“Thank you, Mr. Worley.”
The man named Worley did smile at me on the way out, however, and I took some small measure of comfort in that.
It was hard to make out the captain in the distance because of the sunslight and the deep, deep shadows cast, but I could tell that he was tall and lean, his coat the deepest blue. But then he shifted in the sunslight, and my heart thudded as he took shape,clear and sharp, like the sea carving out a coastline.
“Honor Renn,” he said, not turning. “Bluemage, is it?”
Perfect posture. Regal air. Broad shoulders, narrow waist. One hand behind his back, the other holding the wine. Both hands were elegant, just the hint of a gold in his skin, making them rare for one who lived for the sea.
“Aye, sir. Of theDawn Watch, sir,” I said.
“Wan to Blue in eight months, I’m told.”
His voice was deep and lyrical, beating my blood like an ancient drum, but his accent was unfamiliar, and my mind tried to place it.
“Aye, sir.”
“That’s fast. Were you cheating?”
“I’m good, sir.” And I swallowed back my nerves. “Very good.”
He seemed far too young to captain a ship like this, no more than five or six years my senior, but I couldn’t be sure. Arcane power rolled off his shoulders. Ancient runes whispered in my ears. The runescars on my broken hands ached in his presence, as if he were a balm that was needed to heal or a blade that was needed to slice.
Regardless of age, I knew in my bones that I was in the presence of a powerful mage. I’d have to be very careful now.
“Better than all the others,” he said.
“Aye, sir. It’s the truth.”
“I believe you.”
But there was something else.
He raised the glass of spirits to his lips, and I fought the urge to sit forward. I wanted to see his face, to get a bearing, but this angle was all wrong.
“And now you are tangled in chimeric.” His voice held a hint of something that made my skin bristle. Amusement? Sarcasm? Disdain? “What do you know of chimeric, Ensign?”
I swallowed, using the pause to steady myself. These were deepwaters, dark and dangerous like a riptide.
“Only what I learned in the Yard, sir,” I said.
“And what was that?”
“It, it’s…” I struggled to recall the Navy’s words. The teachings were vague because no one knew a damned thing about chimeric. “It’s an arcane, alchemical powder used with unbridled liberality by theRhi’Ahrfleet. It gives their shot an unstable, unstoppable flame.”
“Unbridled liberality.” He hummed. “Can you bridle freedom, Ensign? Can you tame power?”
He shifted his weight onto his heels, and the sunslight hit the back of his head fully, making my breath catch in my throat.
His hair tumbled across his shoulders, cut in jagged lines as if with a dagger. But it wasn’t the way he wore his hair that alarmed me. No, it was the color.
“And were you taught where this ‘arcane alchemy’ comes from?”
Black with shifting undertones of blue and violet and dark green, like oil on water just waiting for a match.
“No, sir,” I said, my stomach growing queasy.
His hair was dark as night. Dark as the deep. Dark as the colors the sea keeps for itself.
