Chapter 16 Tears of the Moons
It was hard to tell the difference between gap and Sheets at night.
It was raining lightly, pelting us from both sides of the corridor, but it was a warm rain, and refreshing.
I could see the glimmer from one of the moons in the sliver above us.
Lore, I thought it was. She was the smallest. I could barely see her marbled face because of the deck’s rock and heave.
Thom was at the wheels, and Dik was in the rigging.
Neale was watchstander, and he knuckled a salute as Fahr walked past. Nothing for me, for which I was grateful.
All around us, the Dog Watch was quietly attending their stations, and for a moment, I envied them.
Like Worley and his birds, they knew their duties and performed them with ease.
There was no shanty tonight, for in a gap, there was no rest, but the wind hummed, and the hull creaked, and the sea sang songs of her own.
Songs of duty and grief, riches and loss.
We all knew the wordless refrain because we’d lived it.
We strode to the prow over the figurehead, and I peered over the side.
There was still a splintered section that stood out against the Touchstone’s hull.
It was the last of the damage from the Dreadship battle, and I knew it would be repaired first thing in the morning.
Buck and his crew were good that way. Ships needed constant repairs, for a thin sail or a frayed rope could scupper you on the rocks or send you to the deep. Entire fleets had been lost on less.
Fahr pulled his hands from his peacoat and began to draw runes in the blackness.
They sparkled as he blew across them, sending a Carmen Lumiere across the waters.
I was familiar with the pattern now and wondered why he’d added a rune of something else at the end.
Still, the Sheets lit up like fireworks, illuminating the squalls within.
I could see clouds boiling, stormshears twisting, and waves cresting high like mountains.
Lightning flashed from wave to wave, and I knew at once that all the stories I had ever heard were true.
But the roar of the seas was tempered now, and I knew it was the extra rune, dampening the rush of the storm so we could hear each other without shouting. Smart man. Skilled mage. Stolen Prince.
Forge fog us all.
“The Sheets are beautiful,” I said quietly, “but terrifying.”
“Like magik,” he said. “Pushing and pulling at the same time.”
The winter hawk flashed above our heads, soaring through the gap south toward the Hall of Silence. Something inside me ached as I watched him go.
“I’d love to be a mirrormage,” I murmured, and I looked up at Fahr. “Are you a mirrormage?”
“Me? No.” He smiled. I watched the rain droplets roll across his umber cheeks. “To be honest, I never had the inclination to learn.”
“My mother told me the more you become your mirror, the more you want to,” I said. “After a while, you forget that you were a mage at all and the life of your mirror consumes you.”
I leaned out over the rail, feeling the rain pelt my forehead and chin.
“When I was young, I’d bring home animals that I’d found alive in our snares. I remember telling her I thought I should save them in case they were mirrormages. She said that if they were, they’d lost themselves to the mirror and deserved to die. I hid the animals after that.”
“I’m sorry, Blue.”
“I think life made her hard,” I said into the hush and hum of the quieted storm.
“She used to tell me stories about the time of the early Priestlords, when there were no kings and every city looked to their mages for rule. I think she longed for that, deep down. She really wanted to be the best at what she did.”
“Not like you at all.”
I laughed.
“Would she have made a good Priestlord?”
“Hels, no,” I said. “The people would riot, and everyone would die.”
I looked out over the night waters and the lightning that arced through the storms. My hair dripped into my eyes, and I let it. I’d grown skilled at hiding behind the dark tumble of waves, and now, I just didn’t notice it anymore.
“I don’t remember my mother,” he said, and he leaned over the rail next to me. “I suppose she was a queen. Maybe a princess. Maybe just a royal courtesan or something. He’s gone through at least five.”
I let his words roll around in my head for a long while. The sea rocked. The clouds flashed.
“I don’t have a single memory of her,” he said. “Not her face, not her voice, nothing. So, despite your awful relationship, I envy you in that regard. Just a little.”
I grunted but said nothing.
“What about your father?” he asked. “Was he a mage?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember him after I was five. His name was Jak. He drank a lot, and he was from the Spits. That’s it for him. Drunken Jak from the Spits.”
It was an odd feeling, sailing through a gap. With the Sheets raging on either side, I felt insignificant and small and more than a little vulnerable.
“I think there was a bear who wanted to adopt me,” I said. “I should have gone with him. We could have lived on berries and fish, but my mother wouldn’t let me. Odd how you remember things.”
“Aye,” said Fahr. “Odd.”
A crab with no shell.
