Twenty-eight

Alexandra

The calm of the ocean all around me should have been soothing. Given the plan fixing itself in my brain, however, I found that the silence only creeped me out.

Stanis stood a silent sentinel at the bow of the small boat, his eyes fixed on the dark horizon where the shape of the distant but familiar freighter steadily grew larger at our approach.

I shivered and pulled out my notebook to go over the spells Caleb and I had worked out.

“This quiet is killing me,” I said to him. This far out at sea, away from the city and other ships . . . Then it struck me. Something about how the boat was moving seemed . . . off. I turned to look at the back of the boat, where Marshall and Rory were. “You’re not actually running the motor engines, are you?”

He smiled. “I don’t have to,” he said. “The biggest problem with working for the Servants of Ruthenia was their having a floating home—the freighter. It’s never in one place at the same time.”

Rory laughed from where she stood by several air tanks and stacks of bucket-sized containers. Her pole arm rested against the boat’s wheelhouse as she pounded the palm of her hand around the lid of one of the containers, securing it.

“Of course their ship is always on the move,” she said. “Those Ruthenians wouldn’t dare return to their docks. Not after the trouble we caused for them last fall.”

“Trouble?” Caleb said with a smile. “Do tell.”

“We had tracked them to a slip out in Brooklyn,” I said. “Rory might have gotten a little . . . kicky . . . with some of them.”

“And,” Marshall spoke up from where he was looking over the back of the boat at the silent engine, “I got a few of them myself.”

“You?” Caleb asked, unable to stifle his laugh. “Rory’s a dancer with a pole arm. What’s you’re weapon of choice?”

“I . . .” Marshall looked defensive, but it fell away and his voice went quiet. “I hit a bunch of them with books I was throwing, thank you very much. I even drew blood. Those corners can be pointy and lethal at high speeds, you know.”

Caleb’s face was full of suspicious doubt.

“It was actually quiet impressive,” I whispered, leaning in to him.

Marshall went back to peering over the side of the boat. “So if you’re not running the engine, and you don’t know where to go,” he said, “how is this boat taking us there?”

Caleb lowered his notebook. “Kejetan’s freighter is never in the same place twice, so in order for me to get there, I had to get creative. I’m friendly with a few of the Village witches who owe me a favor or two after a job I did for them, so I incorporated some of what they could teach me into creating an arcane binding that’s also alchemical.”

“Like when Alexander bound Stanis to my family?” I asked, looking at the front of the ship to the stone-still gargoyle in question. “He set up rules when he created him. I set up a few simple ones to keep Bricksley from destroying the house when I’m gone, but that’s about all I really grasp of binding. So tell me, how the hell do you set rules to bind a boat?”

Caleb shook his head. “This kind of binding is sort of the same idea,” he said, “but a different principle. Think of it like the relationship of a magnet and a piece of steel. Drawn together like that, with this boat acting as a magnet being pulled to the ship. Except to make it work in the witches’ case, I needed this boat and the freighter to share something in common. They call it sympathetic magic.”

I thought it over for a second, but it didn’t make sense. “How do you make the two objects sympathetic?”

Alexander pulled off his coat and started rolling up his right sleeve.

“Oh no,” I said with dawning realization. “You didn’t.”

Caleb pulled the sleeve all the way up to his elbow, revealing a relatively fresh scar running across his inner arm near his elbow joint.

“A bit of blood magic,” he said. “I bound myself in blood to both of the ships.”

Marshall had stopped looking over the railing and came up to us, his face pale. I was pretty sure it wasn’t due to seasickness.

“And how does that work?” he asked.

“Lexi here isn’t the only artist,” Caleb said, pushing his sleeve back down over the scar. “I do a little painting myself. I mixed my blood with some seaworthy paint and coated the bow of this boat with it. I did the same with a small section of the freighter, too. So when I step on board this small craft, I drink a little something down, my connection to both ships snaps to, and voila! We’re under way.”

“Blood magic,” Stanis said from behind me, suddenly so close that I jumped. I hadn’t heard him join us, but his voice was practically in my ear now. “The work of necromancers. Dark work.”

Caleb hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod. “Maybe several hundred years ago, sure, but don’t forget . . . magic has changed with the times. Yes, a lot of it has been lost to legend or locked away by men who thought it too great a power for the world to know—”

“Like Alexander,” I said.

“Yes,” Caleb said. “But the magic that has remained has been adapted. ‘Blood magic: not just for necromancers anymore!’”

