He looked past me, to Tripp at the door.
“Take this to the hold and put it with the others. And take care. It can do you a damage if you tre—”
TheAndomiehrlurched beneath our feet. The captain frowned.
“Mr. Tripp?”
“I’ll check, sir.”
I stepped over to his side and looked down at the chest.
“I have so many questions,” I said quietly.
He turned, and I realized I was very close. He looked down at me and cocked his head. I couldn’t begin to guess the thoughts that were spinning behind his gold-flecked eyes.
“Tonight,” he said, “I will tell you more about the Cloudgate.”
“Tell me everything,” I said. His warmth felt good in this rotting, dead room, and once more, his eyes darted down to my lips.
Tonight…
Oh suns, they lingered. His eyes lingered, and I leaned, heat rushing through my body as my runescars began to burn.
He raised his hand to my face, barely brushed my skin with those long fingers.
“Do they hurt?” he asked. His voice was soft, deep. Like the purr of a great cat.
“No,” I lied. “They yearn.”
He touched one on my cheek. It gleamed against his skin, the runes lighting a path for him.
“Runechaser,” he said.
He touched another on my jaw, drew his finger down my chin.
And I held my breath, wishing for his mouth.
But the ship shuddered once again, shaking a soggy timber loose over our heads. It swung down, and he deflected it with his forearm, sent it cracking to the deck. He glanced at me before stepping away.
“This is dangerous.”
I knew there was a double meaning. We were runechasers both. There was never enough to satisfy.
“Tonight,” I said.
“Of course,” he said, looking anywhere but at me. “Tonight.”
We left the great cabin and picked our way carefully back to the jolly, scaling down five rotting decks like swabs descending the masts. We nabbed one of the jollies and pushed off with the oarsfrom inside theAndomiehr’s wooden husk. There was someone in the water at theTouchstone’s hull, and I realized that it was Dev. He spied us and swam over, throwing an elbow up on the jolly’s edge. He reached beneath the shallow hull and peeled off a globular, gelatinous mass, tossing it in before heaving himself over the side.
“They’re not normal jellyheads,” Fahr said.
He perched on the prow and wiped off his face. Water dripped into pools at our feet.
“They’re more like leechies or lungpreys,” he went on. “Echo’s dissecting a few up top. They latch on with this barb-ringed mouth and set to it with a raspy tongue. See?”
He nudged the slime blob with his bare foot, and it quivered like a pudding.
“Alteration abominations,” I said. “That’s what theTouchstonecalls them.”
