Magonia (19 page)

A flash of lightning and I see things better suddenly. A pointed mouth, open wide, and a stormshark leaps up out of the sky and over the mast of the other ship. More distress calls.

“By the Breath!” Dai curses. “We have to intervene!” He takes off running. “Captain!”

Our batsail opens its wings and our Rostrae surge up, tugging lines, throwing hooks and ropes overboard and flying at the fray. Zal’s on deck, shouting. She sees me and barks an order. “Belowdecks! You’re not here!”

Then she’s running too.

“Stations!” she shouts. “Squallwhales!” Through some sort of amplifier, she screams out over the storm, into the space where the sharks are feeding and the smaller ship is being overwhelmed.

“SQUALLWHALES!”

Our whales come surging fast, storming harder than I knew they could, and suddenly there’s a rush of rain over the little ship. It pours out of the clouds, and the whales sing ferociously.

“THIS IS CAPTAIN ZAL QUEL! PREPARE TO EVACUATE YOUR SHIP!”

There’s a thud, a reverberating hard bash like a pileup on the freeway during rush hour—and then planks and ropes snake out from our crew and onto the deck of the injured ship.

Ignoring Zal, I peer over the railing. There’s a captain there, but with a sudden weirdness, I realize that the captain is tied to her mast. There are bodies all over the deck below, and bags of grain, slit open and spilled.

What?

The fire I thought was on the ship itself suddenly looks to be off to the side, on a little boat, and contained. A moment of confusion on
Amina Pennarum
, and then—

“PIRATES!” Dai screams.

WHAM. A surge of Rostrae and Magonians up from belowdecks of the little ship, all armed, all screaming.

A pirate Rostrae drops down in front of me, black mohawk, red streaks in his hair, and comes at me with a sword. I have only my mop handle in my hand, and I swing it hard.

I’m fighting like someone who knows how to fight, like this is what I was born to do.

I’ve never been Aza the sick, only Aza the warrior.

I hit him in the side of the head, and there’s a sickening crack and maybe I killed him, but then he’s up again, and shrieking, transforming into a magpie, running and leaping off the edge of the ship into the air.

Screaming and screaling, my crew and theirs. The smell of fire and feathers. Our batsail is shrieking in fury and I look quickly up and see the pirate ship’s sail clawing at ours, the two sails crossing, their wings scrabbling, the masts bending.

I hear myself shouting “
AMINA PENNARUM
!”

My crew shouts with me. I don’t see Zal anywhere now. Only smoke and swords lashing through ropes, the contorted faces of my crew shifting into bird form, Rostrae rising up, talons out.

Dai’s swinging an ax. Everywhere people are notching arrows into their bows, drawing knives.

I swing for the head of a tall figure who’s appeared in front of me, a blurry-panicky-shaky swing.

It’s Dai.

“Get down, Aza!” Dai shouts. “You don’t have a sword, and your mop won’t protect you. Idiot, get below!”

He swings at a pirate, and their blades whack together.

I’m paralyzed momentarily, and it’s enough time to find myself face-to-face with another invader. He raises his dagger, but Jik grabs me by the hair, and tugs me away just in time. The pirate’s blade meets only air and before he can recover, there’s a swoop and a screech.

Wedda. She leaps onto his shoulders, her beak tearing at him.

I retreat toward the hold, but the battle, the smoke, and the sounds of fighting, and killing and dying are too much. I hit the boat rail and scream as my feet fly out from beneath me. I catch the bar, panting. And I see them. The stormsharks, dead-eyed and made of power. Sizzling light. I swing my mop handle at one of them, crazily. It surges back at me and I find myself engaged with a crashing, slicing whiteness, the teeth so close, and each one of them gleaming and electric.

“Down below, Aza, now! Where it’s safe!” Jik grabs me and hurls me back on deck. There’s a flood of Magonians, a spray of red. A Rostrae cabin boy, oh god, his uniform slashed and burned at the edges of the cut, his bones showing and one of his wings hanging by a tendon.