Marshall’s eyes narrowed. “So let me get this straight: You willingly cut yourself, drained your blood, then painted two separate ships with it?”

Caleb nodded.

“There has got to be some kind of great alchemical insurance coverage out there,” Marshall said.

“Not as such, no,” Caleb admitted, “but given what Kejetan had been paying me, I would have considered maybe sacrificing a complete limb.”

“It is amazing the trust one criminal puts in another,” Stanis said, frustration oozing out in every word. “Once my father was done with you, your life would have been forfeit even before you betrayed him by joining in Alexandra’s cause.”

“Hey!” Rory said, stamping her pole arm on the deck of the ship. “It’s all our cause.”

“That it may be,” Stanis said, not looking away from Caleb, “but this human sullies himself with such darkness. Alexander would not have approved of such arcana.”

I stepped back, finding pain in Stanis’s words. Hearing his opinion of how my great-great-grandfather might have reacted—especially when it was contrary to my own feelings about Caleb—struck a nerve.

“I understand your concern,” I said. “However Caleb has worked this, it is working. This gets us to Kejetan and his followers. We’re going to stick with our plan. Okay?”

Silent nods came from everyone except the gargoyle. “Stanis?”

“As you wish,” he said, turning back to the bow of the ship.

I looked to the horizon, surprised to see the freighter less than half a mile away, already looming menacingly higher than our tiny boat.

With our craft being the David to its Goliath, the stark reality of our situation sunk in.

Kejetan’s floating homeland was a singular island on an empty sea. There was no shore in sight, only the distant lights of New York somewhere off in the fog behind us. We wouldn’t have to worry about innocent bystanders out here, but if we failed, there was no one to hear our cries for help, either.

Judging by the drumming in my chest, my heart was already opting for panic, but I tried to calm it, telling myself to focus.

“This can work,” I said, for my own reassurance more than anyone else’s. “If everyone does their part.” Our boat was angling in toward a small dock that rose and fell with the waterline, the side halfway up the ship marked with a dark circle that could only have been Caleb’s blood.

“Don’t head for that landing zone,” I said. “We need to board somewhere with cover, and I suspect there might be people watching the docking section. I know I would be if it were my ship.”

“Right,” Caleb said. He turned away from the freighter for a second, shaking himself to break his focus. It seemed to kill the connection to both ships as we fell into a drift. Caleb turned back around, and our small boat curved off its course, the sensation of being pulled by some sort of tractor beam now gone.

“You do have oars around here somewhere?” I asked, and started to look among all the cluttered tanks and buckets we had brought with us.

“Somewhere around here,” he said, joining in as he picked his way among the cargo nearest him.

“Allow me,” Stanis spoke up, once again perched on the very bow of the boat itself. He pushed his wings up and over the front of the boat, dipping them into the water on either side. The stoneskin membrane of his batlike wings worked as massive oars, propelling us forward and keeping us parallel to the ship.

My eyes searched the deck high above us for a good place to board, and when the familiar sight of multicolored cargo containers caught them, I pointed below where they were stacked.

“There,” I said.

Stanis corrected our course with his left wing, bringing us in at the spot, while Caleb moved up next to him at the bow. Caleb’s eyes searched the side of the ship while he squatted and hefted a massive wrap of chain in his arms. Once he had found what he was looking for, Caleb maneuvered past Stanis and secured the chain through a metal loop on the side of the freighter.

“Don’t want to have our only means of escape drift away, now, do we?” Caleb said as he walked back to me.

I nodded. “Ready, everyone?” I asked, trying to whisper with as much authority as I could.

“As ready as I suppose we can be,” Rory said, sliding her collapsed-down pole arm into the artist’s tube across her back. She slapped her hand on the large, steel pump canisters sitting between her and Marshall.

“Suit up,” I told them, then turned back around to Stanis. “We need all this equipment up on deck, out of sight.”

He nodded, grabbing several containers at once before leaping straight up into the air, pumping his wings with ferocity. In a second, he was gone into the night sky.

Everyone on the deck set themselves in motion. Marshall helped Rory strap one of the large canisters to her back before pulling on one of his own.

I consulted my notebook once again as I went over my spell modifications for the evening, laughing when I saw Caleb standing across from me in a mirror image, holding his own notebook. His eyes met mine, and the two of us both embraced the lightness of the moment and held on to it in silence as the last tranquil seconds of our night ticked away.

