Imprison the Sky Read online

  By the time we were done, Sophy’s meal was ready, and we went back to the galley, locking the hold behind us. “Ori, go get food. Bast, on deck,” I told him, gesturing for him to follow me.

  We got up to the deck, and I nodded Navya toward the galley. “Get some food,” I ordered. “We’ll be up here for a bit.”

  She agreed and went past us, and as I turned to Bast, he crossed his arms over his chest. “They have Elementae,” he said, looking out over the water, keeping his voice quiet. “This changes things, Asp.”

  “I know,” I told him.

  “I’m not saying that we’re not strong in other ways, but our edge is the Elementae in our crew. If we keep running up against these people, we are in serious trouble.”

  I glared at him. “I’m well aware,” I grunted, trying to relax my jaw from its almost involuntary clench. “But I have yet to meet an air power that matches mine, in any event.”

  “Don’t get cocky,” he warned, smiling, but it grated.

  “That wasn’t what I wanted to discuss with you, Bast,” I told him.

  Maybe he moved back a little, or gave me a different look, but I felt the shift across the line that we continued to walk, from friends to captain and crew. “Yes, Captain?” he asked.

  I pursed my lips, using my power to adjust the wheel slightly. “You hesitated,” I accused, my eyes meeting his.

  His nostrils flared. “When? I did not.”

  “When I told you to get on the boat. You hesitated.”

  “I’m not saying I did, but if I did, it would be because I wasn’t planning on leaving you there to die. I thought we all agreed that shouldn’t happen again.”

  “You are not the captain of this ship. In fact, that delay, that distraction almost got us both killed. Are you unable or unwilling to follow my orders?” I snapped as he opened his mouth to argue further.

  It snapped shut, and he huffed a breath out through his nose. “No, Captain.”

  “Good. What happened to raise the alarm?”

  Bast threw up his hands. “You’re going to hold that against me? Be honest. This isn’t about you being captain, it’s about you punishing me because we’re not together anymore.”

  I fought the desire to jam one of my crossbow bolts into my own eyeball. How could I be punishing him for a decision I made? He was the one who didn’t agree with it, not me. That he kept bringing it up in childish ways made me happier and happier that I had. “Bast, you’re my best sword, but something happened that I didn’t see to alert the guards that we were there. You owe me an explanation, no matter what our history is.”

  “No, you owe me your trust. I’ve been sailing with you for four years, Asp. Longer than anyone else here. You can’t trust that I would do everything possible to keep us safe? The guy fought me and I handled it, but he was trying to raise the alarm, as soon as he saw where we were taking him. I stopped him as quickly as I could.” He shook his head. “You’re being unfair and you know it.”

  “Thank you for the explanation. You’re dismissed,” I snapped. “Go get some food.”

  “Dammit, X!” he snapped.

  “I’m not arguing about whether or not I’m being fair,” I told him. “You can get food or you can stay here, but this conversation is done. Unless you really want me to sideline you for our next run.”

  He scoffed, crossing his arms again. “You’d never. You just said I’m your best sword.”

  “You are. And if I can’t trust you, you’re worthless.”

  It was too far, and I didn’t like the shocked look on his face or the ugly feeling in my belly. But he looked away from me and muttered, “Yes, Captain,” before turning and going belowdecks.

  Growling with frustration, I climbed the shrouds up to the main yard, standing out on the edge of it, solid wood beneath my feet and the sail full and round beneath me. I held on to the line as I balanced, the deck and the problems with Bast far below me, nothing but the dark horizon ahead.

  Somewhere in the distance, a weak flash signaled lightning that was too far away to cause concern, and I drank it in.

  I walked out to the center of the yard where there were no lines to hang on to. I felt the ship buoy and fall beneath me, the wind coursing through me, supporting me, holding me.

  I sent my power out over the waves, searching into the night to feel out dangers to my crew. It seemed like a ship in the port was gearing up to patrol the harbor, but it wouldn’t be able to track us. We were already out of sight, and we were about to tack upwind and change course.

