Olsa’s nod was calm, and I might have caught a touch of pride around her eyes.Or perhaps irritation—I was growing rapidly beyond subtleties.My head still ached, and I wondered if I was coming down with whatever Willoughby and Poverly had.
I poured myself a full mug of coffee and filled my plate.We ate, and the conversation wandered away from me—Grant’s alternative suggestions to Mary’s plan becoming more obscure and complex.I drained my first cup of coffee and closed my eyes as the second cup steamed.
Finally, Olsa and Grant left me alone with Mary.As soon as the door closed, she rounded the table and crouched beside my chair.
“Sam?”
She looked at me with concern.I moved before I realized I had, putting a gentle palm to her cheek, fingers delving into the hairbehind her ears, my thumb tracing her cheekbone.Her lips turned up in a startled smile
“Are you all right?”she asked.
“I have a devil of a headache,” I admitted, distracted by the intermingling of dark blue and smoke-grey in her eyes.Short, stray wisps of hair framed her face, curling a little against winter-pale temples.“I am worried for you and am unreasonably furious with Benedict for putting us in this situation.And it has come to my attention that key members of my crew are ill, and I was not told, or did not notice.”
“You have too much on your mind.But we can carry more, if you let us.Can I do anything for you?”
There was an opportunity in that question, one I was not sure she meant to give.Still, several possible answers slipped through my mind.I hastily discarded them.
“No.”I pulled my hand away, cleared my throat and forced my thoughts back into line.
Mary rose, looking down at me with a gaze far more perceptive than I could handle just then.“One of these days I may seduce you, Samuel Rosser.The crew and appearances be damned.”
I felt my lips twitch, but it was not a smile.“Have mercy on me a while longer.”
A frown creased between her brows.For a moment she seemed unable to formulate a reply, then she cleared her throat.“Samuel, we are in Mere.Are we going to look for a healer-mage?Sa Vis may know of one.”
I nodded, wishing I had thought of that myself when the man was still present.I rubbed at my forehead, reflecting how little the coffee had done for the pain.
“That is… a very good idea.Can you ask him?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.”
She squeezed my shoulder and left me alone with my thoughts.
FOURTEEN
The Monastery
SAMUEL
The next day, we reached the western edge of a long peninsula that punched north from the Mereish mainland into the sea, its tip surpassing even the latitude of the Aeadine Anchorage.It was appropriately forbidding, rocky and rimed with snow and ice.The few settlements we saw seemed nearly abandoned, and there were no smaller watercraft to be seen.
I sensed Fort Gat before I saw it, a prickle of premonition that drew my gaze out and up.I called for a spyglass.
The fort sat on an outcropping high above the sea, the heights and lines of its silhouette made all the more ominous by a haze of fine snow blowing out over the tops of the surrounding cliffs.Below it, curving around to the south, lay the port town of Maase.Lights and smoke signaled an active population, but we did not intend to go anywhere near the town, or the fort, until the night of our foray.
The ship changed course under Olsa’s supervision, cutting off my view behind a shoulder of coastline.
We anchored in an inlet the pirates of Orres had directed us to.It was nearly inaccessible by land, surrounded by high cliffs and sheltered from the wind.The only path out of the anchorage was a meandering, ice-laden stairway laid hundreds of years before by the monks who inhabited a nearby monastery.Thankfully for us, ithad fallen out of use—likely due to the inherent danger of the climb and probable bone-cracking fall.
“Every monastery has a Cleric—a healer-mage, as you call them,” Sa Vis had assured us before our departure.Mary had wisely kept the true reason for our seeking a mage quiet, and Willoughby’s fever—now spread among the crew—provided a timely excuse.“They are bound to discretion.They will help your crew, no matter who you are.”
That was good news, considering a quarter ofHart’s complement were ill and my headaches had not eased, despite the fact that tomorrow night we intended to make our play against the fortress.Still, I kept my hopes guarded.Finding a cure for Ben and I would be nothing short of a miracle.But if all I found was a cure for my crew and my own headache?I would appreciate that too.
The monastery was tucked into the hills east of the inlet.The tall, round tower, square of lodgings, and high-roofed chapel were nestled into a spiderweb of stone fences, where sheep and goats nosed beneath the snow.Garden upon garden slept underneath a blanket of white, marked by the drooping heads of dead sunflowers, the outlines of raised gardening beds, and various lattices laden with last summer’s vines.Here and there monks wandered, clad in dark robes against the pale snow, and smoke rose from the chimneys of far-flung hovels in the hills.
As I strode up the long road, coat over one shoulder and steam rising from my sweating back, I reflected that the landscape looked not unlike Aeadine’s midlands, where I had spent my earlier years.But those hills were rawer, nearly mountains, and in the winter the snow would make the roads impassible.These hills were gentler, more forgiving, and the sheep who eyed me through wooden gates were a soft lowland variety rather than Aeadine’s rugged, crag-hopping goats.
