Clouds darken and the storm may not break, but where smoke gathers, fire awaits.
– Alonque saying
Rafi awoke to the smell of smoke. Not the comforting scent of woodsmoke or the sweetly spiced aroma of Saffa’s cooking fires, but a sharper, wilder tang that coiled down his nostrils, clawed into his throat, and whispered to him of danger.
Was that the ghost speaking to him again?
Disoriented, he jolted up, clutching at the hammock’s webbed sides. His left hand twinged in pain, startling his gaze down to the brownish stains smearing the ragged bandage knotted around his palm—the one on his thigh, too, though that wound was still oozing. Ches-Shu take Sahak and all his wicked blades. Raucous snoring jarred Rafi from his thoughts. Cradling his left hand to his chest, he blinked through the hazy dawn light spilling over the thicket of hammocks strung across the crew’s quarters to where Moc sprawled in the closest, scarred head thrown back, long limbs spilling over the sides, calloused feet brushing the deck each time the ship rocked.
Rafi couldn’t imagine sleeping with such easy abandon. Yet, somehow, despite his injuries—or maybe because of them—he’d managed to sleep through the night with the giant Alonque snoring like a thunderstorm beside him. He still felt like he waded through a heavy fog. Only slowly did the rest of his senses catch up.
Voices filtered from above. Bare feet thumped nearby.
The cords of that strange webbed hammock thrummed beneath him, and beyond the surrounding bulkheads, the sea moaned. Closer, a high-pitched scream shivered through the ribs of the ship, and prickles broke out across his neck and spine as he caught a whiff of that smoke again.
“Moc,” he whispered. “Do you smell that?”
Moc grunted and rolled over. His hammock creaked and groaned in complaint, straining under his bulk. His snoring resumed. Stretching out his good leg, Rafi kicked at his friend’s bundled form. Instead of jostling Moc, that just made Rafi’s own hammock wobble and sway, but luckily it lacked the wild, twisting action of the one he’d slept in—and fallen out of—for two years in Torva’s hut. Oddly enough, he actually missed that ornery thing.
“Moc!” Rafi raised his voice. “Wake up!”
But Moc just grumbled and snored on.
So Rafi pitched his voice lower instead, enticingly. “Breakfast, Moc. Rice cakes and simba wedges and fried saga crisps, still dripping from the oil.” His own stomach started rumbling at that, but the ploy worked.
Moc cracked an eye open and mumbled, voice thick with sleep, “Is Saffa cooking?”
Rafi understood the awe in his tone. Saffa’s cooking could roust a rebel from his hammock like nothing else, and it deserved its near mythical reputation. No one used spices and sauces quite like Saffa, creating flavors that fed both nostalgia and novelty. Of course, Saffa was far away, safe in the headquarters of the Que Revolution, so he ignored the question and slid gingerly from his hammock, careful to land on his good leg. “Smoke, Moc. Do you smell it?”
“Don’t smell food, that’s for sure.” Moc yawned and scratched his stomach. “So who’s cooking then, cousin, and are they burning the saga crisps?”
Shaking his head, Rafi limped toward the companionway, chasing the smoke topside.
“What?” Moc called after him. “No one likes burnt crisps!”
Grumbled complaints shushed Moc as Rafi squeezed past three other dozing, cocooned forms who must have rotated off the night watch. Drained by his aquatic confrontation with Sahak, not to mention the strain of his wounds, Rafi had collapsed straight into his hammock last night and slept like a felled log since. Given all this talk of food, he hoped someone had thought about breakfast, otherwise he would have to scrape something together himself that would make Saffa proud. Or at least not disappointed. Seaweed tea and fried saga crisps sounded like a decent start.
But would a foreign ship have such supplies? What exactly did they eat in Soldonia?
He surfaced through the hatch into a hustle of activity. A brisk, salty breeze whipped the mist around him, ruffling his tattered trousers and stinging his numerous scabbed-over cuts. Elder Gordu barked orders from the helm that sent the fisherfolk scurrying to scale the rigging. Under his direction, the villagers of Zorrad seemed to have taken to sailing with ease, though the foreign vessel, with its tall mast and snapping sails and decks raised fore and aft, was a far cry from the simple oared crafts they’d used to ply their trade before.
