Chapter 3
Turncoats. Traitors. Ship of spies.
I hated them all and wanted to go home.
It seemed a mutual sentiment, as that very hour, we set our sail for Hodgetown. There would be no drinks raised when I returned to the docks, though. I doubted I’d even have the coin to book a barge back to the Spits, and thoughts of begging at the tavern doors haunted my waking thoughts.
Echo worked with Smoke Oakum to fix a pair of leather gloves that had been infused with a hold spell. They said it was to protect my hands as they healed, but I knew it was to protect the ship from this rogue magik.
No one seemed to have an explanation.
I knew the chimeric from the cannonball had somehow reacted with the three near-simultaneous spells I’d cast, and now they were as one.
None of the spells on their own would have caused this.
Chimeric was indeed an “arcane alchemy,” an ancient element mined by the enemy and traded in shadow across the seas.
And so, I sat under the fife rail until evening, gloved hands folded across my knees, studying the strange figurehead on the bowsprit.
It was the face of a woman carved into a slab of dense, dark wood.
But that face was haunting, with curved ridges for a shroud and empty eyes that stared at the sea before her.
Runes gleamed across her grain—the same as those that were seared into my skin—and I wondered if she was forged in chimeric as well.
Just like the blackened board that had dogged me in the waters, I wanted nothing to do with her if that was the case.
I turned my face away to watch the crew with begrudging interest.
It wasn’t a large conjury, and like on the Dawn Watch, all the nations of Oversea were visible on deck.
While there were fauns and minotaurs and dworghs aplenty, most were homani like me.
We’re a lack-skinned people, diverse of complexion but unhorned and unhooved, with no pelt, tusk, or wing to protect us.
I was sure it was only our stubbornness that helped us survive.
For the most part, the Touchstone ran like any other ship, with watchstanders and navigators, officers and swabs.
Decks were scrubbed, line was mended, sails hauled to catch the prevailing winds.
Still, I saw a seamage tangle a foot in the rigging, and his mate burned the rope clear with an Ignateus spell.
I watched another cast a targeted Praesidium while he cleaned the cannon’s bore.
None wore colored sashes that signified the various magecrafts and their levels, but I suspected they were all able to cast spells when needed or directed.
The Navy wasn’t like that, and the thought of this appealed to me very much.
Though I was bound for Hodgetown, so what “appealed to me” meant nothing.
Besides, serving under an enemy captain did not sit well, even with a King’s Letter of Marque.
I watched as a man stepped up to the gunwale.
It was Worley, the captain’s steward. He had a basket in his hands and was speaking softly as he unclasped the latch.
To my surprise, he pulled out a bird, all black save a slash of white at its throat.
I recognized it as a swift, used for carrying messages between ship and shore.
Sure enough, there was a tiny parchment at her leg.
“For king and for country,” he said. “Safe skies, my love.”
He kissed the top of her head and released her into the sky.
With that, he turned and left the forecastle, abandoning me to my wretched thoughts and the shadow.
The night was cool; the stars, clear; and the Sister Moons, Luna, Lyrik, and Lore, smiled in a rich, dark sky, watching the night like three owls.
I stared up at them from my little nook, draped in a peacoat three sizes too large.
Echo had brought me rations, but I had refused once again.
Now, if he’d brought me rum and lime, or even a cup of warm, briny beer, I would have accepted.
I could drink the heartiest seamage under the table.
A trait that my father had apparently given me—and the only one that I was thankful for.
I heard a quiet step and looked up. Echo smiled down at me, his goatlike mane waving in the night breeze.
“I don’t mean to listen,” he said, handing me a cup. “But your thoughts are very loud.”
In the cup, rum and lime.
“Don’t drink it too quickly. You haven’t eaten, and the rum will go straight to your blood. You’ll be dancing in the crow’s nest before you know it, and you’ll hate me in the morning, all because I was kind.”
I reached up to take it, wondering if it would burst into sudden, alcoholic flame in my hand.
“I’m sorry you can’t stay,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You’re lying, but that’s to be expected, I suppose,” he said. “Life is a funny thing, sweet like rum and bitter like the lime. That’s why we like it.”
“I’ve had my fill of bitter,” I said. “I’ll take your word about the sweet.”
“Listening to fauns is the beginning of wisdom.”
And he smiled. I couldn’t help it. Wearily, I smiled back.
