Chapter 7
Edmund ran tests on the alleged Skystone once the Maelstrom was moving again. He came back with startling results: the blue stone contained the highest concentration of Aether he’d ever seen—higher than even Hellsgate. It actually shattered the test instruments.
Will’s skepticism regarding the Skystone’s existence shattered with them.
He already knew he’d stop at nothing to keep the stone out of Alastor Graven’s hands. But what did it do? It was supposed to chart a course through the Aether Storm. How was anyone’s guess.
Journals, maps, elevation logs, star charts, letters, manifests, and tomes Edmund had pilfered from the Bitterwind study now covered Will’s room. Most of it seemed irrelevant, but Ed was determined to find every scrap of information related to Graven’s quest for the Skyvault.
The scholar held an advantage over Will and Sebastian, who had joined them.
Although Edmund didn’t have a stomach for violence and could barely lift a sword—which made no sense, considering the mountains of books he regularly carried around—he had a relic called Lightword.
The goofy pair of black-rimmed glasses replaced his regular round spectacles and granted him the ability to process information at a nauseating speed.
While Edmund flipped through page after page, Will and Sebastian were left to process the wealth of material before them at a snail’s pace.
“I need to get one of those big chalkboards they use in schools,” Edmund muttered. The captain’s quarters were the largest private rooms on the Maelstrom, but he still struggled to arrange everything so it was all visible. “Captain, permission to steal one?”
“Permission denied,” Will said dryly. “We’re not making a stop for that.”
“Come on. Look at all this!” Edmund flung out his arms.
“Yeah . . . what exactly are we looking at?” Sebastian said through a yawn, dropping the manifest he held and leaning against the wall.
“I don’t know! There’s too much . . . and not enough. The main thing I’m trying to understand is this house—Starcrest Peak. The blueprints were in the lockbox, and Pearce’s initials are all over it, but there’s no other references to it. No location, nothing.”
Edmund shoved a set of blueprints at Will, who regarded them with disinterest. “I’m on the edge of my seat.”
“You should be.” Edmund had many proficiencies, but detecting sarcasm was not among them. He sat back and rocked on his heels. “We’re on the precipice of greatness.”
“Are we?” Sebastian asked. “Have we found anything new? Like, maybe how that thing works?”
“I’ve been fiddling with it all afternoon. Nothing,” Will said.
When Edmund had returned with the Aether test results, Will questioned Amaya’s claim of ignorance. Now, it was starting to make sense. He picked up the necklace again and turned it over, running his thumb across the crust of jewels and gears. It was just a piece of jewelry.
Except, it clearly wasn’t.
“We haven’t found nothing. There are some gems in here—like this.” Edmund tossed Sebastian a tattered leather journal. “It’s Corsair’s—page fifteen. He said Graven believes ‘the Sinclair girl’ is descended from Pearce himself. But the family tree I found doesn’t support that theory.”
“Of course it doesn’t. That’s a load of crap,” Sebastian mused, flipping through the pages. “Pearce had no children. He was married to science, or whatever.”
“I’m about as convinced of that as I am that you have sired no children,” Edmund quipped.
Will subdued a chuckle; Edmund had a point. The first mate rarely slept in his room when they docked unless Will gave an explicit order to stay on board.
Sebastian scoffed at the suggestion and hurled the journal back across the room, hitting Edmund in the face and knocking off his glasses.
“Hey! You know I’m right.” Edmund was quiet for a moment as he adjusted his glasses and smoothed down his shoulder-length black hair, then abruptly changed the subject. “Do we have a heading?”
“I postponed the raid on Minerva, but not yet,” Will admitted. The Skystone was far more lucrative than anything they could hope to find in Veridian’s western port city. And raids, while necessary to defend the sky cities, left a bitter taste in his mouth anyway.
“Well, all evidence points to this being the Skystone,” Edmund said. “But I don’t have the tools to run more comprehensive tests on this kind of artifact—not on the ship. So I’m thinking . . .”
Will immediately understood Edmund’s trajectory and shook his head.
“No. Not Vaelstead. That’s the first place Graven will look.”
Vaelstead was the Maelstrom’s known home port. They always defaulted to Vaelstead.
“We’ll be in and out. We could consult with Trinity James—she’d love this, and we trust her. I’m sure she could figure out how it works.”
“I think that’s as good an idea as any. We need to resupply and charge the shields anyway,” Sebastian said.
