“You could have told me,” I grumbled, “in here.” And I tappedmy head, like he’d done that very first day.
“And what if they had a thoughtspinner on board?” he asked.
“Youknew the plan,” I said.
“I’ve lived with aRhi’Ahrfor ten years,” he said. “I know how to shield my thoughts.”
“Besides, no need to task the whole crew with such a complicated, not to mention terrifying, set of illusions when they’ll simply obey an order,” said Smoke. “Unlike you.”
And he tipped his cup.
His words held no bite, but they nipped me just the same.
Wayward. Wretched. Stubborn. Proud.All the barbs ever flung at me thundered inside my head.
Runechaser.
“I need air,” I said, and I pushed to my feet. “Dream sweet.”
“When the moons meet,” they said as one. Forge, like the rum and the lime, both bitter and sweet.
The moment I left the wardroom, I was struck by the quietness in the ship. I took my time wandering her corridors, listening for any whisper that said she was there. I climbed up to the main, breathed the salt air, touched her boards, but heard no voice. In fact, there were no voices at all now. No stories in the galley, no watches changing shifts. No laughter, no shanty, no thunder of the sheets. But she was home. Was that enough?
I wandered up and down and around some more, but I knew where I really wanted to go, and finally I found myself at the door to the captain’s cabin. It was not nearly as grand as those on theEndorathil. No, just white, simple, and now broken, and my heart bled through the splinters and the cracks. Cannon fire had hit the room hard, and I could feel the wind biting behind the holes. I rapped softly on the wood.
“Come in, if you can,” he said from the other side, and I tried to slide the door. It popped from its track, so I leaned it against the bulwark.
There was a lone candle flickering on the floor, but other than that, most of the room was gone. The transom was completely shattered, with glass and pane from the galley windows scattered across the floor. There was now a gaping hole where the windows had been, and it was open to the bay and the waters below. His desk was reduced to kindling, and dry papers fluttered in the night wind. I realized those papers were all that remained of his library of books, and he was gathering them from the rubble with one hand.
Hels’ hooks, my heart.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I said.
“The moons have a time for everything,” he said.
My eyes stung as I knelt down, began to mound the papers into piles.
“We have all the wood,” I said. “We can repair her.”
“We can,” he said.
“And then we can bring her back,” I said, though my throat was tight and my chin quivered like a jellyhead. “The Court is powerful, and I’ll have all the chimeric in the world on the island. I heard her today, so I know she’s still here. I can help her channel back. I can use all of it, and she can bleed me dry. Maybe we can even help her become a Tree once again.”
He looked up at me and blinked slowly, sadly.
“There was never any way back for her once she fell under the Impirius’s ax.”
I shook my head, tears spilling over my lashes.
“All timbered trees die,” he said. “It’s just taking longer for her.”
“Don’t say that.”
“There is no way back, for either of us, dear Aro’el. I do not belong in either helm. I must let go.”
He sighed, laid the papers down on the littered floor, and smoothed them with his remaining hand.
“And I have been letting her go, but she has been my world for so long. I need to let her go rightly. I need to let her go well.”
