Magonia(65)

NO.
“BOARD!” Dai shouts, out of the invisible, and I see an entire swath of Zal’s starry-camouflage unwrap from around Amina Pennarum.

Dai dives into the rigging right above me, twirling a rope. He and Svilken are singing incredibly fast. There’s a giant wind kicking up and the squallwhales are orbiting us, looking ready to sing a hurricane. Dai’s shouting at me, and now, now I start singing.
Jason. Jason. JASON.
It’s that song, that griefsong that slams into a Breath, yanking out his tubes. The Breath falls, clutching his chest, ropes twisting around him.
A boom, a big boom and the Regalecus
ShAkEs
And sags at one end, one sail half gone.
I see Jik slash at a Breath, stronger than I could have imagined, still on Zal’s ship, but fighting for me. I’m screaming hard, this song roaring out of my throat. Because. I can’t. I won’t let this be true.
I sing the hummingbirds loose from the official ship’s sail. They fly, darts of dark, fast, fast, into the sky.
My song rises up, Dai amplifying it, and one wasp detaches itself from the Regalecus’s other sail. Then another. A swarm spins up into the dark. And then, there’s a grinding in the sky. The ship lurches, ponderously, a huge weight settling.
Heyward raises her chin in the air, inhales from her oxygen and starts to launch herself to tackle me to the deck.
NO.
I dive at her instead with everything I have. Every memory. Every rage. Everything.
Jason.
I open my mouth and Milekt and Dai join with me. Sand forms in the space between Heyward and me. I sing the air solid. I sing it full.
Choke, I sing, and I think of her lungs, think of her gasping the way I gasped all my life, strangling on air.
I knock her down, but she’s not that easy. She kicks herself forward, a knife in each hand, trying to get to my chest to cut me open, cut Milekt out. She’s trying to kill my canwr.
I sing harder, deeper. I feel things shattering on this ship, Breath helmets, and bits of rigging.
Heyward’s knife slices my arm.
All I have is my voice, but it pushes her, twists her, wrings her.
All around us, my crew and Zal are fighting Breath.
Heyward’s hurt. She grits her teeth, pure force of will, and launches herself at me again.
I roar, this shrill shrieking noise, and I feel it vibrate my vocal cords, feel my canwr with me, and there’s Heyward in front of me, and a sound, a thundering sound.
JASON, I screamsing.
I can hear what I’m doing, calling to the sky and telling it to come to me. Telling it to empty itself for me.
The air’s cracking. There are flashes of light all around us, the sky splitting, and I’m still making the noise, high and sweet and deadly.
I feel it in my fingers, in my tongue, in my teeth, the beginning of fire.
I’m making a storm now, making the air into it, making parts of our bodies into it.
And we sing.
IF YOU KILL THE PEOPLE I LOVE, I WILL DESTROY YOU.
It’s a deathsong, and I’m not sure whose. If it’s for Jason or Heyward or for the entire universe.
Inside my chest Milekt revolts, refusing that song, and I gasp, choking, trying to breathe.
In that pause, all the Breath dive off the ship, covering themselves in shadows.
Heyward is the last to go, abandoning ship. She shouts in fury, shoots me a look made of ice, and dives off the plank.
They’re gone into the night faster than we can follow.
My song is broken by tears. I can’t. I can’t.
Jason.
I sag. I sing, and I don’t know what I’m singing now, but it’s only grief and after a minute, all I can do is sob.
My crew ransacks Regalecus, hanging in the sky now by a single sail. They open the closets, pushing through the vaults, taking provisions.
I’m with Dai, walking as though I’m asleep. I keep thinking squid. I keep thinking burned. I keep thinking gone.
Dead. Dead?
I feel a kind of blankness. I won’t cry again in front of Dai. I won’t cry at all.
If I do, I’ll never stop.
Dai pulls the curtain off one of the portholes, and it’s startling to see the room cloud lit, gray and piercing.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
“For what?”
“Your friend,” he says.
He looks at me, his expression tight, his mouth a crooked line. “I know you loved him.”
“I—”
“I know what it’s like,” he cuts in. “I know how it feels to lose someone you love.”
I shut my eyes for a moment and stay in the dark. I stay there a while.
“What were you doing?” he finally asks me.
“When?”
“When you took off with Zal’s heartbird,” he says.
“Nothing,” I say dumbly. “I made a mistake.”
“You set the falcon free,” he says.
“Yeah.”
Dai nods. “Even if he betrayed Zal long ago, he had no memory of it. It’s better to set him free. He had no song, no use. He should have been released.”
Dai opens a cabinet in the corner. I catch a glimpse of something pale, something fleshy. A body?
Oh god, what if it’s—
“They’re just skins,” Dai says. “Same as the one you were in. Though impressive ones. New versions. Maganwetar must plan to go down amongst them now. That’s useful knowledge.”
He rifles through them. They’re each encased in their own bag. I shiver. Dai takes my hand. That does me no good. He pulls one of the skins out from inside the closet.
It’s less than a body. Flat, deflated, almost a piece of clothing. She’s pale and sad, her face peaceful. A lifelike doll-woman, hanging inside a clear sack, zipped into it. Her hair is long and blond. Her skin is pale, and her eyes are shut. Her lips are just slightly open.