Chapter 32 #2
As he crossed the floor, one boot went through a rotting board, but he caught himself and carried on. The trunk was locked, but the clasp was rusted, and it took a simple incant to turn it to ash in his palm. He opened the lid, and I hissed at the pain.
To my surprise, he smiled at me. It was a big, broad smile, and for a brief moment he looked young and happy and free. Forge dammit if my knees didn’t grow weak, and I cursed myself for the way I was falling. I was so soft now. So soft.
“Our rogue chimeric, Aro’el,” he said.
I nodded, swallowing back the lump in my throat.
He looked past me, to Tripp at the door.
“Take this to the hold and put it with the others. And take care. It can do you a damage if you tre—”
The Andomiehr lurched beneath our feet. The captain frowned.
“Mr. Tripp?”
“I’ll check, sir.”
I stepped over to his side and looked down at the chest.
“I have so many questions,” I said quietly.
He turned, and I realized I was very close. He looked down at me and cocked his head. I couldn’t begin to guess the thoughts that were spinning behind his gold-flecked eyes.
“Tonight,” he said, “I will tell you more about the Cloudgate.”
“Tell me everything,” I said. His warmth felt good in this rotting, dead room, and once more, his eyes darted down to my lips.
Tonight…
Oh suns, they lingered. His eyes lingered, and I leaned, heat rushing through my body as my runescars began to burn.
He raised his hand to my face, barely brushed my skin with those long fingers.
“Do they hurt?” he asked. His voice was soft, deep. Like the purr of a great cat.
“No,” I lied. “They yearn.”
He touched one on my cheek. It gleamed against his skin, the runes lighting a path for him.
“Runechaser,” he said.
He touched another on my jaw, drew his finger down my chin.
And I held my breath, wishing for his mouth.
But the ship shuddered once again, shaking a soggy timber loose over our heads. It swung down, and he deflected it with his forearm, sent it cracking to the deck. He glanced at me before stepping away.
“This is dangerous.”
I knew there was a double meaning. We were runechasers both. There was never enough to satisfy.
“Tonight,” I said.
“Of course,” he said, looking anywhere but at me. “Tonight.”
We left the great cabin and picked our way carefully back to the jolly, scaling down five rotting decks like swabs descending the masts.
We nabbed one of the jollies and pushed off with the oars from inside the Andomiehr’s wooden husk.
There was someone in the water at the Touchstone’s hull, and I realized that it was Dev.
He spied us and swam over, throwing an elbow up on the jolly’s edge.
He reached beneath the shallow hull and peeled off a globular, gelatinous mass, tossing it in before heaving himself over the side.
“They’re not normal jellyheads,” Fahr said.
He perched on the prow and wiped off his face. Water dripped into pools at our feet.
“They’re more like leechies or lungpreys,” he went on. “Echo’s dissecting a few up top. They latch on with this barb-ringed mouth and set to it with a raspy tongue. See?”
He nudged the slime blob with his bare foot, and it quivered like a pudding.
“Alteration abominations,” I said. “That’s what the Touchstone calls them.”
“But what about her?” asked Thanavar. “Are they on her as well?”
“Dozens of them,” he said. “We’re taking water in the bilge.”
“Damnations,” said Thanavar.
“We can spin and leave,” said Dev. “But we’ll be taking them with us, and that will be problematic once we hit the Dreadcurrent. The jollys have ’em, too. Look.”
There was a small split in the staves at our feet where water seeped in.
“I was going to suggest we send divers in, cull them all with Nan’s cleavers, but…”
He inclined his head portside, between the ships, where a thin, wiry eyestalk was slicing through the waters. My heart thudded. Leviathaur.
“Moons,” groaned Thanavar.
“Three of them spotted from the nest.”
“I can try,” I said, and they looked at me. “The chimeric reacts whenever it touches the water. I can see if that does the trick.”
“Give it a go, then, Aro’el,” said Thanavar.
I took a deep breath, slid the glove from one scarred hand, and slipped it over the side.
The ocean boomed, rippling out in all directions from the little jolly boat, and chimeric shot through the deep like lightning.
The Touchstone pitched and the Andomiehr heaved and even the jolly boats shuddered as the jellyheads reacted to the pulse.
The water seethed as they peeled off the hulls, floating to the surface and turning the entire area milky white.
Soon, however, they began to float back toward the ships.
I dipped my hand in once more, with the same effect.
Thanavar smiled at me, and my heart lifted.
“It should take only a few hours for the hands to dismantle what we need from the Andomiehr,” he said. “You will serve here until we’re done.”
“Hours?”
