Break the Chains

Chapter Forty-Three

Each time the trapdoor was struck, the corpses piled on it jerked and twitched. They had to shove them back onto it, keeping the weight centered, keeping their boots on top of the door to hold it down. The door jumped again, jarring Ripka’s teeth. She flexed her fist on the cutlass she’d stolen and scowled.

“Where in the pits is that idiot?”

“The Lord Honding is rarely late,” Enard drolled, pushing a flopped-over arm back into the pile with the edge of his cutlass.

“Rarely on time, is more like.”

“As you say, captain.”

“Is he really a lord?” Honey asked, her glassy eyes wide. Ripka snorted.

“In name only.”

“Little more than a scoundrel, my dear,” Nouli added.

And yet they were all waiting for him. Hoping for him to come and save them as soon as he could. They searched the skies, but did not speak.

The trapdoor thumped again. Honey shrieked and leapt back, taking her weight off her corner of the door, hopping around like her foot was on fire.

“What in the–”

“They stabbed my foot!” She rocked back and sat hard on her rump, holding up the sole of her boot for all to see. A neat two-inch gash opened it, blood seeping out to the baked tiles. As one, they stepped back from the trapdoor.

“Can you stand?” Ripka moved to offer her a hand up. Honey’s expression had gone dark. She glared at the trapdoor like it’d stolen her lunch money and called her mother a whore.

“Let them in,” she said.

“No.”

“Please?” she turned wide eyes and pouting lips on Ripka. Ripka stifled a laugh, thrusting her hand toward her once more.

“You’ll see ’em soon enough. Now get up, if you can.”

Honey hobbled to her feet, favoring her bleeding foot. The dribbles she tracked across the tiles weren’t enough to be worrisome, she wasn’t going to bleed out before either rescue or doom befell them. Still, she was hurting. Slowed. The best of them in a fight, Ripka had no doubt of that, incapacitated. If that door gave way before the Larkspur arrived, they were in for a world of hurt.

“Wish they’d stuck me instead,” Nouli muttered, and Ripka found she agreed.

“No sense in dwelling on it. Keep the bodies centered as best you can, no one put a bit of themselves on that door if you can help it.”

They clustered back around the door, sweating, fidgeting, poking corpses back into place each time they shifted. The sun bore down on them. Ripka spat to curse the sea for denying her its icy bite right when she actually wanted it. She understood now why the old sailors cursed the water as much as they worshipped it. Fickle bitch, indeed.

“Captain,” Enard said. Something in his voice made her shrink within herself. Whatever he had to say, she didn’t want to hear it.

“Yes?” she asked anyway.

“It appears our pursuers have diversified.”

“What are you talking about?”

He pointed with his cutlass, his form perfect despite his exhaustion. She followed the line of his blade to a roof across the rec yard. A handful of guards were rigging up a flier, getting it ready to set out toward their empty docking post. Her stomach fell. There was no cover here – not from sight, and not from crossbows. They couldn’t hide, and they couldn’t go down – who knew how many jackals were waiting to tear them apart past the door.

“Fucking Honding.” She kicked a corpse, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

The trapdoor jerked, one corner lifting, and a gauntleted hand shot through. Before she could think she kicked it, swore as bright motes of pain exploded in the corners of her eyes. Wood groaned, the others piled their weight on. But the guards had leverage, now. It wasn’t enough.

The first one through fell to Enard’s cutlass, throat opened to grin at the sky as his head tipped back and he fell down the ladder. From the thumps and shouts he’d taken a few behind him with him, but it was only a temporary reprieve. Bottleneck or not, they’d be swarmed in moments.

She hooked her aching foot under the flung-open trapdoor and struggled to heave it back closed. Nouli helped, huffing and puffing as he shoved at the blood-sodden wood. They got it to the apex, shoved it down, and it bounced right back up.

The head of a door-breaking ram crashed through. Where they’d dug the thing up, she had no idea, its paint was peeling and its irons rusted – but it shattered the door all the same, wrenched the hinges free with squeals. She staggered back from the explosion of splinters, as did everyone else. Just what the guards had wanted.

“Close the neck!” she snapped, but it was too late. One was up, two. They couldn’t fell them both before the others poured through. Their advantage was lost.

