Chapter 38 Cero #2
“Aiz is a monster,” he said. “And I am too. But we were both made by this world. One in which we were hungry from the day we were born. It was wrong to bomb your people. It was wrong for me not to stop it. It was wrong for me to make the transport Sails. But I never believed we would go to war. I thought your empress would hand over the Loha. I was stupid and naive, and I will never stop being sorry for it. But don’t you dare blame my people for wanting something better than cold and misery and death by starvation.
Especially when you’ve never known any of those things. ”
He turned from her and walked away, down the river. But it wasn’t really her he was walking away from. It was everything he’d just confessed. Everything he couldn’t take back.
Everything he could never undo.
He stayed away for hours, until sunset, when he was certain he’d cooled down enough that no matter what Karinna said, he wouldn’t rise to her bait.
She was waiting by the Sail when he returned, Abzi in her lap.
It was the cat who spotted him first, trotting over and butting her head against his leg.
As he reached down to pet her, Karinna got to her feet.
Cero ignored her and walked to the Sail, innervated it, and began to load up their supplies and strap himself in.
Karinna silently did the same. Abzi settled beneath Cero with a satisfied chirp, and he was about to take off. To spiral up as fast as possible. But this journey was for his people, not himself. He clenched his jaw and turned.
“Rebel.” He tried to modulate his tone. “You don’t want to be scared, but you are and that enrages you.
No—” He held up a hand as she began to accuse him of mindsmithing.
“It’s as obvious as the nose on your face.
You’re afraid and angry. And I’m afraid and angry too.
But our fear and rage guarantee our failure, not our survival. ”
She sniffed, arms crossed. “I’m listening.”
“I don’t know what we’re flying into,” he said. “We might hit land after a few hours, or we might not. If we don’t, I’ll have to keep flying. If I start falling asleep, I’ll need you to notice and keep me awake.”
“I’ll punch you awake.” She nodded seriously. “No problem.”
“Right.” He almost smiled. “I also won’t be able to pull my arms free for very long. Which means I’ll need help drinking water. Eating. Keeping enough energy to sustain the windsmithing.”
“You want me to feed you?” she said, incredulous.
“I don’t want you to,” he said. “Skies know you just might poison me. I need you to. Because we cannot fail. Both of our people’s survival depends on us not failing.”
Karinna considered the ground, biting her lip, which was extremely distracting.
No, not distracting. Because they are just lips, like anyone’s lips, not lush and soft and—
“Fine.” She broke his reverie. “But don’t expect me to give you a bleeding shoulder massage.”
This time, he caught her teasing tone, and when she met his stare, there was an understanding there that he hadn’t seen before. She held his gaze.
“I’m sorry you went through that,” she said, her voice not gentle—he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate that—but sincere.
“I don’t think you’re a murderer. I don’t know why I said that except that I’m angry all the time.
Especially after I—I didn’t save Ruh or avenge him.
Sometimes I don’t know how to keep it in. ”
He didn’t know what to say. So, he simply nodded and spiraled the Sail high onto an updraft before heading west, into the unknown.
The first few hours of the flight were easier than he’d expected.
He used the stars to guide the Sail. According to the map, he needed to head due west for about four hundred miles before turning south.
There should be a small chain of islands that appeared after, but he wasn’t sure how long it might take to get there.
At high speed, they’d cover a little more than a hundred miles in an hour.
He could go faster, but he had to keep the Sail aloft and keep the wind streaming around him so neither he nor Karinna froze and he could see what lay ahead.
Thank the Spires the wind was at his back.
Still, he pushed himself hard, and by the time half the night passed, he estimated they’d gone a little over five hundred miles.
But in an ocean this vast, five hundred miles might mean nothing.
Below them, the whitecaps were massive enough to see from thousands of feet up. He understood why ships could not make the passage, no matter what Musa said of the Mariners’ skill at sea.
Every hour, Karinna gave his shoulder a shake, as if to make sure he was still conscious.
She offered him water and fed him slices of pear and cheese, no doubt aware that if he died, she would too.
Twice, when he glanced to the side to check the repairs he’d made to the Sail, he noticed her looking up through the wing slats at the stars, moonlight highlighting the wonder on her face.
