ChaoticArmcandy

  They awake each other in womb-like darkness.

  The slow creak and groan of the ship, the muffled sp of swelling waves. Aralia’s canvas hammock sways slowly to the ponderous motion of the ship’s tilt. It is dolphin watch, still an hour or two before dawn.

  She wriggles out of the hammock and stands on the lid of her trunk, yawns and scrubs her eyes. Pasha and Kalista are whispering softly to each other.

  They dress quickly and heave on their packs, then climb up through the warren of the ship into the moist night breeze. The air tastes different, here, so close to nd. Above them, the sky is absolutely aching with stars.

  There is a huddle of muffled figures standing around the orange glimmer of the deckwatch brazier. Aralia recognizes Tash and Jacynth and Benso.

  The deck rolls slowly beneath them as the three friends make their way over, their sea legs compensating automatically for the pitch.

  Jacynth nods tightly in greeting. Aralia notices her face is drawn and pale. None of them have been getting much sleep tely, and her least of all.

  “Ah, the sight of you all does my heart good. Are we ready? Yes? Good. Now, be extra careful up there—we’re not taking any risks, understand? And stick together—I don’t want any one of you to so much as lose sight of the other two. Fsh us the all-clear from the peak, and we’ll send the skiff in. If you see any sails on the horizon—and I mean any—signal us. If by some wild chance, we have to run before you’re back, go to ground in town and take passage with the next ship that stops here bound for Faso—the Andartes will get you home to us, one way or another.”

  The three of them murmur assent. On the starboard side, Tash’s tall frame is engaged in winching down a long sea canoe.

  Kalista goes to help him, and while Aralia hesitates, Pasha does not. He hurtles into Jacynth’s arms and then something inside of Aralia gives, and she unches herself at them both, a soft sob tearing from her throat, and then her face is buried, pressed between a wet cheek and a sturdy bosom.

  “Oh darlings,” Jacynth murmurs. “Stick together, and come back to me—you must, understand? Stay together and come back to me.”

  They all squeeze each other hard, for a long, long moment. When it ends, Aralia embraces Benso, sniffling. A low whistle from starboard lets them know it’s time.

  Aralia lowers their packs while Kalista makes her own farewells. Then, one by one, they swing over the side and descend to the unsteady, leaping canoe. Kalista stows their packs under the thwarts while Aralia and Pasha prod the narrow craft carefully away from the Damselfly’s immense bulk. The tippy canoe stabilizes immediately when all three of them are finally kneeling and digging their leaf-shaped paddle bdes deep. With a few strong pulls, they shoot away into the night.

  Above them rears the immense shadow of the dead volcano, Ani Ay. The ancient monolith blocks out the cold majesty of the stars with slopes cd in humid, singing jungle.

  Despite the reef between them and the open ocean, the currents are squirrely, and strong enough to set Aralia’s muscles burning in no time. For a while there is only the sp and spray of dark water and the sound of their rough breathing.

  Finally, the waves begin to surf them in, and they all cease paddling to brace and steer as they ride the whitewash, until the bottom scrapes sand. They jump out into knee-high surf, heave the light craft up onto the beach and carry it towards the silhouettes of some dark rocks, where it can be covered with washed up sea-wrack and palm fronds.

  Time enough for a small respite, a drink of water, and then they swing their packs up and begin trekking up the sand towards the curtain of humming, misty jungle that rises before them.

  Aralia has her bearings. The stretch of water they have just crossed is one of the far western inlets of Hanonoke isnd. A good-sized trading port lies nearby, perched above a good deepwater harbor. Behind the town, fields of taro, coffee and chocote give way to forested slopes that rise gently upwards to the rim of the volcano. The far side of the bckrock cone is gone, bsted off in a long-ago cataclysm that has left only a sharply jutting cliff, dropping sheer from the rim to the cold sea depths below.

  The rim of Ani Ay will give them the best vantage point to watch and warn the Damselfly of any approaching threats, long before they reach Hanonoke. This is one of the safest and friendliest harbors on their circuit, and Jyllish traders have been coming here for a long, long time.

