Witchbreaker (Dragon Apocalypse) (35 page)

He nodded toward his men. Two of them flanked him as they approached Sorrow. On an unseen signal, all three men drew their swords.

“I apologize for the woman,” Gale said. “Her half-animal nature has left her dimwitted. Please ignore her babbling.”

“Remove your hood,” Rim said, as he fixed his eyes on Sorrow’s face.

Sorrow smiled as she obeyed. The look on Rim’s face as he spotted the nails on her scalp was quite satisfying.

“Witch!” Rim shouted. In unison, he and his men drove their swords into her belly. Luckily, her command over iron made her skin even better than dragon hide against their blades. The swords folded limply against her stomach.

“Down!” Lotus cried as the three men stood gawking at their ruined weapons. At her command, they threw themselves to the deck. Lotus pointed her crystal rod at Sorrow and shouted, “Khong!”

Sorrow spread her wings as brightness flared within the crystal, but suspected she wasn’t going to get out of the way in time.

Slate threw himself in front of her as a loud
CRACK
filled the air. An arc of brilliant white light sliced into Slate’s armored chest, vanishing as quickly as it struck. In the aftermath, Slate looked none the worse for wear. The stormcaller raised the glass rod toward the sky and began screaming out a prayer. Poppy dropped down from the riggings, balanced on the woman’s shoulders for a heartbeat, then vaulted to the deck as the woman shot toward the clouds, her prayer changing to a shriek. Her azure mask and the crystal rod clattered as they fell to the deck.

Sorrow blinked and suddenly there were dozens of Storm Guard spilling over the rails. Rigger grimaced as a score of ropes snaked toward them. The soldiers proved remarkably coolheaded in the face of such a strange assault and deftly leapt over the dancing hemp, slicing ropes with their swords as they charged toward Slate and Sorrow.

The air around the
Circus
sounded like an orchestra of harps being plucked as soldiers climbed the rigging of their ships and began to shower arrows toward the
Circus
. A whirling wind knocked the missiles off their path as Gale cried, “Don’t kill anyone!”

Mako froze with his jaws half an inch away from Rim’s throat. “Are you serious?” he growled.

“If no one dies, we might still bribe our way out of this,” Gale shouted. “If we kill anyone, we’re going to have to flee this port. That’s not what Brand hired us for.”

Brand said, “I also didn’t hire you to be pin-cushions. Do what you must to defend yourselves!”

“Storm Guard!” a voice thundered from above, so loud it sounded as if a giant had shouted it. “Stand down!”

Sorrow looked up. A giant
had
shouted it. A man one hundred feet tall was walking down a staircase of wispy clouds. He was dressed in a uniform similar to the one worn by Rim, but with so many lightning bolts they jagged together to form a chain all the way around his shoulders. In his open palm he carried the stormcaller. The front of her robes were flecked with vomit.

“Levi!” Jetsam shouted, as the storm guard lowered their weapons.

“That’s Commander Leviathan to you,” Levi said, as he stepped onto threads of fog that rose up from the sea. He lowered Lotus carefully back to the deck of her ship, then drew a crystalline battle axe that sparked with static from a holster on his back. The head of the axe was the size of a mainsail. He gripped the weapon with both hands as his eyes narrowed. “Did you really believe you could strike a beloved bride of Tempest and not face my righteous wrath? Surrender at once, or face destruction!”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PATH OF THE PILGRIM

L
EVI RAISED HIS
weapon overhead to strike. Sorrow bounded across the deck and grabbed the crystalline lightning rod. She raised it toward Levi, prepared to shout, “Khong!” but before she could finish inhaling, Mako tackled her, knocking the breath from her lungs. He pinned her to the deck, her wings folded painfully beneath her.

“We surrender!” Mako shouted, craning his neck toward the sky.

Sorrow was almost as shocked by these words as she was by the tackle. Mako wasn’t known for avoiding fights.

