Chapter Text
People are wise to fear the ocean. Endless frozen depths capable of snuffing life in seconds - or agonizingly long minutes in its less merciful moods. Even in playful moments, it can wreak havoc on a ship and call it a game, and when its toys break and sink, it snatches up new ones. Its screaming tantrums are destructive at best and fatal at worst. Eerie, placid silences follow, bringing horizons wiped clean and painting a disorienting facsimile of peace. The same waves become roiling, hungry squalls on a whim, and the chaotic cycle begins anew.
Ships that sink and crumple like tin cans never return to tell their tales. The cursed survivors who remember what it’s like to watch a ghost be born spin horrifying epics about the unknown fates of those lost. Naturally, creatures bound to land fear the depths they cannot see, the currents they cannot predict, and the storms they cannot control.
Yang, one of the unlucky few, has seen those depths.
She knows how saltwater burns in her lungs. That suffocating, cutting, riptide of pain is the only evidence she needs to know: she does not fear the ocean. She hates it.
When the sea wants something, it takes it - but then again, that ascribes too much direction to the capricious thing. It does not have to want to take, for it is the act of deprivation itself that the depths seek. Wanting is a foreign concept to it, and it takes simply because it can. It lacks even the cruel laugh of a child stealing a toy from a sibling, taking no joy in its claims. It takes, and it feels nothing.
Yang has witnessed firsthand the most callous and ugly side of the sea, and now she’s a captive audience to its effortless performance of grandeur every day. On an island, it’s impossible to escape the sharp sting of salty air or sand sticking in her shoes. Every cloudless evening brings a sunset, and the sea turns to liquid fire and molten gold. It’s ineffably, indisputably beautiful - and that, above the untrustworthy calm and violent riptides, is what makes the ocean so disarmingly dangerous.
It’s a vast mystery, a puzzle refusing to be solved. Uniquely enthralling, powerful, dark, deadly. A fearsome enemy that carries generations of pain and joy in its currents like bits of plankton, a moody and apathetic beast whose scales sparkle in sunlight. The perpetual ebb and flow moves in patterns too broad to conceive in a single lifetime, constantly reminding the shore that nothing lost is ever really gone, not as long as the moon can push and pull. Everything washes up on the sand eventually, and someone’s day might shine brighter because of one small gift from the sea.
Fishers, sailors, even pirates - divided by what they consider moral, but all ultimately united by their love for the water. Lured in by all its false promises, they may come to believe that something as transient as a moving ship can be a permanent and real home.
Yang thought the same once, but now she knows better. The ocean is only a home in the same way as a grave might be. Neither gives its occupant a choice in the matter of their fate, and neither consults the loved ones of those it takes, those who are left behind to become the detritus that washes up on shore, sunburned, salt-soaked, and abandoned.
All the mysticism around the ocean means that tourists and travelers pay good money for things that the waves vomit out, and Yang can collect and sell sand-dusted trinkets without greed tempting her to keep what she finds. She doesn’t want anything the sea offers. Its alleged gifts are all stolen in the first place, anyway.
People on Patch like to believe that the ocean sends them things on purpose. Barnacle-crusted driftwood could be a sign, sure, Yang thinks - if you clean it up and hang it over your shop. But that’s the only sign you’ll ever get from the ocean. It’s not offering profound spiritual callings through lumps of bloated seaweed.
Yang admires people who see meaning in such things, if only because they’re a prime example of how creativity is borne from necessity when people refuse to take responsibility for the misdirection of their own lives. The ocean told me to carries much more symbolic weight than I just sort of felt like it.
She tells herself that superstition is ridiculous because she has to. Some glimmering thing buried deep in her chest refuses to stop believing in magic and fate. It burns in spite of her best efforts, and nothing seems capable of putting it out.
If she starts letting herself hope that lost things can wash up on her own beach, it would wrench her heart open like a crowbar to a lost treasure chest.
The moon winks down at Yang, disappearing in the folds of a cloud. The space between midnight and dawn is the best time to dredge the harbor for sea junk, even if the impish moon insists on hanging in the sky and taunting her. At least the moon has the courtesy to keep the tides out at this hour, exposing all sorts of washed up trinkets stuck in the sand.
At this hour, Patch’s boats are locked down under their tarp shells, and it’s far from the hour that fishers start filling taverns to eat breakfast before the sun rises. Rare wisps of noise dissipate into the thinness of the midnight air, and every breath tastes heavily of salt and silence. For Yang, this fleeting hour is the only time she can stand to face the sea. Like this, quiet and calm but for the steady, distant roll of the tide respiring, the watery beast could be a sleeping dragon coiled loosely around the island of Patch, unthreatening so long as she doesn’t try to cross it.
Sometimes while scavenging, Yang will pick up a perfectly round piece of green sea glass and find herself wishing that she could love the place it came from, but that’s the closest she ever gets to thinking fondly of the dragon.
In an hour or so, she’ll have a sack full of shells and sea jewels and be on her way back into town. She’ll rest and wake up a few hours later to greet the hustle and bustle of the early morning market, where people are on the prowl for daybreak deals but also susceptible to spending more money than they might later in the day when their common sense catches up with them. Who would she sell to if not wide-eyed customers searching for charms in the hopes of turning their lives around with a single charmed conch? And where else can she surround herself with familiar faces who don’t ask questions beyond Nice morning, huh? and How much for the blue one?
For just a while longer tonight, she can use scouring for knickknacks as an excuse to linger on the beach a safe distance from the water. Surely it has better things to do at this hour than waste its time reaching out to someone who would recoil from it like a hand touching flame, but a part of her likes to believe that the space is careful and deliberate, as if the ocean knows how it’s wronged her and accepts its penance. Let the sea be afraid of her for once.
Or at least let her pretend.
There’s something sacred about the ocean keeping its distance while Yang looks up at the moon, those the corners and pockets that haven’t emptied themselves of childish, delusional, romantic hopes illuminated by shimmering light.
An invitation to reflect in such a way without any of the rigidity of expectation is the most enticing treasure the beach can offer, and the only one Yang has ever felt a desire to claim. Taking solace in the lonesome moon is far less dangerous than indulging in memories of loving the sea, so she allows herself this one vice. At least she’s found a way to make it profitable.
