Chapter 12 Stations
“A tot for a prick,” said Smoke, and I tossed back the rum. “It don’t hurt much.”
“Hurts like hooks,” muttered Buck, and his large hands fell across my shoulders.
It was dark in the galley, with only three, fat-spelled candles flickering for light, and I reckon at least half of the crew was there to watch.
I gripped the stool, swallowing the dread that crept up my throat.
I prayed I wasn’t making a mistake, and my stomach curled at the thought, a tight twist of fear that I shoved down deep.
No one else needed to see. It was mine and mine alone.
The minotaur held me steady as Echo pressed a roll of leather between my teeth.
“Bite hard, Ensign,” he said. “It helps to take the mind off things when the mouth is otherwise engaged.”
I did, forcing my tongue flat and trying not to taste the oily hide. The doc slipped a chunk of cork behind my left ear.
“Breathe deep, now,” he said and held up a long needle, glowing hot. “Just a little pinch…”
I closed my eyes, bit down hard, tried my damnedest not to whimper as heat burned the soft lobe of my ear. Heat, pain, more pain, rush, relief.
“The ring now,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Smoke?”
The dworgh held up the golden hoop, but he hesitated. “There’s only one way this comes out, and it ain’t pretty. Savvy?”
I nodded but bit down harder on the leather.
Smoke leaned in now, and my jaw clenched as the ring slid into the fresh wound.
A sharp bloom of pain burst through my ear, white and clean, anchoring me before my thoughts could scatter.
He ran his fingers along its circlet and muttered a spell of binding to close it, then leaned back, grunting with satisfaction.
“Dangles like all the rest,” said Smoke.
“Welcome to the crew,” said Echo as he tugged the leather strap from my mouth.
A cheer went up from all hands, along with a clap or two on the back.
I still felt like a crab, but one cracking out of its shell, all soft-bellied and bare. Forge, I hoped I could grow a new home before something bigger made a meal of me.
“Another tot?” I asked meekly.
“Before you turn in,” he said. “Because it’ll hurt more later.”
“Like hooks,” muttered Buck.
The doc stood, shuffling back on his boots. “So, Ensign, you can report to my pit at first bell.”
“Ahoy, you gangly, gob-smacked picaroon,” said Smoke, also rising to his feet. “She’s done a turn at navigation. That means she’s mine.”
Echo flicked his ears. “When did she take a turn at navigation?”
“When she was chasing chimeric on the open sea.” Smoke glared up at the surgeon, eyes narrowed under his expressive brows.
“Well, that’s a stretch.” Echo glared back with a different kind of heat, one promising retribution when they were alone.
I leaned back, happy to let them squabble over me. It helped drown out the dull throb in my ear. Besides, I liked being fought over. Especially when it made Smoke’s scowl deepen another notch.
“Isn’t your mother a greenmage healer?” Echo turned to ask me.
I glanced at Smoke, the rum finally warming my chest, and shrugged.
“I’m not hiring her mother,” he said. “Unless she’s pretty and cheap and at a port nearby.”
“I have no apprentice,” said the faun. “You have Neale.”
Sitting on a far bunk, Neale raised his cup.
“While Neale is nearby, he is neither pretty nor cheap.”
That drew a roar from the crew.
“We’ll take it up with the captain in the morning, then,” said Echo. “Able Whacks at Dog Eight?”
“We could wager an apprentice,” Smoke offered, and the whole galley groaned as one.
Echo blinked smugly. “I always win, so that means pit at Morning Six.”
“Hey now—” Smoke began, but Echo had already won. The doctor turned his attention on me.
“Besides, your runescars have spread, Ensign. I’d like to look at them again, if you don’t mind.”
I could feel the eyes of the crew shift to me, turning the rum sour in my belly. I didn’t blame them. I was now Navy and privateer. A liability walking their storied decks. An unpredictable one, too, if the scars kept travelling.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Echo said quickly, and he glanced around at the huddled swabs. “She most likely won’t set fire to us all.”
“She’ll blow us up first,” Smoke muttered. “Up like a cannon. Ka-boom.”
The doc rolled his large brown eyes.
“Morning Six, Ensign.” And he left the galley for the confines of the pit.
Smoke waited until he was gone and the crew had turned their attentions to their cups and their dice before pulling out a pipe and leaning into me like a plotter.
“Come upside and let’s see if I can’t sway you,” he said. “The helm’s a far portlier ketch than a dead man’s chest with a faun.”
I nodded but looked away before he could spot the stinging of my eyes. Smoke would probably cancel the offer if he sniffed out emotion, and I respected that about him.
Following him up to the main, I let the night consume my thoughts.
The sky was dark but calm, and the moons were bright and laughing.
