“I don’t have a single memory of her,” he said. “Not her face, not her voice, nothing. So, despite your awful relationship, I envy you in that regard. Just a little.”
I grunted but said nothing.
“What about yourfather?” he asked. “Was he a mage?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember him after I was five. His name was Jak. He drank a lot, and he was from the Spits. That’s it for him. Drunken Jak from the Spits.”
It was an odd feeling, sailing through a gap. With the Sheets raging on either side, I felt insignificant and small and more than a little vulnerable.
“I think there was a bear who wanted to adopt me,” I said. “I should have gone with him. We could have lived on berries and fish, but my mother wouldn’t let me. Odd how you remember things.”
“Aye,” said Fahr. “Odd.”
A crab with no shell.
“What aboutyourfather, then?” I asked, and a grin tugged into my cheek. “Devhanus Bonavanczek, the Stolen Prince of Oversea…”
“I wasn’t stolen.”
I swung around to him, eyes near popping out of my head.
“He said he stole you,” I said. “Forge, the wholehelmsays he stole you.”
“I ran,” he said with a grin of his own. “Suns, Ijumped.”
“You ran away? From a palace?”
“And I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.”
“And you sayI’mthe idiot…”
I shook my head and turned back to the rail. I couldn’t see the hawk anymore. He’d disappeared into the darkness, and the dim glow of Lore seemed lesser without him.
“Kier Gavriel,” I said under my breath.
“Kier?” Fahr’s eyes widened. “Where did you hear that?”
I shrugged. “The chimeric gives me memories. Or maybe it’s theTouchstone. Why? What does it mean?”
“You know how we have two names?” he said. “For the two suns? Devanhan Fahr. Honor Renn.”
I nodded.
“Rhi’Ahrhave three. One for each of the moons. Luna, Lyrik, and Lore. But they don’t share their Lore name with anyone.”
“Hm,” I said.Kier Gavriel Thanavar.I like the way it sounded. It suited the man.
“Like your mother, he’s had it hard,” said Fahr, “and he was alone for most of his life, so this ship is his family. And now, mine, too.”
So, Fahr knew of Thanavar’s childhood, too, stranded for years on the Cloudgate with the dead. I didn’t know why the son of a king would run, but maybe it wasn’t mine to know. Hardship forged bonds stronger than steel. Shared sorrows knit tighter than cable or cord.
I turned, leaned my elbow on the rail to study him.
“Is that why you stay?” I asked. “I mean, you could have a palace and servants and all the riches in the land. Why do you stay on a small, creaky ship, sharing a berth with three sweaty swabs, when you could have everything you’d ever dream of?”
“Because I couldn’t do this.” He held up one hand, and sparks danced across his fingers. “I couldn’t see this.” He swept his arm over the waves. “I couldn’t sail. I couldn’t chance. I couldn’t sing sad shanties with the lads in the hold. I’d be stuck in a palace, paper-bound to a golden chair, expected to wed a noblewoman and carry on a line.”
He looked to the figurehead at the prow, the carving of a woman’s face rocking above the waves.
