Aro’el.TheRhi’Ahrword for “chase.”
Someone slapped my arm, and I looked up to see Smoke holding a bolt of rope.
“You do know how to tie a foggin’ bowline, yes?”
I took it, held it for a moment in my gloved, scarred hands.
“Do they hurt, Ensign?” asked Echo.
I shook my head. They didn’t, actually. Days earlier, they had been shredded, torn, bloody, and boned. I just didn’t know them anymore. They weren’t mine.
“Fog it,” said Fahr. “Let me help.”
“I can do it,” I muttered and knotted the rope, bent to slip it under my boot.
“Waist, girl! You put it around your waist!” Smoke said. “And for the love of the Sister Moons, take off your boots! Did Taran Vir teach you nothing?”
At the name of my mentor, my throat tightened, but I’d be damned if I let Smoke Oakum see.
I slid out of my boots, stepped into the circlet, and hiked it over my black breeches and up to my middle, settled it against the blue of my sash. Smoke wrapped the rope around the rail like a pulley and passed the end to the minotaur. Buck looked at it, then back at Smoke.
“Well,I’mnot going to belay her,” said Smoke.
Buck grunted, and it almost sounded like a laugh.
“Over you go, then,” said Smoke. “Don’t dawdle.”
I eased my backside onto the banister.
“Trust theTouchstone,” said Fahr. “She won’t let you go.”
With a deep breath, I swung one leg over the side, and there was a sound.
Rumble and grate, grind and squeak. Slowly, magikally, a board moved out from the ship’s grainy hull. Right where my foot would go.
“Trust her,” said the captain. “She never fails.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and stretched down, touching the edge of the board with my bare toes. It was cold and slippery, but it held, and I eased my weight onto it, sliding my other leg over the rail. A second board pushed out of the hull, and I stepped down onto that as well. Each footfall was met with magik, a bulge of wood that formed a step and slid back once I’d passed. Bracing the side with my bare feet and gripping the rope with my left hand, I scaled the slippery side of the Ship of Spells, clinging like a barnacle, rising and falling with her on the waves.
“Touch the water,” called the captain.
I hated him, but, to be honest, I’d never felt so alive as I did in that moment.
My feet were near the waterline now, braced against the smooth hull, and sea spray stung my eyes. I leaned to my right, reaching, reaching. Matching my movements, the rope around my waist began to list as Buck slackened his grip. I tipped slowly sideways to the sea, reaching for it, reaching…
“Glove!” called Echo.
Swiftly, I tugged one off with my teeth and tucked it into my sash. Not the one holding the rope, however. I left that on. I knew how a rope could burn a bare palm. I’d learned that fair quick, on my first days at sea. Besides, if the chimeric had burned the stepladder to cinder, I couldn’t imagine what it would do to a rope.
The patterns on my arms began to glow, and I looked up. Fahr, Echo, and Smoke watched me from above. I couldn’t see the captain, but I could imagine him standing aloof and apart, arms folded across his chest. I didn’t know why, but I could taste the excitement as the waves splashed my toes.
We were under sail now, and the ship rose and fell on the waves. I looked down. The water was dark and cold and black and free, and I bent lower to dip a finger into the deep.
I’m not sure what happened first, the boom or the flash. Chimeric rippled from the touch, shooting across the waves in patterns that were instantly mimicked on my skin.
I snatched my hand from the waters. The fingers were numb, so I shook them out, my arm tingling with tats and needles and pure chimeric fire.
“Back in!” shouted Fahr from above.
