Chapter 11 The Worldrune
The man hung from the yardarm, neck bent, tongue bulging, his naked body swinging with the dip and swell of the sea.
This was the last of the attackers, and the captain had assembled the entire crew earlier to witness his flogging.
Even with him so high above, I could still see the welts on his back from the cat o’ nine.
The harpy had refused to talk or to give up the name of the mutinous “soul,” and the captain had sentenced him to death.
His wings were bound, and chains were tied around his leathery ankles.
Then, he was hauled up the mainmast and hanged from his neck, twisting and thrashing until he croaked his last.
I had never seen a man die like that. It was shocking and visceral, but while I pitied him his agony, I didn’t think it cruel.
He and his mates had taken coin to kill our hands.
Neither mercenaries nor pirates deserved mercy.
Now, his body swung, and his eyes fed the gulls.
I prayed Buck would soon cut him down and feed the fishes because, even with my heart of stone, it was a gruesome sight.
On the prow beneath, Worley fussed over his clutch of ocean swifts.
There were chicks inside, but he reached into the basket and pulled an adult, stroked its downy head before flinging it into the sky.
The bird disappeared almost immediately, and the thin man clasped the basket shut on the tiny, chirping mouths.
I threw a glance to the quarterdeck, where Smoke was at the sunswheel.
His mate, Neale, stood to the side, taking in the lee of the wind.
The deck had been cleared after the battle with the Dreadship, but Buck still oversaw repairs on the forecastle.
It had taken a beating, and his boatwrights were hard at work on the spars and rails.
His riggers scaled the yards like treemonks, yarn in their sacks and needles in their teeth.
Life, death, war, duty. It felt good to be back on the Ship of Spells.
I wondered if she felt the same.
From the main, Devanhan Fahr stepped beside me, hands clasped behind his back.
“I believe I am to sorry up, Blue,” he said.
He didn’t look at me but set his gaze on the horizon. I grinned at his discomfort.
“Square me a rum, and I’ll let it slide.”
Fahr smiled back, relieved. He was fetching when he smiled. Eyes gleaming, cheeks like apples on erthe. Young and happy and free, or at least he looked it.
He couldn’t be more than a few years behind the captain.
The kind of man you’d fog in the dark, no strings, no fuss, no longing glances before the dawn.
The kind I used to enjoy. But safe wasn’t sparking, not anymore.
Not when danger watched with gold-shot eyes and made my bones remember things I didn’t want to know.
“So, the Stolen Prince…” I said, after a moment.
“What? Where?”
I grinned, leaned closer, and asked under my breath, “Who is it?”
He raised one cocky brow. “Would you treat him differently?”
“I just like to know the stakes.” I shrugged. “The Templemore is chasing him, and she’s a daunting foe.”
“I believe the Templemore is chasing you now,” he said.
“Chasing the chaser.”
He laughed, and it was nice.
“Having the prince on board strikes a dangerous balance,” he said. “We’re constantly dogged because he’s here yet afforded the Marque’s immunity for the same reason. But you know, there are many other remarkable souls on this ship.”
I knew him well enough to see the distraction coming. I let him, because I had an earring in my pocket and I truly wanted to know.
He nodded at the minotaur on the fore.
“Buck’s full name is Taramandabuk,” he said.
“He was the oldest of a family of seven, farming a small acreage in County Mores. When his father died, Buck found work as a gunner’s apprentice on a Kingship frigate, sent his coin home to help them.
He was at sea for two years when the frigate met a berg just south of the Spits.
He was the only survivor, and the Touchstone rescued him out of the waters. ”
“Just like me,” I said.
“Just so,” he said. “He still sends coin home for his kin.”
He looked up, to where Kit was braiding rope in the nest.
“Kit’s from Braithe, a member of a caravan that travelled from town to town.
One night, there was a fire, and she was blamed because of her magik.
She fled to Port Reach and took up a job as a seamstress, repairing torn sails and worn rigging.
She quickly became known for her skills and her use of fine magiks to repair sails.
Thanavar commissioned her eight years ago, and she’s been our rigging magister ever since. ”
Hands on hips, he looked around at the seamages on deck.
“Worley there’s a graymage. He can send those birds anywhere with just a thought. Nan’s a former pit fighter who’s a whip with a stew. Who else are you curious about, Blue? Neale, Broom, Ben?”
“Echo?” I asked. “Can he hear everyone? All the time?”
“Not everyone and not always,” he said, tapping a finger against his brow.