  Today is market day, and the ship’s delegation of alchemists will be plying their trade in the town square, distributing hundreds of blue gss bottles with tidy bels, full of all manner of medicine and magic—but especially the increasingly rare halia elixirs—to eager waiting hands.

  The Jyllish alchemy ships used to make harbor at Hanonoke every other moon or so, but such frequent visits are now a thing of the past. The st time the Damselfly was here was almost a year ago.

  Still, Kalista remembers her st one well, and is able to find them a well-trodden path that switchbacks up and up. They climb, surrounded by the forest’s hooting, clicking, rustling buzz, and gain the rim just as the sun is pouring liquid rose gold over the horizon in front of them. All around them, birdsong is mounting to a fever pitch.

  Aralia drops her pack, panting and sweating freely, and gulps water from a skin. Kalista is already unsheathing her telescope, and roving upwards to find a better position on the ramparts of tumbled, sharp bckrock.

  The sun is climbing swiftly, unearthing it’s great burning bulk from beneath the eastern horizon. It is a clear morning, with good visibility. Aralia can see the Damselfly behind them, anchored just out from the town, near the harbor mouth. She puts away the water skin and stretches to touch her toes.

  From a distance, she hears Kalista swear abruptly, in a tone that chills her blood. And then—

  “They’re here! Pasha, the mirror!”

  Everything slows down.

  Pasha close on her heels, Aralia scrambles up the rocks.

  Each jagged, precious moment slips by and is gone forever, bade farewell by another thunderous drumbeat of her pulse, roaring in her ears.

  Despite scraping her knees and hands heedlessly on the rocks, she feels no pain. Finally she makes it to Kalista’s side.

  She takes it all in at a gnce.

  Far below them, in a sheltered cove, crouch two anchored frigates, sails furled, decks swarming like ants with marines. They are already unching galleys, packed with men. Boarding parties.

  Aralia looks frantically around, her heart leaping wildly, as if trying to jump out of her ribcage. Where is the third frigate?

  Behind her, Pasha is fshing code frantically. Almost immediately, Aralia sees answering fshes from the deck of the Damselfly. She whirls, eyeing the Imperiati ships below. Have they seen the telltale glitter of Pasha’s mirror, too?

  Kalista stands her longbow up, grabs the upper end, and heaves down to bend it, slipping on the bowstring in one liquid motion. Then she is off and running to the edge of the sheer drop. She stops, throws down her quiver of arrows, and begins wresting rocks the size of her head from the volcanic tumble, and lining them up at the edge. Aralia stumbles after her, a dull, painful roar of comprehension beginning to set it.

  The boarding parties will have to row beneath the cliff edge to get to the Damselfly. Kalista is staying here to slow them down. She joins Kalista in gathering rocks and then Pasha is stumbling up.

  “No,” pants her friend, pointing at both of them. “Go, get back now, go home! You can still make it.”

  “No,” croaks Aralia shakes her head. “That’s—I—we need to stay together, Kalista!”

  “Only one of us stays,” Kalista says firmly. “With the signal mirror.”

  Pashais numbly shaking his head, looking from one to the other.

  Aralia is tense and helpless, mind frozen at the inevitable, devastating logic as if at an impassable barrier, unwilling or unable to move past the obvious conclusion.

  They must split up.

  She knows that Kalista is the obvious choice. Shooting straight down, with her longbow, her broadheads can splinter deck pnks, puncture steel. She can hold off the entire boat fleet or force them to go much farther out of her range to go around. She's the most experienced by far in bushcraft, evasion, combat.

  “You have to look out for Pasha!” Kalista snaps at her. “If you can’t make it back to the ship in time, find Faram in town, Faram Kessley! Ask him to hide you, and then follow the contingency pns. Now, go!”

  Pasha has both hands clutched over his mouth, his eyes begging them both for this to simply not be happening.

  Aralia shoves her feelings down forcefully, down, down deep inside and seals them off. She will remember the crystalline slice of this moment for years, every time her mind shrugs off another part of itself that is just slowing her down, like casting off an impediment to the urgent work that must, must, must be done.

