Chapter Thirty-Seven
The ’ship shuddered and went quiet. Winds howled outside the hull, and the sound of creaking wood and panicked shouts filled the void. A few seconds later the low groan of the wind elemental that propelled the ship returned. Free from its prison in the anti-ballast, the elemental manifested among the lax sails, a tight ball of furious energy, spitting lightning and screaming wind.
“What happens now that that thing’s free?” Rae asked.
“The ship will fall, and us with it,” Estev said. His voice was stern, but there was a trace of panic in his tone. “Go find your sister.”
“It’s unbound. Why hasn’t it disappeared into the plane of Air?” Rae whirled on the lifebinder. “Why is it still here?”
“Spirits sometimes go mad when released,” Estev answered. He grabbed Rae by the shoulder and propelled him toward the stairs. “I will try to contain it before it smashes the ’ship to splinters, but we need to get clear of this damned vessel. Your sister. Now!”
Fleeing backward, his eyes locked on the zephyr, Rae stumbled down the stairs. His last view of the elemental was of it crashing into the mast. The thick wooden column snapped like a twig, sending a shiver through the entire boat. Rae turned and ran down the ladder.
Lalette was holed up in their assigned room. His sister had a nasty gash across her forehead, and was holding a bundle of rags to the wound while she rifled through the pockets of a member of the crew who lay dead on the floor of the cabin. The crewman stared up at the ceiling with black, empty eyes.
When Rae entered, La whirled on him, pistol in hand. She barely relaxed when she recognized him.
“What have you done, Raelle?”
“Nothing, I swear. Collins came after me in the stormnest, and then . . .” He gestured hopelessly. “Then all hell broke loose. Are you alright?”
“I heard screaming down in the mages’ quarters just before that storm hit. Mahk went to check, but I haven’t seen him since. These two tried breaking in here.” She nodded at a body at her feet. Another crewman was tucked under one of the beds. It was the officer whose room this had been. He had a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. “Kept talking about the dreams, and how we had to get off the ’ship.”
“Well, I think he was right about the second part,” Rae said. “Rassek has killed the captain, and maybe the rest of us, too. He threw the stormbinder over the railing, and now the zephyr has broken free of its prison and has gone mad.”
“Rassek! How did he get aboard?”
“Well, not Rassek exactly. His spirit. He possessed the captain, and then just . . .” Rae flailed in frustration. “Never mind! Estev sent me to find you.”
Mahk returned. His face was screwed up tight, and his knuckles were scraped bloody. He gave the dead officer a glance, then started gathering items from the narrow shelves that lined the room.
“Portside lifeboats are already gone,” Mahk said quickly. “But there are a few left starboard.”
“I never heard the order to abandon ship,” Rae said.
“Well, someone seized the initiative.” He threw a messenger pack across his shoulder, then looked over at Lalette. “Can you walk?”
“I’m fine. It’s just a cut.” She tossed the bloody rags onto the other bed, where they splatted damply across the sheets. “Looks worse than it is.”
“Good enough,” Mahk answered, turning to the door. “Time for us to get off this ship.”
“What about Estev?” Rae asked. “Last I saw he was tangling with the elemental.”
“He can find us at the lifeboats. No other way off, is there?” Mahk said. “Rae, keep an eye on your sister. La, go ahead and clear the hallways. I’ll watch our backs.”
“On it,” she said, looping a brace of pistols across her chest, and taking the knife Rae had been carrying. She opened the door. “Starboard?”
“To the right. Just keep going to the right,” Mahk said. La nodded and headed off. Rae followed close behind, unsure how he was supposed to keep an eye on his sister if she kept running off.
Thunder shook the bulkhead. Rae cast a worried eye toward the afterdeck, and Estev.
“Come on, old man,” he muttered. “Get out of there.”
—he can’t hear you like that.
“So what should I . . . oh.” Rae paused in the hallway, earning a cross look from Mahk as he dipped his soul in the shadowlands. It wasn’t hard finding Estev. His soul glowed green and bright to the rear of the windship. He was surrounded by failing souls, all shot through with black corruption.
Rae narrowed his focus, drawing on the wraith to send a tendril of ghostly energy through the air. Once he was close to Estev, he let the tendril blossom. Delicately, he brushed against Estev’s mind. Tumultuous cursing flooded his senses, an anger completely at odds with Estev’s reserved personality. Rae shook off the distraction and sent a message.
—starboard lifeboats, he whispered, then cut the connection.
“What was that about?” Mahk asked. “You went all frosty for a minute.”
“Giving Estev the heads-up,” Rae said.
Once they were clear of the living quarters, they followed a trail of unconscious bodies to the starboard deck. “They got in the way,” Mahk mumbled when La raised an eyebrow at him. They reached their destination with little trouble. It was a narrow balcony that served as the base for that side’s directional mast, with rigging that led out into the swirling cloudbanks. There were runners along the starboard mast for the half dozen lifeboats that were stowed against the ’ship’s hull. Mahk ran to the railing, leaning precariously overboard.
“They’ve broken free! I think I can haul this one—” Mahk reared back, his hands wrapped around a rope as thick as his wrist. Whatever was on the other end bucked in his hands. Mahk slammed against the railing. “Rae! Help me!”
—as if your insubstantial weight is going to matter a drop in this—
“Shut up!” Rae shouted, drawing stares from Estev and La as he rushed to Mahk’s side. The rope held the last lifeboat. It dangled at the far end of the rope’s length, four sails already deployed, spinning in the windship’s wake. Rae grabbed the whipping end of the rope and pulled. The storm pulled back.
