“Honding’s a catalyst, I won’t deny it. But he’s only showing off the cracks that were already there. It’s not his fault the crew’s shying from your fight.”
“It’s mine.”
“Yes,” Coss said, and the word weighed heavy in her heart. He knelt before the bench and reached out to take her clenched hands. With his big, scarred fingers he eased her fists open, smoothed out the taut and spasming muscles of her palms, then held her, gentle as could be. She dared to pick her head up, to look him in the eye. He smiled, and she felt a little lighter.
“Come on, captain. Let’s get back out on deck and show them how strong that heart of yours can be.”
“Lead the way,” she said, and stood, hands still wrapped in his.
“I already did.” He dropped her hand and gestured toward the door. “The rest is up to you.”
Chapter Thirty
Pelkaia showed a deft hand at the captain’s podium as she angled the ship toward the island, descent propellers heaving away to overcome the ship’s natural tendency to stay on a neutral plane. Detan had declined the crew’s offer to join them on the cranks for those particular propellers. He had, after all, a sore back from wrestling the ship through the storm and rather felt he deserved the rest.
He crowded the fore rail with a damp Tibs at his side as they dropped through the thick layer of cloud cover, following the faint wisps of selium leaking out from the watcher ship. Between cloud and rain and sleet, Detan’s clothes and hair were plastered to his body, a permanent shell of cold. He crossed his arms to huddle against the wind, but didn’t find the experience much better.
“Wish I had a hot whisky,” Tibs said, mirroring Detan’s hunkered posture.
“Wish I had a hot anything.”
“We’ll get a fire going on the island.”
“So our benevolent captain can roast us over it?”
“You know what? I’d be all right with that about now.”
The cloud peeled back and the island revealed itself. Little more than a thumbprint of land clinging to life amongst the waves, the rocky shore was dotted with wind-bent trees, clustering toward the center of the island in a great green mass. A narrow stretch of empty beach ringed the north end of the island, the only place large enough to anchor a ship the size of the Larkspur with any hint toward safety. Sure enough, the ship angled that way, even though the watcher craft was tangled up in the trees a good ways down the shore. Detan flinched, glancing away from the wreckage, and told himself the moans were the wind groaning through the trees.
The crew fired the anchor harpoons from the fore and aft, the ship jerking as the heavy bolts bit into the soil and held tight. Rope ladders were slung over the rail, the weary crew shimmying down them with what little medical supplies they had to spare strapped to their backs. Pelkaia’s crew was in poor enough shape to care for themselves, let alone the crashed watchers. But this was the least they could do for their fellow men and women. And maybe, just maybe, they could convince a few watchers they weren’t such monsters after all.
Stamping some semblance of warmth into his feet, Detan joined the crew at the ladders and dropped down to the rough rocks of the beach. His heels sunk in, squelching as he tromped across the sand. Hond Steading may have been a bit north and prone to a chill breeze on occasion, but Detan reckoned his bones weren’t bred for this kind of cold, and the sticky mist clinging to him wasn’t doing much to help the situation. Huffing breath into his hands to warm them up, he stomped circles on the beach as the rest of the crew spilled down the ladders. Jeffin stayed behind to work on repairs. Detan was grateful for that. The man’s simple presence irked him.
Something dark and lean nestled in the curve of the northern stretch of beach. Detan squinted, brought a hand up to shield his eyes, then realized there wasn’t any sun to shield them from.
“Hey, Tibs,” he called. “You see that?”
Tibs tipped up the brim of his hat to see better. “Looks like a shed. Or a boat.”
Detan snorted. “A real boat? Ridiculous.”
“Either way, we’re not alone on this island.”
Essi wandered over to them and peered at the structure. “Who’d want anything to do with this anthill?”
Detan and Tibs exchanged a look. “Someone wanting close proximity to the Remnant,” they said in unison.
Detan spun around and sought out Pelkaia, standing off to the side with Coss and Laella. He raised his voice to carry across the wind and distance. “Pelly, arm your people! We’ve got company on this pits-cursed island.”
Pelkaia raised the cutlass she had been fitting into her weapons belt. “Had you expected us to charge in after the watchers without protection?” She eyed him pointedly. “Although it occurs to me that, despite best efforts to the contrary, we are substantially under-armed.”
“Err, yes, of course. Carry on,” he said and kicked at a clump of seaweed.
“Going to tell her about the key?” Tibs asked, drawing a curious glance from Essi.
“When she doesn’t have something pointy in her hand, yes.”
“What key?” Essi asked.
“The key to that mouth of yours.”
She kicked sand over Detan’s wet boots and stomped off to join the rest of the crew.
“You got a way with kids,” Tibs said.
“I am a charmer.”
“Didn’t say it was a good way.”
They tromped across the beach, joining the back fringe of Pelkaia’s group, and followed the spearhead of her armed crewmembers along the rocky shore toward the last sighted location of the watcher craft. They didn’t have far to walk. The moans of pain reached them before the sight of the wreck did.
The airship had snagged in the treetops on its way down, spilling its crew in a heinous spiral across moss-covered boulders and the rocky shore. Tie-lines had snapped under the force of the crash. Those who escaped relatively unscathed were at work gathering their injured on softer ground, but Detan counted only three watchers on their feet. The rest were broken shades of themselves.
Detan had gone three steps before he noticed Tibs had halted. And then he realized his mistake in bringing Tibs here.
Watchers – men and women in uniform – strewn broken and weeping across the sands. The heady tang of iron-rich blood on the air, the eerie mist of selium escaping through the treetops. The twisted wooden wreckage. All things Tibs had seen before – must have seen before – in darker times when he served the empire. When he kept the machines of war breathing fire from above.
“Tibs, why don’t you go back to the ship and keep an eye on Jeffin? With strangers on the island, wouldn’t want the kid getting out of his depth.”
It was a weak excuse, and they both knew it, but Tibs took it like a rope thrown to a drowning man. He nodded, gaze glued on the damaged bodies, and sucked at his teeth.
“Reckon that’s a good idea.”
Detan waited until Tibs was a good halfway back to the ship before he turned his attention to the damaged watchers. He cursed himself for a fool for dragging Tibs out here at all. He should have known what the scene would look like. Should have known it’d hit Tibs as hard as rounding a corner into a whitecoat party would hit Detan himself.
Pelkaia’s cutlass was sheathed as she talked with the injured watch-captain, but Laella and Coss had their blades out. They held them low and at ease, but the threat was clear enough. Detan lingered behind the group and ignored their conversation. He had no stomach for the petty dance of threats they were playing.