CHAPTER 12 IN WHICH NADYA LOSES HER APPETITE.

Since one of the pirates is a fireminder, we stash all three in the boiler of engine two. It’s the only place we can think of where the fireminder won’t cause trouble if she works her gag free and calls a fire spirit. There won’t be anything in there for her to burn but herself, a bit of air, and the other pirates. The boiler’s a little small for the three of them, but we figure that’ll just make it harder for them to get loose and cause problems.

It still feels wrong to be stuffing three people into a space so small.

Don’t look at their faces, I remind myself. They came for us first. They would’ve killed us if we’d let them.

The woman, smushed so close between the others she can barely move, stares daggers at me and mutters into her gag.

I close the door of the boiler and turn the wheel that latches it. Tam pulls one of Nic’s keys off the ring we took from the female pirate and locks it.

He looks scared.

I feel the same way.

After a quick vote on deck, we decide to pitch the pirates’ weapons overboard, just in case.

We don’t want to use them, so there’s no sense hanging on to them. If the pirates do get free somehow, the last thing we need is for them to be able to get their weapons.

As the guns and knives and razors tumble into the darkness, I tell myself again that they would’ve killed us if we’d let them, and that they still will if we let our guard down.

Still, my mouth tastes ashy. I wish we hadn’t had to lock them up. I wish they’d never come here in the first place.

After the weapons are gone, we stand in a circle on the deck, listening to the drone of the pirate ship’s engines. With the moon set, the only light in the mist comes from the lanterns along the sides of the Orion. It feels like we’re sailing off the edge of the world and into the jaws of Goshend’s judgment.

It’s also cold. The fog leaves lines of water in my hair. I rub my arms for warmth. My skin feels rubbery.

For a few seconds, we all just stare at each other. Salyeh looks tired and ashamed. Tian Li looks completely exhausted. Tam looks nervous. Pepper’s staring anywhere but at the two cables that stretch from the Orion’s sides into the darkness off its bow.

“Last chance,” I say. I look toward the sound of propellers. Somewhere out there, in the middle of this big bank of gross-tasting crudcloud, there’s a giant metal ship. And somewhere in that ship, the pirates have Mrs. T, Nic, and Thom. If we cut loose from them now, we might never see them again. “We could still try to save them.”

Tam frowns. “We’ve been over this, Nadya. How do you wanna rescue them? We’d all have to climb out on the cables and get over to their ship. Then we’d have to get inside from wherever they attached the cables. Then we’d have to find Thom, Nic, and Mrs. T. Then we’d have to get them out. Then we’d have to climb back, cut ourselves free, and outrun the pirates before they notice what happened. It’s impossible!”

“I want a vote,” I say. I cross my arms. It’s the least they can do. Nic’s from Myrrh, where they’re big on voting, and anytime he leaves a decision up to us, he tells us to vote on it.

Tam rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says. “You’re for rescuing them. I’m opposed. Sal?”

Salyeh shakes his head. “Opposed.”

“Tian Li?”

“Opposed.”

“Pepper?”

Pep stares at her feet. “I—”

“Never mind,” Tam says. “That’s three to two at best. We’re going to do what they told us to do. We’re going to cut ourselves free and run.”

“Every vote matters,” I say quietly.

Tam snorts, but he also shuts up.

“Pep?” I ask.

She looks toward the sound of the Remora’s engines, then at the dancing flames on the Orion’s rails. Thom’s flames, I think. Still bound to the contract he made with them, even though he’s not here.

“I’m for saving them,” Pep whispers, and my heart soars because at least Pep’s with me now.

“Three to two then,” Tam says. “We cut the cables and we run.”

I put my hand on Pepper’s shoulder and glare at Tam. “You mean she cuts the cables and we run.”

The Orion sways gently from left to right as the wind pushes her. The cloud balloon floats over us like a huge black spider’s bloated egg sac.

Pepper takes a deep breath and looks at the cables. “I can do it,” she says, wiping some fog drops from her face with her sleeve. “Not with Ettingott, but there’s another fire spirit—one of the big ones that runs the engines. His name’s Rottfeuer.”

She shivers, and her eyes flick nervously toward Tam. “I’ll have to offer him something big, though. And unusual. He’s already got a contract to gobble coal in the engines. He’ll want something else, like fuel oil or dry wood or—”

“Garden air,” I say.

Pep looks up at me with wide eyes.

The air in the cloud balloons burns crazy easy. We hear about accidents out on the Cloud Sea every once in a while—some fireminder gets careless, and a spark gets onto a balloon’s skin and catches. The balloon burns. Everything in it burns. The ship crashes into the sea, and some watership finds the pieces, or they wash up on an island months later if the leviathans and giant squid don’t get them first.

