Nhika fought back tears on her way through the ship. She had a terrible dread in her chest, a voice that told her this was just like before. It was Kochin taking another bullet; it was another metal coffin. But this time, there would be no chance to save him on the operating table. If this ship went down, they all went with it.
The airship felt like it was rattling apart. From inside, it was hard to determine the change in altitude, but the chandeliers swayed—a tinkling marker of their descent. The halls were growing warmer; the air came like fire in her lungs as she tore her way to the promenade. All that hydrogen gas had been suspended in sacs, and she had to wonder how many had already blown—and how many remained.
When she reached the passenger deck, she heard the clamor of a crowd. She stilled, finding the delayed instinct to hide—but too late. The crowd spilled into her hallway, and she placed her guard up, ready to run and kick and bite.
But they only ran past her. Nhika pressed herself against the wall, feeling small, and found they had greater priorities: the smoke rising from the back of their airship, drawing an ominous curve through the sky.
It took her a moment to realize they were running toward the loading bay, undoubtedly where evacuation protocol told them to go.
“Wait!” Nhika called, her voice small against their clamor. “The loading bay is on fire. Get to the promenade!”
None of them even paused. Idiots, she wanted to scream. More champagne than sense in their heads—because sure, why not run toward the source of the fire? She had half a mind to let them go, get to the promenade for herself, wait for the Congmis, but …
But Kochin had asked her to get everyone off the ship.
“I’m going to die today, aren’t I?” Nhika muttered under her breath. She was going to die, he was going to die—they were all going to die on this flaming ship, but let the Mother witness that she had been a heartsooth to the bitter end. She and Kochin both.
When she escaped the passenger deck and found herself on the gangway, Nhika saw the full extent of the damage. The tail was on fire, blazing through the gray of a settling fog. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the balloon blew. She quickened her pace.
At last she reached the gondola and burst through its door—to meet a collection of pilots, engineers, and guards trying to mitigate the damage. Warning lights flickered across the console, every dial experiencing its own emergency. There had been a tumult of voices—yelling instructions, announcing new calamities—but they all fell silent when she appeared at the door.
Black flashed in her periphery, a force knocked her from the side, and Nhika found herself newly apprehended. She staggered, too shocked to even feel the indignation—until the guard cuffed her to the railing.
She exclaimed out in surprise and made a lunge for the guard, only to be yanked back by her cuff. The guard pulled a gun and panic jumped in her throat—that pesky fear of bullets, rising as bile. She held up a hand, but remembered the palliative gesture was only a threat among this crowd.
The Mother always did love returning Nhika’s acts of goodwill with tests of patience, didn’t She?
Nhika lowered her hand again. Her words would have to suffice. “I came here to warn you. Everyone is rushing to the loading bay to evacuate, but it’s compromised. I need to get everyone to the promenade instead.”
Her plea was only met by empty stares and guarded poses until a pilot stepped forward, speaking for the rest. “Where’s the commissioner?” she demanded.
“Kochin is saving him.”
“His is the highest in the chain of command on this ship. We await his authority.”
Nhika scowled, and her expression won her no favors. “You’re making the wrong decision. This ship is on fire—your commissioner’s doing, by the way. I need you to send a broadcast to tell all personnel and guests to meet at the promenade. There’s a Congmi ship coming for me.”
“And why would the Congmis send you a ship?” the pilot asked, and Nhika wondered if she could even answer that question.
“Because they care about me,” she said, and had to hope it was true.
From the back, an engineer piped up. “Captain, we’re losing altitude. What the bloodcarver says is right—the tail is on fire. We can only assume the loading bay is compromised.”
The pilot gave Nhika another long, discerning look. Then she strode to the console, leveled the PA mouthpiece to her lips, and said, “All crew, make way to the passenger-level promenade for evacuation. I repeat, all crew to the passenger-level promenade.”
When she replaced the mouthpiece, her eyes met Nhika’s. “Your ship better be coming.”
Yeah, Nhika hoped so, too.
Before she could respond, a rumble rocked the airship. She staggered off her feet, the cuff wrenching her wrist as it caught her, before the airship made a jarring drop. Screams gathered around the cabin, and then everyone was leaving, fleeing the gondola.
“Go to the promenade!” Nhika reminded them as they filtered out—engineers first, then pilots, then the guards. The crowd had thinned about halfway before Nhika realized no one had remembered she was still cuffed.
“Wait!” she called, pulling to the end of her chain. “Wait wait wait—come back!”