“Promise me no blood magic tonight, okay?” I asked, only half joking. “I don’t need you bleeding out in the middle of all this.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Blood magic’s really not my thing. When I bound these two ships together, trying to get blood out of these veins was near impossible. Had a little trouble even breaking my skin, and that was with a witch-sanctioned sacrificial dagger. Apparently, there are some good side effects to all this self-alchemy.”

I laughed. “All kidding aside,” I said, composing myself. “I can’t do this alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Caleb reminded me, stepping closer. “You’ve got your big, bad, bat man there, Marshall, Rory . . .”

“And you,” I said, finding it hard not to smile, unable to stop myself from stepping closer to him. This was more than just the comfort of having a fellow alchemist to talk to.

The deck shook as Stanis came down hard next to us, and I stumbled forward . . . into Caleb’s arms, naturally. I went to push myself back to standing, but Caleb’s arms held me in place for a few seconds longer before releasing me.

Stanis couldn’t have landed more than a few inches from us, and given his posture—wings spread out behind him—it had been no accident. Was the gargoyle actually peacocking?

I wasn’t entirely sure, but now was not the time to call him out on it. Of course, it also wasn’t the time for me to be locking eyes with my fellow alchemist, either, but I decided to let that one slide.

I looked up into Stanis’s stoic face.

“Those were the last of the supplies,” he said, his voice plain, betraying no hint of any emotions he might be feeling.

I looked back at the mostly empty deck of our small craft.

“Good,” I said, turning away with only the slightest twinge of guilt. I instead looked up the long expanse of the side of the ship. “Now for us.”

“As you wish,” Stanis said.

One by one, Stanis flew each of us up to the edge of the deck, dropping us behind the empty shipping containers where our piled-up supplies lay before finally landing there himself.

Something didn’t feel quite right. I looked around and did a quick head count, coming up one short.

“Where’s Caleb?” I asked.

Stanis stood still and silent. I walked up to him. He didn’t answer, so I brushed past him to look back over the railing. Caleb stood on the tiny deck of the transport boat staring up at me, confused but waving.

“Stanis!” I whispered. “Get . . . him.”

“We do not need him,” he said, stoic as ever. “He has done his part in bringing us here.”

“And he has more to do for us,” I said. “Just get him.”

Stanis said nothing more but simply turned and leapt over the railing, swirling down to the small craft below in ever-growing circles. The gargoyle was not gentle scooping up Caleb, and an audible oof escaped Caleb’s lips as Stanis grabbed ahold of him. Their return flight was a fast, straight shot inches away from the side of the ship. Stanis shot past, dropping Caleb in front of me from high enough that the alchemist’s legs buckled under him as he absorbed the shock of the landing. He stumbled, then righted himself as he smoothed his coat down.

“What’s up with the attitude?” Caleb asked me, as Stanis came down on the deck next to him.

I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure that it was the time to get into it. Still, I needed both of them at my side in this. “What’s the deal, Stan?” I asked.

The gargoyle cocked his head at me. “Deal?”

Although Stanis was ignoring him, Caleb got up in front of him. “What’s up with all the flight turbulence?”

Stanis didn’t engage him, stepping to me instead. “He says he is a new man, Alexandra, but he has worked for my father. How do we not know this is not some part of Kejetan’s mad plan? How do we not know that Caleb here will not just hand us over to him?”

I stood there, silent. I didn’t have a good answer for him. Truth was, I wasn’t entirely sure. I wanted Caleb to be on Team Belarus now, but as I knew, wanting something didn’t necessarily make it so.

“Way to have my back,” Caleb said, shaking his head at me, then turned to Stanis. “I can answer for myself. Frankly, it looks like I’ll have to. First of all, I need you to think—if you’re capable of it in that big chunk of rock of yours. Do you know your father to be a forgiving man, Stanis? You really think he’d even let me on his team now after I freed you and took away his chances of learning the Spellmason secrets?”

Stanis stared as him for a moment in thought, but Caleb didn’t look away.

“You perhaps have a point,” Stanis said, his voice softer now.

“Great,” Caleb said, testy. “I’ve been paid well by the Servants, and a good part of it in advance before they froze the rest. Kejetan is a determined pile of rocks, and he doesn’t take kindly to being slighted. But . . . he’s also mad with pride. He’ll never expect us to bring the fight right to him, which, of course, is why we have. So you wonder where my loyalties lie? Yes, I’m selfish. And yes, I hope this puts an end to a series of fanatical flying madmen coming after me. I’d like a little less of that in my life. I’ve already got enough regular enemies out there, thanks.”

