This Golden Flame Page 15

  Out of the corner of my eye I glimpse the figurehead, the woman with the crimson rune. “Captain? The rune on the figurehead, what does it mean?”

  Zara grins. “It means freedom.”

  Freedom. How fitting.

  The grin slips off Zara’s face. She strides to the railing.

  A ship cuts toward us, and as its black sails unfurl I see the sigil. The knowledge rune wreathed in flame.

  They’ve found us.

  Zara takes off across the deck. “Everyone to their stations!” she shouts. “Het, Ava, man the riggings. Kocha, grab the cannons!”

  A bell rings out, and Karis and I race to our positions, dodging the crewmen bursting out of the hold, the deck turned into chaos in a moment. Dane appears beside us, hauling rope. I look back over my shoulder at the other ship. It’s gaining.

  “We can’t outrun her, Captain,” Finn says. “She’s too fast.”

  I clench my fingers tighter around my tome, feeling even more vulnerable now that it’s in my hands.

  Zara points toward a chain of low islands clustered closely together coming up on our port side. “We’ll lose them in there.”

  Finn’s pale skin goes even whiter. “Captain, that’ll be a tight squeeze for us.”

  “And even tighter for them. We’re more maneuverable than they are.” She raises her voice. “Hard to port!”

  Aiken cranks the wheel and the deck shifts as we make a sharp turn. I stumble into a pile of crates. The rocks are coming up close. Too close. We aren’t going to make it.

  “Brace yourselves!” Zara writes in her ledger and the sails flare with light as they twist against their riggings. The wind catches them at their new angle, jerking the bow of the Streak to port.

  There’s a horrible grinding noise as we scrape the rocks to our left, cold spray sweeping over the deck.

  “Wreska!” Zara shouts.

  Wreska pulls out a scroll and dashes off some runes. The iron implants on that side of the ship stretch, strengthening the weakened wood. Everything rattles as we scrape against the rock.

  Then we’re clear. Someone shouts from the magistrate’s ship. I look back. Zara was right. They won’t make that turn. They’re not even trying to make that turn.

  The magistrate’s ship runs a parallel course to ours, still out on open water. Something’s wrong. All we need is another channel off our port side and we’ll be able to slip out of the other ship’s reach. They shouldn’t be risking that.

  Then I see the cannons.

  “Get down!” I shout.

  I grab Karis and Dane and fling us all to the ground as a boom rips through the air. A cannonball screams above our heads and crashes through the deck.

  “Incoming!” Aiken shouts. There’s another boom and a cannonball slams through the foremast.

  With a massive crack, it snaps. Kocha drops to his knees and writes in charcoal on the deck itself. Gold flares beneath our feet, racing across the deck, as the pole shudders. For a moment I think it worked, but then the mast falls, ripping a hole in the mainsail on its way. I fling myself over Karis as spears of wood drive down all over the deck.

  Dane is already back on his feet, scanning the waters. I stagger up. Wood and cloth and iron litter the deck. Zara stands at the wheel now, struggling to keep us under control.

  The cannons from the other ship have stopped firing as the magistrate’s vessel slips down a larger channel among the islands, coming after us now that we’re wounded.

  “Captain!” Dane shouts. “Over there!”

  He points to two larger islands with a narrow channel between them. It’s not quite bridged by the dual half arches of stone reaching out to one another over the water. It must have been one island once, until the waves wore away at the stone arch, a little more every year.

  “We’d slow down too much,” Wreska yells back. “They’d be right on top of us.”

  “So, we bring the arches down behind us,” Dane says. “Block them from following us.”

  Zara’s eyes gleam. “To port!”

  The ship turns but this time I’m ready, balancing as the deck rocks beneath my feet.

  “We need a cannon back here!” Zara calls.

  Two of the men slowly start hauling one across the deck. I run to them and grab it, pulling it over to the railing. The runes on its barrel hum beneath my hands and vicious music spills into my head. I grit my teeth against the sound as I position the cannon, dragging another to the opposite end of the deck.

