“She tried to kill me,” I muttered.
“And she would have, had he not intervened.”
“But Thanavar said shechoseme.” I looked up at him. “Why would she do that?”
“Maybe something to do with the chimeric,” he said. “The way it’s working in your body changes everything we’ve ever known.”
I could feel the thrum of the chimeric against my own heart. Thrum and burn as the runescars crept up past my elbows now. Would they consume my heart in their endless crawl? Would I notice, stony and crablike as I was?
But, Forge dammit, I didn’twantto withdraw into my shell anymore, and I took a deep breath. “So, if I didn’t have the chimeric, she wouldn’t have saved me in the ocean?”
“She wouldn’t haveseenyou in the ocean,” he said. “She’s sensitive to runes and pattern, and you disrupted both.”
“Story of my life,” I grumbled.
“There are patterns in everything, Blue,” he went on. “And the patternsareeverything. Do we control the magik, or does the magik control us? We only see what the Worldrune allows us to see.”
The Worldrune. Yes, I rarely called it that, but I knew of the term and the alchemy behind it. My mother had spun it inherently, for she was wylde, untaught and innate, and her magik was wylde in the same way. That’s how I’d learned, reaching for magik intuitively and casting spells by instinct. Because of that, I hadn’t been a good fit in Berryburn Yard. The Navy taught knots and rigs, rote spells and chains of command, but I’d wanted more than a comfortable post and a nightly tot. With her wealth of history, mystery, and magik, the Ship of Spells was an alluring academy. Here, there was just so much to learn.
“How does the RuneTree fit in?” I asked.
“He told you of the RuneTree, did he?” Fahr raised one brow.
I nodded, not sure how much I could share.
“Well, if the Worldrune is all magik, the RuneTree was its heart, a tight knot of pattern made of erthe, sea, and sky.” His gaze narrowed. “What else did he say?”
“He asked me to join the crew.”
“Well,there’ssome serious alchemy,” he said with a grin. “You’ll have to earn your place, though.”
“I can do that,” I answered, shifting my weight. “But if I do, if I allow you to spike this ring into my ear, will you teach me what you know? Willhe?”
“TheTouchstone’s not a teaching vessel,” he said, then paused.“I can’t speak for the captain, but if you join the crew, everything we know is yours to learn.”
That.
Was appealing.
“The captain said I have mutiny in my bones,” I grunted, folding my arms across my chest.
“Don’t you?”
“We’re a nation at war, and he’s still the enemy,” I said, and I gestured in the direction of the captain’s cabin below.
“He’s not the enemy,” Fahr said. “He’s the captain of theTouchstone, and she’ll have no other master save him.”
I bit my lip. “Because she loves him.”
“Just so.”
Not even a beat skipped. I turned, my chest tight.
“How? How is it possible she’s alive? What archaic magik has he plumbed to forge this?”
“It’s deep magik, true,” he said. “But Thanavar didn’t cast it.”
I glanced back at the rail, then up to the sails. A living ship that loved aRhi’Ahrman. It was beyond my imagination, but dammit, if it didn’t make me all the more curious. And more than a little bold.