It’s shaping up to be a typical night of junk dredging - until the sea starts to sing.
The voice carries a wistful, forsaken melody. Yang tries to pick out words, but all she hears is a mercurial call, the emotion behind it folding and morphing and shifting through itself too quickly to comprehend. Staunch loneliness, its impermeability equally stubborn as its crying need to shatter. The singer plucks forlorn, soaring notes across the misty tether that draws Yang closer.
Up to her ankles in the surf, some part of Yang understands that she is the same as every hapless sailor who’s ever gone searching for adventure only to bow to the thrall and drown in thunder. Her concrete hatred turns soft and malleable, and she can’t stop herself.
Suddenly, she’s walking towards the sound, her legs carrying her out until her bare toes are chilled by the water’s touch. Her balled fists offer as much protection for her ears as her sandals do for her feet - which is to say, none.
It could be some fisher who chose to stay out extra late and take advantage of the empty harbor to practice their soprano. That’s plausible - or at least it might be, if there was even a single boat visible through the thin mist hanging on the horizon. Yang scans over it again and again, circling the edge of the beach towards where the sun will eventually reach up and disperse the fog. Soon she’s halfway to the island’s eastern cove, and the docks are only bumps on the skyline behind her. Someone could be singing alone in the cave, but nothing echoes out of its entrance.
Where is this music coming from?
Soon her rolled-up trousers are soaked past the knee. Nobody should be able to sustain a song this long without taking a breath, but the voice never stops. The call persists, and Yang has to know.
She has to know whose voice is condensing on her skin like cool fog. She wants to hold it in her hands and let it run between her fingers, feel it drip down the hollow of her collarbone like cold sweat. She wants to drink it in, feel it fill her lungs, drown in it.
The sound draws her farther east, past the mouth of the cove. Nobody ever fishes here - too many weeds in the water - but Yang knows she’s getting closer. There’s nowhere else the voice could be coming from.
She starts running, as much as anyone can run through thigh-deep water. It sloshes around her legs while wet sand grabs and pulls on her boots, a futile attempt at dragging her back to shore. The land is as powerless against the call as Yang is.
The voice is out here somewhere. It has to be–
No.
It stopped.
Why did it stop?
Only then does Yang realize that she’s freezing up to her waist. The icy water clings to her stomach through her clothes, and her teeth start chattering. Not only is she miserably cold, but she stepped into the sea. Willingly. For the first time in twelve years.
She wished for it to drown her, to consume her like fresh grief or howling ecstasy. No voice should carry such power.
Yang occasionally finds herself overcome with an urge to cry when she hears sailors at the docks roaring out their shanties. It doesn’t matter if they’re singing about legendary pirate kings who met their doom in the clutches of sirens or raunchy tavern wenches getting it on with flirtatious busboys - the cores of their ringing melodies remind Yang of the songs her parents used to sing while rigging sail lines, back before they stopped singing altogether, one by one by one. Losing Summer’s voice hollowed out Raven and Tai’s songs, and nothing new could bloom to fill the space, even once they settled on Patch’s fertile volcanic soil. No new gardens grow without Summer.
Normally Yang makes a point of walking away when the sailors start, but here, tonight, her soul has never prayed to witness something so entirely. She’s never felt such a deep-seated need to hear someone sing.
The horror strikes.
Did Yang do this willingly?
The possibility that she chose to just walk right into the midnight ocean for no reason (without the proper clothes on, nonetheless) is frightening enough, but she fears that the truth of it is much more sinister.
How did this song speak to the sunken hope that she’s buried so carefully, like an heirloom tucked under a shipwreck?
She barely even noticed her feet moving, so fixated on that voice giving fragile form to the euphoric melancholy of loneliness, certain that it had to be near, dreading the thought of never finding its source.
After having so much of what she loves taken away, why is she so afraid to lose something she’s never known at all?
Yang listens for a moment more, praying - to the taunting moon, maybe - that the voice will return. It doesn’t, and now she’s just cold and wet and shaking and alone.
As she trudges out of the ocean’s limp grasp, her feet drag in the wet sand. Did the receding tide take her shoes? Greedy bastard. Maybe she’ll find them washed up the next morning. One of the ocean’s little games, just to remind her that she risked greeting the undertow for something as incorporeal and fleeting as memories and hope.
Her naked toes are frozen stiff, and she feels her bones shiver painfully when she accidentally kicks a rock. Except it isn’t a rock, because rocks don’t usually sound hollow and metallic.
Yang kneels to examine the object that so stealthily attacked her, distantly noting that her rucksack is lying half-spilled somewhere on the shore.
Whatever this metal thing is, it didn’t fall out of her pack. She’s never seen it before. The shallow waves drift out to show her a sparkling red jewel - so it is a rock after all, in a sense - but it’s embedded in something bigger. Yang tries to pull the jewel and its setting out, but the sand grasps it with a vice grip. Usually, wet sand doesn’t fight to hold onto things unless they’re very large things. And very large things, especially one with rubies attached to them, can be quite valuable.
Escaping the cold tide is a lost cause at this point, and its threats to wash up again are empty against the constricting chill that’s already taken root in Yang’s muscles. She braces a knee and a hand against the sand and pulls. With a graceless sucking sound, the beach relinquishes its quarry: a metal cylinder, a little longer than Yang’s forearm. Runes and etchings line the burnished gold metal, and the tube ends in two stacks of gears tempered to reflect different colors that taper in size until they’re no bigger than a wide open eye. Altogether, the strange piece bears strikingly few signs of erosion. Could be that it was recently discarded or lost in the waves, but the runes feel too old for that to be the case. The only parts of the cylinder that seem to have sustained any visible damage are the thumbprint-sized rubies encrusted along the top and bottom edges. Some are scratched or worn down, and one is cracked, almost like someone tried to claw them out. Gem fragments are still worth a whole lot more than nothing.