Will considered it. He didn’t have a better idea, and they couldn’t just fly around aimlessly with the Skystone. Mitigating every risk would be impossible. At least visiting Trinity James would give them some clearer answers.
Hopefully.
“All right. Vaelstead.”
Edmund grinned victoriously. “Great. I’ll throw some materials together for James.” He paused, tapping his chin. “What about the girl? Do we think she’s Pearce’s descendant?”
Will clicked open the locket, but his eyes didn’t fall on the stone.
Instead, he studied the photo on the opposite side: a young girl with a playful grin alongside who he presumed was her mother—regal and serene.
Amaya looked around the same age Will had been when he’d lost his parents, maybe a year or two older.
Snapping it closed, he envisioned Amaya languishing in the brig while he debated her fate. If she was related to Ronan Pearce, she was essentially sky royalty. But it didn’t change her involvement, or mean she knew more than she let on.
“I’m not sure it matters. If she doesn’t know how to use it, she can’t help us,” Will said. Setting her loose once they reached Vaelstead was starting to sound like the best option. He wasn’t going to kill her, and he couldn’t keep her in the brig forever.
If Amaya was as clueless as she seemed, it wouldn’t matter if Graven went after her again after that.
And it wouldn’t be Will’s problem.
Sebastian leaned forward and elbowed him. “Let’s assume this professor figures out what it does. What then?”
Will hesitated. No one truly knew what lay hidden in the Skyvault, but there was a prevailing rumor that had circulated for decades regarding Genesis, one of the lost Class Fours.
And the extension of that legend, the one Graven believed, was that Ronan Pearce had kept himself alive for over a hundred years by using the fabled mechanical heart.
He was said to be trapped in the storm, unreachable. Undying.
“Graven believes Pearce is inside the storm,” Will said slowly. He slid Sixth Sense off his finger and let the ring unfold into an astronomical sphere, fiddling with it. “He thought if he could just get to the Skyvault and find him, he’d know how to disperse it.”
“Well, that would be great,” Edmund said, brightening. “All that Aether returned to the atmosphere—imagine it! And Pearce is the greatest artificer in history. He could revitalize the relic industry in a way that’s truly unprecedented.”
Edmund’s perspective wasn’t surprising. And honestly, Will couldn’t say he opposed the idea either.
With the storm dispersed, the sky cities would have enough Aether to reopen their many abandoned factories. And all the knowledge—Pearce’s knowledge—that had been lost in the Relic War would bring about a new renaissance.
If relic output increased enough, they might even be able to stop conducting raids.
But this was Graven. Will didn’t want someone as powerful as Ronan Pearce falling under Graven’s control, where he would surely be made a slave to the Sky Lord’s will. No one was safe from Nightmare. Not even its creator.
“I know Graven,” Will said. “He’s not a philanthropist, he’s a dictator. Imagine Graven using Nightmare on Ronan Pearce. Imagine Pearce as his puppet. He’d revive the relic industry, sure, but—”
“You don’t know it would be all bad,” Edmund argued. “It would still bring the sky cities back to life. We’d be able to craft real relics again, not just piddly Class Ones. Who cares who’s in charge?”
“You want an obsessive, sadistic egomaniac who already has two Class Fours to be in charge?” Will snapped.
“I lived on the Baroness for eleven years, Edmund. I’m not making shit up.
And what happens when he’s done with Pearce and kills him for Genesis just like Pearce killed Cory? Because he will—you know he will.”
There were seven Class Fours in total, all crafted by Pearce to give the sky cities an edge during the Relic War. Each Sky Lord was technically supposed to have one, but out of those seven, Graven possessed two—including the one he’d stolen from Will’s father.
Of course he’d want a third. Of course he’d want Genesis.
Graven, immortal and in control of a second relic renaissance, was just about the worst thing Will could imagine.
“So . . . what do we do, then? If we figure out how the stone works?” Sebastian asked.
“I guess we’d better find the Skyvault before Graven does,” Will said. “If Pearce is in there, we get to him first.”
“Say he’s not,” Sebastian said. “Say there is no Pearce, because I’ll be honest, it sounds like bullshit. Mom and Dad thought it was bullshit, too. What then?”
Will pressed his lips into a thin line. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he believed the rumors, either. Legends like Pearce and Genesis could easily be spun out of proportion by time and fanciful imaginations, and Graven had the most fanciful imagination of all.