“What about your father, then?” I asked, and a grin tugged into my cheek. “Devhanus Bonavanczek, the Stolen Prince of Oversea…”
“I wasn’t stolen.”
I swung around to him, eyes near popping out of my head.
“He said he stole you,” I said. “Forge, the whole helm says he stole you.”
“I ran,” he said with a grin of his own. “Suns, I jumped.”
“You ran away? From a palace?”
“And I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.”
“And you say I’m the idiot…”
I shook my head and turned back to the rail. I couldn’t see the hawk anymore. He’d disappeared into the darkness, and the dim glow of Lore seemed lesser without him.
“Kier Gavriel,” I said under my breath.
“Kier?” Fahr’s eyes widened. “Where did you hear that?”
I shrugged. “The chimeric gives me memories. Or maybe it’s the Touchstone. Why? What does it mean?”
“You know how we have two names?” he said. “For the two suns? Devanhan Fahr. Honor Renn.”
I nodded.
“Rhi’Ahr have three. One for each of the moons. Luna, Lyrik, and Lore. But they don’t share their Lore name with anyone.”
“Hm,” I said. Kier Gavriel Thanavar. I like the way it sounded. It suited the man.
“Like your mother, he’s had it hard,” said Fahr, “and he was alone for most of his life, so this ship is his family. And now, mine, too.”
So, Fahr knew of Thanavar’s childhood, too, stranded for years on the Cloudgate with the dead. I didn’t know why the son of a king would run, but maybe it wasn’t mine to know. Hardship forged bonds stronger than steel. Shared sorrows knit tighter than cable or cord.
I turned, leaned my elbow on the rail to study him.
“Is that why you stay?” I asked. “I mean, you could have a palace and servants and all the riches in the land. Why do you stay on a small, creaky ship, sharing a berth with three sweaty swabs, when you could have everything you’d ever dream of?”
“Because I couldn’t do this.” He held up one hand, and sparks danced across his fingers.
“I couldn’t see this.” He swept his arm over the waves.
“I couldn’t sail. I couldn’t chance. I couldn’t sing sad shanties with the lads in the hold.
I’d be stuck in a palace, paper-bound to a golden chair, expected to wed a noblewoman and carry on a line. ”
He looked to the figurehead at the prow, the carving of a woman’s face rocking above the waves.
“The Touchstone’s been good to me. Gav’s been good to me.
” He smiled wistfully now. “And Smoke and Echo, Buck and Kit and Ben and Nan. I’ve got maybe six months left on the Touchstone’s decks before the Marque expires and I’m forced to go back.
The moment I leave her decks, the king will send every ship to sink her, so I have six months to conjure a way to keep them all safe. ”
Suns. I couldn’t imagine the Touchstone sinking. I couldn’t bear the thought of her gone.
“That’s a heavy kedge,” I said. “I’d rather be on my own than under that weight.”
“This life has made me strong,” he said. “And I’ve learned more about our helm than I would in a High Temple palace. That’s got to count for something if I ever become king.”
True, that.
“Six months left?” I repeated.
“Six months,” he said. “Until then, I’m going to sail and chance and sing sad shanties with the lads in the hold.”
“You’ll be a good king,” I said softly.
“One day,” he said. “One day, maybe I will. And I’ll have Gav to thank for it.”
He tried to smile, and it almost made me cry.
We stood for a long while, side by side on the rail, watching the Carmen Lumiere dissipate into the fury of the Sheets, and I studied him, this child of a king, this protégé of an enemy captain.
The dark hair shifting in the breeze. The days-old stubble of a struggling beard.
A little scar under his jaw, another on his brow.
His hands clasped together, fingers rough and strong and skilled in all manner of magik.
He noticed me looking.
“What?”
“She’s gonna be one hels of a lucky noblewoman, so make sure you fog her good.”
He grinned. “I will, Blue. Just for you.”
I heard the cry of the winter hawk, and I leaned on the rail, watching as the flash of white returned from the horizon.
He circled the hull, dipping a wing at us as he swept round the stern.
I knew that Worley had opened one of the transom’s windows for his return.
The blanket, the chest, the books, and the wine.
The man was loved by a living ship, had befriended a good man and shaped a future king, and made my very skin burn in his presence.
It was a very strange place to find myself.
“Don’t you dare, Blue,” said Fahr, his gaze narrowing on mine. “Don’t even think about it.”
“What?” I plucked a feather from my tunic and watched it float away on the wind.
“What I know you’re thinking.”