  The arch is getting closer. So is the magistrate’s ship. Close enough that I can hear the crewman on it shouting and see their mouths as they form the words.

  A shadow falls over the deck as we pass beneath the arches.

  “Fire!” Zara shouts.

  Both cannons explode in unison. They hit true and the arches crumble into the ocean, the world dissolving into a spray of wet and cold that obscures everything.

  We shoot through, leaving the magistrate’s ship trapped in our wake.

  19

  * * *

  ALIX

  The Crimson Streak limps through the water. Two of her three masts are gone. She has four holes punched through her deck and sides, each a gaping wound.

  Her crew almost looks as bad, exhaustion heavy beneath their eyes, more than one with some slipshod healing job. In the two days since we were attacked, no one has slept much. I don’t need sleep, but going this long with only scant breaks has given even me a sluggishness to my thoughts I’m not used to.

  I grasp the mast in my hands, and as everyone stands clear, I heave it up. It’s brutally heavy, the sheer weight making my feet carve into the wood of the deck. I grit my teeth and push harder, levering it up from the deck, step by labored step.

  “Almost there,” Kocha says, his hands coming to rest next to mine, guiding them.

  I shake from the effort as the mast finally sways upright, precariously balanced on its broken, bottom half. Kocha dashes off a rune like a whorl of wood and the jagged splinters twine around each other like snakes. A whisper of the music of his runes, a thin strain of a flute, pulses softly beneath my hands. I’ve never seen Scriptwork mend something.

  “Wreska!” Kocha calls, his voice strained.

  She steps up to his side, a thick piece of iron in her hands. Karis holds it flat against the wood as Wreska writes a rune in her scroll. The metal warps, wrapping around the mast until it encircles it like a cuff.

  The others step back. I timidly let go, my hands at the ready to catch it if it falls. It creaks ominously but then settles.

  I sag in relief. When I saw the damage to the Streak, I was so sure there wasn’t any chance of us making repairs quickly enough to get away. With the right Scriptwork, though, with all of us working together, perhaps there is.

  “How goes it?” Zara asks, coming up behind us. A scratch crosses her temple. I wonder if in the chaos she’s even noticed. Everyone else seems worn thin, but there’s an energy to Zara that makes her look even more alert. It feels as if she’s the only thing holding this crew together right now.

  “It’s not the strongest patch job,” Kocha says. He sits on his haunches, his hands hanging limply between his knees and his face drawn. Wreska comes up beside him, resting a palm on the nape of his neck, and he leans into her. “But it’s as good as I can manage. With any luck, it’ll get us into port on Valitia.”

  Zara nods. “Good work. You two have earned yourself a break. Alix.” She turns to me. “I take it you’re still fresh?”

  Physically, yes. Mentally, I’m waning. I can’t stop, though. We only went to that island because of me. The Scriptorium only caught up to us because of me. I’m the one they want in the end. I nod.

  “Then come with me. I have something I want you to help with.”

  I follow Zara, Karis trailing behind us. We go to the mainmast, w
hich Kocha fixed first. The sail, now also repaired, is roughly laid out in front of it.

  “All right,” Zara says, “so here’s the problem. See the line of runes there?” She points to a string of them that runs along the edge of the sail, the ends of the crimson threads twining into the ropes. “Normally these runes let me raise the sail. But thanks to our spat—”

  “That was just a spat?” Karis mutters.

  One of Zara’s eyebrows twitches up. “Thanks to our spat, the pattern has been broken.” She points to the edge of the sail, where a rip cuts through the line. “It’s fixable, but that would take a long time, time we don’t have. However, if there’s a second person working the Script, we can each handle one end of the line and it won’t matter.”

  I’m so tired, it takes me a long moment to catch her meaning. “Wait,” I say. “This is what you want me to help you with?”

  She nods. “I’ve taught some of my crew Arizan runes, but nothing at this level.”