“Fire!” I hear Zal shout, and from the bowels of
Amina Pennarum
, there’s a boom. The ship shakes and the pirates scream in fury. All around us I see lightning, and our ship lurches again, and begins to tip.

I lose hold of the ladder and start to skid across the deck. I’m clawing at the boards, trying to get my fingers on something, but it’s slippery with blood.

No one notices me, because this is a ship full of people who can fly, and half of them aren’t touching the deck.

For a moment, I’m in the ambulance again. There’s flashing light and a terrible sense of inevitability as
Amina Pennarum
tilts up almost on end.

I slip from the deck of the ship,

O

F

F

A

N

D

D

O

W

N

into open sky.

I’m the dying girl all over again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I’m dropping through time and back to Icarus and his wings,
back to me and Jason on the roof.

I’m dropping back to the grave I never occupied.

Air and storm, rain pouring, and me, arms out like a skydiver, falling faster than I thought anyone could fall.

The air is slick, clouds are in my throat, and hail in my hair. I can’t hear my own voice, and I can’t hear Milekt either, because he’s not with me. He was up with the rest of the canwr when we heard the distress calls.

No one knows where I am for the first time in a life of being watched, a life of buddy systems and care.

I’m alone.

I’m alone in the (
how many?
) minutes before I smash into the ground. I’m going to die now, and no one will know where I went.

A flick of sharp dark fins circle suddenly below me.

But it’s not a shark.

Red eyes, hooked beak, long neck covered in rough pink scales, hungry and joyful. Its wings beat slowly, up and down, their tips peeking from the top of the clouds, and it starts to sing out, calling to others. It grabs my clothes in its talons, and my falling slows.

Dead thing
, I hear, a whistle croak.
Dead thing falling.

Vultures.

Another flaps into me, bumping my side with its beak, wings cutting at my skin. The first vulture drops me.
Dead animal
, the new one whistles,
dead, dead, sweet new dead blood, dead.

There’s a clattering cackle, birds surrounding me, looking into my eyes.

Dead thing!
they shout, all their voices colliding with me. They’re huge, and starving.

Then I hear a scream from above, a precise song with beats of silence and rattling percussion, tiny clacking beak closing and opening, guttural whistling of rage and relief.

Milekt. I turn my head and see him diving, a golden beacon.

SING
, he screams, and I tap my chest, opening it for the first time without help, and Milekt is in.

I open my mouth and because this is it, I give in.

I feel a surge up from my lungs into my vocal cords and instantly—harmony.

Millekt and I are singing together for the first time. With one voice we chant this single two-pronged note. It is a howl of holding, it is a screamed lullaby, no sound I could ever make alone.

With the song, something changes. The air feels . . . denser.

I’m hanging from the wind now, like I’m floating in a swimming pool. There is tension in the air beneath me, the feeling of it supporting me—

I stop falling. My heart slows. Between my feet I see the earth still far below and I—I
hover.

A rope with a hook attached comes spinning down from above. There’s a violent snap as I’m grabbed by my jacket. Then they’re reeling me in, yanking me up through the sky, jolting and tugging.

I’m heaved into a launch boat. It’s Dai, sweating, swearing, bleeding.

“Oh my god,” I say, gasping. That’s all I’ve got. “Oh my god.”

Dai grabs me and holds me tight, and I’m uncertain. I think for a moment I’m still singing, but I’m not. I’m crying and panicked, my heart pounding hard.

“I saw you fall,” he says. “I wouldn’t have gotten to you in time if you and Milekt hadn’t sung. I thought you were gone.”

I’m shaking and shaken. So is he. His arms wrap around me, and mine around him, and—

Rostrae all around us—the birds from my ship, led by Jik, some of them midtransformation, their arms half feathered.

The spotted wings of the sparrow, the golden brown feathers of the eagle-woman. The hummingbird a buzzing dart.

