12. The crimson skies
12
THE CRIMSON SKIES
Looking back, Anahrod’s escape from the Deep sparked the idea. She’d been thinking of sky amber, since that had proved their salvation. Although one might argue sky amber was the salvation of all of Seven Crests.
Every dock in a Seven Crests city, from Crystalspire to Snowfell, invariably featured a statue of sky amber’s patron saint, Laer Berosidge. She wasn’t the one who’d discovered sky amber—the dragons had been using the stuff for meditation and ritual from the earliest days—but Berosidge had discovered how to use sky amber to make humans soar.
Anahrod rather doubted Berosidge had any idea how her discovery would change human society—or at least the human society that lived on the mountains, where the air was thin enough for human lungs. And she certainly couldn’t have foreseen just how dangerous collecting sky amber would be, because the resin didn’t come from a tree or fungus or mineral vein. Sky amber came from the only animal on the planet that lived their entire lives in the upper atmosphere, never landing at all.
Leviathans.
What Anahrod knew about sky amber harvesting was best summed up by its effect on trade: indispensable. Dragons would never degrade themselves by becoming mere cargo carriers or modes of transportation. Similarly, transporting goods on foot down a mountain, navigating the perils of the Deep, and ascending another nearby mountain to reach one of the other city-states of Seven Crests was prohibitively hazardous.
When sky amber became an option, it soon became the only option.
Unfortunately, since sky amber refused to cooperate by raining down on the cities, someone had to harvest it. Amber harvesting was the fastest way to die in the Skylands—and the fastest way to strike it rich. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of people willing to overlook the risk of the former in pursuit of the latter.
All of which meant that Anahrod stood an excellent chance of finding an amber cutter who was both hiring and uninterested in asking questions about her background.
The second cutter she checked, the Crimson Skies, had room for one more. The cutter planned to leave port with the evening wind.
A cutter was just a larger flyer, of course. They could’ve taken any shape—sky amber didn’t care what it kept afloat—but Anahrod had never seen a flying craft not modeled on a living counterpart. Thus, most flyers looked like birds—blood crows or star kites. The larger cutters were modeled after the leviathans themselves.
The Crimson Skies was no exception: a large, sleek aerodynamic tube that flattened out to a rounded square in the front and narrowed to a point in the back. Giant sail-wings, pointed straight up while the cutter docked, could be moved in a circle around the whole vessel to catch the wind while flying. The cutter design was a matter of practicality: the only way to approach a leviathan was to make the giant creatures think the cutter was a stray calf.
The Crimson Skies’ captain was named Bederigha, a plump, curly-haired man with only one hand who therefore wore his garden rings in his hair. He was late-sprouting, married, and preferred masculine partners. His garden rings included a cliff tulip, which Anahrod had wanted to find herself, as it meant “none of your damn business” in a less offensive way than not wearing any rings at all.
She liked him immediately.
He’d squinted at Anahrod, taking in the clothing, the sword, the knapsack, that blood crow career ring. “Ever gone harvesting sky amber before?”
There seemed little sense lying to the man. “No, Captain.”
“You ever served on a cutter?”
“No, Captain.”
“A flyer of any kind?”
“No, Captain.”
He scratched his chin. “Ain’t anyone told you that you’re supposed to lie about that sort of thing? Make yourself seem valuable?”
Anahrod shrugged. “I don’t start fights and I’m not afraid of work. Isn’t that valuable?”
“You don’t start fights?” His gaze slipped down to her sword. “While I am glad to hear that, if you’re the sort that will finish them with that sword, we still have a problem.”
Anahrod dropped her fingers to the pommel. “It’s not like that. This is… it has sentimental value. I’m not fool enough to attack people with it.”
“Can you use it?”
She shrugged. “Anyone who says there’s no need for swords anymore hasn’t tried walking the bad part of town after dark. It’s damn useful in the right circumstances.”
The captain made a face. She could see him weighing the risks.
Revealing her culinary skills would’ve guaranteed his acceptance (assuming he believed her), but it would also intensify doubts about her true motives. Trained cooks didn’t hire on as regular crew. They didn’t need to.
The captain finally snorted. “Fine, but the sword stays peace-bound and out of sight.”
“Easily done. Thank you.”
The captain squinted at her, waiting for her to say something else. Suspicion was creeping back into his expression.
Anahrod shifted on her feet, staring past the captain’s shoulder toward the vessel.
Right. She was forgetting something.
Anahrod cleared her throat. “What does the job pay?”