“We most certainly do not surrender!” Gale shouted, raising her hands toward Levi, whose hair began to flutter in the wind.

“Brand!” Sage shouted. “It’s your ship! Order Ma to give up!”

“Gale,” said Brand, “Give up.”

Gale clenched her jaw, her lips pressed tightly together.

Brand cupped his hands and called out, “I own this ship and I surrender!”

Gale turned her back to Brand, folding her arms across her chest. The wind that stirred Levi’s locks vanished.

“A wise choice,” Levi said as he sheathed his ax. He looked down at Inspector Rim’s ship. “Carry on with your duties,” he said. “I personally will take these foreign heathens into custody.”

Rim frowned.

“Is something displeasing you, Inspector?” asked Levi. “Speak freely.”

Rim looked like he was in pain as he said, “Should we trust these foreigners into the custody of someone who is himself a foreigner?”

Levi ran his fingers along the chain of lightning bolts encircling his shoulders. “That’s Commander Foreigner to you, Inspector. Your trust is not required, only your obedience.”

Rim bowed deeply. “As you say, commander.”

Mako rose, freeing Sorrow, as Rim barked out orders for the two ships to leave.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Mako said.

Sorrow said nothing, ignoring the hand he held out to help her rise. There was a cold pit in the center of her belly. She worried that if she opened her mouth, dark energy would spew out and reduce Mako to bone.

A woman’s voice screamed in her left ear,
Don’t fear this power! Master it! You’ll never learn to control Rott’s power if you shun all opportunities to unleash it!

Sorrow turned her head. No one stood beside her. Perhaps sitting quietly in the dark had been the wrong strategy for inducing Avaris to teach her. But this lesson would have to wait for another time. She breathed deeply, calming herself. The tension in her stomach seeped away. She took Mako’s outstretched hand.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

You’re a weakling and a coward!

Mako showed no reaction to the angry voice, though it was so loud Sorrow was surprised other people couldn’t hear it.

“I’m fine,” she answered softly.

As the two ships departed, Levi knelt next to the
Circus
. He smiled broadly and said, “Rescuing you guys is turning into a full-time job.”

He placed his fingers on the deck of the boat and Poppy and Cinnamon ran up to hug them. Jetsam swam through the air to hover in front of his brother’s face. “I knew you wouldn’t hit us!”

“I needed to put on a show, though,” said Levi. “Most of the Storm Guard are suspicious of me thanks to my foreign origins. They hate that I’ve become commander of a hurricane in such a short time.”

“We knew you were a good sailor, but it’s impressive that you’ve risen in the ranks so quickly,” said Jetsam.

Levi shook his head. “It’s all dumb luck. When I met Flutter and fell in love, I had no idea she was the daughter of Commander Rumble. He only accepted me as part of his crew because Flutter threatened to live out the remainder of her life on land with me if he didn’t.”

“That’s romantic,” said Poppy. “Like something from a story book.”

“The story books skip over the hard parts, I’m afraid,” said Levi.

“Like betraying your family by joining the armed forces of their enemy?” Gale asked, still not looking back at him.

“You’re not seeing the story from my perspective,” said Levi. “At the time, I’d lost my power to shrink back to human size. I’d been forced to leave behind my life as a Wanderer simply because there were no ships I could board without capsizing them. I thought I was fated to live out my life alone, on a desert island, until Flutter looked down and spotted me. My choice to join the Storm Guard had nothing to do with politics. It was my only chance to live a normal life.”

“You live in a cloud,” said Jetsam.

“Which feels curiously normal after a while.”

Gale shook her head. “It’s one thing to join their crew. Now you command their forces?”

Levi shrugged. “Again, dumb luck. What I didn’t know about cloud giants when I went to live among them is that they might be huge as clouds, but they’re also just as fleeting. They go from babies to adulthood in about six months. The average cloud giant lives only seven years. A few truly ancient specimens make it to ten. This means there’s a lot of churn in the ranks aboard any cloud ship. In the human world, I’m still wet behind the ears. Among the giants, I’m practically an immortal, and treated like I’m in possession of some special age-imbued wisdom.”

