Chapter 7

Nathaniel peered through the porthole overlooking the starboard side of the ship-city Matariki. The pink hues of dawn crept over the horizon, breaking up the vast darkness of the sea and sky that seemed to be as one. The stars were fading, wisps of cloud high up in the sky coming into view with the sun. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass, letting it ease the throb in his head a little. He'd woken up with a headache and an uneasiness in his gut he attributed to lingering seasickness. After several weeks at sea and a handful of pitched naval battles, Nathaniel had thought he'd moved past the illness.

There'd been no activity during the night, no sirens calling crew to their battle stations. The ship-city was a massive piece of engineering that fascinated Nathaniel to no end, rising like an island out of the waters even as it churned through the waves with ease. He'd been amazed at how the frigate he'd boarded in Oeiras had seamlessly attached itself to the ship-city, its engines providing extra power to the whole of Matariki.

Its sister frigate on the starboard provided the same sort of support, both smaller ships able to disengage quickly from the main portion of the ship-city. The main deck that sat above the waves was where its heavy artillery and harpoon guns were located, situated in intervals that meant it could cover every side of the ship-city with defensive fire. A cargo hold at the aft had a recessed ramp that, when winched down, led to the water. The space was used to haul leviathans into the belly of the ship-city but also to dispatch Matariki's contingent of submersibles.

When he'd been given a tour of the ship-city, it had felt like a warren of painted iron hallways and countless rooms. Some were used for berths to sleep in, many more were meant for the overall function of the place the crew called home. While Matariki could be pressed into battle—as it had been in the past, for the Tovanians had their own history of sea-faring skirmishes between ship-cities—it was meant to be a home first. Port Avi back on the Tovan Isles was where the shipbuilders resided and where their country's laws were decided, but home was found on the open seas.

"How's your stomach faring?"

Nathaniel lifted his head and dragged his gaze away from the endless stretch of water to meet Uri'ka Akeheni's eyes. The officer's mess was quieter than the crew's on the other side of the ship-city, but it was still crowded, more so than it typically was, he'd been told. Akeheni had graciously allowed the Ashion officers use of this mess, and people were packed elbows to elbows at the narrow tables bolted to the floor. The officers at the one Nathaniel sat at all handily shifted down the bench to provide their captain room.

"Better than my head, if a little uncomfortable. I haven't needed to use the bucket in my room for at least a week," Nathaniel said in the trade tongue with a faint smile.

A few of the Tovanian officers at the table laughed, the ink on their faces moving with their smiles. Like Akeheni, they sported tattoos on their chins, around their eyes, and across their cheeks and foreheads of delicate designs that depicted rank as much as they depicted their lineages. Nathaniel was still learning what they all meant, but he knew the ones Akeheni sported elevated her to something higher. Akeheni was captain, ambassador, and a ruler of sorts in her own right, and he was continuously deferential to her.

Nathaniel might be Caris' representative out here in open waters, but he had no power or sway over anyone. The treaty had been negotiated and signed, and that alliance granted Akeheni the right to wage war how she saw fit on the waves to bring the troops to shore. So far, that had resulted in dozens of Daijal ships and Urovan submersibles sinking into the ocean's depths before the blockade had pulled back along the Daijalan coast.

It also meant Nathaniel had come to learn what seasickness was like, the opposite of the land sickness Tovanians experienced when away from the motion of their ship-cities. It meant his breakfast was plain, unsalted rice porridge, lacking the bits of dried fish, onion, and fried bread most everyone else had before them. It wasn't what he was used to eating, but at least the ginger tea was soothing, even if it was a bit strong.

Akeheni picked up her spoon and ate a few bites of her steaming porridge before catching his eye. "You should still keep taking your potion."

Nathaniel nodded, biting back a wince at the thought of the terrible-tasting medicine the ship-city's onboard apothecary had given him. But it had quelled his nausea up until this morning, enough that his stomach no longer roiled when the ship-city sometimes did.

Of the many conversations happening around him, Nathaniel only understood the ones happening in Ashionen. Akeheni was kind enough to speak to him and some of the higher-ranked Ashion officers he traveled with in the trade tongue. Nathaniel wasn't ever offended when he was excluded from strategy meetings, left to wander sections of the brightly painted ship-city with an escort. Akeheni might have agreed to take him on, but the vivisection scars on his chest still gave her people pause.

Even though he wasn't privy to battle plans, Nathaniel still knew when maneuvers were underway. It was difficult to miss when the ship-city's sirens suddenly punctured the early morning camaraderie, calling everyone to their stations.

Akeheni stood before anyone else, pushing her bowl into the bin sunk into the wood at the end of the table. Nathaniel hastily followed her actions, along with everyone else, until the bin was filled. Someone flipped the top panel back around and bolted it into place, ensuring that whatever happened in the next few hours, none of the flatware and cutlery would be pitched around the mess, creating a hazard.

Nathaniel lost sight of Akeheni in the initial rush of sailors exiting the mess, but the sailor assigned as his escort for the day appeared by his shoulder in seconds. Matiu flashed him a tight smile before speaking to him in the trade tongue. "Let's get you back to quarters."

