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Sinead or Siobhan reached for Yana but she only screamed at them. Even Emrys knew she cursed them for murderers. She slapped at their hands and ducked away from them when they reached for her again.
Bronach crossed her arms and turned to Mari. “She don’t play nice, she better grow some wings.”
Mari spoke rapidly in that other language native to Yana and Lyosha and Yana barked back her response. A quick, terse conversation followed.
Bronach watched, tapping her left foot. Her smile disappearing as she waited. “Time’s up.” She nodded at Sinead and Siobhan who approached Yana once more.
Yana stood stiffly, head held high, mouth in a hard line. She glared at Bronach with such hate.
Emrys knew it would not last.
Yana would not last.
Knew Bronach saw the hate. Yana would wait for the soonest opportunity to murder Bronach. If Emrys had been in Bronach’s position, he would not risk taking her aboard.
He swallowed, wondering at what it meant that he could so easily measure a life against another, so easily put himself in the skin of the pirate there to kidnap and murder. Perhaps it was the simple brutality of her boarding. She killed rather than negotiate and even her negotiating relied on the threat of violence.
All so clean and simple.
Bronach had a goal in mind and would take it or kill those in the way to get it.
Emrys could almost admire the fanatic zeal had it not been so terrible. Had it remained theoretical and abstract, a conversation between him and Ariana round their table. Something to discuss and prod at rather than experience.
But there in the air with Lyosha’s dead body at his feet, he felt only terror at Bronach’s impatience.
Yana allowed herself to be taken by the twins. They set her on the dragonfly and one of them climbed aboard behind her. She flicked on the dragonfly and the engine came to life, the wings flapping rapidly. That loud buzzing filled the room, thrumming through his chest and all the way to the wound at his hip where it battled with the lord of bone’s echoed touch.
Emrys winced and put a hand to his hip.
Bronach raised an eyebrow, her eyes on him. He straightened up and ignored it. A pulsing pain lancing at his hip.
It made no sense to him but he knew nothing of magic wounds. He thought he’d burned all his touch away. Thought distance would make the connection weaker.
And yet.
The dragonfly took to the air and disappeared around the starboard side of Mari’s ship to return to the Wailing.
Bronach eyed Lyosha’s corpse and said, “This a right mess, ain’t it?” She looked from Mari to Benoit to Fionnuala to Emrys. “Don’t know about you,” she said to Mari, “but I keep a tight ship. This simply won’t do, yall. Come on,” she clapped twice. “Throw him overboard.”
“What?”
Bronach raised her eyebrows at Mari. “You not understanding me or you defying me?”
Siobhan or Sinead—whichever of the twins still remained—raised her weapon at Mari.
“He’s our friend,” Mari said. To most, that would’ve been explanation enough.
But Bronach yawned. “At sea, we bury our lads in the water. Drop them right in to become food for the fish and sharks and all else. Here in the sky, we do the same.” She clapped her hands twice more. “Come on.”
Mari and Benoit stared down at their friend’s dead body.
Emrys said, “I’ll do it.”
“Ah, the Fool’s a priest too.” Said Bronach.
“No,” said Emrys. He touched Mari’s arm as he passed and gave her a light squeeze, knowing how friendship would make it harder. To look upon his dead face while she dragged him to the edge and threw him into the air.
Emrys knelt beside Lyosha and placed a hand over his eyes, pushing the eyelids closed. “Do you have something to wrap him in?”
Bronach said, “Nah.”
Emrys nodded as if expecting that. Like he had done this before. He raised his eyes to Bronach, “Will you help me?”
She cocked her head and appraised him, looking him up and down. Emrys felt small and flayed before her gaze. She smiled and said, “You’re cute, Fool.”
“Do you have druids where you’re from?”
“Oh, aye. Suspect your druids stole all they know from the Eirish druids.” She turned to Fionnuala. “She knows what I’m talkin about.” Bronach sighed. “The old way?”
Emrys didn’t know what that meant but he nodded and Bronach went to Lyosha’s feet and took hold of his ankles while Emrys got his hands underneath his back to grip him by the armpits. A big man, he was heavy. Too heavy for them to lift him entirely so they lifted him in bursts. Bronach counted to three and they lifted him an inch or two off the ground and swung him a foot towards the sky before letting his back hit the deck once more. They repeated this until he was at the edge.