Yang taps her knuckles against the metal tube again - hollow. Maybe there’s something inside it. She shakes it, hoping to hear more gems clattering around inside, but hears nothing. Given the weight of it, the cylinder is too thick to cut through with ease, and Yang doesn’t have the proper tools to attempt it anyway. Although the gears turn easily, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious point of opening along the cylinder. Any seams must have been welded and sanded down before the runes were etched in, and whoever might have sealed the tube went to great lengths to make sure it would be very hard to open again.
Could be some kind of puzzle. Fortunately, Yang knows a puzzle enthusiast.
Rarely does the ocean offer a pleasant surprise, but Yang’s night is off to a lucky start. What kind of luck it is, exactly, will become clearer once she figures out if these rubies can be removed.
The sound of a dust-powered saw whirring tells Yang that her favorite person in the world is awake late (again) and hard at work in their shop. Even through the winding alleys that lead from the harbor to the central market district, Ruby’s enthusiasm for power tools rings out night and day. She likes to work with the windows open, something their neighbors have complained about repeatedly to no avail. They calmed down about it when handmade tables, chairs, and light fixtures started appearing on their doorsteps along with apology notes. On an island city where dock work and carpentry are the primary trades, complaining about the sound of hammers doesn’t garner a significant amount of sympathy, anyway.
Yang comes in through the back entrance and finds her sister at the workbench with two recently separated slabs of wood in front of her.
“Ruby!” Yang calls. She’s had a lot of practice at this. Her voice carries.
With a tiny, startled “Eep!” Ruby jumps back from her workstation. She lifts her visor, round cheeks and shining smile a stark contrast to the gritty workshop and expressionless safety mask. “Yang, you’re back! Did you bring me anything cool?”
“Actually, yes.” Yang hoists her rucksack onto a bench at the opposite end of the workshop and starts unpacking her haul piece by piece. “Whatcha makin’?”
“New drawers for out front by the counter. I figure I’ll put some custom organizers in them so that people can sort through all the shells and sea glass and stuff more easily.”
“You couldn’t just make organizers for the drawers we already have?”
“Yes! I could have!” Ruby says, defensive. She opens and closes her mouth a few times - she probably got caught up in her whirlwind idea and didn’t think of the simpler possibility. Her mind works in brilliant ways, though it often takes the scenic route to get where it wants to go. “But those drawers are all gross. And unvarnished,” Ruby goes on. “These ones will be shiny, beautiful, and fully immune to all the stale, salty bits you bring back.”
Yang frowns. She doesn’t really want to hear her sister say salty bits ever again, but Ruby’s earnest drive to make the shop the best it could possibly be is so endearing that Yang can’t bear to drag the energy down with crass comments. She smiles at her sister just as her hand touches cool metal.
From the rucksack she withdraws the cylinder, rubies glinting like shards of fire in the moonlight that streams in through the open windows.
“Whoa,” Ruby exclaims. Her grease-streaked hands reach out towards the tube as if they have a mind of their own.
Yang pulls the cylinder away. “Wash your hands first. I don’t want you getting oil and sawdust all over my stuff.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Ruby says, saluting. She dashes over to the sink.
“I’m gonna start putting the rest of this stuff out front,” Yang calls over her shoulder as she heads through the twin swinging doors into the shop.
A cruise ship from Vacuo is due to dock in a few hours, and that means the shop will be flooded with customers as soon as the doors open. The shop is as ready for the influx as it could be, but times like this remind Yang how much she misses having her dad around to help. She ignores the thought, though it pangs in her chest, obstinately refusing to be ignored. Yang needs to be smiling - people buy more when they walk in and see a friendly face.
Ruby bounds out of the workshop and over to the register. Yang was planning to take the cylinder into the back office or up to one of their rooms, somewhere it would be out of sight and shoplifting range, but Ruby’s already making grabby hands at it again.
“Lemme see,” she insists.
Yang lifts the cylinder up above her head where Ruby can’t reach. She’s a good six inches taller than her little sister, and Ruby has to jump to try and get her hands on it.
“Yang,” Ruby snips. “Come on.”
“Okay, okay. But only because I’m tired.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t be if you slept more than four hours a night.”
Yang patently ignores that. She does what she has to do to keep the shop running, and she takes plenty of naps in the evenings. She’s fine. “Check this thing out.”
She holds out the cylinder, and her sister’s eyes sparkle even brighter than the gems.
Ruby wiggles her fingers and gingerly picks up the tube. “Ooh, do you know what these symbols are?”
“No. Wait, do you?”
“Nope! No idea. But they sure look cool.”
“Can you get the gemstones out? What do you think we should call them? I’m thinking ‘rubies of the sea.’ Open to suggestions, though.”
Ruby scrunches her nose, something she always does when she’s trying to figure something out. It’s like she’s trying to unfold a paper crane in her mind, learn its creases, and put it back together without ever harming its structure or chipping the edge of the paper. Puzzles are sacred to Ruby, and that’s definitely something she got from Summer.
Her eyes scan the symbols frantically. “If it’s some kind of language, I don’t recognize it. Maybe there’s something in one of dad’s old books. And these gears are almost like tumblers or something...”
“You can do whatever you want with it after you get the gems out,” Yang says. She doesn’t like nagging, but sometimes it’s the only way to keep Ruby on task. Residents of Patch might buy precious stones for special occasions like engagements or birthdays, but tourists always have money to spare, and they lack the inhibition of the more practical hometown dockworker crowd.
Ruby finally looks up. She raises an eyebrow. “What do you say?”
“Please,” Yang obliges.
“Okay!” Ruby agrees. She pulls out a bucket of random tools from under the front counter and sits down right at the register. With a heavy CLANG, she sets the bucket out and starts sorting through the tools. Yang has no idea how anyone could find anything in a giant bucket of pliers and wires and nails, but somehow Ruby is navigating it without so much as pricking her finger.
Customers will be coming in a few hours, but Ruby is very clearly not going to move until she’s done with whatever this project becomes. Her unflappable focus leaves Yang to wonder if she’s going to have to come up with a good excuse as to why she’s making sales from the central display table instead of the main counter.
“Don’t stay up too late, okay?” Yang says, starting up the stairs. “And don’t make a mess!”
“You’re not the boss of me!” Ruby calls back, already clicking the gears around.
Yang can never roll her eyes at her sister, so instead she smiles fondly and makes her way to bed.