“Out of the way!” someone shouted, rushing past with a coiled line.
Rafi dodged, knocked against a tethered barrel, and tripped against it, hampered by his wounded leg. He caught himself face-to-face with old Hanu, who slouched behind the barrel with a large, floppy hat shadowing his thin face. Hanu raised a crooked finger to his lips, tugged the hat down, and continued snoozing, conveniently hidden from Gordu’s sight.
Still up to his old tricks. Nice to know some things didn’t change.
Straightening, Rafi caught a scowl from Gordu clear across the deck and smiled pleasantly in return. Some people were as fond of scowling as he was of smiling, and who was he to deny them such a simple pleasure? Hanu could sleep. Moc could snore. Gordu could scowl. What did Nahiki care?
That stray thought jarred him from his complacency.
Nahiki was no more. He had made his choice. He was Rafi Tetrani, an identity with roots, no longer free to drift and let drift, and that meant learning to make his stand.
Gordu raised one eyebrow, jabbing a finger at Rafi, but something closer to hand snagged his attention. “Sev!” Gordu had a voice like a water buffalo and the lungs to match, which had been wasted in the fishing village but here meant the whole ship could hear his commands. “Get that boat secured. Don’t want it sliding across my deck.”
Ducking around the mast, Rafi came upon Sev and a handful of others midship, lowering a boat, hull up, beside the large central hatch. Water slicked the boat’s sides and spattered their feet.
He recognized several who had been on Nef’s team the day before, sent inland as a distraction, so the ship must have reached the rendezvous point and launched the boat to retrieve them, all while he’d still been sleeping.
“You got salt in those ears?” Gordu bellowed.
“Working on it,” Sev yelled back, then muttered, “you great blowhard!” At his nod, the others tossed lines over the boat, and he knotted them off, then tugged the tail end twice.
The ship shuddered and seemed to skip across the waves.
Rafi flung out his arms to balance himself. That was odd. It almost felt like . . . like what he’d done to the longboat full of royal guards, twisting through the water atop his sea-demon colt, churning and striking and leaping, until it seemed he wielded the sea itself against Sahak. He stumbled to the port rail and searched until he spotted a familiar dappled shape with bright blue eyes cutting through the swell alongside.
Ghost haunting him still.
His lips tugged into a relieved grin. Of course, he’d been too exhausted last night to wonder if the colt would follow once released into the sea, but recalling yesterday’s wild, exhilarating dive, and the strength of Ghost’s surging form while he clung to his soft, white, rippling mane, he breathed easier knowing Ghost had chosen to stay. For Saffa’s cala root crackers, probably, but also, maybe, for him.
Cresting a wave, the colt tossed his mane and squealed before diving again. His movements seemed playful rather than threatening. Rafi doubted the colt was to blame for whatever was—
The ship trembled again, and the planks groaned under Rafi’s feet.
Muttered cursing drew his focus back to Sev, whose knots had slipped, allowing the boat to skid forward and crunch against the rail. Waving off Gordu’s shouting, Sev dropped to his knees and struggled to wrestle the boat and ropes back into place. He jammed his thumb and yanked his hand back, shaking blood from his split nail. “Ches-Shu!”
“Here!” Rafi limped over. “Let me help.”
Sev’s head shot up, and his initial scowl faded. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Me,” Rafi said lightly, “who happens to be a master at tying knots, whereas you have always been all thumbs.”
“It’s not me. It’s those cursed beasts, rioting below.” He punctuated each word with a tug that made the boat scrape across the deck, then flicked his gaze up briefly to meet Rafi’s. “Having those creatures so close . . . it’s bad luck, for certain.”
Rafi eyed the weathered planks beneath his feet, only a thin barrier separating them from their unexpected cargo. A stiff gust caught him across the face, bringing another whiff of that wild and tangy smoke. Standing shirtless in his bloodstained, salt-stiff trousers, he felt gooseflesh prickling his arms, though the breeze wasn’t cold. Could all of this—the strange smoke, the bizarre way the ship moved—be their doing? He’d barely begun to understand what Ghost could do. How could he comprehend these far stranger beasts of fire and wings and stone?