Dev laughed.
“Aye, sir,” I moaned.
“And Mr. Fahr will keep you company.”
I laughed now.
We reached the Touchstone’s hull, and Thanavar grabbed the rope tossed down for him. Both he and the oarsman were gone in a heartbeat, leaving myself and Fahr and the blobby, bulbous jellyheads.
It was noon when I was summoned to the captain’s cabin.
When the crew finished stripping the Andomiehr, Dev and I were hauled back up.
Ben and the carpenters had patched the hull with the staves from the Rhi’Ahr ship, and the sunswheel had been tripled, essentially giving Smoke his dream of sailing with a moonswheel.
Without a third rudder, it would only be a shadow, but Thanavar had insisted that the chimeric in its wood could replace mechanics with magik.
With the ironmages in our hold, it wasn’t hard to believe.
“To stations,” said Thanavar on deck. “All hands prepare to cast off.”
He glanced down at me.
“You look exhausted.”
I was exhausted. Two hours of casting chimeric at jellyheads had hollowed me out. But that didn’t mean he needed to notice. Or that my chest didn’t tighten when he did.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”
“Come with me.” And without waiting for an answer, he whirled and headed through the hatch. Wearily, I followed him down to the great cabin, barely able to keep up with his long strides. He went straight to his books, called an ancient, red-bound journal from a high shelf.
“We missed our lesson last night,” he said as he passed the book to me.
The Magik and the Mirror: Life on the Other Side by Cendry Puck.
I grinned.
“Take it to your berth, then be present on deck at five bells. We’ll need you to go over the side one last time here, in the Silence.”
“I will,” I said, clutching the book to my chest, and I stepped toward the door.
“Aro’el?”
I turned.
“Forgive me,” he said. His eyes were lowered, his head slightly bowed. “For my behavior on the Andomiehr earlier today.”
The breath caught in my throat.
“Behavior?” I asked.
I was not so innocent. I knew what he meant, but I’d be damned if I didn’t give him the chance to own it, to speak it, to see where it might lead.
“Touching your scars,” he said. “I was carried away by the devastation and the raw chimeric. It will not happen again. I swear to you.”
Just like the Touchstone, he had integrity in his bones.
It was admirable, I thought. Sweet, even. But I wasn’t looking for sweet. I was looking for salt.
“What if I want it to?”
I was looking for stakes.
He shook his head.
“It cannot. Not while you are under my command.”
I was looking for storms.
“But I’m also Navy, remember?” I said, and I arched a thick brow. “So not really under your command.”
He glanced up quickly, and I could see this was something he hadn’t considered when he’d suggested it a lifetime ago.
I certainly had.
“No,” he said finally, and his lips twitched. “No. Perhaps not.”
“You said that’s my course to chart,” I said, a grin beginning to tug into my cheek. “And I told you that course led me square in front of you. What did you expect from a wretched woman from a lost frigate?”
He grinned now, giving me the courage to continue.
“Maybe it’s time to quiet your ‘ardent council,’” I said. “And maybe it’s time to ask yourself what you really want?”
His eyes softened as he considered my words.
“Besides,” I said, hugging the book in my arms. “Would I even be Aro’el if I wasn’t up for a little chase?”
“Ha.”
But he was smiling now, and it made me giddy just to see it. Clearly, it had been a long time since anyone had tried to pry that aloof, guarded heart from his steely chest. Clearly, I was the first one in a long time bold enough, or reckless enough, to try.
“Good luck to you, then,” he said. “I am not an easy man to catch.”
“I’m a little sharper than Bracebridge or the king,” I said. “Better at my job.”
He raised a black brow.
“But I haven’t made the offer yet,” I said. “So don’t get ahead of yourself. A ship can only go as fast as waves can carry her.”
I turned to leave but paused at the door.
“Dream sweet,” I said over my shoulder.
“When the moons meet,” I heard him say as I closed the door behind me.
I sagged against it, eyes wide, heart rushing up to my throat and down to my boots and back again.
Suns, moons, Forge fog a faun. I was bold, yes, and I was reckless, but I really wanted something with this man.
Would rune lead to ruin, or was there a chance at all we could soar over these stormy seas?
I took a deep breath. I needed to clear my head.
If I was to chase a winter hawk, I’d need to be able to catch one. I’d have to be swift, and I’d have to be sure.
Be strong and be swift, said the Touchstone, and I grinned.
I’d have to have wings.
I raced to my corner of the galley, lit a candle, and cracked open the journal.
Fly or Swim? Tooth or Wing? went the first line. Who are you in your bones?
I settled onto the floor and began to read.