Sky Song: Overture (15 page)

The men were clearing out the carnage, lifting the last of the bodies onto a cart to clear a path through the hall. I overheard some of them whispering about Dirk and theorizing what might be done if he didn’t make it. The battle was won, and we had taken the palace, but nothing felt finished as we waited for news on our leader’s state.

Baker stood amongst a few others who sought medical attention. He was a little battered and bruised, clutching a bundle of gauze against his forehead, but his bleeding was not profuse. My heart trilled in my chest. I marched towards him, path unbroken.

Baker shot me a subtle salute. “Look who’s still alive,” he said. His smirk softened as I grabbed a handful of his dreadlocks and kissed him, nearly knocking him over. He held the back of my head as his other arm locked around my waist. I pulled back, not entirely sure what had come over me.

Baker guided me away from the gawkers who were commenting on our affectionate display. We found a deserted corner and he took me into his embrace. I rested my face against his collar and could feel my own tears drenching his jacket.

“Clikk?” he asked.

I couldn’t explain myself, but I didn’t want to apologize either. “I’m just so glad you’re alive,” I said. “I couldn’t stop him in time…” My voice became too hoarse to make words anymore.

Baker kissed the crown of my head. “Dirk’s tough. Have faith.” He touched my face, catching my tears with his thumb. “Is my friend Clikk actually crying?” he said. “Never thought I’d see the day. No tears, Clikk. We’re alive. And you just kissed me.”

“I might do so again.”

“I won’t object,” he said, and so I looked up from my sorrows and kissed him once more.

The doors to the war room burst open. Everyone turned to see the surgeon coming out covered in Dirk’s blood. He removed his gloves and pulled down his facemask so it hung from one ear.

My entire life, I’d been unlucky. We orphans tend to believe our existences are inherently cursed. We feel unwanted, undeserving, unhappy and above all uns, unlucky. I’d known loneliness, bed bugs, food shortages; I’d been robbed, beaten, humiliated and hungry all my life. Perhaps the steel ring was lucky; perhaps not. But on this day of the battle for Locwyn, the fates looked down and took pity on us.

“I’ve removed the bullet, cauterized the wound and sewn him up,” announced the surgeon. “His internal organs are intact. He has a good chance of surviving!”

All those years of ill luck had led to a series of miracles this day. Every last one of us in that hallway applauded the doctor. Someone began the chant of, “Long live the King!” and I grinned until it hurt, shouting along with the others who had fought for Dirk’s return to power. It was victory, true victory over the Blue Dusk.

“Let’s open the shell!” I cried.

For eleven years under a tyrannical reign, only the elite who lived in one of the seven spires had any view of the sky. I aimed to change that forever.

I darted down the hall and followed metallic sign markers until I found my way into the central control room. Baker and several other Rotters came running after me. We examined a long panel of switches and levers. One of the switches was larger than the rest, so I flipped it, and a light came on in an adjacent room. What had been a mirror was now a window and it revealed a chamber with a scale model of Locwyn mounted on a platform. I twisted a knob on the panel and on the other side of the plated glass, a tower on that model shifted. Overhead, the castle rumbled and shook, and that was when I knew that whatever I did to the miniature would affect the actual city.

It was no different from any puzzle. As the model through the observation window moved, we heard machinery cranking as the very bones of Locwyn shifted. I fiddled with the controls until I opened the replica like a flower. It was the best lock I’d ever cracked, for when we went outside, we could see the sky overhead. The sun emerged over the horizon, burning like ruby fire.

Throughout the old square, the rebels began a chant of “Rise! Rise! Rise!” The citizens of Locwyn joined in, banging, clapping and stomping in rhythmic accord that erupted into a mighty cheer. History would record Prince Derek as the savior of our nation, but in truth, he was only an intrepid leader of people who had saved themselves.

XX. Song of Ramona

I
followed Dirk into the candlelit belly of the castle. This was the first place he wanted to go upon regaining consciousness, and though the surgeon objected to his travelling, Dirk grabbed a rifle off the wall and went hobbling away on it until a Rotter brought him a cane.

I’d never been particularly fond of dungeons. This one was miserable, with not a single window or place for ventilation. The air was thick with mold spores and I had to cover my mouth with a rag.

Dirk wielded a torch and bid the warden to give us the keys to the cells. We navigated the dark tunnels, Dirk’s cane echoing each time it rapped against the stone. We came to a door with a tiny slot in the bottom of it. I unlocked it and Dirk fixed the torch into a holster in the corner of the room. Rex was inside. His uniform was rumpled and stank of piss. Someone had already given him a beating. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the socket dislocated.

Dirk had the curved saber on his belt. He unsheathed it and handed it to me. Gazing upon the tear-shaped sapphires, my heart filled with fire.

I never thought this moment would be laid at my feet in such a way. I sometimes fantasized about seeing that sword in battle and going after the man. I’d chase him down and tell him who I was and why I had come to kill him. This wasn’t anything like what I’d pictured. The Cerulean Knight was now shackled to a wall, degraded and abused.