He shook off his concern for now. “Still, want a hand?”
Sev’s lips twisted wryly. “Depends. Which one are you offering?”
Rafi noted Sev’s glance to his bandaged left hand and wriggled his right instead. “The good one, of course.” Ironic, since he was left-handed. But Sahak had stabbed his left hand, so until it healed—and Ches-Shu grant it did—his right would have to suffice.
“I’ll take my chances alone, thanks.” Sev bent over his work again, tying off a haphazard string of knots sure to drive Gordu to wrath—chancy, indeed—while Rafi scanned the deck for Nef. It was always a good idea to keep an eye on that python in the grass, and besides, it would be helpful to know if he had discovered anything about Sahak’s operations while ashore. Between the newly constructed harbor, the contingents of royal guards, and this unprecedented shipload of steeds from Soldonia, Sahak was clearly up to something, and that never boded well for anyone but Sahak.
Nahiki would have pretended not to care. Rafi had to.
“You see where Nef went, once you got back?”
Sev pushed up to his feet, inspecting his split thumbnail. “Didn’t come.”
“He didn’t make the rendezvous point?”
“Took off after your cousin to shadow him.” Sev’s voice took on an edge, and Rafi wasn’t sure whether it was the mention of Sahak, or because Nef had made an even worse first impression on Sev than he had on Rafi—whom he’d first threatened, then attempted to kill.
“So you just left him?”
“Left who?” Moc thumped up alongside, yawning and scratching the dark, puckered scar that marked the side of his head. It had still been red and freshly scabbed when they’d first met. Rafi had never asked about it, but he’d gathered that Nef had been involved somehow.
“Nef,” Rafi said. “He took off after Sahak, and they let him go.”
Sev set his jaw in that belligerent expression Rafi knew too well. “No one let him go. Your friend—”
“He’s not my—” Rafi clamped his teeth and stared out toward the distant shore, visible through a gap in the mist as a thin strip of white sand trapped between the encroaching blue of the ocean and the creeping green of the jungle. Nef might not be a friend, but leaving him felt too much like running, and he’d done enough of that to last a lifetime.
He half expected the ghost to disagree and urge him to flee, but the voice had fallen strangely quiet recently. Could he even recall the last time he’d heard the ghost speak? He found the silence troubling. “We just shouldn’t have left him.”
Maybe if he’d stood with Delmar long ago, he wouldn’t be plagued by nightmares whenever he closed his eyes. It was worse now that Sahak had told him his brother had survived the fall, only to die in agony later. Alone.
“Maybe.” Moc shrugged. “But Nef can handle himself, and once his mind is fixed, there’s no changing it. He is tough as a kaava and twice as prickly. You know this.”
“Besides, he was gone before I arrived,” Sev said, then added, “not that I would have stopped him. We must seize every chance if we are to save her.”
His tone dared Rafi to disagree, but he couldn’t.
He had six days until he met with Sahak to trade their stolen cargo for the hostages of Zorrad, including Sev’s wife, Kaya. But if six years had not prepared him to face his brother’s killer, six days were unlikely to help. They needed every advantage they could get. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I know, and I swear, I will make it right. All of it.”
The words sounded strange coming from his lips, but it wasn’t the first time he’d remade himself and become someone new—just the first time he sounded like his brother.
Sev searched his face, brow furrowing. “You really aren’t him, are you?”
“Who? Rafi?” If only. Rafi offered a thin smile. “Sadly, I have the scars to prove it.”
“No. Nahiki.” With that baffling remark, Sev rounded the mast and strode away.
Watching him go, Rafi asked, “You think that’s good or bad, Moc?”
Moc just clapped him on the shoulder. “Come. We must see to those fried saga crisps. You were right about that smoke. Someone is burning something.”
