Chapter Two

The Razing

Sweat stung Naokah’s eyes. She dashed it away, gloves scraping her cheeks. Every muscle ached, the fumes clouding the ship deck near suffocating, but she kept heaving the line. The Midworlders packed along the lug ropes couldn’t afford a second of weakness inside the Razing. The vast chasm spanning the equator spitting up walls of steam and smoke took mercy on no one.

Ash geysered the vessel, the stench of burned corpses bloating the air. Though Naokah’s fellow Mids chanted a steady cadence, inching The Andreia closer to the beacons – mere glints beyond the Razing – they failed to drown out the shrieking under the hull.

She cringed. Soon. They’d escape this cursed region soon.

Naokah peered up at the blackened sails. Legions of gulls flew in tight formations behind the canvas, generating wing-power to help propel the dame o’ war forward. For three days and three nights the flocks had strained alongside the humans, fighting the smoldering columns and the roiling sea. Desperately trying to ignore the haunting keening of whatever lurked beneath. But with exhaustion marrow-deep, and no reprieve from the boiling heat, how much longer would they last?

A thunk, by Naokah’s boot. She didn’t have to look. Her patri, pulling in front of her, flinched. Another bird down. Out of the many tow ropes, he picked the one under the mainmast as it had the best view of the blue-footed gulls. Naokah chose the spot behind him. A decision she regretted since entering the Razing. Before the price of wing-power spiked, they’d relied on flocks to pollinate their crops. Since the wind vanished from the world, birds weren’t just a means of survival. They were kin. Now, as gull after gull plummeted to its death, the old farmer shrank further, and with him, Naokah. A daughter could only watch her patri suffer for so long before breaking.

A whistle pierced the haze, and a hulking man materialized on the forecastle. The comandante. “Half a league out,” he shouted. “But stay sharp. Last stretch is a real beast—”

The ship pitched. Tow lines staggered. The Andreia juddered like she’d run aground. Metal grated. Something clawed the stern, the portside. A crith? Nightmares from her childhood of soul-slurping demons flooded her thoughts. Naokah steadied Patri, chills needling her spine.

“Hold strong!” the comandante bellowed at the Mids, then waved wildly at the outer crew.

A series of hisses as fuses lit. Shadows tentacled the topsail. The gulls flew faster and faster, a fray of beating wings, of squawking. Thunder ignited, a screech. More cannons fired, rattling Naokah’s teeth. A loud plop, a moan. The ship bobbed as the monster released the mast. Clouds rifted; a globe of light emerged. The beacon. They were almost there—

“Heave!” The comandante’s eyes bulged.

Naokah yanked, blisters popping on her palms.

“Heave!”

Guttural cries arose from the starboard side. More cannons. She shut her eyes. This couldn’t be it. She had to reach the Isle of Bees, had to see her big sister. Had to apologize, to beg forgiveness—

An agonizing wail, a retreat. The air fizzled, lightened. Smoke cleared. Sobs of relief rained the deck, and the tow ropes slackened. She opened her eyes, sank to her knees. A calm sheet of cobalt stretched into the horizon as they finally emerged from the Razing. Patri twisted around, eyes wet. Naokah leapt up and crushed him in a hug, inhaling greedily. The pipe smoke from his tunic never smelled so sweet.

They’d made it.

* * *

Abelha, the Isle of Bees, was a tongue of smudged black circled by cliffs that made a jagged maw against the bruised sky. After clearing the Razing and a few days of recovery, the gulls were back at it, thrusting the dame o’ war forward. At this rate, they’d port by sunset.

Progress, yet bittersweet.

No longer in the throes of the chasm, Naokah had nothing but dread, thicker than gristle, to chew on. She envied the other passengers their simple fears, sidestepping the severed limb of the beast that tried to capsize them. A tentacle big as a tree trunk, pocked in squid eyes and lamprey teeth, oozed black over the deck. When the Scorned Son stole the wind from the Divine Daughter, spawning the Razing, anything in its path was decimated. Animals melted into blobs of bones, scales, and ash that, over time, cooked back together and morphed into new, composite beasts with misaligned joints, jaws and teeth on bellies, fins all over. Scary, yes. But Naokah’s destination, brimming with bees and a jaded sister whose sting was just as lethal, was scarier.

“Lenita will be eager to see you,” Patri said, a little too reassuringly. “Bet she doesn’t even wait for us to dock before she dives into the sea.”

“Eager to see you. She hasn’t written me since she left.”

“You don’t think the Keepership had anything to do with that?” His ochre eyes glinted.

It had everything to do with it, but not in the way he meant. Even if Lenita were busy, she’d have carved out time to write. But that was before their fight. When the Council of Croi Croga chose Lenita over Naokah to apply for the coveted position of Keeper, they’d also driven a wedge between the two. The sisters had beaten out over a hundred applicants for the top two positions, and that, in itself, was a triumph. But she would’ve rather been last. Being a runner-up was merely a bitter reminder that, when pitted against her big sister, she was always second best.

“I….” She choked on her shame. “I was cruel, Patri. Said things I never should’ve said.”

“Lenita doesn’t hold grudges.” He squeezed her shoulder. “It’s you who must forgive yourself.”

Her throat knotted and, though she wanted to believe him, to lean in and accept his comfort, she wasn’t worthy. He only saw the good in her, but if he’d overheard her that day? Even he would undoubtedly agree – some words were too vile, too despicable, to deserve absolution, and not all broken bonds were meant to heal.