Early the next morning, after a brief interlude of sleep for Yang, Ruby is facedown at the counter, drooling all over a notepad and snoring quietly.
So she didn’t listen about staying up too late, then.
The gems from the cylinder are nestled in a small bowl at the edge of the counter, neatly extricated from their facets. Additionally, Yang counts at least six notepads, four jars of ink, and a dozen other miscellaneous supplies that have been displaced from the office for this project - though why Ruby might have needed a ruler to examine a round cylinder is beyond explanation.
“Ruby,” Yang sings. “You know what I’m gonna have to do if you don’t wake up...”
All she hears is a muffled snore-gurgle. She pokes her fingers into Ruby’s ribs, jolting her awake and nearly knocking her off the stool.
“Wahh!” Ruby shrieks. The entire right side of her face is covered in ink. “Yang! Don’t do that!”
“You gave me no choice, little sister. We’ve gotta open after breakfast, which means I have to clean up.”
“Breakfast?” Ruby sniffs the air. “Did you make pancakes to bribe me into leaving the counter?”
“Is it working?”
“Of course it is,” Ruby says. “Wait! Before I go, look at this.” She shuffles through her pile of papers and finds one that looks exactly as ink-stained as the rest. She holds it up proudly.
Yang tilts her head. Yeah, it still doesn’t make sense. “What am I looking at?”
“The rune thingies,” Ruby explains. “I made transcripts and prints.”
“And a giant mess.”
“Yes, also that. But I needed to arrange the symbols in all sorts of different orders since I’m not sure what direction this language is supposed to be read in. Plus, it made it way easier to compare with some of dad’s books on global linguistics–”
She drops the print, then nearly knocks the bowl of rubies over scrambling to grab a leather-bound tome on the other side of the counter.
“–And get this. These symbols aren’t in any of them!”
Ruby is terribly excited about discovering nothing at all. Yang’s afraid she knows where this is going. “So...?” she asks, leading.
The grin on Ruby’s face could power the entire island for a year. “Some of these books are from hundreds of years ago. If it’s not even referenced in any of these, it must be really, really old. And I’m gonna read it.”
Yang sighs. “How?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Ruby says, as if not knowing something is the greatest feeling in the world. “I’m thinking I could at least start getting a vague idea of which symbols mean what through frequency and context clues, but that would be a lot easier to do if I had some kind of anchor for it or knew what kind of language system this is. It looks kind of like a really old version of the pictographic script they use in Mistral, but I’m not sure if that’s anything.”
“Ruby, I love you, but it’s way too early for this.”
“That’s fair,” Ruby nods. “I’ll tell you everything after pancakes. And sleep. I kind of stayed up all night.”
“No, really?”
“I am not sorry!”
Yang waves her off up the stairs. She can handle a tourist rush by herself just fine.
Around lunchtime, the rush slows to a trickle. Yang’s managed to sell half of the rubies already - she found out early in the day that letting tourists make their own offers on precious stones means she can easily get between double and triple the price she was originally asking for them. So far, the day is going as well as she could have hoped.
Luckily, the shop is otherwise empty when a woman in a knee-length black duster comes in, because her silent, sweeping presence washes through the space like a flood.
The round brim of her tattered black hat reveals little more than a slight resting smile, obscuring the details of her face in soft shadows. Her dark leather boots hit the hardwood floor with hardly a whisper, each step ringing through the quiet shop like a distant crash in the fog.
When her striking amber eyes meet Yang’s, the seasoned saleswoman forgets all about putting on a market-ready smile. Instead, Yang feels the corner of her mouth tilt up in an involuntary, lopsided grin, like a fish seconds from realizing that it’s been snagged on a line.
“Morning,” the woman says, and her voice is like a breeze brushing through a windchime.
“Welcome,” Yang remembers. “Looking for anything specific?”
“Hmmm. No,” the woman decides, trailing a finger around the corner of a display table. “But thank you for asking,” she adds, subtle humor flickering over her features.
Yang isn’t sure she’s in on the joke, but she wants to be.
A good salesperson usually doesn’t make a point of bothering customers, and Yang is sure this woman wouldn’t take kindly to being pestered about a purchase. That said, Yang isn’t one to pass up the chance to learn more about an interesting stranger. Every word out of this woman’s mouth is a fucking symphony of color, and Yang wants to listen until she can paint each note, each shade, each thread by memory.
“So, what brought you to Patch?” she asks. Is that intrusive? No. She asks people that all the time, especially on tourist docking days.
The woman catches Yang’s eye again, and with a wry curl of her lip, replies, “A ship.”
Yang’s question was simple enough, but the woman’s fluid gait stuttered just slightly, like a wave caught on a rock, finding its way around quickly and hoping nobody noticed. Given her sly answer, maybe the question was too personal after all. Maybe she’s running from something and doesn’t want to be reminded, or maybe she’s searching for something that can’t be found in a souvenir shop. Plenty of people waste their lives aimlessly running or searching. Or standing still.
Yang’s instincts are usually good when it comes to people - most of them aren’t worth trusting - and there’s no chance this woman is a gullible tourist. Her brown skin doesn’t show any signs of burning or desert weathering, her complexion smooth instead of sun-ruddied on the cheeks and nose. She must wear that hat all the time, or she spends most of her days indoors. With her long, dark hair and quick wit, she would be right at home on the busy streets of some faraway city. Here on Patch, where most people have practical, short haircuts and permanent sunburns, she sticks out like the moon during daytime: shockingly obvious, and with an unmistakable pull. Yang suddenly feels self-conscious about her own clear-cut tan lines, and she’s not used to feeling embarrassed about anything.
“You’re not with the Vacuo crew, are you?” Yang asks.
“No.” The woman replies as if it’s the precursor to a rounder thought, but offers no more.
She hasn’t turned her shoulder or given a pursed, dismissive smile yet, so Yang figures the conversation hasn’t scared her out of buying something.
In fact, the woman is looking at Yang again - or rather, past her.
“Looks like you’ve got quite a creative bookkeeper,” she comments with a nod at Ruby’s abandoned pile of papers that Yang haphazardly stuffed behind a statue on the counter. The papers would get mixed up with their actual records in the office, and Yang isn’t going to risk getting half-damp ink all over her father’s desk.
