Only Broken Things Are Free (A Pygmalion Fail Book 3) Read online

  My feet hit the deck and Captain Tammagan nodded. “Welcome back,” she said coolly.

  Kyra and Elsie burst from behind the Captain, Elsie throwing her arms around me, nearly tackling me over the rail. “Magister Grawflefox! Thank God, I was so afraid.” She squeezed.

  “Uh.” I blushed, confused. It was an energetic greeting even by Elsie’s standards. “What about?”

  “I was worried you’d come back with a battle scar,” she whispered. “Kyra goes crazy for battle scars, and I didn’t want her to be unnecessarily attracted to you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jerk.” At one point I’d carried a torch for both Elsie and Kyra; but Elsie was gay and closeted, and Kyra only dated other nobles.

  Elsie put me in a headlock and noogied my scalp. “Hey look, everyone, the wizard’s totally intact. I won the pool! Didn’t I tell you he’d be too chicken to get in the line of fire?”

  “Some would call it wise,” Kyra said. The olive-skinned beauty stood in her usual stately posture, her hair braided with one white blossom. The flower was something I’d never seen an Akarri bother with. She held Leo in her hands, proffering him. “Your turtle missed you.”

  “And thank you for reptile-sitting while I was out saving your queen,” I teased, taking my shelled friend in one arm. “Hey, wait a minute—isn’t that your job?” I asked Tammagan. “Does this make me an honorary Akarri? If so,” I directed a thumb at Elsie, “I’ll take her job. She’s lazy.”

  “Would you listen to this guy!” Elsie shouted, tightening her headlock. “He wants to be an Akarri. You going to shave your legs and wear the bikini armor?”

  “Since when do you shave your legs?” Tammagan cracked, her stern features thawing briefly into a smile.

  Elsie stiffened, releasing me, and her back went rigid. She saluted. “My habits are within regulation, Captain.”

  My instinct was to laugh. It had to be a joke.

  But Elsie didn’t grin. The pixie-faced brunette stared hard at Tammagan, held the salute, and finally the Captain dismissed her with a wave, saying, “Of course. At ease.”

  “I have duties.” Elsie nodded at me once, then flitted below deck without a word.

  I had trouble figuring out what I’d just seen. A week ago, Elsie had been the wild kid sister of the crew, with a longstanding secret crush on the Captain—and I suspected Tammagan returned her affections. Between the Captain’s superior station and the Akarri’s sensitivity about female/female relationships within their ranks, though, it had ended with a stern rebuff.

  I guess Elsie got the message. There was worry in Tammagan’s eyes when Elsie departed—faint, but I’d drawn Tammagan; I knew her face.

  “What’s that all about?” I quietly asked Kyra.

  “It’s between them,” she whispered.

  A round of “Huzzah!” greeted Eliandra’s arrival on deck. Ronin came aboard next with mask clipped on, and the Akarri sprang into action at her terse orders to bring the ship around. The Akarri might belong to the Queen, but Ronin commanded them in combat.

  The groaning winch pulled Dak up last. The eight-foot orc wore breeches blended with leather girding on his loins and steel plate at his shins and knees, his upper torso shirtless and scars from the bolts nearly erased. Hanging by the line, he had that Conan look going on, the braids in his hair tossed by the breeze.

  But when he came into view, Kyra sucked in a breath, blanching. His huge, orcish feet thudded onto the deck, and swords rang from scabbards all around me. “Orc!” cried Kyra, rushing him.

  “Hold!” Ronin barked.

  Kyra’s sword point stilled about six inches from Dak’s throat, her whole body tense, poised to drive it into his windpipe.

  “He’s with us,” Ronin said.

  All around us, the Akarri had drawn steel. Even Tammagan, who had moved to reinforce Kyra. A murmur went around.

  “I said he’s with us!” Ronin shouted.

  Only at the second order did they sheathe their weapons—Tammagan last of all, and without taking her eyes off my friend.

  “I can see how this ‘orc’ thing will get old,” said Dak.

