Chapter 45 Elena
ELENA
There are three main ways to employ the Sesharian laborer: one, as an industrious miner; two, as a duteous servant; and three, as an unerring soldier.
Rustbloods, they call themselves. An unruly term, but then again, they are an unruly people.
That is why it is integral to rule them with an iron hand.
—from A Manual on Employing a Sesharian for Jantari Gentlefolk
She woke to the smell of grease. Elena turned, vomiting into a bucket. An older, grey-uniformed woman watched her dispassionately and, when she was done, handed her a wilted rag.
“No sea legs,” she muttered.
“Wh-where am I?” Elena said. She tried to sit up and knocked her head against the bottom of a bunk. “Ow!”
“You would have been better off drifting out at sea,” the woman said.
It was only then that Elena noticed the bull inked on her hand. The blue streak in her hair. Someone pounded on the door, and without waiting for an answer, a Jantari officer sauntered in. At the sight of vomit, he wrinkled his nose.
“Well, good, at least she’s awake.” He turned to the woman. “Can she work?”
“She’s got no broken limbs that I can see,” she said. “Just a tattered soul.”
“Quit complaining. Get her proper clothes and send her to the line. You. What’s your name?”
“El—” she began, and stopped.
“Hmm? What was it?”
“Wh-where am I?”
“On the Lord of Sea. We found you drifting on a broken… mass when we found you.” The officer studied her. “Where are you from?”
“I—I don’t re-remember,” she lied. “I was on a ship, and then there was a storm—”
“An islander, then, though your accent is strange.” The officer nodded, pleased with himself. “Yes, well, looks like you’re not being shipped off to the mainland. You’ll work this ship. Now get her dressed, Maya.”
He left, and Maya handed her folded clothes, rough to the touch. “What is your name?”
As the woman’s fingers brushed hers, Elena startled.
An electric shock, white-hot in its intensity, blazed up her arm, and she turned, half-confused, half-alarmed, to Maya.
Her vision split. She saw the healer through not only her eyes, but her Agni’s.
She saw the woman’s seven chakras lined up her spine, the rivers of energy flowing through her nadis like tributaries toward a sea. She saw the map of her.
“You look like you’re going to faint.”
As she spoke, Elena felt a deep and sudden compulsion to reach forward with her Agni and simply tap into Maya, to bend those streams of heat to her and—
“Hello?” Maya waved a hand in front of her face. “Girl. Where is your mind?”
“A-Aadya,” she stuttered. “M-my name is Aadya.”
“And where are you from, Aadya?”
“I—I don’t remember.”
Maya sniffed. “Well, you’re not an islander. I can smell it on you. But he can’t. So keep your head down and just follow everyone else, and maybe you’ll survive the passage.”
“Where are we going?”
“Tsuana,” Maya said.
Elena froze. Tsuana? And the ship was named Lord of Sea…
Phoenix Above! I’m on one of the killdoms. But how had she washed up here, this far out?
The last thing she remembered was the cold impact of the waves, Samson’s distant scream.
She had tried to kick to the surface, but then a shadowy tendril had grasped her ankle, and everything went dark.
She glanced down at her ankle, and sure enough, a purple gash marred her skin.
Fresh stitches held the wound together. Gingerly, she peeled off her clothes and put on the rough uniform, trying not to wince as the pant leg scratched against her welt.
Instinctively, she reached inside her pocket, and when she felt nothing, a cold realization hit her at once.
“My holopod,” she said, turning out the pockets. Yassen’s pod. The only memory she had left of him. She whirled around, searching the small room. “Where is it?”
Maya scowled and held up the silver disc, along with a small lotus. Jaya. Elena snatched both. She tapped the pod’s center, but no holos sprouted.
“It’s dead,” Maya said.
“No—no, it can’t— There must be a way to fix it—” Her fingers trembled as she clutched the pod.
Distantly, she knew the pod was nothing but an array of holos and codes and maps, that it could not replace the living memory of Yassen himself, but something wild and ferocious beat against her chest. She felt as if she had lost Yassen all over again.
Maya placed her hand on top of Elena’s, her voice oddly gentle. “You can try to have it repaired once we land.”
Numbly, Elena slid the pod and lotus into her pocket. A dirty mirror hung along the far wall. She caught sight of her hair, a tangled mess, but what stopped her was the unfamiliar streak of blue.
She touched her hair. “Did you—”
“Blending in as an islander will make things easier. Now hurry.”
Elena nodded, her throat suddenly thick. She did not know if she should be appreciative of the woman’s resourcefulness or horrified by what it meant—that she was a prisoner on this ship.
Inwardly, she reached for her Agni. It throbbed at her attention, warm, sure.
When Samson had tapped into her chakras, she had been overcome by the sudden uncomfortable sensation of being less.
It was as if he had taken all the bright, essential parts of herself, fused them to his Agni, and lobbed it at the beast. And even as it writhed and screamed, Elena felt as if she had been listening from afar.
With ears that were not hers, with a body that felt strange and foreign, as if she had diminished into a shade of herself she did not want to meet.
Maya tutted. “If you move any slower, they’ll chuck you back into the sea.”
Elena rose carefully. “How long have you been on this ship?”
