But so did I. Besides, I had mutiny in my bones.
“I have my own course to chart,” I said. My heart was pounding, but the rhythm was sure. “And it leads me straight to you.”
“I look forward to it, then,” he said. “For I am not an easy man to catch. Beloved.”
Beloved.
I would find another way. I would bleed, break, bargain with every ounce of chimeric in my veins if I had to. I would find him. I would save him. I would release him from his life of duty and remorse.
Besides, deep called to deep. We were runechasers both. We would find each other because of the chimeric in our veins. We would chase and we would catch and we would finally be free.
“Captain?”
It was Smoke. He threw a glance at the curtain of water, the tear growing, opening. Falling.
Sometimes I fight. Sometimes I run.
“I know what to do,” I said.
“Run,” he said.
“Run.” I nodded again. “Go.”
He stepped back but lingered a brief moment, as if memorizing my face for the very last time.
“I love you!” I shouted. “Go!”
And he flung himself over the side.
Over the side, where wayward Blues go.
I held my breath, sure my heart didn’t beat until I saw the flash of white streak up from the stern. I watched him soar up, so high up, until he was lost in the roiling white clouds of the Dreadwall, taking what was left of my heart with him.
I spun around to Smoke.
“Another chest of chimeric!” I ordered. “We’re closing this foggin’ gap!”
“Aye, Chaser,” he barked, and I felt a surge of pride. Chaser. I had chased, and I had found. I had fought, and I had won. I would close this gap and run with the wind. I was stubborn, and I was loved, and I was not too proud for the Ship of Spells.
I couldn’t be proud enough.
And I plunged my hand in to the chimeric once more.
43. Aro’el
We ran for a day through the Dreadwall and her Halls. The sickly green of the Silence and the raging storms of the Sheets. I burned through three crates of chimeric, did not eat or drink or sleep. So, when we finally rocked out of the Channel into open seas, I dropped to my knees, weak as a lamb, spent.
Smoke struck the sails then, and the ship rocked gently in calm waters. It was nice to have calm waters. No wall or current, no stormshear or wave as high as a mountain. No Sheets, no Silence, no Dreadtowns with wheels. Just calm seas, blue skies, and change on the wind.
Four of the six Navy warbirds had survived the Channel closing, and they currently floated in the waters off theMarelethan’s side. TheTemplemorewas off our port bow, the other two ships afore and abaft, an Emperial escort waiting to take the prince home. No, not home. To High Temple. He had lost his home scuttled on the shores of the Cloudgate, just as I had lost my heart.
We had done it. We had closed the Channel and sealed the island off from raiders and warriors, killers and kings. Kier had braced the spells from the Cloudgate while the spinners and I closed it as we ran. It had been like a dream, watching the gap seal back up, seeing the line ripple into water and disappear. We had done it, but some of us had lost.
I’d cried myself to sleep in theMarelethan’s great cabin that night, and I cried when I awoke. My tears weren’t for me, for I was stubborn and willful and, above all, free. I wept for him, for the man who had returned to the place that had forged him, a place of undeniable power and unfathomable loss. He had been betrayed by our king and his people and, in return, had saved us all from the madness of war. My heart broke for all our world,for the lure of power that drove men to fury and the lust for vengeance that made all else fade.
And worst of all, he was with the ironmages and my mother. Oh Forge, I couldn’t imagine a more horrible fate.
His very first joke.
