“All hands!” Fahr cried. “To the post!”
“What is it?” barked Smoke as he marched to the wheel. “What is she seeing?”
“Damned if I know.”
The ship banked starboard, and we braced against the strain. I glanced at the wheel. It was a sunswheel, two wheels working together and reinforced for rough seas. Smoke had a meaty hand on a grip, but he had no shoulder in it. In fact, it seemed as though the ship were moving independent of her crew and the prevailing wind.
The harpy scrambled out from the hatch, and I watched her leap through the rigging to take her place on the bowsprit. Her taloned feet gripped the spar, her leathery wings extended as if catching the breeze. I could see her eyes sweep the horizon, and I wondered what she thought of life on the Ship of Spells. She seemed born to it, like all of them.
My chest was tight, my throat dry as I gripped the rail and peered across the waters toward the distant flicker of red. I knew that sight. It was burned in my eyelids like the runescars on my skin. The crackle of timber echoed in my ears, the boom of cannons, the screams of my crew.
I was grateful for the cool spray of the ocean as I leaned over the rail. A flash of white swept overhead, and I looked up. It was a winter hawk, white and ghostly, and he streaked away from theTouchstonetoward the glow. Echo moved to the rail, standing beside me as I watched him go.
“I know that bird,” I said. “He waited with me for a while when I was in the sea.”
Echo kept his gaze on the distance, the breeze blowing his earsback from his long face. “Indeed.”
“Should have saved me. Stupid bird. He’s big enough to carry me.”
“Maybe he reckoned you’d set him on fire.”
We watched until the hawk was little more than a speck, disappearing into the dark like an anchor in the deep.
Suddenly, the harpy cried out and pointed with the clawed finger of one wing.
“Gunners, at the ready!” Fahr shouted.
“Gunners!” Smoke repeated and leaned on the sunswheel.
Fahr stepped to the prow, raised a hand, and the bells fell silent.
“Weather eye, lads,” he called.
“Weather eye,” Smoke repeated, using the command to keep watch for changes on the sea. “Keep a lookout for swabs in the water.”
Fire was floating toward us. Fiery timbers, fiery boards, fiery barrels and crates and beams. I swallowed hard as burning debris bumped against theTouchstone’s oaken hull. It seemed to be the remains of a fishing vessel, and we sailed through her bones, scanning for signs of life. There were none, only fire and crackling chimeric.
Silently, we glided, but the flames were not finished, for another pocket flared on the horizon, leading us like stones down a garden path. We swept toward it, knowing what we would find.
“Those are new,” said Echo, nodding at my hands, and we both looked at the patterns gleaming past the edges of my gloves.
“TheCarmen Lumieredid something, I think,” I said.
“You’re going to need longer gloves. Do they hurt?”
“No,” I lied again.
“You forget I can hear you.”
“You forget I don’t care.”
“Hmm,” he said.
I stared at the horizon, trying not to wonder what would happen if my hands never healed.
The crackling bones of a Navy frigate camenext, and soon, the waters were littered with the smoldering wreckage of other ships. Trollers and dories, packs and barrels, ropes and rigging. The dark waves carried stories of life and death and the spoils of war, and I didn’t need my aching hands to know, beyond a shadow of belief, that theRhi’Ahrhad been here.
There was another flash of white as the winter hawk returned. He dipped a wing at the harpy on the sprit before swooping around to disappear behind the pup. Scavenging for dead and dying seamages, I reckoned. He’d probably been hoping I was dead that day in the ocean. He’d happily have picked my bones for his supper.
