“She can’t haul. She can’t braid. She can’t hoist. Hels, I doubtshe can even scrub.” He began to hunt around the surgeon’s pit, lifting packs, moving blankets. “And I, for one, ain’t no mother hen. If she don’t work, I have a dory just her size that’ll do.”
“Ensign, this is Smoke Oakum,” said Fahr. “Our quartermaster, coxon, and Magister of Magiks.”
“I do everything,” the quartermaster grunted.
“Except beat me at Able Whacks,” said Echo.
“Foggin’impossible to beat a clearseer at Able Whacks. Pretty, prancing hornswaggler, you are.” The quartermaster shoved two barrels to the side. “Ah, there it is.”
He pulled a boot from under a shelf and shook out the sand. I noticed he was also wearing an earring and a thin gold ring around the same finger as the doctor.
“Forge-damned fauns. More like thieving fae, I say.”
“Don’t leave your boots in my pit,” said Echo with a flick of an ear. “I don’t ask much.”
The dworgh grunted again, but I could have sworn he blushed. Suddenly, I knew the identical rings meant they were more than mates, and as close to married as one could get on the sea.
“The question is, lads,” said Fahr, “where do we drop her? Hodgetown is not on the captain’s books.”
My heart pounded in my chest. I was nothing without a ship.
“As I said, Dev, I have a dory…”
I sat forward, ignoring the bite from the chimeric.
“I can stay.”
“Bells, no,” said Fahr.
“I may be only a bluemage, but I’m a damned good one,” I insisted, my gaze darting between all three men. “And this is the Ship of Spells! The things I could learn! The spells I could cast!”
“Not without your hands,” said Fahr.
It cut me to the quick, and I fought the tightening of my throat.
There was silence for a moment when Echo looked up.
“Perhaps theTouchstonechose her?”
“Rubbish,” said Oakum. He slid the boot over a nubby, callused foot. “She’s a sea-soaked, spit-licked Navy castaway. Bad luck on all counts.”
But the first mate folded his arms across his chest and studied me.
“The captain says theTouchstonewas drawn to the chimeric patterns in the water.”
“Andshe,” Echo said with a wave of his hand, “was the cause of them. Those patterns are repeated along her fingers and palms.”
“It was probably just echoes from theEndorathil,” said Fahr. “Next to theTouchstone, she’s the most arcane bird in the sea.”
“I’m afraid I disagree,” said Echo. “Her scars are still spinning.”
I felt a rush of gratitude. I would buy this faun a drink now, regardless of my state of employ.
“Into the sea,” muttered Oakum over his shoulder. “That’s what we do with flotsam and the peels.”
And he disappeared through the canvas that served as a door.
Fahr studied me for a long moment.
