Break the Chains

Chapter Five

Pelkaia leaned against the cabin’s exterior wall, watching Detan and Tibs make their way to a ladder at the roof’s edge, and breathed easy. She’d never been so relieved to be free of a passenger before. She caught herself drumming her fingers against her thigh and stopped. No matter what stories he told – possibly especially because of the stories he told – Detan wasn’t a soul she could trust, not like the rest of her well-vetted crew.

Jeffin slunk up alongside her, the lanky man’s face sallow in the seashore sun. A tiara of sweat gleamed across his forehead, and the crescents beneath his eyes looked bruised and sunken. “Begging your pardon, captain, but should we shove off? I’m, ah, getting rather tired.”

Glancing at the sun’s angle, Pelkaia clapped him on the back and nodded. “We’re going to put in here for the night. As soon as it gets full dark, drop your mirrors. In fact, you can try and pass them onto Laella, if you think she’s up for it.”

A frown flitted across Jeffin’s already drawn face. He crossed his heart with the old Catari constellation for strength. His lineage was nearly as tangled in Catari blood as Pelkaia’s, though he seemed to harbor a deeper loyalty than she did. The man still said prayers to the stars every night, while Pelkaia was lucky if she remembered to cross her heart with the constellations once a week, no matter her full-blooded body.

No matter her childhood in the dusty oases, hiding like stonerabbits in the badlands from the advance of the Valathean Fleet.

“I’ll show her how,” Jeffin said. His voice sounded like it was tumbling out over hard stones. Forced as his helpfulness was, she was grateful for it, and she gave his shoulder a small squeeze. Valathean, Catari. They were all deviant selium sensitives. They were all outcasts, in their own way. She and Jeffin would just have to get used to the Valathean girl’s presence.

Coss approached her, his slate-grey eyes bright and a strange tension in the tendons of his jaw.

“Ho, captain,” he said, but there wasn’t as much affection in it as usual. Jeffin tucked his head to the first mate and, sensing Coss’s agitation as surely as Pelkaia did, scampered off in a rush to find Laella.

“Ho, mate,” she said, drawing out the word “mate”. Coss rewarded her with a soft flush and shifted his weight.

“May we talk in quarters?” he asked.

Pelkaia surveyed her ship. Essi was up the ropes, getting a lesson from Old Ulder on proper knot-tying, and Jeffin had disappeared into the cabins to find Laella. The others lounged about, trading stories and drinks in Petrastad’s sea breeze. Watching them now, she could not help but imagine her son, Kel, amongst them. He had been a simple sel-sensitive, the kind the empire approved of. But even that had not been enough to keep him safe from the power struggles between Valathea and their once-commodore, Thratia. He’d died in Aransa for being a witness to Thratia’s treachery. Someday, with the help of this crew, she would balance those scales.

The crew did not need her now, and so she nodded to Coss. “Spending time with the Honding that bad?”

“Something like that,” Coss said and took off toward Pelkaia’s cabin.

She followed, checking on her ship with every step, but scarcely seeing a thing. What had gotten Coss so wound up? The man was a rock. Cheeky, sure, but stable in all weather. Seeing him tense as a harpoon spring made her heart ramp its pace.

In the privacy of her cabin, with the door shut and the thick black curtains drawn against the light, he dropped all pretense of affability. He would never question her in front of the crew – they’d agreed to that – but she’d given him permission to be open with her in private. From the way his expression darkened, she wished she’d rethought that plan. Criticisms were always worse from Coss. Due to his deviation, he was the only one in the whole of the world who could see her true face hidden beneath her selium mask.

“Why in the black skies didn’t you tell me Detan has access to a list of deviants?” he demanded.

“Captain’s decision,” she said, knowing as soon as the words left her lips that they were the wrong thing to say.

