These Rebel Waves

  Her limbs worked by memory until she knocked over a vial, her hands shaking.

  Vex wrapped his fingers around her wrist. His other hand settled on the back of her neck, a whisper of a touch that shot comfort down her spine. She leaned against him, but all she saw were words flashing in her mind:

  The war is returning.

  Everything I did, the lives I took, the horrible acts I committed, meant nothing.

  Edda gave them the Mecht boat’s current location so they could trail it out to the sea. She couldn’t abandon her Mecht crew without arousing suspicion, but Cansu said that she would get her raiders out to the ocean. It would be a day of travel from the Tuncian syndicate.

  Until then, Nayeli, Vex, and Lu would find out what mysterious contacts the Mechts were meeting late at night. They would scout, and get proof of Argrid’s conspiracy, and Lu would do everything in her power to make the Council see reason.

  The Rapid Meander left the Backswamp village later that afternoon. Nayeli operated the engine room, Vex went to the pilothouse. Lu stayed alongside Nayeli to assist her, and Teo stayed with them to keep out of trouble.

  After a few hours, Nayeli said, “We’ve reached the ocean.”

  Lu paused in the motion of shoveling coal into the furnace. Teo sat on Edda’s cot, flipping through Botanical Wonders.

  “I’ll be a moment, Teo,” she said.

  He hummed at her in response, idly kicking his legs.

  Lu lifted herself onto the deck. Where monstrous arching trees had been interspersed with the swamp’s moist, mossy shadows, there was now an expanse of blue, star-speckled navy sky above and froth-capped indigo ocean below. The air filled her lungs with salt and freshness and a churning sensation brought by the wind in her ears and the waves crashing against the boat’s hull.

  She had seen the ocean a few times, and this undeniable swell of power always awed her. Here was a force that no one could tame or break.

  The Rapid Meander sped along, smoke streaming into the dark sky. The late hour worked in their favor, giving them the advantage of stealth when they doused the lanterns. Other steamboats sailed ahead of them, lights low—the Mecht boats, one carrying Edda.

  An hour later, the steamboats they followed dove around an inlet. New silhouettes nestled alongside tufts of rock far off the coast.

  In the pilothouse, Lu shifted at the door. “Ships.”

  “Only one country has sails like that.” Vex’s posture was rigid at the helm.

  Lu forced herself to say the word they were thinking, to not fear it. “Argrid.”

  28

  THE THREE STEAMBOATS they followed headed for the largest of the ships hidden among the rock outcroppings. Lu braced herself in the pilothouse’s doorway and counted the clusters of masts—three belonged to brigantines, two-masted vessels equipped for speed and protection; and two belonged to galleons, behemoths of transport and comfort.

  No warships. But it was hardly reassuring that this fleet was not sent to destroy them—who was on those ships? Why were they here? Were more ships waiting off the coast?

  Lu’s resolution not to let Nayeli blow up the ships hardened. They needed information. No matter what Cansu said, or what Lu herself had feared, war had not yet come. They could still stop this without violence.

  The Rapid Meander slowed as Vex maneuvered them around the jagged rocks. The steamboats ahead faded from sight, night welcoming them into the embrace of the hidden gathering.

  “Two main ships,” he noted.

  Nayeli had joined them on deck moments after the Argridian ships came into view, the furnace well stocked with coal and Teo safely belowdecks. “The big one will be full of activity as soon as the Mechts show up,” she said.

  As if on cue, a single lantern flared to life on board the largest galleon. It flashed twice, then was joined by a second lantern, the lights low enough that, had Lu not been paying attention, she would have dismissed it as starlight.

  “Plus Edda’ll be with them, so she’ll keep an eye out for things there,” Nayeli added.

  “Things,” Vex echoed. “Plants. Or weapons. Or news of ships beyond that we can’t see.”

  “They aren’t warships,” Lu countered. “This won’t end in bloodshed. We can handle anything else.”

  Vex gave her a disbelieving look. “Bloodshed isn’t the worst thing that could come from those ships. Who do you think’s on them? Happy diplomats come to celebrate the peace treaty and leave with smiles on their faces?”