Marshall ahemed loudly and we all turned to look at him. “Are we done determining who’s going to be on our side tonight?” He threw one of his hands up over his shoulder to slap the tank strapped to his back. “This thing isn’t getting any lighter.”

Rory sighed. “You want me to carry you?” she asked, patting her own tank. “On top of my rig?”

“Let’s get focused,” I said, going over my spell notes. “Everyone clear on what they’re doing?”

Rory, Caleb, and Marshall nodded, but Stanis did not. I met his eyes.

“You’re with me and Caleb,” I said to him. “We’re going to go in all stealthy-like.”

Caleb leaned over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Think small and quiet thoughts.”

“Will that help?” Stanis asked with sincerity, missing the point.

“Just try to keep quiet,” I said, then turned to Marshall and Rory. “Head for Kejetan’s throne room when you’re done. And try not to get seen.”

Marshall smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got a little something for that.”

I paused. “Like what?”

“You’ll see,” he said, pressing a single finger to his lips. “Shh! It’s a surprise.”

“You know,” Caleb said, “historically speaking, the words surprise and plan aren’t considered great bedfellows.”

“Trust me,” Marshall said. “You’ll like this. I promise.”

“All right,” I said, smiling. “Let’s do it.”

I did trust Marshall, and if he had a surprise in store, not knowing what it was might be helpful, especially given the distinct possibility that we might be failing miserably at any second.

Marshall and Rory disappeared around the side of the shipping container, each carrying two sealed buckets in addition to the tanks on their backs. We waited several minutes, then made sure the deck was clear before setting off in a run across it, headed for the interior depths of the freighter itself.

Stanis and Caleb took the lead since they knew the way. I was happy to follow along, readying the spells in my head as my own memories of the path to the throne room below had faded somewhat. Stanis’s preternatural hearing always caught the approach of any of the gargoyles or human Servants of Ruthenia in time for us to hide ourselves as we went.

The way to Kejetan’s throne room was far more crowded than last I had seen it, what with all the additional gargoyles on board. It was easy to differentiate which were true Servants of Ruthenia by how they carried themselves, while the outsiders moved with more modern mannerisms or exhibited signs of meek confusion.

Surrounded and crowded by other gargoyles, Stanis abandoned any pretense of hiding and instead powered his way through the confusion until he burst into the throne room, wings fully spread, with Caleb and me at his side.

Kejetan sat upon his throne, and upon seeing us flew to his feet, his own set of batlike wings extending wide.

“My people,” he called out, and the assembled crowd turned to take notice of us. “A plague has come upon my great hall.” He pointed to the three of us, going down the line, starting with Caleb. “First it weaved its way into those in my service, then my son, and now a woman brings her family name here, one that has been cursed these centuries by all who serve me.”

“Belarus,” I said, unable to contain the swell of pride and power I felt behind the simple word. I turned to the crowd. “Curse it if you will, but no one is to blame for your long suffering except the man you call your lord.”

I sensed division among the ranks there, open hostility on the face of some, while others looked on in confusion.

“Followers of Kejetan, hear me,” I continued. “There are those of you who have long been with him. I doubt my words will appeal to any sense of reason in you. But for those of you who find yourself new and afraid in your service to this mad lord, know this: This is not your fight. Your lives may be spared if you turn from the false promises of this man. Mark me, I will only offer you this option once.”

The room erupted in conversation and shouting, some of the crowd attempting to disengage from it. Caleb grabbed my arm and dragged me behind Stanis’s wings.

“Laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think?”

I shook my head. “Remember, we don’t have to beat them; we don’t even have to fight them. We just have to keep them engaged.”

“Right,” Caleb said.

Before either of us could move, Stanis stepped away from us toward his father.

“What is the matter, son?” Kejetan said to him. “No longer feeling special in a roomful of your fellow creatures?”

“Do not call me your son,” Stanis said. “You lost that right centuries ago.”

“And you lost any chance you had to rule by my side when you choose to stand with their kind,” Kejetan shouted, pointing at Caleb and me.

The alchemist moved closer to me, whispering.

“What part of not engaging them did that hunk of stone not understand?” he asked.

I ignored him, trying to draw the focus of Kejetan back to me.

