Chapter 2
Turned out the Ship of Spells had a name.
Touchstone.
She was an old three-masted frigate, smaller even than the Dawn Watch, and she sailed under no flag.
It made sense, I supposed, as she was technically a privateer in the employ of the king.
I knew little of privateers, except that they weren’t actually pirates.
They were the bane of the Navy, threading a lawless cord through legal waters and flaunting the rules of warfare whenever it suited their needs.
Still, her lines were sound, and she smelled of linseed oil, pine soap, old oak, and the sea.
“So, what happened to your hands?” asked the faun. He was the ship’s surgeon, and he’d said his name was Echo.
I didn’t answer. I’d never spoken to a faun before.
Hels, I’d never even met one. Berryburn Yard was a remote naval academy, and there’d been less of them on the roster than minotaurs or dworghs.
Still, had I not just been plucked out of the ocean after losing my ship and my hands and my future, I’d probably have bought him a drink.
Or vice versa, considering he was employed and I was not.
“Whatever it is,” he went on, “it’s having a curious effect on your healing. Your hands were little more than bones when we dragged you aboard, but now…”
He tugged the gauze around my thumb.
“…the flesh has healed. Curious.”
He was right. I should have been happy about it. I should have been grateful.
“Clearly, it’s a by-product of the chimeric.” The faun continued. He seemed to enjoy talking, so didn’t need my response. “But not one I’ve seen before. Does it hurt?”
I bit my tongue. It hurt like hooks, but I wouldn’t admit it.
He turned my hand over as he bandaged, and he frowned.
At least, I think it was a frown. His forehead was wrinkled because of the horns, so it was hard to tell.
He looked like he was always thinking. I didn’t care.
I’d said nothing since I was brought aboard, but Echo talked enough for both of us.
“Well, I’ll try to be careful,” he said.
He had very long fingers. Funny—of all the things I noticed, the one I found the most interesting was his fingers.
Not the horns nor his short, smooth hide of tan; not his wide nose, goatlike nostrils, or the rectangular pupils in his soft, brown eyes.
His ears were large and pointed, and he wore a golden hoop in one of them.
He also wore a thin golden ring around one of those long fingers, and I wondered if, like the earring, it was the mark of a privateer or if it was something more.
No, it was his fingers that captivated me, and I watched them as, carefully, methodically, they wrapped my hands and wrists in gauze.
He peered up at me.
“You must be a Blue, yes?” he asked. “Most of your sash is still intact. Charred at the bottom, but with all that chimeric, it’s to be expected, I suppose.”
Blue threads mixed with undyed and wan, the rank of a junior officer and midshipmage. Not that it mattered now.
“Were you casting or holding?”
“Both,” I grunted, my first word in hours. Or days. I wasn’t sure. I vaguely remembered a hawk on the sea.
“Hmm,” said the faun, and he bent back to his work.
I sighed and let my eyes wander around the cabin.
We were in a surgeon’s pit deep within the ship.
There were no windows, and light came by way of candle and mirror.
The ceiling was low and the floor rough with bags of sand at the ready to sop up the blood.
A young homani boy sat taking notes in the corner, and I knew he was the surgeon’s loblolly.
I could have been a loblolly when I’d first enlisted, but it reminded me too much of my mother.
She was a greenmage healer, skilled but wylde, and I’d been her apprentice since I was three.
I could stitch and bandage, tar and bleed, and could identify most of what was on Echo’s shelves.
Tourniquets and splints, linseed and lime, plaster and soap and salve.
I didn’t think this faun was a mage, however.
So far, his treatment of my hands had been entirely traditional, with ice, bandages, and a bit of yellow grease.
There was a small, bronzed mirror on one of the shelves, and I grimaced at my reflection.
I rarely saw my face, except for glimpses in the water when I’d lean over a rail, but there I was in all my sea-soaked glory.
Homani, like the loblolly, and tanned from months spent on a ship.
Dark hair chopped at the chin. Gray eyes, thick brows, wide cheeks, square jaw.
A scar beneath my eye from my first day on the Dawn Watch. A livid set of bruises from my last.
Echo was watching me. I tore my eyes away from the mirror, set them like stone on the canvas flap that served as a door.
“Arik,” he said. “Fetch Mr. Fahr, if you will.”
“Aye, sir,” said the boy, and he ducked through the canvas, with a glance back at me before going.
“Well,” said Echo. “I’m not sure if you’ll keep them like this or if the chimeric will continue to burn and you’ll lose both hands within a week. But they seem to be healing, so my coin is on the scars. Wiggle, please.”
