Chapter 10 Letter of Marque #2
His gaze held mine, steady and unblinking, and for a moment we were caught in the same swift waters—two souls drawn by the same hunger.
Was it runechasing, or was it more? The silence stretched, and I thought he might deny me.
Then he drew a slow breath, wincing slightly, as if pulling himself back from something even deeper still.
“I will ask Mr. Fahr to teach you,” he said finally. “But you have asked about the boy.”
Bells, he was clever. Spinning this extravagant web of history and political strife, and yet he remembered to bring it back to the very question that had sparked it all. I admired that skill and the mind that could weave it. It was a magik of its own.
“So, when the Rhi’Ahr traitors cut down the Tree, releasing the chimeric and beginning the catastrophic end of our world, they released something else. Something much worse.”
“Worse?”
“You see, your Coward King had made one mistake. One miscalculation even greater than the Abolition, and one that will haunt his name until the end of days.”
I swallowed. These were deep waters, and I would surely drown.
“What was the mistake?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from trembling.
“When he sent his fusiliers to slaughter the Priestlords…”
He leaned back in his chair, a smile sliding like a knife across his face.
“He missed one.”
My heart froze like a northern berg.
Oh, Forge.
“One Priestlord who made vengeance his purpose and set his bones to wreak havoc on both royal houses. That Priestlord stole one of those accursed Rhi’Ahr ships and slipped through the northern Cloudgate Channel.”
Oh, Forge. Oh, Fog. My heart was racing, my insides falling off a cliff.
I didn’t need to ask. I knew. Thanavar was the last living Priestlord.
“But that was twenty years ago…” I did the figures in my head as he watched. “You were only a child when the Priestlords were abolished.”
“Seven suns.”
An image of the captain as a boy sprang into my mind.
Laughing turquoise eyes, wild black hair, mischievous grin.
Rowdy, impetuous, free. He would have been a handful for any parent or priest, no doubt.
But to be that young when his friends, his mentors, his only family, were slaughtered…
I shook my head. Grief cut out pieces of the heart, seared itself into the mind in ways that never truly healed.
And so we sat, listening to the creak and hum of the ship.
The spell lingered between us, heavy with all we couldn’t say.
The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uneasy.
It was a balm, and I wanted it to last. A space between two people where words weren’t needed.
Where the simple act of living was enough.
Finally, he looked away, and, for a fleeting moment, I missed him.
“I was seventeen when the ships came,” he said quietly. “Eighteen when I swore allegiance to my enemy’s enemy.”
“The Letter of Marque,” I breathed, and he nodded. Now it made sense.
But he wasn’t just hunting. He was avenging, and my heart quickened at the thought.
“Therefore, regarding the question you have asked,” he said, his eyes daring me to make the leap.
So, so clever.
“The boy,” I said. “Why did the harpiar think he was on the Touchstone?”
“Because he is.” Thanavar grinned a lazy, catlike grin and leaning back in his chair. “I stole him.”
I blinked at him, my mind racing. The Stolen Prince of Oversea. The myth was true, and the boy was here.
“The king knows?” I asked, my voice thin like ash.
“Would he offer a Letter of Marque otherwise?” One eyebrow rose.
There was a prince aboard this ship—the Crown Prince of Oversea. A prince and the last Priestlord of Lindurithain.
No wonder the Touchstone was notorious. No wonder she was chased.
He slid a tiny wooden box my way. Inside was a golden hoop, and my heart hammered in my chest. To be honest, I’m not sure it had eased for a moment since I stepped through these doors.
“I will give you a third chance, Ensign,” he said. “Something that has never happened in the Touchstone’s history. But I am afraid there are two caveats.”
More? I glanced up at him, my mind spinning with all the possibilities.
“One. If you choose to join the Touchstone’s crew, you will serve her as a member of the Emperial Navy.”
“The Navy?” I gaped. “How can I still be Navy if I’m a privateer?”
“That is your course to chart.”
The Navy did not get on with privateers because they existed outside the usual chain of command.
The professors at Berryburn wanted them outlawed at best, sunk if we had our way, and told us they wanted us quartered and sent to the Old Sand.
I’d be a target every day I walked her decks.
Did he really believe I could succeed, or was he setting me up so that someone else could do the deed, keeping his hands clean and the Marque unsullied in the process?
“And two. You will chase chimeric for me, and together, we will find the Cloudgate.”
Find the Cloudgate.
“Deep calls to deep, Ensign, as the Cloudgate now calls to you.”
Find the Cloudgate.
With a trembling hand, I took the earring and held it a long moment.
“If I put this on, I become a part of the crew,” I said. “I belong to the crew, to the Touchstone.”
“You do,” he said.
“I’ve never belonged anywhere,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
“I have belonged only one place,” he said. “But that place is gone.”
He missed one.
I glanced up and swallowed back the ache in my throat. Maybe I didn’t have to run anymore. Maybe I would finally belong.
There was a rap at the door, and Echo peered in.
“Captain,” he said. “Mr. Fahr says all ready on the main.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” said the captain, and he looked at me. “You have until Emberset to decide.”
I swallowed and slipped the earring in my pocket.
He rose to his feet and strode around me to the door. I stood and almost touched his arm as he passed, but instead made a fist and hid it behind my back.
“Captain,” I said, my throat beginning to tighten anew. “I, um, you…”
He turned and looked down at me from the corner of his sea-deep eye. I took a breath and raised my chin.
“You were the hawk,” I said. “In the battle, sir. You were the hawk, and you saved us from the Endorathil.”
He waited. Suns, he drew the air out of every room like a tide.
“I know that now, and I know that there’s a lot more I need to learn, so thank you for taking the chance on a wretched woman from a lost frigate.”
“Well,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “The frigate is still lost.”
A joke?
“Do you really think Commodore Bracebridge wants me for the chimeric?”
“I think, very soon, all the world will want you for your chimeric.”
Echo and I followed him down the corridor, every step tilting now as I tried to keep my thoughts to myself. But you can’t quiet a fear that big. It wasn’t loud, just heavy, shifting like ballast in a storm. Only thing to do is hold fast and pray you don’t capsize.
Echo didn’t look back, but his ear flicked.
“You can lock it down if you want, Ensign Renn. But we cannot change what’s coming.”
All the world will want you for your chimeric.
No longer a wayward girl swept out to sea, no more a wretched woman from a lost frigate. I was a runechaser, a wielder of chimeric, and now I’d become a weapon of war. It was time I stopped running and learned to fight.