“I cooked as much as I always do,” the boy snaps, his eyes stark and ringed with dark circles. He moves like the wind, quiet for once, even when I offer to watch the newest batch of poultice as it boils.
Rune retreats. I watch him go, watch the weight of Otto’s words settle in and his shoulders slump, damp blue hair clinging to his back. We certainly aren’t feeding as many as we were.
Part of me wants to follow him, but I stay, stirring tonics, redressing wounds, and pretending notto notice Elio and Tavi huddled on one hammock, his chest bare besides the bandages and the blood that still seeps through them.
After the night time round of bandage changes, I trudge back up to the deck, my exhaustion bone deep. Those who are still of able body and mind hang on the rigging, mending and reattaching sails. I would help them too, if I wasn’t certain I’d only fall to my death. My spine aches in earnest now, the bruise in the bone having had time to settle.
I expect to find Rune in the room, but it’s empty, the coffee cup still on the floor to one side, as if he hasn’t made it in here yet. The space over the bed looks strangely bare without the halberd, but the glasses in the wall bracket are remarkably unphased, and the drakeling scale still rests where I’d left it on the nightstand. I gingerly place the roc feathers beside it and retrieve the red-veined leaf from where it lays on the ground. It would seem my little collection is growing.
I give the items one last look before I pour myself some whiskey and down it, then pour more and leave to find Rune. I’m sure he needs it more than I do.
I find him sitting on the prow, his long legs draped over the side. The breeze is cool with gentle apology. Strange to think this is the same sea, her anger ebbing as naturally as the tide. He doesn’t stir when I set the glass by his hand, nor when I climb to sit beside him, my stomach swooping as the deep yawns beneath my feet.
“Don’t slip.”
“You’ve got all the time to catch me now.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, and the crash of the waves is the only sound for a while. Beside us, the figurehead looksas proud and polished as ever. Moonlight gleams from her cheekbones and between her brow like an adornment. The water elemental must have been carved by a master craftsman.
“My mother used to whittle wood,” I say, surprising myself. “Smaller than this, of course. My father still has a few of her figurines. Little land animals. I pretended they were my friends.” Those last words come out softer. I’ve never admitted it out loud, and I’m not sure why I do now. Maybe it’s the way he follows my gaze, looking into the face of the figurehead. His eyes are mournful, and only become more so as they seem to unfocus, lost in thought.
“Mine used to paint,” he says, quietly. “There are entire murals on the castle’s hallways documenting the history of her people. We’d had to drain each section as she worked, and once the paint dried and we nullified the sea stone, the flow of water and the light would warp the images, and they would look alive.” At some point, he’d taken the time to change from his formal attire. He smooths a hand over his pocket, the movement habitual. “It was magic to me. She taught us to think in colours, look for the beauty in even the forgotten places of the world.”
The ache in his voice settles in my chest. “She sounds amazing.”
“She was.”
The ocean waves churn in the silence. I want to ask when he’d lost her, and how, but I wait, unwilling to take more than he wants to give. The moment feels like standing at the edge of a cliff, a breeze away from the kind offall you can’t stop.
“She’s why I wanted the map.” The words confuse me enough that I look at him, my brow pinched, but his gaze is still trained on the carved woman beside us. “When I saw her mark, I had to try. A water elemental treasure trove—centuries of coin and history spilled into the sea and collected. Coveted, claimed by the ocean. Had she helped grow it? Had her kin left what they found most precious?” His voice goes high and thin. “Would I find . . . clues there? Of where she’d gone?”
Two realisations hit me at once—the map was rarer and more extraordinary than Ivor ever knew—and Rune’s mother . . . was a water elemental.
They’re rare creatures, and their treasure troves rarer still, according to the tales told by drunk pirates and superstitious fishermen. I’d heard horrible things, too. Of the harm done to those elementals that were captured by land dwellers who believed they’d be a quick ticket to the sea’s riches. Ivor had never believed in that sort of thing, he had more efficient methods, but other pirates did, hunting them, pushing them further and further into hiding, until people began to wonder if they were ever real.
“That’s why you’re a bounty hunter,” I murmur, the pieces clicking into place. “You think she was captured.”
“I—” He pauses. “It was something I coulddo. A way I could act. While telling myself that answers were out there somewhere. They had to be. And even if I never found them, at least I’d keep the seas that much cleaner. Safer. I don’t have anything else.”
The words are so raw I know he believes them. “Rune—”
His voice turns sharp. “I’m done with the map.” I go silent, stomach dropping to the waves below as he goes on. “We can’t keep doing this. It has to be over.”
I train my eyes to the sea, pretending not to feel the heat of him beside me. I’m too much of a coward to ask what exactly he means—the ending is the same either way. He’s lost enough. So we’re done. No map. No keys. No reason for Nisse to hauntThe Gilded Hart.
The ship creaks, motionless but for her gentle sway side to side. The sails that are patched have been rolled tight to avoid strain. Beyond, the horizon stretches endlessly on every side. One slip and I’d go over. I wait for the fear to come, to claim, but it’s muted, exhausted—or perhaps sated by the knowledge he’d go in after me, just like that very first time.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words feel foreign. My teeth clamp tight against any explanation, against giving more than I already have.
He lifts the glass beside him and dumps it over the side in one smooth motion, watching how it disappears in the sea. “Me too.”
I almost have to bite back a smile. We’re so different. Too different. I’d do anything to feel less—and he martyrs himself to it.
“You didn’t steer us into the Sotor, Rune.” The words come out soft. “You just handled what came for you. It’s all any of us can do.”
He shakes his head.
His grief is tangible. There’s nothing I can say, not really. So I stay, half-wondering if I should go, half-wondering ifI should take his hand like before. But something in me remains stunted—these hands are too bloodstained to be any comfort. They’ve snapped necks. Driven blades into the soft of eyeballs and held fast as my bola choked the life from so many I’ve lost count. They’re for violence, for sinking chipped fingernails into whatever I’ve needed to survive. How many have flinched away? And how little mercy were they shown?
