Chapter 13 #2
“Oh, that’s very naughty of you, Bas,” Serena teased, coming up behind them with her breakfast. She squeezed between Amaya and Sebastian, forcing Amaya to scoot aside to make room.
The first mate rolled his eyes at his sister’s comment, but Serena paid him no mind and turned to Amaya instead. “Feeling better, princess?”
Amaya nodded. “That hot chocolate helped.”
“Chocolate always helps.”
“Why didn’t I get any?” Sebastian asked with a pout.
“Because, brother dear, you made fun of my hot chocolate machine,” Serena quipped. “You’re cut off for life.”
Sebastian and Serena began bickering back and forth, volleying childish insults.
Amaya tuned them out, her eyes sliding to Edmund and his books.
She skimmed the titles: The Life and Legacy of Ronan Pearce; Class 4 Relics: A Comprehensive Guide to the World’s Most Powerful Weapons; Understanding the Aether Storm and Other Atmospheric Anomalies.
Surely he would have something akin to what she needed. The worst he could say was no.
“Hey, do you think I could borrow a couple of those?” she asked.
Edmund glared at her as if she’d requested a year of his life. “Um, no. I need these.” He gathered his books into his arms protectively.
Amaya blinked, his refusal stinging a little more than she’d expected. “It doesn’t have to be exactly those. Don’t you have more?”
“Of course, but I don’t just lend them out to . . .” He scanned her up and down. “Why do you want them, anyway?”
“Well, I . . . do you have anything on the Sky Lords?”
If she planned to live on one Sky Lord’s flagship and be hunted by another, she thought she should know a little more than the base knowledge provided by her schoolbooks.
“You want to read about the Sky Lords?” Sebastian asked, her question pulling him away from his argument with Serena.
Amaya met his gaze evenly. “Unless you’d rather put me to work?”
The first mate snorted at that, a smirk pulling at his mouth.
“Ed, give her some books.”
“What?”
“That’s an order.”
“She offered to work! I daresay there ought to be something she can manage.”
“I won’t say it again.”
“Are you serious?” Edmund groaned. “I need them!”
Sebastian was serious, and it turned out Edmund could live without quite a few books. Amaya left the artificer’s workroom feeling smug, carrying an armful of books on Sky Lords and the history of airships. Edmund wouldn’t relinquish any of his tomes on Ronan Pearce, but it was plenty to start with.
The deck flurried with activity as the crew worked to repair the damage caused by the Stormrunner.
Serena and Malcolm were hard at work disassembling the ruined automaton, collecting any parts she deemed useful, while Sebastian got his hands dirty helping replace the broken floorboards. Mouse was on cleaning duty.
Everyone pitched in where possible, but Serena explained they could only do so much until they docked in Vaelstead.
Some of the crewmates, particularly the ones cleaning up the main deck, sang shanties to pass the time.
They were colorful and catchy, a far cry from the classical melancholia Amaya typically played.
The singing lifted everyone’s spirits, drawing out smiles and theatrics from men who had every reason to be downtrodden.
Amaya was genuine about offering to help, and had offered a second time, but she sensed she’d be more of a hindrance, and Sebastian agreed.
So, she made herself comfortable on a railside bench near the ship’s bow, humming along with the ongoing shanties as she cracked open her first book: The History of the Seven Sky Lords.
In their current state, the Sky Lords were a fraught, fractured community of vigilantes who lived by a codex that kept them from descending into complete lawlessness.
Barely. Their primary mission was raiding Veridian for pilfered relics and returning them to the sky cities, where they were looked upon not as pirates, but as heroes.
But that wasn’t how they started. The Sky Lords’ history stretched back over eighty years, when Ronan Pearce’s business partner, Westin Cory, had hand-selected seven generals to wage his war on Veridian.
The king at the time had decided that, given the ten settled cities were in Veridian airspace, they should also fall under his rule.
Cory, the most powerful man in the sky cities following Pearce’s discovery of Aether, disagreed.
Getting the average civilian on board with the war hadn’t been easy, given the sky cities were relatively recent settlements, so Cory relied on his generals, equipping them with seven powerful, destructive relics crafted by Pearce himself. Those seven generals later became the first Sky Lords.
What happened next was a lot of politics Amaya didn’t really care about, so she flipped to the back of the book to read about the current Sky Lords.
Of course, Amaya knew their names. Alastor Graven and William Lexington were just the beginning. Orion Thatcher captained the Constellation and was celebrated as an exceptional warrior, having once been a member of the Royal Fleet.
Daitan Toma ruled the Tamarix Desert with his band of smugglers—not relic smugglers, obviously, but he believed in giving Veridian a taste of its own medicine by carting weapons and opioids in addition to conducting raids.
Casimir Zealot seemed especially nasty. He was known for torturing those who wronged him by hanging them upside-down on his masts until the only thing left was their skeletons. Amaya shuddered at the thought.
Dhruv Kamran was said to be a mastermind impossible to outwit, and Emelie Hawk stood alone as the one and only woman on the list.
Based on what Amaya gathered from her entry, Hawk was everything the others were and more.
To hold her status and command respect as a woman in this aggressively male-dominated field, Amaya reasoned she’d have to be twice as extraordinary—especially since, according to this text, she wasn’t currently in possession of a Class Four.
Kamran didn’t have one, either, which helped Amaya understand some of the animosity toward Graven for possessing two and allegedly seeking a third.
As she flipped through the first book, Amaya realized that William Lexington wasn’t actually accounted for.
Instead, she found information about his predecessor, Dorian Duaric.
She remembered hearing that name as a child, undoubtedly before William took over his ship .
. . along with his signature relic, it would seem.
There were no photos of Duaric, but the few illustrations depicted a stocky, muscular man with a grisly scar across his profile and an unkempt beard decorated with tiny braids and beads.
He wore a jacket not unlike Lord Lexington’s, but his was black instead of crimson.
His hair was dark, too, streaked with gray.
Even in the drawing, his eyes seemed to gleam with malice.
But Amaya wasn’t focused on his face. She was looking at his sword.
The sword in Duaric’s hand shone black, with red highlights accenting the blade. It was roughly shaped like a wing, with tendrils of black smoke surrounding it. Amaya scanned the text for its name.
Hellsgate.
Amaya squinted, honing in on the relic’s description.
There was a footnote for Aetheric Decay, prompting Amaya to flip to the index.
Amaya shuddered, remembering the black lines she’d seen on Lexington’s wrist—all stemming from the steel embedded in his arm.
Setting the book aside, she reached for a different one whose spine wasn’t as worn, determined to find something on William Lexington instead of his predecessor.
She flipped through the chapters about each Sky Lord, paying little attention to any of them until she finally found what she was looking for.
The illustration was . . . something else. It rendered a handsome young man with blond hair and a red coat, holding a curved sword ensconced in black smoke. Accurate, so far.
But Lexington’s eyes weren’t green in the drawing. They were almost red. His expression was dastardly and cruel. He stood on a smoking airship surrounded by carnage, rising above it all.
Under the illustration was a caption that read: “Sky Lord William ‘Deathsmoke’ Lexington.”
Amaya trailed her thumb across the page, attempting to reconcile the image with the Maelstrom captain. It was him, but it wasn’t. Not quite.
“Not exactly the legacy I wanted.”
The voice startled her. Amaya jumped, slamming the book closed and looking over her shoulder to see Lexington himself.