44. FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FOUR
FANKALO
Location: Casowhatan Sea
Fankalo rubbed the soft scrap of paper Killari had delivered between her forefinger and thumb.
She leaned against the Rogue’s Rapture’s starboard rail in an attempt to ease the ache in her leg.
Even weeks later, it had yet to regain feeling in some places, yet throbbed in others.
The medic had told her this morning the tissue damage might never be reversed, but she was a veteran to ill news by now.
Calver’s letter was just another fracture.
Her Luck detected Mitek, leaning against the mast behind her, returned from Thaligan where she’d sent him to do reconnaissance and collect Calver.
He’d been lurking for at least a minute, watching her, probably deciding how to approach.
He’d treated her like something fragile since the Tera’thian assault, now three days past. And it was no wonder—she’d been acting like something fragile.
Fankalo gave the note a final glance before opening her fingers: a motion so small to let something so large flutter down into the waves, where it would disintegrate as the ocean licked its ink. She watched the water where it fell as Mitek finally got up the gall to stride to her side.
He reached for her shoulder, then retracted his hand before it landed.
“Ay, Bratty.” Like everything was normal.
Like they still had the world at their mercy.
Like he might not be the one who’d set her up.
“No word on the Reaper. Anchor’s still set.
Do you want keep holding the Rapture for when he makes it out of the Jiradesh, or—”
“I’ve gotten word. Calver has expressed his wish to continue towards Steila.”
Mitek’s eyebrows nearly left his face. “Didn’t you tell him that—?” He faltered at her expression.
She slid her tongue over her teeth. “I can’t.
” Telling someone they did, in fact, have a son with indefinite powers—with which Cul’Mon planned to wipe them into extinction—was not something done in a letter.
Especially considering she’d always known it was a possibility.
“If I had to take a guess, Cul’Mon won’t reveal his Ruxian weapon in Steila, anyway. Not unless he’s backed against a wall.”
It was a dangerous wager, made worse knowing that it wasn’t her life she was betting.
She steeled herself. She couldn’t add this to her fast-growing list of problems. Calver had chosen to take on Cul’Mon over coming to meet her.
She hadn’t even begun to assess how scrapped they were if they lost him.
But it wouldn’t be as bad as if Mitek was right, and Calver was setting them up in Steila.
“What are you going to do?” Mitek asked it like he expected her to say that they would advance forward to ally Calver.
That they would aid the Red Wing against the Tera’thian assault, even though it was about to be blown into the sky by distortion explosives or a Ruxian, whichever came first. That they would risk Cul’Mon capturing her, too.
That they would risk outing their numbers to the Nelfinden oligarchy in the process.
No.
That was a route she would not sail. Not with everything they’d already lost. Her chest ached worse than her fated leg.
What if Mitek had been right? What if Calver was the one who had betrayed her?
What if the Tera’thians had converted him and he was requesting her aid in Steila only to hand-deliver her to Cul’Mon?
Traitor.
The thought lanced talons into her gut.
Like their blood-father. Like Gelhard. Like… She looked at Mitek.
No point in wearing her emotions like a hat. They would not shield her from the burn.
“We move for the warehouse in Casowhatan. I take it Drogus is ahead of me in alerting border patrol and getting our papers in order?”
Mitek nodded. “All over it.”
She breathed in the salty sea air and let it out slowly. “Excellent.” She nearly vomited around the word.
Mitek moved beside her to stare out over the cliffs of Thaligan. His elbow jabbed at hers. “Remember the last time we were here?”
The smile that tugged at her unwilling lips was fake. “Yeah.” But the vice loosened around her chest. It had been more than a year ago. She and Mitek and Cam had scrambled up the cliffs. It had taken them almost an hour to get to an outcropping that vaulted over deep, rockless water.
“We were seeing who would chicken out, backflipping from the ledge. I was about hyperventilating, psyching myself up to do it. My heart was beating out my ears. You were already in the water, casual as a fucking fish, when Cam hit.”
She remembered. Dislocated shoulder. Burst eardrum.
Mitek chuckled. “Swam him to the rocks, you did. And you were screaming at him to stop being such a fucking baby while you popped his arm back into place.”
She snorted. It was almost genuine. “Well, I could hardly concentrate over his blubbering.”
“That was the first time I realized…”
Fankalo’s newfound levity crashed down. The way he was looking at her.