  It works. Inside her there is a dry riverbed, where only a moment ago was pounding, welling grief.

  She grabs the signal mirror from Pasha, clips it to Kalista’s belt loop. “We’ll leave you our packs, we’ll go faster without them.”

  Her gaze locks with Kalista’s, and such a torrent of gratitude and acknowledgment and confirmation passes between them in that split second that it almost tears her dams open again. It’s as if an undying vow flickers into being and forms in one silent cp of utter crity, a storm of vivid meaning boiling electric through her nerves, down her spine, almost too fast to be scrawled into nguage—

  —gotyourbackallthewayandyouhaveminefindyouagainalwaysanythinganyway—

  Kalista seizes them both and hugs them tightly, for far too short a time, then pushes them away with visible effort. Aralia seizes Pasha’s shoulder, throat aching, and pulls him away, down the slope.

  “I swear I’ll find you again!” She calls over her shoulder, raggedly.

  Then they are hurtling down the trail, skidding and sending pebbles flying, startling birds into an uproar.

  It is a long, terrifying descent. Her lungs are burning but she shoves that down, too. Speed is the only thing that matters. Sobbing for breath, they burst into a silent meadow. The sun has not yet reached this slope and all is still overcast with gray-blue dawn shadow. The birds are not singing.

  Aralia’s stomach jolts with sick arm. Why are there no birds?

  She jukes west, yanking Pasha after her, just as a ragged skirmish line of marines rises from the tall grass at the far edge of the meadow, crossbows leveled, faces made insectoid by gas masks of oiled leather, mirrored lenses, tubes and filter apparatuses.

  A muffled yell, “Halt! Imperial Navy!”

  An instant countermand, “No crossbows! Torch ‘em!”

  Aralia sees the nearest marines drop their weapons and fumble at their chest rigs. She puts her head down and pulls Pasha at an all-out sprint towards the treeline. They are so close, if they can just make it to the beach—

  There is a loud chorus of metallic clicks and then hissing as clockwork grenades, spewing gas, begin arcing over them, past them.

  But they’ve made it to the treeline. The slope drops away beneath their feet, straight down to the beach below.

  So close, is all she can think.

  Aralia’s vision blurs with burning tears and her lungs begin to seize.

  Next to her, Pasha’s strained wheezing.

  His grip on her hand sckens.

  They are both stumbling.

  Her coughing has become a wracking spasm.

  Behind them, the crashing of boots.

  She goes for her knife.

  ~ ~ ~

  Aralia prowled moodily to her desk and pulled out a bottle without looking. Her hand a little shaky as she poured, raised the gss, smmed down the liquor.

  She poured another, and walked to the window, swirling it, to stare at the moon, rising higher and paler in the sky. It was te. Too te to wake Esca or Pasha, she decided, though she craved the comfort of their presence. No one’s fault but hers that she hadn’t shown up to dinner tonight.

  Another part of her, the part that had kept her away, shut up in her office, cringed away from the vulnerability that seeing the two of them, soaking in their warmth and the resonance of their shared pain, would bring up in her. What if she broke down? What if she couldn’t hold her face together? They both needed her to be strong, capable, unflinchingly calm under pressure.

  Most of the time she could be that. But some nights were bad. Right now, she needed to stop remembering. She needed distraction, comfort. She chewed her lip, a silent debate raging within her. She could summon Ellie…

  Was that objectifying? Perhaps. She suspected the girl wouldn’t compin about that, though. Aralia’s lips curved in what was, she realized betedly, her first smile that day. This alone nearly made her decision for her. And Aralia had so been looking forward to seeing the girl again. She’d found herself looking forward to staring down into Ellie’s wide-eyed gaze until it softened and went heavy-lidded with desire, to hearing the hiss of her sharp indrawn breath, to making her tremble and whine…

  Fine. She had compromised her ethics so completely already, what was one more debt? She needed something, right now, or she didn’t know what she would do. This parade of sharpcut shard memory and salted pain was intolerable. She tossed back the drink in her hand, and turned to go warm Ellie’s coin.

  ChaoticArmcandy