My crew. They’re saving me.

Dai takes my hand.

“You’re pretty good with the mop handle,” he says, and for a second, I’m laughing, and I don’t
know why. I’m shaking with adrenaline, wobbling and surging and I want to sing and fly and battle some more.

The Rostrae lift our launch boat up, through the fog and white again, through clouds scented with lightning, and into the shadow of the ship.

I look down at the deck of the
Amina Pennarum
as we rise up to its level. I look at Dai.

His face goes ashen. All over the deck, there are dead bodies and when I look around, in disbelief, I see our crew has lost.

Blood and feathers and gore, and the pirates—now I finally get a look at them, are all over the place—a group of ragged Magonians and Rostrae. They hurl ropes around us the moment our launch is in reach, and yank us down, and we don’t have time to do anything. I’m grabbed by a big pirate, my arms wrenched behind my back, and Dai is too.

Zal’s tied up, bloody faced. I see her see me, and take in a gasping breath of relief. Wedda’s near her, and half the crew, many of them wounded.

“A trap,” Zal spits at the pirate captain, whose back is to me. “It is against the laws of the sky to tempt a ship toward false rescue. You killed that captain and crew to summon me under their signal, and no doubt they were innocent. I’d expect as much from you.”

The pirate turns toward Zal. She has long gray hair, twisted into ropes of knots, nothing like Zal’s pattern. These are a whole other kind of complicated.

What would normally be the whites of her eyes are dark blue. The sides of her cheeks draw up as though there’re strings attached to them, and maybe someone’s trying to make her smile, but she’s baring her teeth instead. She’s thin in a way that looks hungry, not purposeful. Her face is sunken. She’s wearing a tight uniform, but it’s got tears and bare spots all over it.

“Where are you heading, Zal Quel? We’ve heard rumors you brought something lost up from below. You don’t sail as invisibly as you imagine. We knew which quadrant you flew in, and the sky? It whispers. I heard a rumor among the corsairs that you’d brought a girl aboard,” she says. “Where is she?”

Dai makes the mistake of glancing at me.

The pirate captain’s head whips around and she looks at me too. A blade is suddenly at my throat. I feel its edge. I’m holding my breath, panicking.

“Identify yourself,” the captain of the pirates bellows into my face.

“Don’t,” says Zal, nearly levitating with rage, and with something else too. Fear? “You owe her nothing. Keep silent,
Amina Pennarum
crew. If we plank-walk, we do it without words.”

The pirate captain looks closely at me, examining me, and I feel like prey. Dizzy and tiny, skinny, unmuscled, and powerless.

She pokes me in the chin with her sword, and it doesn’t tickle. It hurts.

“Who was that singing, girl? Was it you? This boy leapt off the ship midbattle to bring you up, and
Amina Pennarum
’s Rostrae saved you. You are not what you seem. No, I think you’re much more.”

I see Zal signaling with her eyes, willing me not to say anything, not to tell them anything.

“It was me singing,” says Dai, and steps forward. The pirate captain looks at him dismissively.

“No male could sing that powerfully,” she says.

One of our masts is broken. The batsail looks wild-eyed and furious, though it’s uninjured, and it shrills at me wordlessly. I hear an echoing wail up from belowdecks as well, the ghostly bird screaming a hoarse call. This ship, and everyone on it, is in danger.

I still don’t even have a sword.

I swallow. Milekt rattles inside my chest, angry and still feeling the song we sang, just as I am. I take a step forward. I inhale, and I feel Milekt opening his beak too—

Dai jabs me in the ribs with his elbow.

“Yes. You’re right. I’m the Captain’s Daughter,” I blurt, instead of singing. I see Zal struggling against her bonds.

The pirate looks at me. I can’t get a read on every emotion that flits across her face, but there’s relief. Sorrow. Anger. Guilt.

“Of course you are. Aza Ray, daughter of Zal,” she says simply. “So the rumors were true. You’re why we’re here.”