CHAPTER 52: LEAPING FAITH

  Bartholomew Grimsby cleared his throat as he stood alone atop a wooden stage built for this special occasion. The stage had been erected near the finish line in front of the oldest piers of Sailor’s Rise, now stretching with fresh promise into the clear, fogless sky behind him. Large banners hung from either side of the platform, each adorned with the logo of The Emerald Cup (which was, quite literally, an emerald cup), and every street and alley in view was a riverbed of bodies, packed shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye could see, waving their arms, crunching their kettle corn, releasing their colorful balloons. The Rise seemed to be raining upward.

  The Transcontinental Trading Company’s chief proprietor cleared his throat again. The old man had not been the loudest speaker the two times Elias had met him before, but he would need to be this afternoon, or perhaps the pageantry of the stage would do the speaking for him. “It is my great honor,” he began, stopping to cough into his fist. “It is my great honor,” he said again, “to present the winners of this year’s Emerald Cup.”

  Cheers and claps embellished his short introduction with a youthful energy Mr. Grimsby could never quite muster. He was effectively the Rise’s unelected mayor, now in his nineteenth year as council chair, a position he would hold until another company outgrew his well-established empire—assuming he did not pass the baton willingly or otherwise relinquish his station, as all men must do, upon his deathbed. That day never seemed far away, and yet, year after year, never came any closer. For his colleagues and competitors on council, he was the proverbial carrot on a stick: impossibly close and impossibly far.

  “But first, I would like to acknowledge our third- and second-place racers,” Mr. Grimsby continued. “In third place, we have the crew of The Gray Gargoyle. Edric Graystone, would you please join me on the stage.”

  Elias watched his rival clomp up the wooden platform with a shamefully vindictive sense of satisfaction. For Edric, every compliment was an insult. Their applause was an insult. Third place was an insult. But the biggest insult of all was yet to come.

  “Well done, young man.” Mr. Grimsby beckoned him forward a little more. “Congratulations, Mr. Graystone. I’m sure your mother is very proud today. Perhaps not that father of yours, but he is a difficult man to please.” The old man chuckled at his own inside joke. Standing beside the platform, Abigail guffawed with delight, while the mother in question shook her head, beaming and proud. Arthur Graystone smiled up to his cheeks.

  After a sagging handshake and a smile Edric could not quite sell, the competition’s third-place winner left the stage with his head down.

  Mr. Grimsby moved things along. “Next, we have our second-place winner, racing on behalf of our Valshynarian friends. The ship with no name, though it certainly doesn’t need one to stand out from the flock. She is an eagle soaring among pigeons.” A number of onlookers near the front—mostly racers and their families—looked somewhat slighted. “But the eagle is only our second-place winner today, so never underestimate the noble pigeon. Lucas Dawnlight, please come up for your handshake.”

  Lucas sprinted onto the stage, unshackled from any sense of shame. He accepted his handshake and waved to the crowd. Elias spotted his fellow Valshynarians standing off to the side. His shipmates, he assumed, though they did not join in the clapping. Perhaps they too were insulted. Perhaps they hadn’t agreed with Lucas’s decision to suddenly throw the race in Elias’s favor. It had been his debt to repay, not theirs.

  Lucas, at least, seemed utterly unbothered. He hopped down as Mr. Grimsby appeared ready to announce the winners of this year’s Emerald Cup. The applause picked up, but their host had more to say before the big reveal.

  “Back when we started The Emerald Cup, the entry fee was five hundred relics, not five thousand,” the old man said contemplatively. “The prize was smaller and the event more modest, but we didn’t want to exclude anyone, you see. That was our naive dream for the cup—not so unlike the dream upon which Sailor’s Rise was built—a dream of building a great equalizer. Let merit and tenacity choose a champion. Give the modest merchant a chance to stand a head above the titans of industry for a day. Like most dreams, this one was seldom realized. And yet… it was realized today.”

  One last time, Mr. Grimsby cleared his throat. “Elias Vice, Briley Soren, Bertrand Fairweather, Iric Halvorson, and Gabby Mason, please come join me on the stage.” Gabby skipped ahead of them all, and the crowd loved her for it. Elias walked up last as Mr. Grimsby matched eyes with him and said quietly, “Lovely to see you again, Mr. Vice.”

  Handshakes were had. Prize money was promised. Behind them sat two large, presumably very heavy chests enclosing a combined fifty thousand relics. Elias was already puzzling out the logistics of rolling those onto The Sapphire Spirit as quickly as humanly possible. Every extra minute they spent stuck here made their ultimate destination more elusive, more unlikely.

