Chapter 8
Eight
Aesira
Warm, orange light filtered through the small porthole window, dragging Aesira from her restless sleep. She leaned over the edge to find the bottom bunk empty. Nora must have gotten a head start on the day.
Slumping back on her pillow she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and gasped when she looked out the window. The red sand that she’d become accustomed to in Vargah had become a sea of shining black granules. Pink clouds dotted the horizon, giving a false sense of serenity.
After the crawlers last night, she couldn’t look at the desert the same way again.
“I told you to fuck off!” a voice shouted from above deck. Aesira jumped off the bed, pulling on black armored pants, a short sleeve tunic with a built-in breastplate, and her boots.
“Go back to where you came from!” the same voice bellowed down the empty hallway as she poked her head out of the door. It was a feminine voice, but not Nora’s, so it had to be one of the two women part of Stone’s group.
An arid breeze scalded her cheeks as she climbed the same ladder as last night. Like the wind, images resurfaced in her mind, frenzied and blurry.
The ladder.
The wraith.
The loss of control over her body.
Stone.
“You! I need your help.”
“As good a greeting as any, I suppose,” Aesira said, following the woman. Her short, sleek hair bounced lightly as she stomped across the deck. Her angular, onyx eyes gave Aesira a quick glance over her shoulder before she turned away again. “Okay, well I’m—”
“I know who you are,” the woman said. “Here, take this.” She tossed Aesira a heavy rope before moving to the edge of the ship. “Get ready.”
“Get ready for what?” Did the woman expect her to man the ship? While she’d flown many times over the last year between Vargah and Novaria, she’d never worked on a ship before. “Maybe I can get Stone?”
“He’s busy.” The woman picked up another large rope and tossed it Aesira’s way, filling both her arms. “If you’re going to be hitching a ride aboard the Aquila, you’re going to be pulling your weight. Now get ready to toss those down.”
“Down?”
“Fucksake,” the woman mumbled. Aesira couldn’t keep track of her. She moved like a tiny bird zipping about the deck. In one place for no longer than a second before moving onto the next. “When I tell you to toss those lines, you toss them as hard and far as you can. Understand, Commander?”
The annoyance in her voice made Aesira’s cheeks heat. She was the head of her own squadron. Had moved up the ranks quickly and gone head to head with monsters–and won. Yet, this tiny woman had reduced her down to a novice. “Commander?” the woman demanded.
“Understood,” Aesira said through gritted teeth. The ship swayed slightly, creaking and groaning as it sailed around a cluster of pink clouds. But other than the noises of the ship and orders from the woman, everything else was eerily quiet. “Where is Stone? The rest of the crew?”
The woman finished tying off one of the lines. She glanced at Aesira, putting her hands on her hips. “They’re busy, like I said.”
“And my knight?”
“She’s busy too.” The woman was fiddling with something mechanical, not bothering to glance her way.
“Then who were you talking to earlier?” The woman stiffened. “I heard you shouting, so if it wasn’t to one of the crew, who?”
Her eyes narrowed but something scraped against the side of the ship, drawing her attention. “Toss the lines,” she said. “Now!”
Aesira took two steps toward the bow, the heavy ropes bundled in her arms. Dry, scorching wind seared against her lips, but when her eyes tipped down toward the dark sand, she froze.
“Commander. We waited for you. We’ll always wait for you.”
The crawlers from last night.
Fear lodged in her throat, her grip loosening on the lines.
“Drop the lines, Commander!”
“Come.”
“Let us heal you.”
“Let us take your pain away.”
Something about the last words shook Aesira from her stupor.
“They told me they’d make my pain go away.”
The same thing Stone had told her last night.
“Commander! Drop the fucking lines!” The severity in the woman’s voice was enough to wake her up. She shook her head once and tossed the heavy lines over the sides of the ship with all of her might.
It wasn’t until her arms were empty that she realized what she just did.
“Wait!” Aesira spun, finding the woman next to her, as if she’d flown across deck, peering over the starboard bow. “Haven’t we just given them a way to get up here?” Panic leeched the color from Aesira’s cheeks, her stomach dropping.
“Patience,” the woman said. Aesira glanced down at the crawlers and just as she suspected, they began to climb. Their skeletal bodies moved with unnatural speed and even more unnatural angles. Bending and twisting, oily strands of hair swaying in the breeze, bones cracking, teeth chattering.