Bronach straightened and put her hands to her lower back as she stretched. “Big lad.” She swung her arms in circles and turned to Siobhan or Sinead. “You remember the dirge?”
She nodded, and then her daughter began singing in Eirish. Emrys didn’t know the words but he recognized the melody. Behind him, Fionnuala sang with the pirates.
Bronach held her yellow hat in her hands at her chest, eyes closed. She had a deeper voice than he expected while her daughter sang the high reaches and Fionnuala wandered the space in between. Emrys hummed the melody and heard Benoit and Mari doing the same.
A solemn moment. One that seemed to bind them all together.
As soon as the funeral song ended, though, Bronach kicked him over the edge and smiled at Emrys. “You got a pretty voice to match that pretty face.”
Emrys only nodded, staring at the spot Lyosha’s body had been.
“Somewhere down below two dead men will land in some town or field. The people will look to the sky and their gods for explanation and a thousand rituals and beliefs will bloom from the place they land.”
Bronach threw her head back and laughed. “You trained as a druid?”
Emrys shook his head. “Was denied even that.”
“Wrong kinda bastard,” said Bronach, laughing. “My ship’s full of bastards like you, Fool. Ah, aye, you’ll get along well on the Wailing. Can’t say the same for your friends here, especially the banshee Siobhan took over. But the rest of yall,” she turned to Mari and Benoit and Fionnuala. “Well, the first few days will tell us much.”
Mari’s forehead knit. “Are we not prisoners?”
“Are. But everyone works for their beds and their food. We don’t carry loafers around. No, you’ll be kept quite busy, little Miss.” She giggled as if that were some great joke.
The buzzing approached once more and when they came into view, there were two more dragonflies. When they landed in Mari’s ship, that made four. Some of the pirates stayed while they forced Emrys and his friends on each dragonfly. A pirate climbed on behind each of them.
Bronach got on behind Emrys. She put her hands on his hips and slid him back into her hips. “Just like that, my Fool.” She giggled. Her breath cold on the back of his neck.
Her arms came round him to flip some switches, bringing the dragonfly to life. She grabbed the handlebars as the wings began flapping and the engine roared beneath him and between his legs.
A powerful vibration that shook his whole body but at such rapidity that his skin buzzed as heat rose. He wanted to know how it was made or how it did what it did or what powered the engine but then it lifted into the air. Only a foot off the deck but he gasped at the weightlessness of it. Like his body had been plucked from the deck by some great hand.
The sensation of flying almost made him believe in the god.
The other three dragonflies entered the sky and someone screamed and another yelped but he only held his breath as he and Bronach entered the bright sky above the clouds.
The wind tore past him so loud that the buzzing of the wings became a secondary noise and all sound washed away from him. An indistinct roar, constant and deafening. It fell away from Emrys and the sense of weightlessness gripped him, destabilizing his sense of self. He moved without his own volition and he moved through the sky.
Lightness. Terror rose from his bowels to his chest and throat but it came out, instead, as laughter. He laughed, tears blurring his vision. Afraid to let go of the dragonfly, he let the wind take his tears away.
Beneath him, the sea of clouds. An ocean of them. Undulating like waves with fingers reaching higher and entire mountain ranges in the distance. The cold bit him but even that didn’t matter. He’d been cold before.
He’d never flown through the air.
The dragonfly flew and buzzed and vibrated and his chest felt so light and his head emptied of all thought, of all rationalization. He stopped thinking.
Became empty.
Only a man in the air.
Never mind the pirates and the dead and his father and clan. Never mind his life and all the weight of experiences dragging him always down.
He flew through the air.
And there, the pirate ship. Wailing. Enormous when compared to Mari’s airship. He smiled, seeing that he was right about the envelope. So much thinner than Mari’s envelope but twice or even thrice as long. He wondered why, or if there was even a why. If this led to some appreciable difference in flight or if this was simply the result of necessity, of convenience.
They came round back of the Wailing where the ship opened to the sky like a mouth drinking in the sky. Emrys wanted to understand this too. What kind of hinge could allow for such an enormous opening without breaking to pieces under its own weight.
They dove straight towards that opening and the weight of gravity seemed to reverse, lifting him from the seat. He clung tighter and he felt Bronach’s laughter behind him as she pulled him down into his seat.
And then they were inside.