Chapter 30 The Silence
Where the Sheets were all rain and wind and waves and storm, the Silence was none.
None. Nothing. Only water as still as glass.
Only hot air choked with chimeric, burning my skin like many small needles.
We’d made it through to the Silence in a little over a day. Faster than I’d hoped, slower than we needed. The skies shifted black to gray to hazy blue. Forge filled the horizon, Ember a distant glimmer, the Dreadwall faint on the edge of sight.
The captain had a plan.
Our course would chart east-southeast, closer to the Dreadwall with every league. Thanavar meant to catch the Dreadcurrent that dragged the sea into the sky—and then tack sharp, riding the zephyr of wind that roared up the wall, filling our sails, racing the razor’s edge of death to the island.
A dreadful plan, but he wouldn’t turn.
And I couldn’t blame him. The Touchstone had gone quiet. The music in her boards from two days ago was gone, her timbers weak as if mourning all we’d lost. Everyone felt it. The urgency. The need to find the Cloudgate. To make this fool’s journey worth the cost.
But after hours of lessening winds and slack currents, the sky had become a hazy gold, the water a sickly green, and the horizon was a fog of both.
Soon, we lost sight of the suns by day and the moons by night, and all was shades of bronze because of the Dreadsky, the streaking mass that carried the Dreadwall’s water over the Silence and back to the Sheets.
There was no wind in the Silence, and I knew it was because of the heat, causing the air to rise straight up and robbing us of sail.
And always, always the chimeric in the air, a thousand needlepricks biting down on me.
Once again, uniforms and shirts were discarded in the heat.
Even the officers had given over to breeches and tunics only, forgoing the waistcoats and topcoats of rank.
I was glad of it, for in this sweltering heat, the linen stuck to my chest, and my breeches sagged like dungarees.
I took to tying my neckerchief around my head to sop the sweat that ran like little rivers into my eyes.
The ironmages still wore their robes, but I rarely saw them on deck.
Everyone prayed to Forge in the Silence.
We prayed to him to avert his gaze, to look away, to forget we sailed this boiling sea.
We prayed to Ember, sweet, gentle Ember, to remember our fauns and our minotaurs and dear, departed harpy, and to send a shower of rain to slake our thirst. And lastly, we prayed to the Sister Moons to entreat their brothers for mercy by stirring their breath and making a breeze.
Despite the lack of wind, the ship was still moving.
We were the Ship of Spells, after all.
Our spinners worked in four crews, with short shifts to accommodate the heat and lack of fresh water.
Smoke, Buck, and Dev worked endlessly those days, calling the water to push us across the glassy yellow sea.
From morning to night, night to morning, one of them manned the pup, hands wide across the stern, eyes closed, skin glistening with sweat, and lips moving with incantations only seasoned waterspinners knew.
Not fast, not far, but until the Dreadcurrent picked up, we needed to move, else we would die from dehydration, heatstroke, or madness.
A knot of unease pulled tight in my gut the closer we sailed to the Dreadwall. It was now a looming presence, the roar and the rush of the sea growing louder with every league.
We couldn’t afford to miss if the island suddenly moved again, so I would assume my position on the Touchstone’s hull and chase for only a few hours before Echo would haul me up for water, hard tack, and salt fish.
He would also rub wax across my lips, cheeks, nose, and collarbone.
While my skin was tanned, the compounded elements of the Silence created new blisters every day.
By nightfall, I was exhausted and needed help to my bunk, where I slept like a stone until the morning.
My runescars had swallowed my shoulders and met across my back and chest with only patches left on my thighs, belly, and face that were bare.
My throat and jaw were beginning to mark, and I purposefully stayed away from Echo’s pit with its slivers of mirrored glass.
It was bad enough that I felt them. I didn’t need to see.
My berth was quiet now, without Kit.
We were closer to the Dreadwall now, and I climbed the stepladder to the main.
When I opened the hatch, the heat hit like a fist. Much of the crew lay about on deck, reduced to their trousers and kerchiefs or sunscaps.
I glanced to the pup, where Thanavar stood.
He, too, had discarded his coat and vest, and the gold beneath his skin shimmered in this heavy chimeric light.
He blinked slowly when he saw me, and I tried to smile, but my cheeks were burned, and I didn’t succeed.
I had to believe he knew me by now. Our silence spoke volumes when we didn’t have words.
