Free The Spirit War by Rachel Aaron

missing a tied-off line, much to the crew’s displeasure) that Eli wanted to strangle him.
    “Who does he think he is?” Eli growled, turning back around. “We’re supposed to have a plan when we enter a new country. We would have had a plan three days ago if I’d had my way, but no . I don’t know what he expects us to do when we land in Osera. Powers forbid he actually tell us anything.”
    Nico shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”
    “Oh, I’m sure he does,” Eli said. “I just wish he’d share them. We’re supposed to be a team.”
    For the first time in days, Nico smiled a little. “Well, we were the ones who decided to come along. I suppose we can’t complain if he doesn’t share plans that he didn’t want us along for in the first place.”
    “I can complain about anything,” Eli said, straightening up. “And if you ever quote that back at me, I’m never speaking to you again.”
    Grinning at her arched eyebrows, Eli spun on his heel and walked off to find the captain to ask, yet again, how much longer this unbearably long boat ride was going to take.
    Nico listened to Eli’s light footsteps until they were lost in the crashing waves. Fifteen steps, she noted to herself. Fifteen steps from a famously light-footed thief on a rocking ship in the middle of the sea. She gripped the railing until her already-white fingers were the color of bleached bone. It wasn’t her imagination. Her hearing was getting better.
    And it wasn’t just her hearing. Ever since she’d taken back her body from the demon, her strength had grown as well. Her night vision was now better than her normal sight, and she could smell the tiniest traces of scents lingering days after whatever had madethem was gone. She could hear the turning of the sleeping spirits and the laughter of the winds as they rushed overhead. But all this she could accept. It was reasonable that her senses would get better now that she was her own master. What didn’t make sense, what she couldn’t accept, was that she wasn’t just seeing the world more clearly. She was seeing things she’d never seen before, things that were not there.
    Nico tilted her head back, squinting up at the clear sky overhead. At first, she saw nothing but the sky, deep blue and cloudless. Then her eyes adjusted, and she saw them. High overhead, great things —she had no other name for them—streaked through the air. They were as faint as shadows, but they were always there, swimming through the sky in great colorless coils, turning and flashing so quickly it made her nauseous.
    The snakes in the sky weren’t all she saw, the strange things were everywhere: in the boat, in the sails, in the nets. Unlike the things in the sky, these were stationary, twitching only slightly, mostly when Eli walked by. The sea, however, was roiling with half-seen shapes. They flowed with the waves, thousands of millions of little sparks swimming in and out of each other.
    The first time she’d seen the shapes was the day after she’d beaten the demon. They were so dim then, barely more than shadows, that she’d dismissed them as a trick of the light. But the trick never went away. Day and night she saw them like a second world over the real one. As the days passed and it was clear the things weren’t going away, she’d finally decided to talk to Eli. Other than Slorn, he was the only person who might know what they were. But just when she’d finally worked up the courage to ask him, Josef had declared they were going to Osera. Nico decided to keep her mouth shut after that. Whatever Josef needed to do in Osera, he had enough to worry about without her adding more.
    Nico closed her eyes. When she woke up on the valley floor, ithadn’t occurred to her that she might be different. How stupid. You couldn’t be torn apart and rebuilt and expect to still be what you were. What had happened in Izo’s valley had changed her. Was still changing her. But whatever was