“Are you?” asked Jetsam.

“Only if heartbreak is wisdom,” said Levi. “I live in a world where anyone who becomes important in my life passes away almost before I get to know them. I was seventeen when I met Flutter. She wasn’t even a year old, but already considered something of an old maid among the giants. She passed away last year, just after her fifth birthday.”

“Oh, Levi,” Sage said. “I’m so sorry.”

Levi smiled wistfully. “She had a good life. I’ve learned a lot about living for the moment. You have to drink every bit of life that flows into your cup today, because the cup might fall from your hand tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this when you helped rescue us when the
Freewind
was sinking?” asked Sage.

“You guys had your own problems. I knew Ma’s heart was breaking to lose that ship. I didn’t want you to worry about me just because I’d lost someone I loved.”

Gale’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, turning to look at him. “But what about the loss of all those Wanderers who fought on our side during the pirate wars? Every day, we received reports of some new ship lost at sea to the Storm Guard’s hurricane fleet. How did the lives of Wanderers become so cheap to you?”

Levi shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I didn’t start the war. Cloud giants don’t even keep slaves. Pygmies just fall through the clouds. Even after you drink the zephyr elixir, you still need really big feet to get any traction on mist.”

“We Wanderers didn’t start the war either,” Gale said.

“I’m almost entirely certain you did,” said Levi. “And you had good reason to. Every time I return to this port, I watch Wanderer ships hired by slavers unload their human cargo at the pygmy market. It turns my stomach to see people in chains, sold to the highest bidder. If I’d already been commander when the war started, I would have done anything I could to tip the battles in your favor. Alas, I wasn’t in command of the ships.”

“You still could have changed things.”

Levi nodded. “The question of what I should have done burns in my mind every single day. Unfortunately, what I should have done has to be weighed against what I could have done. Giants have learned the art of steering the winds and shepherding clouds together into semi-stable structures to live upon. But they don’t actually make clouds. If they ever earned the wrath of Tempest, he could simply blink his eyes and the clouds we live upon would evaporate. The dragon holds the power of life and death over every last giant. As long as there are giants in my life that I cherish, that means Tempest controls me.”

Sage asked, “Did you have children?”

Levi shook his head. “No. I don’t know if humans and giants can’t interbreed, or if there was just something about the two of us. But even though we had no kids of our own, her brothers and sisters were quite prolific. There’s about three hundred cloud giants who call me ‘uncle.’ If I were to openly defy Tempest, it would be bad for all of them.”

“Giants need not live on clouds,” said Gale. “As a race, you could free yourself from Tempest’s power just by moving back to land. It’s where giants lived long ago, before discovering the zephyr potion.”

“True enough,” said Levi. “And Wanderers could avoid the whole slaving controversy just by giving up the sea.”

Gale didn’t respond to that.

Levi said, “Just because my new family is important to me doesn’t mean I don’t still love you guys. Why have you come here? What can I do to help?”

Brand stepped forward to explain his situation and tell Levi about Slate’s quest.

Levi answered, “I’ll tow the
Circus
to the slave market. There’s a dock next to it reserved for ships under quarantine. We can anchor you there and no one will mess with you. I can arrange the proper travel permits so a few of you can leave the ship. I suppose we need three, for Brand and Bigsby and Slate?”

Four!
Avaris shouted, so loud that Sorrow flinched.

Her sudden motion caught Levi’s eye. “Yes?”

“I need a permit as well,” Sorrow said. “I’m going to the Temple of the Book.”

Slate looked at her with unmasked suspicion.

“What?” she asked. “If I wouldn’t burn churches at Port Hallelujah, do you think I’m dumb enough to walk into the most sacred sanctuary of the church and try to pick a fight?”