“Really hating on humanity,” I shouted, before Stanis could escalate this any further. “Do you forget where you come from, Kejetan? Do you forget how you were created?”

“I have no need for humanity,” he said. “Except as servants to my higher form. When I was stuck in that jagged stone body for centuries, all I could do was sit and watch your kind squander their lives, toiling in this world with the mundane. There is no nobility in you.”

“If you’re the paragon of nobility,” I said, “I think I’ll pass.”

Kejetan waved his hand, and the circle of gargoyles closest to his throne broke away and ran toward us, but Stanis dashed in front of them, blocking their way. Their claws and fists rained down on him as the shouts of the scared and confused filled the room.

I had hoped to avoid this, but all I could do was watch in horror as the fight in Stanis slowly went out of him because of the superior numbers of his attackers. Many of the newborn gargoyles ran off in horror, leaving only the most dedicated human and gargoyle Servants of Ruthenia remaining. The ones surrounding Stanis grabbed at him with their clawed hands, restraining him.

“If humanity has nothing, what do you have?” I asked Kejetan. “Followers, dedicated only because of the promise of eternal life. A promise that you have failed on yet again, and without that, what do you really have? Empty dreams filled with empty promises.”

Kejetan stepped down from his throne, eyeing me as he crossed the floor to his son. He grabbed Stanis’s face in his clawed hand. “And what do you offer us, Miss Belarus?”

I didn’t truthfully know what to say that wouldn’t get Stanis’s head crushed in, but luckily I didn’t have to speak.

“What does she offer you?” Rory’s voice spoke up out of nowhere. “How about us?”

The entire room turned to the empty space off to my right. Ten feet away, the air shimmered like I was looking underwater. Rory’s shape appeared, slowly coming into focus like a film projection.

I looked off to the door behind her, wondering if Marshall was coming through it. Or maybe he was inside already.

“We good?” I shouted out to her.

“We’re good,” Marshall’s voice called out from the far end of the throne room. I focused on the sounds coming from the only exit other than the ones behind Rory and me. Marshall came into focus by the door, a vial raised to his lips with one hand, the other one holding the spray nozzle attached to the container on his back.

“Nice touch with the invisibility,” I said, looking over to Caleb.

He nodded. “It was. But it wasn’t mine.”

Rory came over to us, holding up an empty vial of her own.

“Courtesy of Mr. Blackmoore,” she said.

I smiled as Marshall ran over to join us, spraying the ground behind him as he came. “Surprise!”

“Somebody’s been doing his homework,” I said.

He blushed.

“I’d have to turn in my Dungeon Master’s Screen if I didn’t figure out how to at least mix an invisibility spell,” he said.

I started to laugh, but a much darker laughter filled the room, booming over mine.

“So this is what you have to offer as opposition?” Kejetan asked, letting go of Stanis’s head. The rest of the mad lord’s pack still held their grip on him, but Stanis kept his head up with a grim determination on his face. “You mean to stand against me with whom?” He looked to Caleb. “First, a traitor to me, his greatest benefactor. Who will line your pockets now?” Kejetan turned to the rest of us. “And three other humans . . . ? A shopkeep, a dancer, and a stoneworker. Did you really expect to come here and challenge us with only one gargoyle against my multitudes? Did you hope to beat us down one by one?”

“Oh please,” I said. “Give me some credit. I am of the Belarus blood, after all.”

“And don’t worry about my pockets,” Caleb said. “‘You never know when one well will run dry’ . . . especially one so foul. It’s practically a freelancer’s motto. I’ll be fine. Which is more than I can say for you.”

“You dare—”

“Oh, we dare,” I said, the anger rising hot within me. “You’ve prolonged your life, but every last piece of your existence is driven by fear. The fear you strike in others. The fear you strike in yourself. It’s so all-consuming that you’ve spent centuries hiding away, chasing after revenge and power, but never living, never learning.”

“And why should I not have vengeance?” Kejetan asked, wrapping his hand around Stanis’s throat this time. The secrets your family stole were still mine, and they have been denied to me far too long.”

“No,” I corrected. If we were going to pull off getting out of here alive, I needed to turn Kejetan’s anger against him. “The arcane and the alchemical are not something you made. They’re things you accumulated, gained through intimidation and murder. Alexander’s child, your own son. And you wonder why my father took them from you? You wonder how your son chose to love Alexander more than you?”

My words had the effect I desired. Kejetan’s face became monstrous with rage, and he lunged for me across the throne room.

