Chapter 8 Low Tide
I lay in my hammock, swinging to the music of the ship. It was like breathing once you grew accustomed, side to side, up and down. Some got sick, others lost their nerve, but I loved it. It was like being rocked as a child. Not surprising I loved it, since I had never been rocked.
I had a canvas hammock in a corner of the galley, above Kithriit, who rarely slept there.
She was the only other woman on the ship, so I suppose they thought they were doing me a kindness by bunking me with her.
Still, she was loud and restless, and I was glad that she preferred to sleep in the masthead.
It was quiet now. The mess cook, a minotaur named Nanarobbin, was awake and warming up the oats for breakfast. So, I lay there, rocking side to side and listening to him hum.
It was early morning, and the bell rang with the changing watch.
The dawn watch, actually, and once again, I blinked away the stinging of my eyes.
Odd. I never thought I’d mourn that ship, nor her crew, but now, as I lay swinging in a foreign berth, a part of me yearned for her cramped quarters and surly company.
The Dawn Watch had been Navy, through and through.
Dependable, predictable, sure. The Touchstone was none of that.
But the Touchstone, she was alive.
It was a thing I’d never heard of, never could have imagined in my wyldest thoughts. Magik beyond anything written in spell books or sheets, and it changed everything. My chest was tight, my belly in knots, and my mind pitched like a stormy sea.
I swung my legs over the side, sat there for a moment, hunched and shapeless.
The Touchstone was alive.
What did a body do with that?
I dropped to the floor, ignoring the stare from the cook as I headed toward the hatch.
“Come in, Ensign.”
I pushed my head through the flap. Echo was rolling a woolen blanket into a bolt, which he secured with a strip of tanned leather.
He slid it into his surgery chest and bent to pick a pipe up from the floor.
He tapped it a few times and laid it on one of his shelves before turning and tugging down the tunic at his waist.
“I thought you were an officer,” I said.
“I am,” he said.
“Then why don’t you sleep in the wardroom with the other officers?”
“Because I prefer to sleep on the floor by myself, rather than swinging in a canvas sack in the company of four snoring Overlanders, regardless of rank.”
I slunk into the room.
“How many did we lose?” I asked.
“We?”
“You,” I said quickly. “The ship, the Touchstone.”
“Five,” he said. “Including my loblolly, Arik.”
Shades of Corwen, the powder boy.
I didn’t know what to say. I was never good with platitudes or comfort or words.
“But only ten injured, so I’m satisfied.”
“Including the captain,” I said, “who is a hawk…”
He folded his arms over his chest.
“What do you want, Ensign Renn?”
I sagged against a wall, swallowed the tightening of my throat.
“I don’t know, Doc,” I said. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Did you ever?”
Recriminations from a faun.
“I used to.” I shrugged. “No, maybe never.”
He sighed.
“The captain is putting you off at Flogger’s Bay. We should be there shortly.”
“Why?” I asked. “I was helpful, wasn’t I? I helped.”
“He said you have mutiny in your bones.”
Was it mutiny to hate the enemy? It’s what I had learned all my life once I left home.
My mother had yearned for Rhi’Ahr magik and had joined their worship of the Sister Moons in a land given over to Forge.
So, in an act of early rebellion, I had set myself against them both.
That small seed of hate grew like a weed once I traded my little island home for a world at war.
It had grown nettles in the woolback farm, then thorns while choking down rations at the docks.
When I arrived at the naval academy of Berryburn Yard, that hate had sharpened to a spike, and I was promoted early because of it.
Hate was good magik, it seemed. We all needed someone to blame.
The three-toned pips sounded, and I glanced up.
“Hmm. It appears we’re there now.” He sighed again. “I’m sorry, Ensign. You were warned.”
“I don’t take well to warnings,” I mumbled.
Wayward girl spit up on shore. If only I were a wyrmaid. I’d swim away and never return. If I were a bird, I’d fly.
“Come on, then,” he said, and he moved past me, ducking through the flap that was his door.
Sunsrise at Flogger’s Bay was gray. Gray skies, gray sea, gray fog.
Forge was a pinprick, Ember unseen. There was a stiff wind from the south, and the cold drizzle bit my cheeks.
I shivered, despite the peacoat, and I clutched a rucksack to my chest. I had nothing but pride to my name, and now, not even that.
There were eight tall ships moored off the coast, and the docks were crowded with jolly boats and prams. Fahr and Smoke joined me in a longboat, but neither said a word.
