CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tassos was waiting for her when she left the cell.
He leaned against the opposite wall, speaking quietly with Cepheus. The two of them looked up when she dragged the hatch closed behind her and spun the lock herself. Pisces started forward, doing her best to mask her concerns, but Caledonia could see the question in the smallest pinch of her sister’s eyes: Steely?
Caledonia felt as though she’d been driven beneath stormy seas, sucked down a whirl she had no hope of fighting until she could do nothing but inhale all the salt of the sea. Her insides screamed for relief, but on the surface, she was a stone.
“Do you know what I like?” Tassos asked. When he grinned, the scar on his left cheek pinched together, distorting the corner of his mouth and the shape of his eye.
“I’m certain I don’t care what you like, Tassos.” Caledonia’s voice was flat.
“I like when things come together as though I planned them,” Tassos continued with no regard for her response. “And I like when seemingly useless things turn out to have value. Or, in this case, more value. Donnally? I thought he was only important to Lir, but it turns out”—here he paused to drive a finger toward the shape of her family sigil high on her temple, half-hidden by her hair—“he’s the honest-to-salt brother of the Bale Blossom. And he’s mine.”
The spike of panic Caledonia expected to feel was dulled by a sudden rush of anger. In a rush, she closed the distance between them until it was no more than a sliver of stale air.
“Donnally made his choice,” she snapped, letting anger and disappointment and panic weave into uncompromising confidence. “If you think you’re going to control me through a brother I barely remember, then you’re as dumb as you look. And if you only have forty-three ships to offer me, Tassos, then you are less valuable than I’d hoped.” The look of shock on his face was pleasing on some distant level, but Caledonia didn’t take time to enjoy it. “But we can fix that.”
“What do you mean?” Tassos asked through grinding teeth.
“Take me to your comm center,” she said, all authority. “We have an announcement to make.”
“Listen to me, Caledonia Styx.” Tassos pushed off the wall and drove her back with two menacing steps. “Working together doesn’t mean I’m working for you. And it certainly doesn’t mean I’m taking orders from you.”
Caledonia took a calming breath and reminded herself that she had nothing to gain by angering him. “It won’t be long before Lir knows that we’ve allied against him. It does us no good to keep that fact quiet, and we need as many ships as we can muster. We’re going to broadcast on an open frequency and let everyone know that if they want to join the fight, now’s the time.”
“You want to tell Lir that we’re planning an attack?” Cepheus didn’t bother to hide her skepticism.
“I do,” Caledonia answered with a ready nod. “I want his eyes on the sea.”
“And . . . isn’t that where we’ll be?” Tassos asked.
Now Caledonia smiled. “Not all of us.”
Tassos considered her thoughtfully, eyes narrowing before he nodded to Cepheus.
“Follow me,” she said.
Cepheus led the way to a windowed chamber atop the megaship with clear views in all directions. What she saw from that perch made Caledonia’s breath catch in her lungs. There was her fleet, dotting the water before her, nineteen beautiful ships. To the west, the sun was dipping low, throwing the shuffling islands of the Bone Mouth into extreme divisions of light and shadow. They bowed out in two directions, little islands reaching toward each other like the disjointed bones of a hand. In the center, the water was clear and inviting, a mouth opened wide.
In the opposite direction, sunset ignited the Net in flashes of punishing yellow and orange. It was like a strip of fire pointing due east, running all the way to the peninsula that housed the Holster.
Caledonia turned her eyes south to a point a few miles away that could only be the Silt Rig. It glimmered like a beacon against the darkening sea, roughly the size of an Assault Ship, a perfectly attainable target. If she could get any part of her fleet past the Net, she could destroy it. Of course, getting past the Net was always the problem.
Tassos moved in front of her, blotting out her view of the rig with his chest. “Comm’s this way.”
“Something out there you don’t want me to see?” Caledonia feigned innocence.
Tassos paused, a small smirk punching in one side of this face. “You mean the rig? You can look as long as you like.” He stepped aside, hooking one arm around her neck as he was too fond of doing. “I’m certain you’re making a plan to destroy it. Or, trying to. Go ahead!”
He released her just as suddenly as he’d grabbed her. Caledonia only shrugged, resisting the urge to back away.
“There will be time for that,” she promised.
“Oh, I’m certain there will,” Tassos responded, that wild grin returning to his face. “But trust me, anyone who wants to take that rig from me will die trying.”
