So, we stood there, hands clasped behind our backs, like that would keep us anchored in the pitching of the sea.
“Would you like a chair?” I asked finally. “Nan has extra—”
“No,”he said. “No. Mr. Fahr said… Hmm.”
He fell silent for another moment before he reached into his waistcoat pocket and held out his hand. In his palm was a thread.
“Dev said that, in the Navy, this would be the appropriate mark for such an achievement.”
It was a long golden thread for my sash.
“Oh…”
My throat tightened.
“It is spun from a shearling farm in Braithe, where they plait gold fibers into the loom.”
He held it toward me. I plucked it from his hand and ran my fingers along its delicate strand.
“It is quite strong,” he said. “Kit chose it, and she knows her craft.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, fighting the stinging in my eyes.
He stepped closer, and my skin woke with the nearness. He raised his hand to my collar, slid the linen away to study the bandages. It was an intimate touch, and be damned if it didn’t make my heart race.
“Sometimes, when I am the hawk, I forget myself,” he said. “Do they hurt?”
“Not much,” I lied. “Echo says the chimeric is healing them.”
“Good.”
He released the linen but didn’t move away.
“The next time you wish to cast that deep, please have someone attend,” he said. “We cannot lose you over the side.”
I raised my eyes, spied the pendant around his throat. Definitely a bird carved in ebony. Up past the pendant to his throat, his angular jaw and high cheekbones and his sea-deep eyes. All the worlds were in those eyes, sea and sky, waves and land, suns and moons, Oversea and Nether and the Island InBetween.
“I will do that,” I breathed. “I’ll have someone attend.”
“Good,” he said, and he nodded once. “Very good.”
He turned and walked toward the galley proper but paused to glance back over his shoulder.
“You should be in the wardroom with the other officers,” he said.
“I have it on good account that they snore,” I said, a smile turning up the corner of my mouth.
His lips twitched, and then he was gone. But I stood, holding my thread and breathing his tides for a while longer.
We’d made good time in this gap until the Hall of Silence. There, both eastern and western horizons exchanged their storms for a sickly gold. They glimmered with an unhealthy sheen, as if reflecting tiny splinters of broken glass, and my skin crawled with the chimeric that choked out the air. The winds and currents slowed then, too, giving me a hint of what would lay in the Silence on either side.Sliver of suns while the corridor runs, theTouchstonehad said, and I was so grateful for the sliver of blue above us. It meant some wind still swept from north to south toward the breach. In the Silence proper, the air rose directly up, eliminating any breeze, and for a sea bird that caught the winds, that was a problem.
In the gap, the heat was sweltering, the suns relentless, so I was reduced to half-buttoned tunic and breeches as I lay in my bunk, journal in my lap, charcoal stick melting in my fingers. I was almost asleep when the shouts of the crew roused me and lured me up to the main.
It was the first time I’d been on deck since theAuctorus, so when I pushed open the hatch, the humidity struck me like a fist. While there was a breeze in the Hall of Silence, Forge loomed overhead as if boiling the seas below him. I couldn’t even see Ember because of Forge’s massive, fevered face.
Swabs gathered at the prow, shouting and pointing at the ocean ahead of us. But the sails themselves were laughing, and I looked up, knowing and delighting in the music of theTouchstone’s voice.
There were even more swabs perched in the rigging, but I was surprised to see Thanavar up there with them. He was wearingneither captain’s coat nor boots, and like them, his eyes were fixed on the waters ahead.
