Aralia Cordivar stared broodingly out her enormous office window, onto a pale moonlit sea of rain-slicked ste and chimney brick. Memory was always ready to intrude, always trying to pour through her fingers. Usually she kept it stubbornly at bay, but tonight, for whatever reason, she was inclined to allow herself the sparkle of starlight, the heaving breath of the ocean.

  ~ ~ ~

  It’s almost sunset in the southern reach of the Whistling Sea, and the whole western sky is a riot of blood orange and pink. There is a fine, stiff breeze that bellies out the canvas of the sails and makes them thrum.

  The Damselfly blows through a spray of seawater and crashes down into the valley of another rolling swell. Aralia is newly thirteen, a gawky teenager. She stands on the quarterdeck, her sea legs rolling with her ship’s movements, and thinks she will never stop feeling tiny, in comparison to the ocean. Nothing else reminds her of this as much as the swelling waves—they’re just so big!

  There is a shout from the girl up in the rigging, on lookout. She has seen something with her long-gss—three sails on the horizon. Aralia feels the pall of tension that drops like a curtain on the handful of crew that are moving about on deck. Everyone knows Imperiat frigates run in squadrons of three. Not one of them can resist turning to look, though they must know the sails will not yet be visible to the naked eye.

  In front of her, Aralia sees the grim looks her aunts exchange. Her aunts Venti and Jacynth and Moa are the captains and navigators of the Damselfly, but they are also more than that. They are the heads of the families that crew the ship. They are Aralia’s teachers in more than several subjects. And they are the most wanted people in the known world, with the price on their heads increasing astronomically with every passing year. But, again, that is not all they are.

  Right now, they look like three middle-aged Jyllish women with shadows under their eyes. Aralia, her heart beating faster now, gnces at her friend, Kalista, standing beside her. Her aunties have been as rock solid as mountains for as long as she has been alive, and she feels shaken by the gravity in their faces, so she looks to Kalista, because Kalista will know what to do in a world that has come so unfixed and started to unravel.

  Kalista is already sixteen, tall, graceful, and everything Aralia admires and wants to be. She is haliati, which means she has chosen to be a woman—has poured over it, considered it, unearthed it in a way that Aralia has not, a way that in truth Aralia has not had to—and the result is that now Aralia cannot dream of wanting to grow into any other kind of femininity but the one that she sees Kalista embodying.

  Kalista has her weight shifted forward on her toes—she is listening to their aunties. Aralia copies her subtly.

  “Well, that was fast,” sighs Jacynth.

  Venti spits over the side. “We could lose them in the night.”

  “Depends how many fres they’re willing to waste to find us.”

  “Not worth the risk. If any of them are clipper-rigged, we’ll be boarded before dawn. We should tip again.”

  “So soon? There is such a thing as too often,” warns Venti. “The risk compounds.”

  “Tell that to my aching voice,” grumbles Jacynth. “I agree with Moa.”

  Venti nodded slowly. “Kalista?”

  The lean, dark, wolfish girl reaches forward and touches her elbow gently. Venti smiles back at her.

  “Mea canat. Be a dear and fetch our mien, will you? Tell them we need another one, but keep it calm, eh? Don’t let them stub their toes rushing up here.”

  Kalista is off like an arrow, bare feet spping the deck.

  “Aralia, see to the drum and silver, please.”

  Aralia feels inexhaustible as she drops down the dder and careens around corners, down into the cramped, dim warren of the hold. Only by luck does she avoid a head-on collision with a small, fast, warm body running the other way.

  “Aralia!” it gasps. “I was helping Esca with dinner. Is it them? Are they close?”

  She reaches out and steadies him. “Careful, Pasha!” she breathes, though she was running just as reckless. Pasha is haliati, younger by two years, and for the st few months he has been excitedly telling everyone that he wants to be something like a boy, searching and sifting through the words and symbols of the several nguages he knows, trying to share about what his desire feels like to him.

  “There are three sails on the horizon. Venti wants our to help set up. Come on, help me with the drum.” She seizes his hand, pulls him in her wake.

  Together they slip their way for’ard to a low-ceilinged cabin full of lockers and trunks. The timbers that form the walls are whorled with ridges and bumps that shed a faint, blueish-green glow. Aralia makes several quick hand motions in front of her face, and the glow brightens. In the center of the room is a broad, squat cylindrical shape, wrapped in oil-skin. The ship’s drum is easily as rge as the Damselfly’s barnacle encrusted anchor, but whereas the anchor is heavy hammered iron, the drum is fiendishly light, a marvel of carefully braced wood and stretched hide.

  Aralia and Pasha raise and maneuver the covered drum towards the cargo hatch, which is open, and lift it into the waiting hands of their crewmates, who raise it onto the weather deck. This done, Aralia and Pasha turn and make their way to the windowless heart of the ship.

  The alchemy sanctum betrays the Damselfly’s true purpose, both because of just how much space it takes up, and what it contains. Officially, the ship is a gss merchant trader, and it is true enough that the crafting and grinding of lenses for the prized Jyllish telescopes and spectacles takes pce down here. But it takes only a gnce around to realize the obvious fact that the alembics, stills, and other strange instruments that line the space are not for gsswork.