  “Captain, I can’t. My runes are Eratian.” The Script on me is bound to this country. To Eratian runes. I thought she realized that. “I can’t use the Arizan—”

  “You know about Script ink now,” Zara says and I hear the firmness in her tone and, behind it, the first hint of weariness. She looks at me and there’s the tiredness that she can’t quite push back or hide any longer. She’s as exhausted as the rest of us. She’s simply better at hiding it. Captain or not, she shouldn’t have to. “You have some inside of you. That’s what all runes operate on, and it might mean you can use any of those runes. I need you to try this. If we can’t get the sail up from the deck, we’re going to need to fix all the riggings as well. And if we have to do that, we won’t beat the magistrate’s men into Valitia.”

  I hear the words she doesn’t say. Some of her crew were once in the Magistrate’s Library. If we don’t get moving, they’ll all end up back in that terrible place.

  “Right.” I shake out my hands and step closer to the sail. They’re simply runes like I’ve worked dozens of times. That’s all.

  As I touch the fabric, the pounding of the drums echoes into my head. I try humming, but before I get the first note out, I know it won’t work. I’m used to hearing melodies from runes, but this is pure rhythm, vibrant and energetic.

  I pause and then cluck my tongue. It’s difficult. The rhythm is so quick, and my tongue feels sluggish. I keep going. I find myself connecting with the thudding in my head, with what feels like vibrations beneath my fingertips, as if I’m not simply hearing the rhythm but feeling it.

  The cloth twitches. I’m so surprised I falter.

  Karis’s eyes widen. “Alix, you’re doing it.”

  I am. The cloth is moving. In stops and starts, but it’s moving.

  Zara pulls out her ledger, a gleam in her eyes that makes her look more like her old self. She writes something and her end of the sail moves. I can hear her runes resounding in my head, a counter-rhythm mixing with my own. It’s the first time I’ve done Scriptwork with someone else before. It thrills me.

  The music leaps faster and I join it as the sail rises, sliding on its own along the ropes, making me shift my hands. Rhythm and excitement buzz beneath my skin. Faster. Faster. I don’t want it to stop.

  The sail reaches its top and the runes flare before quieting. The music fades away.

  The sail. It’s fixed. I was a part of that.

  Wearied applause scatters over the deck. I turn. Other crew members have drifted closer—Aiken, Manaka, Camila—and for once there’s no wariness in their faces. They look at me, relieved. As if I belong here, standing among them.

  Zara nudges my shoulder with her own. “Looks like you are more than your runes.”

  I stare at her. My whole life I thought I was constrained to the runes carved into my skin. Yet the runes that I worked on those sails were not ones my father gave me.

  They let me do something good.

  Zara grins and strides away. “Now come on, let’s do the other one.”

  20

  * * *

  KARIS

  A dot appears on the horizon midway through the second week and we slip through the waves toward it. Valitia. I knew from the maps the Scriptmasters made us study how much larger it is than any other island in Eratia, but I hadn’t understood until now what that really meant.

  The island rising out of the ocean must be at least ten times the size of Tallis, and it touches the horizon on both sides as if it wants to swallow the waves. A sheltered bay nestles at its base, dotted with the colorful sails of fishing ships. Even from here I can see the fisherfolk rushing about on the decks, pulling in nets full of flopping, shining fish. There are larger vessels, too, military from the cannons on their decks, flying sails emblazoned with the Scriptorium seal. Alongside them are other ships, with Eural seals, Anderran seals. Maybe they’re here for diplomatic purposes, but soldiers stand on their decks even now, their spears glinting in the sun.

  Near the docks are houses not so different from that fishing village. And then rising above the refuse of the tiny buildings is the famed City of Scholars.

  It’s built in tiers, reaching toward the summit, each one blocked off by a wall. The lowest tier holds smaller but orderly homes, with white walls and red pottery tiles covering their roofs. Then come the villas. As the city continues upward the homes grow larger, nestled among the hills and surrounded by vast swathes of green. Up above there’s a tier of what looks like government buildings, schools and libraries, all with soaring architecture, surrounding the bustling central agora.