He said it with such certainty that Caledonia understood it to be true. He wasn’t as clever as Lir, but he was every bit as stubborn, every bit as ambitious. Something more than the Net was protecting that rig. She just couldn’t see whatever it was.
Tassos swept forward again, scooping up the receiver and fiddling with the dials on the panel before handing it to Caledonia. “Let’s get on with our business and one day—soon—you and I will dance.”
Just over Tassos’s shoulder, Caledonia caught the way Cepheus tried and failed to cover a disapproving frown with a quick duck of her head. But whether it had been for her or for Tassos, Caledonia wasn’t sure.
“Open frequency. And recording,” the Bullet stationed at the comm announced.
Caledonia raised the receiver. Her mouth went dry and she swallowed hard, suddenly unsure. Would anyone be listening? Would anyone respond? Instinctively, she slipped a hand inside her pocket, finding the garnet Hesperus had given her. She pressed her thumb to the smooth spot where he’d worried his own thumb. Knowing that even the Sly King of Cloudbreak had needed reassurance from time to time bolstered her and she licked her lips.
“This is Caledonia Styx, commander of the Cloudbreak Fleet. Many of you have heard of the recent attack on our city. We were forced to flee, but many survived, and we are still fighting against the legacy of the Father, against Fiveson Lir and all he represents. We have joined with Fiveson Tassos at the Net, and I am asking that any ready and willing crew join us here.” As she spoke, she imagined how that news would land. She imagined fear and mistrust and hope colliding like an explosive star. “You have no reason to trust Tassos, but I am asking you to trust me. Sail to the eastern edge of the Bone Mouth and my people will be there to meet you.”
She released the receiver and turned to Tassos. “How often can you loop that message?”
“As often as you want,” he answered, nodding to the Bullet stationed by the comm, who held a small speaker up to one ear and set to work.
“How far can the signal travel?” Pisces asked. Their own shipboard radios were limited to a range of ten miles, but Hesperus’s comm had been much more powerful. “Can it reach Cloudbreak?”
Caledonia caught the slender flame of hope in Pisces’s eyes and felt it kindle quietly in her own chest. A single name whispered there: Amina.
“On a clear day,” Cepheus answered, stepping closer to Pisces.
Pisces nodded, hiding her emotion by clearing her throat.
“Good?” Tassos was growing irritated. “Now, what in the deepest hell is the rest of your plan?”
Caledonia gestured for them to follow her back into the bowels of the megaship. She said, “We cannot defeat Lir ship to ship, so we’ll have to go about this another way.”
“What way is that?” Tassos asked, falling into step at her side.
“We’re going to take control of those gun towers.”
“But how will we get to them?” Cepheus asked, keeping pace at their heels with Pisces at her side. “You’ve already said we can’t go ship to ship, and the only way to reach them is through the harbor.”
“That isn’t exactly true.” Caledonia turned down a broad hallway, hoping she was leading them in the right direction. “There’s more than one way inside the Holster.”
“You want to flank them? Over land?” Tassos asked, incredulous, as they reached the chamber where the others waited.
Tug and Heron were seated on the opposite side of the room, the former looking more relaxed than the latter, while Oran, Sledge, and Nettle were almost exactly where they’d been before. The only difference was that Sledge had a hand on Nettle’s shoulder, though whether he was holding her back or she him, Caledonia couldn’t tell. Oran was across from them, shoulders squared, chin tucked, using every bit of patience he had to stay put. At the sight of her, he exhaled so subtly only she saw it.
“I don’t see how moving over land helps us,” Tassos continued. “That approach is twenty miles. They’ll spot our troops long before we can get close enough to engage. And those gun towers fire in all directions.”
Caledonia bent over the map and pointed to the eastern border of the Holster, where the five gun towers stood at equal intervals. “I don’t want to send in troops, just a small team. Maybe twenty-five, five per tower, who can move over land and hijack those towers.”
“That’s why you sent out the call.” Tassos bobbed his head in understanding. “To make sure Lir is preparing for a seaborne attack.”
“We’ll have an entire fleet to distract him from what’s happening in his own backyard,” Caledonia confirmed.
“If we control the towers, we control the town, the harbor, everything in range of their fire,” Tug said, studying the map as if it would reveal a solution. “If we got them, we could just destroy the entire town. Boom! No more Holster.”