  Lu clamped her lips, wrestling her fear into submission. But Vex set her mind spinning. The king could be on one of those ships. His son. High-ranking generals with orders to ready the island for incoming waves of soldiers. Or perhaps these ships had come at Milo’s behest, and he was aboard one, gloating in satisfaction of his impending victory over Grace Loray. What did they have to stop him? Cansu’s syndicate and the Seniors under house arrest?

  Lu’s hope wilted, the last feeble petal on a dying flower.

  They could stop this. They could board those ships, find proof, take it to the Council—

  Her plan echoed, focusing her mind.

  Get aboard a ship. Find proof that Argrid did this. Get to the Council.

  Lu was a soldier. She was a spy. This was what she did—gathered information, took it back to her parents. Her body and mind functioned on that instinct, but beyond it, she was fraying.

  Lu pointed at the smaller galleon, off to the right and farther back. “We’ll start there.”

  Vex plowed the Meander in that direction, weaving behind rocks to put space between them and the brigantines.

  The smaller galleon was docked at the farthest rock, as though its captain found the proceedings boring and wanted to waste no time leaving once the order came. Vex brought the Meander around the ship’s port side, the right edge of the vessel flush with the rock. He dropped the engine as low as it would go, the eternal slosh and groan of the ocean covering its hum, and as the boat drew closer, a struggle raged in Lu’s body.

  She hadn’t felt this mix of emotions since her missions during the revolution. Anticipation, bright and nauseating and exciting, paired with an exquisite dread. But it was that dread that climbed over all else, towering above her drive, her resolve.

  Milo Ibarra could be on that ship.

  Vex killed the engine. The galleon’s hull bulged with four floors of portholes, arranged in decorative rows that, Lu suspected, would glint with polished copper in the sunlight. But those decorations would be their way in—climb the moldings, flip over the railing, and search each floor for news of Argrid’s next step or Elazar’s progression or Milo . . .

  “Nay, keep the Meander hidden behind some of those rocks. We’ll signal you when we need to leave. But if things turn bad, get to safety.” Vex gave the order behind Lu. She didn’t move, her shoulder fused to the pilothouse’s frame. “Lu and I can handle this. Can’t we?”

  Lu’s eyes went to the galleon’s silent deck.

  Hire Devereux Bell to find Milo Ibarra—it had been her only plan.

  She hadn’t thought this far ahead, with all that had happened. To the moment when they would find him, and Vex would assume she’d accompany him to get Milo—she wasn’t a lady now. She was who she used to be. A spy. A murderer.

  Milo would see her, brandishing weapons, defiant, vicious.

  Lu spun away from Vex. “No. You go. See if Milo is on board.”

  Vex gave her an odd look. “Ordinarily I’d be flattered that you think so highly of my skills, but that’s not all we’re here for. Ibarra’s important, sure, but he’s not the—”

  “This is what I hired you for,” Lu told him. “I infiltrated far worse places with far less information, and as a child, no less.”

  Lu threw herself at the hatch, getting one hand on the ring to open it before Vex stopped her, his boot on the door.

  “Why do you think Ibarra’ll fix this? What’s he gonna do, confess all he’s done?”

  Lu looked up at him. “U
nder the proper circumstances.”

  Vex dropped back. His demeanor changed, arms slack, eye narrowing. The boat rocked as Nayeli moved closer, while Vex looked tragic and exhausted and furious all at once.

  “What, exactly, are the proper circumstances?” he asked.

  Lu’s heart thundered, her mind roaring yet empty. Ocean spray stuck hair to her cheeks, made her palms clammy and her whole body cold.

  She’d wanted to find Milo Ibarra, to drag him back to face the Council. But Milo wouldn’t confess—he’d never confessed anything he’d done.

  But he would this time. Lu would make him.

  That wish sprouted in her belly. Roots dug into her legs, leaves unfurling in her chest and up her mouth until she parted her lips and knew, if she let the wish grow, she would laugh. What fragments she had left of herself would clatter out of her fingers, and her wicked, terrible wish would make her pain disappear, because she wouldn’t exist after it was fulfilled. She would be as bad as Milo.

