“Then I will help you.”
I sighed, looked down at my hands. They were almost independent of me now, powerful and strange. I would give them their freedom if it would grant me my own, but it was too late for that.
Maybe too late for me.
“She decent yet?” barked Smoke from outside the canvas. “A naked chaser ain’t no sight for these poor eyes right now.”
“Remember.” Echo patted my knee. “I’m here.”
“A body’s got to sleep sometime,” the quartermaster muttered as he pushed into the pit. “Foggin’ Court of Shanks taking the wardroom.”
“Smoke has been assigned to bunk with me,” said Echo with the flick of an ear. “Ember forbid a ship’s surgeon get some rest, the wayhesnores.”
I slid off the table, pulled on my boots.
“So, that’s your mum, then,” said Smoke. He began to string his bunk. “The greenmage healer?”
“Ironmage, now,” I said. “It’s what she always wanted. What she was born for, really.”
“She’s a sweetmeat,” said Smoke. “Clearly, you look like your daddy.”
“She must be a powerful mage if she’s part of the Court of Sand,” said Echo.
“She always was.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “People feared her for it.”
“Well, perhaps she’s found out where she finally belongs.”
Smoke stretched out in the hammock, kicked off his boots to the floor.
“Why’d you run, then?” he asked. “Did she beat you?”
“No.”
“Lock you in your room? Try to sell you in the market?”
“What? No…”
“Call you names? Wish you dead? Force you to work in a palace because the king thought you were funny? Oh, wait. That was me.”
“Smoke.” Echo tsked.
“She was manipulative and harsh,” I said, but I was surprised at the lack of vehemence in my voice. “And we were chased from town to town because there was nothing she wouldn’t do for magik.”
“Did she heal people?”
“Yes,” I said, again surprised at myself. “She was very good at it.”
“But that frightens people,” said Echo. “Did it frighten you?”
I looked up, but I wasn’t seeing him. I was seeing her, seeingus, setting up the greencellar in each little hutch we lived in. Following her through the forests to choose the mushrooms and the pickled moss, the hildeberries and the sour grass. Snapping the necks of hares and slitting the throats of foxes caught in our snares. Bones pinned to the ceiling, pots on the fire, jars of oozeon the ledge. She was a woman hungry for magik, eager to learn all there was to learn, regardless of cost. She was a true Archaic, her magik unstructured and wylde. No wonder I’d sought out the rules and discipline of the Navy.
“You are not her,” said Echo.
“But I’m like her,” I said. “And maybe it’s time to stop running.”
“You see,” said Echo. “The beginning of wisdom.”
And he smiled and held out two green threads.