“Considering I’m actually the bookkeeper, I feel like I should take that personally,” Yang counters.
“My apologies. Are you offended?”
“No,” she grins. “I’m Yang.”
The woman rolls her eyes spectacularly. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”
Most people find Yang’s sense of humor either entirely irritating or profoundly charming right away. She likes to let people know what they’re getting into. Fortunately, the woman in the duster gives a soft, low chuckle, less audible and more palpable in the way the air vibrates.
Then, she says, “It’s nice to meet you, Yang.”
“Likewise.”
The woman hasn’t offered a name in return, and Yang isn’t going to push for any further introduction. She doesn’t have to know someone’s name to graciously accept their money - or their attention. On occasion, she spends nights aboard cruise ships or in tavern rooms with women whose faces she hardly remembers and names she rarely even learns at all. It isn’t callous, she tells herself, if they don’t ask either.
“I’m Kali,” the woman says suddenly. She’s at the counter now, but her hands are empty. Either she isn’t buying anything, or she’s found herself more interested in something that isn’t displayed on a shelf.
“You sure you’re not looking for anything specific?” Yang asks.
“Depends what you’ve got to offer.” Kali’s gaze is relentless.
Something is off - Yang’s not as on top of her game as she usually is. And she’s kind of enjoying it. Few things can throw off her guard, and her stomach flips. Kali might not be able to see it, but Yang can feel sweat cracking through her palms, a single drop running down her lifeline as she rests the side of her fists on the countertop.
Yang reaches out for the closest distraction she can find, and her hand lands on the bowl of rubies. She slides it to the center of the counter. “How about these? You seem like you have more specific taste than the average Vacuo tourist.”
“What makes you say that?” Kali asks. She hasn’t even looked down at the rubies yet.
“Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not wrong - you’re Yang, remember?” the woman teases.
Yang presses her thumb and forefinger against the pointed corners of one of the rubies. She holds it up, letting the sunlight catch the cut of the gem. It might be an entrancing sight if she could manage to keep her eyes on it for longer than a second, but it’s rude not to give an engaged - and engaging - customer one’s full attention. “I think gems like these are too pretty to sit in a backwater shop.”
“Agreed.” Kali watches her for a moment, then looks at the stone, and back to Yang with a curious expression.
She’s glancing towards the haphazard stack of papers again. Is she really that put off by poor bookkeeping?
“My sister was in the middle of a project,” Yang explains. “I didn’t want to mess up whatever system she had going, so I just kind of moved it out of the way.”
“She’s an artist?”
“More like a linguist today, I think. Most days she’s also a carpenter and budding dust enthusiast.”
“Interesting.” Kali points at the stack - at the cylinder. “What’s that?”
“That would be the project in question.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
Yang doesn’t see why not. If anything, Ruby would love to meet someone who seems as interested in this as she is. Yang picks up the cylinder and puts it exactly halfway between them on the counter.
Kali turns the cylinder over in her hands. Yang takes particular note of the way her fingers dance over the runes.
“Is this for sale?” Kali asks.
“Not until Ruby’s done with it,” Yang says apologetically. She hates to disappoint this woman - she really, really hates to.
“I’ll give you three hundred pieces for it.”
Yang’s breath hitches. Nobody has that kind of money to throw around on ocean junk, not even the most frivolous tourists. Who is this woman? “Three hundred?”
“I guess you were right. My tastes are specific.”
“Well, what’s so special about this thing?” Yang asks a little too fast.
“Maybe I’m just... drawn to its form.” The woman watches her, intrigue shirking caution. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
Yang hesitates. On the one hand, there’s an enigmatic, gorgeous woman standing in front of her and offering six months’ mortgage for a piece of metal. On the other hand, Ruby will be very upset if Yang sells her new favorite puzzle, and Ruby’s happiness can’t be bought with all the gold in the world.
“I’m sorry,” Yang says. “It’s not for sale.”
“Do you have any idea when your sister might be done with it?”
“Knowing her, she’ll come down for dinner and crack the code wide open.” Yang pauses, then adds, “You could always come back tomorrow and check.”
Kali nods slowly, rotating the cylinder slowly, her thumbs stroking thoughtfully over the ridges of the gears at either end. She looks at the cylinder the way Ruby does, but almost... hungrier. Like she wants to devour whatever secrets it holds.
Finally, she puts it back down on the counter. “Maybe I will.”
“I’ll be here.”
With that, Kali sweeps out the front door, disappearing as swiftly as she entered.
For the first time in a long time, Yang dares to hope someone might follow through on returning.
Hours later, Ruby comes barreling down the stairs. She waves hello to Yang and goes straight for the pile of papers, sorting them into what look like completely arbitrary piles. Yang has faith that there’s some kind of organization happening, even if she can’t quite see it.
After an evening that involves wrangling two separate groups of rowdy children away from the table of blown glass souvenirs, Yang is ready to crash into her own bed, so she leaves Ruby to watch the shop with the promise that she’ll listen to her rant about her ancient runic findings later.
Yang doesn’t often dream during her afternoon naps, but today is an exception. All she can grasp is the distinct sensation of being watched and vague shapes, unable to see even her own hand through a dense fog. She hears nothing at first, but soon she can feel a sound rolling through the mist around her, pushing its way in like a ship dragging its hull through a sandbar. She feels as though a dozen figures are rushing past her on all sides, too fast to see, too obscured. They latch onto her presence just as she feels theirs, and they reach out to her in the only way they can: fragments reach her ears, whispered gasps swelling to assert themselves.
A hand brushes her shoulder.
The startling warmth of it shocks her awake.
As soon as her eyes open, she knows something’s wrong.
The darkness outside her window is normal at this hour, but it’s too quiet. There’s no noise from the workshop, no clanging of tools. If a customer is holding Ruby hostage past closing time, she would still be audibly jabbering on about whatever they were debating purchasing. If she’s by herself closing up, she usually hums or sings out loud.
Yang throws her blankets off and leaps down the stairs two at a time. The only thought in her mind is assuring her sister’s safety, the strange dream forgotten.