But doing nothing wasn’t worth the risk. Because what if Graven was right?
Will had spent over a decade under Graven’s thumb, and he wouldn’t wish that fate on his worst enemy, let alone their entire civilization.
“If there’s nothing to find, it doesn’t matter,” Will said. “We go back to our lives. But if Pearce is in there . . . I’d much rather he answer to us.”
“My ears hurt,” Crowe complained as the crew gathered in the mess for dinner. “Damn princess wouldn’t shut up.”
Will had finally sent Ford to take over Amaya’s jail duty. Now, the first brother sat at a table with Will, Sebastian, and Lockwood.
“Maybe she’s as annoying as she is nice to look at,” Sebastian suggested, wagging his eyebrows.
Will rolled his eyes, but sincerely hoped his friend was wrong. She was already an inconvenience. The last thing he needed was a pretty woman badgering his crew.
And she was nice to look at. Unfortunately.
“I thought she seemed like a princess, too,” Mouse said, a dreamy vacancy in his eyes.
Now cleaned up and helping serve dinner, the boy juggled a tray stacked with food and wore a white apron tied around his waist three times to hold it up.
Each man received a bowl of hearty stew that fragranced the air with herbs and warm spices.
“It wasn’t a compliment,” Crowe grumbled, digging into his dinner. He took a few sloppy bites before turning his focus to Will. “Anyway. Seems harmless enough.”
Will nodded and dug into his own meal. He’d been on edge all day after discovering Amaya and the Skystone, but Ozzie’s stew warmed his body and lulled his mind into a calmer state that almost resembled relaxation.
It was as close as he ever got.
Mouse hovered beside the table, holding an extra bowl. He cleared his throat, and the tension in Will’s shoulders snapped right back.
“Um, Captain? She’s probably hungry, too. Can I bring her something?”
“You are not in a position to be asking for anything,” Will reminded him.
Mouse deflated. “I know, but it’s just . . . well, we can’t starve her.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Will said, annoyed that Mouse would even suggest that. He let out a heavy sigh, glancing up at Crowe. “She didn’t try to escape?”
Crowe shook his head. “She tested the lock once, but no. She did say she was hungry.”
If Will planned to set Amaya loose in Vaelstead a couple days from now, it might be worth getting on decent terms. Treating her poorly would only result in her leveraging her father’s resources against them.
Amaya herself might be harmless, but her connections were anything but.
Decision made, Will stood without finishing his food and took the bowl from Mouse.
“All right. Mouse, come join us when you’ve finished up here.”
The teenager became giddy at the order, offering a firm salute that nearly cost him his tray.
“Aye, Captain.”
Sky Lords rarely delivered meals to prisoners themselves, but the Maelstrom rarely kept prisoners on board. Their enemies typically died, escaped, or surrendered in exchange for their freedom, with little space in between.
Amaya, however, was different. Not an ally, but not quite an enemy either.
Not yet.
Will descended the steps to the brig, where he found Ford standing guard and Amaya behind bars, sitting against the far wall of her cell.
“At ease, Ford; you’re off duty,” Will said.
“Captain?” Ford was understandably surprised—he hadn’t stood guard an hour yet.
“Take the night off.”
Ford offered no protest, merely grunting in appreciation before handing over the key ring. The rusted key belonging to Amaya’s cell made a horrible screech when Will rotated it in the lock, a result of disuse. Wincing, he forced it open and stepped inside.
The layers of Amaya’s skirt rustled as she stood.
“The entire night?” she asked without preamble. “Don’t tell me you’re taking the night shift.”
“I’ll be the one asking questions.”
Will handed her the bowl of stew, which she accepted.
Her fingers brushed his, and the light touch made him suddenly aware of how he must look: exhausted, dark blond hair falling over his eyes, the white shirt he hadn’t bothered to change speckled with Corsair’s blood and haphazardly tucked into black trousers.
Will assuaged his insecurity with a reminder that Amaya looked worse off.
Her eyes, though—they pulled him in as if they had their own magnetic field. The low light of the lanterns cast haunting shadows over her face, illuminating the beaded stars on her dress.
She was going to be a problem, wasn’t she? There was something dangerously intoxicating about her unwarranted confidence. She was too beautiful, and not nearly scared enough.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“You have a captive audience,” Amaya said. “Talk.”