“Sure, kill everyone,” Nettle muttered. “Good plan.”
“The Holster isn’t just a base of operations,” Oran said, shifting his attention to Caledonia. “It’s a city. There are children, elderly. Firing on the city is firing on them.”
“What difference does that make?” Tassos asked.
“We want to take the Holster, not kill it,” Caledonia answered swiftly. “Once we have the gun towers, we aim for the fleet, not the town.”
“I don’t know how you like to fight, but I’ll aim for anyone that aims at me,” Tug said with a condescending smirk.
“I fight to win.” Caledonia pressed her hands flat on the map. “And if we want to win this battle, the fleet is our priority.”
“We won’t have contact with the team that infiltrates. They’ll have to go in dark, and we’d have no way of knowing if they were successful or not.” Cepheus leaned a hip against the table as she spoke, thoughtful and not yet convinced.
“So we send our best,” Pisces said, turning to Cepheus. “And then we trust them.”
“It’s a day’s sail to the peninsula, then another on foot to reach the outer perimeter of the Holster. They’ll need a third to prepare, but any longer and they’ll risk detection. That means we attack at dawn of the fourth day. The question is . . .” Caledonia paused, turning to face Tassos. “Will your Silt last long enough to get this done?”
Tassos looked from the map to Caledonia, mouth set in a stern line as he considered the question. Finally, he nodded confidently. “It’s a good plan. We’ll make it last.”
They spent the better part of an hour discussing who to send to infiltrate the Holster. Tassos appointed Tug as his proxy; Caledonia chose Pine. Glimmer would temporarily command the Blade, and the infiltration team would leave at first light. When that happened, their plans would be irrevocably set in motion.
It was night by the time Cepheus led Caledonia’s team to their quarters: a single room shared by the five of them. Cepheus shoved the door open to let them into the tight chamber, handing out orange armbands as they passed.
“Keep these on you,” she said. “They’ll mark you as under the protection of Tassos. No one will bother you as long as you wear them.”
She left and it wasn’t long before the five of them collapsed for the night.
Tassos might have meant the sleeping arrangements as an insult, but all things considered, Caledonia preferred it while they were his reluctant guests. She didn’t even mind that her bed for the next three days was a hammock. What she did mind was the snoring. Sledge she’d expected. Nettle was a complete surprise, as always.
When sleep eluded her for more than half the night, Caledonia rolled out of her hammock and padded quietly across the floor. Nettle and Pisces had taken the upper hammocks, their bodies cocooned at the level of Caledonia’s head, while Sledge and Oran’s beds hung low like hers. Other than the hammocks, the room contained very little. Not even a window. Oran was in the very center of the room, his eyes pinched shut, his brown skin reflecting the dim orange lights that glowed along the ceiling. He looked peaceful. Caledonia almost didn’t want to wake him.
Careful to avoid his gloved fingers, she squeezed his arm and shook. He blinked. “Trouble?” he whispered.
Caledonia shook her head. “Walk with me.”
The megaship was designed to be confusing, but Nettle had discovered a trick: if you followed the very thin strip of orange painted so low along the wall it almost disappeared into the floor, you’d find yourself on the main deck.
Though the ship was quiet at this time of night, it was hardly asleep. Everywhere they turned, Bullets patrolled the deck and the halls. They cast wary glances toward the two unusual figures, but one look at the bright orange armbands and they left them alone.
“Have you ever seen it?” Caledonia peered into the darkness where the sky and sea smeared together. “The rig?”
Oran shook his head. “Aric kept us compartmentalized.”
Like the rest of the Net, the megaship was not a sailing ship, and from what Caledonia had seen, she suspected most of it was rooted into the same bedrock that connected all the islands of the Bone Mouth. Here the Net met with those perilously shallow waters her mother had loved so well. It was amazing to think she and her own crew had sailed this close to the rig for so long.
“It’s the key to all of this,” Caledonia said, lowering her voice as a sentry passed near. “The thing both Lir and Tassos need if they want to keep their power.”
Oran nodded thoughtfully. “You want to destroy it.”
“I want to destroy it,” she repeated. “But Tassos has safeguards in place and I need to know what those are.”
The same sentry looped back on his path, passing closer to them than he had the first time.
“C’mon.” Caledonia found a southward-facing section of the deck and settled into the shelter of a curved bulkhead. Here at least, they would have the illusion of privacy. “I don’t know that I’ll sleep at all while we’re on this ship.”
