Chapter Nineteen #4
door. Zaria released a growling huff, letting her pass. After a drunken limp
toward the command chairs, the bunny pointed outside, in the direction that
Berith’s voice had echoed. She made a jerking shake of her head.
Isaac leaned on a chair. “I’m not taking his offer.”
Soren nodded, seemingly in relief.
“Well,” Isaac said, “not yet, anyway.”
Zaria stepped to Soren’s side, nearly three heads taller
than the bunny. “Come again?”
“That’s my plan.” Isaac glanced in the direction of Berith’s
voice. “I go out there and distract him. You run around the side and stab him
in the back.”
Both pirates stared at him. For a moment, there was only the
distant sound of falling rock.
“It is rather inelegant,” Isaac admitted.
Soren stepped forward, shaking her head so hard her jaw
snapped back and forth. She raised the bomb again, gurgling.
“Shut up,” Zaria said, stepping forward. “Isaac, do you see
this?” She gestured at the standing, half-headless body of her captain.
“It had caught my attention,” Isaac replied.
“Good.” She pointed at the wet bandages covering her eye.
“You see this, as well?”
“You wear red very well, I must say.”
“Eat me, squire.”
He shrugged.
“Do you see the rest of this?” Zaria asked.
She waved at the ancient command room. She waved at the
spilling mounds of ossein. She waved in the general direction of the
earthquakes and squalls, where the colossus was still roaming, hanging like a
comet above the sky.
“Isaac,” Zaria said. “A week ago, I was nicking purses off a
frigate, and my only concern was whether my bunkmate was shedding lice again.
Now, I’ve just ran through a black ruin of evil, places where bones are growing
out the fucking walls, and there’s this giant cunt the size of a mountain
sniffing around for me, and I’ve just lost a fucking eye, and it’s all a real
fuckin’ terror, as you can imagine.”
“It is for me, too.”
“And, now, after all this shite, after doing all this with
the knowledge your arse-wiping wizards are gonna hunt me for it, you’re telling
me your plan is to offer yourself, like a lamb, right to the graveyard harlot
you call an uncle?”
“. . . yes.”
“No,” Zaria said, towering over him. “You’re not doin’ it.”
“It’s the only way.”
“I don’t care if it’d cure cock rot and famine. It ain’t a
good solution.”
“Do you have a solution?”
“No! And I don’t need one to call yours stupid!”
“We need to do something!”
“Something smart! Not what you’re proposin’!”
“I’m going to do it, with or without your help!”
“I forbid you, squire!”
“I’m not your fucking squire!”
Soren stepped between them, waving frantically. After a
moment of gurgling, she dropped the bomb to the floor. She formed a heart with
her fingers, waving it back and forth.
“Fuck off!” they shouted together.
Soren made the heart again, nodding insistently.
“Look,” Isaac said. “He will hesitate. I know he will. He
could’ve just killed me himself, before I’d even left the tower. He had every
opportunity, and he could never do it. He had to trick me into being swallowed
by dragons. He said he would never be able to stomach the sight of my body.”
Isaac took a moment to breathe. “He spared me in the extraction chamber. He’s
refused to stand and fight. Now, he’s offering me a chance to live, when the
colossus could just sweep us away like dust.”
One of Soren’s teeth clattered to the floor.
“He doesn’t want to kill me.” Isaac grimaced, poking at the
curled flesh on his chest. The burn was wicked and black. “At least, he’s too
much of a coward to do it himself. He will hesitate. I know he will.”
Zaria was less than mollified. “And what happens if he spots
me skirting the sides? What’re you gonna do then?”
Isaac pulled out the dagger she had given him earlier.
Soren shook her head.
“I’ve always been prepared to die for my mission,” Isaac
said. “I was ready to fight the sorceress alone. In that regard, nothing has
changed.”
Zaria flexed her hand, hissing through the pain.
“If either of you has a better plan,” he said, “I would very
much like it hear it.”
Soren crouched down, picked up the bomb, and gestured.
“I will need your help, as well,” Isaac said. “We need to
get as close as possible, before I enter his view. A bomb will be very useful
in masking our approach.”
Soren hesitated. After a moment, she pointed at a mound of
ossein, which had been spilling into the room. The fibers slithered back into
the viewport window.
“That was you?” Isaac asked. “Controlling the bones?”
Soren nodded. She pointed at the two of them. She gestured
towards Berith. A moment later, she pointed at herself, followed by a direction
perpendicular to the one they would take. Wherever she pointed, the osseous
fibers began to quiver.
“You can use the ossein to distract the colossus,” Isaac
said. “That’s good. The bomb will be an even better diversion.”