“Thoughts are runes, and there are some magecrafts that drown each other out. Because graymages can speak to animals, they cast thoughtrunes differently, so their minds are muddy to someone like Echo. He also can’t hear other fauns or minotaurs. Just us ‘lesser’ creatures.”
I grinned.
“But for the most part, Echo gets on by concentrating on his own thoughts and ignoring everyone else’s. He says most of the time, it’s a buzz of quiet, constant noise.”
Until I came aboard.
“How about Smoke?”
Fahr grunted.
“Raised in a palace with silver spoons, to be sure,” he said.
“Is Smoke Oakum his real name?”
“Not a chance, but I couldn’t pronounce it if I tried,” he said, his brown eyes sparkling like stars.
Chalk. I’d use chalk for Devanhan Fahr. Light or dark depending on pressure, soft or hard depending on need.
“And what about you?” I asked. “How did you come to serve the Ship of Spells?”
“Press-ganged into service at a High Temple tavern,” he said. “Typical tale of woe.”
“Liar,” I teased. “How long have you been on the Touchstone? Ten years?”
I was fishing. He grinned again but said nothing.
“Is Fahr your real name?”
“Not a bloody chance.” He laughed.
“Why did Smoke say they wouldn’t shoot you?”
“Fusiliers couldn’t hit the side of a barge.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Everyone has a story, Blue,” he said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his breeches. “You want to know people? Ask them. They aren’t runes to be studied and chased.”
I flashed him my palm with the Aro’el rune, and he laughed again.
“I stand corrected.”
“Thanavar, then,” I said. My thoughts tumbled like stones. I wanted to ask Fahr if he trusted him, if he knew his story of the RuneTree and vengeance, and how he felt about being stolen by a man he now called captain.
But in truth, I wanted to let myself believe his story. A part of me wanted to trust this enigmatic Rhi’Ahr man, but I’d learned early on that trust would gut you faster than a blade.
“What about him?” asked Fahr.
I turned to face the bow and laid a hand upon the rail.
“Why is Bracebridge chasing him if he has the King’s Letter of Marque?”
Aro’el wicked.
I sprang back, raised my hands as if stung.
“I’m not wicked,” I said to the sails snapping in the wind.
Aro’el wicked to beloved.
“I’m not,” I wailed. “I’m just asking questions.”
“You hear her?” asked Fahr.
I rolled my eyes, until I realized he was being serious.
“Why? Don’t you?”
He shook his head, and his earring glittered in the noonday suns.
I had one like that. It was currently tucked in my pocket, safe and undecided.
I looked down at the rail, the polished wood and the gleaming brass, the thick line coiled around the fittings.
“Truce?” I said to her.
She said nothing, and I wondered if ships sulked.
“She tried to kill me,” I muttered.
“And she would have, had he not intervened.”
“But Thanavar said she chose me.” I looked up at him. “Why would she do that?”
“Maybe something to do with the chimeric,” he said. “The way it’s working in your body changes everything we’ve ever known.”
I could feel the thrum of the chimeric against my own heart. Thrum and burn as the runescars crept up past my elbows now. Would they consume my heart in their endless crawl? Would I notice, stony and crablike as I was?
But, Forge dammit, I didn’t want to withdraw into my shell anymore, and I took a deep breath. “So, if I didn’t have the chimeric, she wouldn’t have saved me in the ocean?”
“She wouldn’t have seen you in the ocean,” he said. “She’s sensitive to runes and pattern, and you disrupted both.”
“Story of my life,” I grumbled.
“There are patterns in everything, Blue,” he went on. “And the patterns are everything. Do we control the magik, or does the magik control us? We only see what the Worldrune allows us to see.”
The Worldrune. Yes, I rarely called it that, but I knew of the term and the alchemy behind it.
My mother had spun it inherently, for she was wylde, untaught and innate, and her magik was wylde in the same way.
That’s how I’d learned, reaching for magik intuitively and casting spells by instinct.
Because of that, I hadn’t been a good fit in Berryburn Yard.
The Navy taught knots and rigs, rote spells and chains of command, but I’d wanted more than a comfortable post and a nightly tot.
With her wealth of history, mystery, and magik, the Ship of Spells was an alluring academy. Here, there was just so much to learn.
“How does the RuneTree fit in?” I asked.
“He told you of the RuneTree, did he?” Fahr raised one brow.
I nodded, not sure how much I could share.
“Well, if the Worldrune is all magik, the RuneTree was its heart, a tight knot of pattern made of erthe, sea, and sky.” His gaze narrowed. “What else did he say?”
“He asked me to join the crew.”
“Well, there’s some serious alchemy,” he said with a grin. “You’ll have to earn your place, though.”