Chapter 25 Our Dead Drink The Sea #2
“It was the same morning I’d overheard Rhyland Crow was to dock in the Cove.
If I hadn't been sneaking around where I shouldn’t be, trying to secure papers…
.” She sighs heavily and shakes her head.
“Taking the vows of Sisterhood would have secured my place and made it easier to steal funds. Less eyes on me. Freedom, mostly, to come and go between prayer times. I am…regretful to leave it behind. I know we won’t be back in time.
And that if I try to return, the Sisters will likely turn me away.
But I have hope that the cause will find me another opportunity to help. And Sabre said—”
“Sabre?” I interrupt sharply. “You’ve told her about this?” That sharp jealousy again. How could she tell a practical stranger something like this and leave me in the dark?
Rosy heat blossoms beneath her freckles.
“Some of it. None of your secrets, of course. She says that the winner of the Mad Queen’s trials gets to take not only the crown piece, but a large sum of the entry tribute from each competitor.
She expects that it will be a fortune. Captain Crow has promised a share of it to every member of his crew, says that he’d never ask them to sail all this way through dangerous waters to hostile land without offering incentive.
So I’ve been helping.” She pulls away and shows me her palms, an angry shade of red, blistered in some places, with the beginning of calluses in others.
“With my share, I could do a lot of good when we get home.”
“Rowan—”
The door comes open, rattling against the wall behind it. Rowan and I both start at the sound. Sabre stomps through, looking worse for wear. She pauses at the sight of me but only briefly.
“Get dressed. Everyone on deck, Captain’s orders. We need to see the weary souls off who were lost to the storm last night.”
I swallow hard in spite of the pain that rears to life in my throat. “How many were lost?”
“Three good men.” She turns on her heel without further explanation of their demise, though I picture the man who fell from the mast, a crack of bone echoing in the memory. The door shuts firmly behind her.
“Those poor souls. I wish we could have done more for them,” Rowan frowns, staring after the place Sabre stomped off from.
They knew what they were getting into…. The words almost slip off of my lips but I bite against them.
After all, I knew what I was getting into last night when I went above deck to find Rowan, yet Rhyland still jumped into the sea to help me.
Still cut through the water like he was born to do it and lugged me to the surface.
An imagining strikes me; the weight each death must take on a captain when it comes to the men and women they’re responsible for.
Surely, if there’s some feeling part left in him, Rhyland Crow is suffering the grief of it.
“Here.” I didn’t realize Rowan had started moving, mixing hot tea together in a flowered glass teacup that seems wildly out of place.
“I’ve added honey to your tea. Should help with that sore throat—don’t even try to deny it.
Your every word is like sandpaper. Try to eat while I sort your hair out. ”
She opens the thick curtains wide before hunting down a brush. I let her set to work, knowing any argument is futile and my hair could use it, when I feel her fingers pause their work separating curled sections and she takes in a startled breath.
“What is it?” I ask sharply.
Her thumb traces over the patch of skin behind my right ear and I flinch. I hate having my ears touched, ever since what the Mothers did to them. She knows this.
“The rune.”
Harial’s rune, ansuz. The one he marked me with when our deal was struck.
That night flashes behind my eyes. Freezing salt water filling the hull.
Rain and lightning. Dark waves that crashed into Harlow’s ship until it splintered apart.
Chains binding me. I couldn’t move my arms or legs.
Couldn’t reach Màma through the deep that she sank lower and lower into.
Then the bright light. Precious air rushing into my lungs when we were dragged to the surface.
A man with laughter in his green eyes and hair like spun gold.
Harial. Trickster god, dream weaver...Rhyland’s youngest brother.
I hadn’t known who he was at the time.
I’ll make you a deal…. His words were honey. The light was blinding. I can save you. Save your mother, but it will cost you a crown.
I blink and my hand shifts to the spot where his rune was seared into my flesh. I hadn’t even known it was there until a year later when Rowan discovered it, brushing through my hair at Blossom house. After that I ran my finger over the raised skin obsessively. Tracing the lines over and over.
A jolt rushes through me. The lines feel…different. Changed.
