. Never prayed to the stars or the sky unless in jest or curse. Not even when his mother lay still beside him, the bonewither eating her up until there was nothing left but the same emptiness he felt now. The only comfort he’d ever wrapped himself in was the company of his friends, the sureness of his scheming. If Alli had religious beliefs, she hadn’t mentioned them, and yet he felt like he should do something. Felt that there must be something one does to honor the end of a life.

Bel Grandon’s throat, gaping red and pumping her life to the floor, filled his mind. He shivered. What had been done for her, after he’d leapt from Thratia’s dock?

“Detan,” Pelkaia’s voice was soft, but he jumped all the same and glared up at her. “You’ll freeze, sitting in the surf like that.” She offered him her hand, reaching across Alli’s body. He took it, pulled himself to his feet. Brushed sand from his pants and coat.

“The others?” he asked.

“Those who didn’t die on impact are mostly whole. We may lose a few in the cold tonight, or to infection, and the broken bones are always a risk for future illness. But most should survive. Watch-captain Gisald is wary, but thankful to have our help. They’ve agreed not to pursue us once we get them on their way again. We’ve confiscated their weapons for the time being, though most are waterlogged. The selium remaining in their craft is sparse, but…”

Detan felt the sudden cold of the setting sun lance through him. “You will let them keep it to get home, Pelkaia. You will not take it for your ship.”

She kicked at a seashell. “I agree with you. We’ll camp on the beach for the night and move the injured watchers to the Larkspur in the morning. Then we can see about patching up their barge.”

He nodded. “I’ll go back and tell Tibs and the others, maybe grab a few extra rations and tarps.”

“You do that.”

Detan trudged off back down the beach, wishing he’d volunteered to stay behind and get the fire burning instead. His sodden clothes clung to him, felt like tiny knives of ice kissing his skin all over as the night winds swept in.

“Honding,” Pelkaia called after him. “This was the right choice. Thank you.”

He kept on walking, pretending he hadn’t heard, and listened for the soft tread of her feet retreating back across the sands to rejoin her crew. Any other day he’d gloat. He’d dance around her scowling face and sing his own praises, insisting she should listen to him more often. But not today. Not with the chill of Alli’s hand in his no different than the icy brush of the sea. He’d made the right choice insisting they come down here and help, he was sure of that.

He just wasn’t sure he’d made any of the right choices leading up to that moment.

The more he played these games, the more he found doing things for good reasons wasn’t enough. Dealing a blow to Thratia. Sparing a murderous doppel. Making off with a ship and then letting it go.

Convincing Ripka and New Chum that Nouli was Hond Steading’s greatest hope.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and shivered, speeding his steps toward the Larkspur and Tibs. He’d feel better, he was sure, if he had Tibs nearby to explain what an idiot he’d been. It always sounded better when Tibs laid things out for him.

A strand of trees to his left rustled and he paused, expecting some weather-beaten local animal to make its presence known. Instead, a rangy looking man stepped from the trees and stood before him, a nice shiny crossbow leveled at Detan’s chest.

Detan giggled. The man’s eyebrows shot up.

“Something funny, boy?”

“Oh, it’s just been one of those days.” He held his hands up to either side to show they were empty, and was unsurprised when two other men slunk from the trees and patted him down for weapons.

“What are you doing on this island?” the man demanded when his fellows had declared Detan free of weapons.

“Would you believe vacationing?”

Someone clipped him in the back of the head and he sunk to one knee, head swimming. A hand grabbed the back of his collar and jerked him to his feet, touching the scar flesh of his family crest there. He grimaced as his collar was twisted askew so that his captor could get a better look.

“Got ourselves a Honding,” a man said. The one with the crossbow smirked.

“Interesting. Walk, Honding. We’re going to go have a chat with your friends.”

His captor spun him around and shoved him forward, back toward the crew and the watchers. Detan tromped along, wondering if he’d ever be warm again.