Previous: Chapter 7 | Next: Interlude II
“Usually in this sort of situation – that is, a newly-born immortal coming into contact with the greater world for the first time – there’s usually a bit of ceremonial tradition we try to follow,” said Marcel. “To pay the proper respects. It’s old practice, but sometimes we've still found that it… eases the transition, to have someone there to welcome you.”
It was either her or me, so I made the choice for both of us.
“But the circumstances in this case are more than a little outside the norm, and I can’t exactly make another first impression to negate the one we’ve already had. And clearly there’s already more than enough discomfort, here.”
It was the right one, wasn’t it? The one she inspired me to make? To keep her safe even when it hurt? Because she was good, and I wanted to be, too.
“It feels somewhat inappropriate, is what I mean to say. So perhaps we can dispense with the formalities and superstition?”
That’s how it works. That’s what good people do.
“...Would you like another moment?” he asked. I looked at him, startled. I realized I’d barely heard a word of whatever he was saying.
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “We can go. Let’s go.”
He took one last glance in the direction River had gone, brow furrowed, before turning the other way and starting off to where his ship must have landed without another word. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that I did the same.
It took a while. He slowed down to match my pace when he remembered that I was still injured, for the most part; but he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like I had much to say anyway, though. I was drained. So I was content to walk, letting whatever had broken in my chest heal. It was quicker work that I expected, but it still left me short of breath at some points, as Marcel lead me across rocks and silent groves.
I wasn’t really content, but I would make do. Because I’d done the right thing– on some level, after the chaos of Vermiles and the past day, it really did feel right for the first time. We didn’t have a better choice. I was…
I was certain.
Marcel and I emerged from the forest into a long, rolling plain, bounded by a corridor of trees on two sides and only by the hazy mountains in the distance on the others. The still-early sunlight cut across the grass and wildflowers in long golden beams, illuminating the back of Marcel’s jacket in patterns that dimmed and flickered as we skirted the edge of the woods, heading to the ship perched peacefully across the field.
They hadn’t hidden it like the Seremina; it was just out in the open, sails folded and scarlet stripes gleaming, short struts keeping its hull suspended above the earth while a long, shallow ramp bridged the gap between them. It was quiet and cold– less terrifying than before, certainly. It was just a thing. A big machine with a jagged silhouette. I still found my heart racing, though.
And there was someone else, too. Besides Marcel and I. I couldn’t make out their features from the distance, besides the heavy coat they were wearing and the band around their arm, and the faint pull they had on the air and energy between us. The other immortal of the Court, it had to be. Valerie. He was totally still.
As we approached, Marcel slowed down until we were walking closer astride, nearly side-by-side. It felt like his eyes were on me, but I didn’t try to meet them. “I should ask,” he finally said, “what can we call you? We haven’t exactly had the liberty.”
“Oh,” I said, and only hesitated for a second. “...I’m Adeline.” I rolled the name around in my mouth. Needing one was still taking some getting used to.
“Adeline,” he repeated. “I’ll make sure we make some space for you aboard, and once everyone is settled in we’ll be on our way. We’ll be flying for about a day until we reach Lainarke, across the strait – a short holdover there – and then another day and a half to the capital. Unless there’s anything else you need?”
He said it like a question, so I took it as one, though I wasn’t really sure of the answer he was looking for. “No, not here.”
He looked like he was about to continue when another thought crossed my mind. “Unless,” I blurted, before stopping to collect myself. “Um. Unless… do you have books?”
“We–” His eyes widened, and he sort of chuckled. “As in, as a culture? We have books, yes. I don’t know how many you’ll know the languages of, and not out here, specifically, but we have books, I assure you,” he said. “In the capital? You’ll have plenty. No harm in you perusing the archival collection.”
They have books. And a library. In everything that was gone, missing from my old life, and everything that was different and new, at least they still had something I knew.
“Alright, then,” I said, relieved.
“Wonderful!” he said, punctuating it with a clap of his hands, and he turned back to face the ship. something else shifted in him, like his aura of energy pulsed strangely just once or twice. A few seconds later, Valerie caught the signal and stopped watching our approach to step aboard, turning on his heels.
Maybe this would work. I’d make it work. Marcel followed him aboard a few moments later, and I followed right after, setting foot on the deck of my second flying boat in just as many days.
The powerful engines flared into life with the scent of char on the wind.
I changed from the single battered dress I had into a spare set of clean clothes they lent to me; they cleared a small room deep in the ship for my own use, were I ever to find myself wanting to sleep there (I knew I wouldn’t). I kept the scarf, though. I hadn’t realized she’d left it behind until it was too late.
Then they flew again, and although I was sure Marcel and Valerie were keeping track of where I was by the pulse of my aura just as I was them, they mostly left me to my own devices.