  Pasha hovers on the threshold, watching Aralia go straight to the back, where a rge bubble of gss squats, wrapped and ringed with bands of pure beaten copper. Inside of it writhes a coiling argent fog. There is a spout at the bottom, from which she decants a stream of mercurial silver into a bottle. As she caps the bottle, she murmurs softly to it, and the liquid springs back into gaseous form. Slowly, Aralia spins, and proceeds back towards Pasha, as if walking with a stick of sweating dynamite, or perhaps an immensely rare butterfly, paper-thin wings still moist from the cocoon’s embrace.

  Pasha follows her up to the main deck, where Kalista has just reappeared and is in the midst of ushering the elders Hallel and Synka, swathed in thick dark robes against the chill, towards the drum. The st rays of sun are dribbling vividly over the far edge of the world. The breeze is softening. The night is clear. A few drops of spray dapple the back of Aralia’s neck. The bottle in her hands pulses with an otherwordly starlight.

  Kalista beckons Aralia and Pasha, and together they help their retives creak down into cushioned seats, and position a brazier full of glowing charcoal between them. Moa and Venti are already there, sitting on the other side of the drum, eyes closed, breathing long slow breaths. Jacynth seats herself st.

  A cry from the lookout. Aralia turns, and sees that the squadron of ships behind them have unched signal rockets. She has been studying Imperiat naval communication, and in the multi-hued bursts, she instantly decodes the demand to head into the wind, drop sails and prepare to be boarded. She mutters this into Pasha’s ear, with a derisive eye roll. The rest of the crew is gathering around, murmuring, craning uneasily to look back in the direction of their wake.

  The aunties are unruffled. Kalista walks around and pces long drumsticks, the ends swathed in sealskin hide and sinew, into their hands. Aralia sees the first stars glimmer into view.

  The drums begin—rolling waves of sound that overy and underlie each other, complex polyphonic rhythms older than nguage. There is a collective sigh as the gathered crew begins to untense, lulled by the blossoming field of the drummers. Nobody speaks.

  Aralia’s gaze seeks out Kalista’s with an easy familiarity. Between them, they have accumuted a lexicon of thick and silent meaning, and the dim and dying light does little to obstruct their communication. They circle towards each other and walk for’ard together, Aralia still holding the bottled pulse of burning silver, to the deep, wide bowl of knapped obsidian set into the deck near the bowsprit. Aralia uncorks the bottle, holds it almost tenderly for a moment, and pours out the contents.

  Again a liquid, the silver spshes as it hits the obsidian stone, then billows into an argent mist that spreads and envelopes the entire bow. The ship slides deeper into the silver fog, until first rigging, then masts, then everything from bow to stern, is inside the shining cloud. Wordlessly, Aralia and Kalista’s hands find each other and share a squeeze.

  The drums are thunderous now, a wash of vibrating vowels that bathes Aralia’s bones in reverberation. The stars overhead are pulsing to the beat that is everywhere at once. She turns her head and looks aft, just as the drummers throw back their heads and begin to sing. Their voices, imbued with burning silver, burst the membrane between the yers of the world.

  There is a visceral tipping feeling, and then—as the hull crashes through one swell and charges up another—the whole ship slides into the spirit current and everything, from the sp of the waves to the groan of the rigging, is muffled quiet. The Damselfly has crossed into the unseen yers of the world, the pce her aunties call the Tide.

  Aralia’s hair, cropped short, does not float up, but it is ruffled and stirred by the invisible current. It’s as if she and Kalista are poised on the precipice of an interdimensional diving board, as the void rushes up to engulf them.

  Aralia’s memories of the space between the stars are always gssy and loose, prone to slipping and rearranging. Each moment seems endless and also gone before she can quite understand what happened—a frustrating rarity for her. Moa has intimated to her that this is a side-effect of the quicksilver.

  Each time, she swears to herself that this time she will remember the fractal geometric patterns that burn behind her eyelids. The chilly tug of the spirit water. The eery sounds that drift and wash up from the depths.

  She always remembers when the ancestor spirits come, though, the deep and soundless beating of their wings, the whole ship bathed in their fming silver glow. The singing of the drummers is endless and the silent response is also endless. The conversation is slow, ceremonial, graceful, urgent.

  The endless depths around them sparkle with the light shed by the silent star beings that pace them, and the pitch-dark void beyond that ancient protection is also full of swarming shapes, only vaguely hinted at—some of which are rger than the ship itself.

  Faintly, as if through a thick brainfog, Aralia knows those hungry presences are only kept at bay by the presence of their guides.

  Their journey may have taken hours or only a few minutes, but at some point the pull of the Tide begins to recede, and the pressure darkening the inside of her intellect begins to lessen and lighten. The ship’s creaking emerges again in her ears. The stars are once again above her, instead of watching and protecting her from just beyond the hull.