  Elias permitted himself a single one of those minutes, nonetheless. A minute to bask in an ocean of glory the size of which he would likely never again experience. A minute to scan the audience for those he wished to see. First and foremost was always Abigail, enjoying the look on her brother’s face, as promised, but also the one on Elias’s. He attempted to find Jalander, but his occasional mentor must have been farther back—beaming proudly or sighing disapprovingly, he could not say. Irvin, Mable, and Sorea were displaying only the former emotion. Bertrand dropped down to hug his family. No doubt Mr. Mason was somewhere out there too, and Elias knew Iric had a sister in the city.

  And then, unexpectedly, he imagined his mother. He had won this race for himself, and yet it felt for a moment like a promise fulfilled to her. He pictured her ghost: young and healthy, snipped out of time and place, sewn into the scene before him like a patch on a quilt.

  Elias lost track of his minute. As soon as they stepped down from the platform, he gathered his team into a huddle.

  “It’s time,” he told them. “Briley and Gabby, get the ship running and the gangway down. Iric, Bertrand, and I will move the chests. After that, you’re on your own here, Bertrand. Try not to embarrass us.”

  An excuse for their absence had already been prepared. Bertrand would attend the evening reception on everyone’s behalf, telling anyone who asked that his colleagues had left on urgent business. It was not even a lie.

  “We have twenty-four hours.” Elias already sounded out of breath. “Let’s not waste them.” He could not tell if they believed in him now, in the possibility of completing their master plan, even after winning The Emerald Cup. But they had signed up for the impossible when they had signed on with Elias Vice. They were logical men and women, but it required a leap of faith.

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  * * *

  Seven hours had passed since their departure from Sailor’s Rise, and The Sapphire Spirit was making impressive time. The wind was blowing in their favor, Briley had kept them on a perfect path, and Gabby had overpowered their engine once already—as close to the line as she could, she had explained. Alas, they still were not going to make it at this pace, and their airship would need the evening to cool down.

  Elias, of course, could not and would not cool down. He had stowed himself away in the great cabin, alone with his thoughts and two chests heaping with fifty thousand relics. He had never seen so much money in one place before, and he still could not quite believe that all of it was legal property of The Two Worlds Trading Company. Even if they failed to make this trip in time, surely fifty thousand relics—not to mention a boost to their reputation—could buy them other opportunities. He just liked this one so much. It was serendipitous. It was a deal.

  Islet sauntered down the note-strewn table at the center of the room and rubbed herself against his shoulder. “Hey, sweetheart.” Elias scratched her ear. He supposed he was not entirely alone. Taking a deep breath, he stood up from his bench and collapsed to his knees, bowing before their prize money.

  It was twenty thousand more than they needed to buy Grayson’s paper mill, but Elias had other plans for these relics. He had discovered that he could consume roughly five of them per minute, or about three hundred in an hour, but what he hadn’t anticipated was just how exhausting a process this would become, and not only from the monotony of it. Consuming nearly a thousand relics—he had almost lost count at one point—over the course of a few hours was draining. He felt overstuffed, sleepy, and no closer to ascension.

  To frustrate matters further, he simply did not know when to stop. There was no universal answer to the question of how many relics one must consume to ascend. Jalander had said a few thousand. Elias had read a dozen of his books now, often skimming for the insight he considered most relevant to his goal of ascension, and the Southlander’s estimate seemed as accurate as any could be. There were hopeful exceptions. Apparently, a woman twenty years ago had ascended after consuming only thirteen hundred relics. Elias was just three hundred shy of that milestone—just one more hour of relentless consumption. He tried not to think about the stubborn aristocrat, mentioned in another book, who had consumed ten thousand in vain.

  There was no altering course now, after all. He would consume what he needed and figure out the rest. He would ascend. He had to. He was born to.

  But first, Elias needed to ensure The Sapphire Spirit was headed in the right direction. He exited the great cabin, briefly blinded by the sunlight, and marched past Gabby and Iric. The girl was teaching the northerner how to play Sirens, but despite their best efforts—which amounted to placing stones on cards—a mermaid queen flew free from their barrel table and beached herself upon Elias’s chest. He handed her back to them, then turned his attention to Briley.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” their navigator commented as he approached. “Taking a nap in the great cabin?”

  “I could use one, but no,” Elias replied. “I’m trying to get ready for what comes next.”

  “That will be a while yet,” Briley said. “We’re as fast as we’ve ever been, but we’re still on track to miss our deadline by five hours.”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk about.”