I drifted between the narrow, comforting corridors of the hull and the edges of the upper deck, sitting behind the railing and watching the world go by. I didn’t seek anyone out, and they didn’t seek me out. Even the pair of mortals on the ship – whatever they were there for – seemed to avoid me. I wasn’t alone, but after everything they’d done to find me, I accepted the peace.
We forests and rocky hills and stretches of plain painted in bright colours, plants I’d never imagined before but which were too far to really make out as anything clearer than abstract smears. Clouds rolled overhead. The mountains grew more distant.
I wasn’t actually completely sure what a “strait” was. So when we finally reached the water, I was definitely not expecting to find myself looking down at a whole other ocean.
I’d seen the turbulent, white waves of the sea before, from the shore; and back home, I watched placid waters stretching out forever beyond the horizon from atop the towers of home, but seeing it all from aboard the flying ship was something else entirely. With more of my bearings about me, it was absolutely, utterly breathtaking.
I rushed from my place looking out from a narrow window beneath the deck, emerging into the sunlight and throwing myself against the railing to see the waves spread out below us; another endless expanse blanketed beneath the gentle sky, white crests and troughs melting into each other in their own sort of strange pattern.
There were even little boats in the distance, like they’d been plucked from the sky and water-bound, sails fluttering. More living beings, drifting, silhouetted against the rippling faraway line of the strait’s other shore.
The sun drifted towards the water and the clouds burned with brilliant dying light. Night fell as we crossed, everything above and below fading into comfortable darkness except the wavering reflections of the moon and the stars against the sea and the sky. The distant sails were replaced by the glow of distant shining lights.
Marcel, in what I imagined was the absolute least number of words he could get the idea across in while also avoiding telling me much of anything concrete at all, said we’d be setting down for a while in the city on the far shore of the strait, Lainarke. They needed to refuel and resupply, he said.
We landed on a long, flat airstrip just out of sight of the shore, just far enough away from the city that it was more of a dull glow in my perception than anything else. It was surrounded by darkness; the pools of illumination around the ship and the row of low buildings at the edge of the field didn’t reach far into the grass.
Marcel went inside with Valerie, and I saw the two mortals descend from the ship to the airstrip, passing from one shroud of stark white light to the other, and then out of side beyond the edge of the field, towards the treetops and glittering towers shattering the horizon.
I got bored. I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t sleep.
It was my second night, I realized. I wondered what she was doing right then, but there was really no way to know. I hoped she was okay, wherever she was. And still, I didn’t sleep.
After an hour, maybe two, maybe more – enough time that they couldn’t have spent it all restocking provisions, though I didn’t want to press them about it – the mortals returned with boxes under their arms and fiddled with the engines for a short while longer. They and Marcel and Valerie all seemed to flurry around me, barely acknowledging my presence. This time they didn’t say anything before we took to the air again. That was fine. It wasn’t exactly a secret.
We soared over shingled roofs and chimneys, wide streets and tall spires (towering higher than anything in Vermiles, anyway). I watched as ribbons of glittering water, pouring from the strait between the built-up tracts of the city, came together; they wove into a single stream, flowing inland, and we followed.
The river – I had no idea what they called it – was still a silvery, wavy line below us when morning came, cutting through the quiet countryside; sometimes little villages sprung up around it, sometimes it was enclosed in desolate wilds, but eventually something resembling a road began to hug its gentle curves. Long metal serpents slithered up and down its length. They entranced me for a bit. And then I got restless.
I stood up and stretched. I winced a little as the tension reached my chest, still tender, but I was as good as healed, all told. A brief probe told me Marcel and Valerie were in the bridge, as they almost always were for some reason– watching me watching them, surely. One of the mortals was buzzing around the engine; a nest of what were probably spiders was buzzing in a dark corner, somewhere nearby.
At the opposite end of the deck, the other leaned against the railing, one arm hanging precariously over a precipice that they were apparently far less likely to survive than I was. They glanced at me as I walked down the deck, sensing my eyes on the dark hair falling to their shoulders. A short cigaret smouldered between the fingers of their other hand, brought away from their lips.
They blew a hazy cloud of aromatic smoke from their mouth, all of it whisked away almost instantly by the wind, before they promptly went back to gazing over the passing landscape.
I shook myself and tore my own gaze away. I hadn’t crossed anyone’s paths, much. Maybe they wanted to say something, but they didn’t, and I didn’t ask. I kept aimlessly wandering– as far as I could, in such a deceptively small space. I wasn’t looking for anything. It probably would’ve been better to hole up in “my” room, get comfortable for the rest of the trip…
I started down the stairs to the lower deck, but I only took a couple of steps before something else inexorably caught my notice.