“I’ll get him a jar,” I say quietly. “We can throw it off the back of the ship, or lower it on a rope.”

Pepper bites her lip and rubs her hands on her coveralls. The light of the fire spirits dances and sparkles on the mist in her hair.

“That might work,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “I’ll ask Rottfeuer.”

Her eyes close. Her lips start moving again, forming words that don’t even look human to me. Tam walks away and starts checking the cables attaching us to the Remora. Tian Li stares into the fog. Salyeh looks at his feet and whispers something to himself.

Pepper opens her eyes. “He wants the jar first,” she says. A bead of sweat rolls down the side of her head. “He doesn’t believe we can get it for him.”

I nod. “Easy enough.”

Tam comes back over and frowns. “And what if the pirates notice the big lamp we’re dangling out in the fog?”

Pep looks at her feet. “It was the only way he’d do it, Tam. He doesn’t trust me. Says I lied to Ettingott.”

Tam crosses his arms. “Did you?”

“No!” Pep stamps her feet. Her eyes glisten. “But she’s been spreading rumors about me in the World Beyond! All kinds of things—that I went back on my contract, that I tried to bind her against her will—horrible things! Things I’d never do!”

I grind my teeth and mouth dead man at Tam. His nostrils flare, but he shuts up.

“It’s okay, Pep.” I give her arm a squeeze. “Rottfeuer’s willing to do it, right? And then he’ll go back to the World Beyond and tell the other spirits they can trust you.”

Pep storms away and slumps against the rail. Her eyes are red and watery. She’s exhausted, I realize. We all are. Tired and cold and hungry.

“I’ll go get a canning jar and fill it,” I say. “Can you guys make some sandwiches or something?”

They look at me like I just asked them to hold a square dance. But after a second, Tian Li nods, like she gets it. Salyeh heads toward the kitchen. Pep sits against the rail looking miserable.

Tam just stares at me.

So I turn my back on him and go get my jar.

The inside of the cloud balloon’s a wreck.

The plants have turned awful shades of orange and yellow and purple and red. The birds’ nests are in shambles. The birds themselves look upset and dirty. The frogs sit nervously on lily pads in little clusters, like the old men in Vash Abandi who talk about the desert at cafés.

Their voices hit me like a tidal wave.

Nadya, what’s going on? I thought—

Nadya, where’s Zelda? She was supposed—

Nadya, are we safe? I heard shouts—

Nadya—

Quiet! I shout, as loud as I can get.

The tidal wave recedes into quiet, whispery shallows.

You’re all safe, I tell them. My gills suck in the warm, moist air of the garden. It calms me. And my calmness will calm them. That’s what Mrs. T always told me.

There’s a problem on the ship, I say. Mrs. Trachia’s dealing with it.

The voices start in again right away.

What kind of problem?

Will it hurt us?

What about the children, Nadya?

I close my eyes and let their chatter wash over me. I don’t bother trying to pick out words or voices. I just focus on the tone. They’re scared. They want to know I’m looking out for them, and that all they have to do is carry on as usual.

So that’s what I tell them.

They calm down then. The birds cock their heads and blink at me. The frogs look up at me with wide yellow eyes. The minnows in the pond stop schooling and drift. The plants exhale.

I have to go back down now, I tell them. My jar’s full of garden air, and I’ve sealed it tight. But I’ll be back soon. Just pretend that everything’s normal.

I swallow. Mrs. Trachia will be back before long.

The birds stare at me. The frogs bob on the lilies. Even the insects stop buzzing.

It’s not a lie.

I won’t let it turn into one.

The voices of the garden follow me into the waiting house with good-byes and good-lucks and thank-yous. They’re only drowned out when I seal the door behind me and the pumps start to work.

I slump against the metal walls and wait for the rush of outside air. For the first time in my life, I’m glad to leave the garden.

The others are waiting for me when I get back down. They’ve got salami-and-sharp-cheddar sandwiches on yesterday’s brown bread, spread with mustard and mayonnaise and topped with cloud lettuce and sky tomatoes. We sit cross-legged on the deck and pass around a thermos of lemonade as we eat.

I’m glad I asked for food. I’m absolutely starving. I tear through one sandwich and half of another before I realize there are eight sandwiches in all, and I ought to only eat my share.

Salyeh notices me stop. He waves at one of the sandwiches that’s left.

“Go ahead,” he says. His eyes look deep and sad, like sinkholes full of brown water. “I’m not hungry.”

I frown. He should be eating more than any of us. He’s bigger, and he used all that energy wrestling with the pirates.

But my stomach’s happy about the promise of more food, so I grab another half sandwich and tear into it.

“What’s the plan after we cut free?” I ask around a mouthful of cheese and mustard and bread. “How do we run away?”

