He didn’t. I watched him slide the door closed and stride off.I wondered where he would go now that the ironmages had the wardroom.
I waited until he was surely gone before I slipped back to my berth in the galley. My questions, my lessons, could wait.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night, but at least I didn’t dream.
There were more jellyheads in the morning, and I had a bad feeling about them. Last night, there were three. Now, there were more than thirty, and they bobbed just under the surface of the glassy green sea. They were odd—bilious and bulging—with spikes along one edge that looked like teeth or jagged bone. I thought them as unnerving as the leviathaur but less likely to win us a meal.
Altercation. Alteration. Abomination. Dread, said theTouchstone.
Suns, she was poetic. It was hard to think of them as simple jellyheads after that.
The captain came with me on the jolly boat to the wreck of theAndomiehr. I was impressed at how the boatwrights had made her somewhat stable as she bobbed lifelessly on the surface of this quiet sea. Even sunken ships would float for a time once raised, but I knew we had hours before the water-heavy timbers would take her down again. The holes in her hull were wide and many, and it was clear that not all were made by cannon fire. There were also no barnacles, and I thought that odd. All ships were covered in barnacles. Still, she was water-bloated, slimy, and green, and I had to hold my breath as we rowed through her open hold.
We docked just under the second gundeck, open to the yellowhaze that was the sky, and a seamage helped us up to the main. She was exposed like a rib cage, an oaken skeleton with shallow pools of slimy green on what remained of the decks, with vines of kelp hanging between them. It was sad. This was all that was left of a fine four-master when the ocean worked to consume her.
Two crewmen and I followed Thanavar as he walked along the main, slowly and carefully because of the slippery, rotting planks. His hands were speaking, and I knew he was looking for RuneTree wood. He paused at the wheel, touched one of its grips, glanced at me.
“This?”
I looked at my scars, bright with chimeric even under the gloves.
“Aye,” I said, and he nodded to a seamage behind.
“Bring the whole wheel aboard,” he said. “And take care that you get it all. See the darker strains of wood here and here? Leave none behind. Is that understood, Mr. Tripp?”
“Aye, sir.”
We spent the better part of the morning touring what was left of the ship. Her canvas sails were tattered to threads, and almost all of the shrouds and lines were eaten clean away. There were decks with missing floors and holes so large we had to climb between them in order to move aft. I felt like a scavenger crab, picking the bones of a watery carcass, and it was hard to remember that this was about theTouchstoneand the chimeric-laden wood that would prolong her remarkable life.
We were at the door to the great cabin when Carpenter Ben Kobe hailed us down.
“There’s something not right with these jellyheads,” he said. “They’re attaching themselves to the boats.”
“That is not normal,” said Thanavar.
“No, sir, it ain’t. But what’s more, sir, is when we pry ’em off, there’s a hole where they was stuck.”
“Are they attaching themselves to theTouchstoneherself, Mr. Kobe?”
“Aye, sir. Mr. Buck is run ragged with repairs.”
“We shall be done soon.”
Kobe disappeared down the rotting hall.
The captain pushed the door to the great cabin, and it cracked off in his hands. He grunted, set it aside, and stepped carefully into the room. The moment my boots crossed the threshold, my runescars began to dance.
“Captain,” I said.
He looked around the cabin, but there was little left. Any papers would have been consumed by the sea long ago, any mementos swept away or buried in silt. But there was still a trunk under the gallery windows, and my heart skipped when I realized what it contained.
As he crossed the floor, one boot went through a rotting board, but he caught himself and carried on. The trunk was locked, but the clasp was rusted, and it took a simple incant to turn it to ash in his palm. He opened the lid, and I hissed at the pain.
To my surprise, he smiled at me. It was a big, broad smile, and for a brief moment he looked young and happy and free. Forge dammit if my knees didn’t grow weak, and I cursed myself for the way I was falling. I was so soft now. So soft.
“Our rogue chimeric, Aro’el,” he said.
I nodded, swallowing back the lump in my throat.