An hour before dawn, about a thousand miles out to sea, he spotted a long pale stripe gleaming ahead—the moon glittering off white sand. Land.
Giddy relief swept through Cero and he whooped. He circled the island twice to make sure it wasn’t inhabited and then brought the Sail down gently on a rocky rise at its southern edge.
He and Karinna stumbled free of the Sail, and she offered him a huge smile, one that changed her face. One he’d never seen before but that he suddenly wished he could see again.
Abzi immediately disappeared into the trees nearby, returning after a few minutes with a squirrel that she happily feasted on. Every now and then, she’d stare at the tree line, ears pinned back, growling low in her throat. But whatever had spooked her stayed away.
Exhaustion swept over Cero almost as soon as he ate, and he fell into a restless sleep. In his dreams, he visited a place that seemed familiar and yet he was sure he’d never been there. It was a cave with curious carvings on its walls, a crevasse in its shadows, and a dark hole at its center.
Who are you? a voice said. The voice of the child. The one he’d seen before.
“I’m Cero bet-Dafra.” Cero peered through the mist, but he saw only the cave’s walls, which seemed to pulse with weak blue light. “Who are you?”
Why should I tell you who I am when you don’t accept who you are?
“I told you,” Cero said. “I told you my name.”
But that is not who you are.
Cero woke right after, just as the sun reached its zenith. It felt as if he hadn’t slept at all.
For the next four nights, Cero found safe islands to land on, though on the third night, they passed over three smaller atolls before finding one that had fresh water. Every night, he was riddled with anxiety. He’d flown for years now, but never without the prospect of somewhere reliable to land.
On the sixth night of the journey, Cero lifted the Sail into air that felt heavy and still. The ocean shone like glass, and he practically had to conjure wind to keep the Sail aloft.
After a time, thunderclouds built on the horizon, and red lightning flashed.
Below, he saw enormous swirling whirlpools, and twice, the movement of immense creatures in the water.
When the wind finally picked up, it was with a vengeance, and Cero fought it, struggling to keep the Sail aloft.
He dropped elevation, hoping the winds along the ocean’s surface would be calmer, but the waves were enormous, the gusts more violent.
“Cero!”
Even over the sound of the storm, he heard Karinna’s shriek of terror in the comms tube.
A giant creature breached the ocean below them, all teeth and sinew and barnacles.
It might have been an octopus once, but now it just looked like a nightmare.
Before it could strike, Cero lifted the Sail, gasping from the chill spray that soaked him as the creature descended back into the waves with an almighty splash.
Perhaps out of fear, Karinna shook him every thirty minutes now. She offered Cero food and water, but he could barely keep the wind off them, and one of their canteens was ripped from her hand into the sea.
After hours, exhaustion consumed every limb. He kept expecting to fly out of the storm, but it never ended. His head felt as if it were full of sand, his body as ragged as if he’d run a hundred miles. He needed to stop soon. He couldn’t hold the Sail up for much longer.
Finally, the sun began to rise, a distant line of peach behind them, and he saw clear skies ahead.
But no land.
“Water,” Karinna croaked, and put the canteen to his lips. He accepted it gratefully.
“I don’t see land.” She sounded frightened.
“We’ll find it,” he said. “We aren’t far off course. We should be near Old Kegar by now.”
The wind tossed the Sail this way and that as if it were a paper kite. Cero caught an updraft, hoping to slip into a glide, but he wasn’t high enough. The magic grew more difficult to harness.
“Land!” Karinna cried out, pointing, and at first, he didn’t see it. But her vision was keener than his. Moments later, there it was, a shimmering green line. He calculated the distance—eighty miles.
An hour, he thought. Just an hour.
But his body was done. The Sail began to lose altitude; his magic began to fail.
“Cero?” Karinna called. “We—we’re falling. Are you—”
A wave of nausea hit him so hard he nearly pulled his arms from the Sail sleeves and doubled over. Behind him, Karinna gasped. “My—my head. Cero what’s—what’s happening—”
But Cero could not answer. The Sail was stooping toward the flat surface of the sea at an astonishing clip, and the last thing Cero wondered before he blacked out was how he could have failed his people so badly.