  “He’s a Northern Spine orc,” I assured Tammagan. The species the Akarri were at war with was Dracon’s, and my impression was they’d fallen straight out of someone’s Monster Manual.

  “What’s the difference?” Tammagan asked.

  “My kind only eat redheads,” Dak said.

  “Look, just forget what you think you know about orcs and treat my friend like a very tall asshole, because that’s all he is,” I said.

  The Akarri went back to their duties, but their restless glances were pointed. Dak had gone stone silent, so we went below deck to my old bunk. He didn’t fit on either bed and had to scrunch both knees to his chest to squeeze into one. He growled, stood, and banged his head on the ceiling. He looked like an adult wadded into some little kid’s playhouse. “This is stupid.” He punched a wall, splintering a panel. We both stared at the hole.

  “You okay?”

  “No.” He blew out a frustrated sigh, stooping back through the door without comment. An Akarri cursed his “gargantuan frame” in the hallway and he shouted back louder as they tried to get past one another.

  Dak needed space, so I found a cherry tomato in the galley and fed it to Leo while heading above deck, to the butt end of the ship where Ronin gripped the giant wheel. “How’s this thing even steer?” I asked.

  “You don’t know?” asked Ronin, her voice distorted again by her demon mask.

  “I just drew it.” Maybe I should have researched ships a little more… I was pretty sure this part wasn’t usually called the butt end. “I know a lot about rune stones and magitech, but not boats. Didn’t think through all the details.”

  “That explains a lot,” Ronin said. “Float stones keep it aloft, and the sails power forward movement. The rudder only works if we splash down in water. Otherwise, slight vibrations against the aft stone steer the ship.”

  “You wanted to go west. Why?”

  “To hide you.”

  “How informative. C’mon, you’re keeping secrets. Have I pestered you about how you know more about my powers than I do? Or why you hate Dracon? Or why you bleed silver, for that matter. You could at least tell me where we’re going.”

  “To Lake Everfrost and the Citadel of Light.”

  “Evocative, but doing me no favors.”

  Ronin growled.

  “Fine. Don’t tell me. Tell Leo.” I lifted the turtle in front of my face, pointing his smiling beak Ronin’s way. Using my best fake-turtle voice (which wasn’t particularly good), I said, “I am Leonardo, your loyal companion. You can trust me.”

  Her blue eyes stared from behind the mask.

  “This hard shell protects my secrets,” I said through Leo. “Also, my ears are actually internal bones abutting thin, fleshy membranes, with no external ear to channel noises. So my hearing isn’t very sensitive and I probably won’t quite catch what you say. In addition, I don’t speak any languages, because I’m a turtle.” Leo grinned joyfully at Ronin.

  She snorted. “Fine. The Citadel of Light was created by the last dreamer—the one who came between Dracon and you. I knew her.”

  So that’s how Ronin knows about my powers. I nodded.

  “At full strength, the Citadel amplifies a dreamer’s power enough to change Rune from outside the realm, such as when you first altered it through your paintings.”

  “If you get me there, could I just draw Dracon out of the world?”

  “No. The Citadel isn’t at full strength with two dreamers in the realm. Though Dracon’s power has waned from centuries of abuse and stagnation, he still divides your power. The last dreamer hoped to use the Citadel to go home, but failed. It’s a staging ground, though—a place for you to hide, gather power, and wait for Dracon’s end. It’s imperative that Dracon never learn it exists.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” I said through Leo.

  “Understa
nd: I keep things from you not because I lack faith in you, but because Dracon would torture you for this information. I know things about his power that even he doesn’t. I’ll tell you everything when you’re secured in the Citadel.”

  I smiled, understanding now why she kept her secrets. “I trust you.”

  She went still, searched me with her eyes, and nodded. “Thank you.”

  I watched her sail the sky ship, silently fascinated by the relaxed posture she used to grip the wheel and tease the vessel toward a point on the horizon. Even masked and with her beauty concealed by body armor, the casual grip and the sureness in her stance made my heart catch, capturing something about her I loved: her confidence.

