Cast Off, page 16
part #3 of The Peridot Shift Series
But who had written those texts? Illiya had read every text in her temple’s expansive archive, had faithfully copied new editions of many of them herself. She knew how powerful was the desire to write history as a triumph of one’s own side, to omit fallibility. To reduce and simplify. To make everything so tidy. Victories so inevitable.
The Veritors were obsessed with a world that had probably never existed. But this, Illiya knew, was not the moment to point that out.
She tried to direct them back to the main point so someone might give her some pants. “Now we are down to three of those five.”
He nodded. “We have the aliens to thank for the death of Silus Cutter.” There was no hitch in his voice at the memory of his own dead god. “And Meran to thank for reducing Onaya Bone to an obstacle instead of an overwhelming threat.”
“Imagine who we might thank next.” She knew what Captain Brickham had probably been encouraged to imagine.
“Three gods to unseat. Four rings to claim. We have never been so close to righting the wrongs of a tortured world.”
Had the word choice been ill-conceived or intentional? Illiya could flex any single muscle in her body, tighten any tendon, and be reminded of the torture from which this ship had extracted her. This captain might be earnest, but he was smart enough to choose his words with intention.
“But you cannot find the rings.”
He leaned back in his seat, eyes unfocused a moment, corners of his mouth slightly turned up.
“You’ve found one?”
He held up a hand, index and middle finger extended.
“You’ve found two?” There was little she could do to hide the surprise from her voice.
“Located, but not yet recovered.” He dropped the hand with a slight thump on the table.
Now she was overly expressive, overly eager. She sat up straight, trying not to bounce with excitement. “Which?”
“Arthel Rak’s.”
Illiya almost failed to prevent herself from gawking. In all her research, she had seen not one hint of Arthel Rak’s citrine and yellow-gold ring. “Impressive. Where?”
He shook his head, smiling in a parry at her attempt. “Unrelated to this ship’s mission. It is the other ring we are charged with seeking out.” He indicated her with a casual flat handed wave. “And this is where you come in.”
“Onaya Bone’s ring.”
He nodded. “You were central to the temple’s starship project.”
She realized how rigid her spine was and eased back against the seat’s cushion. She may have been central to the construction of the ships, but in the end, it had hardly mattered. Onaya Bone said alchemy was the key. She had not said how, but it did not tax the mind to imagine the forbidden arts were capable of protecting ships beyond the thinnest atmosphere.
The Veritors defied the Divine Alchemists, but they also disdained alchemy. They preferred to amass wealth and manipulate political balances in their favor. To them, alchemy was a crime by which to condemn the Five, not a tool by which to overthrow them.
The captain was waiting for her response. She inclined her chin to acknowledge his statement, her thoughts churning like sands in a windstorm. She was grateful for the ride off of Fall Island, but there was not enough gratitude in the world to make her aid the Veritors in their quest for ethnic cleansing.
But helping them would get her closer to Onaya Bone’s ring.
Captain Brickham pressed her for an answer. “Will you lead us to Onaya Bone’s ring? Will you forsake your goddess and give us the knowledge of star travel?”
Onaya rolled her shoulders back and felt her sternum adjust. “I will need the assistance of a skilled alchemist.”
The captain nodded. “I can arrange that. How quickly can you produce the plans for the Temple’s ships?”
Illiya worked at a hang nail. “If you have the forces, I suggest the faster solution would be to commandeer—I believe you would use that term?—Onaya Bone’s own ships. They’re at the shipyard on Kiani.”
“A Vein shipyard?”
“They have always been very accommodating to my people.”
“How many ships? How many guards?”
“Six ships. Fifty guards.” And maybe those numbers were still accurate. She had no idea what had happened since Onaya had directly involved herself.
She eyed the doctor, standing silent to one side this entire time, absorbing every word, betraying nothing of his thoughts. She was already crafting a backup plan.
Chapter 16
× Talis ×
Tisker lowered the scope from his eyes. “They’ve got a sense of style, haven’t they, Cap?”
Talis smirked. The approaching ship, the Not If We Don’t Get Caught, certainly had that. Its hull was a simple design, but it made up for that with a cacophony of colors and decorations wherever paint or fabric could be applied. Brightly colored scales were painted along a canvas bumper that wrapped the entire perimeter of the ship at its beam. They flew no flag of colors, but no one would see the ship and mistake it for any other. The race-built galleon was smaller than Fortune’s Storm, of lighter armament, but bore a crew well above what Talis’s ship would need. The rigging was run in the traditional manner with none of the upgrades Sophie would have argued for. Lines ran every which way, and with figures scaling them like spiders.
“And four-dozen crew who would resent your criticism, no doubt.”
“I’m not criticizing, Cap. I like it. It speaks to my Subrosan sensibilities.”
Across the gap of sky between them, someone ran up the signal flags. She took the scope back from Tisker. “Captain Hawke wants to have tea. You’ll get a close look, it seems.”
“Tell Sophie. She’ll want to see it.”
“Call her up. You two make ready to tie off and plank out.”
She stowed the scope and climbed down the accessway to the deck below. She needed a fresh change of clothes and not just for vanity’s sake. She was a day or two past her shelf life, if she was being honest.