  The voices of the drummers, which have taken on an almost drone-like quality, scken and gradually fall silent. The silver cloud around them begins to unknit, drift away and disperse in the much warmer night breeze, which has changed direction. The Damselfly drifts, sails fpping gently, in unknown waters.

  ~ ~ ~

  There were two raps on the door, a pause, then another two.

  Aralia rose and opened the door to admit Pasha, wearing the same unobtrusive uniform as after-hours cleaning staff and pushing a cart den with various closed buckets and pails. Aralia bolted the door and they embraced tightly.

  “Mea canar.”

  “Mea canat.”

  Aralia went to her desk and there was the soft, oiled clicking of tumblers. She drew out a briefcase, id it on her desk, and popped it open. The padded interior was full of sealed gss vials, stacked and strapped into pce. All the vials were a uniform cylindrical shape with a valve at the top, but some were multi-chambered, and contained various different combinations of vividly colored compounds.

  Aralia and Pasha, working carefully and silently, transferred the vials into the buckets, nesting them securely between yers of cushioned padding. Then they refilled the briefcase with identical but empty gss vials.

  When they were done, Aralia produced a bottle of expensive-looking, amber whiskey and poured a strong dollop into two tumblers, then pulled her chair around the desk. They both sat down heavily. Aralia raised her gss and Pasha clinked it.

  “To our continued treason, sabotage, and theft” said Aralia dryly, in Jyllish, and drank.

  Pasha snorted, and then tossed his off, too. “To finding Kalista, and the rest of our people.” There was a burr of tension in his voice.

  Aralia cleared her throat and looked away. “Of course.”

  “Have you found anything? In the restricted clearance files?”

  Aralia shook her head heavily. “Nothing. I even started leaning on some of my assets to help with the research. I got so tired of hitting dead ends I took the risk.” She frowned. “And still found nothing.”

  Pasha’s voice was gentle. “You’re the one who has told me over and over that we’re pying the long game, here, Aralia. Remember, this is how it felt right before we found Esca.”

  “I know, I know.” She hesitated. “It’s just…Pasha, the Imperiat has Apomasaics, now. I gave it to them.” She grimaced. “It’s only a matter of time before they figure out the key hidden inside it, and are able to engineer their own mercury. And now with imminent war on the horizon, as well? You know what this could mean. For the whole goddamn Whistling Sea.” She looked down and winced. “Every day I think about what Kalista would say to me about the cost I paid for this, and every day I get a little more afraid she’ll never talk to me again when she finds out.”Aralia swallowed. “If she’s even still—” she caught herself, as Pasha made a little noise of protest.

  Aralia closed her eyes. “I’m not giving up, Pasha. I promise.” She opened them again, took a deep breath. “But I can’t just—it’s not enough, what we’re doing. I want to start increasing the shipments.”

  “Emilia will just love that,” said Pasha rolling his eyes. “You two are far more alike than either of you is willing to admit. You’re both part mule, for instance.”

  Aralia shrugged that off. “Not just the grenades. The halia, too. I want to double the volume of what I’m currently synthesizing each month. Will you be able to keep up?”

  Pasha looked at her askance. “Do you even know how many draft cart loads I am hiding right now? How many barrels I have to make disappear from riverboat ding bills? I’m up to my ears in forgery and graft and false paperwork.”

  “You can do it, Pasha.” Then, at the look he shot her, she got serious. “You’re a genius with the numbers. Listen, if you’re having trouble, I’ll come cook the books with you. Like old times.”

  He grumbled something under his breath.

  “Also,” Aralia said carefully, “I need you to hide the paper trail of our test stray. And soon.”

  Pasha stared at her. “You want me to disappear her from the staff accounts? Aralia, that’s not the same as smuggling goods. People are much harder to hide.” His tone turned condescending. “They draw a sary, you see.”

  Aralia ignored his sarcasm. “I need her safe, Pasha.” She hesitated. “I feel like she’s my responsibility somehow. She threw herself out into empty air, without a pn, because I showed her it was possible.” A wince. “And then, I gave her refuge. And I can’t withdraw that, now. I already told her I wasn’t going to let them have her, and Pasha, the look in her eyes—” Aralia looked beseechingly at him and shook her head. “I know this sounds so, so hypocritical of me, but I just can’t.”

  Pasha groaned. “You’re serious? I knew this was a bad idea. You weakened your only leverage over her just so you could see the look in her eye? Don’t you fall apart on me, Aralia. Not now. I’m serious.”

  Aralia rolled her eyes. “I’m not falling apart, you little twerp. I was worried that she would do something stupid if she had nothing and no one at all to depend on. Anyway, I think I know how I’ll gain that leverage back, it’s just…”

  She hesitated, then muttered something under her breath.

  Pasha gave her an exasperated look.

  Aralia rubbed her face, then poured herself another whiskey. “She’s growing on me, all right?”

  There was a pause as she tossed it back.

  “Don’t make that face at me,” she snapped. “I’ll take care of it.”

  ChaoticArmcandy