“Behind me,” she ordered Nouli, and sliced down a woman who closed on her, chopping her like she was wood, trying not to think of the friends and families and passions she was destroying with every strike. Watch-captain Leshe, killing guards like they were sent for slaughter. Her stomach boiled with shame, but she dug her heels in, stood her ground. They’d kill her for this. No one saw a trial who felled a body in a uniform with their fellows around.

She figured she deserved it.

Somewhere on the other side of the swarm boiling up through the broken door Enard’s roar of effort turned into a screech of pain. She winced, letting the man facing her get inside her guard with her fear. He scored a cut on her arm and she hardly felt it as he pressed the advantage, shoving her back into Nouli, turning a clipped duel into a shoving, grunting match that was likely to end up on the ground. Someone always died when a fight like this went to the floor. She was tired. Worn out. Ripka steeled herself, hoping they’d let Nouli live in the end.

Someone screamed, and it wasn’t from pain or anger or death, it was a shriek of pure, raw, fright. A shadow flickered over the melee and other shrieks joined in, the guards breaking, scattering. Ripka staggered back, dumbfounded as her partner squirreled away from her, Nouli’s hand on her back the only thing that kept her on her feet.

Through the sky twisted a massive beast, a serpent wrought of silver and cloud, its writhing body undulating above their heads as its great maw snapped down, breathing crystals of ice.

Ripka froze, momentarily stunned. A thing of legends, a creature out of fairy tales… Like a doppel. Or, she recalled, an illusionist. Frantic, she searched the sky, saw a gleam of pearlescence by the dock. Pelkaia. Had to be.

“To the dock!” She grabbed Nouli’s wrist and ran.

Steps pounded after her, she didn’t know whose, prayed it was Enard and Honey but didn’t dare turn her head to be certain. Nouli huffed along beside her, not questioning, not even as she tore full speed across the spit of wood and stone that stretched out into open sky. She saw the gleam again. Thought there was something like a smirk in it.

Death by blade, or by falling. Either way she was destined to die. Might as well risk it.

Her boots hit the last board of the dock. Nouli screamed. She leapt.

Hardwood slapped her feet, her knees. She crumpled, landing hard, awkwardly as she couldn’t see her goal. Nouli splayed away from her, rolling like some flicked larva. Someone grabbed her arms and hoisted her up, dragged her out of the way and dropped her back to the deck where she lay on her back, arms wide, staring at the blue sky and its slight gleam.

“Knew you’d see it.” Pelkaia stood above her, sweating, ruffled, but smirking. Ripka never thought she’d be pleased to see that smirk.

“The others–”

Pelkaia cocked her head, smiled. “Arrive now.”

Honey and Enard leapt through the air, appearing out of nowhere, arms windmilling and eyes wide with horror as they tumbled to the deck. Enard was bleeding, seeping his life out his side, and Pelkaia’s crew rushed him, bundling him up so quick she began to doubt she’d ever seen him in the first place. Honey crawled over and flopped down beside her, smiling.

“You jumped,” Ripka said, realizing that neither Honey nor Enard could have known what they were leaping toward.

“He said it was all right. Said the captain wouldn’t ever lead us astray.”

Honey trailed her fingers through Ripka’s hair, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry from relief. Pelkaia helped her back to her feet and snapped for one of her crew to come see to Honey’s wounds.

“Need an apothik?” Pelkaia raised her brows at the weeping wound on Ripka’s arm.

She looked at it, almost startled it was still there, and shook her head. “In a moment. I want to watch this place fade away.”

“As you like. Aft rail will have the best vantage.” And then Pelkaia was gone, shouting orders as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Ripka limped her way to the aft rail. Tibal lingered there, his back hunched, his arms hanging over the rail with his hat in his hands as he worked the brim around. She came up beside him, eased her weight against the railing, and watched the mist roll back from the Remnant as the Larkspur changed course for the Scorched.

“Long time,” she said, after the silence had grown too wide.

“Mmhm,” he said.

She fidgeted with the frayed hems of her sleeves. Didn’t he have anything to say to her after all of this? After all she’d been through on behalf of their mutual scheme?

“Where’s Honding?”

He spat over the rail, shoved his hat on, and stomped off back toward the cabins. Ungrateful man. No matter what spat had brewed between Tibs and Detan this time, he could at least answer her with words instead of bodily fluids. Ripka stared out across the fading Remnant, too choked with questions to give voice to any particular one.