“You orphaned me,” I said to him, hoping the words might inspire my hate to flurry. All it did was remind me that killing him would not bring anybody back.

Rex spoke to me in a dry, tired voice, “Every warrior has orphaned a child at some point in his career.”

“Quiet, maggot,” said Dirk, striking him with his cane. “Take your vengeance as you please, Clikk. Do not kill him. He is to be tried for his crimes and I need time with him as well. I’ll be just outside.” He handed me the saber and left, closing the iron door behind him.

Rex laughed weakly, his voice like a scythe scraping against brick. His face was vague in the torchlight, but he had the same pale skin and blue eyes of the knight who cut my throat.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

I lifted the torch from its holster and held it so he could see my scar.

Rex laughed, but this time it sounded like he was crying too. “Oh my stars,” he whispered, gasping. “I do remember you. Oh… oh what was your name? Oh what did they call you? Little Rowena… Rosana?”

This vengeance was hardly a gift. “So you do remember.”

“Many of my little angels blur together, but I took you just after we killed the king. How could I forget my little blondie girl in Shale? Hadn’t seen a blonde for months until you came running out of that farmhouse. I remember how your father begged me to leave you be. I do regret he died without seeing us couple.”

I told a certain narrative to Baker, the same narrative I repeated to myself until I believed it, but in truth my mother had died of illness during the drought leading up to the revolution. The crimes committed that day were the same, but the victim of outrage had been none other than the pitiful child called Ramona. I cut Rex’s cheek with the tip of his own sword. It was sharp, deliciously so. And it hurt him. He tried to hide it, but I could hear his teeth grit at the sting.

“Ramona!” he exclaimed with abrupt laughter that reverberated in the cell. “Your name is Ramona.”

“A name you will never forget again, I assure you.” I crouched before him. “Now I’ve had a long time to think about what I should do if I ever found you. I decided I should try and share with you the full torment of being forced. I could sodomize you, of course, use you up and leave you bleeding and humiliated, but your days are numbered and I shouldn’t want to rob you of the full experience. So I should gouge out your eyes with a hot spoon, cast you into darkness to show you what it is to never feel safe again in your own skin. I should fill your cell with rats, so they dig away at you in the night, burrow holes in your gut as you think of me, as you wonder if I’ll return, if I’ll kill you or if I’m watching you from the shadows, dreaming up new tortures to inflict in the morning. And you shall think of me until it drives you mad, for that solitary image of my face shall be seared into your mind’s eye and shall not cease to haunt you until you are dead in your grave.”

Rex closed his eyes. “Do it then,” he said. “Do to me what you think is just.”

I wanted to kill him, bestow my justice on his head for what he had done to me. It would be so easy. The trial didn’t matter.

Let Dirk despise me for losing control in this cell and damn the consequences. Killing Rex might not bring anybody back, but at least it would satisfy the agony of hating someone all my life.

I sheathed the saber. “Why bother?” I spat. “All these tortures combined cannot amount to my suffering, and frankly, it would give me no joy to harm anyone like that. I think I will leave you in this cell, let you feel the sting of being sentenced to death at your trial. Know this: I will see your sword dismantled. I will see you buried with no headstone and the world will forget you ever existed. In time, I will forget you too.”

I banged on the door and Dirk opened it for me.

“Oh, Ramona,” whispered Rex. “A girl never forgets her first.”

We sealed the prisoner back in darkness. Dirk’s eyes met mine in the firelight.

“Clikk,” he said gently.

Had he heard the conversation between us? I remembered the slot in the bottom of the door.

“I’m done with him,” I said.

I followed the corridor to the stairwell. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think about Rex ever again. I would leave him and all the memories associated with him down in that dank, dark hole to shrivel and shrink into oblivion.

As king, Derek promised all his men a warm bed and a living wage in his military for as long as we liked. Taking dominion of the castle was all so surreal. As much as I knew that Dirk was now my country’s monarch, I’d never be able to stomach calling him King Derek, much less Your Grace. He would always be Captain Dirk.

As I lay on my bed, tuning my new fiddle, the sun was setting outside my window, filling my chamber with an orange glow. I had my own quarters in the palace, as well as a butler to bring me tea and greet my guests at the door. It surprised me when Baker entered unannounced; my butler came in behind him, bumbling an apology.

“It’s no trouble, Mr. Peake,” I said, setting down my fiddle. “Leave us.”

My butler nodded and excused himself, closing the door behind him as he left.

Baker stared at my outfit, my ruffled poet shirt and laced britches. “You’re still dressing like a man,” he said.

“And you as well.” I nodded at his same dirty frock coat he always wore in the cities. Baker hadn’t embraced the fashionable attire of court, but he did have a clean shave. “Truth is, I feel quite silly in a dress,” I said. “Are you here about your watch?”

“No,” he said. “I won’t ask you to fix it until I can pay you back your two silver. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

“Ah, well, in the interest of new beginnings, consider the debt forgiven,” I said. “If you’re not here about the watch, why are you here?”

