Check out the Table of Contents.
Or start here: Chapter I.
Manage your subscriptions here.
They said nothing when he returned flanked by two more of Bronach’s granddaughters who didn’t bother introducing themselves and only spoke in Eirish to one another. They brought a lantern with them but took it away when they left and darkness swallowed them.
Mari and Benoit ate the loaf of bread he brought back to their cage. Emrys listened to their chewing and ran his fingers absently against the bars of their cage. Cold metal. He could heat it. Burn it. Melt it. But he would remain imprisoned on this ship full of pirates.
He didn’t know what Fionnuala could accomplish or how she could remain hidden as she made her way through the airship.
After Benoit and Mari finished the bread, Mari spoke in Faroise, “Where is Fionnuala?”
Emrys still stared down at the floor he couldn’t see where Yana died. Her blood still stained the wood. Could still smell it. Taste it in the air. Swallowing, he said, “Did not see her. They do not know she is gone. At least I do not think.”
“That’s good,” Mari said. “Perhaps she can get some vengeance against these pirates.”
Benoit said, “What did they want from you?” He had so rarely heard Benoit’s voice that it surprised him at first. A pleasant, gentle voice, the Faroise rolling swiftly off his tongue.
Emrys tried to compose himself. Tried to sort the day into something that made sense, that could be easily understood, and how to bring that into Faroise. “I do not know. Truly. I believe Bronach wishes to take possession of me.”
“What?” Mari shifted in the dark. Her legs stretching out and reaching him. The hush of fabric against the wooden floor.
He nearly grabbed her leg to massage it. To spread some comfort. Some warmth. They’d spent all day in the cage while he worked the ship. Scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets and serving meals. He said, “I do not know how to explain in Faroise.”
“Mari’ll explain to me later,” Benoit said.
“What I can understand,” said Mari. “If you cannot say it in Faroise, I may not understand well enough.”
“He’ll dumb it down for us. Like telling stories to children, yes?”
Emrys had never spoken to Benoit but he got the feeling he was telling a joke. A deadpanned, smileless one. They would have laughed if they were anywhere else, given any other circumstances. But their friends were dead. Murdered by pirates who held them captive in a cage in a ship flying high above the earth.
“There’s a child on the ship with ears like a fox,” Emrys said in Graelish.
“What?” Mari sighed. “Emrys—”
“Just listen. Please. This child has the ears of a fox rather than human ears. She works in the kitchen with Bronach’s sister, who told me that Bronach collects people.”
“Collects people.”
“She,” Emrys searched for words. “She takes people. She holds them like prizes, I think. That’s how I understood it too. The ship is steered by a dead giant too, and there—”
“Emrys, what are—”
“Please, just listen.”
“I do not understand.”
“Me neither. There’s a giant. A large man. Twice my size. He is dead. He steers the ship. Magic sustains him, I believe. There’s magic here. Bronach herself is some kind of mage. At least that’s the impression I got from her sister, the cook. Bronach seeks others and there may be others aboard. Other strange creatures brimming with magic or danger.” He swallowed. “I think she means to collect me.”
His words got caught in the dead, stillness of the dark. Of the cage. He continued. “She means to keep me here. Keep me close to her. Take me as some kind of prize. I think she can, like, sense what’s in me.”
“The magic.”
He nodded though no one could see him. “I don’t know. Maybe. She means to ransom you. Not sure what she’ll do with Benoit.” He swallowed. “I—they shocked me. Rattled me. I let them know I wasn’t part of your crew. It was an accident but there it is. And so Bronach may be ransoming you both but not me.”
“Tell her that your father will pay for you.”
He snorted. “You do not know my father.”
“He does not want you dead or captive.”
Emrys sighed, ignoring that. Unsure how to respond or if it was even true, if his father would care if he died far away or if he’d simply adjust his plans. “The whole crew is Bronach’s family. Her daughters and granddaughters. She said the dead giant is the father and grandfather of everyone aboard but that seems like a lie.” He squeezed his eyes shut, exhausted. “I don’t know, Mari. This place is a nightmare but it crackles with something. Maybe magic. She seeks to consume me, I think.”
“You must fight her.”
He didn’t know if he could. Didn’t even know what he was fighting.