  I closed my eyes, and air rushed over me, the ocean crashing against our hull, the distant cries of shorebirds punctuating the night. This was my domain, and I was the ultimate ruler of this stretch of ocean. No matter how false the feeling was, how deep the ache of depleted energy rattled in my bones, when I was out here I was free.

  Cursed Thing

  Nearly two weeks later, I woke up falling. My back hit the edge of the wooden bed, the long way, right along my spine, and I cursed and sprawled onto the floor. My door opened with suspicious speed, and I saw Ori standing over me.

  “I’m okay,” I told him. He held out a hand and I took it, standing as the boat swayed beneath us. He glanced at the bed and I shrugged. He gave me a tiny smile. This was our half language, mine and Ori’s—he hadn’t spoken much since we lost his sister, Dara. Most of the rest of us assumed she was dead, and when her twin thought she died, something within him died too—perhaps his voice, or perhaps just any desire he had to talk.

  I figured it was hard to speak when the person who understood you couldn’t listen.

  I pulled on my leathers to ward off the cold and went aboveboard.

  As I hit the deck, the cold air rushed around me, greeting and rubbing like a cat desperate for attention. I flexed my hands, tugging on the threads as wind circled eagerly around me. I was almost at full strength after the communes, but it had taken a long while.

  Three hells. Elementae were working for the Trifectate.

  The memory stung me again. It was inconceivable.

  My fingers curled into fists, and I reminded myself to find a new swear word—I didn’t want to invoke the hells of a god I refused to believe in anymore. Every time my mind and my mouth betrayed my beliefs, it had the ashy taste of submission.

  I went up to the quarterdeck where Anika stood, leaning weakly on the rail. She barely glanced at me before she obeyed my inevitable command and went belowdecks. I made my way to the wheel at the stern. “How was the night?” I asked Navya, looking out over the blue-gray morning calm.

  “Sails,” she told me, and with barely a thought, I took up where Anika left off, and the sails filled despite the nearly windless morning on the ocean. I watched the yellowed sailcloth fill with deep gulps of air, and then looked at Navya, who was watching where Anika had gone, ever the older sister. “It’s not easy for her,” she told me.

  “I know.”

  “It’s easier for you.”

  “It is. But unfortunately I can’t do it all day and all night. Not much wind last night?”

  “Will she learn?” Navya asked me. “Does she need more practice? Or will she never be like you?”

  She didn’t mean to accuse me of anything, but the morning and the edge of her voice, the need to protect her little sister, ground on me. “I don’t know, Nav,” I told her. “How could I know that?”

  She squinted up at the sails. “I’m getting food. Ori?” she asked.

  He nodded, and he walked along beside her as she followed her sister down belowdecks. Second in command in all things, Navya was the closest I had to a first mate, and I knew she’d make sure everyone—especially Arnav, her troublesome brother—had their orders before she slept for a few hours.

  I sighed and let my power wrap around the wheel, stretching my control over the wind as if I were stretching muscles in my back. If I went too long without bending the wind to my will, I felt restless and caged and knotted inside myself.

  The o
ther members of the night watch waited for a replacement before heading down to get food from the galley and choosing a hammock in the hold, and for a sacred few moments, I was almost alone on the wide deck. I shut my eyes and rolled my neck, reaching out with my power.

  Waves, clear and blue, churned themselves into foam against the hull, sweeping out in swirling bubbles behind us, turning the surface white.

  Anika had taken us off the stream by accident—she couldn’t feel it yet, but there was a certain way that air moved in the natural world. Some of it was cold and heavy, and some was warm and light. There was a wide band of steady, warm wind that we could slip into and follow, and the natural rhythms in my body always guided me back to it. I adjusted the wheel, pitching us toward it again.

  Farther out, I felt the slide of something breaking the water, rubbing its long smooth body into the air. A whale, maybe—it felt huge. On the other edge, I could feel the piercing jabs of the port city of Diadem.