  Briley looked befuddled. “Are we giving up? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Not giving up. Doubling down.” Elias reached into his coat pocket and unfolded a heavily creased piece of paper. He showed her his hand-drawn map and drew an invisible line on it with his fingertip. “I want us to fly this way,” he explained, “right over the summit of this mountain. We’ll need to gain altitude.”

  Briley responded with an almost pitying look. “That’s not a shortcut, Elias. If we go your way, we’ll miss our deadline by six hours.”

  “I need you to trust me,” he said.

  “I need you to make sense,” she shot back. “Look, I’m not blind. I don’t think Bertrand sees it, but I know you’ve been hiding something from us. I also can’t explain it because… I don’t quite believe where it leads me.”

  Elias exhaled. Briley was being entirely reasonable, as she always was, as they depended on her to be, and that was a problem. He could not ask her to make incomprehensible turns when the stakes were this high. He had gone nearly two years not telling anyone else about his incipient powers, and yet if he couldn’t trust his closest friends, whom could he trust? Besides, he had already predetermined this decision: he had to tell them. Jalander did not need to know everything. It was just harder to say the words than he imagined, perhaps because he had held them in for so long, or maybe it was because they would sound so stupid spoken aloud, so unbelievable. He was bracing for incredulity, for rejection.

  “Remember when we first acquired this airship from the Graystone Junkyard?” he finally asked.

  “How could I forget?” she said.

  “We had to navigate our way to Mr. Mason’s hangar absent a running steam engine,” he went on.

  “I remember that too.”

  “And you’ll recall that I asked you to make a few odd maneuvers then. It didn’t make sense that I knew exactly which way the wind would blow, but I did, and we got there in one piece. There have been… other instances as well.”

  “Like the fact that you keep winning competitions.” Briley crossed her arms. “You’re stronger than you should be too. Like I said, I can’t explain it, so why don’t you try.”

  “I’m not sure you’ll believe me,” Elias said.

  “I’m not sure what I’ll believe, but there’s a blank that needs filling.”

  “There’s no time for me to tell you everything right now, but—” He stumbled, swinging his gaze toward Iric and Gabby, ensuring the two were out of earshot. He wanted to take this one person at a time. “I have this power,” he whispered. “I’m not the only one.”

  Briley did not immediately shut him down. “Jalander,” she said. “There was something between you two.”

  “There was. There is. He works for the Valshynar, but only because he has to. The man who helped us win The Emerald Cup, Lucas Dawnlight, I think maybe he knows about me too, but I haven’t told him anything.”

  “Haven’t told him what?”

  “That I’m a collector.” There it was. “The Valshynar are collectors, but I am not Valshynarian because, quite simply, they do not know about me. I’m unlocking my abilities on my own, which is why this needs to stay between us. They don’t like that.”

  “Clearly, I’m missing a few details here. What the hell is a collector?”

  “We collect relics,” Elias said.

  “Yeah, I collect relics too. I think it’s safe to say that collecting relics is probably the number one pastime of anyone who lives in Sailor’s Rise.”

  “I don’t just collect them.” He reached into his pocket and fished out a single relic. He showed her the coin, placed it down on his palm, and closed his fingers into a fist. He pulled back his sleeve, revealed to her every angle of his fist and forearm, then reopened his hand. “They give me power.”

  Briley shook her head, though at what, Elias was not sure. “Do that without closing your fingers.”

  “I haven’t figured out how yet,” he admitted. “I have a process. This is what works for me. I’ll explain more later, but right now we need to change course. I can get us to the Broken Isles with hours to spare. I promise.”

  Briley’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Well, it’s not like we were going to make it in time anyway. Let me see that map.”

  “Thank you, Briley.” Elias had not realized that spilling a secret could feel so freeing.

  He was, however, quick to fly away. After she turned them toward their new destination, Elias excused himself, went back to the great cabin, shut the door, and returned to her thirty minutes later looking tired.

  They could see the mountain summit now, rising high above the scarcely populated Dominion of Alpia, pointing to the horizon like an instruction. With its dying grasp, the setting sun sketched an orange edge along the tall mountain’s snowy peak. Elias had watched his mother make that same brushstroke in paintings from his past.

  “We’re almost there,” he confirmed.

  Briley still looked unconvinced. He chose to interpret her well-warranted skepticism as the ultimate expression of friendship: she believed in him enough to try this anyway. Strangers needed convincing, but friends could be trusted.

  They were over the mountain now, and for a sinking second Elias doubted himself. And then he saw it, that first crack in the sky, soon followed by another. By the time Briley noticed them too, it was too late for her to reconsider the meaning of trust.

  The impact made no sound. It rattled no boards. The rift simply swallowed their ship as the ocean swallows a fish. A dark shadow fell over them like the closing of a curtain.