Nathaniel nodded jerkily and let Matiu lead the way out of the mess. The small gas lamp above the door with its spinning mirror never stopped flashing; neither did the ones scattered down the corridor Nathaniel found himself in. He kept close to the wall like Matiu, letting Tovanians who clearly had places to be rush past him. The Ashionen officers who'd been out and about were doing the same, all of them knowing this wasn't their ship, wasn't where they could fight, and the best course of action any of them could do as passengers was to stay out of the way and be prepared to evacuate if need be.

Nathaniel, like the other Ashionens, had run through emergency procedures with the Tovanian crew since the moment they boarded. He knew the way back to his berth, the colors painted on the walls changing as Matiu turned down a different direction at a cross-corridor. While some walls held murals, those never went to the floor. The solid colors and integrated stripes helped show which direction on the ship one was in when all you had to navigate by was iron walls.

They were halfway there, if Nathaniel judged the paint correctly, when a searing pain wrenched itself from one side of his chest to the other in the space behind his ribs. He fell to his knees with a strangled cry, one hand going to his chest in a useless gesture. He gripped the fabric of his shirt since he couldn't reach skin, cold creeping through his torso.

"What's wrong?" Matiu asked.

Nathaniel could only mutely shake his head, trying to breathe when his ribs didn't seem to want to expand around the clockwork metal heart that kept him on his road. It took time—long minutes, going by the increasingly frantic escalation of Matiu's prodding, who was surely late to his station in the middle of an emergency—before Nathaniel could uncurl himself from the ball he'd sunk into.

Every muscle in his torso throbbed, bones aching, the weight of his clockwork metal heart heavy in a way he rarely noticed, thanks to the alchemy and magic Ksenia and her wardens had worked into him. But there, in the middle of a Tovanian ship-city, Nathaniel felt as if his heart was an anchor that could drown him.

Something wanted him to kill—that distant thought hovered at the very depths of his mind, cradled in a tangle of magic he knew Caris had helped to unstitch one note at a time from everything that made him a person. Ksenia had tied it all back, barricaded that foreign magic from all that he was with her own skill.

But pushing it aside didn't mean it was gone, and Nathaniel could sense the gap between his own free will and that of the Klovod's desire was as razor-thin as an emergency fence in the poison fields with revenants clawing for a way in.

And the Klovod wanted in.

Matiu helped him to his feet, keeping him upright. Nathaniel swayed there for a moment—then lurched when a distant, echoing boom from below shook its way through the framework of the ship-city. Matiu shoved him against the wall to brace them both. He grimaced, head tilting as the sirens abruptly changed tone to something Nathaniel couldn't parse.

"What is it?" Nathanial asked.

"Depth charges were deployed, far too close to the hull. Whoever is on duty knows better than to deploy them like that."

Nathaniel knew the ship-city had Tovanian magicians whose magic was tied closely to the sea. Their repertoire included spells that specialized in mapping the area beneath the waves surrounding a ship-city in search of underwater threats or leviathans during hunts. It was why Tovanian ship-cities were so effective at hunting submersibles. The magicians should have been able to warn the rest of the crew on duty of an incoming attack.

But they wouldn't if any of them were rionetkas.

"Akeheni," Nathaniel rasped. "I need to speak with her."

Nathaniel couldn't be sure that request came from him or whatever bits of the Klovod's control was—hopefully—held at bay by warden interference.

Matiu shook his head. "She'll be on the command deck and will have no time for you. I'm to get you back to your berth?—"

Nathaniel reached for the Tovanian, gripping his wrist with shaking fingers as crew ran past them. The sirens rang in his ear with a warning that seemed to rise and fall in time with the click of the gears in his clockwork metal heart. "The Klovod is trying something. She needs to be warned."

He knew the Klovod wasn't a secret amongst the Tovanians. They'd accepted two treaties and a shared alliance based on the knowledge of foreign interference. While no one had solid proof, too many pieces placed Eimarille at the center of a web of machinations that had ruined so many lives. Nathaniel wouldn't let the ship-city sink because of her.

Matiu gripped him by the arm and turned them back the way they'd come. Nathaniel let himself be hauled forward on shaky legs until he could get his feet back under him, the pain in his chest settling into something like a metronome his breath kept time to.

It took time to get to the captain's deck, the location high up top with the best view of the horizon on the ship-city. Nathaniel hadn't been allowed up on his initial tour of the ship-city, but Tai got him through the checkpoints and pushed him through the open doorway being guarded by a crew member outfitted with both a pistol and a heavy blade.

The captain's deck was a space ringed by glass windows that circled the entire room, giving an undisrupted view of the horizon. Nathaniel could see for miles, nothing but waves beyond them and no other ship breaking up the brightening vista. His attention was jerked back to the chaotic scene they'd stepped into, with officers shouting at each other and into radios, people entering and leaving with a clear destination in mind. He couldn't understand anything that anyone was saying, but Matiu didn't hesitate to lead him through the fray.