“Ahoy, Doc!” came a voice across the main. “Able Whacks at Dog Eight. Wardroom!”
“I’ll be there!” He twisted the ring on his left hand. “Smoke never learns, but I get his rum, so I don’t mind.”
I watched him walk away with his bobbing, goatlike gait.
And so I sat, cupping the rum with gloved hands, sipping it slowly, breathing the deep salt air, and relishing the rock and sway of the ocean.
It was on nights like these that I would think about home, the poor little pebble of land on the shoals of the Spits.
I thought about my mother, a wylde greenmage, trained by no one but skilled beyond reason.
She had battled the contempt of the people to become a sought-after healer.
To them, she was beautiful and bewitching, but to me, she was hard and unyielding and cruel.
All to make me stronger, she had said. All to give me the hope of a life beyond the Spits.
Well, she was right, and I was gone, and I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived.
Plenty of bitter. Still waiting on the sweet.
There was another step, and I opened my eyes, hoping to see the faun with another cup, but it was Devanhan Fahr.
He hadn’t seen me, huddled as I was under the fife rail, wrapped in peacoats and shadow, as he stood, facing the horizon.
He was a puzzle of a man, with his laughing eyes and crooked smile, regulation hair and lawless earring, yet he cut a fine figure at the prow of this ship.
If I’d come across him in a tavern or shipyard, I’d have fogged him in a heartbeat and been gone before the sunsrise.
But he sailed with the enemy, so I could just as easily put a shiv in his ribs and call it a day.
Slowly, he pulled his hands from his pockets and began to form the patterns for lightspinning.
His lips moved, and sparks traced from his fingertips as he drew runes in the dark sky.
Soon, a flare erupted between his hands, illuminating his face in flickering light.
He folded it into his palm and softly blew across it, sending sparks along the waves.
As if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he didn’t sail with a Rhi’Ahr for captain.
“Traitor,” I spat.
“Hels’ hooks!” he exclaimed, stepping back. “Why are you there?”
“Where am I to go? Don’t have a berth, and despite the quartermaster’s kind offer, I don’t think the dory is as comfortable as he makes it sound.” I fought his eyes with mine. I was good at that. “Besides, the air stinks of Rhi’Ahr down there. I’ll take my chances with the sea.”
He shook his head. “It’s not what you think,” he said.
“I don’t need to think,” I said. “It’s pretty damned clear.”
It’d been ten years since the Nethersea lit this war, and still each day flung another ember into the blaze. We’d burned through too much death already, and now my people, my bones, ached for the same blood in return.
“Is it now, Bluemage?” He tossed the light to the other hand, his gaze holding mine. “Tell me what you can see without thinking.”
“The infamous Ship of Spells is captained by the enemy. Who do you serve?”
“The king, Oversea, and the Northhelm itself.”
“Liar.”
He grinned. “One of the best you’ll ever meet, I’ll wager.”
“How in the hels did you get a slip at Hodgetown?”
“That’s the king’s business, Blue,” he said. “Not yours.”
“That’s convenient.”
“That’s the crown.” He turned to let the light dance along the wind again.
I leaned my back against the rail. “It doesn’t matter. I will tell everyone at Hodgetown that you’re spies, and I will keep telling them until they send a fleet to sink you hard.”
“Eight months at sea, and you know more than the king.” He laughed, and I had the sudden urge to kick him in the shin. “Perhaps we should drop you at High Temple instead. I hear his court is easily breached. Wasn’t a princeling stolen once?”
I bit my tongue, cupping my rum so tightly that I thought I might turn it to sugar in my palms. The Stolen Prince of Oversea was old news, a far-fetched fable for cold nights and warm beer. It had been one of my mother’s favorites, however, and likely why I had no patience for the telling.
“Trust me, Blue,” he said finally. “We would keep you if we could, even just to teach you a thing or two about seeing.”
I studied my feet. Sparks from his magik flickered against my boots. He was clearly a mage but, like the rest of them, wore no sash.
“How do you spin the light like that?” I asked, and he looked back at his hands, appearing relieved at the change of topic.
“It’s a basic luminary line with a Carmen incantation. A bit beyond the skill of a blue.”
“Teach me,” I said.
“I can’t.”
I narrowed my gaze on his. “You mean you won’t because I’m Navy.”
He shrugged. “What I mean is, Blue, there’s no point.”