The ships were still far enough apart that she had time for a proper shower, and she took advantage of every minute of steam and water in Fortune’s Storm’s generous accommodations.
It seemed another life in that she, Sophie, and Tisker had plotted a mutiny in these very showers while Dug hung near death in the medical bay. But it was only months ago, and since then they’d had to bring Dug back once more.
She caught herself scrubbing her skin red in annoyance with herself. A captain’s job was to protect her crew. Talis had failed over and over, yet somehow, they’d stuck with her. More had signed on.
She owed them everything, and she’d see that debt repaid.
Dressed in fresh shirt and trousers, she detoured to her cabin for the almost full bottle of spiced rum that she’d been working her way through at the most disciplined pace she could manage. Not because the good rum was getting harder to find (which it was—she usually drank from the barrel of lesser rum in the galley), but because she wanted all her decisions made with a clear head and none of the crew left alienated by her loosened tongue.
So as Captain Hawke met her in the glass-walled deckhouse, warmed by Fortune’s Storm’s engines, Talis poured them each two fingers and set a goal of making hers last the whole visit.
“You as heavy with presscoins as the rumors say, old friend?” Hawke filled the doorway and put her hands on her hips. She wore as roguish a smile as Talis knew the woman was capable. And she was quite capable. The smile was as disarming as ever. A long red braid hung over one shoulder to fall in contrast against a black satin blouse. A cape was slung over one shoulder, a formality against the wind. Her belt hung low on her hips, the absence of anything there but a purse set the tone for the visit.
They stepped together and clasped forearms. “Hawke. I’ve been blessed and am grateful. You think you’ve got something I want, I take it?”
“Something everyone wants. The question is, will you offer enough that I don’t shop it around?” Hawke looked over her shoulder. Beyond the large expanse of windows, three of her crew wheeled a large, gleaming white sarcophagi up to the reinforced gangway linking their two ships.
Chapter 17
× Hankirk ×
The skies were unnervingly quiet as Hankirk steered the small craft from the shadow of the Not If We Don’t Get Caught to that of Fortune’s Storm and tied off at their lower transom. He found it unguarded and unlocked. He smirked. This deception was Talis’s own trick, only fair, after all, that he use it against them.
He slipped inside. Fortune’s Storm had an unfamiliar layout. He smelled sawdust and paint as he searched quickly through their stores. All he found were personal effects, dry good and cable reserves, and a netted palette of Yu’Nyun scrap. There was no caged area as there had been aboard Wind Sabre, where Talis might secure her most precious payloads. The ring was somewhere else.
At the bottom of the accessway to the deck above, he held his breath and listened for footsteps. He could barely make out voices shouting. Not in anger, but in conversation across the distance between two railings. Hawke was doing her job, engaging the crew’s attention so he could go about his re-theft of Silus Cutter’s ring.
He rubbed a sweaty palm against his pant legs. In a short time, he would awaken Meran and command her. With her power, he would find the remaining rings then reunite them at Nexus. He’d wear all the rings this time. She wouldn’t overpower him again.
Deep in his thoughts, he ascended the access way and found himself directly in front of one of Talis’s crew.
He froze on the top step, surprise and panic preventing him even from breathing.
But the person was Vein. He fought the urge to sigh with relief. Even had he known that Talis had taken on a blind crew member, he never would have hoped that they might be who he’d encounter as he explored. As she moved past him, he praised his family name that the ship’s noises around them hid the sound of his heartbeat and the rustle of fabric as he ducked back down the steps to avoid her outstretched outer hands and the cane she skimmed across the decking. Even so, he could almost swear she slowed as she came alongside the accessway in which he crouched. He fought the urge to shut his eyes like a child who has yet to learn how hiding works. It was too loud aboard an airship, what with the engines, creaking, and wind, for her to have heard him.
The woman only lifted her head as if listening to the voices above, and boarded a lift that released more of the sawdust and oil smell of recent construction. She was unhurried, placid expression untouched by suspicion, never the wiser. So much for the unnatural perception Lindent Vein supposedly gifted his people. The god’s gifts were as false as the god himself.
Hankirk slipped back in the direction from which she’d come. This was not the deck for crew mess or quarters. By the pale edges of cut bulkhead, not only had the ship had a lift added but this deck had been renovated for passengers. Sensible, to keep them out of the way of the ship’s business. One Vein person was probably not enough to warrant a full renovation. Something cold turned over in Hankirk’s stomach. In Diadem, Talis had made off with Emeranth. Was she here, aboard this very ship? Had Talis found a way to help her?
And if so, who better to guard the ring of Silus Cutter than the rightful monarch?
It had been his greatest regret to leave his Little Em behind. By the time he’d gathered the Tempest forces around him to attack Diadem, it had been too late.
His healing gunshot wound burned and the cold thing in his stomach grew warmer. Talis had slowed his plan, kept him from acting in time.
But now. Not only could Hankirk retrieve the ring and wake Meran, but he could protect the young empress again. He hadn’t failed her. His pace quickened on the decking.
