I heard the shuffling of papers and the sliding of chairs, and suddenly, the door swung open. I wasn’t prepared for the twist of my gut, nor the sting of my eyes.
“How could you?” I hissed.
“Hello, Blue,” he said, and he noticed my hands crackling. “You can’t do anything with those. There’s aSublimatuson the entire ship. Not on theTouchstone, mind, if you catch my drift.”
“You killed Buck!”
“Yes, well, if only you’d listened to the cap—”
I slapped him.
It was clever because I knew he’d allow it. Proud people usually did. You could slap someone, and they’d allow it because it would be weak to be afraid of the palm of a hand. But I was smarter than that.
So, yes, I slapped him, and when his cheek turned on impact, I slipped my finger through the hoop and tore the ring from his ear.
There’s only one way this comes out, he had said that night so long ago. And he was right. It sure wasn’t pretty.
He yelped and staggered back, clapping his hands over the side of his face. Blood seeped out between his fingers, and I held the ring out in my palm.
“You don’t deserve this,” I growled. “You’re not worthy of theTouchstoneor her crew. Worley was a better man than you!”
He looked up at me, his eyes large and sad, and I didn’t care.
“If you’d just obeyed your captain’s orders,” he said, “if you’d just stayed in the hold, you would have been spared.”
“I would have died like everyone else.”
He shook his head, stepped back and back again.
“Safe seas, Honor Renn. I do hope you make it out alive.”
“Respiramaealis,”I spat. An old incantation, more curse than spell. I heard it often when I was little, before my mother became respectable and feared.
Breathe evil and die.
He shook his head again and turned away, and I hoped never to see him again as long as I lived.
“Send her in.”
The guard shoved me forward, into the cabin of Kinrath Ilvalour.
“Sit,” he said.
I didn’t sit.
“Eat,” he said, indicating a bowl of red grabberries and pickled sunfish.
I didn’t eat.
“Drink.” He poured a glass.
I didn’t drink.
“You spin chimeric. How did that happen?”
I said nothing, fixed my eyes on the trappings of the room. Maps, sextants, astrolabe, charts.
“Was it a spell? An incantation? A ritual gone wrong? Or was it Thanavar? Did he brand you with rune so you could spin for him?”
