The sky is full of shreds of clothing now, drifting like milkweed. I can hear vultures below us, and more than vultures. I look down and see a giant smoky tentacle of something, moving slowing, taking some part of Ley’s body, and curling away into a dark cloud. It’s so huge I can’t see all of it, but a flickering mass of eight silvery arms, large enough to tear this ship from the sky, before it pulses away again.
Dai passes me and touches my shoulder. I shriek and clench my fist. He wrestled Ley up onto the deck. He’s unquestioningly loyal to Zal and the ship. What does that mean? What would he do if I was on the wrong side?
Dai frowns, then swings himself back up into the rigging, Svilken chattering away at him, telling him to get back to work or there’ll be more work later. Milekt flits away to the top of a mast, where he roosts in a hunched ball of brightness.
I feel sick. I keep seeing Ley fall, again and again. Her words—about not trusting Zal, about Caru, echo through my mind.
There’s a feeling—a dread that doesn’t go away. There’s nothing to be done about it. Ley is left far behind us in the sky, buried in the clouds and circled and consumed by creatures. Dead thing.
I remember the story Jason told me, four Magonians showing up in a town on earth, getting put in the stocks. But they would’ve drowned if they’d really fallen.
Maybe they did drown. The story didn’t say how long they were down there, nor did it say what ultimately happened to them.
Magonians—we—don’t look enough like humans to pass. If I went overboard and didn’t die, what would happen? What would they do to me on earth now?
Some part of me still hoped that maybe I could go home—
But no. There’s no maybe. I can’t.
Eli might be going to school now. She might be in algebra learning enough math to calculate the size of the universe. She might be in English, learning words to describe the way her sister left her one night in the middle of a snowstorm.
I guess I’m never going to know what Eli will turn out to be.
And she’ll never know I’m up here training to—
What am I training to do?
I grit my teeth and climb up into the rigging a little way below Dai. I look out at the nothing and wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t. He just stares out into the clouds, looking worried.
I can feel something changing. I’m not Dai, trained my whole life to obey orders.
I can feel uncertainty, but also ferocity, branching alongside everything.
Dai puts an arm out, and I cautiously lean into him. Once I’m there, against his body, there’s that rightness when we touch. He looks out at the sky.
“That was the first execution I’ve seen,” he says, and I feel him shaking.
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
For a moment, I think about my dream, the interrupted dream, Jason walking through the dark air of the undersky. Holding up his hands to me. Then I forget him again, hard, and on purpose, letting him go forever. He was a dream from a place I used to know.
He was a drowner.
And I am Magonia.
Jik shows up in my cabin before dawn. My canwr’s in the cote, sleeping with the rest of the birds, and I’m down here, supposedly sleeping too.
Did I miss a watch or something? That would be Dai after me, not Jik. Jik has no authority.
“You should know something,” Jik says after a moment.
I sit up, eager to listen.
“I feed him,” she whispers.
“Who?”
“The captain’s bird. It’s part of my duties.”
“But Wedda says—” I say.
Jik shows me her hand, each finger surrounded by a metal ring, and shakes it in the air.
“None of us can be trusted,” she says. “Wedda? And Dai? Have they made you think there’s nothing wrong in Magonia? Magonians are at war with one another, and we, the feathered classes, are at their mercy. Don’t you ever wonder—”
“What?”
“Which of the Rostrae and canwr who serve you do it unwillingly?”
I stare at her as the implications of what she’s saying fasten into my brain.
“Your Milekt is a lungbird, and loyal to the captain. The captain was granted a heartbird, and when she lost her bond to him, she was unwilling to let him go.”
“What are you trying to say?” I ask. “Just say it.”
“Caru betrayed Zal. Her own canwr refused to sing her song with her. Are you sure you understand your mother? Are you certain you trust her?”
A few things are falling into place in my head.
“I’m not asking you to free the Rostrae,” Jik says. “There is a time for rebellion, and it is coming. Some of us work toward those ends. Some of us work from the inside.”
She looks at me, her gaze a challenge.
“Aza. There are places on the ground that will be lost to us all if Zal has her way.”
“She only wants the airplants,” I say defensively, hearing myself and feeling suspicious of what I’m saying.
Jik looks at me.
“Did you see what she did tonight? She broke her word. Denial of deathsong? That is against all Magonian laws,” Jik whispers in the harshest, sharpest tones. Like I’m a fool. Like I know nothing.
“Do you trust a woman who would deny a deathsong? Your mother, Aza Ray, is a criminal. She has no honor.”
It’s too much.
“Do you presume to question the captain’s judgment, Rostrae?” I interrupt, and I hear it coming out of my mouth, this wrongness, this not fairness.