A tremendous howl cut off all further conversation. Out among the starboard rigging, a form started to take shape. At first, it looked like a pinwheel, rotating slowly between the fluttering, ragged sheets that still clung to the mainyard. As it grew, the arms of the apparition twisted and spun, drawing out into the material plane until they formed six different funnel clouds, each as long as a horse. They danced through the rigging, tearing the sails free and snapping the starboard mast like kindling. With a roar, the spirit made itself manifest—pure wind, blowing in all directions, breaking and screaming and throwing, decades of captive frustration released in a single moment. And then it disappeared, leaving behind the wreckage of the starboard side sails.
“So that’s what it looks like when they go mad,” Rae muttered to himself.
Estev’s rotund form appeared overhead. He slid down the side of the hull, in a feat of agility and courage that Rae wouldn’t have thought possible for the lifebinder. Estev landed with a thud in the middle of the deck.
“Leaving without me?” Estev asked.
“Wouldn’t think of it. I see you got my message,” Rae said. The lifeboat bucked him off his feet, nearly dragging him over the rails. Mahk grunted and hauled them both back upright.
“Oh, that was you. I thought I was having a mental breakdown,” Estev mused. He laid a hand on the bucking rope, and vines crawled down its length, joined by roots at Estev’s feet that dug into the decking. “I don’t like the idea of flying this thing into a storm.”
“Little choice,” Rae said, grunting as the three of them drew the lifeboat back to Pearlescent’s side. La secured the anchor, then threw open the hatch.
“Get in, and be quick about it. We’re well on our way down,” Estev said.
“What about the other passengers?” La asked.
“Anyone not already dead will have to find another way off. I’m not risking the pair of you to save a handful of merchants and the mistresses,” Estev said.
“The pair of us?” Rae asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Estev’s only answer was a nervous glance at the bundled sword on Rae’s back. Rae was about to press him, when the storm cloud disintegrated around them. There was a long moment of absolute silence. Rae’s brow furrowed in confusion. Then he looked out at the sky, and saw the doom that awaited them.
The orderwall hung fifty yards away, streaked with sluggish lightning and the coiled clouds of the Heretic’s Eye. Pearlescent slipped closer, its bulkheads groaning under the strain of gravity and storm and corruption.
“Enough!” Estev grabbed Rae and tossed him toward the lifeboat. Rae stumbled against the railing, then vaulted over and dropped into the belly of the narrow vessel. The sides were padded with leather cushions, and a long tangle of velocity couches ran the length of the lifeboat. Rae heard his sister yelp, then she thumped into the crash netting next to him. Rae busied himself with securing the two of them while Mahk and Estev scrambled over, tying themselves down before Estev heaved against Pearlescent’s spar, sending them cartwheeling out into the sky. As soon as they were clear of the doomed windship’s hull, a pair of glide wings automatically levered open, snatching at the storm and jerking them away from Pearlescent.
They went through the orderwall together, lifeboat and windship, twin projectiles in a fatal orbit. Rae had a long look at the doomed Pearlescent. All four of its masts were splintered, the sail tattered and fluttering, while the hull looked like it had been twisted back and forth by an angry giant trying to squeeze the last drop out of an orange. Bodies littered the decks, hung from the rigging, spilled out of the torn hull as the windship listed to the side. The splintered end of the main mast whistled past their lifeboat, then Pearlescent toppled and fell.
A roar of harrowing noise washed over them, followed closely by blinding mist, shot through with electric light. It felt like a sandstorm going through Rae’s mind, the filtering energies of the orderwall scouring his soul and leaving him frayed. The others screamed, but Rae swallowed his heart and laid against the lifeboat’s railing, paralyzed with fear.
The wraith rattled against his soul. The storm mote, still lurking, almost forgotten in the coiled tapestry of Rae’s heart, spun like a top. It felt like his teeth were on fire, like his bones were a fuse, and his blood the powder keg. And then it passed, and they were in clear air, and still falling. Rae blinked and caught sight of the ground through the thick trees of a primeval forest. It was close, and getting closer very fast.
The crippled windship smashed into the high branches of the forest, coming apart piece by piece as the trees swatted through its hull. The sound was deafening, and quickly overwhelmed by the rush of wind that preceded the debris cloud. Their lifeboat shuddered in the outflow, Estev wrestling with the controls, the rest clinging to the crash nets. Rae stole a look outside just as they slipped beneath the canopy of the forest. What he saw stopped his heart.
A hill, and a blighted structure on top, windows black and walls covered in vines. It was surrounded by acres of ruined ground, and a single tower on the far southern side, sticking out of the earth like a finger pointing accusatively at Heaven.
Hadroy House. The site of the Heresy, and so much more. Rae had brought them home. Finally home.
Then they hit a tree, bounced, spun around. La’s scream pierced the air. Rae slammed hard against crash netting, then felt something give as they whipped around into another tree. For a long, weightless moment they were airborne again. Branches scraped the underside of the hull. Rae had a foggy image of Estev wrestling with the controls at the front of the cabin, then he turned aside and threw an arm over Lalette. Brambles blossomed out of his flesh, forming a dome. The sudden weight jerked the nose of the boat downward. Rae looked up and saw the sky, the ground, the sky again. Everything was green and storm-gray. Then they hit, and the lifeboat came apart around them.