“We’ve only been half a day sailing.”
Half a day, which means the bounders still have time to catch up. A frantic, furious hope fluttered in her stomach, fragile as moth wings. If only she could send them a signal. Let them know where she was…
Maya nudged her. “Did you hear me?”
“Huh?”
“Skies above, you’re deaf and slow.” Maya shook her head and opened the door. “Come, snail legs.”
Elena followed her out into the passageway. Soldiers—Sesharian recruits—walked stiffly by, their zeemirs strapped high upon their shoulders. Maya glowered as they passed.
“Rustbloods,” she said, loud enough for them to hear.
A soldier at the end picked up his pace, avoiding Maya’s glare.
Elena glanced at Maya’s uniform. Strange. Hers was the same dark slate grey as the Sesharian officers, but Maya regarded the others with derision, and they regarded her with fear.
Jantari officers passed then, nodding to Maya, who saluted stiffly.
They barely gave her a second glance. Faintly, Elena could hear the bustle of a ship at work: the rumble of orders, the drum of boots, the quick staccato of guns firing during a weapons check.
But the Sesharians were quiet. And she could feel their tensely corded anxiety as they followed the officers down an adjoining hall.
One woman passed something into Maya’s hand. She pocketed it quickly.
They went above to the quarterdeck where two Jantari officers, including the captain, oversaw Sesharians scrubbing grime from the deck. Dark liquid sluiced across the floor. Elena realized a moment too late that it was blood, and she let out a small yelp. The captain turned.
“Ah. So our mysterious passenger survived. Did you manage to stop the bleeding, healer?”
“Yes, sir,” Maya said. “She’s good as new. Name’s Aadya.”
“Good.” The captain assessed her, his eyes scanning her hair, her face, her arms and legs. “And what is she trained in?”
“She can shadow me, sir,” Maya said quickly. “Get her familiar with the ship.”
“No, I don’t need you babysitting. Put her in the laundry. The least she can do is clean out her blood from these rags.” He nodded to one of the Sesharians. “You. Give her yours.”
Elena accepted the rag, thin rivulets of rust-colored water beading down her fingers.
“Clean,” the captain commanded.
Elena did not move. She stared at the rag in her hand, and then at Maya. Her face was carefully neutral, though Elena could see the warning in her eyes.
“Are you deaf, islander?” the captain said.
Elena slowly lowered onto her hands and knees and began to rub at the dried blood.
There was so much. Surely this could not all be hers.
And then Elena looked up and saw the Sesharians strung along the upper railing.
Her heart stuttered to a halt. There were three, their arms and legs pinned up, their heads bare to the sun, blood caked on their faces.
The captain and his first officer stood nonchalantly underneath the hanged men, their white, crisp uniforms garishly bright in contrast. Elena could not tell how long the dead men had been up there, but she noticed how the deckhands did not dare look up.
Did not dare stop. Did not dare show their grief, or their anger.
There was a charged quiet in the air, filled with the overzealous sound of brushes scraping against the deck.
Them, scrubbing their frustration away. The Sesharian beside her caught her gaze.
He was a young boy, no more than fifteen, with thick black curls pulled back in a low bun.
When the captain turned to consult his officer, the boy leaned closer.
“They said you were screaming about monsters when they pulled you in,” he whispered.
“Was I?”
He nodded. “It’s got everyone on the ship talking about the Serpent’s shadows. That nasty cut on your leg—” He stopped abruptly when the first officer glanced back. It was the same man from before, the one with an upturned nose and dirty ashen hair.
“What was that, boy?”
“N-nothing, sir,” he said quickly.
“Come here.”
The color drained from the boy’s face. He stood obediently. Elena had the sudden urge to pull him back, to pull him down, but the boy moved forward, his movements stiff and stilted. He came to a salute before the officer.
“Now tell me what you just said to her.”
The boy said nothing, his head bowed.
The officer glared at her. “You, girl, up.”
Elena stood slowly, fisting the rag to stop her hand from shaking.
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing,” she said.
The officer frowned. The captain yawned, waving his hand. “Let it go, Kilith.”
But this seemed to spur Kilith even more. He turned to the boy and, without warning, slapped him with his open hand.
The boy fell to his knees, gasping. The others froze.
Kilith snarled and kicked the boy down. He was too slow to protect himself as the officer stomped on his hand.
A wet, sickening crunch resounded through the deck.
Without thinking, Elena threw herself onto the boy.
Kilith’s boot rammed into her side, white spots bursting before her eyes as she gasped, short of breath.
“Fucking Sesharian scum,” Kilith spat.
“Enough, Kilith,” the captain said, sounding bored.
But Kilith raised his foot again, and Elena whipped around, half snarling, to catch his boot with her hand. It glanced off her fingers, knocking her chin.
Pain blazed down her jaw. She coughed, hacking out blood, as the officer sniffed. He kicked over her rag.
“Clean it up,” he said.
Elena did not know what possessed her then. Only that, as pain thundered through her skull, as the boy lay quivering on his side and Maya looked down, her shoulders stiff with rage, some bitter fury snapped her up and she flung the rag at the officer.
It hit him on the side, smearing blood on his white uniform.
Everyone went still.
And then the captain began to laugh.