“I…well…” Baker crossed his arms and shrugged, smiling as if he knew exactly why but couldn’t verbalize it. “It turns out, I don’t much care for nobles or their parties and frivolous ways. I thought I might head out with a crew bound for Amaranthia, but I couldn’t. Something was holding me back. Someone rather.”

“How now,” I said. I avoided his eye contact and stared at a porcelain water pitcher instead. “I know your type. I’m nothing like it.”

“I don’t think I ever had a type,” he said. “All my life, women were either whores or wives. My mum was a whore until I was fourteen, and then wife to the devil who beat us both. I never had anyone. Never wanted anyone. You could throw me out of an airship to ride the wind, but the suggestion of love, that’s for madmen. You’d have to hold me at gunpoint. Except you wouldn’t. And that’s why I haven’t left. I did not fight this war for Dirk. Not for Elsace either. I did it for you. I’d follow you into mutiny, into certain death, because I’m in love with you.”

When I didn’t say anything, he meandered towards the window, gazing out like some tragic figure. I joined him, leaning against the encasement on the other side. Outside a courtyard of metal-forged fountains glistened like liquid steel.

“Baker in love?” I said. “I don’t know what to say to that, friend. If you’re only after a jolly, I’d rather you be honest about it.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

A smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth. “Is seduction simple for you?”

“Like you and your watches.”

“You’re a bloody rake,” I said. “You’ve opened more women than I’ve done watches.”

“I haven’t done!”

“How many then?”

“Are we including ladies of the night?”

“‘Course we are.”

“Then that’s… fourteen. No. Fifteen,” he said.

I was taken aback. “That’s it?”

“Several of them I actually cared about.”

“Hm,” I said. “I swore off rogues long ago. I’ll not be jilted again.”

“I’m not perfect. I might tease you or steal a sip of your Skye while your back is turned, but I would never betray your heart.” He took my hand and my heart trembled. “Not for anyone.”

I shook my head, swallowing a lump in my throat. He was beginning to sway me, which scared me. It was already terrifying how I craved him like Skye. “I can’t be something I’m not, and if you’re with me, there are people who will whisper and point, who might even call you deviant,” I said.

“I don’t care.” He came closer still, pressing his forehead against mine. “I love you, Clikk.”

“Thomas.” I said his name with care. “When we’re alone, you may call me Ramona, if you like.”

“Ramona of Shale,” he whispered, brushing my hair behind my ear. His words and his touch made me ache for him. I wound my fingers into the laces of his tunic and tilted my face up to meet his lips with mine. His taste was like ambrosia, like something I couldn’t have enough of no matter how long I lingered. The floor beneath my feet shifted as if we were back on the Wastrel, taking flight.

Pale dawn shone in through the window, and just outside, the pigeons perched in huddles on the flower box. The calming roll of their voices made me want to sleep more, but I knew that if I did, I would be missing these minutes of perfect happiness. My beloved lay at my side, awake and pretending not to be, and for a while I pretended not to be as well, and we stayed like this, cherishing our waking dream of love.

I traced the sparrow tattoos flitting down his forearm. I had none of my own. Nothing in my life had ever been permanent. Baker had a hawk on his pectoral muscle, and a vaporous black cloud on the opposing shoulder. I could have remained there a fortnight, learning every scar and every line of ink on him. We couldn’t know how much time we had to enjoy such harmony, and so I savored this moment with all my being.

I still wondered if I could trust him, and if his heart was true. In so many ways, the answer felt simple, but then I remembered that lovers often change in the night, reveal some shadow that was so clearly there all along. All I could do was surrender. There was uncertainty in love, like that in a bout of turbulence, in which one yields control to the wind and to the ship herself.

I reached for my fiddle and played a slow melody that moved like drifting clouds in the light of dawn. It came to me from some invisible muse. The notes fell into place, and I played a song as ancient as the sky. I marveled at the thought of love and how people called it falling, for to fall was something else entirely, and love had little to do with it. Love was more like flying.

There came a gentle rapping on the door. I reached for my tunic and threw it on over my head. “Come in,” I called.

My butler cracked the door just a jar and spoke through the opening. “Forgive the intrusion. The princess requests an audience with you.”

I had completely forgotten to check in with Molly. I put my fiddle away and hurried to get dressed. “Thank you, Mr. Peake. I will be ready shortly.” I was lacing up the side panels of my britches when an arm hooked around my waist.

“This is now a hostage situation,” whispered Baker, pulling me in.

“The princess has summoned me.”

“Then I shall send her my demands.”

“What demands?”

“All the gold in the royal treasury, a canary that recites poems in Nazari, a ship that turns rain into Skye and enough guns to steal you back.”

I bit my lip and against all my instincts, slipped away from him. “Leaving you now is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I said, “but I must go.”

“Are you going to accept her offer?” he asked.

“Her offer?”

“Princess Molly adores you. I suspect she will want you to take up a position in court.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Your choice is your own,” he said. “You know me better than anyone; you know I can’t stay here in Locwyn. My feelings for you will remain unchanged whatever you decide, and we will find a way to be together.”