Tam looks at Tian Li.

“We talked about that,” she says. She sets her sandwich down and nods at the cloud balloon. “We think the best way will be to drop as low as we can—almost all the way to the sea, maybe.”

“That’ll get us out of the fog,” Tam continues. “Plus the pirates’ cloud balloon has got to be massive to support that ship. Refilling it with garden air could take days. They probably won’t want to go that low to come get us.”

I nod. He’s right, and it’s a good plan. It would take our garden most of a day to get us this high again if we dropped down to around a thousand feet. Longer without good clouds or if the plants and animals were unhappy. The pirates would take a lot longer to pull the same trick.

I slurp down a loose tomato slice and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

“And then what?” I ask.

Tam frowns. “Then we have a problem. We’ve got to figure out what to do with the pirates we caught, and we’ve got to avoid the other pirates. We only have the one engine, and I don’t want to start it for a while anyway, so the other pirates won’t hear it if they do decide to come after us.”

I crunch through some lettuce. “We can fix engine number two, Tam.” We were almost finished with repairs before the pirates showed up.

“But we can’t run it.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Did you forget where we stashed the pirates? We can’t run whichever engine has them in the boiler.”

I remember turning the wheel and locking them in the darkness. I remember the woman staring at me.

I lower my head.

“Okay,” I say. “So we sit for a little while and wait until we’re sure the pirates are gone, and then we go somewhere on one engine. Where?”

Tam shrugs. “Vash Abandi’s still closest.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You think we’ll get a good welcome in Vash Abandi? Five kids alone on a cloudship, with three captured pirates? They’ll seize the Orion for sure, auction it off to some slimy merchant and throw us all on the streets. Besides, that’s where those goons found us in the first place!”

Tian Li looks up. “There’s the gormling to think of too,” she says. “We only have a few days of food left for it.”

Tam rolls his eyes. “If we go back to Vash Abandi, we can just return it to whoever gave us the contract in the first place.”

Salyeh leans back and shakes his head. “Far Agondy,” he says quietly. “It’s got to be. Nic said we should get help from his old crewmates if we were ever on our own. More of them run in and out of Far Agondy than anywhere else. That’s where Dream was headed too.”

I nod. So do Pepper and Tian Li.

“Fine,” Tam grumbles. “Have it your way.”

I look at Thom’s lanterns and the old, scarred wood of the Orion’s deck. The thought of taking it away from Nic, even if it’s really the pirates who did the taking and we’re just stealing it back, feels horribly wrong to me.

I take a deep breath. If we sit down by the waves while we make sure the pirates are gone, maybe I’ll be able to change someone’s mind about rescuing Nic and Thom and Mrs. T. Tian Li can be pretty brave. So can Salyeh. I bet they’re just rattled from our fight with the pirates. I bet I can talk them into it.

The drone of the Remora’s engines fills the night. Thom’s fire spirits flicker and dance in their little glass prisons.

“What’s going to happen when I cut the cables?” Pepper asks. She’s finished her sandwich, but she looks sick to her stomach and she’s hugging her knees.

Everyone stays quiet. I try to imagine it. Pep, dangling out on the cables, will summon Rottfeuer to cut them. He’ll bite his way through. The cables will fall.

With Pepper still clinging to them.

Tam’s eyes glitter in the lamplight. He swallows. He’s known. The whole time we’ve been ready to act out this plan, he’s known Pepper will fall.

“We’ll have you roped up,” he explains. “You’ll be totally safe. Once it’s over, we’ll just pull you back on deck.”

Pepper squeezes her eyes shut. The veins in her neck flutter. She clutches her knees so tightly her fingers turn white.

“Okay,” she whispers.

Tam looks like he’s swallowed a fish bone. A few seconds go by.

“You’re not coming out there with me, are you, Nadya?” Pepper asks.

In my mind, the clouds rush up to swallow me. “I will if you want me to.”

Pep shakes her head. “That’s okay.”

I reach out and hold her hand. “You’ll be fine,” I tell her. “I promise.” She doesn’t even open her eyes.

Tam’s mouth twists to one side, like he’s suddenly having doubts about his plan. You better be sure about this, I mouth to him.

I am, he mouths back.

You don’t look it, I retort inside my head. But I can’t come up with another way to cut the ship free. And if we don’t cut the ship free, this ends in disaster.

Still, in my mind Pepper falls, over and over again. The cables snap. The mist rushes up to meet her. The rope tied to her safety belt stretches . . .

It won’t break, I tell myself. We have good ropes. Nic buys the best.

I sit for a long time holding Pepper’s hand. The last of the sandwiches lies untouched.

I don’t much feel like eating anymore.