Bederigha huffed, but also relaxed. Now they had returned to following the expected script. “This ain’t paid by the hour. You’re joining our division. You understand that, right? If we don’t bring back anything, you get half a share of nothing. If we find some old grandpa out there, you get half a share of a fortune. You do fair by us, and we’ll do fair by you.”
He pointed up the gangplank to the cutter. “Go tell my first mate, Grexam, that you’ve joined up. He’ll show you where to bunk. We leave in a few hours, so if you need to say goodbye to your husband, you best do it soon.”
She almost protested that she didn’t have a husband, but remembered her rings said otherwise. “It won’t be a problem. Thank you, Captain.”
He pursed his lips. “So, it’s like that, huh? Well, you’d hardly be the first to fly from a bad marriage straight onto a leviathan’s back. Now get yourself inside before we leave you on the dock.” He waved her toward the cutter’s boarding ramp.
The cutter was graceful for a hunting vessel. Beautiful, even, with no hard edges anywhere. Intricate painted designs ran all along the outside edges; it was impossible to tell which inscriptions were important and which were nothing more than elaborate facades meant to protect trade secrets.
The inside of the cutter wasn’t as pretty. The fancy decorations gave way to weathered lumber and dull metal. Eventually, Anahrod tracked down Grexam, a hulking man twice the captain’s size who climbed tall mountains with his bare hands and ate raw titan drake eggs for breakfast. His rings differed from Bederigha’s only in that he wore a lower rank of career ring, wasn’t late-sprouting, and was a lot more interested in sex—or at least watching other people have sex. His rings were also in the same style as Bederigha’s, if not made by the same jeweler, suggesting the “mate” in his job title was more literal than usual.
When Anahrod tried to introduce himself, Grexam waved her back.
“I don’t care what your name is,” he growled. “I ain’t gonna bother learning your name until your second trip out, understand? Until then, you’re just Stupid, get it? When I call out ‘Hey, Stupid,’ I mean you. Survive this trip and prove that my name for you is wrong, well, then we’ll give you a new one when we give you a new ring. Maybe even your real name if you’re lucky. Understand, Stupid?”
Anahrod’s mouth quirked. Not using her real name fit her own plans nicely. She could put up with being called “Stupid” if it meant the crew had no name to give pursuers.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
He eyed her up and down as though he thought he’d find a tattoo on her somewhere confessing her incompetence. A dissecting, judging look. It didn’t offend her. This was a dangerous job, and the crew needed to depend on each other.
“Fine then,” he grumbled. “Stow your shit in the main cabin. Last bunk in the row. Find an empty chest for your stuff. No locks unless you brought your own. Stow the sword: you won’t need it and you’d best not be tempted to use it.”
Anahrod sucked on her teeth. She hadn’t brought a lock. She hadn’t even thought of it. Ah, well. She was wearing everything of value except for the sword, and if someone tried to steal that, she hoped they’d made peace with their loved ones first.
Anahrod shrugged and gave the man a bow. He gave her a huge stink eye in response, and she reminded herself to never do that again.
“And throw that damn blood crow ring over the side,” he yelled after her. “You’re a whaler now.”
She went to store her meager possessions in the main cabin.
Anahrod removed the blood crow ring, but she didn’t throw it away. She knew her stay on the Crimson Skies would be short-lived. Whaling cutters chased leviathans anywhere: leviathans held no respect for political boundaries. A chasing cutter would trespass anywhere they thought they could get away with. Which meant cutters often stopped off in other mountain cities—cities outside of Seven Crests—to resupply. That was all the opening Anahrod needed.
The first time the cutter stopped at such a city would be the last time they ever saw Anahrod.
Her plans had neglected to include an important variable. Her mistake was understandable: it depended on information she hadn’t known and didn’t discover until the cutter left Crystalspire.
By then, it was too late.
They’d put her to work immediately. Mostly tasks of the “carry this” and “pull on that” variety. Drudge work and heavy lifting. All easy enough. She’d spent too long in the Deep to find manual labor anything worth grumbling over.
The Crimson Skies had a few windows, small and high set—the captain probably had a lovely view, but such luxuries weren’t for the crew. Anahrod thought nothing of it. The cutter felt oddly vacant because the experienced crew were busy manning the giant pinions that connected the wing sails, slotting them into position and then moving them again as the captain shouted down orders. The process involved a great deal of pulling, knotting, retying ropes, and swearing.
Around thirty minutes after leaving the city, someone pushed a bucket of water and a ladle into Anahrod’s hands. “Go give the crew water.”
