“Yes.”
“A prisoner, no doubt, or a token, a performing monkey.”
Nat thought of the golden-eyed girl with the orange hair, the Slob’s favorite pet, and understood now. “You spoke about something called the drakon—what is it?” Nat asked.
Liannan studied her before answering. “The drakons are protectors of Vallonis. They have been lost since the breaking, but now one has returned.” Her voice was like the sound of falling water, it had a lovely lilt, like a melody.
“Vallonis . . . do you mean the Blue . . . is that what you call it?”
“Yes.” Liannan nodded. “That is what I call my home.”
Farouk came stomping down the stairs into the hallway, and when he saw the two of them, his face blanched and he crossed himself as if to ward them away. It pained Nat to see him—she’d thought Farouk was a friend, like Shakes—but now the young boy was gaping at them, pressing himself against the wall so that no part of his body would come into contact with either of them.
Liannan laid a hand on his shoulder and he visibly flinched.
“You have nothing to fear from me. I am not infectious. I can no more turn you into one of us than I can turn into one of you,” she said.
Farouk did not look convinced and shook her hand off him. “Don’t
There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “What’s going on here?” Wes asked, looking at the troubled faces in front of him.
“She touched my shoulder,” Farouk accused. “And she killed Daran.”
“I did no such thing,” Liannan said. “It was the drakon who decided his fate,” she said, turning to Nat.
“Leave her alone,” Shakes said, as he walked out of the room where they had imprisoned Zedric. “She didn’t do anything to him. He asked for it, he was looking for trouble. Things happen out here in the water—you haven’t been, you don’t know.”
“Or it could be nothing. Coincidence,” Wes said, his gaze falling on Nat as well.
“What brings you to this part of the world, Ryan Wesson?” Liannan asked.
“You know my name,” he said, and Nat felt a stab of jealousy to see him give Liannan the same smirk he’d given her the first time they’d met. She knew she had no claim to him, and that she had already decided to all but cut him loose, but somehow she couldn’t help but feel as if he were hers and hers alone.
Liannan cast her cool gaze upon him. “I know everyone on board this ship. Ryan Wesson, the mercenary. Vincent Valez, second in command, more commonly addressed as ‘Shakes.’ Farouk Jones, navigator. Daran Slaine, currently in the water. Zedric Slaine, his brother. And . . . Natasha Kestal.” Liannan turned to her and stared. “Who asked about the drakon . . .”
Wes raised an eyebrow and regarded Nat with a questioning gaze.
“You are marked,” Liannan said.
Nat nodded.
“So you are one of us.” The sylph nodded. “Do not worry,” she told the others. “Our powers are not malicious in nature, no matter what you have been led to believe. Do you know why they cast us out? Why we are hunted and killed, or confined to prisons? Why they spread lies about our people? Because their world is broken, their world is ending, and so they fear us, they fear what is coming. The world that is returning, that is growing in the ruins of this one. A drakon flies again, and we are renewed in its presence.” Liannan’s voice had grown lower, and her eyes were kaleidoscopes.
Farouk was shaking. “She’s . . . cursing us, I swear . . . stop her . . .”
Nat sucked in her breath, and Wes was frowning now. He turned to the golden-haired girl. “Okay, enough. You’re scaring my crew, and you’ve cost me a soldier,” he growled.
“And you have gained a guide. I believe our journeys are the same. You are ostensibly on your way to New Crete, yet in truth you seek the Blue. You are headed to the doorway at Arem. Natasha wears the Anaximander stone.”
“The stone!” Shakes said. “I knew it!”
Nat’s hand flew to her neck as she stared at the sylph. “How did you . . . ?”
For his part, Wes did not answer, but remained wary.
“I can help you reach your destination,” she said.
Wes sighed. “Listen, I hate to break it to you, but you’re no better off on my ship than you were on your own. We lost our engines to the same thing that took Daran. There’s been no wind for days, and we’re down to eating twigs. You want to join us? Be my guest.”
32
THE SYLPH HAD NO ANSWER TO THAT OTHER than a cold gratitude, and Wes went with Shakes to check on the sail—they could hear it flapping, which meant a wind had finally kicked up.
They circled back again to look for Daran, but there was no sign of him; either the water or that thing in the water had claimed him. With Zedric in the hold, Wes ordered the family placed in his cabin, which was more comfortable. He went to check on their progress and found the parents lying on the bed, covered with a thin woolen blanket. Nat was sitting by their bedside, next to the two little ones.
“How are they doing?” he asked.
She cast him a stricken look that told him everything. They were dead. There was a cry of pain from the younger boy, and his brother soothed him.
“I’m so sorry,” Nat whispered, and only when the child turned to her did Wes realize his mistake. He had been wrong about the new passengers. The little ones were not children. They only looked like they were. The boys were smallmen.
Wes faced the group, taking a knee.
“This is Brendon and this is Roark,” Nat said, introducing them. Brendon had curly red hair and tears in his eyes. Roark was dark and stocky. They were the size of toddlers—three feet tall, but proportioned and fully grown; Wes had never met any before, but they struck him as being about his age. The smallfolk were said to be wily and malicious; they could see in the blackest dark and hide where no hiding place could be found, giving rise to their reputations as thieves and assassins. But the two in front of him looked nothing like the sort. They had ordinary, pleasant faces, and their clothing was rough-hewn and handmade.
It was Brendon who spoke. “Thank you for taking us on board.”
“I’m sorry about your friends,” said Wes, shaking his hand.
Brendon nodded, blinking back tears; he looked as if he were about to collapse. “They sheltered us from the raids when we were separated from our families. With their help, we found Liannan and the boat. We would not be here without them.”
The smallmen told them their story. They were refugees from Upper Pangaea, where the RSA had just taken over. The smallkind had lived in the open there, along with a few tribes of sylphs. It was peaceful for a time, but things started to change. Many of them were suffering, dying from the rot, the strange plague on the marked and magical that no medicine could cure. As part of the cleansing, they had been rounded up with the rest of the marked and others like them, herded and made to live in confined areas until they were moved somewhere else. So Brendon and Roark had hidden with their friends on their farm and survived for a time, hiding in the attic, in the recesses of the walls, but it became too dangerous. The neighbors had become suspicious, so they looked for passage and decided to undertake the dangerous voyage to the Blue, where they heard there was a cure.
For a while they had been lucky; their captain was savvy and the ship was fast, and they had made good time. Then they had hit a trashberg, and their ship began taking in water, which slowed them down. Supplies began to run out, then they were ambushed and drifted for weeks, with nothing to eat . . . and being human, the young couple had taken the worst of it. They had died of starvation.
Roark put his face in his hands and sobbed. They were great, terrible sobs, and Wes felt helpless around such grief. He wondered at the depth of feeling and was envious of it, in a perverse way. He hadn’t cried like that since his parents died, since he and Eliza had been separated. Wes had seen so many of his soldiers die before