“Is this really so different from what you did in Slipmark?” Oran asked as he lowered himself next to her, splints clinking together softly like wind chimes. “At least here there’s no chance you’ll be discovered as an imposter.”
Until this moment, sneaking an entire crew into Slipmark disguised as Bullets had been the most terrifying thing Caledonia had ever done. But in Slipmark she’d had a very specific goal and a very specific plan. At least then, she wasn’t trying to pretend she was surrounded by anything but a city full of enemies. Being on board this ship, literally locked into the Net itself, felt like stripping herself to the skin and leaping into shark-infested waters.
“In Slipmark, I was working against an enemy, not with one.”
Oran laughed once, a mirthless sound. “That is very true.”
Moonlight glinted on his splints and Caledonia felt an answering glimmer of guilt. Tassos had only agreed to meet with her because Oran stood by her side, but he should be somewhere else. He should be with Hime, letting his fingers heal so that when it came time to fight once more, he’d be able to defend himself. Instead, he was in an unbearably vulnerable position: surrounded by Bullets who had more than one reason to hate him and unable to pull the trigger of a gun. He would argue it was the right choice. But she should have protected him better.
All at once, she was overcome with a feeling like exquisite sadness. It expanded inside her like wings, filling her up and pushing into every dark corner of her mind. “Oran,” she said, suddenly breathless. She leaned in, pressed her lips against his, and took a kiss so sweet it felt like a cleansing wash of tears.
When she pulled away, his eyes were soft and content. “I love you, Cala,” he whispered.
She drew a sharp breath, all the warmth of the previous moment chased away by a sudden wintery chill in her bones. “Oran,” she said again, accusing and confused.
“Cala,” he repeated, mouth tightening in amusement.
“Why do you— Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s the truth and there’s no point in not telling you.” He shook his head once, unapologetic. “And I don’t say it so that you’ll say it back to me. I say it so you’ll know.” When all she did was stare disbelievingly, he continued. “I have to be so many different versions of myself in this fight. One moment, I’m the Fiveson defector; the next, the Steelhand. Every terrible thing I’ve done is always with me.”
A flush rose in Caledonia’s cheeks. Every day, without saying a word, she was asking him to hold the worst parts of himself close enough that she might use them if, no, when, she needed them.
“I’m sorry.” She dropped her chin in guilt, but Oran reached out and ran a thumb along her jaw. “If there was another way—”
“I would be those things with or without you, Cala. My past is not your burden to carry.” He tried to cup her cheek, but thwarted by his splints, he settled instead for hooking an ankle around hers, locking their legs together. “Sometimes, for a brief second, I’m just Oran. I didn’t think that was even possible. But it is with you. And you should know that.”
“But how do you know that’s love?” Caledonia shook her head, realizing that wasn’t the question she meant to ask. “Why is it so easy for you to say it?”
Oran stilled. Moonlight pooled in the rings of his brown eyes, making them sad and deep. “Because the only thing I know for sure is that I am alive right now. Tomorrow might change that. And even if I somehow manage to survive this whole fight, I don’t see how I fit in the world after it changes. So, I have to say it. Because being in love with you is the best thing I’ve done with my life.”
Caledonia nearly stopped breathing. It was impossible to parse all he’d just shared, but her mind hung on one word: after.
When she imagined the future, she imagined a world where her crew and everyone who had ever felt the pressure of Aric’s thumb might live without fear or constant coercion. She imagined cities that weren’t founded on violence and the ruined lands to the north covered in verdant crops. She imagined Nettle in command of her own brilliant crew; Hime working to ensure soiltech and medtech traveled far and wide; Sledge finding ways to help Bullets transform their lives.
She imagined herself . . . not at all. She imagined the end, the moment her fight would be finished, but there was never anything after except a feeling of relief. A kind of absence of feeling, as though she had been so focused on this fight for so long that without it she might cease to exist.
“How can I possibly love?” she asked, horrified. “I keep asking you to do terrible things, to endure terrible things and—” She nearly gasped. Tears threatened in the back of her throat, but they weren’t for him. “I will probably ask you to do something just as terrible again.”
“And I’ll do it willing—”
“No.” She stood abruptly. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t love you, Oran. Not until this ends.”
She turned, biting down on an incomprehensible maelstrom of emotion, and walked away.