The sudden opening of his wings struck terror in me, but this was what I had wanted—him away from Stanis.

Caleb’s hand went into his coat and from within he pulled a clear vial filled with purple liquid. He unstoppered it and let a single drop fall to the ground on the spot Marshall had sprayed on his way over to us. I only hoped he and Rory had covered as much of the ship as they could have with the amount of Kimiya we had made. The rest relied on Caleb’s transformative mixture.

My mind and arcane will were already reaching out, searching for the one thing I needed to isolate in this freighter and finding it—my arcane connection to stone . . . and it grew every passing second as the steel of the ship began to transform all along the path of Marshall and Rory’s trails. I breathed out my words of power, the rest of my will and energy bridging the newfound connection.

Kejetan was in a full-on run toward me by then, and the deep part of my primal brain wanted to flee, but I stood my ground, focusing on the gargoyle’s feet as they hit the floor of the ship. As his right claw came down, I rushed my will into the spot below it, what had become a stone floor itself rising up around his foot, twisting over it, encasing it.

Kejetan stumbled, and when his other foot came down, I caught that one in another swirl of malleable floor, hardening them both in place.

The momentum of his charge sent him tumbling forward, but Kejetan caught himself with his wings to remain standing. Immediately, he used their clawed tips to free himself from where his feet were trapped, but it did him no good.

Caleb laughed. “Now, you see, maybe if you worked smarter and not just meaner, you might have stood a chance.”

Kejetan looked down at his feet, then caught my eye, confusion in his voice now.

“How?” he asked. “How are you using the steel of my ship to do this? Your bloodline’s arcane skill is only with stone!”

“Technically,” I said, “I am working with stone here.”

“But how?” Kejetan shouted, still struggling in vain to free himself.

“Allotropy,” Caleb said, holding the purple vial up. “You hired me, Kejetan, because you needed an alchemist, and what is alchemy really but a science most people don’t understand. For instance, take allotropy. An allotrope allows for elementary substances in material matter, like say those found in steel, to exist in other forms, such as stone. Superman crushes a piece of coal; the allotropes help it become a diamond. Same principles at work here. Steel, meet stone!”

“This fight was only the distraction,” I said, “keeping you and your men occupied down here in the depths of the ship.”

Marshall held up his spray container. “There’s a lot more where this came from,” he said. He shook the container, the contents of it sloshing around. “Actually, there’s not much more of it left. Almost all of it is coating your ship, sadly.”

Kejetan shook his head.

“Tricks,” he said, struggling. “Your potions and concoctions are limited in their uses, alchemist, offering nothing more than a delay.”

“You’d be surprised,” Caleb said, stoppering the vial. He slid it back inside his coat. “A little goes a long way, and it doesn’t take much for the structural modifications of the elements to spread. Just a jump to the left. You hired me because I was good, remember?” Caleb turned to me, giving a deep bow. “My lady, the ship is yours.”

I began to thank him, but Kejetan would not let me speak.

“It is not hers,” he shouted. “It is mine. Or would you rather have my men tear your dear Stanis apart as you watch?”

Kejetan had charged me before, but his men had stayed their ground, Stanis still strung up among them, caught in their grasp.

“It seems, Miss Belarus—much like when I stole Stanis away from you the first time—that we are at an impasse. Harm me, and my men will have no other choice but to end Stanis. I no longer care for the miserable cur. It has become more than clear that he is no longer one of my kin.”

“Nor would I ever wish to be,” Stanis said. My heart went out to him, stretched out in submission among the other gargoyles.

I looked to Rory, who had already assembled her pole arm. A vial of her own appeared out of her coat, and she applied its contents liberally to the bladed end.

“You sure that’s going to help?” I whispered to Caleb, and he nodded in response. Her blade hadn’t always been the best weapon against stone, but this concoction was supposedly going to change all that. Now I just had to make sure I had the power to pull off the rest of this.

I turned my attention away from all other things back to Kejetan.

“Release me, and you can have my worthless son once more as yours,” he said, a nervousness behind his attempts to bargain with me.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’ve done this dance before, remember?” I pulled my own notebook from my pocket, letting my anger grow as I turned to the spell I had marked out in detail there. “You broke into my home last year, threatening my family. Stanis gave his own freedom over to protect us, to take you away from us, but, no, that wasn’t a permanent enough solution. All that did was buy us time, and right about now, I think a more permanent solution is in order.”

