Chapter 22 Days Like This
We sailed north out of the Sheets and made for the Isle of Haran, mooring in an unnamed bay for repairs.
It was a mountainous cove, lush and tropical and all but hidden from the open sea.
One bank was sand, however, and half the Touchstone’s hands were on the beach, including me, wading through the warm waters of the shore.
The other half was busy stripping the Touchstone and exchanging many of her planks and staves with wood from the Nil’hellyn.
I wondered what could possibly be accomplished by such a task.
Moreover, I wondered if the Nil’hellyn had been the real goal at Bilgetown, and if so, was a cobbled wreck like that worth losing two seamages over? I didn’t want to think about Fahr.
No, I couldn’t really see anything that was worth losing the Crown Prince of Oversea for.
The suns were strong here in this little cove, and I felt my cheeks red and hot.
I sloshed back to the beach, kicking up water as I went and enjoying the sensation between my toes.
Unlike the seamages, I was a junior officer and normally wore boots on duty while they wore nothing.
Bare feet could grip a deck or a shroud far better than any footwear, but boots brought with them authority and dignity and perfect naval pride.
Still, there was nothing like bare toes in warm sand.
My runescars were aching after the Auctorus save of Bilgetown, and once again, I felt a dread inside me.
They were over my shoulders now and up past my knees.
There was a patch begun on my right hip, and it reminded me of the pox.
I’d never seen anyone with the pox recover, not even under my mother’s care, and I tried to force down the creeping tide of fear.
Still, fear was a lingering companion, full of shadows and whispers and dread.
Neale and his mates were playing lop-ball with a corkanut, but I walked past them toward the tree line.
They stopped playing to watch me go, and I fought the urge to fry their corkanut with chimeric.
It wouldn’t make me any more popular with them, but then again, I doubted it would make me any less.
There were tents set up along the tree line, and one had flaps open to the beach. The smell of pipe smoke wafted on the breeze, and I knew Smoke, Echo, and Dev were inside. I needed to ask them about this Nil’hellyn and about the games that were being played with crewmen’s lives.
As I trudged toward the tent, each step became hotter, angrier, and my fists were sparking as I neared that flap that served as a door. I stopped in my tracks as Thanavar stepped out.
Fog.
He’d ducked a little to avoid catching his hair on the hooks, and he hesitated when he saw me, a blur of emotions racing across his handsome face. But he straightened and glanced down at the chimeric sizzling from my fists.
“Aro’el?”
Fog. Fog. Fog.
“Captain,” I said stiffly.
“Mr. Buck said you saved Bilgetown with your spells.”
“Someone needed to,” I said, desperate to keep the fury from my voice. “There were children.”
The little girl with the big eyes. Her doll of wood in the canal.
“It was quick thinking,” he said. “And considerable skill.”
It was frustrating how easily he deflected the conversation, and I found my temper draining like sand through my fingers.
“How is he?” I asked after a moment.
“Strong and stubborn but not good,” he said. “We have a plan.”
Of course you do, I thought darkly.
There was laughter from the beach, and we both turned to see the corkanut high in the air, the lop-ball players racing about to catch it when it fell. They looked happy and free, and my heart ached at the sight of them, lesser now without Cable and Dion.
“They are a fine crew,” the captain said, his gaze softening as he watched them play. “I regret that Bilgetown cost us two.”
“Bilgetown?” I asked. “Or you?”
He glowered at me but said nothing. I met his gold-flecked eyes, held them, did not retreat.
“Tell me their deaths were worth it,” I said. “Tell me you needed the Nil’hellyn.”
“I needed the Nil’hellyn.”
Not even a beat missed. I stepped closer, feeling my skin burn as I did.
“You’re a good captain,” I said. “They love you. They’ll follow you anywhere. Don’t take that for granted.”
“I take nothing for granted, Aro’el,” he said. “Not life. Not death. Not duty nor service nor the wretched requirements of command.”
I bit my tongue, desperate to believe him.
“So, there was a reason?”
“There was a reason.”
I nodded, looked down. My bare toes. His black boots.
“One day, I will tell you,” he said, his voice weary. “But that is not today.”
Shouts rose up from the lop-ball game, and we both turned to watch the corkanut high in the air above them.
“And they respect me as one should a commanding officer,” he said. “It is not love.”
“Well, they hate me.”
“They have all sacrificed much to belong to the Touchstone,” he said. “And are wary of the Navy.”
“I’m not Navy,” I said. “I wear a ring, like the rest of them.”
He smiled now, and I knew he was sad.
“You carve your own path, Aro’el,” he said. “But that does make it lonely.”
“Better lonely than left.”