A very faint vibration, obscured but distinct from the constant thrum of the engines and machinery, running through the lightweight hull of the ship. I sat down on the stairs and pressed the side of my head against the wooden wall, picking out the sound, hoping the mortal wasn’t still watching.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what it was; as I blocked out everything else, I found I could make out the cadence and the harsher syllables. Words. Marcel and his partner were speaking just a few feet above me.
I probably shouldn’t listen, I tried reasoning to myself. Privacy appeared to be a weird thing, here. But considering he was an enemy a couple of days ago, hearing what he had to say without me could be invaluable to figuring out where we all stood, so when it came down to it there was really no way to say whether it was right or not.
He was laughing. Rhythmically, shortly. It was probably more noticeable as vibration than sound.
“I sure botched that one, didn’t I?” he said.
“You cleared the whole festival,” came another voice. One I hadn’t heard before, lower, steadier. Valerie. “Is that what you want to talk about? Yes, you overreacted, if you’re asking me. I’m assuming you are.”
They were talking about me; I didn’t know what I expected, what else I might have thought was on their minds, but it was still jarring. Even isolating, in a way. Like I’d been locked out of my own stream of thoughts and forced into the position of a bystander, hearing about myself from some source… beyond myself. That space had never really existed before. I almost felt dizzy.
“To my own credit,” said Marcel, “I actually am glad that I haven’t gotten complacent. I didn’t know what we were dealing with, so I made a call. You would have done the same thing.”
“Not causing a panic is an implicit part of keeping the peace. Word will spread sooner than later, if it isn’t ahead of us already. Vermiles isn’t isolated like they used to be. Nobody is. We may have overstepped our bounds,” Valerie said.
“I know, I know, Val. I’ll take care of it if things get out of hand, alright?” I couldn’t make out his reply. “Doesn’t change the fact that in my position you would’ve done the same thing, though. She didn’t explode. This has been successful, so far.”
“That is why your position is for you and only you, Marcel. So I get to prod you about it when we get home.”
“You’re more conniving than you give yourself credit for,” he laughed. “...But was that a little hint that we’re still on for dinner tomorrow? Hm? It’s been a couple weeks. I could really use some time to unwind, if you know what I mean.”
“That is what you’re concerned about.”
“Among other things.”
Something clattered to the floor, and they paused for a moment. “...Have a handle on the Vermiles coverage by morning and I’ll have a reservation. For everyone.”
“Yes, alright,” he conceded, “I guess I deserve that.”
Then they weren’t talking about me at all, anymore. They moved on quickly. They rambled back and forth a few times with long silences in between, and I sat there with my ear to the wall because when it came down to it, I didn’t have much else to do. I mostly let their voices mix into the noise, until–
“...about what you asked before, what I thought of her,” said Valerie. “I don’t believe I ever actually answered the question.”
“Oh, Valerie, you actually want to impart that on me now? By all means, please do tell. Now that you bring it up, you were downright inscrutable.”
“...She seems sane enough. If you believe her, she’s your responsibility, but I trust you. I think it will be good for all of us to have someone else around.”
“That’s all?” asked Marcel. “Well. I’m glad.”
“That isn’t all, in fact. Regardless of whether she’s from somewhere offworld, whether she is one of them or not, I have… justified concerns… that her arrival is a sign of things to come. I should hope you’ve read my full report–”
“Before River got her hands on it, yes, I did.”
“You are aware that wherever she came from, this is the second incident without precedent in the past six seasons. She could be one of their agents. She could be the spring from which the skeins are propagating, even if she isn’t aware of it. Or her arrival could be a symptom of a greater breach we are not yet aware of. None of the implications are good. You understand this, right, Marcel–?”
Marcel’s voice was different when he spoke up. Slower. Softer. “Val,” he said. “I know, and I’m with you, alright? But let’s take this a day at a time. Wait until we get back before throwing yourself back into this loop, at the very least. Please?”
““You can’t convince me that you believe all of this is a coincidence. Distracting myself won’t make it any less true. You know better.”
“Of course not, but…” he trailed off. “...Have you spoken with her at all since we left?”
“No. I haven’t had the chance.”
“Well, maybe try when we get back? Everything will be smoother if we have a rapport, rather than trying to start from scratch. Knowing what we’re dealing with might put you more at ease.” Marcel sighed, deeply. “Well… not really from scratch, to be fair. I just hope she isn’t one to harbour a grudge, huh?”
“Mm,” Valerie hummed, cleanly demarking the two lapsing into another silence. I peeled away from the wall, my jaw feeling fuzzy from all the vibrations. Some of what I heard dissolved and slipped away, discarded, but what was left revealed itself from the mess of thought and emotions: the flimsy shape of what I knew.
