He looked at Thanavar.
“Can we have the ball, Cap’n?”
Thanavar’s gaze rested on the “ball” for a long moment before dragging up to Neale’s face. He arched a brow, and the knife grin slid into one cheek.
“Run, Mr. Neale,” he said.
Neale laughed and bolted back through the sand, glancing over his shoulder as he went. The captain rolled the corkanut in his hand and looked back at me.
“You should play,” he said.
“I don’t know the rules.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “We make our own.”
And with that, he flung the corkanut high into the skies, swung an arm, and suddenly, he was the winter hawk, launching into the air with a thunder of his wings. He caught the corkanut in his dagger talons and soared up, up, up until he was almost invisible in Forge’s blinding light. The crew scrambled to catch it when helet the corkanut fall.
Hand shading my eyes, I watched him disappear over the bay toward the ships.
“You know how to play, by gods,” I muttered to myself. “You play me like a drum, and I so want to dance.”
I sighed and turned back to the tent.
Echo and Smoke sat at a table made from a barrel, playing Able Whacks with shells and dried banana leaves. Between them, several bottles sat in the sand, some wrapped in reed baskets, others plain. All were open, and I was sure they had lost the corks hours ago.
Fahr lay on a cot, propped up with pillows and blankets to watch their match. His shirt was loosed, and I could see Echo’s bandages binding his chest. I had helped the surgeon operate, that night of the Bilgetown Twelve, and I’d seen how the three shots had chewed up his lungs from the back. We had secured the iron pellets and the cloth that had travelled in with them, but the bleeding had been generous, and I was certain he bled still. His breaths were raspy and his body cool, not right for a man on an island beach.
He smiled when he saw me, and I managed one for him. It was weak, but still.
“Ensign,” said Echo. “Please join us.”
“Pull up some sand,” said Smoke. “But I’m not lending you m’pipe.”
I dropped down at the foot of Fahr’s cot and looked up at him.
“You were lucky,” I lied.
“What a pitiful way to die,” he muttered. “Shot in the back by Ten foggin’Polley.”
“From the Bilgegate, no less,” said Smoke.
“A fine epitaph for a prince,” said Fahr. His voice sounded thin, and I glanced at the doctor. Echo didn’t look back.
“Fortunately, the shots missed your heart,” he said, studyinghis shells. “But they did damage your lung.”
“Poked three holes clean through,” said Smoke.
“So,hewon’t be getting your pipe, either,” I said, and Smoke grinned.
“More for me.” The quartermaster raised his brows over the banana leaves. “Ain’t this sweeter than the Navy, Blue?”
“How?”
“Well, you’re only an ensign. You wouldn’t be a-sitting here with the senior officers were you on a Navy ship.”
“I wouldn’t have just barely escaped a murderous encounter with a lethal Dreadtown, either, were I on a Navy ship.”
“Indeed,” said Smoke. “You wouldn’t have escaped at all.”