“Moc, no one is—” Rafi broke off as a crash sounded in the hold below, where the steeds were housed, and cold sluiced through his gut. If anything happened to them . . .
He shoved toward the stern, passing the mainmast and the ten Soldonian sailors trussed at its base. He ignored their sullen stares, catching alternately at the rigging and rail to limit the strain on his wounded leg. He reached the helm where Gordu stood with his burly arms knotted over his chest, listening to one of the fisherfolk who gestured with one hand and gripped a wriggling nine-year-old boy with the other.
Iakki, face set like a thunderstorm, which made him look surprisingly like Sev.
“I caught him,” the fisherman, Aruk, was saying. There was no hint of the roguish smile he was notorious for using to charm fresh rice cakes and cups of seaweed tea from the women of Zorrad—that smile, along with the dark waves of his hair, barely salted with gray, and his skill with the pan flute he wore strung on a cord about his neck, meant he was regarded, apparently, as quite a catch. “He was trying to sneak below and wreak havoc among the demon-steeds.”
Iakki glared up at his accuser. “Was not!”
“I saw you with my own two eyes.” Aruk matched him stare for stare, though one of his eyes was watering and already swelling shut. Never one to come quietly, Iakki.
“I weren’t wreaking no havoc. I don’t even know what that is!”
“Trouble,” Gordu said. “Havoc means trouble, which might as well be your first name.”
“Oh.” Iakki sounded mollified, even pleased. “Well, I was just looking.”
Beside Rafi, Moc barked out a deep laugh. “Like you just looked at Hald’s goats?”
“I only teased them a little.”
“They started fainting anytime anyone came near them!”
“Yeah.” Iakki’s eyes gleamed, and Rafi couldn’t help snorting in amusement, which drew the boy’s attention. “Nahiki?” Iakki wrenched free and dove into him, forcing his weight back onto his injured leg.
Ches-Shu, that hurt. He made quite the cautionary tale these days, a warning for anyone mad enough to join the Que Revolution or cross the Emperor’s Stone-eye.
“So,” Gordu grunted, eying Rafi balefully and using the flapping tail of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his bald skull. “You’ve decided to grace us with your presence at last.” He jabbed a thick finger at Rafi’s chest. “Something is wrong with those steeds of yours.”
His manner instantly set Rafi on edge, which meant his own voice emerged with a deliberate lightness. Old instincts. Mildly annoying humor and subtle sarcasm had been his only recourse to deflect the cruelty of his long-ago jailers.
“Something is very vague. Could you be more specific?”
Gordu’s chest swelled. “This is no time for jokes, Tetrani’s son. We face a disaster.”
Which was the best time for jokes. How else could you hope to distract death with a grin so you could slip past without being caught? Rafi should know. He’d evaded death a half dozen times already, give or take. But as he squared off with the village elder, he was struck by the wrinkles that sagged under the man’s eyes, and how his muscular bulk, which had once strained the seams of his vest, now seemed swallowed by the folds of his threadbare shirt.
Sighing, he looked at Iakki. “Did you set off the demon-steeds?”
“No, honest, I didn’t. Just wanted to take a peek, but I didn’t even get the hatch open before he”—Iakki flung an arm back toward Aruk—“swooped in and grabbed me.”
Aruk shrugged. “He was messing with the hatch. Something set them off.”
Gordu’s thick eyebrows drew together. “It is Ches-Shu, mark my words. We have displeased her by ferrying demon-steeds across her domain.” His deep rumble dropped deeper still. “She will not be appeased until this taint has left her waters, for good.”
Sea-demons were aquatic beasts, so they actually lived in Ches-Shu’s domain, but Rafi doubted pointing that out would help. “So, as soon as we reach the smuggler’s cove then?”
The elder harrumphed. “If we reach it.”
The ship shuddered again, as if in response to Gordu’s dire prediction, then pitched and heaved, tossing them all off-balance. Rafi fetched up against the wheel and heard muffled thuds as the others hit the rail or deck. His vision blurred, and he shook his head, convinced his senses were failing him as the world seemed to tip further over.
No, oh, Ches-Shu, no. Not the world. The ship.