  In that moment, secrets didn’t matter. I didn’t want to know anything else about her, because I was afraid of adding too many tallies to my “You’ll go to hell if you do” sheet. Yet the idea that I’d created her nagged me, spoiling the serenity of merely watching her sail.

  Trying to distract myself, I drummed “Wipe Out” on Leo’s shell. Worry haunted the edges of my mind anyway.

  When I glanced up, Ronin stared at me again.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Have you ever flown?”

  “No. Wait. Does offering to let me ‘fly’ mean you’re throwing me off the ship?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I heard this rumor about you dragging a guy through a pine forest.”

  “That only happened twice.”

  “In that case, what did you have in mind?”

  She beckoned me, so I stood and approached the wheel while she braced it in one hand.

  “You’re seriously letting me drive?” Aunt Amy wouldn’t even lend me the keys to her new pickup after I lightly—ever so lightly—took some paint off that nice police officer’s cruiser.

  “Hold the wheel here and here. Plant your feet apart. A stray gust could toss the wheel.” She kicked my heels, nudging them farther apart. Her cool grip yanked one wrist and my hand flew from the peg. “Tighter,” she said.

  I firmed my grip. “Like that?”

  She pulled again, but my hand held fast. “Good.” She released the wheel.

  My stomach flip-flopped. Realization set in: I was holding the sky ship steady. The whole of the ship—taut ropes, whipping sails, rocking deck—all of it controlled by two hands. Nervous energy jittered through me, but I couldn’t suppress the widening grin.

  “How does it feel?” she asked.

  “Kind of scary. Kind of cool. Scary-cool.”

  She pointed to a distant, gleaming river, off to the left. “Adjust course and point us there. Gently.”

  The wheel spun farther than expected before the turn started, but the ship bent gradually toward the river. Ronin took a lever beside us, adjusted it, and the ship started to rise. It didn’t incline, but merely lifted as if carried by a tide.

  “We want to hit cloud cover,” she said. “It will hide us from sentries on the ground. By going west, I hope to avoid tangling with a stray flock of dragons.”

  Our mast cut the dank clouds like a knife blade and left a black slice behind. As we rose, it swallowed our sails a few feet at a time. It felt as though the whole sky were coming down atop my head. “Hold the wheel.”

  “Why?”

  “Please.” My heart jackhammered.

  She took the wheel and I stretched my fingers over my head, my hand scraping the periphery of the cloud, which was more like an extremely dense mist the closer we approached.

  I laughed. “Oh, wow.” It was wetter than I’d expected, and as it swallowed more of me, a chill worked over my body.

  We were engulfed in the foggy wet, so opaque I couldn’t see Ronin beside me. Her hands found mine. They were soft and powerful at once, planting my grip back on the wheel and holding it there. I realized she was tucked in behind me and my shiver wasn’t entirely from the temperature.

  “Are they all like this?” I asked.

  “Some are wetter. The nimbus clouds—the droplets are fat, like flying through rain. In some, it’s frost instead of water. Very cold clouds will ice our sails and deck; unwary sailors can skid over the rail.” For a while, we flew through the mist. Then she added, as an afterthought, “Some of them smell like fish.”

  Water had matted my hair; a cool drop passed through my collar, zipped down my spine, and charged my every nerve. I was aware of her body even though it didn’t quite touch mine. “You know a lot about this world. About clouds, and Dracon, and everything in it.”

  “I do.” Her hands hadn’t left mine.

  Realization made my heart skitter. “You’ve been around a long time.”

  “You knew this about me.”

  But now I connected it to my drawings, which had only affected Rune over the last hundred years. Relief flooded through me. “I didn’t create you,” I whispered.

  She snorted again—I realized Ronin never laughed. That little noise was the closest she’d ever come. “Why does that matter?”

  We pushed through the cloud cover and her hands released mine so that she could ease down the lever, stopping our ascent. The ship sailed across the clouds, cutting a wake in the misty surface. The sky was naked and clear above the overcast; the sun blazed its last purple colors on the horizon we scudded toward, the first stars and the three moons shining directly above.

  “It matters,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I shrugged, unable to glance back at her.

  “I have ways of making you talk.”