“We’re always alone,” he said. “Just sometimes, alone together.”
I gazed up at him.
“Alone together,” I echoed.
I was about to say something more, but suddenly Thanavar’s hand shot out, palm wide, fingers taut, just inches from my face. I blinked. The corkanut was frozen in midair, caught by a swift Kinestorum.
“Hels’ hooks,” I muttered. “That was close.”
He turned his hand, and it settled into his palm.
“Sorry!” came a voice, and Neale jogged up, glanced between his captain and me. “Sorry, Blue. We wasn’t trying to clock you. Honest.”
He looked at Thanavar.
“Can we have the ball, Cap’n?”
Thanavar’s gaze rested on the “ball” for a long moment before dragging up to Neale’s face. He arched a brow, and the knife grin slid into one cheek.
“Run, Mr. Neale,” he said.
Neale laughed and bolted back through the sand, glancing over his shoulder as he went. The captain rolled the corkanut in his hand and looked back at me.
“You should play,” he said.
“I don’t know the rules.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “We make our own.”
And with that, he flung the corkanut high into the skies, swung an arm, and suddenly, he was the winter hawk, launching into the air with a thunder of his wings.
He caught the corkanut in his dagger talons and soared up, up, up until he was almost invisible in Forge’s blinding light.
The crew scrambled to catch it when he let the corkanut fall.
Hand shading my eyes, I watched him disappear over the bay toward the ships.
“You know how to play, by gods,” I muttered to myself. “You play me like a drum, and I so want to dance.”
I sighed and turned back to the tent.
Echo and Smoke sat at a table made from a barrel, playing Able Whacks with shells and dried banana leaves. Between them, several bottles sat in the sand, some wrapped in reed baskets, others plain. All were open, and I was sure they had lost the corks hours ago.
Fahr lay on a cot, propped up with pillows and blankets to watch their match.
His shirt was loosed, and I could see Echo’s bandages binding his chest. I had helped the surgeon operate, that night of the Bilgetown Twelve, and I’d seen how the three shots had chewed up his lungs from the back.
We had secured the iron pellets and the cloth that had travelled in with them, but the bleeding had been generous, and I was certain he bled still.
His breaths were raspy and his body cool, not right for a man on an island beach.
He smiled when he saw me, and I managed one for him. It was weak, but still.
“Ensign,” said Echo. “Please join us.”
“Pull up some sand,” said Smoke. “But I’m not lending you m’pipe.”
I dropped down at the foot of Fahr’s cot and looked up at him.
“You were lucky,” I lied.
“What a pitiful way to die,” he muttered. “Shot in the back by Ten foggin’ Polley.”
“From the Bilgegate, no less,” said Smoke.
“A fine epitaph for a prince,” said Fahr. His voice sounded thin, and I glanced at the doctor. Echo didn’t look back.
“Fortunately, the shots missed your heart,” he said, studying his shells. “But they did damage your lung.”
“Poked three holes clean through,” said Smoke.
“So, he won’t be getting your pipe, either,” I said, and Smoke grinned.
“More for me.” The quartermaster raised his brows over the banana leaves. “Ain’t this sweeter than the Navy, Blue?”
“How?”
“Well, you’re only an ensign. You wouldn’t be a-sitting here with the senior officers were you on a Navy ship.”
“I wouldn’t have just barely escaped a murderous encounter with a lethal Dreadtown, either, were I on a Navy ship.”
“Indeed,” said Smoke. “You wouldn’t have escaped at all.”
Fahr laughed, then groaned, clutching his chest.
“Why the Nil’hellyn?” I asked straight-out. “What is so special about this ship that was worth risking the Touchstone for? Why does she call her Sister, and why does she sound Rhi’Ahr?”
There was silence for a long moment. I growled and yanked my earring.
“Remember this? It still hurts!”
Fahr sighed, and his chest rattled as he did.
“I’ll tell you some, but I won’t tell you all,” he said. “It’s the captain’s story, and we all respect him too much for that.”
“If you’re going to tell me the story has its start a thousand years ago—”
“But it does, Blue.”
I groaned. I would never have imagined privateers to be so dramatic. I leaned over and snatched the bottle from the sand at Echo’s hooves.
Hooves. He had hooves.
Of course he did. He was a faun. I’d never seen them before, hidden as they always were inside his boots.
“Well, how about this,” I said, and I took a swig of the bottle. “We’re on a beach, and we have rum. Why not tell a story that’s been only ten years a-writing?”
“Aaaah,” said Smoke, snatching the rum back. “The Stolen Prince of Oversea.”
“That’s the story I want to hear.”
“Foggin’ persistent, ain’t she?”