Soren shook her head, spraying some of her brain.
“Something else?”
She nodded, pointing at the satchel.
“Is it . . . tangential to the bomb?”
Another nod.
“Bomb,” he said, like reciting a thesaurus. “Powder.
Explosive. Heat. Energy—”
Soren nodded at the last word.
“Energy.” He paused, feeling a sudden chill. “You don’t have
much energy left.”
There was another nod. With a jerk, Soren pointed at the way
they had come, through a cleared open tunnel of metal and bone.
“The obelisk,” Isaac said, piecing things together. “The
thousands of souls were the source of your power. It’s how you could manipulate the bones. Without them, you . . . don’t
have much left. You won’t have anything to sustain yourself.”
The bunny looked at him, silent.
“How long do you have?” Isaac asked.
The bunny looked to the floor, shrugging.
Isaac felt a rush of emotions, hitting him at once. He was
scared, and tired, and pained, and grieving, and it was all happening too
quickly, all the revelations striking him one after the other, too rapidly for
his mind to fathom, and, now, he had to hear that his father was dying, and it
was nearly enough to send him into hysterics. He looked at his father, who was
contorting the bones of a recently-dead pirate. There was suddenly so much he
wanted to say.
The only thing that saved him from crying was the feeling
that his father was looking at him kindly, through blood and meat and bone.
“I need your help, father,” he said. “Can you be our
distraction?”
Soren straightened her posture. She looked down at the bomb.
She looked back where the obelisk had been. Slowly,
she stumbled forward, gazing at Isaac through a cratered face. After a moment,
she pulled him into a hug, and her armor was tough, and her skin was burned,
and her flesh was already cool, and Isaac returned the hug as best as he was
able, because he knew he could not do it again.
They stood together for a moment, surrounded by tremors,
bone, and metal.
Soren pulled away. Clumsily, she wrapped a hand around his
cheek, using her one blue eye to look into his. Isaac tried to smile, but his
lips trembled, and he couldn’t maintain the effort. Soren shook her head.
Before he could ask what he meant, the bunny pushed her thumb against the edge
of his mouth, completing his failed smile with a flimsy, awkward pressure. She
looked at him, raised his smile a little wider, and nodded.
“You want me to smile?” he asked.
The bunny nodded.
“. . . I’ll try.”
The bunny pulled away, nodding. She clapped Isaac on the
shoulder. Slowly, Soren lurched through the command capsule, roaming over to
the side of the metal bulkhead. She slammed her body into a half-opened latch,
fell through a pile of ossein, and vanished into the gloom.
There was a moment of silence.
“Let’s go,” Isaac said.
Zaria waited at an opposite door. When he approached, she
smashed an opening into the metal. They squeezed through a tangle of bone,
heading back into the pale orange light. A tunnel of ossein had already been
dug ahead. Zaria led the way, keeping him close. He kept stumbling, leaving a
smear of blood with his boots and hand.
Above, the day was bright and hot. Titanic shadows raced
overhead, buffeted with a screaming wind. He could imagine the colossus craning
its head back and forth as his father began to quiver the seas of ossein,
trying to stir up as much distraction as possible. It seemed to confuse the
creature. Concrete trembled as it shifted its weight. Isaac could not tell if
the colossus was stooping to investigate, or preparing itself to strike. He did
not stop to look.
Ahead, there was an endless tide of butchered ships, full of
metal casings, tempered glass, concave dishes, alloys of unknown metallurgy. He
saw the flag of the necromancer’s gods emblazoned on many. He barely took
notice.
“Isaac!” Berith shouted.
His voice echoed across the boneyard, through the gloom and
shadow and ancient, weathered machines. Isaac tried to steel himself.
“Your father’s tricks won’t help you! I know he’s
distracting me!” There was a pause, which waited for a
reply. His voice grew angry. “Enough of this! Show yourself!”
Isaac continued through the shade of bone and metal.
“Don’t test me, boy! I’ve spent decades preparing for this
mission! I will not falter where it matters!”
He gritted his teeth, wincing at the pull of his cauterized
wound.
“Do you think you’re being brave?” Berith shouted. “Do you
think your father is worth your life, when he tried so hard to spend your own?”
Zaria held up a hand, slowing him to a stop. There was a gap
in the canopy overhead. Walking through would expose them to the titan above,
though there was no other way ahead. The osseous fibers were no longer
slithering out to protect their passage.
He wondered if his father had finally run out of energy.
“Why didn’t you leave, Isaac?” Berith asked. He imagined his
uncle pacing back and forth, ready to lecture. “I thought you would, before you
entered the desert. I hoped you would run away the moment you tasted freedom.