  I grinned. “Promises, promises.” My mouth clapped shut in sudden realization: Did I just flirt with her? Did I just flirt with Batman and Wolverine’s lovechild? That was quite possibly a poor life decision.

  Instead of flaying me, she stepped forward into my peripheral vision, gazing off at the encroaching twilight. For the hundredth time, her short stature surprised me. She was seven feet tall in my mind’s eye. “Speak, Isaac.”

  “Okay.” I summoned my courage with a long breath. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because I know Eliandra likes to stir up trouble, but she intimated to Dak that you’re into… um…” I sought a way to describe myself that was short of bragging but not faux humility. “Into guys who are less than traditionally masculine, but perhaps make up for it with our witty repartee.”

  “I see.” Ronin didn’t quite look at me.

  “I maybe got some actual ‘I’m sort of into you’ vibes from you, too.” My cheeks blazed and I cleared my throat when she didn’t interrupt. “It weirded me out, because you’re not the type of woman who goes for my particular flavor of awesomeness. So I worried I’d… y’know. Drawn you. Or things that somehow turned into you. And Dak suggested that maybe I’d subconsciously implanted in you the desire to fall for adorable, blond geeks.”

  “Would it bother you if you’d created me with those desires?”

  That was a strange question. I’d wanted her to say she either liked me or didn’t. Instead, she wanted to delve into that particular thicket. I turned it over in my head, figuring I owed her an explanation. “There’s something ugly about the idea of making someone love you.”

  She nodded. “It steals their will. It’s a type of rape. But I’m not talking about overriding someone’s will; I’m talking about creating in them a capacity, a desire, and leaving them free to act. Which is closer to what you’re talking about.”

  “Still skeevy. It’s ugly in a Freudian way.”

  “I do not know ‘Freud.’ ”

  “Incestuous?”

  “I should add, I have no parents and cannot reproduce.”

  Okay. That’s… different. “What about Eliandra? You understand you have a lot of power over her as the person who raised her, right?”

  Ronin nodded.

  “It’s a screwed-up power dynamic. Even beyond the genetic ‘ick’ factor, parents have a role in shaping children; not only do we cleanly separate parental from romantic love, but we have age-of-consent laws, I think, for simil
ar reasons. Children are… halfway created beings. Still nascent. People shouldn’t have the power to make or to remake their romantic partners. Romantic love is too selfish for that. It ends up as a violence on the poor soul trapped on their anvil; and it perverts the heart of the maker.”

  “You feared you had that power over me?” I could hear the smirk in her voice.

  I deflated. “I did. And I didn’t want to be the mayor of Ick Town.”

  She laid her hand on my shoulder. “You will never be more powerful than me.”

  “Strangely comforting.”

  “So the reverse doesn’t bother you? I’m much more powerful than you, after all.”

  “It bothers me some,” I said. “For instance, sometimes I worry Eliandra sees me as a sibling to quarrel with; I don’t want to be a little kid in your eyes.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You’re more like a pet.”

  My first instinct was to take offense, but I thrust it aside. Ronin had clearly dumped her charisma stat. “What do you mean?”

  “I expend routine effort to keep you alive. But you provide useful services and companionship. You can even do some things I cannot. Plainly, at my age and skill level, I’m the superior force. But your contributions are irreplaceable.” She glanced at me, blue eyes boring through me. “And you are appreciated.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’re comparing me to a dog.”

  “No, a pet.” Ronin held out one hand to demonstrate. “A dog is down here. A human is up here. As a wizard, I rate your competencies above a normal human’s.” By now her hand was to chest height. “I’m up here.” It went well above her head.

  I adjusted my grip on the wheel. “Where’s Eliandra?”

  Ronin put her hand—remarkably—just a few inches above where she’d put me.

  “Is Eliandra your ‘pet’?”

  Ronin paused, and for the first time, I felt like I’d won an argument with her. She turned back toward the horizon. “I see your point.”

  “Can’t we just leave it here?” I asked. “Clearly, you would own me in a fight. But maybe our value isn’t rated on a scale of who can beat up whom. Maybe we’re all just people.”