His wound pulsed and itched. He scratched at it uselessly and instead applied pressure like it was a bleeding wound or something that could be massaged away.
A magic wound. A ship of magic.
A dead giant.
He lay back on the wooden floor. Where much of the ship was polished wood, the hold where they were caged was rough and unfinished. He expected splinters if he moved too fast or ran his skin along the surface.
The smell of wood. Of unwashed bodies.
Skin.
Mari’s flesh.
Yana’s blood.
His mother’s bleeding corpse. The monster wearing his mother’s face.
It all swirled round him in the dark. The edges of his body becoming meaningless in the blackness.
“What do we do?” Her voice sounded loud after the quiet.
“She wants us to work the ship. If we don’t, she’ll kill another of us.” He didn’t say that she’d kill Benoit but he knew in his bones that was who would be next. Mari could be sold. She had designs on Emrys.
Benoit was expendable.
Scuffling footsteps and fumbling hands. Muttered words. Perhaps a curse. Someone approached in the dark.
In the dark, Emrys heard everything.
Mari scooted to the edge of the cage and Benoit clenched his fists, inching towards the door. Another stumbling and an overturned basket dropping a handful of soft objects. Perhaps fruit.
Emrys swallowed and wished he had managed to learn proper magic.
The steps came closer and then a quiet voice, “Fool?” A child’s voice.
Emrys nearly laughed. “Sionnach?”
He heard the smile in her voice. “I thought you’d be down here. Granny doesn’t trust people right away. She likes to break their spirit before she gives them freedom of the ship and that won’t come until after we stop home for a while.”
Mari said, “Who are you?”
Sionnach’s voice snapped back, “Who are you?”
“I’m your prisoner. You stole my ship.”
“Oh, that was the captain. I’m just Sionnach.”
“The girl with fox ears,” Emrys said.
Sionnach sniffed. “They’re my ears.”
“I know.”
“I’m not a fox.” Sorrow pulled at her tiny voice.
Her voice and words blanketed him. Weighed over him. His heart ached, not only for her, but for himself. For the boy he was. The child he had been, pierced so deeply by pain and misery, by loss and absence.
It strangled him there in the dark, in the cage. No words came for no words could comfort that hole inside her. Inside himself.
Mari said, “Emrys says—”
“Who’s Emrys?”
“I am,” he croaked out the words. Coughed. Ran his fingers through his hair. “Emrys is my name.”
“That’s a good name. Remember it. Dorian doesn’t remember his name and now he wanders the ship, sometimes in a daze. He says he dreams of the air but I don’t know what that means.”
“Who’s Dorian?”
“Captain brought him aboard. Sometimes he’s like a druid but other times he’s like no one at all.”
“You have druids aboard?”
“The captain was a druid, or so granny says. She likes to have them around sometimes though. They know the tongues of many people and do much to keep peace and calm. Captain values harmony above all else.”
“She’s a pirate.” Mari spat the word.
“Are you not yourself a pirate, Captain Mari?” Her voice came richer, as if it aged. “Do you not scour the earth for knowledge to package and take home for your queen?”
“Who are you?”
“Sionnach,” she spoke once more in her childish voice. “Emrys. That is a good name, fool. You must keep it. Remember that. Granny can’t protect you once the captain takes hold of you but you’d do well to avoid her tomorrow and maybe the whole way back to Paradise.”
Mari said, “Paradise?”
“Home,” said Sionnach. “That’s why she keeps you down here. Can’t have you seeing the way. You’ll be freer there, though. It’s an island and there’s no way out except swimming and that’d be crazy. One time—”
“Sionnach, why are you here?”
She breathed quietly just beyond the bars. Emrys felt her lean against the metal. Felt her the way he felt dust and attraction. A prickling beneath his skin. She said, “Your wound needs to be healed.”
Emrys swallowed. “Can you heal me?”
“I feel it. There’s a cold wind blowing from within you. Can smell it.”
A loud bang from the far end of the room followed by cursing in Eirish. A pale light came in the distance and Emrys saw the shadows of someone flickering against the wall but when he turned to Sionnach, she was gone.
Mari stared at him but said nothing. He turned to Benoit who watched the shadows until the light receded, leaving them once more in blackness.