Dread pooled in her stomach. No no no, Mitek.
“You. Ahm. You were an amazing leader.” Mitek’s hand ran through his long black hair, straight as silk and littered with small braids. He gave her a weak grin that didn’t meet his eyes and turned away.
Mitek already knew she wouldn’t have him. That she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Why did that make her feel even worse?
Fankalo swallowed, and it felt like pushing a stone through her throat. If she were to do anything but dismiss him back to his station this instant, she’d be a fool. But with everything that was happening, she could hardly stand the thought of being alone.
She’d act a fool if it meant she didn’t have to think about Calver, abandoned to his fate without her aid, for even a heartbeat. She’d act a fool if it meant she and Mitek could be the way they used to. Her eyes lingered on the cliffside.
“Mitek. Do you want to…”
His gaze followed hers. “You bet your lucky ass I do.”
No ‘What about your leg?’ or ‘Sure you’ll make it?’ Just, “I’ll even let you get a headstart,” and that cocky grin of his.
He began pulling his tunic over his head. “But Drogus left this afternoon for Casowhatan?” As if he were genuinely concerned with order of command and hadn’t already made up his mind to goof off for the evening.
Fankalo shrugged and whistled up at the crow’s nest, Zeb’s old station. “Ay, Cam!” she screeched.
Mitek’s mouth fell open. Cam’s scraggly head peered down at her from the basket. She nearly missed his wind-muffled, “Captain?”
“Rapture’s in your charge for a span. Keep at anchor.”
A long pause. Then an enthusiastic, “Yes, Captain!”
Mitek cackled as they undressed to their underclothes, leaving the rest in a pile on the deck. They swung their bodies over the rail—Fankalo, minding her leg, at a dive and Mitek ass-first.
The cold shock of the Casowatan struck all misery from her.
A gradient of deep, resplendent blue engulfed her.
She hovered several body lengths below the water, letting her eyes adjust to the sting of salt.
When her lungs began to burn, she undulated and pulled with atrophied limbs towards the surface.
How long had it been since she’d felt this way? One could not limp in water. Her twisted leg moved without pain. There was no one awaiting her next order; the ocean was its own queen. Her every fear had been left behind on the Rapture.
For at least a couple hours, she was completely free.
CALVEROUS
Sweat beaded at Calver’s brow as he worked at the remote activator. Half a day passed as he dismantled the orb piece by piece, with painstaking care so as not to activate anything in the process. By the time he finished, Dex confirmed that the streets below them were occupied.
No escape.
He’d known this was a trap. He’d known it in his bones.
But he hadn’t known what else to do. Their only hope now was a distraction.
Or a miracle. His eyes flicked to the window for the tenth time that hour, and he wondered on the last note he had left in Killari’s care. The highsun had long since passed.
She’ll come.
Calver ignored the knotting in his throat. He couldn’t focus on Fankalo’s job. He had his own and it wasn’t going well. He’d searched a hundred times for the same stratum that the tampered plate he’d worked on in Niklaus’s wagon had been attuned to. It wasn’t there. What was he missing?
His hands stilled as a darkness rippled at the center of his mind: his paltry version of second sight. It was a warning he couldn’t ignore. The Survivor uncoiled like a serpent at the smell of his fear. He let the mind-djinn wash through him, masking his presence, numbing his worry.
Dex, who had been cycling his dowaga through the warm-up Calver taught him weeks before, paused. His dark eyes narrowed at Calver’s expression, and he holstered the weapon. “What is it?”
Fifteen years without a tongue, and Calver had never learned to resist the futile impulse to swallow.
FANKALO
Fankalo gasped as her head broke into open air.
Mitek had already surfaced, black hair billowing out behind him, and he lobbed her a smirk before paddling towards shore.
She swam after him. They matched one another stroke for stroke for the long minutes it took to reach the coastline. Her leg dragged behind her, unhindered.
The waves were low, lapping gently against the pebbles of the small beach bordered by cliffs.
She stopped to float in the ankle-deep shallows, letting the tide push and pull her with it.
Mitek floated beside her. Every so often their limbs grazed.
It was the tide’s doing, not his. She couldn’t blame it—it didn’t know she’d given up on him years and years ago.
Suddenly, Mitek sat up. Fankalo followed suit.
“Hungry?”
“Starving,” she admitted.