“Really? The fate of a whole fistful of deviants, and it’s just you who gets to decide? Thought we were all important on this ship. Thought we were partners.” He stepped forward as he said “we,” his body canting toward her, his tannic breath gusting against her cheek. She shifted backward, putting distance between them. Long ago, she’d decided neither one of them could afford to be distracted by the sly glances they stole at one another – nor by the comfort she took in knowing he was near.

“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. You’ve never worked with Honding before. He’ll play you, even as you’re playing him. Maybe there is a list, maybe there isn’t, but he wants something from me – from us – that I can’t see yet, and I’m not chasing his tail without a clearer picture of where we’re going.”

“So you are considering it.”

“I didn’t put down in Petrastad for the food. I docked us here to see what he does next, to see how desperate he is to get out to those isles.”

“What isles?” he asked, quick enough to make Pelkaia snort a laugh. Of course Detan wouldn’t have explained the dangerous aspects of his supposed plan.

“Didn’t he tell you the whole story while he turned you against me? I’m shocked he wasn’t more forthright. The woman with the whereabouts of that mythic list is a prisoner at the Remnant, as is her friend, and Detan expects me to swish on over there in the Mirror and pluck them out.”

Coss folded his arms over his ribs and slouched, wary. “What’d this woman do to get locked up in a place like that?”

“If Detan’s to be believed, she got caught stealing the list and hid it somewhere before being apprehended.”

“She a deviant?”

“Ripka Leshe, a deviant?” Pelkaia shook her head. “She’d knock you cold to hear you say it. That woman’s as banal as they come – and as straightlaced, too. That’s the only real believable part of Detan’s story. If Ripka was going to get herself locked up for anything, it’d be a good cause.”

“And you’re willing to let a woman like that rot?”

“Let? Clear skies, Coss, there’s little all I can do. This is the Remnant we’re talking about, the most secure prison in the whole Scorched. I wouldn’t know where to begin plucking her free, even if I wanted to. And regardless, it’s not me who got her locked up there.”

“Real nice.” He snorted. “So just because it’s not your fault means it’s not your problem?”

Her back stiffened and she picked her chin up. “What’s so wrong about that?”

“What’s good about it?” He threw his hands in the air, grasping as if he could wring an answer from the emptiness. “I thought we were trying to change things – thought this crew was meant for bigger things than snatching sands-cursed deviants away from death at the final moment.”

“And you think breaking someone out of the Remnant is worth risking this crew? You think trusting a thing Honding has to say is wise? Even if the list is real, there’s no telling what became of those on it. They could be captured already. We could be wasting a lot of time for nothing.”

“Regardless of the list, I think saving a good woman from a wretched end is worth it, yes. And I think the crew would agree with me. Pits below, maybe you should ask the crew what they want to do about it. For once, give them a say in matters. They aren’t children. Well, all except Essi anyway, and she’s no innocent. And if that list is real, then there’s a chance–”

“Stop.” She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “I agree with you, it’s just that…”

“Pell.” Coss settled a hand against her upper arm and the warmth of him spread through her sleeve. She pushed his hand away. “You’re afraid to risk the crew.”

“It’s not the crew I’m worried about. He’s stolen this ship once before. I wouldn’t put it past him to try again.”

Coss shoved his hands in his pockets. “Stole it because you tricked him into it, unless there’s a piece of that story you’re not sharing. There are sixteen of us, and one of him. Two if you count Tibal. I think we can do it. I think we should at least try.”

“We’re not ready for something like this. We’re not even properly armed if it comes to a fight.”

An impish grin curled its way over Coss’s lips and he cocked his head to the side. “This is Petrastad, captain. We’ll put a watch on Honding, see what he does, and if his story checks out – well then. There are weapons to be had aplenty in this salty hole, and a man with his particular talent is well suited for recovering them.”

Pelkaia picked her head up and met his eyes. A smile worked its way across her tired features. “You mean to rob the imperial weapons vault.”

“I do. And what better man for the job than Detan Honding?”