“Happy to drop you on the next spit we come to, Dev.”
Fahr shook his head and left the rail, shouting orders to the crew. The captain looked back down at me.
“Well done, Aro’el,” he said. “Concentrate your chase on the southeasterly trail, if you will.”
“Aye, sir,” I said, and dipped my fingers back into the water.
Several hours went by, and our progress was pathetic. The spinners were exhausted. We needed wind, else we would die out here, hot, thirsty, and burned like a run of sausages. They hauled me up midafternoon, and I found my appetite gone.
“Eat, Ensign,” said Echo as he rubbed wax on my nose and brow. “Else, we’ll lose you over the side.”
I shrugged.
“Not much of a loss, really,” I said. “It might be a blessing, given my runescars.”
“Please, don’t start,” he said. “We can’t lose heart now.”
“We’ve lost everything else,” I said. “Kit, Hobbs, Fletch, Cable, Dion…Worley…”
My throat grew tight as I bit into the tack and struggled to chew. It was hard, tasteless, and drier than bone.
“Seems I lost Dev and the captain, too.”
Echo moved closer, dipped his head in like a conspirator.
“Don’t fret, dear one,” he said. “There are forces at play between them that we can’t understand. Betweenallof them.”
“Some damned bargain,” I said. “We should never have taken the Court of Sand.”
“And we would have died in that wave, surely.”
“Death comes to all of us, Doc.”
“As a doctor, that’s not something I’ll easily concede, else I should hang up my wraps and leave the service entirely.”
He handed me a mug of water.
“Here, young cynic. Drink and be amazed.”
I did, and I was.
“What is this?” I gasped, looking at the water splashing in the cup. “Thishasn’t been sitting in a barrel for weeks!”
“The ironmages made it,” he said. “They knew our course was charting us through the Silence, so they have been perfecting the incantation to separate seawater from salt. We currently have three barrels of potable water and two sacks of usable salt.”
I gulped again and again. It was very good.
Echo patted my shoulder.
“You see? There is always another way to look at things. Able Whacks in the pit tonight? Smoke is utterly spent, so it’s easy to win.”
I grinned despite myself and climbed back over the side.
It was evening when I saw her sitting on a crate overlooking the port side, holding a book in her lap. I debated just trotting down to the galley and grabbing my ration before Able Whacks, but the sight of her gave me pause. She was reading what looked like one of the captain’s journals—the one with the strange incants andAro’elrune. I took a deep breath and crossed the deck toward her.
“Daughter,” she said, smiling as she saw me.
“Mother,” I said, not.