Sailors manned a section of the command area that looked to be some type of analytical machine. They faced the prow of the ship-city, the lower outside decking in view, along with the heavy guns that were being cranked into position. Nathaniel only got a glimpse of what the sailors were working on before Matiu pushed him toward the area behind them, where officers huddled around a navigation table filled with gridded maps. Amidst the group of Tovanians listening to Akeheni's orders, one person stood out.

A warden.

Matiu said something in Tovanian that had everyone's head jerking around, attention landing on Nathaniel. He contained a flinch, lifting his chin in the face of their judging eyes as he slipped into the trade tongue. "Uri'ka Akeheni, I think I know what's happening."

Akeheni half turned to look at him, lips pressed into a grim line. "I can't trust your words."

She didn't need to say why. "I know, but you need to. Just this once."

Caris had sent him here to keep him out of the Klovod's reach, and still he could not escape that repudiated warden's grip. Akeheni knew that; it had been part of the terms of the treaty-signed alliance. But if he was a risk, Nathaniel would be the first to take one of the lifeboats and set himself adrift if it would keep the ship-city on course.

"Ksenia unmade what the Klovod did," the warden said, her voice cutting through the chaotic noise around them.

"Unmade doesn't mean gone." Nathaniel tapped a finger against his chest, never looking away from Akeheni's eyes. "I can feel him reaching. I don't think I was the only one out here he found."

"You said you woke with a headache this morning," Akeheni said.

"Yes." He swallowed thickly, well aware of what it meant. "But I am in control of myself."

"We don't know that for sure."

"I know, but in this moment, you must believe me. Please."

Akeheni looked over her shoulder at the warden. "What say you, Binh?"

"Ksenia is our master alchemist, and few in any country can match her skill. Her magic and alchemy would hold, especially this far from the Klovod's reach," Binh replied after a brief pause. "If Nathaniel can sense the Klovod in his mind, you should believe him."

"If I was truly a rionetka again, I would not be able to tell you that I could sense him," Nathaniel said.

He remembered the agonizing horror of being a prisoner in his own body, the way his hands moved without his permission, the words that were spoken that were not his. But everything he did and said here on the ship-city was of his own volition. The Klovod might have left fingerprints on his mind and rebuilt his heart, but the control he'd experienced before was no longer there.

Binh frowned thoughtfully. "He is right. My understanding of rionetka control is they act like the person they are, and you would not know the difference."

Akeheni didn't let what she thought filter onto her face when she looked back at Nathaniel. "Tell me what you think the Klovod's motive is here?"

"Where are we under attack?" Nathaniel asked.

Akeheni bared her teeth. "Not from without. Our magicians see no Urovan submersibles within range."

"Matiu said the depth charges went off too close to the hull."

"We aren't sinking."

The derisiveness in her tone made Nathaniel want to laugh, but he choked it back. "Your sailors know their duties. Rionetkas will take that knowledge and twist it to do harm, and they will have no choice."

"We have precautions against rionetkas. Physical checks and spell detectors."

"They aren't infallible. The Klovod has ways of infiltrating the governments of our allies."

"We are aware." Akeheni rested a hand on the navigation table, the map beneath her palm crumpling. "If we have rionetkas aboard, then they are the ones responsible for releasing the depth charges. Clearing my sailors will take time, which we have precious little of since we are scheduled to meet up with the Ailani for an attack on Daijal's ironsides along the coast. We need?—"

Akeheni's next words left on a jagged cry as her first mate unexpectedly turned and slammed their knife into her left shoulder. It would have been her heart if Akeheni had been even a shade slower in twisting her body. She jerked back, sliding off the knife as a cry of rage rose from those assembled around her. The noise was disrupted by the crack of a single gunshot from Binh's pistol.

The first mate—the rionetka, Nathaniel's numb thoughts supplied—went limp and fell to the floor, a gaping hole on the side of their skull where the bullet had exited. In such tight quarters, it was a miracle the bullet hadn't hit anyone else, though Nathaniel had no clue where it had ended up. All of that musing felt like background noise as he was pushed back by Matiu, Akeheni disappearing beneath a crowd of her people.

Nathaniel couldn't understand anything being said, the Tovanian washing over him in an unceasing wave of sound. He had no weapons, but considering what he'd been and what had occurred just now, Nathaniel made sure to keep his hands in sight and went where Matiu prodded.

He watched as Akeheni was helped by her sailors, saw the worried, sometimes wary glances the crew gave each other. The rionetka might have missed the mark in murdering Akeheni, but the seeds of distrust were there in the aftermath.

"You need to clear your ship-city through whatever measures you have for rooting out rionetkas," Nathaniel said quietly.

Matiu looked back at him, dark-eyed gaze steady and without judgment. "Can you sense any of them in some way?"

Nathaniel shook his head. "I can sense the Klovod's intent in the back of my mind, but not rionetkas. Even when I was under his control, I never knew who the others were."

Caris was the only person he knew of who could differentiate between a rionetka and a person who still had their own free will, and that was only because of her ability to hear clarion crystals sing.

Matiu nodded, his grip tightening on Nathaniel's arm. "Let's get you back to your berth."

Nathaniel swallowed and dipped his head in a nod. At least they weren't taking him to the brig.