But it was futile; the ship was shaking as though its hinges had come apart, the crowd had disappeared in a frantic panic, and Nhika was left in the gondola, chained to the railing.
“Mother, you have a twisted sense of humor,” she cursed beneath her breath. Nhika wrapped the chain around her wrist, yanked—tugged on it with all her weight. Nothing. She kicked the railing, kneed it until her skin burst with bruises. It held, the fasteners welded to the wall.
The room was growing hot. She wondered if it was because the fire was spreading. She hoped it was just her panic—and she was growing panicked. Frantically, she explored the room, trying to find a blunt object within range.
Instead, her eyes found the PA mouthpiece, dangling from its cord. It was at the console; she was near the door, but she dragged her cuff to the far end of the railing and reached out a foot. Her toe tapped the mouthpiece. Muttering obscenities beneath her breath, Nhika leaned forward—until her wrist was chafed raw, her fingers crunched—and managed to snag it. She dragged it closer, brought it to her lips, and pressed the button.
For a moment, she said nothing. The task of speaking felt enormous, and she felt small. Her old natures were returning, and she wondered: Who would even help her?
But she remembered Mimi and Andao on this ship. She remembered Trin, who was certainly coming with a ship. She remembered that she was no longer alone—and wondered how she could have ever forgotten.
“If anyone is out there, it’s Nhika,” she said. “I’ve been chained to a railing in the gondola. I need help. Right about now would be good.” And that was it. Sending that message through the ship with no response felt a little bit like prayer, and Nhika had never much believed in the Mother.
Just then, a dark spot passed the window—at first, looking like the airship’s own shadow cast against the clouds. Then, just as sea beasts emerged from the abyssal deep, the curve of a hull broke the even surface of gloom, banishing wisps of fog as it arrived. At last, it swiveled, and she saw the beautiful insignia of the Congmi family painted in gold against its black balloon. Her heart leaped with relief—then dropped in equal height when she remembered her predicament.
Trin had come for her, and she wouldn’t even be able to meet him.
Nhika found new determination. As she wormed her wrist against her cuffs, the Congmi balloon reoriented itself parallel to Nem’s ship. She saw movement, the beginnings of an evacuation plan—and could only hope that Kochin was among them.
Nhika was seconds away from doing something regretful with heartsoothing when the door burst open. She spun, heart lifting with hope and Kochin’s name on her tongue.
But it wasn’t him. It was Lanalay.
“Nhika,” she said, assessing Nhika’s cuffed situation. “I thought you were trying to get off the ship. Not trying to bring it all down.”
“Nem’s fault, not mine.”
“Where are the papers?”
Nhika hung her head. “Is that really your priority right now?”
“Have you tried breaking your thumb?”
“I’m trying to make it out of here intact.”
“What? You have heartsoothing. A broken thumb is no matter.”
“Can you please just find something to break the chain?”
“Right.” Lanalay disappeared. Moments later, she returned with a metal statuette in her hands. Nhika splayed her hands apart, exposing a portion of the chain, and Lanalay slammed the statuette down.
“Watch the fingers,” Nhika chastised.
“You can heal them,” was all Lanalay said before bringing down the bludgeon again.
Once, twice, thrice more and the chains finally snapped. Nhika pulled her hands from the railing with a breath of relief. “Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Twice,” Lanalay added. “Please, Nhika. The papers.”
Nhika couldn’t argue. She reached up her sleeve and drew them out. When she offered them to Lanalay, the girl paused. For all her earlier stoicism, her hands were shaking.
“They can no longer hurt you in any way that matters,” Nhika said softly. “So, take them.”
Lanalay had never waited for Nhika’s permission on anything before, but she took the papers. And maybe she would’ve stayed there frozen, staring at the papers in a descending gondola, but Nhika grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to the exit.
“Quick, Lanalay. We can’t stay here.”
Together, they left the gondola. The carnage had spread, fire climbing up the hull of the balloon and seeping into the body of the ship. But the Congmi balloon was level with the promenade, and Nhika found a gangway extended between both ships. She squinted, trying to discern people—but it was too far away.
She was nearing the promenade when she saw two silhouettes at the end of the hallway, gray forms in the smoke. Nhika tensed, but when the figures drew closer, she recognized them.
“Nhika!” Mimi said, her brother trailing her. “You’re safe. Thank goodness—we were just coming to get you.”
“Did you see Kochin?” Nhika asked.