Her boots skid on the shop floor. As she pivots away from the bottom of the stairs, she sees Ruby behind the counter, her shoulders shrinking. Fear - Yang recognizes it, even though Ruby hardly ever shows it.
Two women stand on the other side of the counter. One leans in, tall and lithe, an asymmetrically long strand of otherwise short hair curling past her cheek. She grins as if she’s convincing someone in a crowded bar to pick up her tab. Odd metallic accessories adorn her outfit like an industrial exoskeleton: pipes run the outer lengths of her forearms, and a decorative flintlock hangs on a string of leather around her neck. The whole engineer-chic ensemble is crowned by a pair of dark-vision goggles obscuring her eyes. Yang’s never seen a pair in person before, and Ruby would probably be thrilled to examine such a rare accessory under different circumstances.
The other woman lurks a step behind her imposing companion, long brown hair pulled back in a practical braid. At a glance she seems the more unassuming of the two, but her sleeveless leather vest reveals that every muscle in her arms is coiled like a spring about to snap.
And her hand is on the hilt of a sword.
Weapons aren’t common in Patch, and one as menacingly precise as a rapier usually doesn’t return to its sheath without needing to be cleaned first.
Before Yang can figure out the best angle to leap into the nonexistent space between Ruby and the intruders, the tall woman notices her.
“Well, hello, Sunshine,” the woman says, a snarl under her shallow smile. She jerks a thumb in Ruby’s direction, far too casual for someone making tacit threats. “This one clearly flunked out of customer service training, so I’m hoping you can be a little more accommodating.”
Yang takes a step towards Ruby, and the shorter woman’s hand flinches on her sword. Yang puts her hands up, but only because it brings them closer to a defensive stance. If she needs to start throwing punches, she’ll be ready.
“If you’re here to rob us, you’ll have better luck at a tavern,” Yang tries.
“Taverns have witnesses,” the tall woman says. She laughs at her own joke. Her partner doesn’t.
“What do you want?” Yang asks. She continues trying to move closer to the counter, but the woman with the sword shakes her head morbidly slowly.
“Stay,” the shorter woman says. Her voice is gravelly and rough in a way that suggests she’s ordinarily very reserved or used to barking out orders at aggressive volumes. Could be both, given the way she’s staring Yang down despite being about the same height as Ruby. This woman doesn’t have to say much to be in charge of a situation.
Yang knows she should keep her eyes on the people with weapons, but she can’t help but check on Ruby again. Her little sister looks like she wants to disappear under the desk and cry, and all Yang can see is the reprinted memory of a terrified girl clinging to a broken mast, tears washed away by rain.
“You have something we want,” the tall woman says. Her thumbs tuck behind her obnoxiously ostentatious, polished gold belt buckle as if she’s standing around talking with an old friend on the street. Yang wants to tackle her through the fucking window.
“Hand over the cylinder. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean,” the shorter woman rasps. The way her voice cracks, it could be the longest sentence she’s ever spoken aloud.
From where Yang’s standing, she can see the cylinder hidden under some large sheets of printing paper. Whatever Ruby was doing, it’s lucky she happened to hide the cylinder in all the mess.
Torn between her pride and telling them to take what they’re after and leave, Yang stays frozen and says nothing. She’s a lot better at action than acting, but throwing up her fists isn’t going to do them any good right this second.
The tall woman squares up to Yang. If she has any weapons on her, they’re well-hidden, and that’s almost more concerning than the blatant sight of a sword. “Sunshine, tell me you’ve got more common sense than your assistant here. We already offered her five hundred pieces for this stupid hunk of junk.”
Five hundred? Why are so many people interested in paying a shocking amount of money for an ornate piece of metal? No way it’s just a hunk of junk.
The salesperson in Yang wants to barter, run the price up, but there’s still an unsheathed sword in the vicinity and it’s a little harder to broker deals with a stab wound.
Few robbers are chivalrous enough to pay for what they can otherwise take by force for free. If this cylinder is as valuable as the intruders believe, this is probably the kindest offer Yang’s going to get. She almost regrets not selling to the mysterious woman in the black coat earlier instead, even if the offer was lower - at least she didn’t bring weapons into the shop and threaten Ruby.
“Why not hand it over nicely and call this a successful sale?” the tall woman adds.
Survival instincts winning out over pride, Yang cautions, “Ruby, maybe we should–”
“No,” Ruby interrupts. “They can’t have it.”
The taller woman’s snarl cuts through, any trace of her smug smile vanished.
There will be other puzzles, Yang wants to scream at her sister, ones that don’t cost your life to solve. But she knows Ruby won’t hear her. She’s so much like Summer sometimes - that familiar stubbornness is what lets Ruby succeed at so many things that others would give up on, but at times like this it makes Yang want to punch a wall.
From a pouch beside her belt, the taller woman takes out a shimmering, red sphere. Yang recognizes the distinct sparkle of crushed fire dust, just like what Ruby uses to fuel her blowtorch. The firebomb is no bigger than a small apple, but it could easily put a crater in the center of the shop.
“We’re not here to haggle,” the swordswoman says.
Yang notices something then: the swordswoman’s jaw flexes, and beads of sweat hang at her temple as if she’s the one behind the counter instead of the one holding a weapon. The tall woman, for all of her posturing, shifts her weight. She might be holding a firebomb, but she also seems to like herself too much to set it off while she’s still inside the building.
They’re bluffing. And they’re nervous about it.
Maybe this is their first time holding up a shop. If so, Yang has to commend them on their image, at least. They’re very convincing. Unfortunately for them, this isn’t Yang’s first time dealing with people attempting to steal from her family.
Once, a crew of brigands stowed away on board and waited until night to strike, planning to steal the emergency rowboat and make a clean getaway without ever being spotted. Easy in, easier out. Unfortunately for them, they failed to factor in how unsteady their legs were at sea, and their stumbling woke the entire Starcrossers crew before they could secure their loot. The fight was short, and Yang spent the next morning helping her parents scrub blood from the main deck before Ruby woke up.
If Yang can find her footing and knock these thieves off balance, she’ll gain the upper hand. The first thing she needs to do is make them think they’ve won.
