“Indeed, the erthe trembled when it was spun.”
I could see the pointed tips of his elven ears peeking out beneath the tousled strands. In one of those ears, an earring.
“But the moons…” He turned now, squared himself before me, and the suns gleamed off his sharp, angular face. His brows arched over eyes both green and blue and shot with gold. They looked like an undersea reef, ebbing and flowing, and panic began to rise up my throat.
“The moons,” he said, holding my gaze, “they sang.”
I’m sure I looked like the powder boy, caught up in the rigging and sinking into the depths. The dory was sounding good. Infact, the dory was sounding great. I would slip away and never look back. Wayward girl, just waiting on the whale.
“I am Gavriel Thanavar, captain of theTouchstone. I understand you wish to join my conjury.”
My heart thundered in my ears. But I couldn’t look away from his eyes. Light as the surface, dark as the deep, gold like the treasure scattered under the sand.
It’s subtle, my mother had said a lifetime ago.You see other things—the crowds, the clouds, the colorful fluttering of guild flags. Even the dance of shore birds. Anything and everything except the thing you’renotsupposed to see.
He smiled thinly, dangerously, like a cat about to eat a mouse, and all my boldness melted away like a sugardrop on the tongue. I was that mouse, small and insignificant, awaiting the fang of the sleek black cat. I was a fish in the talons of a winter hawk.
“But the answer to your question is no,” he said. “You will not now, or ever, be permitted to do so.”
I wanted to flee. I wanted to hide, but I could not look away from his terrifying, ethereal, enemy face.
“You are far too proud for the Ship of Spells.”
Fear seized the back of my throat. For, standing before me in the boots of an Oversea captain, was aRhi’Ahr.
3. TheCarmen Lumiere
Turncoats. Traitors. Ship of spies.
I hated them all and wanted to go home.
It seemed a mutual sentiment, as that very hour, we set our sail for Hodgetown. There would be no drinks raised when I returned to the docks, though. I doubted I’d even have the coin to book a barge back to the Spits, and thoughts of begging at the tavern doors haunted my waking thoughts.
Echo worked with Smoke Oakum to fix a pair of leather gloves that had been infused with a hold spell. They said it was to protect my hands as they healed, but I knew it was to protect the ship from this rogue magik.
No one seemed to have an explanation.
I knew the chimeric from the cannonball had somehow reacted with the three near-simultaneous spells I’d cast, and now they were as one. None of the spells on their own would have caused this. Chimeric was indeed an “arcane alchemy,” an ancient element mined by the enemy and traded in shadow across the seas.
And so, I sat under the fife rail until evening, gloved hands folded across my knees, studying the strange figurehead on the bowsprit. It was the face of a woman carved into a slab of dense, dark wood. But that face was haunting, with curved ridges for a shroud and empty eyes that stared at the sea before her. Runes gleamed across her grain—the same as those that were seared into my skin—and I wondered if she was forged in chimeric as well. Just like the blackened board that had dogged me in the waters, I wanted nothing to do with her if that was the case.
I turned my face away to watch the crew with begrudging interest.
It wasn’t a large conjury, and like on theDawn Watch, allthe nations of Oversea were visible on deck. While there were fauns and minotaurs and dworghs aplenty, most were homani like me. We’re a lack-skinned people, diverse of complexion but unhorned and unhooved, with no pelt, tusk, or wing to protect us. I was sure it was only our stubbornness that helped us survive.
For the most part, theTouchstoneran like any other ship, with watchstanders and navigators, officers and swabs. Decks were scrubbed, line was mended, sails hauled to catch the prevailing winds. Still, I saw a seamage tangle a foot in the rigging, and his mate burned the rope clear with anIgnateusspell. I watched another cast a targetedPraesidiumwhile he cleaned the cannon’s bore. None wore colored sashes that signified the various magecrafts and their levels, but I suspected they were all able to cast spells when needed or directed. The Navy wasn’t like that, and the thought of this appealed to me very much. Though I was bound for Hodgetown, so what “appealed to me” meant nothing.
Besides, serving under an enemy captain did not sit well, even with a King’s Letter of Marque.
I watched as a man stepped up to the gunwale. It was Worley, the captain’s steward. He had a basket in his hands and was speaking softly as he unclasped the latch. To my surprise, he pulled out a bird, all black save a slash of white at its throat. I recognized it as a swift, used for carrying messages between ship and shore. Sure enough, there was a tiny parchment at her leg.
“For king and for country,” he said. “Safe skies, my love.”
He kissed the top of her head and released her into the sky.
With that, he turned and left the forecastle, abandoning me to my wretched thoughts and the shadow.
The night was cool; the stars, clear; and the Sister Moons, Luna, Lyrik, and Lore, smiled in a rich, dark sky, watching the night like three owls. I stared up at them from my little nook,draped in a peacoat three sizes too large. Echo had brought me rations, but I had refused once again. Now, if he’d brought me rum and lime, or even a cup of warm, briny beer, I would have accepted. I could drink the heartiest seamage under the table. A trait that my father had apparently given me—and the only one that I was thankful for.
