CHAPTER NINE

Two weeks after their return to Cloudbreak Caledonia was itching to return to the sea, but every day conspired to keep her bound to land.

Rogue ships continued to arrive, Amina successfully modified a tow with enough explosive to sink a ship, and with Nettle’s clever assistance, Kae was certain they were mere moments away from cracking soiltech. It all pointed to one thing: staying put.

Her days were endless rounds of finding problems and solving them while trusting that time would give them the tows and soiltech they needed to move forward with their plan. All she had to do was keep everyone prepared for the moment it came together.

Still, in the back of her mind, she could not quell the haunting voice that whispered a name over and over again like a slithering ocean breeze: Donnally. She could not subdue the ever-present fear that her brother had become the monster she was destined to kill. Her thoughts dragged her back to that moment on the Titan when he’d refused to go with her, and her dreams cut darker trails through her mind, conjuring memories she could not claim of the violent murders of Fivesons Decker, Venn, and Tassos.

This, at least, she could do something about.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Caledonia told Oran as she slipped a jacket over her arms.

Oran stood with his back to the window of her office. Outside, storm clouds rolled slowly across the western sky, giving the room a liminal quality.

“Remi,” Oran said, disapproving.

“Yes, Remi.” Caledonia let defiance slip into her tone.

They’d had this conversation twice already. Each time, Oran had urged her to forget Remi’s words. Even if they were true and Donnally had killed the other Fivesons, Oran argued there was nothing new that Caledonia could learn from Remi. Better to verify the information on her own and leave Remi to her recovery.

Caledonia was in the process of doing exactly that. She’d sent Gloriana and her crew out days ago to confirm the deaths of Fivesons Venn and Tassos, but now that Remi was recovered, it was harder to ignore that she was a potential source of information.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t see her. Only to be cautious. Don’t let her inside your head.” Oran spoke carefully, watching her as she twisted her hair into a thick braid. “I’m afraid she’s already there.”

“That’s why I have to go,” she said. “To get her out of my head.”

Oran was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. “At least take the mountain with you.”

As Caledonia exited the fortress, the sky above rumbled and the western distance flashed with lightning, brilliant blue against the black coil of a storm. Undeterred, Caledonia struck out for town, Sledge and Pine following close behind. Though Sledge followed like a dark cloud, Pine was the one who matched his stride to hers.

“There’s only one way to get good info from a Bullet,” Pine said, the opening bars to what had become a very familiar song. “Pain.”

“We aren’t torturing her,” Sledge growled.

The dawn air should have chilled her, but adrenaline fueled her steps and even though her breath came in small white puffs, she broke into a light sweat.

“Pine,” Caledonia warned.

“What choice do we have?” Pine protested. “You can’t unmake a Bullet in two weeks. The only language she understands is pain and pleasure.”

“We aren’t torturing her,” Sledge repeated, voice growing more dangerous.

“You don’t have to.” Pine tossed the answer out casually. Even now, it was easy to forget how swiftly Pine shifted between the Blade he was and the Bullet he’d been. Caledonia was suddenly reminded of the night he’d killed that Bullet in Slipmark, how he’d moved to intercept before she’d fully registered the threat.

Pine knew Bullets better than Caledonia could, but that didn’t exactly recommend his methods.

“Withdrawal is torture enough. This is just a discussion,” Caledonia said, putting the matter to bed as they journeyed through the heart of Cloudbreak.

Once, these meandering alleys had been indecipherable to Caledonia; they’d morphed as she passed, vendors claiming and relinquishing patches of rock almost as soon as she’d seen them. Now Caledonia traversed the streets with ease, weaving her way through the Body Quarter, then cutting between the chaotic press of hastily erected cabins that housed the crews of rogue ships until she came to the barracks that scooped across the far northern edge of town.

In the wake of the battle, Cloudbreak had gone from scheming black market town to burgeoning military operation. There were still vendors hawking their contraband wares, but they were fewer and farther between. In their place were people: families, crews, recovering Bullets, all waiting for Caledonia’s team to bring them into the fight.

Thunder boomed, closer now, and lightning splintered across the clouds, briefly illuminating pale layers of mountain ridges to the west. The wind was picking up, bringing with it the promise of colder weather on the other side of that storm. They ducked inside the barracks a second before the clouds shuddered and unleashed a sudden, torrential rain.

“Cala!” Ares stood abruptly, his voice soft with surprise as he rose from behind a desk covered in stacks of yellowed paper. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

Ares had come a long way since they’d found him on Electra, since he’d drifted through the hallways of the Luminous Wake like a shadow. He’d struggled with dreams and nightmares, fear more than anger. It wasn’t what Caledonia would have expected of the boy she’d known as a child. Ares had been the sunniest of them. He’d been daring and bold and looked for any excuse to have fun. He’d also had a temper that flared hot and fast. Caledonia had assumed that would make him a better Bullet, or a tougher one. But she’d been wrong.

Being a Bullet had stolen all the joy from Ares’s eyes; it had smothered the fire behind his temper and left him with nothing but coals.

“This is an unplanned visit,” Caledonia admitted. “I’m here to speak with Remi.”

“Ah, I don’t think you’re going to get what you want from her,” Ares said, folding his arms protectively against his chest. “We lost two of the other Bullets last week. They, um, we couldn’t get them through their sweats.”

Regret was tight across Ares’s features and exhaustion tugged at the corners of his eyes. He’d been up all night. Possibly longer.

“I’m sorry, Ares.”