“I think we should make the sale, Rubes,” Yang says.
“Yang–”
“We would be set for the rest of the year. It’s the smart thing to do.”
“Plus, you know, you’ll still be alive, and not a smoking pile of hot ash,” the tall woman winks. She tosses her firebomb in her hand, each slap against her palm like a harpoon thudding into a rotten hull. Yang watches the bomb - slap. slap. slap. - and it tells her one key thing. These bombs aren’t activated on contact. The bomb must have some sort of safety or an arming mechanism or both (if Yang was carrying bombs around on her person, she would certainly want them to be as unlikely to accidentally blow up as possible). Yang examines the bomb as closely as she could while it bobs up and down through the air, and sure enough, there are two small buttons on opposite sides around the equator of the sphere. They’ll both need to be depressed at the same time to activate the device. Yang silently thanks Ruby for all of her rants about dust stabilization and how it’s revolutionizing the speed of production pipelines in mainland Vale.
Yang can’t look at her sister now. If she does, it will break her resolve. She wants to promise that she’ll listen to everything Ruby finds out about the cylinder and any other fascinating, strange object for the rest of time, but she can’t. Not yet.
“It’s in that lockbox on the counter. I need to move to get it, if that’s okay with you,” Yang says, glaring at the woman with the sword.
She wordlessly flicks the sword in the direction Yang indicated.
Yang takes it as permission and hopes she isn’t about to get skewered through the kidney.
Her first cautious step leads to no immediate disemboweling, so she keeps her hands up and continues past Ruby towards where the cylinder is buried under some papers. Yang vows to never again tease her sister about messy workstations.
Yang shoulders past Ruby, doing what she can to block her from the intruders’ line of sight in case they snap and decide their weapons need a workout. She picks up a few papers, clearing off the lockbox as if she’s preparing for any normal transaction.
“Shoot, I left my keys upstairs. Ruby, can you go grab them?”
Ruby doesn’t respond.
The betrayal on her face is something that will stay burned into Yang’s mind forever. She knows she’s shattering the image Ruby holds of her fierce, stubborn older sister who doesn’t take shit from anyone. Yang wants to scream that she’s trying to rescue them both, protect their shop, and save the only thing they have left of their family, but she can’t. There are too many things she can’t say right now, and all she can hope is that she gets the chance to beg for Ruby’s forgiveness. She can apologize forever once they’re both safe.
Some fragment of hope stuck onto Yang’s clothes on the beach last night like sand between her toes, and she latches onto it now, sure she can feel its edges cutting into her palm. If they survive unscathed - when, when they survive - she’ll fix this. She’ll make sure Ruby never has a reason to doubt her again.
Right now, she needs Ruby to go upstairs where she’ll be out of harm’s way.
But she’s just standing there, shocked, horrified.
“We don’t have all day, sweetheart,” the tall woman says.
Ruby finally starts towards the stairs. Good. Even if she thinks Yang is weak and useless after this, she’ll be safe. That’s something - it has to be something.
Yang stands behind the counter sweating nonchalance out of her pores. She counts Ruby’s uncharacteristically heavy footfalls on the creaking steps. One, two, three. Seven to go.
Both of the women across from her are motionless now, nerves wound so tight with anticipation they’re hardly breathing.
While one of Yang’s hands shuffles papers into a stack, the other reaches for the still-hidden cylinder. Four, five, six. “So, come here often?” Yang asks.
“Shut up.” The woman with the sword twitches and glares at her. Seven.
“Just trying to make conversation.” Yang asks. Eight.
“Don’t.”
“Fine.” Nine.
On ten, Yang moves.
First, pieces of parchment swarm the space between her and the intruders like a flock of startled pigeons.
Second, Yang swings the cylinder across the counter and swats the dormant firebomb like a bat hitting a ball.
Glass shatters as the bomb flies through the window. Deadly steel arcs through the air towards Yang. She ducks behind the counter, cylinder in hand, just as the swordswoman’s rapier splinters into the polished wood.
Yang doesn’t expect the blade to whip out and curve past the lip of the counter like a forked tongue lashing out to sting her shoulder.
Maybe she overestimated how useful a foot-long tube of metal would be in this fight.
“I’ve got more than one bomb, you know,” the tall woman says. She sounds bored. “But that was a nice shot.”
With every wisp of air in her lungs, Yang screams, “Ruby, run!”
Yang hears a series of clicking sounds and wonders if she wrongly assumed that these people cared about self-preservation when it came to firebomb usage.
“Really a shame this had to turn violent,” the taller woman’s voice says, a strangely sensual drawl undermining any disappointment she claims to have in the turn of events.
When Yang peeks around the side of the counter, the rapier’s hyperflexible blade is snaking back to its hilt, and all of the tall woman’s odd accessories have come together to form a shotgun pistol. She’s still knocking the butt of it into place against the heel of her hand.
This is the only opening Yang’s going to get.
She leaps over the counter, letting the metal cylinder clobber the swordswoman in the face and dashing for the front entrance. The woman barely grunts at the impact, but when Yang stops at the door and turns, she’s satisfied to see at least a snarl.
“You want this?” she taunts, waving the cylinder around.
They’ll come after her. They’ll pursue her until she loses them or they catch her, and Ruby will have time to escape.
“Go find the other one,” the swordswoman barks. “I’ll handle this.”
The tall woman with the shotgun raises an eyebrow. “You just love the feisty ones. Don’t you, Ilia?”
The swordswoman - Ilia - clenches her teeth and cracks the tip of her rapier against the floor. It sparks like an electric eel. Without another word, she rushes at Yang.
All Yang can do is hope she’s given her sister enough of a head start. She could have climbed out the window or onto the roof. Ruby’s creative and smart and she’s been through worse. Ruby’s going to be okay. She’ll be okay.
Yang repeats that refrain to herself over and over as she bursts through the door and takes off at a sprint through the alleys. There isn’t much opportunity to lose a pursuer on an island this small, but she knows these alleys better than someone who hasn’t spent a decade playing Hide-and-Seek with neighbor kids in them.
She cuts around corners at random, running nowhere in particular. All she has to do is lure the intruder far enough away and get her lost in the tight maze of the marketplace. Then Yang can circle back to the shop and track down her sister.