There were five doors on that deck to stern. All personal quarters, private and oversized for an airship. The two portside rooms belonged to people clearly unaccustomed to life in the skies; books teetered precariously at bedsides, and pens rolled gently side to side on desktops as the winds pushed at the lift system far above. Some clothing, stored linens, and some journals. The journals in two rooms featured illegible handwriting, both a hurried scrawl and written in Arthelian. He thumbed through the pages, hoping for maps or other obvious diagrams of ring-related clues. All he found were sketches of sigils that meant nothing to him, and something that looked like a peg leg.
A light, hollow clinking sounded from the last small cabin, which he approached with caution until he was sure it was empty. The sound came from a mobile strung with painted rodent and bird skulls. They reminded him of something, but he could not identify what until his search uncovered a case of Yu’Nyun carving tools. Scrimshaw. After leaving the alien behind in Diadem, Hankirk had counted the creature for lost. There were more books near Scrimshaw’s bunk, but these were stowed securely, evidence of the alien’s former spacefaring ship life. But of Silus Cutter’s ring, still nothing.
There was one last door, at the stern, like a secondary great cabin. Perfect to host an empress.
His hand shook as he reached for the door latch. His fingers on the cold iron, he inhaled a breath for resolve, then pushed his way inside.
By an airship’s standards, the cabin was a mess. Trunks and shelves ate up the wall space around a hip-height workbench. It made aisles and corners of what should have been clear floorspace.
He paused, uncertain. This was no royal apartment. As his mind raced, voices came to him. One low with the quality of raking gravel and an edge of impatience while the other was smoother by several degrees and bubbling over with warmth. They spoke Arthelian oddly, even to Hankirk who only tangentially knew the Rakkar language. What he did parse were heretical phrases, arcane references, and calculated brainstorming. Shorthand.
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” the younger Rakkar was saying (or something like it). “The ring would be as good as unprotected.”
There was a brushing sound, of something moving across paper to smooth it. “My translation is above reproach, young apprentice.”
“Arthel’s upturned pyramids! Well, at least it’ll save us some time.”
Talis had alchemists aboard her ship, and Hankirk had just wandered into their dedicated workspace. This wasn’t Emeranth’s room. Emeranth was, after all, likely just as he last saw her, or worse. But the alchemists’ words caught his attention and held him fixed to the spot. Yes, they spoke of a ring, but it was the expletive the young Rakkar apprentice had muttered: “Arthel’s upturned pyramids.”
Hankirk was a fool. It was so obvious, now. He’d been right there, circling Tavinando where Arthel Rak’s ring lay at the heart of an inverted pyramid. Underground, constructed downward, because of course it would be. Why would the Rakkar build anything above ground that wasn’t an entrance to get below it?
He could have already woken Meran and been that much closer. But he still would have had to come after Silus Cutter’s ring, and here he was about to reclaim it. Not strictly efficient, but it was still progress.
And he had the answer to his puzzle. The trip had been well worth it, even if he’d rather not spend a redundant leg of the journey with Hawke’s intolerable crew.
Would these alchemists have been entrusted with the ring? He might have been able to catch one person unaware and overpower them so he could search the room. But two? One of them would be able to alert the rest of the ship before he could dispatch them. If he shot them both, it would be faster but have the same result and leave him reloading his weapon one-handed as the rest of the crew cornered him here before he could even search the chaos for something the size of a ring.
Captain Hawke wouldn’t hold Talis’s attention forever. Not against such noise. This cabin was silent, save for the conversation between the alchemists and their movements. Not so much as the sound of wind or the creak of wood and rope.
Come to think of it, he couldn’t feel the sway of the hull, either. This cabin may as well have been deep within the rocks the Rakkar likely once called home. Confused, he looked over his shoulder at the door lintel, as if he’d see some proof he’d walked through a portal to an underground refuge.
He still couldn’t hear footsteps, but he saw feet descending the accessway from the deck above. The stairs faced the bow, giving him a moment to react while he was still hidden. But still no sound of footfalls.
He stepped back, wedging himself behind the open door, hidden from any other angle by a pile of crates piled against the nearby bulkhead. The back of the door was covered in chalk sigils. His skin itched and his nose tickled as though the chalk dust still hung in the air.
Knuckles beat a quick tattoo on the other side of the wood just inches from his face. Hankirk caught his breath.
“Professors,” said a deep voice, and Hankirk recognized the voice of Talis’s first mate. Talis had told Hankirk that Dug was corrupted. If she had solved the issue of souls, then the empress, wherever she was, might be cured after all.
The master alchemist switched back to Common Trade. “Yes, Mister Kheri, what can we do for you?”
“It appears we have an unwelcome guest aboard. Have you seen anything?”
“Unwelcome guest?” The alchemist made a strange hrrming cough.
“Who is it?” The young apprentice sounded as curious as she was surprised.
“Zeela did not recognize him. You have seen nothing?”
“There’s not much spare space to hide in here, really, and, we haven’t . . . ah . . . heard anything.” The elder alchemist sounded chagrined.
Dug’s voice dropped into a tone edged in disapproval. “You put the dampening sigils back up after the captain specifically told you not to.”
