“The furious flight from collapsing elements?”
“Yes.” I grinned. “That.”
“Well, yes,” he said, and he paused, thinking. Rain dripped into my eyes as I waited for him.
“Well, not theEndorathil, naturally,” he said after a moment. “I’ve never seen a ship appear when we were closing a breach like that. But the elements, yes. First the Silence, then the Sheets. It’s all sunny and clear sailing toward the Dreadwall, but then hours and hours of running in terror out of it.”
“But you do always outrun it.”
“TheTouchstoneis here, Ensign Blue,” he said. “I should think we would not be, were we unsuccessful.”
I wondered if he knew he was funny.
“When do you think we’ll be in open waters?”
“Two more hours, I expect. We always make good time once we hit the Hall of Sheets. Still, the Silence and the Sheets are all closing in now, and we’ll need all the magik we can muster so we’re not trapped.”
He looked down at his basket, the woven reeds growing dark in the rain.
“But theEndorathil,” he began. “She is a very different bird.”
“The captain said there were few ships that wish theTouchstonesunk as much as her.”
“That is the truth,” he said. “Captain Ilvalour hates our captain almost as much as Commodore Bracebridge.”
The rain was soft and surprisingly warm.
“That’s the captain of theTemplemore, yes?”
“Oh, my. Yes. He hates Captain Thanavar with a most powerful hate.”
“But why? We have a Letter of Marque from the king.”
“Bracebridge does not recognize our Letter.” He clutched his basket to his chest and leaned down toward me. “It’s a rather personal hate.”
Forge bless Worley, the source of all gossip.
He glanced to the pup, to the captain’s turned back.
“I shouldn’t say…”
I rose to my feet.
“I won’t tell.”
Tiny rivers splashed along his thin face as he glanced from side to side. He wiped them away and leaned in.
“Many years ago,” he said, “our Captain Thanavar did a very bad thing.”
“He stole the prince.”
“He did. At that time, then-Lieutenant Bracebridge was charged with the boy’s security at High Temple, so losing the prince almost cost him his position, not to mention his head. He’s never gotten over the shame.”
I could understand that.
“To make matters worse, in the process, the captain sliced his face open with those terrible hawk claws. Cut his face clean off. They had to sew it back on with a thousand thousand stitches, or so I’m told.”
I rememberedit vividly from Flogger’s Bay—the three-taloned scar and the milky white eye.
