Imprison the Sky Read online

  “You’re worse,” the fighter growled as I passed by him again. His voice was dry and low, like the biscuit had sucked the spit out of him.

  I pulled the volunteer’s door shut and locked it.

  “Worse than the Trifectate. Worse than whoever you’re taking us to. You’re worse than all of them. You’re the most cursed thing I’ve ever met.”

  I scoffed, a wry smile on my mouth. “I’m the worst you’ve met?” I asked, shaking my head. “Lucky for you, then.”

  The other two cages, which were once full of children, were empty. At least that I could be proud of.

  Mothers Always Know

  The sun was warm and full by the time the crew and ship were both settled enough that I could call a meeting.

  Navya, Anika, and the night crew joined us, and I sat on the stairs, my elbows on my knees as Navya held her hands up.

  “We’ll make port in a few hours,” she said, looking to Bast for confirmation. He nodded, crossing his arms. “We’ll take a team to offload and restock, and everyone should be on the ship again by tomorrow morning,” she said. She shouted names off, listing first the team that would be going and then the group that would stand watch. The watchers almost always had to be the Elementae—even with weapons and bad attitudes, there wasn’t much a small hold of children could do if other traders decided they wanted our ship. Except, of course, if you could light them on fire or toss them in the ocean by looking at them.

  She looked to me, and I held her gaze, trying to remind her that she was a great leader and if anyone could shepherd our crew through this vote, it was her. She sucked in a breath and faced the others. “We have to replace Dara,” she said flatly. “Really we should try for two if we can; the crew was light even when she was here.”

  This wasn’t a question, but people murmured among themselves, considering this.

  “Votes to replace her with two,” Navya called.

  There were fifteen of us total, and six raised their hands. I kept my hand down—as captain, I was the only one without a vote.

  “Replace her with one,” Navya said.

  Four.

  “Not to replace her.”

  Three.

  “Ori,” I called softly, since he wasn’t standing far from me, but it was loud enough to draw attention. “You have to vote.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. Abstain.

  “We replace her with two,” Navya said. “In the usual way? Vote for yes,” she called.

  Thirteen hands rose. Ori crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Then we’ll divide the haul after the replacement,” Navya announced. “Captain?” she asked, turning to me. “Anything else?”

  “Is anyone leaving us in Diadem Port?” I asked. No matter how many times I asked this question, I couldn’t stop my heart from stuttering in the gap, nervous and tight as I waited for their answer.

  No one raised their hand. Ori crossed his arms on his chest again, beating his chest softly with his fists like he was a drum, or maybe he was reminding his heart to beat.

  “Very well,” I said. “We’ll make port in a few hours. Everyone be ready.”

  I didn’t like land. I didn’t think I was built for it; things felt far too solid there, too lawful and finite. On the water I was a ferryman of sorts. A trader. On land, I knew the moral weight of what I did.

  It wasn’t unusual, then, to find tension curling inside me. Bast was watching me as if he wanted to argue about something, and I felt restless, too wide for my skin. So like the coward I’d somehow become, I didn’t face any of it. I climbed the rigging and walked carefully out on the topsail yard, sitting on the wide beam that held up the sail.

  It was easily my favorite place in the world.

  As the day pressed on, I saw a smudge on the horizon, and I felt my stomach growing tight, then churning. Diadem Port came into view as the sun set behind us, and the first glimpse, as always, belonged to Kamaria.

  She stood in stone, hundreds of feet in the air, guarding the entrance to the channel. Her arms were stretched wide, and her long hair was whipped around her and frozen in stone. Her eyes were covered, and I knew on that covering were the words: The Earth Will Crack Before Sarocca Falls.

  She was the first queen of Sarocca, and legend had it she was a powerful earth element—she was the one who made the harbor to defend her country. As we passed by, I bowed my head to her, wondering if we were kindred in some way.