“What—” I swallow. “What does it look like?”
“Not a crow foot anymore. Now it’s like an arrow pointing up,” she answers shakily.
Tiwaz. Màma taught me rune markings as a girl, the marks of magick, of the gods. This one, warrior, is Talon’s. I’m sure of it.
“Vale—”
“Hush.” I turn to her sharply. “We can’t speak of this. Not until I understand what it means.”
Her lips press into a firm line. “I think you know what it means. I think it means the agreement you made before is forfeit and a new one struck—”
“I didn’t agree to anything.” My words are ice. Frigid, piercing.
Rowan flinches, her eyes so round and innocent.
I suck in a deep breath, trying to catalog my thoughts.
Force them into a semblance of order. Did I agree to…
whatever this is? Harial had come to me in a dream the night I discovered the brand and told me his rune was to bind me to him, so he could find me.
That it wouldn’t disappear until my oath was fulfilled.
Gather the crown pieces. Bring them to me; only then will you see your mother again.
I hadn’t known he marked me as a means of insurance.
Blinking away from my panic, I take Rowan’s hands in mine and level her with the calmest look I can gather.
“No one can know, Rowan. If the captain finds out about my deal with his brother—” My fingers twitch to imagine his wrath.
“—I don’t know what would happen, but it wouldn’t be good.
We need to stick to the plan for now. Play it safe and see what happens in Staygia. ”
There’s a hesitation in the air, but finally Rowan nods, picking the brush back up.
By the time she’s finished combing through my snarls and separating the long, thick wild mane into a loosely plaited braid, I’ve finished only a fraction of my food.
The tea helps, and the creamy oats are tolerable, but I can't bring myself to try the yolky egg or the fruit that I know would be delicious but too acidic for the tender walls of my throat.
Rowan makes nervous chatter about all the crew members she’s met so far as she helps me into an outfit from one of Mòr’s large wooden chests.
Silky under clothes, a pair of simple trousers, and a dark tunic that’s gentle against the many bruises peppering my skin like some sort of tragic constellation.
With a careful touch, she dabs at my swollen lip, cleaning the dried blood away with a wet kerchief.
There’s no time for a proper wash and though once I might have out of sheer spite, today I wouldn’t dream of delaying any further.
Rowan insists on fitting and tying my sturdy boots for me.
There’s no point in arguing, so I let her, and then we’re headed out the captain’s door into the bright sun that stings at my eyes until they prick with salty tears.
I rub them but wince at the way my bruised arms and chest twinge from the movement.
My fingers twitch at the sight of the open skies, the unending seawater stretched in every direction.
How do I keep forgetting how terrifying it all is?
The crew dutifully assembles on the main deck, encircling three long bodies bundled in white sacks.
Some glance at us, whispering to one another as we descend the stairs from Rhyland’s cabin, but most are fixed on the somber scene in front of them.
I keep my gaze trained on my boots, both to avoid looking at the water and a certain sea captain I’m not prepared to face.
Rowan leads me down and we slip between a broad shouldered man smelling strongly of rum, and a petite woman whose dark hair is cut in choppy, erratic layers.
Neither of them bother so much as to look at us and I’m grateful for it.
There’s an almost devastating silence among the fifty or so gathered.
An unnerving hush that reminds me of the night we sailed through the mists that surround Elaris.
I wait for the mind numbing screeching to begin as it did then, but instead Rhyland’s warm, gravelly voice rings out and somehow it’s worse.
Worse because while the crew is wallowing in their despair at losing three who might’ve meant quite a lot to them, the sound sparks something else in me. Something forbidden.
A vivid sort of mortification swells near the dip in my throat. Lock it away. Never think of it again. Build walls around the memory so fortified not even the god of gods could break through.
“We gather under a heavy sky to see off three good men. Jonas Crick, Sheldon Adams, and Todd Undling. All loyal crewmen. Well liked and hard working. They won’t be pulling the ropes or lifting a mug with us any longer.”
The stark silence settles even more heavily in the air when Rhyland pauses. Everything within me begs to look up at him, but I refuse.