I heard a quiet step and looked up. Echo smiled down at me, his goatlike mane waving in the night breeze.
“I don’t mean to listen,” he said, handing me a cup. “But your thoughts are very loud.”
In the cup, rum and lime.
“Don’t drink it too quickly. You haven’t eaten, and the rum will go straight to your blood. You’ll be dancing in the crow’s nest before you know it, and you’ll hate me in the morning, all because I was kind.”
I reached up to take it, wondering if it would burst into sudden, alcoholic flame in my hand.
“I’m sorry you can’t stay,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You’re lying, but that’s to be expected, I suppose,” he said. “Life is a funny thing, sweet like rum and bitter like the lime. That’s why we like it.”
“I’ve had my fill of bitter,” I said. “I’ll take your word about the sweet.”
“Listening to fauns is the beginning of wisdom.”
And he smiled. I couldn’t help it. Wearily, I smiled back.
“Ahoy, Doc!” came a voice across the main. “Able Whacks at Dog Eight. Wardroom!”
“I’ll be there!” He twisted the ring on his left hand. “Smoke never learns, but I get his rum, so I don’t mind.”
I watched him walk away with his bobbing, goatlike gait.
And so I sat, cupping the rum with gloved hands, sipping it slowly, breathing the deep salt air, and relishing the rock andsway of the ocean. It was on nights like these that I would think about home, the poor little pebble of land on the shoals of the Spits. I thought about my mother, a wylde greenmage, trained by no one but skilled beyond reason. She had battled the contempt of the people to become a sought-after healer. To them, she was beautiful and bewitching, but to me, she was hard and unyielding and cruel. All to make me stronger, she had said. All to give me the hope of a life beyond the Spits. Well, she was right, and I was gone, and I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived.
Plenty of bitter. Still waiting on the sweet.
There was another step, and I opened my eyes, hoping to see the faun with another cup, but it was Devanhan Fahr. He hadn’t seen me, huddled as I was under the fife rail, wrapped in peacoats and shadow, as he stood, facing the horizon. He was a puzzle of a man, with his laughing eyes and crooked smile, regulation hair and lawless earring, yet he cut a fine figure at the prow of this ship. If I’d come across him in a tavern or shipyard, I’d have fogged him in a heartbeat and been gone before the sunsrise. But he sailed with the enemy, so I could just as easily put a shiv in his ribs and call it a day.
Slowly, he pulled his hands from his pockets and began to form the patterns for lightspinning. His lips moved, and sparks traced from his fingertips as he drew runes in the dark sky. Soon, a flare erupted between his hands, illuminating his face in flickering light. He folded it into his palm and softly blew across it, sending sparks along the waves. As if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he didn’t sail with aRhi’Ahrfor captain.
“Traitor,” I spat.
“Hels’ hooks!” he exclaimed, stepping back. “Why are you there?”
“Where am I to go? Don’t have a berth, and despite the quartermaster’s kind offer, I don’t think the dory is ascomfortable as he makes it sound.” I fought his eyes with mine. I was good at that. “Besides, the air stinks ofRhi’Ahrdown there. I’ll take my chances with the sea.”
He shook his head. “It’s not what you think,” he said.
“I don’t need to think,” I said. “It’s pretty damned clear.”
It’d been ten years since the Nethersea lit this war, and still each day flung another ember into the blaze. We’d burned through too much death already, and now my people, my bones, ached for the same blood in return.
“Is it now, Bluemage?” He tossed the light to the other hand, his gaze holding mine. “Tell me what you can see without thinking.”
“The infamous Ship of Spells is captained by the enemy. Who doyouserve?”
“The king, Oversea, and the Northhelm itself.”
“Liar.”
He grinned. “One of the best you’ll ever meet, I’ll wager.”
“How in the hels did you get a slip at Hodgetown?”
