“D’ye want yer second tot?” Nanarobbin called, dipping a curved horn toward the bottle on the counter.
“No, Nan,” I called back, keeping my voice flat and even. “I’m bunk bound.”
He grunted and left it at that.
I strung the hammock between the hooks and climbed in, heart pounding, chest tight. I rarely let swabs like that disturb me, but a part of it rang true. I did outrank them, and I could claim apprentice rights for any station. I was bold and arrogant, and yes, proud because I was good at my craft. Maybe better now, with these re-formed hands. So, what did I want on the Ship of Spells?
Runechaser. An insult for mages who thirsted for more, mages who needed the magik to feel alive. Like tavern rats with rum, runechasers became drunk on the power of their spells, and because of it, a danger to all those around them. I wasn’t a runechaser, and yet, when I closed my eyes, I felt the chimeric pulsing from fingers to elbows, burning its way up my arms. A part of me yearned to give myself over to it, to surrender to the relentless pattern of the runes and welcome the ashes they’d leave in their wake. Would I die, or would I become something else? It was music, a mystical rhythm, arcane and old and free as the wind.
Can you bridle freedom?Thanavarhadasked. Can you tame power?
His eyes lost in my magik, adrift in my seas…
What did I want on the Ship of Spells?
A stolen prince, an enemy captain, a living ship, a traitorous soul on board, and now threats from a bitter crew. Perhaps it would be best for me to run while I could, for there was no way my stony heart would be safe in the cross-tides of everything, one swift away from treason. This should have been the ship of my dreams, but my dreams didn’t matter. They never had. I’d learned that long ago and cursed myself for forgetting that simple lesson.
Magik was easy compared to dreams.
I closed my eyes, quieting the racing of my mind and the drumming of my heart. I rocked myself slowly, trying to remember the night sky and the salt wind, the tang of the pipe and the wail of the hawk. Sadness and beauty was life on the sea. Life and death, loyalty and strife. Storms and fair winds, Dreadwall and sky. Once again, I saw the branches of a snow-covered tree reaching down for me, reaching, reaching…
I opened my eyes. There was a scorpion on my chest.
I didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. It was poised in the defense position—barbed tail held over its head, bobbing.
I couldn’t simply think a spell, not yet. At my level, spells needed weaving with fingers and casting with hands, but my arms were at my sides, gloved and unhelpful. Spells needed spoken incants, and I didn’t dare move my lips. Maybe this creature wasn’t lethal, but then again, after the litany of deaths I’d been cursed with earlier, I doubted this would go down soft.
The creature skittered forward, down the curve of my throat and up the line of my jaw, the barb now a heartbeat from my cheek. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t dare…
Suddenly, there was a flash of motion, and the scorpion was gone. I pushed up in my hammock as Kithriit crunched and crunched again in a jerky, open-mouthed chew. The tiny legs ofthe creature twitched between her teeth.
“Dangerous for you,” she said and swallowed, licking her beaky lips with a long, prehensile tongue. “One sting, you die.”
“Thank you for saving me, then,” I said. I was certain my voice cracked.
“Maybe not around next time,” she said. “You never know with harpiar.”
She strung up her bunk and flapped into it, chittering to herself in her strange tongue.
I lay for a long time, desperate to convince myself that a scorpion in my berth was mere coincidence. I couldn’t believe Neale would do such a thing, no way he’d have easy access to that little dart of poison, nor the cold, cold heart to use it. Maybe it was a bliss, an illusion, a feint. Some mages could spin the impossible and make you fall for it every time.
Surely, it wasn’t something theTouchstonewould do…
I rolled over and hugged my peacoat tightly but didn’t sleep at all for the rest of the night.
13. Learning the Ropes
I stood for the better part of an hour outside Thanavar’s cabin, waiting for Echo to be done. As I did, my mind raced over the events of last night.
I had an earring. I was now a member of theTouchstone’s crew. I’d learned many things about them over this last day—mainly that they were the same as any other crew, with good and ill working side by side. Trust was a thing not easily earned, and I didn’t know where Kit fit in, whether she was a friend or a foe or a soul in league with the enemy.
I couldn’t even begin to make sense of it.Who was the enemy? If it wasn’t Thanavar, then whom? And was he really missed in the Abolition? If so, that made him the last Priestlord to serve on the Cloudgate and a sworn enemy of the king. He said as much himself. And yet, he sailed with a Letter of Marque.
Eighteen when I swore allegiance to my enemy’s enemy…
Smoke had said the Cloudgate was a rotting wound, a bleeding, festering shadow of what once was. Did it have mountains like other islands? Did it have sand and trees, rocks and fields? Or was it aRhi’Ahrspit, an inhospitable atoll of ice and snow and deathly cold? Did the suns ever shine, or was it perpetually surrounded by the Dread’s waterwalls?
Navy ships were forbidden from approaching it, forbidden even from entering the Sheets without a specific commission. Ships that strayed too close often found themselves caught in the Dreadcurrent or becalmed in the Silence, where the seas held their breath for weeks on end and smothered hapless crews with diamond-laced air. And while I wanted dearly to see this oceanic marvel of magik, I remembered what Smoke had said about ships like driftwood raining down from the skies.