  But she wouldn’t feel anything. She had wanted that for five years, to not feel.

  Lu looked up at the galleon, tears hot.

  “Lu,” Vex tried. His voice told her he hadn’t moved closer, as if knowing that any motion right now would set her off. “What’s happening? Why do you care so much about Ibarra—”

  His question broke. Lu opened her eyes to see that Vex had bumped into the pilothouse’s wall, his mouth agape.

  “What?” Nayeli prodded. She didn’t know Lu’s story like Vex did.

  Lu saw on his face that he’d made the connection. She couldn’t stop his realization, and that loss of control freed her to say words she had never admitted aloud:

  “He was the Argridian commander, the night they attacked the rebel headquarters.”

  Vex’s hands opened, closed into fists. “You’ve been sitting by him in Council meetings.” His voice grated. “Letting him live. Letting him be near you.”

  “I haven’t allowed him anything,” Lu refuted. “He doesn’t know who I am.”

  Vex panted. “He doesn’t . . .”

  Nayeli seemed to feel the gravity in this situation, even if she couldn’t place it. “Gods, if you find him on board, just kill him.”

  “You’re damn right,” Vex said. He lunged toward the galleon, one foot on the railing of the Meander before Lu grabbed his arm.

  “I need him alive. Not for redemption—to stop a war.”

  Vex’s eye patch was toward her so she couldn’t read his face, but the muscle in his arm coiled under her fingers.

  “If I faced the people who did what they did to me,” Vex started, “I’d kill them. I’ve dreamed of it for years.”

  He looked at her, and it surprised Lu to find not anger on his face, but sadness.

  Vex twisted so he held her arm as she held his. “You’re asking me to let him live, knowing what he did to you. You want me to show him mercy.”

  “I don’t want to kill him,” Lu admitted. “I want him to break. That’s what I most fear. If I see him on that ship, without propriety holding me back, I won’t—” She stopped, chin dropping. “I won’t survive the things I’d do to him. I could never look Teo in the eyes again, or pretend to serve this island with dignity. I’d be what I was during the revolution. I cannot be a murderer again.”

  She didn’t weep as she said this. She told him, and let the words hover.

  Vex didn’t show any reaction. Not shock or pain. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I know you aren’t capable of being what your parents turned you into again.”

  “How could you know that?”

  He smiled. “I didn’t become what people wanted me to be either.”

  He drew her closer before letting go so she could retreat. She didn’t. “We’re stronger than they could have dreamed. You are stronger. Come with me or don’t—it’s your choice.”

  With a wink and a smile, he leaped from the Rapid Meander, grabbed the lowest porthole, and began climbing the galleon.

  “Go,” Nayeli said. “You’ll hate yourself if you stay here.”

  Lu looked at her through the pilothouse’s window. “I could hate myself if I go, too.”

  Nayeli shook her head. “We both know that’s a lie.”

  A wave broke on the railing, spraying foam across Lu’s boots.

  If she followed Vex onto that ship, and the person she fought so hard not to be resurfaced, she would hate herself. But if she stayed and hid in the engine room with Teo, she would hate herself more, for the fear she would continue to let rule her life.

  Lu adjusted the satchel around her shoulders, checked her weapons, and propelled herself onto the side of the galleon. No time to think; no time to worry.

  Nowhere to go but forward.

  Vex was glad to have this bright spot of hatred for Milo Ibarra as he climbed the exterior of the galleon. He focused on that, where his mind wanted to spiral out of control.

  He recognized this ship. It was one of Elazar’s.

  No—Ibarra. Find Ibarra. And murder him.

  He wouldn’t, though, for Lu’s sake. But god, give him ten minutes alone with that disgusting excuse for a man, and he’d have Ibarra begging for death.

  Vex heard a rustling against the waves crashing, and when he looked, Lu was climbing up the ship below him. He hadn’t expected her to stay on the Meander—she was the strongest force he’d known. She’d find a way to get through.

  But seeing her eased a knot of tension. He wouldn’t have to board this ship alone.

  This ship. One he’d been on before.