Mitek pulled a distortion orb from his waist belt, tossed it into the air, and caught it like he was still a boy who took nothing seriously. Fankalo matched his grin as he pulled out his dagger.
“First octopus kill gets to watch the other try to make a fire with soggy kinder?”
“Deal.”
CALVEROUS
Slit windows lined the circumference of Steila’s central tower. Calver peered out one—not at the still-empty ocean where the fast-sinking sun met the sky, but at the street below. A dozen Tera’thians moved toward the base of the spire. Something heavy pounded against the tower door below them.
Calver and Dex’s approach had been soundless, their scuffle discreet. The Survivor was masking his impression from Cul’Mon. They shouldn’t have found them. Invisible spiders skittered up Calver’s neck and over his limbs.
Not unless Cul’Mon had expected him there.
“I’ll always be two steps ahead of you.” But how would he have known?
The sounds of wood splintering echoed up the spiral stair. There had to be a way out of this mess. He looked out to sea again.
The Survivor pressed down on what little of Calver held on. {Think. Who told you where the activator would be?}
Calver gritted his teeth as he looked at the activator: the one didn’t seem to have been tampered with, any additional stratum applied to it—because there wasn’t one.
Fankalo.
he signaled.
Dex shook his head. “Please tell me I’m just bad at reading signals.”
Calver repeated. He spared another glance at the empty horizon. Palmed the only tampered Aetech lamp he had in his pocket. Worked his jaw.
“What does that make us?”
Dex’s hands gripped his mane of dark hair. He muttered something unintelligible, pacing the confines of the space.
Calver pooled air into his chest and let it out slow. Cul’Mon wanted him backed into a corner? Fine then. It was time to announce his arrival.
FANKALO
Into the depths they went. The cove was littered with underwater caves and coral where octopuses would hide.
Fankalo let Mitek take his turn first. The cephalopods were intelligent and wily, but, despite nocturnal tendencies, drawn to Aetech lights.
She floated to the surface and watched through the water as he dove into a rocky trench.
One of the tentacled creatures, larger than a dinner plate, approached and he speared it between the eyes.
Mitek swam back, prize in hand. His head broke into the evening air with a cackle of triumph.
His joy was contagious. “Guess I’m cooking. I hope you enjoy your food charred beyond recognition.” She found the shallows and began treading towards the rocky shore.
Mitek swam to her and handed her the octopus. Then he laced a hand around her waist, pulling her arm over his shoulders. “I’ll help get you out.”
She needed it.
They grilled their dinner over an improvised spit. He told a joke about a farmer who didn’t have any legs. She explained the sensory systems of cephalopods. He told her a story about Cam hooking himself with his own line. She recited a passage from her favorite Nelfinden theologian, Toronoff.
Everything was perfect.
Time slipped by, casting gold over the pebble beach until the sun hit the horizon.
Fankalo relished the crimson claws tearing through the clear, clashing blue above them.
A sting blossomed behind her eyes. Preservation, Mitek.
Don’t you dare betray me. It was the closest she’d gotten to prayer in a long time.
“Hey, Bratty,” Mitek muttered, “I’ve missed you.”
The sky shone red on the ocean, its corrugated mirror: eternal companions, the two. She scooted closer to him. Her head tilted onto his shoulder.
“I’ve missed you too.”
CALVEROUS
Dex kept the fear from his voice, but it shone through his eyes. “What do we do?”
Below, splintering wood cracked like thunder in the tower’s entryway. It would break any moment, and Cul’Mon’s numbers would come pouring in. Calver slid his thumb over the activator, tensed to press it. He moved for the trap door, ready to throw it down.
“Don’t!” Dex shouted.
They looked at one another, the air heavy around them. And Calver risked it. He poured himself over the mask of the Survivor, if only for this last moment.
Dex’s lips rolled over his teeth. “She did her best,” he croaked out. “And I’ll do mine. Funny the way that doesn’t always look the way we expect it to.”
Death is a little bit funny. Leave it to Raimee to be right about everything.
He thought about her, waiting for his signal, only for it to never come.
He thought about her, realizing he’d failed, that their plan would never have a chance to play out.
He imagined her weary smile, just before the encampment went up in flames.
They had both known it was a gamble. But the hope that it might be more had been the best thing he’d ever known.
Dex nodded. “At least I’m not on a horse.”