  Diadem wasn’t like any other port I knew. Instead of a wide, round harbor, it was a narrow slice, running up a tributary to the river. As you came up the channel, narrow spits of land to the left created little pocket harbors. It was a dangerous harbor for most boats; the narrowness made collisions more likely and required rowing a ship to mooring since sailors couldn’t control where the wind would take them in a narrow lane.

  Unless, of course, they could.

  We went as far in as a ship like mine was able, hauling up a mooring buoy and securing it to the ship.

  By the time the sails were furled and tied, the cargo had been loaded onto the upper deck and two longboats were coming out from shore to meet us, laden with Cyrus’s dockworkers and henchmen. I saw Tommaso, Cyrus’s head enforcer, standing in one, the gold thread in his robe glinting under the lantern swinging on a post in the boat.

  We nodded once to each other across the water.

  When the longboats came abreast of us, Tommaso’s men came aboard to help us load down the boats with cargo and those of us going ashore. The human cargo was blindfolded and gagged, which some of them minded more than others. The one who threw a biscuit at me fought so much one of the men knocked him out, even knowing that would mean carrying him.

  Navya was in charge while I was gone, and I gave her a solemn look as I climbed down the ladder to the longboats. Nothing about this situation was safe; nothing guaranteed this wouldn’t be the trip when Cyrus decided I was worth more as a slave than a trader, and remembered she could just steal my cargo instead of paying for it.

  It wasn’t a possibility; it was an eventuality. One day, I’d get off this boat and I wouldn’t ever return, and Navya knew it and I knew it.

  Bast and Ori came with me, and I saw Arnav sulking beside Navya and Anika on the deck. He was a wildly untrained fire element, and it suited him. The middle of the three siblings, at twelve he was small but had so much anger balled up inside him he constantly craved the satisfaction of making others miserable. Usually that meant hitting things or picking fights. He wanted so badly to be the kind of enforcer that a man like Tommaso was, the kind of enforcer who would be sure I came back to the ship and made sure his sisters were safe and made sure no one hurt him, but he wasn’t yet. And he would hate everyone and everything until he was.

  At the dock, the others who needed to come ashore—like Sophy and a few crew to help her buy new food—split off. Tommaso and the rest of us hauled item after item into the waiting carts, throwing heavy cloth over all of it, including the people, as if it was that easy to just pretend they were things. As if hiding them would undo our sins.

  I rode with Tommaso, Ori, and Bast in the other cart, and Tommaso tossed a heavy bag of coin to the port master. Cyrus always covered our mooring fees, and I was never sure if it was a favor or just a reminder that I was a dependent, like a child waiting for her mother to buy bread.

  Cyrus’s warehouse wasn’t far. It was a huge stone building, an indication of how permanent this business was, how permanent Cyrus was—other traders fell prey to raiders and pirates, thieves who struck often and hard to steal cargo of all kinds, but especially slaves, and traders kept their operations mobile in response. Cyrus never hid. Cyrus had built such a strong empire that no thief would be able to break it down.

  A huge wooden door hauled upward, pouring light out onto the street, and Tommaso led the carts inside. Someone came and took the horses, unhooking them and leading them out, and the business of unloading began. Everything went onto tables, parceled out by item and then amount, in neat stacks and rows, until we came to the human cargo. They were brought to wooden posts, their tied hands lashed to the post behind them.

  Abla came out and began walking up and down the ranks, scratching out calculations on a sheet. “All in one piece?” she asked me off-handedly when she was a quarter way in.

  “Me, or the cargo?” I asked.

  She flicked her gaze to me. “I know the state of the cargo,” she said, lifting a shoulder.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

  She made a soft grunting noise and made more marks.

  The sound of a door drew my eye upward, and I saw Cyrus emerge from the ledger room and trot down the stairs, billows of thick, dark hair sweeping out behind her like a cape.

  She came over to her sister, eyeing Abla’s sheet. “Well?” she asked.

  Abla waved her off, and Cyrus moved down the ranks, drinking in the treasures. She picked up the sack of black salt that came from the shores of Kiri and danced her fingers over the hammered gold bracelets from Liatos. She never could resist something shiny.