“Shit,” Aesira murmured. She gripped the pommel of her sword, letting the bite of cold metal be her anchor. The crawlers screamed. Over and over again they screamed. They screamed her name. Her secrets. Her fears.
She drew in sharper breaths, and as the first wraith’s hand reached for her, a burst of heat and light dropped her to her knees.
Flames engulfed the crawler. Its shrieks grew higher and more piercing but through the horrific sound, a laugh rose in its place. Aesira swayed on her knees, her hands pressed tightly over her ears and when the noises began to dwindle, she pulled her sword and stood.
The woman stood tall, boot propped on the railing, a machine Aesira had never seen before aimed over the bow, flames shooting out, torching everything below.
A lone crawler had escaped the woman’s wrath, its empty eyes narrowed on Aesira. The crawler launched, but Aesira was quicker, slicing her blade clean through its middle. Inky ichor spilled on the deck. The crawler howled, something low and deep until Aesira used her blade to finish it off.
“Nice work,” the woman said. Together they pulled the dead crawler from the deck and pushed it over board.
Heat singed the hair on Aesira’s arms as she peeked over the bow, down to the scrambling wraiths below.
The smell of burnt hair and rotted remains drifted through the black smoke.
Aesira wiped her blade on her pants and turned to the woman at her side.
A satisfied smirk was slashed across her thin mouth, a quiet chuckle escaping her.
The same laugh, she realized, she’d heard among the carnage.
She pushed her goggles atop her head and lowered her weapon, her gaze drifting past Aesira.
“Convenient of you to join us just as all the hard work is done.” Aesira turned in time to see Stone taking a few strides toward them.
“Smells terrible,” Stone said, peering over the edge of the ship. “All of them?”
“All of them,” the woman said, raising her chin.
“Well done, as usual.” The compliment sounded strained, as if it pained Stone to admit it.
“That’s new.” He pointed to the flame tipped weapon the woman still held tightly in her grasp.
Aesira had never seen anything like it. The mechanics of it.
The flames. She was trained using traditional weapons; blades, arrows, her hands, and poison when necessary.
She admired the weapon as the woman slung it over her shoulder.
A weapon like that could change everything in the face of war, Aesira thought. The ease with which it annihilated an entire hive of crawlers. It was too dangerous.
“Had a lot of time to think in Vargah.” The woman pulled the weapon off her shoulder and cradled it in her arms, admiring it like one would admire a newborn baby. “Didn’t take much to make with all those supplies so graciously given by the queen.”
Stone glanced at Aesira, maybe waiting for a comment about the underground prisons, or her role in placing so many people there.
Or maybe he didn’t think she should know of the weapons being made with Vargah’s money, but he turned his focus back to the woman.
“Tidy up,” he said. “Meet me when you’re done. ”
Alone again, the woman led Aesira to an area where they kept cleaning supplies; mops and buckets stacked on top of each other. “Thanks for the help,” the woman said. “I’m Birdie, by the way.”
The hours melted into one another with various tasks Birdie assigned to Aesira.
Never mind she was the least experienced flyer on the ship.
Never mind that she was the queen’s sister and royalty herself.
In the few minutes she managed to sneak away, she found Nora who’d be assigned below deck, prepping meals and organizing their rations.
Aesira wouldn’t have been bothered by the work in any other circumstance. She liked keeping her hands occupied. Appreciated the sweat that built on her brow and the dull ache of her muscles as she dragged herself to her bed later that night.
She wouldn’t have been bothered if not for seeing the work for what it really was. A way to keep them busy. Keep them distracted from whatever Stone and the rest of his crew were doing beneath the ship.
“You didn’t see them all day?” Aesira asked as she and Nora slid into their bunks.
“Once,” Nora said through a yawn. “When they came to get their meals but they were quiet so I didn’t bother making conversation.” Nora poked her head out of the bottom bunk. “Stone asked about you, though, wondered why you weren’t eating with us.” Her grin spread the freckles across her cheeks.
“And did you tell him it’s because I find him repulsive?”
Nora laughed and rolled back into her bed. “Of course not, Commander. You know I’m a terrible liar.”
The small window in their cabin let in the last of the day's golden light. A few moments later, Nora’s soft snores drifted up from her bottom bunk, and despite the sleep clawing at her eyelids, Aesira couldn’t settle.
Tonight, however, it wasn’t the wraiths or nightmares that occupied her mind and made her restless. It was the nagging feeling that this crew–Stone–couldn’t be trusted.