Yang’s lungs and legs burn after a few minutes of sprinting at full speed. If she keeps it up much longer and there’s a fight, she won’t stand a chance.
A few more turns, and the sound of heavy boots against cobblestone behind her is gone.
Yang ducks behind a barrel that’s unmistakably filled with salted fish. She gasps in a breath and holds it despite the cramp between her ribs, listening and staying as silent as possible. The cylinder is cold where she clutches it against her chest.
The tense moment passes, and Yang is cautiously sure that Ilia and her whip-sword aren’t waiting on the street outside.
Yang releases the breath she’s been holding with a gasp and creeps out from behind the barrel–
In her periphery, a shadow leaps from the roof.
Yang hits the ground hard.
The weight that lands on her is more momentum than pure mass, and Yang throws it off easily. She does a sloppy somersault backwards and steadies herself on a bruised knee.
With the intense moonlight amplifying the electric dust glow of the rapier, Yang can see the mottled purple spots on Ilia’s cheekbone where the cylinder’s gears connected. Despite the current unfavorable circumstances, it’s at least a little bit satisfying.
After getting tackled from a roof and knocked into the pavement, Yang owes her at least two more bruises to make them even. She hopes she got lucky and avoided scuffing her prosthetic - buffing metal takes a lot more effort than slapping on a bandaid.
Then again, that’s hardly a concern when she’s stuck in an alley with a woman who’s got a fresh grudge and an electric sword.
Yang pushes herself up to stand. Her legs ache in protest. “Alright. Let’s do this. I can take you.”
“I’m not fighting you.”
“Scared?”
“It would be a waste of time.” Ilia extends her free hand. “Give it.”
Patch’s air is clean and crisp, especially at this time of night, but Yang tastes bitter bile in the back of her throat.
“Not gonna happen,” Yang says. She has no weapon and nowhere to run, but she can put up a fight. She has to. These people came into her shop - her family’s shop - and drew weapons. It’s a matter of pride at this point. If she’s gone this far to keep a piece of beach junk out of the wrong hands, she’s going to see it through.
With no other options, Yang raises the cylinder above her head and charges.
But she’s sore and slow, and her opponent is neither of those things.
With a flick of Ilia’s wrist, current courses down the slithering blade of the rapier. A second snap of the wrist sends the blade darting through the air. For a fleeting moment, Yang thinks Ilia struck wide and missed, but then the whip wraps around the cylinder in Yang’s grasp.
She feels a tingle at first. Then a violent jolt travels from the metal cylinder through her prosthetic and straight to her nerves.
When she hits the ground this time, she doesn’t feel it.
Drifting. Yang is drifting. The ground is moving, and she’s like a marble caught in the middle of a maze. Voices warble around her. They swarm like the ones in the fog in her dream, but these whispers sound different. Alarmed.
“...pick it up as soon as possible,” the rougher-sounding one says. Yang remembers that voice right away. Electricity. Scraped skin. Ilia.
Bitch.
“...shouldn’t have done that,” another voice fades in. Yang thinks she recognizes that one, too - but her mind drifts back to the fog. Can she open her eyes, or is she still sleeping?
Something is binding her arms together behind her back. Her wrist hurts. Everything hurts. She remembers she got deep fried and knocked out, and her disdain for Ilia blossoms anew.
“Should I call him again?” Ilia asks. She’s deferential now in a way that it wasn’t back in the shop, where she was the one giving orders. Someone else is in charge here.
“No,” the second voice snaps.
“I thought Admiral Taurus would want to know–”
“That you captured a hostage during what was supposed to be an interrogation and acquisition mission?”
“She had the map tube, Blake. I thought–”
“It wasn’t your call to make, Commander.”
A pause. Then Ilia’s voice, resigned and thoroughly chastised: “Understood. Captain.”
The captain says something else, but to Yang it sounds like a flute being played underwater.
Captain. First mate. Yang is on a ship. On the water. Possibly nowhere near land, depending on how long she’s been knocked out. Everything spins and electricity lingers. Her skin feels like bugs are crawling all over it, and nausea boils in her stomach.
She tries to blink. Her eyes open, and her vision is a blur. Her breaths come shallow, cracking through her chest. Dim, yellow spots swim across her vision. The air smells like salt, but her tongue is mercifully dry thanks to the gag tied around her mouth, and that’s the only thing convincing her that she isn’t actually underwater at this very moment.
Under the stench of salt, there’s something else. Damp wood. Dark wood, all across her view. Someone is walking. Each time the soles of their boots hit the floor, heavy and petulant, it echoes in Yang’s skull. She blinks again, and the multiplicity of her vision starts to synthesize.
By the time Yang can raise her head and begin to make sense of what she’s seeing, Ilia is leaving. Yang catches only the tail end of a ponytail, the heel of a boot, and the glinting tip of her rapier before she’s gone. The stinging sword bite in Yang’s shoulder flares.
Another set of footsteps, lighter and more assured, grows louder, and it pulls Yang out of her half-consciousness. With all the effort she can muster, she looks up.
A pair of eyes she never expected to see again hits her like a cattle prod to the sternum. Amber-gold, catching the lantern glow from under a round, black brim. Kali - or Blake, rather.
She’s shed her long duster, and without it she’s almost a different person. Crossed arms, bare save for the intricate tattoos snaking down the curve of her muscles. That resting hint of a smirk is gone, twisted now into a frown. A pair of obsidian cutlasses hang from her belt.
Electricity lingers, and it burns.
Yang vows never to call this liar of a woman Captain.
Blake looks down, watching, her face all but unreadable. Everything about her is reserved, calculated, intentional - but those eyes flash with a rogue spark of doubt that vanishes so quickly it could have been invented by Yang’s foggy mind and the low light.
She comes down to Yang’s level, perching on her heels. Her elbow comes to rest on one knee and her other arm drapes across her lap, hand resting just so that she can brush her fingertips over the cut of pearl inlaid at the base of a sword hilt. She props her chin on her knuckles and looks Yang dead in the eye.
When she speaks, her voice sends a shock up Yang’s spine.
“Well. What do we do with you?”