Helmed by Buck, a crew rowed the distance from the Touchstone to the dock, and the smell of woodsmoke, limons, and salt fish carried heavy on the air.
Smoke stood as the longboat neared the wharf, tossed the rope to a swab on deck.
The boat bumped against wet timbers, and soon, we were landside, my sea legs unsteady on the planks.
I’d never been to Flogger’s Bay, never even heard of it.
It seemed a busy port, not large but thriving, and Buck’s crew stayed behind to register with the magister and take provisions.
Fahr, Smoke, and I made our way across the sandy market, and I marveled at the numbers of fauns, minotaurs, harpiar, cyclopes, and other races that moved through the crowds. The Spits were not like that. Nothing other than homani like Fahr and me lived on the Spits.
Not true. I remember a bear that came to our cabin when I was very young.
He walked like a man, and he could talk like one, too.
My mother supplied him with beetroot ointment for digestive issues, and he always paid her in pinesap and honeycomb.
I used to pretend he wanted to take me to the forest to live with him as a cub.
Odd, the things I remembered, and when.
We paused at the doors of a tavern, and Fahr glanced up.
“The Whiskee Drum,” he muttered.
“Sounds promising,” said Smoke.
Fahr squared himself.
“We’ll buy you one drink,” he said to me. “But we have business, so you’ll be off.”
“Story of my life,” I said and stepped in.
The tavern smelled of pipes. It was small, crowded, and dark like most, but still, we managed to find a table in an alcove beneath a dirty window. Fahr and I sat in silence as Smoke fetched the drink, the mate staring at his hands, me staring at nothing at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment.
“Me too,” he said.
“I wish…” I sat back, my heart sinking like a stone. Not surprising. Stones didn’t break. I made damned sure I wouldn’t, either. “Never mind. Wishes don’t matter. I am who I am, and life is what it is.”
“Blue,” he said.
“Don’t tell me it’s complicated,” I muttered. “I gathered pretty quick.”
But stones could hurt someone else if you swung them hard enough. I was good at that. It was how I stayed safe.
“But I’ll never know, will I?” I asked. “I’ll never know how the Touchstone is alive, or why she’s in love with a mirrormage, or what your hels ’n’ holy commission is that no one can talk about.”
And I needed to stay safe.
Fahr said nothing, and I stared out the dirty glass. Forge was trying his best to bake away the gray, but he was losing, despite his size.
Smoke approached with the cups.
And so, I swung.
“I’ll never know why Smoke talks like a foggin’ prince, or why you all wear earrings, or how a floating slab of wood ‘chooses’ her crew.”
The dworgh set the drinks on the table. I reached for my cup but paused, lifted my hands.
“I’ll never know what the bells happened to my arms, or why they respond to chimeric, or if I’ll ever find a station that allows me to work when things I touch burst into flame.”
Fahr took his cup but did not drink. Smoke, for his part, did.
“I’ll know soon enough if these runes are going to kill me, though, won’t I?
Will they eat through my skin and start a-branding my heart and my lungs and my belly?
Will I blow up like a lit wick to gunpowder and take most of Flogger’s Bay with me, or will I dissolve into a pile of ash and float away on a sparkly breeze? ”
I snatched my cup. My hands were shaking, but my heart was cold.
“But thanks, mates, for buying me a tot. I feel much approved.”
And I tossed it back easily. Rum, not whiskee. Shame. Still, it was only half watered, and I had been drinking hard since my tenth year.
I slapped it back down on the table and rose to my feet.
“I’d repay the kindness, but I don’t have coin or a berth or a job.” I leaned toward Fahr, nice and close. “Maybe I’ll ask at the brothel. I’m not too proud for that. I’ll make sure the swabs pay up first, though. Need to get coin before I set ’em on fire, right?”
He emptied his cup in one go.
I glanced at Smoke.
“Mr. Oakum, I’m sorry I never did get to try out that dory.”
“I won’t tar the holes, then, in case you return.”
“Kindness all around. More than I can bear.”
One last look.
“Safe seas, sirs,” I said as if the plank beneath me hadn’t just cracked loose.
“Safe seas,” they both muttered.
I left them, wishing I could stride out of the tavern with a confident swagger.
In fact, I wanted to rush out of this sour place before the tears that were stinging my eyes began to spill.
I sucked air in my lungs, willing the salt at bay, but I hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s gruel, and the rum hit my blood hard.
So, I dragged a hand across my face and slipped through the patrons and onto a barstool, hoping the crew’d lose sight of me in the crowd.