“How?” I ask.
“We need you to retrieve something,” Zal says. “The drowners put it beneath rocks, in a place they thought it would be safe. We need you to turn those rocks to water. You and Dai. Together you’ll be strong enough. Then, we’ll bring it up into the sky.”
“What is it?”
“Aza,” she says. “If the drowners starve themselves, we starve with them. If they destroy our skies, we die with them. We must take back what belongs to us. You will help us steal something that was stolen from us, long ago.” Zal smiles and it pulls me in. “The drowners have our plants underground. In a hidden vault in the frozen North.”
The crew’s been cautious with me, I realize now. But there are a lot of stories about the Magonian epiphytes, because apparently they were magic food, enough for all of the skydwellers. Did some kind of bad bargain with earth take them away?
Are these plants the only thing Magonia wants?
“Why doesn’t Magonia just negotiate with earth?” I say, and Dai looks at me and laughs.
I imagine a delegation of Magonians landing on the lawn of the White House, asking to talk to the president about trade. It’s pretty obvious that said delegation would get shot out of the sky before it even landed.
Okay, yeah. I get that.
“There can be no more wishing for our people, no more relying on others to do the right things. Do you see what you can do? For me? For us?” Zal taps her chest, right over her scar.
I look up at Zal. “A plant,” I say.
She nods. “A plant, yes. And so, so much more. You, Aza, will save your entire people.”
Even though a small part of my brain is muttering about how no deal is ever simple, the angry song Milekt sang is still rattling around in my head, and it drowns out everything else.
“Yes,” I say to Zal.
“Do you swear to it?” she says, and puts out her hand, blue and calloused.
I offer my own hand, but I’m not prepared when she slashes my palm with a tiny silver knife. Inky blood, and pain, a searing sense of flood. I stagger back, but she presses her own palm to mine, her own cut.
“We already share blood, daughter,” she says. “But this is ritual. We’re vowed to our mission now. Swear it.”
Her blood drips onto the deck as the pod of injured squallwhales swim slowly past us.
“I swear,” I say, watching them go, listening to their broken, breathless song. Dai stands beside me, his hand on my back. Somewhere deep in the ship I hear Caru call, just once, a long wail in the dark.
“Daughter,” Zal says, and kisses my forehead.
I close my eyes and for just a moment, I’m on earth again. My mom putting me to bed, keeping me safe, keeping me alive every night.
Then I open my eyes and it’s cold wind all around me, and the fading song of the sick squallwhales as we sail away from them and into the night.
I’m at Dai’s cabin the next morning, pounding on the door. He opens it, looking like I woke him up.
Does he ever wear a shirt? He stretches his arms out. I try not to be taken in by the look of him, but it’s useless.
He jumped off the boat to save me from vultures and pirates.
Um, you were already in the process of saving yourself, my brain points out, but I’m not in the mood for logic.
Dai cared. So I can trust him. I want to trust someone.
“So, I’m not just a normal Magonian singer. My song is different, right?”
“What do you think?” he says, and grins.
“And according to Zal, according to Wedda, according to everyone, you’re supposed to sing with me,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice under control. “That’s supposedly part of your official job description.”
“It is,” he says.
“How come you never do?”
“Because you weren’t ready.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you never did before what you did yesterday,” he says, fairly reasonably.
His eyebrow goes up in a way that reminds me of—
I imagine Jenny Green ringing Jason’s doorbell, looking at him with sympathy in the wake of my death, and him answering the door muttering pi.
No. Jason wouldn’t actually want Jenny Green.
(He might.)
He wouldn’t.
Dai must see the messed-up look on my face.
“Are you okay?” he asks, and he puts his hand on my shoulder. The warmth of it makes its way through my jacket, and it apparently doesn’t matter that I just got derailed by sad, I feel my heart pounding as though I’m singing all over again.
I’m standing here with a boy who lost his own family, in a totally different way than I lost mine. Who am I to be sad? My family on earth is still alive. His isn’t.
“Fine,” I say, even though I have to grab my own fingers and hold my own hand to keep from touching him. It’s such a want that it’s almost not a want at all, but a need, like the need for water or food.
I try in vain to swallow down the guilt and the weirdness and the want and every single thought except about what’s in front of me. Dai shrugs on his shirt and jacket, giving me so much view of his back, his shoulders, his profile, I have to actually shut my eyes.
“You’re shy,” he says, reappearing beside me, and he laughs.
“You weren’t wearing enough,” I say.
“Drowner,” he says, but for the first time, it’s in a teasing voice.
“Exhibitionist,” I say.