At my command, Rory leapt forward, winging her pole arm at the gargoyle closest to her. The blade came down as the creature raised its claws to block it, catching it between two of its fingers. Like a hot knife through butter there was barely any resistance, and the blade slid down through its hand and the center of its arm. Everything below the gargoyle’s elbow fell away in two pieces, which crumbled when they hit the floor.

However, even with that advantage, their numbers were too many, and I needed to act fast if we were going to keep from getting overwhelmed.

Already, the rest of the other gargoyles began pulling Stanis’s limbs in four different directions. The strength of his wings knocked some of them back from him, but not enough were falling away in the struggle.

“Your men aren’t going to hurt Stanis anymore,” I said, pushing my will further out into the immediate surroundings of the throne room and the changing steel-stone of the ship. My body began to thrum with the almost overwhelming connection to it. “Your men have bigger fish to fry.”

“Meaning what exactly?” Kejetan asked, lashing forward with his wings in a last, desperate attempt to attack, but he was still not able to reach any of us.

“Oh right, I forgot,” I said, reaching out with my mind to slam shut the two other doors leading out of the room, the once-metallic clang of them sounding like a stone coffin sliding shut. “You ancient types have trouble with idioms like ‘bigger fish to fry.’ It means Stanis isn’t their biggest problem right now.”

The only door left for escape was the one behind me and my friends, and Marshall was already running for it as he unscrewed the top of the spray canister and spilled its remaining contents along our path out of the throne room.

“This,” I continued, letting my will loose on all the steel-stone spread out in front of me, “is their biggest problem. First, I’m going to crush this room in around you like a balled-up prison, so you can’t escape. Then I’ll fold the rest of this ship in around you until it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.”

The floor and walls were alive to me by then, the connection complete. I reached out to it, and it responded to my command. The floor beneath the gargoyles began to twist and buckle, the wrenching sound of metal fatigue and the grinding of stone filling the room as the walls pulled in to surround Kejetan and his men.

Many of the gargoyles holding Stanis broke away and began scattering around the room to push back against the walls that were pushing in, but several of them were still on him. With the numbers of captors thinned, Stanis struggled to break free, his wings thrashing about him.

“Stand still!” Rory called out to him, poised for action, holding her pole arm over her head, hesitant to take a swing with it. “Stanis, I’m serious!”

I lent her a hand, steadying the buckling floor directly beneath Stanis for a moment, allowing the gargoyle a bit more control of his movement. Instead of struggling, he pulled his wings in tight around him, making his body as small a target as he could.

Rory’s blade made quick work of removing the arms of the gargoyle to Stanis’s right, which freed his other arm enough that he lashed out with his claws at the remaining ones on his left. Roars of pain echoed throughout the room. But, in the end, Stanis was free.

Instead of coming to us, he turned, stepping toward his father.

“I do not know what you truly hoped,” he said to Kejetan. “We stopped being family centuries ago when you killed Alexander’s son and forced him into your servitude and when you ended my own life. I was willing to be taken into servitude by you as well, to protect them and to buy them time, hoping I could dissuade you from your madness, but the truth is that a man such as you will never be satisfied. You would try to bend this modern world to your will, never giving up on obtaining the knowledge you do not justly deserve to have.”

“We could have lived as gods to them,” Kejetan said.

“And that is your true failing,” Stanis said. “We are still human born. No better than they. What you consider your calling, I consider madness.”

“Stanis,” I called out, feeling the use of my will beginning to take its toll as it drained me. “We need to go. Like, now.”

More and more of the ship was crushing in behind them, and it was taking every last part of me to keep it from adding Stanis to it all.

“Kill me, then,” Kejetan said, turning to me.

“No,” I shouted. “Back away, Stanis.” At my word, the gargoyle stepped away from Kejetan and toward me, his eyes still fixed on his father. When Stanis stood by my side, I spoke again. “I will not give you the dignity of death. Truthfully, I’m not sure if I could kill you. I might simply destroy this form you sought so hard to get all these centuries, but what of your spirit? Would it find another vessel?”

There was nothing but pure disgust on Kejetan’s face now. “Your lack of commitment will leave you undone,” he said.

“For generations, my family has either been hunted or suffered by your hand,” I said. I pressed my will into the steel-stone at his feet, crumpling the floor up over the lower half of his body, encasing him further. “And now, for generations it will be yours to suffer instead. You finally have the physical form you desire, but it will do you nothing.” I turned to Stanis. “You don’t technically breathe, correct?”