He shrugged his shoulders, then leaned heavily against the wall. It happened at least once in each new group. Bullets started receiving doses of Silt around twelve or thirteen turns. After that, they got it every day with few exceptions. Caledonia had learned that withholding the drug was sometimes used as a punishment, a reminder that Bullets needed Aric and should do exactly as he asked. But some had received it so regularly for so long that their bodies simply didn’t know how to function without it.

“More made it through than didn’t,” Ares continued. “But that doesn’t make it any easier. For them.”

Caledonia understood what he wasn’t saying. Whether or not they’d chosen this was irrelevant. They’d lost some of their own and they were bound to resent Caledonia for that.

“Take me to Remi.”

They followed Ares down the dimly lit corridor past rows of doors that looked exactly the same. Each was locked from the outside and made of a single piece of hard wood with a small window the size of a fist punched through at eye level. Given more time, they might have installed self-healing glass over the windows, but that was a luxury, not a necessity.

Ares stopped, then pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. “Incoming, Remi. Captain’s here to talk.”

The door opened on a figure that was not quite what Caledonia remembered. She seemed smaller now, huddled at the edge of her cot with her back in the corner and knees pulled up in front. Her auburn hair was cut short and it curled tightly toward her scalp. When she smiled, her mouth was wide and sharp.

“Morning, Captain.” Her voice was raw but determined. “Come to count the bodies?”

“Good morning, Remi. I was very sorry to hear about your people.” Caledonia ignored the sneer that curled Remi’s upper lip. Sledge had told her once that this stage of withdrawal was sometimes worse than the pain of detox. Aric’s emotional claws bit much deeper than his physiological ones.

“Just the ones you let die here? Or all of them?” Remi asked, a dangerous challenge in her eye. “Seems to me you only have room for sorrow when there’s no glory to be had.”

“There is no glory in this fight,” Caledonia countered. “There’s surviving and there’s dying, but I’ve never seen glory on the Bullet Seas.”

“I have.” Remi’s voice softened and her eyes unfocused as she let a memory pull her away. “I will again.”

Glory. Always glory. Aric had used that word so effectively it had galvanized his entire army. The deadly combination of glorious rhetoric and Silt had given his Bullets the justification they needed to take children from their parents and turn them into soldiers. Aric’s glory was a promise. One as violent as the guns he put in their hands.

“Glory shouldn’t have to come at the expense of so many others,” Caledonia said.

“That is the only way.” Remi laughed. “Sacrifice is the truest kind of glory. To give yourself, your life in the service of someone so much greater than you, is glorious.”

The thought sent a chill down Caledonia’s spine. How had Aric—and now Lir—convinced so many people that killing and dying for them was the truest form of anything? But she knew the answer. Silt, food, power. Aric had figured out what people needed and then he learned how to control it. Lir had learned from him and decided he could do it better.

Somehow, some part of Remi had resisted that power. Enough to choose to follow Caledonia to Cloudbreak where she knew this would be her future. The question now was whether or not she would keep making that choice now that she’d experienced the reality. In some ways it would be easier to do as Pine suggested and keep every Bullet they collected under lock and key until the fight was over. But as dangerous as it was to extend trust to a former Bullet, it was the only way to truly win in the end.

“I won’t let you die for him, Remi,” Caledonia said. “I want you to stay here. I want you to get strong again and make your own choices. As soon as you’re healthy, you can do just that: choose.”

Remi’s eyes watered as she watched Caledonia with a kind of agony. Her brow creased and her lips quivered as if something she needed were just out of reach. She drew a shuddering breath and said, “I don’t want your mercy, Caledonia Styx.”

“You have it, regardless.”

This time Remi’s laughter was disbelieving. “Why?”

Caledonia’s answer came without a breath of hesitation. “Because mercy is what is left when glory fails us.”

For a second, Remi only watched Caledonia with her mouth partly open, as if she couldn’t make those words make sense in her own mind. Then she began to laugh. It started in her throat and bubbled up until there were tears streaming out of her bleary eyes.

“Mercy.” She pushed the word out between spurts of laughter. “Mercy, mercy, mercy. You want to fight this fight with mercy? Caledonia, I think I overestimated you. Maybe Lir has, too.”

On the other side of the door, Sledge made a low sound in his throat. The conversation Caledonia had intended to have with Remi was no longer the one she needed to have. Dismissing everything else she’d come to say, she settled on a new approach.

“I have one question for you, Remi.”

“Only one? But I have so many answers to give. Don’t you want to know what I know about Lir? Where he is and what he’s doing now? Or Donnally? Wouldn’t you like to know what kind of face he made as he murdered Fiveson Decker?”

Caledonia stepped forward, ignoring everything except the information she wanted in this moment. “Why did you come with us?”

Remi blinked, unable to mask her immediate surprise before her mouth returned to its sneer and she exhaled slowly. “Maybe I just wanted to see it all for myself.”

“The inside of a barrack? Cloudbreak? Me?”

“How it all ends.” This time Remi’s smile spread slowly, exquisitely across her wide mouth into the kind of expression that suggested Remi’s mind might never recover from decades of Silt.

“How what ends?” Caledonia regretted the question immediately.

Remi tipped her head back, sighing sweetly as she said, “You, of course. And him. And the two of you and the whole salt-sick world.”

There was nothing more Caledonia could learn from this woman.

Yet, as Caledonia left the room, she felt a pinch of remorse for Remi. And foreboding for herself, too. Though on opposite sides, whatever end was coming for them all, it would be neither pleasant nor glorious.