Falling in a Sea of Stars
S tevic shifted restlessly in his hammock. Even the gentle sway to the motion of waves could not ease him back to sleep. The odd dream stuck in his mind, and he replayed it over and over, his daughter wearing strange armor that flared and sparked as she fell in a sea of stars.
He took a deep breath and slowly released it.
For a time, he lay there and listened to the ship’s song.
Every ship had one, and Messenger ’s was a light ayre for she was newer and tighter than a large warship or kettle-bottomed merchant.
There was an eagerness in her voice as she skimmed across the southern sea like a filly on race day.
Despite her speed, the thrum of water on wood was a comforting downbeat to her spritely refrain.
Her tone would only deepen and mellow with age.
He gave up trying to sleep and slipped out of his hammock. Sevano’s hammock was slack for he had the night watch.
Stevic fumbled around in the dark and dressed, then headed above deck. The air was cool even though they remained in tropical waters. The sky was wide open and saturated with stars, the River of the Gods a bright ribbon through the heavens.
River of the gods, indeed, he thought. He wasn’t much of a believer.
Above decks the song of the ship was different.
The wind hummed through the rigging like the gentle stroke of fingers across harp strings.
Sails rustled and waves whispered and plashed against the hull.
There was always a drone out on the ocean, a drone of infinite waves rolling from the horizon to unknown shores.
He climbed to the helm where Sevano stood at the wheel.
“Trouble sleeping?” Sevano asked.
“Yep. Thought some fresh air would help. Everything well here?”
“Fair wind,” Sevano replied. “Quiet, the way I like it. It’s as if she barely touches the water at times.”
Stevic smiled at their shared appreciation for a well-crafted ship.
“Stargazer is abreast port.”
Stevic squinted and in the distance barely caught the glint of lanterns.
They’d sent Sojourner onward to an island port frequented by Tallitreans where it was hoped the Tallitreans among the captives they had rescued from Varos could find passage home.
King Zachary’s agent, Master Hunt, had joined them for reasons undisclosed.
They were not likely to see Sojourner again on this journey. “Any sign of our tag-along?”
“Nope, not that I’ve seen, but Aelff’s been keeping an eye out.”
Stevic glanced up toward the crow’s nest. Another unknown ship or ships were tailing them. They remained too far distant to be identified, and at times vanished, seemingly, beyond the horizon.
“Varos doesn’t have anything this fast,” Sevano said.
“No, they don’t.” Neither had to say aloud that it was likely pirates taking a gander at them.
“Gonna need water soon,” Sevano said.
Stevic had matched the charts in his waggoner with the newer ones that had come with the ship, verifying an island with safe fresh water along their course.
Stopping to refresh their supply could be dangerous depending on what the pirate opted to do.
Fortunately, having been a privateer and pirate himself, Stevic was familiar with their tactics, as was Sevano.
“Quiet Vendane,” Sevano commented.
Earlier, some of the crew had played music and a few danced jigs. Cook put out extra rations of food and drink.
“Doesn’t seem like Feast of Vendane unless it’s gray and cold.” Sacoridia seemed so very far away.
Sevano laughed. “I hear that.”
They stood in silence for a time, enjoying the air and quiet.
“Need a break?” Stevic asked.
“Nah. My watch isn’t much longer.” Sevano then nudged his arm and pointed. “Down by the bow.”
A familiar figure walked along the rail, pausing now and then to gaze over the side into the water.
What the hells was she doing out of bed? Stevic left Sevano to the wheel and marched to the bow where she now leaned precariously over the rail.
“Laren!” he cried in alarm.
She looked his way but did not change her position. “Stevic.” She sounded dismayed to see him.
“Please be careful. If you go over, do you know how unlikely it is we’d find you?”
She flashed a smile. “I’m a good swimmer.”
“Not that good.”
She raised an eyebrow.
He subsided realizing she was just needling him.
“I am being careful,” she said. “I wanted to see the sea light Amina told me about.”
He glanced over the side where a bluish-green glow flowed along the wake line.
Superstitious mariners called the phenomenon ghost light.
They believed it was the spirits of drowned sailors come to haunt the living and pull the unwary into the depths to crew their dead ships.
Stevic was not of a superstitious nature, though he’d known plenty of captains who’d pour a keg of rum into the water at first sight of the luminescence in order to appease the spirits and, more importantly, calm the anxiety of his crew.
“We don’t see this on the river,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
He decided not to tell her the myth behind the ghost light. “It would settle my nerves considerably if you would please not hang over the side like that.”
She gave him a look indicating she thought he was being ridiculous, but obliged. He sighed in relief.
“You let my daughter climb all over the rigging,” she said. “This is nothing.”
“Your daughter follows orders and learned much on our voyage to Varos. She has the makings of an excellent mariner. You may know river running, but the ocean is a different beast. You never know when a rogue wave or sudden wind will turn a smooth-running ship into a wild bucking horse. Besides, you’ve been ill.
” He took off his coat and put it around her shoulders so she would not catch a chill. She accepted it without complaint.
Following the removal of the bronze disk that had branded her the property of King Farrad Vir and was used to control her, she’d become ill.