“This is true,” he said. “I do not.”

“Good.” I stepped toward Kejetan, still keeping well out of the reach of his wings, which were already partially trapped beneath the metal of the collapsing room.

“Do you have any idea how cold and dark it is at the bottom of the ocean?” I asked, watching his eyes widen but not waiting for an actual answer. “No sound, no one to rule . . . losing all freedom of movement, the ability to fly. No control, whatsoever.”

“No!” he shouted, his usual air of authority finally replaced with open fear.

“You’ve had more than a lifetime to choose your course,” I said. “The only ‘good’ to come from you was Stanis. Now you’ll have a lifetime to contemplate those choices. At the bottom of the sea.”

I expected rage. I expected pleading, screaming. I did not expect silence, which almost caused me to lose my angered emotional hold on my spell. Faltering for a second, I let the thoughts of what Kejetan might have wrought on this world fuel me. The corpses of my friends, the shattered remains of Stanis, and yes, even Caleb’s lying dead at my feet. All those images filled my mind’s eye, sticking my conviction to the spell.

“Lexi!” Rory called out from the doorway behind us. “Out, now or never!”

“Go,” I whispered to Stanis through gritted teeth.

“Farewell, Kejetan the Accursed,” he said to the man who had once been his father. Without another word, he turned and walked past me to Rory.

With the room clear of my friends, I backed my way out of it, rolling my will over it, trapping Kejetan and his fellow gargoyles in twists of crumpled steel-stone. I focused all my will to compress it in as tight as I could. Soon, the sight of anyone in the room was lost to me, but I kept compressing bit after bit of steel in on itself. My legs shook with the effort, the press of my nails digging into my palms, my body on the edge of collapse.

As I passed through the doorway of the throne room out into the rest of the ship, stone arms scooped me up into a carry.

“I have you,” Stanis said. “Do what you must.”

The five of us backed through the rest of the freighter while I continued collapsing everything that was in our wake.

Rory and Caleb took on any stragglers we came across, although at this point the bulk of those belowdecks still seemed to be of the human-servant variety, the newborn gargoyles having had at least the smarts to leave a sinking ship.

The freighter continued to collapse, and I fought to block out thoughts of the enormity of the task, as Caleb had so often instructed me.

And he had been right, too, about how a little of his alchemical mixes went a long way. I had been worried we hadn’t mixed enough Kimiya to affect the whole of the ship, but every time I thought the connection to the balled-up steel-stone would give out, I felt more of it come to life as the alchemical process continued to spread, like a virus, throughout the entire ship. I folded deck after deck in on itself as we worked ourselves higher and higher through the freighter, until we emerged on the ship’s already tilting top deck.

“Holy crapballs,” Marshall called out behind me.

“What?”

“Just . . . look.”

I turned my head. The deck of the ship was pure chaos. Human Servants of Ruthenia scrambled around, looking for some way off the ship. There were even a few gargoyles left, some not knowing what to do while others struggled to take off from the deck. With so many humans latching on to them, however, their winged forms could not get airborne.

“The diehards stayed with their master,” I said, “but the rats are fleeing a sinking ship.”

“So what now?” Rory asked. “The deck is swarming!”

“Here,” Caleb said, handing her a flask. “Take a sip and pass it around.”

Rory looked unsure. “What is it?”

“You might remember it from the night at the guild hall when I first fought you and Alexandra,” he said. “When I sped myself up.”

It was no doubt an unpleasant memory for Rory, but she drank from the flask nonetheless and passed it to Marshall. I followed, then handed it back to Caleb, who in turn drank from it and offered it to Stanis.

He shook his head. “I do not believe such a thing would work on me,” he said.

Caleb nodded and recapped the flask.

“Run for our ship over the side,” I said. “You should be speedy enough now to avoid conflict. Stanis and I will meet you there.”

Stanis didn’t wait for an answer, and with me still in his arms, he leapt into the air, arcing high above the madness below.

My friends sped across the deck of the ship below at their accelerated rate and I watched their progress as the two of us flew.

“I can take you to the safety of land,” Stanis said.

“No,” I said. “To our boat. We came here together, and we’re leaving together.”

“As you wish,” he said. The words, as always, comforted me, but I pushed comfort away.

I still needed my anger. After all, there was so much more of the freighter for me to collapse in on itself.