  “Asp,” I heard, but it was warped and far away.

  It took a full long breath for me to pull back into myself, unsure how I had walked that wide outside my body. Bast stood before me, glowering right back at me, Ori by his shoulder holding breakfast for me and giving Bast a dark look.

  Ori didn’t look any other way at Bast since Dara was taken. It wasn’t fair, the way Ori blamed him.

  It should have been me he blamed.

  Bast snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I slapped his hand away. “Rude,” I told him.

  “I called your name ten times,” he said. He crossed his arms. “You can’t do that, Asp. You can’t just leave.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said, his voice lower, his gaze flicking out over the crew. “You have to be more in control of your power.”

  It was one of those statements that amplified the cooling divide between us. I just shook my head at him; it wasn’t worth fighting about. He had no idea what this power was. He couldn’t, and I couldn’t hold that against him, but I had no desire to explain.

  “What’s the problem, Bast?” I asked.

  Ori handed me a biscuit and hard eggs and coffee, and I shoved the biscuit in the coffee to make it edible again. I missed soft, fresh bread and disliked the hardtack we resorted to a few days out of port. At least we had chickens. “Thank you, Ori.”

  Ori smiled at me and glared at Bast again before trotting down the stairs to the central part of the deck and climbing up the shrouds. Navya usually gave him a list of repairs that needed to be made, and he went about doing them in his quiet way.

  Bast watched him go and stepped closer to me. I shifted, putting the wooden plate I was balancing my breakfast on between us. “Will we make Diadem by nightfall?”

  I took a deep breath and a bite of the slightly softened biscuit, measuring. “Just,” I said.

  “What will we do about Dara’s spot?” he asked.

  I squinted at him. He knew what we had to do about Dara’s spot, but he couldn’t be the one to suggest it, not the way things were going for him now. I lifted an eyebrow. “What do you reckon we do?” I asked, biting the biscuit again.

  “You know what we have to do.”

  “What’s that?” I asked around a mouthful.

  He studied me for a long moment. “Is this you teasing me, X?” he asked.

  I hated that he couldn’t tell. I hated that the nickname I’d once enjoyed from him now just seemed to make me feel vulnerable—a reminder that he knew my secrets. I swallowed my food. “We need to replace her, Bast. But we also need to put it to vote, and you can’t be the one to suggest it. I know.”

  “You don’t have to come to see Cyrus,” he said. “I can do it myself, if you want.”

  It was supposed to be a kindness—but was it still kind if it made me appear weaker? “No,” I said flatly. “Take the wheel.”

  He drew a breath but didn’t complain, and I glanced up at the sails. Closer to the stream, we were in more natural wind, and while I was awake and paying attention, the wind would always mind me. For the most part—it was like a child: when you didn’t give it enough attention, sometimes its obedience would fray.

  I swallowed my coffee and trotted down the steps, shelling the eggs as I went. I passed through the upper deck, walking the weather deck round the bow, checking the sails and the rigging and the placement of the crew, chucking the shells into the ocean, and biting into the eggs.

  Before I went down, I looked up at Bast, at the stern of the boat, holding the wheel with two hands, his fingers tight around the handles.

  There was a long time when looking at Bast gave me a warm, sinful feeling curling in my belly. He wasn’t the first person I’d cared about like that, but it had lasted longer than with the other two crewmates. And Bast didn’t have that piece of my heart that Tanta did, because she was the first person I’d ever kissed and touched and loved and lost.

  The curl was still there, but its warmth had gone cold. There was something else too, something that scratched the back of my neck and threaded acid into my stomach.

  That part was new. All the other crewmates had left me; I’d never had this, a slow disintegration of something that used to make me happy.

  But I had never loved him, and he wanted me to.

  I shook my head, looking away and ducking down below.

  When I came into the galley, my hard glare sent everyone but Sophy up to the decks. Sophy doused the small flame we kept boxed in a sand pit and handed me the trencher full of eggs and biscuits. “Have they had water?” I asked.

