20. Hope
20
Hope
A fter days working together, Hope knew two things: Marcus had been preparing the escape to Thyria for more years that she had been alive; and there were so many things from his plan that could go wrong that she had almost lost track. And maybe that was a Cardinals’ blessing, for the sake of her bravery not faltering when they departed.
Hope was still not used to being inside the vessels, and she felt somehow relieved to not be the only one. The circular tunnels filled with air in the middle of the ocean were so unnatural. They were unnatural, Marcus had told them, since the Cardinals had created them when Thyria was formed.
Nina’s steps next to her were as cautious and silent as her own. The fact of stepping over what looked like a thin membrane that protected them from falling into the vast depth of the ocean underneath them was breathtaking. And regardless of how many times Hope had walked in the vessels underneath the courtrades’ quarters, she still did not trust that said membrane, transparent with just a smear of turquoise shine, would not vanish, leaving them to drown.
“I still can’t believe that this is safe for anyone to walk in, least to say for vehicles to go in it and not make the membranes collapse,” Nina said, putting a strand of her silk-white hair behind her ear. It had only taken a couple of days for the natural brown dye to completely fade and her natural white to shine again.
Hope silently nodded, kneeling for the tenth time that day, poking with her finger at the surface that separated them from the waters below. From the waters and from every single creature that lived in them.
“As if cellholts are small and light,” Hope’s voice was hoarse. She hadn’t been talking much and the air down here… It was rough. A normality in the vessels, apparently. That no one else seemed too concerned about.
Nina exhaled sharply. Hope stood up and stroked her hand. A silent reminder that she also wished they had a better alternative.
A few minutes later, they had returned to the blind spot that connected the quarters to the vessels. The blind spot that they all relied upon for this plan to work.
The vessel in this area was so narrow that any roixers or Thyrian officials traveling in a cellholt wouldn’t notice anything unusual. Not unless they stopped their transport despite not having an official station nearby, tried to get off it however they could in the small space left around its cylinder shape, and looked to the roof of the vessel. Only there they would notice that the blueish membrane was perforated, the end of a rope hanging in the middle of a vertical tunneled hole that could fit one person and a half.
Hope interlaced her hands so Nina could jump and grab the rope they had tucked in safely after they landed. A couple of attempts later, she pulled the rope down.
“After you,” Hope smiled. The amount of strength Nina’s legs had had to gather in these past days since they had been working with the courtrades was immense. Hope knew very well how much the legs of her friend had hurt, the pins and needles that made her moan every time she turned in her sleep in the bunk bed below hers.
But there was not much choice. Not when it took two people to walk in the vessels and be able to return. And especially not when, after climbing the rope until they were out of the vessel and out of sight from any passing cellholts, they had to climb a metallic ladder drilled into the wall of the tunnel for long minutes. Until they reached the interior of a room in the building where the courtrades lived.
Hope climbed the last step with a final push, jumping into the control room where someone always was on duty, ensuring that the building stayed safe and unnoticed by unwanted beings. Nina was panting, sitting on the floor with her hands on her head, her elbows on her bent knees. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, but decided against it and closed it.
Hope sat on a table and started removing some of her sheathed knives and daggers from her belt, carefully placing them next to each other. She did not remove all of them, obviously, as danger could become present anytime, anywhere. Just enough to sit comfortably with no unnecessary spiking.
When Nina opened her mouth again but said nothing, Hope asked, “Are you okay over there?”
Nina started nodding slowly and then changed her mind and shook her head vigorously. With her hands still covering her forehead, she gasped, “Water.”
Hope chuckled, grabbing a glass from a cabinet and filling it with cool water.
Marcus was pressing some buttons on the screens that showed the live feed of the cameras monitoring the blind spot.
“We had outer-vessel cameras twice, but the sea creatures ended up eating them pretty quickly.” He scratched his haired chin distractedly. “Definitely not worth the effort and risk to put them up again if they only last a couple of days. But it had... interesting views.”
How the courtrades had put cameras on the outside of the membrane of the vessels would have been interesting, for sure.
Marcus pointed towards the glass wall next to the screens, the one showing the living map of the wider vessels net. “The way the vessels connect to each other is by merging membranes, so when we want to redirect some cargo to another destination, all we have to do is push it away. Physically redirect a vessel to connect to another one.”
Aurora nodded, her index finger on her chin. “And if someone or something is in the vessel that you move?”
“They would feel the vessel shake, sort of like a magical wave, the sorts of a panomquake, except on a very small scale, and only for a short time. I bet most times they think it's some sort of malfunction or a sea creature hitting it,” Marcus scratched his dark hair.
Aridian chuckled from another spot in front of the screens, “And thank Llunal for that.”
Nina's breathing had finally eased a bit, so Hope offered her a hand to stand up and they got closer to Marcus, Aurora, and Aridian.
Feeling the familiar sensation of her stomach rumbling, Hope asked, “So the plan is to get into a cellholt from the tunnel you have down there, and then someone will push vessel after vessel, over and over, until we reach Thyria? What if we reach a dead end?”
“That, my friend,” Marcus' dark eyes shone, “is the key to this game. The vessels always reconnect. Their nature makes them crave the connection to another one nearby. Their net exists to ensure the flow of the magic above them. There are no loose ends. Ever. And as for who will push the vessels, it will be me. Each cellholt has a living map that can be unlocked with panom blood. Your blood, in this case.”
Hope frowned without meaning to. The fact of having to go into a system of never-ending underwater magical-fueled tunnels was everything but promising.
Nina's blue eyes were wide and her eyebrows raised as she slowly shook her head. Two firm believers in this plan, they were.
Marcus stood up clapping his hands, “Lunchtime, everybody. Shall we?” Without looking backwards, he walked towards the dining room a few rooms down the corridor.
Courtrades of different ages and profiles occupied multiple long metal tables in orderly rows. All of them wearing black, the color these shadow-dancers seemed most comfortable in. All of them interacting with each other like a big family reunion.
The shock at how non-silent these meals were, how everyone seemed cheerful about being part of the group, had made Hope stop dead the first time she had entered the dining room. She hadn't even considered that this would be the normality for some people. Hadn't even realized it was an option.
She missed the peace of her meals in the treehouse, or by the lake, or in the woods. This was just... Too loud. Too overwhelming. It was almost impossible to avoid thinking way too much about her own life. About all the what-ifs. About what a mess of a life she had ended up living, how many times her soul had broken, and how many more it would be shattered again.
Bowl of hot soup and fresh piece of bread in hand, Hope and Nina found a spot in the middle of the unfamiliar social chaos.
Nina wiped her mouth with one of the cloth napkins distributed across the tables. Black napkins with white spirals and half circumferences sewn into them. “You will regret not eating this when we are en route and eating cold tinned meat and peas for Cardinals know how long.” Nina’s top lip curled in disgust at the thought.
Knowing how much truth those words bore, Hope forced herself to taste the soup. Which wasn’t an easy feat, considering the knot in her stomach had only grown exponentially since they had entered the courtrades’ quarters a few days ago.
A mix of emotions, that ever-increasing knot was. The strongest being the feeling that something in her was missing, but she couldn’t identify what. Overall, it was a big damned cocktail of emotions that threatened to implode sooner or later.