“I said dismissed, Ensign.”
“No.” I looked up at him, heart hardening to stone. “Why did you kill Worley?”
His eyes flashed like the lightning, and I raised my chin, defiant.
“You asked me to be Navy while serving the ship,” I said. “Last night, you said a Navy witness would be wise. Well, consider me Navy now. Why did you kill Mr. Worley?”
“I trusted him,” he said. “We all did. With our lives and our secrets. He betrayed that trust.”
“You didn’t have to keelhaul him. That was cruel.”
“TheRhi’Ahrway,” he said.
“You could have clapped him in irons and kept him in the brig. You could have dropped him off at the nearest port with neither penny nor purse. Hels’ hooks, you could have set him in the dory and quit him to the sea. He was a sad old man, and you killed his son.”
“We have been dogged for years now, by Emperial ships andRhi’Ahr,” he said. “I can’t count the number of men I’ve lost to their guns, and there is no worse crime than betrayal on a ship of war. It is worse than piracy or cowardice, for it buys and sells souls as if they were plunder.”
“You sold Cable and Dion for the price of some timbers,” I said. “For the bones of theNil’hellyn.”
“You are in dangerous waters, Aro’el,” he growled.
“You didn’t have to keelhaul—”
“He killed my men!” He swung in close now, and I could feel his breath on my skin. “He killed my crew, and without a doubt, he killed yours!”
My heart was already stone. Now it turned to ice.
“Hodgetown, Flogger’s Bay, the Hall of Sheets, Port Corvallan,” he went on. “TheTemplemorewas always there like a shadow, chasing us from port to port and peppering our wake to keep us hot. But have you not noticed, Aro’el, in this chase, that it was not merely theTemplemorewho dogged us but theEndorathilas well?”
TheEndorathil.Nothing triggered fear in my heart like that name.
“How was theTouchstonemerely days away from your sorry frigate, when we have all the oceans of the world in which to sail?”
“You said she was drawn to the chimeric in the water—”
“Could she have felt that chimeric a half world away?” He straightened, stared down at me, but did not step back. “Could we have made it to you even if she did? No. TheEndorathilwas looking forus, Aro’el.Looking for us because she knew where we’d be. Your unfortunate frigate was simply in her way.”
Suns, moons, and stars, I knew it was true, and my gut twisted at the thought.
“I don’t know if you knew them. I don’t know if you cared. But Worley’s treachery cost you yourDawn Watchand sent her good men and women to the deep.”
Corwen. Vir. Firmir. Lagerheim. If not my friends, they had been my crew.
“This is not a game,” he said. “This is not an exercise. This is war, and you are not captain. You are not responsible for the lives in your care.Iam, and I will not be dressed down by a junior officer for carrying out the duties of my command. Do you understand?”
Damn, my throat.
I nodded once. There was nothing to say.
He turned on his heel and grabbed a bottle.
“I do not enjoy it, Aro’el,” he said. “It weighs on me every day.”
I stood for a long moment, trying to master my breath, caught between the captain and the books, the basket of glass and the chest filled with chimeric. I could feel the runescars burning along my skin, across my breastbone now, and down my belly. But as they went, they charted a new path, spinning new patterns while burning off the old. I was not the same mage I was when I was pulled like a fish on to theTouchstone’s fabled decks. Not the same mage at all.
“On a ship filled with crew who worship you,” I said quietly, “who hang on your every word, who would die for you if only you asked, you choose to be alone still.”
“You sound like Dev.” His back was to me as he poured himself a glass.