  “Yes, Captain,” she said.

  “We’ll be in port by nightfall. You know what you need?”

  “I’ll have a list ready by then, Captain.”

  “Thanks, Soph,” I told her. “We’ll be having a vote in a few hours.”

  She took a basket of whatever was dirty and hauled it to the deck to clean. She was little, even for fifteen, and she’d been littler still when she started to cook for us, so I was always shocked by her ability to sling around heavy pots or armfuls of dishes. I used to have one of the boys help her, but she only got offended if I thought she couldn’t handle something.

  With a sigh, I pulled out my key from my belt and unlocked the door behind the galley. I turned down the narrow stair there, going farther below.

  There weren’t portholes down here; we were underwater, in the belly of the ship. We sprang little leaks often enough, but Ori was good about fixing them.

  The man with the scars had been causing trouble for us all week, but it wasn’t unusual. People fought harder when they saw a girl like me in charge. They fought doubly hard when you’re a girl and barely eighteen, even if you looked the way I did.

  I unlocked the first door, and the two men looked up from the benches. The scarred one was young, not even ten years older than I was, and I could never decide what was worse—taking men like him, who would be worked hard for the rest of their natural lives, or men like the older one beside him, who didn’t have much of that life left and whose end I would probably hasten.

  I didn’t lie to myself—I was hastening both of their deaths. That was the one thing I was sure of.

  But the younger ones definitely took longer to give up.

  The scarred man stood and jerked on his chains when I opened the door, like he could burst out and free himself.

  With a sigh, I told him, “Sit if you want food,” and went to the old man beside him. I knelt before him, peeling the egg for him, and then peeling a second when he gently took the first from me. I pressed a biscuit into his hand.

  “Thank you,” he murmured.

  “Don’t thank her,” growled the young one.

  I looked at him. I was careful to crouch outside his range while I helped the old man.

  “The funny thing is, you still believe you can be free,” said our mysterious volunteer, his voice smug and knowing from deeper in the brig.

  “Not everyone volunteered to be a sla
ve,” snapped the scarred fighter.

  “I didn’t volunteer,” the other voice said lightly. “I chose my kind of slavery. That’s the only choice you get.”

  “She’s free,” the fighter accused of me.

  “Is she,” was all the other voice said.

  The fighter seemed to lose some of his fervor at this, and he sat down on the bench. Rather than come within his range, I tossed him two eggs and a biscuit.

  Without missing a beat, he caught the biscuit and hurled it back at my face. It was so fast I didn’t even think to stop it before it hit me, and he lunged up against his chains.

  But I was still out of his reach, and now I was annoyed and he was out a biscuit. “What is your plan?” I snapped, touching my eyebrow, where it stung. Damned hard, terrible biscuits. “Knock me out with a biscuit? And then what? Get my keys, free yourself, and face down my entire crew and an ocean?”

  “A crew of children,” he sneered.

  I shook my head, my powers itching at my hands, longing to show him just how powerful these children were, but I didn’t ever show that to the cargo if I could avoid it.

  Instead I just kicked the biscuit back his way, regretted giving him two eggs, and locked the door behind me.

  I went down to the next cage, with two men we’d taken from the shipbuilders’ camp. I gave these men three eggs apiece—they came to us broken and emaciated, and after weeks on the sea, they were rested and healing. Yes, I was giving them one kind of slavery instead of another, but at least I would keep them the best I could in between.

  The last cage held the volunteer with his silky, knowing voice. He was probably a little older than the fighter, and after two weeks, I knew less about him—or why he wanted to come with us—than I had in the Bone Lands.

  His head cocked to the side. “Biscuits again.”

  I tossed him his share as well. Of all the people currently in our hold, I watched him the closest. Maybe it was because he was here by choice, but I always had a suspicion that he could get out of here if he needed to. He caught his rations easily and gave me a sage nod.