Only my fingers were visible from the bandaging, and I hissed as they flexed beneath the gauze.
“Hmm,” he said again.
As he stood back to admire his work, my eyes flicked to his legs.
Goat legs bent backward at the knee, and his breeches disappeared into boots from the hock down.
He wore a belted tunic and a woolen vest but no sword or dagger.
Then again, he was a surgeon. Surgeons were traditionally useless with anything larger than a scalpel.
I did wonder about the horns, though, and, while they curled backward from his skull, they looked like they could do some damage were he provoked.
There was a rap on the wall, and someone stepped through the canvas flap.
It was the man with brown eyes who had pulled me onto the ship.
He looked only a few years older than me, with black hair and eyes that danced like starlight.
He wore the informal clothes of a ranking officer, his white tunic and flaxen vest a regal contrast to his dark amber skin.
His thick brows rivaled mine, as did the scars along his cheek and jawline.
But unlike me, it seemed his smile came easily.
Like the faun, he wore an earring but no sash to signify a magik.
“So, she’s not a wyrmaid, then,” he said. “Pity. Buck’s running a wager.”
“No wyrmaid, Dev,” said Echo. “Settle your bets.”
And he gave the gauze a last tug.
“I’m not sure whether she’ll keep her hands, but she seems to have had no ill effects from prolonged exposure to either sea or chimeric.”
“It was chimeric, then?”
“Of that, I am convinced.”
The officer squared his shoulders toward me.
“I’m Devanhan Fahr, First Mate of the privateer Touchstone under Captain Gavriel Thanavar.” His eyes flicked first to my bandaged hands, then to my face. “What happened to your ship?”
I met those eyes and said nothing.
“She was serving on the frigate Dawn Watch,” said Echo. “It was attacked by the Endorathil in open seas.”
“What? How?” I gaped at him. “I said nothing!”
He smiled and tapped his head with a long finger.
“You were right,” he said. “Not a mage.”
I growled to myself. Clearseer. My mother had told me about them. They could hear thoughts the way people heard words. Dangerous types, she insisted, for you never knew when they were spinning.
Devanhan Fahr raised a brow and grinned.
“Now, would you like to tell me your name, or shall I ask our surgeon?”
“Honor Renn,” I said. “Ensign Bluemage of the Kingship Frigate Dawn Watch.”
“Captain?”
“Lagerheim.”
“Understudy?”
“Taran Vir, Blackmage.”
“How long deployed?”
“Eight months,” I said. “I was conscripted as a bluemage from the Berryburn Naval Yard.”
“I don’t believe you finished the curriculum,” said Echo.
“I was better than all of them,” I said with a shrug.
“You quit?” asked Fahr.
I raised my chin. “The magister said I was ready. All I needed was the ship.”
“Remember your rank, Ensign,” said the faun. “Dev is First Mate. You do need to call him sir.”
“I went from Wan to Blue in less than a year. They were jealous.”
“Jealous, sir,” Echo repeated.
I snorted.
“I’m Navy. You’re privateers. I outrank all of you.”
“Privateers at the hire of King Bonavanczek himself,” said Fahr. “Would you like to inspect our Letter of Marque?”
Damn. I looked down. Stephanus Bonavanczek IV was the King of Oversea, lawful ruler of the Northhelm and all its colonies. That gave them rank, even outside the Navy’s chain of command, and I appreciated that chain, that structure, that rule of law.
“No, sir,” I said, finally using the customary honorific.
“Good call, Ensign,” Fahr said. “Now, where can we drop you?”
“Drop me?”
“You can’t stay with us,” he said. “You’re Navy, after all. We’re just lowly privateers.”
“Where did you accept your commission? Hodgetown?” asked Echo. “That’s generally a good place to begin again.”
“Suns have mercy,” said Fahr. “I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to a rathole like Hodgetown. Still, she is Navy…”
And he laughed. A most unusual trait for a privateer, but I was beginning to believe that the Touchstone was a most unusual ship.
“I can’t go back,” I said, glancing between them. “My hands… I need… I can’t…”
“Well, she can’t stay here,” came another voice, and another man pushed through under the canvas.
He was a dworgh, several hands shorter than I but built of solid muscle and iron, with a barrel chest, strong arms, and calloused hands.
His thick hair and full beard were the color of nutmeg, his brown eyes expressive and large, and his brows were as bushy as a bear in winter.
“Bad luck to have a castaway on board,” he said with the polished accent of someone who’d grown up far from the docks. “Especially a Navy bird. The crew’s already jumpy.”
I noticed he was wearing only one boot.