  Vex kept climbing, unable to tell whether he was shaking from his illness or terror. He and Lu would find Ibarra, or other proof of this insanity, and get off before anything happened. They’d stop the war before Argrid could sink its claws back into Grace Loray. Before—before—

  Lu plopped onto the deck seconds after him and scurried over to where he crouched behind a longboat. Even terrified, he couldn’t help it. He grinned at her.

  “I figured I couldn’t let you go alone,” she whispered. “You are, after all, dying of a condition that makes you unstable.”

  Vex rolled his eye. “Had to bring that up, did you?”

  They both faced the deck. Three guards could be seen on the rear quarterdeck, two more pacing along the forecastle deck. The main deck dipped between the two, low enough that Vex and Lu could hide along the wall, sneak to the central hatch, and drop belowdecks without arousing attention.

  “We should start with the lower decks,” Lu whispered. “Work our way up. Take anything you find—correspondence, vials that could be Elazar’s test potions, anything. We’ll have to go to the Council after this no matter what.”

  She moved before Vex said anything. Not that he could have.

  Staircases lined the wall below the quarterdeck, a door between them—the way to the captain’s quarters. The central hatch was ahead of that door, a straight shot once the guards on the forecastle deck turned.

  Vex slammed next to the door seconds after Lu did, panting like he’d run laps around the deck. She grabbed his wrist, and while it was probably to make sure they timed their sprint to the hatch, Vex leaned into it.

  Lu shot forward, Vex stumbling behind.

  The central hatch thudded open. Light flooded the main deck as a man climbed the steps.

  Lu froze, cursing. But it wasn’t Milo Ibarra.

  The man held a lantern to illuminate some paper he was reading. He didn’t notice Vex and Lu until he stood on the main deck.

  He snapped his head up. Lu drew a blade, the knife catching the lantern light with a flash.

  The man didn’t look at her knife—his attention was rooted on Vex. Who stared back, seeing through six years of absence, of dreams, of pain and death.

  He remembered this ship. He remembered standing on it with his father and this man, who had been a boy not much older than himself, before the world burned to ashes in front of a cheering crowd—

  Vex was aware of Lu looki
ng between them. “Vex? What—”

  The man didn’t shout or raise an alarm. He said a name, soft and imploring, from a hundred lifetimes ago.

  “Paxben?”

  29

  BEN WAS SEVEN, clambering through the gardens of Rodrigu’s mansion in Deza. Ahead, a hedge rustled and a body leaped through—a thin, wispy boy two months younger than Ben but a whole head taller.

  “Got you!” Paxben shouted, and hurled a harmless cluster of leaves at Ben’s chest.

  Ben laughed as it fluttered to the ground.

  “No, act like it’s Variegated Holly! You’re supposed to do this!” Paxben flailed, eyes dipping back so the whites showed. He stuck out his tongue, which made Ben giggle more.

  A shadow passed over them. “Where did you learn that?”

  Ben looked up at his uncle Rodrigu and sobered. Paxben, though, never sobered, a wellspring of energy that Ben got to wade in.

  “At the University,” Paxben told his father. “It’s magic. I know about other ones, too. Drooping Fern and Eye of the Sun and Croxy and—”

  “Paxben,” Rodrigu reprimanded. “You shouldn’t speak of these things.”

  “Why not?” he whined. “You speak of them all the time!”

  Later, Ben would think back on interactions like this and realize Rodrigu’s intensity hadn’t been righteous condemnation. It had been fear.

  Ben and Paxben were twelve, and they joked about his name, Paxben, and how it bound him to Ben more than Rodrigu was bound to Elazar.

  “You’ll help me when I’m king too,” Ben said as they sat on a bridge in the University’s complex, feet dangling over a gurgling brook.

  Paxben folded his arms, body woven through the railing as Ben’s was, and rested his chin on the cushion his elbows made. He was quiet for too long.

  Ben started to worry until Paxben beamed at him.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll be right next to you. You’ll be the best king.”

  Ben shook his head. “Not better than my father.”

  Paxben kicked his legs faster. “I’ll take over my father’s position. We’ll be irmáns, side by side, helping Argrid.”