Chapter 35
“Captain,” said Echo. “Captain, it’s time.”
The heartache in Kier’s eyes. The pain and the loss, the dying of hope.
“My course is not life,” he said softly. “But thank you for believing it could be.”
He kept one hand and rose to his feet, bringing me up along with him. I looked around at the cabin, the journals and the maps, the bottles and books. The cyr stood in the corner, gleaming in the candlelight and casting shadows across the room.
I drew my hand away, already missing the warmth of his skin. I looked up at him.
“Whatever you need,” I said. “Remember that.”
He smiled sadly.
“I will never forget.”
My eyes stung as I turned to the door, not sparing a glance for Echo as I rushed through the companionway.
I made it to my little berth in the galley, my small, dark corner of this remarkable ship, and stood for a long moment, just telling myself to breathe.
The death and the grief, the fury and the pain.
I missed Kit, and I missed Worley. I missed games of Able Whacks in the wardroom and deep conversations on deck under the stars.
All those simple months when I didn’t know what lay ahead. My throat grew tight at the thought.
My course is not life.
We were all going to die today.
With a deep breath, I opened my trunk and rummaged through the journals and inks.
Faces stared back at me. Echo and Smoke, Buck and even Neale.
The cyclope at Corvallan and the fauns in Flogger’s Bay and the little girl from Bilgetown.
I picked up her wooden doll. This was more than a piece of drift, because she had been loved by a little girl.
I held her for a moment before tucking her into my vest.
The fate of the world is in our sails.
I took another breath and marshalled my bones.
I was not Kirianae of the House WoodRaven, Priestlord of Lindurithain and Goddess of the Tree.
I was Ensign Honor Renn, bluemage of the Navy and of the renegade Ship of Spells, daughter to an ironmage in the bloody Court of Sand.
I was Aro’el, chaser of chimeric and spinner of the sea.
I held the heart of a grieving Priestlord in the palm of my hand.
And that was enough.
I whispered a prayer to the Sister Moons and headed back up to the main.
There was something utterly terrifying about racing headlong toward a half-league-high wall of water. The wind was relentless and fierce, the current too strong to break free. We would hit and shatter, or we would rise, and there was absolutely nothing in our power to stop it.
There was little else now but dread and Dreadwall.
The roar was deafening, the sky before and above us billowing gray.
From the base, a cloud of white mist and green spray cut across the entire world, growing larger and more threatening as we hurtled toward it.
It was easily a half league deep, and we were heading into it in a matter of moments.
Buck had abandoned clocking our speed once the line had snapped at sixty knots, which was clear impossible.
Then again, Thanavar had promised us impossible.
At this speed, the sea spray cut my cheeks and stung my eyes and the wind bit like winter in the Spits.
All was the wall, and the wall was all. The roar and the speed, the spray and the sky.
I was on the main, tied off to the mast with four chests of chimeric strapped alongside. We were all tied off now, and the ship listed heavy to port because of the cannons. We were sailing due south, but I knew that wasn’t the plan for long.
“All hands make ready!” came Fahr’s voice over the bullhorn. He was at the captain’s right hand, Echo on the left, while Thanavar himself was at the new moonswheel, awake and aware and in complete command.
The Touchstone shuddered as we entered the cloud, and I could see nothing but white beyond the bulwark and the sails.
His gold-shot eyes fell on me.
“Ensign Renn, chimeric, please!”
“Chimeric, aye!” I barked. With a deep breath, I laid my hands on the mast.
Runes and patterns glowed up her timber, flashed all along her deck, danced across her sails. The rails, the sails, the shrouds, the yards. She gleamed and glowed like a starry sea. She was beautiful. She was magnificent. She was magik.
Be good and be swift…
My chest grew tight, and I was thankful to hear her voice in my head again.
“Close-haul us, Mr. Oakum. Sou’sou’east!”
“Sou’sou’east! Aye, sir!”
The crew heaved line, and the sails snapped full, and the Touchstone shuddered once more as slowly, she began to bend.
Be still and be strong…
“Court of Sand, cast away!”