  I had no idea how old Cyrus was—old enough to have a few strands of silver in her black hair, young enough that all her soft, round parts hadn’t fallen any, which was clear in the close-fitting pants and shirt she favored—but her curiosity always made her seem younger. The world hadn’t stopped interesting her yet, which always seemed bizarre.

  Then she moved to the human cargo. She knew what her buyers wanted, and she pinched their skin and pressed their teeth and examined their hands. She smiled, but her smile was razor sharp as she returned to me.

  “No women, no children,” she noted. “Always so strange that they never cross your path, hmm?”

  I didn’t react.

  “Abla, give her the price so we can talk business,” Cyrus ordered.

  “Pearls or gold this time, Asp?” she asked.

  “Depends on the price,” I told her.

  “Four hundred kings,” she said. “So twenty-three pearls.”

  I crossed my arms and looked to Cyrus. “Try seven hundred kings,” I told them. “We all know the value of the things I bring you.”

  Cyrus put a gold bracelet on. “We all know that you don’t have a choice, Aspasia.”

  “You pay me less money and I can’t bring you the same quality next time,” I reminded her.

  Cyrus looked to Abla.

  “Six hundred, that’s it,” Abla said, raising her hand like I was assaulting her. “So thirty-four pearls.”

  “Thirty-five if you round up,” I told her.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Thirty-five if you round up.”

  “I’ll take three hundred kings and eighteen pearls,” I told her.

  Abla opened her mouth to protest—probably my rounding up—but Cyrus waved once and Abla went off to get the money.

  She handed me a small, light bag and a very heavy bag. I passed the kings to Bast to count, and I counted out the pearls.

  I tugged off my coat and slung a bag across my body, filling it with the items when Bast was finished verifying. I put my coat on over it, hiding it from view and hands. “So,” I said to Cyrus. “Let’s talk.”

  Bast and Ori stayed downstairs, watching me. Cyrus led me up to her ledger room, a spare, empty space that betrayed nothing about her.

  “I heard a story,” she said, sitting at a chair behind a table. Cautiously, I settled against the wall inside the door, crossing my arms and keeping one eye on my crewmates through the warped pane of glass. “Someone broke into the Trifectate communes to steal laborers. They killed many, many soldiers. They suspect that it wasn’t the first time.”

  “Was that the whole story?” I said. “It sounds boring.” I kept my tone and body relaxed, but if she heard that much, she knew someone flew a ship into the communes.

  Cyrus and I had never talked about my abilities. They surfaced after I went out on her ships, and my crew knew enough to be tight lipped about our powers. There were rumors about me, certainly, but Cyrus never asked me to confirm.

  Now my power scraped at my neck, answering my emotions, my fear, my worry.

  “Your value to me is extremely defined,” she told me. “Whatever I earn from you in profit, less the cost of your ship, less the cost of you as a slave. If I suddenly think that your value as a slave goes up, or your profit goes down—you see the issue here.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think I do.”

  “Don’t cost me more money, Aspasia. I don’t care what you do to get your freight unless it’s cutting into my business.”

  I shifted. “Is it?”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “The Trifectate has been increasing their orders from across the sea. Every month, they buy more from me. They don’t want people stolen from their shores.”

  My eyes narrowed. “You’re supplying slaves to the communes?”

  She laughed breezily. “No, darling girl. Slavery isn’t legal in the Trifectate, remember?”

  “Slavery isn’t legal here,” I reminded her.

  She clucked her tongue. “Slavery isn’t illegal in Sarocca. There’s a difference.”

  “So you sell them slaves that aren’t ‘slaves,’ ” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “No. I sell them Elementae to experiment on.”

  My stomach lurched and my power pulled so hard at the back of my neck that I winced. I stared at her for a long while, but each question I formed had an immediate, obvious answer.

  Why? Money.

  How could you? How is it different from other slaves?