Mimi shook her head. “He’s not with you?”
“Not anymore,” Nhika said, swallowing the rest of her fears. “Let’s just get to the promenade.”
Smoke hazed the hallways. Nhika held her breath until they’d ascended the levels to the promenade. There, most of the crowd had already made it to the Congmi vessel. A perilous walkway spanned their two ships; guards helped shaky aristocrats traverse the terrifying length first before the staff.
And there, waiting to accept them on the other side of the gangway, was Trin. Nhika nearly cried in joy at the sight of him.
“Nhika!” he called, giving her a reassured smile. “Do I even want to know what happened?”
“Best not to ask,” she called back. Then, to Lanalay and the siblings, she said, “Go on, get across.”
Mimi shook her head. “No. You first.”
Nhika gave the crowd another scan, only to be disappointed. “I’m still waiting on someone.”
She sent Mimi up. Andao next, then Lanalay, her eyes on their footing until Trin was able to haul them up into the safety of the Congmi ship. Slowly, while smoke expanded around them, the crowd thinned on her side of the ramp and grew on Trin’s. Aristocrats first, as they were always accustomed to, and finally personnel.
Nhika stayed last, bidding even the guards to go before her. Every other second, she threw a look over her shoulder—toward the billowing smoke, toward the door—waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to come through. As the last evacuee escaped up the ramp, leaving Nhika alone on the promenade, Kochin still hadn’t arrived.
“Nhika, come on,” Trin urged, holding a hand outstretched.
“No, not yet,” she called back, shaking her head. There was a hammering in her chest—she wasn’t sure if that was her heartbeat or the drumming of the airship engines. “That’s not everyone. Not yet.”
She couldn’t leave. Not until Kochin came. There was no assurance that the Congmis wouldn’t fly away once she was on board. Instead, she held tight to the railing, eyes fixed on the door, even as Trin called her name and smoke poured out of broken windows.
“Come on…,” she whispered to herself, a prayer stolen by the wind. He’d asked her to trust him. He’d promised. “Come on, Kochin.”
The promenade was growing unbearably hot. Fire coursed above, racing along the deck. The railing burned the skin of her palms.
“We have to go, Nhika,” Trin implored. “We can’t risk catching fire here, either.”
She met his eyes, brow furrowed with pleading. He extended his fingers; Nhika drew toward the gangway—
—and Kochin kicked open the door with Nem draped over his shoulder, both in a coughing fit from the smoke.
“Kochin!” she shouted. Relief poured out of her in a heavy breath, and she rushed to aid him, taking the commissioner’s other side.
“His leg is injured,” he said, lips smudged with ash. When his eyes met hers, they softened. “You waited?”
“You fought on Yarong for me. I bought you a few extra minutes. Now, we’re even.”
“Sounds fair.”
“You can express your grievances once we get off this ship.”
Together, they helped the commissioner toward the ramp. Trin met them halfway, hauling Nem up as he stepped off the promenade. Then it was only Nhika and Kochin left on the smoking platform.
“You first, I’m right behind you,” Kochin said, his hand tender at the small of her back as he pushed her up. Trin coaxed her on the other end and she climbed her way up the ramp, trying not to look at the plunging descent on either side.
“Okay, it’s ready for you,” she called back to Kochin once she’d reached the top. Her hands stabilized either side of the ramp as he reached for it.
Before he could climb aboard, the rest of the hull blew.
The gangway escaped Kochin’s reach when Nem’s airship dove toward the ocean. Nhika screamed his name as pockets of fire bloomed across the airship, quickly gaining toward the promenade. Kochin ran for the front of the airship, leaping off the promenade and falling shakily onto the landing platform.
Nhika whipped around to Trin. “Tell them to lower the airship. I can grab him. Please.”
With a nod, Trin disappeared into the cockpit. Nhika sprinted her way up to the bow, running parallel with Kochin—him on a sinking ship, her on a racing one. They were both reaching the end of their line, their ships speeding toward the ocean; the nose of her airship dipped, just enough that she was level with him for a few seconds’ time.
“Jump, Kochin!” she called, even though she wasn’t yet there. Her ship drew close and Kochin was running out of space to flee the fire.
Kochin leaped; Nhika hurdled the railing at the bow. They both reached for the other.
For a heart-stopping moment, it wasn’t enough—the space between them too great, their hands too far. Time slowed to an unbearable stillness, and Kochin wasn’t falling—he was flying. Nhika wasn’t catching him—she was bidding him goodbye.