My head fell back against the wall and the noise washed through me again, but I managed to drown it out. The shaking felt like my own, but it wasn’t.
At least they’re not monsters, I thought, and blew a strand of hair from my face.
I stood up and took a step further down the stairs, back into the depths of the ship where I’d been planning to go already, before thinking twice and planting my foot where it was. I turned around and walked the short way up to the deck, crossing perpendicular to our course (noting, distantly, that the mortal was gone). Bracing myself against the wall, I climbed the narrow stairs at the windswept edge of the ship.
And I found myself facing the closed door to the bridge, still occupied by Marcel and Valerie. I hadn’t seen inside before. I hadn’t given myself a reason to look.
They both started when I slid the door open, two pairs of eyes flicking toward me disconcertingly– although they both must have sensed me approaching before I was anywhere near the bridge. In all fairness I wasn’t really sure what I was doing there, either. Marcel, standing across the room next to the window, twirled a pen between his fingers, like he’d forgotten to stop when I intruded and pulled his attention away.
And next to him, Valerie.
He was clearly even taller than me, when I could compare them both side-by-side. Otherwise, he wore the same crisp outfit as Marcel, the jacket hanging loose over his shoulders and the thick grey shirt underneath fluttering in the sudden gust. His hands hovered over the long control panel of the ship, his dark eyes, set between hard features and short-cropped hair, fixed solely on me.
“Good to see you’re up and about,” said Marcel, and my eyes dropped from Valerie’s face. “I think we should be landing shortly, but if there’s something you wanted…?”
He trailed off, voice lilting upward at the end like he was expecting there to be something, because naturally that’s what he expected, because why else would I have come up here? Right. There was a reason for that.
I cleared my throat. “Can I speak to you?”
“Well evidently, you can.” He paused. A smile flickered onto his face, vanishing just as quickly. He cleared his own throat. “But you mean now! With me, specifically. It’s just, I mean to say, yes, of course.” He stood, reached over to pat Valerie’s shoulder. “You can keep us on track if the two of us step out for a minute?”
But as he walked over to meet me at the doorway, gesturing to lead the way as he slipped the pen into a pocket, instead of affirming, Valerie said sharply, “Not now. We won’t be in the air for much longer. This will have to wait.”
We both looked at him quizzically, before something passed between them, silently. It was only a fraction of a second of hesitation, but it was undeniably there, even as Valerie’s gaze rested squarely on the panel in front of him.
“Right,” said Marcel, and turned to me apologetically. “Adeline, I need to get on the wire and take care of– it’s complicated. Just a bit of procedure before we land. You understand. I assure you we’ll talk after, though, once we’re settled.”
Oh. I didn’t, really. But I got that they were going to have their hands full very soon. I turned to leave, suddenly very aware of how uncomfortable I was standing there as they started manually checking over the ship’s delicate controls, my presence already nearly forgotten. It felt like they were already speaking amongst themselves again, only without anything as easy and obvious as words. Shame on me for expecting things to make sense.
I found myself stopped in the threshold of the bridge’s sliding door as I held it half-open with one hand, the smooth currents outside gently tugging at my worn clothes. “Of course,” I said. Then, impulsively, something else bubbled up.
“I– sorry, Valerie.”
He paused what he was doing for only a moment, and then, voice gruff, said, “Nothing to be sorry about.” And that was that.
I briskly stepped outside and shut the door.
Disastrous was probably too strong a word. I was, at the same time, relieved and utterly disappointed, and I wasn’t really sure of the logic behind either of those feelings. They had other things to focus on besides me, though. So what? I was with them now.
I had nothing but time. I could wait a little longer. So, as I waited, I returned to the open air and searched for our destination.
The wilderness far below us, cut in two by the river winding toward the horizon, wasn’t marked only by hills and woodland anymore; I leaned out over the railing and saw tiny houses, trackways and roads, patches of densely-packed farms plots and rows of bright green plants sprung from the earth. Even as I watched the tracks merged and flowed into one another, sprouting lamps and fences and more humble buildings.
At the horizon, the river melted into the sky, rapidly dimming as the sun descended once again behind the clouds. We passed a flock of birds riding the windstream some distance away across the open air, nevertheless following the same course.
And rising over that impossibly-thin line, stricken in dark bands of shadow and fiery sunlight, I saw the city rising; first a handful of towering spires, and then a forest of shorter silhouettes, bursting from behind the edge of the sky.
Solace, the capital, was vast, glittering, brilliant; the electric rumble of its lifeblood intensified every moment we neared. I pulled River’s long scarf tighter around me, without thinking, its touch mingling with the wind.
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