Tied to rails off the pup, the ironmages began to spin. I watched my mother and felt a stir of pride. She was amazing at her craft, I had to admit. She was an ironmage, and she was magnificent.
Be wary…
Beams moaned and timbers creaked as the ship leaned into the wind.
All around us, water was rising straight up.
I knew we were intentionally rolling. The weight to port heaved her deep, and the masts skewed port.
While we were close-hauled, we were approaching too fast. There was no way we could come alongside the great Dreadwall without slamming into it and shredding like chaff from a field of sunbaked wheat.
Be wise…
Suddenly, the cloud lifted, and I saw it all. The great wall, wider, taller, and more terrible than any waterfall on erthe, all the sea rushing madly straight up to the moons above, and I cried out in terror, hugging the mast as the ship began to roll.
Beloved.
And Thanavar spun the wheels, hand over hand over hand over hand.
The rudders squealed and the tillers shrieked, and the ship leaned hard to port.
Harder, lower, deeper, until the Touchstone slid nigh horizontal, her yardarms spraying seawater, her keel kissing the Dreadwall.
We were still moving, almost capsizing now as we yawed hard, and I clenched my eyes as the strain pulled me downward.
Good thing I was tied, and the captain was tied, and we all were tied, else we’d all be over the side.
The sea was on my left, the sky on my right.
We were skidding close-hauled, racing abreast of the Dreadwall, sails bent as we cut at right angles to the sea.
I remembered the day I first learned to skate.
The pond by our house had frozen solid, and I had strapped knives to my boots and set out across the ice.
I fell more times than I can remember, but I was stubborn and tough and refused to give up.
Finally, after hours and hours of trying, my body blue from bruising and the cold, I skated across the surface like a dancer. I was four.
Slew the Dread, came her voice in my head. My timbers will hold.
“Cast anchor, Mr. Buck!” called Thanavar. “Beam reach!”
My timbers will hold.
The rushing waters of the Dreadwall caught our keel and swept us up.
Up, up, up we went, pitched horizontal but angled aright, and the anchor cable boomed as the crew ran the capstan. And the anchor thundered from the cat.
The Touchstone squealed with straining planks and stressing timbers.
We were still moving forward under full sail but crossing the Dreadwall diagonally. It would only be minutes before we reached the ceiling and would shatter into a thousand pieces, to be carried back along the sky before raining back down in the Sheets.
Horrible, horrible, I thought to myself, and I’m sure I wept as I clutched the mast with all my strength.
Beloved…
Kier Gavriel Thanavar, her beloved.
Honor.
Me?
Honor, strength, freedom, fly.
She meant me.
Anchor and sea. Trust and believe, child of the north. Mine.
I blinked the tears from my eyes, summoned my breath. She was so strong and so brave. And, in that moment, I realized I would rather die trying to be half of what she was than live as none at all.
I squared my shoulders, squeezed her timber harder, and gave her all the chimeric in my poor, battered body.
Suddenly, the Touchstone bucked, her hull straining as the anchor reached the end of its chain.
With nothing to catch on and no ocean floor to haul, the anchor became a sea anchor now, a kedge, dragging the nose down and keeping us from riding the wave.
Except we were riding the wave. The sails at beam reach kept us moving forward, the anchor kedged us parallel to the sea, while both current and wind pushed us perpendicular. We were riding the wave. Sideways.
We were flying.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I laughed, and I cried and hugged the mast and thanked the ship, the woman, Kirianae, goddess of the Cloudgate and the RuneTree, for this.
We were riding in a bubble of rune and chimeric, our keel in the wave and our sail in the spray, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. It was an illusion in part, my mother and her mates keeping our feet on the decks and believing it.
The anchor, the sails, the rudder, the wind.
Magik and seamanship, Thanavar had said. We had it in fathoms.
But it was him. I knew it. All him. His plan, his goal, his ship, and ultimately, his fate. We were tied to him like stays or shrouds, lines or rigging, but he was the wind in this voyage. He was the waves.
And fog it, I loved him for it.
He swept his eyes across the main, found home when they found me. A twitch of his lips just for me.
“All hands,” he said. “Steady as she goes.”
And into the Dread we went.