I sighed and let my eyes wander around the cabin. We were in a surgeon’s pit deep within the ship. There were no windows, and light came by way of candle and mirror. The ceiling was low and the floor rough with bags of sand at the ready to sop up the blood. A young homani boy sat taking notes in the corner, and I knew he was the surgeon’s loblolly.
I could have been a loblolly when I’d first enlisted, but itreminded me too much of my mother. She was a greenmage healer, skilled but wylde, and I’d been her apprentice since I was three. I could stitch and bandage, tar and bleed, and could identify most of what was on Echo’s shelves. Tourniquets and splints, linseed and lime, plaster and soap and salve. I didn’t think this faun was a mage, however. So far, his treatment of my hands had been entirely traditional, with ice, bandages, and a bit of yellow grease.
There was a small, bronzed mirror on one of the shelves, and I grimaced at my reflection. I rarely saw my face, except for glimpses in the water when I’d lean over a rail, but there I was in all my sea-soaked glory. Homani, like the loblolly, and tanned from months spent on a ship. Dark hair chopped at the chin. Gray eyes, thick brows, wide cheeks, square jaw. A scar beneath my eye from my first day on theDawn Watch. A livid set of bruises from my last.
Echo was watching me. I tore my eyes away from the mirror, set them like stone on the canvas flap that served as a door.
“Arik,” he said. “Fetch Mr. Fahr, if you will.”
“Aye, sir,” said the boy, and he ducked through the canvas, with a glance back at me before going.
“Well,” said Echo. “I’m not sure if you’ll keep them like this or if the chimeric will continue to burn and you’ll lose both hands within a week. But they seem to be healing, so my coin is on the scars. Wiggle, please.”
Only my fingers were visible from the bandaging, and I hissed as they flexed beneath the gauze.
“Hmm,” he said again.
As he stood back to admire his work, my eyes flicked to his legs. Goat legs bent backward at the knee, and his breeches disappeared into boots from the hock down. He wore a belted tunic and a woolen vest but no sword or dagger. Then again, he was a surgeon. Surgeons were traditionally useless withanything larger than a scalpel. I did wonder about the horns, though, and, while they curled backward from his skull, they looked like they could do some damage were he provoked.
There was a rap on the wall, and someone stepped through the canvas flap. It was the man with brown eyes who had pulled me onto the ship. He looked only a few years older than me, with black hair and eyes that danced like starlight. He wore the informal clothes of a ranking officer, his white tunic and flaxen vest a regal contrast to his dark amber skin. His thick brows rivaled mine, as did the scars along his cheek and jawline. But unlike me, it seemed his smile came easily.
Like the faun, he wore an earring but no sash to signify a magik.
“So, she’s not a wyrmaid, then,” he said. “Pity. Buck’s running a wager.”
“No wyrmaid, Dev,” said Echo. “Settle your bets.”
And he gave the gauze a last tug.
“I’m not sure whether she’ll keep her hands, but she seems to have had no ill effects from prolonged exposure to either sea or chimeric.”
“Itwaschimeric, then?”
“Of that, I am convinced.”
The officer squared his shoulders toward me.
“I’m Devanhan Fahr, First Mate of the privateerTouchstoneunder Captain Gavriel Thanavar.” His eyes flicked first to my bandaged hands, then to my face. “What happened to your ship?”
I met those eyes and said nothing.
“She was serving on the frigateDawn Watch,” said Echo. “It was attacked by theEndorathilin open seas.”
“What? How?” I gaped at him. “I said nothing!”
He smiled and tapped his head with a long finger.
“You were right,” he said. “Nota mage.”
I growled to myself. Clearseer. My mother had told me about them. They could hear thoughts the way people heard words. Dangerous types, she insisted, for you never knew when they were spinning.
Devanhan Fahr raised a brow and grinned.
“Now, wouldyoulike to tell me your name, or shall I ask our surgeon?”
“Honor Renn,” I said. “Ensign Bluemage of the Kingship FrigateDawn Watch.”
“Captain?”