And then their hands met. Nhika tightened her fingers around him as time lurched back to regular pace; her other hand gripped the railing.
The force of his fall yanked at her shoulder and she felt the railing give. Half of its bolts sprang free before it swiveled loose, and then they were both dangling over empty air. Nhika’s fingers slipped against the metal, grip painful and their combined weight threatening to pull them into the ocean.
“Nhika, the railing,” Kochin warned with breathless panic, but she already knew. As the railing loosened, her grip on Kochin only tightened, and she felt her arms pull apart from the tension of it all.
“Don’t let go, Kochin,” she said, even as her muscles screamed for relief.
He shook his head. “I’ll take you with me if I don’t.”
“Don’t you dare.” Tears burned in her eyes; she pretended it was from the pain, rather than this impending act of goodbye. “I didn’t come this far to lose you now.”
“It was enough for me just to see you again. To know that I succeeded,” he said. The panic ebbed from his eyes, replaced by something softer: acceptance.
Was this how he’d felt when she was on her deathbed? The same helplessness, feeling that if she were just a little stronger, their grip just a little tighter, she might be able to pull him up? Knowing he had made up his mind but hoping he would change it? Instead, all she could do was dangle here, limbs pulled apart and heart torn in two.
“I have to bring you home,” was all she could say. “I have to.” She didn’t fear the retribution of the Vens; she feared their grief. And she didn’t know how, after all this, she could stand being the last heartsooth again.
“It’s all right,” he said, letting his fingers go slack. They started slipping from her own, and just as she felt her grip might give, he met her eyes: his, full of awe and reverence; hers, brimming with desperation. Beneath him, Nem’s ship tore itself apart, its tatters claimed by the ocean. His lips parted and she barely heard his next words over the roar of the fire. “Nhika, I love you.”
Her heartbeat staggered. Was this it, then, a mirror of before? Were they always fated for this ending?
No. Not like this. Those words would not be final words again—this time, the declaration would take no fatalities.
“You’re going home,” she told him. “Don’t argue with me, Ven Kochin. You won’t win.”
Nhika shot electricity down his arm, shocking the flexor muscles of his fingers—not allowing him to let go, no matter how he slacked. She did the same for hers, even as she felt the muscles tire, even as the fibers sheared themselves apart, even as Kochin stared at her in stunned surprise. The pain coursed through her forearm, and she let out a roar, one part agony and two parts Hell-bent determination, knowing that the moment she gave in they would both plummet toward the ocean. Her fingers, slicking with sweat, slipped from the railing, but she only tightened them. Nhika had never been anything if not relentlessly stubborn and unendingly difficult, and she mustered every ounce of her defiance to spit in the face of whatever fate determined to keep them apart.
Ven Kochin would not die today.
He looked at her in hapless awe, but he didn’t fight her anymore, fingers clenched around hers as her tears fell along his arm. In his eyes she saw an echo of a memory, saw every ideal that he had worked for these past months, saw peace, freedom, and …
Love. He loved her, she loved him, and she wouldn’t let go.
She felt her muscles weaken, tear apart, beg for the relief she wouldn’t allow. Tendons threatened to snap, bones pulling loose from the joint, but her soothing bolstered them all. Just when she was about to give—not from the shallowness of her will but from the sheer inability of her anatomy—salvation came.
Arms descended from the platform, hands grabbing her by her shoulder, her shirt. They lifted her up, Kochin with her, and dragged them onto the ship. She managed to crawl against the support of the hull before every muscle sagged, her fingers forgetting how to move. When she blinked the dancing light out of her eyes, she found Trin and Mimi stooped beside her.
“Nhika, are you okay?” Mimi asked.
Nhika was covered in soot, hair ashy from the flames, with ghastly bruises growing on either forearm. “Do I look okay, Mimi?”
A smile tugged at Mimi’s lip. “It seems like we managed to arrive just in time.”
Nhika’s sardonicism softened. “Thank you,” she said. “For coming back for me. For saving me. For everything.”
“Mimi, is she thanking us?” Trin asked dryly.
“We need to get her to a doctor,” Mimi teased. “She must have inhaled too many fumes.”
“I mean it,” Nhika grumbled.
At that, Trin gave her a warm smile. “We know. You’re family. Rest now.”
Nhika nodded, slurring her next words in sleepiness. “Wake me up when we get to Theumas,” she said, and slumped off into slumber.