Two men in suits that sheened like crow feathers approached the mainmast. Stray gusts from the gulls ruffled their long hair. Father and son, likely, with the same flinty eyes, aquiline nose, and the smooth complexion of those not forced to drudge beneath the harsh, Midworld sun. Raptor flock tycoons. Smug as they were beautiful. And rich. Their nation monopolized wing-power and had repossessed Patri’s starling flocks when he failed to pay. Since Raptoria was the northernmost country in Vindstöld, they’d boarded the dame o’ war long before Naokah and Patri. But she’d yet to see them. Like the other affluent Poler nations, they didn’t have to work for passage. While the crew and Mids battled the Razing’s fumes and choked on ash, the Raptors had sheltered inside their private cabin, safe and spineless.

Patri followed her glare and stiffened. “Those money-grubbing—”

Naokah shushed him and grabbed his shaking hand, tugging him towards the railing. “We knew they’d be here,” she whispered. “The Keeper requested that all first runners-up attend Lenita’s ceremony.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he growled and ran a hand over his slick scalp. “We’re here at the edge of the razing world, thanks to them.”

He wasn’t wrong. Yet, “If they hadn’t raised their rates, we wouldn’t have been forced to move to bee pollinating, and Lenita wouldn’t have made history.” No Midworlder had ever won the Keepership, but no Mid was as tenacious as Naokah’s big sister. With Lenita getting sworn in as the new Keeper tonight, Croi Croga would never be without pollinators again. The farms, and thus the people, would endure. Whoever ruled the bees, ruled the world.

He cocked a brow. “How’d you get so wise?”

“I listen to my patri.”

A ghost of a smile flickered across his weary face, and she nudged him playfully, grateful his anger had receded. As they neared the cliffs ringing the isle, a large shadow crawled through the fjord. The comandante blew a shrill whistle. The Andreia jolted, slowing to a moaning halt as the gulls spiraled from behind the sails and thundered to the deck, awaiting their next command.

The dame o’ war stopped within a rock throw of the shadow – a monstrous, bee-armored barge needing to pass. The Andreia wasn’t small by any means, but the vessel from Abelha was a giant of giants and, beside her, the dame o’ war was a sardine. The barge shook the ship as it passed, veiling them in darkness, its sides buzzing with thousands of hives. Every hair barbed, Naokah didn’t dare move until it faded into the trailing fog. The gulls squawked, returning to the sails and pushing the ship into the fjord. Shadows slipped over the deck, and the air condensed.

A feather floated down, and Patri caught it, tracing the pearlescent threads. He cleared his throat and fidgeted, ashamed of being wistful, as though nostalgia were a luxury reserved for all but him. “Still miss my flocks.”

“Wish we could afford them,” she said, and meant it. The fight with Lenita might’ve never happened.

He planted a kiss on her temple, then averted his gaze. A failed attempt at hiding his sentiment. His eyes had gone soft as clay.

A hiss drew her attention up. Atop the narrow cliffs pranced a young girl. No more than thirteen. Skin white as skimmed cream. She danced close to the edge. Precariously close. One wrong step and she’d plunge to her death. Dress puffing around her, she stopped short. Her dark eyes, too big for her face, found Naokah. She hissed again. Goosebumps pricked Naokah’s neck, and she jerked around. Patri stared forward, still sulking, and the crew carried on. No one acknowledged the girl. When Naokah risked a glimpse back, she was gone.

The change in pressure stayed, however. Naokah’s ears popped as Abelha leered over them. The sun’s departure bled down the spiked walls forting the isle. Dusk clung to the shoreline, and fog concealed the water. She frowned. The Council of Croi Croga described the Isle of Bees as ‘The Paragon of Paradise’, an oasis frocked in flowers and honey and dreams. All luxuries to Mids, having spent their lives coughing up dust and ash, sweltering in barren regions pillaged by the Razing. But this monstrosity with jagged edges and thorny overgrowth? A far cry from that colorful depiction. Perhaps the encroaching darkness and dread of facing Lenita soured Abelha’s air.

Perhaps not.

When the ship veered into port, something sticky, laden with dark, nauseating power, weaved over Naokah’s skin. Tati would have called it witchcraft, but Matri, averse to tall tales, would’ve vehemently disagreed. Her aunt had traveled the world many times over and if anyone ever encountered the preternatural, it would’ve been her. Yet Naokah, prone to self-preservation and whatever might confirm her bias towards safety, sided with her mother. Still, she couldn’t help but feel she’d just been flung into a great, malevolent web. Where was the plotting spider?

The comandante whistled, the gulls swooped to the railing, and The Andreia groaned to a stop. A few seconds passed before an orange orb glowed on the dock. A torch. Its dingy flames silhouetted the grim sentry holding it.

“Doesn’t look very welcoming,” Patri whispered.

Something wasn’t right. Where was Lenita?

“There will be no ceremony tonight,” the sentry barked.

Gasps and gripes rumbled from the ship. Naokah exchanged a bewildered look with Patri.

“Ridiculous,” the comandante said. “We’re right on time. Why has she moved it?”

“Forgive me. I misspoke.” The sentry cleared his throat. “There will be no ceremony at all.”

“What?” the comandante yelled over the rising din.

“Lenita Hansen is gone.”