So Anahrod did. Or at least, she tried.
As Anahrod carried the bucket, she glanced down through one of the pinion slits. The gap itself was only a foot in width—someone might trip or possibly jam a leg through the opening, but falling through it would’ve taken dedicated effort.
Anahrod stared down at an enormous drop of land sliding away from the mountain, white and gray toward Crystalspire before sinking down into the Deep’s vivid greens and purples. She saw blood crows flying a few thousand feet lower, clouds weaving in and out underneath.
In between: twenty thousand feet of empty air.
Nothingness.
The next thing she knew, Anahrod hunched on the ground, her trousers wet from spilled water, her back pressed against the curved hull of the cutter. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase against the metal hull.
The world appeared and vanished in flashes. Anahrod picking up the water bucket. Anahrod free-falling to her death. She scratched at the wooden deck with her nails. The wind slashed at her eyes and whipped back her hair. Someone shouted at her. She was all alone, tossed out like garbage by her own people. Someone touched her shoulder. She watched the earth reaching up for her. More voices speaking to her. Her ears popped as the air pressure changed far too quickly. Someone spoke to her. She couldn’t save herself.
Someone slapped her, hard.
The second time, she caught the wrist.
Grexam, the first mate, kneeled next to her, his expression more annoyed than angry. “What kind of fool signs up on a whaler who’s scared of heights?”
Anahrod made a face, fighting off an outburst of laughter or tears. She couldn’t tell.
Anahrod whispered: “The kind of fool who didn’t know she was.”
Grexam sighed. The sound was old and tired. “Kenerem, take her to the mess, would you? I don’t have time for this shit right now.” He stared down at Anahrod. “You, Stupid. Follow Kenerem. I’ll find you in the mess when we’re done adjusting the course, you hear me?”
Anahrod nodded and let Kenerem lead her away.
They didn’t go far. The mess hall was empty since the crew was busy at their posts. Kenerem sat her down on a bench, giving her a pitying expression. The crewman looked like she’d been asked to care for a bird born without wings.
“You stay here, okay?” Kenerem didn’t wait to hear Anahrod’s answer. With Grexam’s order accomplished, Kenerem retreated.
Anahrod pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and sat there. She was numb. Scraped clean of all emotion but the dull, aching certainty that she was cursed.
All her plans, tentative though they’d been, had hinged on a false assumption. For a Skylander to fear heights wasn’t impossible, but Skylanders who feared heights didn’t sign up as crew on whaling cutters.
Or any flyer.
She thought about her life. All her life. All the years she spent in the Deep. She’d climbed trees. She’d even climbed cliffs. Nothing even close to the sort of height she’d experienced when the Crimson Skies had left Crystalspire. Nothing like the height in those awful memories, so awful they felt like a visceral fist clenched around her throat.
Blood crows screaming as they grabbed at her clothing. The snapping sound her bones made as she hit the tree branches.
The fear, the dismay, the desperate flailing attempt to grab hold of anything or anyone that might save her life.
Anahrod still didn’t know how she’d controlled a flock of blood crows, all at once, but she must have. They’d slowed her fall enough to survive the impact. She’d broken both arms and legs, five ribs, and her collarbone, but she’d survived.
She raised her head and wiped her tears. Maybe it was just as well that she’d been unconscious when Ris and her dragon Peralon had carried her back to Crystalspire.
Regardless, now Anahrod faced a new problem.
Whaling divisions weren’t known for indulging people trying to gain free passage. If Anahrod had come to Captain Bederigha from the start with an offer to pay a fare, he might have granted her permission. Maybe. But to suddenly announce that she couldn’t perform the work she’d agreed to?
Anahrod eyed the door to the galley. She hadn’t wanted to fall back on her cooking skills, but maybe this was the right time to make an exception.
She shakily rose to her feet and walked inside the galley, intent on having a chat with the cook.
This goal was complicated because there was no cook. The galley stood empty.
Anahrod frowned. The galley shouldn’t have been empty. “Cook” was a vital position in any division, but triply so in a division that traveled. “Flyer cook” was a position just under quartermaster, equal to the crew doctor. Making sure any food served to the crew wouldn’t make them sick was a full-time job.
The galley itself was clearly being used. It was clean and well maintained, possessed a large store of fermented ingredients and specially grown staple grains. The pantry was full to the brim with provisions.
The crew ate well.
Which meant that Anahrod had a decision to make.
If she guessed wrong, she might find herself tossed off a cutter for a second time.