I loved the sea at this hour. She shone back the starlight and made the horizon disappear.
The music of the wind and the waves, the creak of the timbers and the flutter of the sails. And now, the hawk.
Shrill and sad, its mournful cries echoed across the water, and I remembered the visions as clear as day. An island of deep jungle and glittering rune, soaring through branches, diving in the bay. Kirianae ik thay’ell, Kier Gavriel sil.
It broke my heart, those sad winter cries. I felt like, somehow, I had caused them.
Smoke didn’t take his place at the wheel. It wasn’t his watch, and he was content to stand behind Thom, the quartermaster’s second, puffing his pipe and surveying the deck before him.
If I drew the stout dworgh with his expressive eyes and bushy brows, I’d use charcoal. Dark, layered, easily smudged.
“Have you laid hand on a sunswheel before, Blue?”
I grimaced, unsure if I wanted to touch the ship again so soon. Her voice was loud, her ropes deadly, her memories visceral and profound.
“I’ve not laid my hand on any wheel,” I answered.
“It’s amazing how the ship responds. Though I’ve a dream to sail with a moonswheel one day.”
“What’s a moonswheel?”
“Three wheels fused together, each controlling their own tiller and rudder. Bloody marvel of engineering and design. That’s m’dream.”
Dreams, I thought to myself. Magik was easy compared to dreams.
He drew a deep breath, let it out with a roll of smoke.
I inhaled deeply. I loved the smell of pipes.
I used to have one on Sky Spit. Carved it out myself, but finding good tobacco had been costly, so the shop owner, Mr. Teller, gave me old bogmallow leaf for free.
It tasted terrible, but I’d taken it happily.
It was one of the few good memories I had from Sky. Odd that I’d remember it now.
I gazed out over the ocean, vast and deep and dark and wylde.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He blinked sleepily but said nothing.
I pushed. “Fahr said that once I had a ring in my ear, there would be no more secrets.”
He puffed his pipe, and I breathed it in. “You like him.”
I shrugged. Not in the way he meant, but no one needed to know that but me.
“I like fogging, and he’s fetching.”
“Well, that’s honest,” he said. “And I like fogging, too. I’d be all over the map in that regard, but despite his moaning, milquetoast manner, Echo’s a jealous lover, and I’m lucky to have him. A good mate’s hard to find on the sea.”
He pulled his pipe and looked around at the skies.
“You hear that, clearseer? I’m faithful…”
I grinned. I’d been right about the rings.
“So?”
“Bilgetown,” he said, and my eyes widened.
Bilgetown. It was almost as much legend as the Ship of Spells. A town cobbled together from the bones of shattered ships, with a people so hard and lawless that pirates trembled at the sight of their flag.
“I didn’t think it was real,” I said, my voice low.
“It’s as real as the Ship of Spells and just as dangerous,” he scoffed. “We got a reported sighting of it when we were at Flogger’s Bay.”
“So, why are we going?”
His gaze darted to Thom staring out across our bow. He pitched his voice low. “To find a piece of a puzzle.”
I couldn’t help it. I turned back to him and grinned.
“A treasure map?” I asked with hushed excitement.
“Infinitely more valuable.” He eyed me under his bushy brows. “It should lead us to the source of the chimeric.”
You will chase chimeric for me, and together, we will find the Cloudgate.
“The Cloudgate,” I said, the name landing heavy.
“Aye. A breach in that suns-cursed wall where ships can slip through, if they’re mad enough to try.” His voice dropped, low and sure. “But it moves like it’s alive. Or angry. Or both. Most who go chasing it end up as driftwood, raining back down from the sky.”
We all knew the shanty. “Song of the Dread” ran deep in our bones.
“The Navy likes to pretend the Dreadwall’s a fortress,” he said.
“It keeps the war on their terms. But the Cloudgate doesn’t give a damn about Navy terms. It’s a wound.
The RuneTree was the world’s heart, so when the Rhi’Ahr cut it down, the Dreadwall started to rot.
The Cloudgate’s a bleeding, festering shadow of what once was. ”
He puffed a good long puff, released the smoke as a ring. We watched it float high into the sails before it was snatched away on the wind.
“So, we needed a few things before we could make an attempt,” he said. “And one of them’s a-standing here in Forge-ugly boots.”
Heat bloomed under my skin, sharp and raw. They needed me. Thanavar had said as much, but I was just beginning to understand how far, how deep this post could run.
“A bluemage, Navy trained, could turn the tide of the war,” I muttered, remembering his words.
“She could indeed,” said Smoke. “You’re a chimeric chaser, and the Cloudgate’s made from the same magik that burns in your skin. We’ve been searching for years.”
His fingers drummed the rail, slow and even.