  You know they’re being tortured. Killed. Cyrus didn’t care. Why would she?

  “So. You will not return to the communes this time. And even if you’re tempted, I have it on good authority that every port has a damn good description of my ship and orders to obliterate you on sight. Do you understand me?”

  My jaw tightened. I hated the Trifectate, and I always would, but the last time I had seen my family was in the communes. Returning there, like I had for years, was my best chance of finding them.

  But I would never tell Cyrus that.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t a good-enough liar to come up with a better excuse on the spot. “I do,” I answered.

  She leaned back. “Good. Now I need you to prove it. Next time you come into port, I need fifteen slaves to sell or I won’t pay for a damn thing off your ship.”

  I sat up straighter. “Fifteen.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Business is picking up. The Saroccan king’s new road has brought a whole new clientele to Diadem. I need pretty girls and strong children, Aspasia. I need to satisfy demand.”

  “No,” I snarled. “You’re telling me to stop doing risky things, but triple my usual haul?”

  She turned the bracelet over on her wrist. “We both know you can do it. We both know you put so many more people on your boat than end up in my port.”

  My blood ran cold, but I fought to keep breathing, even as my power clawed at my skin, desperate to rise up and protect me.

  “You think you can lie to me? Cheat me? You will make it right, Aspasia.”

  Fear and anger were making my skin tremble. “Or what?” I asked. “What if I don’t? What if I just sail away and never return?”

  “You don’t want to honor your bargain?” she asked, sounding hurt, like a mother whose child said she didn’t love her. She shook her head. “My sweet girl. You’re a slave with a longer leash, Aspasia, but you’re mine. You will always be mine. I never regretted our little deal, but if you run, there’s nowhere you can go. You can’t hide a face like yours, not from my spies. Not from me.”

  My scar usually made me feel fierce and powerful, like I had stolen something back from a world that had taken everything from me, but right then I hated it. Right then I would claw it off my face if I could.

  She leaned back, propping her feet up on the desk. She looked at me, turning the bracelet over and over and over. “You know,” she said, musing. “When I was a girl, I loved this boy. He used to whisper pretty things and give me pretty gifts. He kissed me and touched me and did all the delicious things I wasn’t supposed to like. I was so thrilled with the secret of it—hiding it from my mother, letting her think I was pure and really I was a woman, a thing of sin and sensuality. And then he asked to marry me, and my mother told him—publicly, in front of our families—that he couldn’t. Because I was filthy and ruined, and he couldn’t have me because it wasn’t proper.”

  My brow knotted at this strange insight into her life.

  “You look confused,” she observed.

  I looked around the room like it might have a clue.

  She sighed. “Children think they have their clever secrets. But mothers always know, Aspasia. I know exactly what you’ve been looking for.”

  This was the most important lie of all. My blood pounded in my veins, and I couldn’t see straight, but I forced my breathing to be normal, my face to betray nothing. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know.

  “What happens if I find it before you do?” she asked. “What happens if you’re defying me when I do?”

  It. She said it, not them. It could be a slip of the tongue—or it could be a guess, meant to make me betray some bit of information.

  So I looked her in the eye and said, “I guess we’ll just have to find out.”

  She bared her teeth in a savage grin and laughed, a throaty, pretty sound. “Yes!” she said. “That’s what life is all about, my sweet girl. Discovery.”

  My stomach was tight and pushing high in my throat. A minute longer and I’d be sick. “Are we done here?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Just remember, I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  As if I could forget. “I remember.”

  “Good,” she said, standing. “Now let’s go celebrate your triumphant return!”

  She came and draped her arm around my waist, tugging me close to her. She walked out with me, smiling, and shouted to everyone below that it was time to celebrate.

  She steered me down the stairs and out a door into the rapidly cooling night. I gulped the air, desperate for my stomach to settle and ease, pushing the fear out of my gut, praying for my power to settle down. My power was linked to my emotions, and it reacted the strongest, the most unpredictably, to my fear.