As usual, Buck helped to belay me, the Touchstone slid out her planks, and I took my position over the side.
Once again, the waters boomed, chimeric patterns scattered in the waves, but there was no direct path toward the breach or the upcoming Dreadwall.
Rain was rare in the Silence, making dehydration a very real concern, and I read the warm waters.
They told sad stories of ships and seamages, wyrmaids and whales caught in the breach when magik was used to reshape a world.
The chimeric was changing me.
We all knew that. It was obvious. I felt alive, but the chimeric was killing me, and I was as terrified as the crew regarding the manner of my imminent death. The dread rising within me was worse than the one that lay before.
We had mere days left to play out this “great game,” but honestly, I wasn’t sure I had the time.
A voice cried out from the rigging and jolted me from my dark thoughts. I could hear the crew scramble to the rail, and I blinked as I scanned the horizon. There was no drum, no beat to quarters, so clearly no enemy ship.
Something tickled my fingers.
I glanced down. An eye was rising out of the waters. A tiny eye on a long, thin, feathery stalk. I’d never seen anything like it. It rose up out of the sea, holding my gaze, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
Aro’el, said the ship. Be wary. Beware.
“No,” I said. “Good. It’s good.”
In fact, it was wonderful. I knew this in my bones. It was my friend. My strange, tame, watery friend. Waves of calm washed over me, and I felt an urge to reach out and pat it, this funny little eye on a stalk.
Suddenly, the line at my waist yanked up as rows of dagger teeth rushed straight out of the water toward me.
I grasped the rope and tucked my legs, crying out as teeth grazed the linen along my back.
A harpoon flashed downward, and the creature arched away, splashing back into the sea.
I was hauled over the bulwark, and I hit the deck in a tangle of arms and legs and shredded linen.
But I pushed to my feet and rushed to the rail with the rest of the crew as Buck braced himself against the gunwale to draw the creature in.
I watched in awe of its massive, undulating curves, and it rolled and thrashed, rocking the ship as though we were a jolly.
A second harpoon flashed, and then a third, and blood turned the water the color of ambergris ink.
The men threw all their weight into it, and soon they hauled the creature over the rail, thudding it onto the deck with a splash.
Huge and barbed, it was almost as long as the Touchstone and narrow like a snake.
I bent close, seeing the strange wiry stalk coming out of its head, positioned strategically above its harrowing jaws. It was looking at me still.
“Leviathaur,” said Smoke. “Dragon eel.”
“It’s said they hypnotize their prey,” said Echo.
I swallowed, knowing it to be true.
“Good eating,” said Buck.
“Our chaser was almost good eating,” said Smoke. “One gulp and she’d have been a cheesy snack.”
The crew laughed at that, and I tried to join in, enjoying the fleeting moment of good humor in this desolate place on the sea.
That night, we dined like kings on dragon eel steaks, and the galley was filled with contented swabs as they washed the oily meat down with rum and beer.
But after that, I must admit I was unnerved each time I went over the side, and I watched these waters with new eyes for other eyes watching me.
Five more hours in, the chimeric went strange, and I called up for the captain.
He leaned over the side, as ragged as the rest of us, dark hair pulled off his face in a queue, and my heart ached at the sight of the ebony pendant against his gold-laced chest. Our relationship was strained since the ironmages had come aboard, and it felt like I’d been gutted like a dead fish.
Actually, everything was strained now, and I hated how life had turned.
“It’s the chimeric, sir,” I called up to him. “It’s split.”
“Split?”
“Aye, sir. Two streams, see?” And I waved over the water with my hand. “Due east, aye, but also, look…”
Bubbles and bursts of chimeric channeling sou’east.
He frowned, and Fahr stepped to the rail to look. My heart twisted inside me. Somehow, in Port Corvallan, I’d lost him, too. That made four, with Kit and Worley gone. Damnations if life wasn’t so much easier alone.
“What the hels is sou’east?” asked Fahr.
Thanavar said nothing, and the mate stared at him a long moment.
“Forge, you know…”
“Have the spinners bring us southerly, Mr. Fahr.”
“Forge, Gav. You’re going to kill us all.”
“Happy to drop you on the next spit we come to, Dev.”
Fahr shook his head and left the rail, shouting orders to the crew. The captain looked back down at me.
“Well done, Aro’el,” he said. “Concentrate your chase on the southeasterly trail, if you will.”
“Aye, sir,” I said, and dipped my fingers back into the water.