She raged with fever, and Roderick, the ship’s mender, believed some agent intentionally bonded into the disk had been released into her body with its extraction, most likely meant to kill any slave who attempted to remove it.
The cruelty of the Varosians was endless.
Stevic thought they’d lose her after all they’d done to retrieve her, and they nearly had.
He was not sure what he would have done if she hadn’t recovered.
He’d almost not survived the loss of his wife, Kariny, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to go on if he lost Laren, too.
After Laren had fallen ill, only Amina among the rescued women decided to go through with having her disk brand removed. She, too, suffered, but this time they were prepared and she recovered more swiftly.
“You should be abed,” he chided Laren. In the dark it was difficult to see the ravages of the illness. She was not yet wholly herself.
“As should you,” she countered.
“Yes, but I have not been sick.” As he gazed toward the bow, he could make out part of the head and the shoulder of the figurehead that too much resembled his daughter. Ghost light and starlight glimmered on the swells ahead, and the cobwebs that had obscured his dream fell away.
“Stevic,” Laren said, “what is it?”
He gave a shaky laugh and combed his fingers through his hair. “Remembering a dream I had about Karigan. It’s what woke me up.”
She gazed at him with unexpected intensity. “Tell me.” It was more an order from the colonel than a request from his lover.
He told her and when he finished, she leaned against the rail and looked back out at the water.
“Perhaps I should escort you back to your cabin,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m fine, but...”
“But?”
“I, too, dreamed of Karigan, and it, too, is what awakened me.”
“What? That’s a strange coincidence.”
“Is it? Coincidence? Events such as these seldom are.”
“Well, I...What was your dream?”
She covered her eyes as if trying to recall the images.
“She lay on the floor in my cabin. She was in strange armor that glowed just as you described. She reached out to me as though she wanted help, but I couldn’t move.
Then she was gone. Gone just like that. It was a dream, but I also felt like I was awake. ”
He reached to place his hand on her temple to check for fever, but she batted it away.
“I am not sick,” she said, “and I certainly think it no coincidence.”
“What does it mean, then?” he asked, wondering what his daughter was involved in this time. He dreaded the answer.
“I wish I knew.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Stevic. I know how you worry about her. I learned how hard it is with Melry. When the Darrow Raiders...” Her voice broke and she sobbed.
He placed his hand over hers on the rail, unsure if she’d tolerate his touch. He did it as much for his own comfort as hers.
“I was a poor parent after Kariny passed,” he told her, “always away and leaving it to my sisters to raise Kari. I do not deserve the fine young woman she grew into. But now with all she has undergone, I think I am being recompensed in worry a hundredfold for my earlier negligence.”
Laren did not pull her hand away, for which he was relieved.
After her enslavement and illness, he hadn’t wanted to push her, but allow her to come around in her own time.
They hadn’t even spoken much. Usually she kept in the company of the women they’d rescued with her, or she hadn’t been well enough to leave her cabin.
Melry, who was fiercely protective, was often by her side.
He still knew very little of what her captivity had been like, and he wasn’t sure he needed to. Only if she wished it.
“There is a lot of you in Karigan,” Laren said with a smile. “A certain brashness that appears in need. Clearly, while your sisters did a wonderful job of raising her, your limited presence made an impression on her.”
“I am afraid brashness is too much a G’ladheon trait. No doubt it’s what gave her the urge to beat up the heir of Mirwell Province and get kicked out of school.”
“No doubt.” There was humor and starlight in her eyes. That was the Laren he missed. “Karigan is strong, Stevic, and if there is something happening with her related to these dreams—”
“Hey, Cap!”
Stevic looked up toward the crow’s nest. He couldn’t see Aelff, just the silhouette of masts and rigging. “What is it, Aelff?”
“The stars, sir! Lookit the stars!”
“What?”
Laren gasped and pointed over his shoulder. “These southern stars still confuse me, but look beneath the Sword of Sevelon.”
Stevic turned. In this part of the world, the sword was turned in the half-raised position. He tried to discern what she was seeing. It took a moment to pick out the stars that shouldn’t be there amid the masses of others in the clear sky.
“What the hells?” he murmured. “I’ve never seen that constellation before.”
“What do you make of it, Cap?” Aelff called down.
“Nothing to worry about, I expect,” Stevic answered, whether or not it was. The last thing he wanted was superstition to overcome the better sense of his crew.
“It kind of resembles a horse galloping across the sky,” Laren said.
“I am not surprised that’s what you’d see,” he replied, but she was right. “What the hells is it doing there? How’d it get there? What does it mean?”
“I don’t know, but it makes me wonder...”
“About what?”
She gripped his hand. “It makes me wonder if it has anything to do with our dreams tonight, or if it’s...”
“Coincidence?”
She nodded.
“Aren’t you the one who said that events such as these seldom are?”
“Guilty.”
He could not conceive of Karigan having anything to do with a new formation of stars appearing in the heavens, and yet, the appearance of a new constellation was inconceivable in itself.
Maybe it was the atmosphere of the wide open sky and sea around them glimmering with ghost light, and the synchrony of them both dreaming of Karigan that made almost anything seem possible at the moment.
Even his daughter affecting the order of the cosmos.