  There are automatons, too, dozens of them. Standing among the buildings, in the hills and fields. An army, no less terrifying for being frozen. Here, time was never allowed to bury them in dirt and rocks, and the sight of so many, all of them caught in the moment they stilled, chills me.

  At the summit of it all stands the Acropolis. It’s massive, a half dozen stories high and large enough to encompass the entire complex on Tallis. The marble is so polished and white it shines like a beacon beneath the sun.

  The seat of the magistrate and the heart of the Scriptorium. It’s mighty, imposing, and yet it’s nothing compared to what towers before it.

  The Colossus.

  It’s an automaton out of legend. According to the stories, the Scriptmasters of a magistrate long dead toiled for a hundred years and a day to make it: the largest automaton to ever walk. It’s always stood sentinel before the Acropolis, guarding the line of the magistrates. Except for once, during a great sea battle between Eural and Eratia. Our navy was losing badly. Their ships had almost reached our shores. The magistrate at the time took the Colossus’s tome and sent the beast out into the waters. The legend says that even in the deeps it stood high over the Eural ships. By the time it was through, all that was left was driftwood.

  I know we’re running away from the magistrate’s men by running toward the magistrate himself. We’re being cautious—Zara even had Alix help her switch out the sails and we won’t get too close to the capital until nightfall. But I can’t help but be worried about how poorly planned this might turn out to be. Not that we have a choice. My brother is here. Alix’s answers are here. And with any luck, those chasing us won’t have had a chance to communicate what they know back to the magistrate yet.

  Besides, some risks you have to take.

  Alix drifts to the railing. “It’s so different,” he murmurs. “So similar, yet so different.”

  The raw loss in his voice catches me off guard. I shift closer to him, bumping his arm with my own. “Where’s your father’s house?”

  “Up in the second tier, around the curve of the hill.”

  “I’m looking forward to seeing it,” I say. “I’m sure there’s something left.” I hope there’s something left.

  Alix shakes his head, staring out across the water. “I forgot how...imposing this city w
as. I lived in it my whole life, and I barely saw any of it.”

  It’s hard seeing Alix down like this. I search for something that might make him feel better.

  “You know, Matthias and I were originally from Heretis,” I say. “It’s not exactly Valitia, but it was still a large city. I think we knew every street in that place and there was this...wildness to it, I guess you could say. Simmering just beneath the civilized surface. A sort of heartbeat.”

  Alix is looking at me now, interest clear in his eyes. It’s strange to think of my time on the street positively. But maybe, like anything else, there was some good mixed in with the bad. I search for one of those moments, to share with him. He doesn’t have many memories of his own, but he can have one of mine.

  “I remember a time, we were having some problems with a group of older boys. Eventually, we started hiding down by the docks, which Matthias hated because it smelled so bad. And soon we smelled like it, too.” I grin. “One night we were hiding on this flat roof with all these baskets of slimy fish guts. We heard those boys in the street below us, and without even hesitating, Matthias grabbed a basket and dumped it on them.”

  Alix lets loose a bark of laughter, so loud he looks surprised that it came from his mouth. Which immediately sets me off laughing. A grin splits Alix’s face. And I’m proud. That I could give that to him.

  Finn comes up behind us, looking between the two of us, their eyebrows quirked. “You two. The captain wants to see you and the soldier in her quarters.”

  I stifle the laughter still bubbling in my throat as we follow Finn. We pick up Dane on the way, from where he was learning a dice game I’m sure his old masters wouldn’t approve of.

  Zara stands in the corner of her quarters, examining the knife on her belt, but as we step inside she turns and nods at us. “Good, you’re here. Front and center.”

  We line up in the middle of the room.

  “We’ll be docking soon,” Zara says. “So, it’s time for all of you to get ready.”