Chapter 40 The Captain’s Cabin
I didn’t go down to his cabin, choosing to give him some time and to set my own bones.
We had sent most of the crew to the Marelethan, keeping only a small post of boatwrights and riggers on the Touchstone to begin repairs.
Smoke had rounded up the few survivors, bound them with the thickest of rope, and locked them in one of the Marelethan’s smaller holds. Of Kinrath Ilvalour, there was no sign.
“I can’t believe we did that,” said Dev, and he raised his glass. “Fog, we just sank the most lethal bird in the sea.”
“A right mafficking melee,” said Smoke. “Thanavar might be a wily dodger, but once in a while, his plans just smack.”
I smiled into my cup. Sometimes I didn’t understand a word that came out of his mouth.
“I’m sorry about your ear,” I said.
“That was clever,” he said. “Painful but clever. Besides, I won’t be needing it. I’m m’own captain, now. I’ll think of a new way to disfigure my crew.”
I studied him a long moment. Suns, this man was complicated, but damnations if he didn’t have the sharpest mind and the biggest heart on the ship. He’d played the role of traitor and sold it like a crate of spiced rum, running the gauntlet, risking his life and saving us all in the process.
“I’m a proper captain, now,” he said. “And methinks I need an eye patch. All the most dreadfullest captains have one.”
“Then I shall endeavor to make you one,” said Echo, not looking up from his cards.
Quartermaster, coxon, and Magister of Magiks, indeed. Smoke Oakum was all that and more.
“What did you make of the swifts?” I asked. “He said they were from Bracebridge, but could they have been from Worley?”
“I haven’t the foggiest. I was making everything up as I go.” He lifted his cup. “Wouldn’t surprise me, though. Bracey’s a lick-spittle pincock.”
“Able and Whack.”
Echo laid down his cards, and Smoke cursed under his breath.
I sat back and looked around. The wardroom was a wardroom once again, with Smoke’s kit moved to the Marelethan and the ironmages recovering in Echo’s pit.
The Marelethan herself was hauled close, given that the Touchstone had no anchor and was adrift in the moonslit waters of the bay.
This night was last for many things, and we all felt it, sharp and dull, bitter and sweet.
“I’ve told Neale he’s promoted to coxon,” said Smoke. “With Dik on the Marelethan and Bergy in the Old Sand, he’ll need someone to bully. Ain’t fit for quartermaster yet. The Touchstone will need one, sure enough.”
“The Touchstone won’t need anyone after tomorrow,” said Dev. He downed his rum and reached for the bottle. “She’s not leaving the Cloudgate.”
She will live forever in the form of a ship.
“What’s that you say?” asked Smoke.
“He’s going to run her aground, careen her on the shore,” he said. “At least she’ll be home.”
Home.
My heart twisted inside me, and my throat tightened once again.
“Well, I can’t say that would be sad,” said Smoke. “The old girl’s been through enough. I can take everyone on the Marelethan, if needed.”
“What the hels was that spell?” I looked up over my cup. “Aluciatus and Mendacium. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We would have,” said Echo, and he flicked an ear. “Had you stayed in the hold.”
“You could have told me,” I grumbled, “in here.” And I tapped my head, like he’d done that very first day.
“And what if they had a thoughtspinner on board?” he asked.
“You knew the plan,” I said.
“I’ve lived with a Rhi’Ahr for ten years,” he said. “I know how to shield my thoughts.”
“Besides, no need to task the whole crew with such a complicated, not to mention terrifying, set of illusions when they’ll simply obey an order,” said Smoke. “Unlike you.”
And he tipped his cup.
His words held no bite, but they nipped me just the same.
Wayward. Wretched. Stubborn. Proud. All the barbs ever flung at me thundered inside my head.
Runechaser.
“I need air,” I said, and I pushed to my feet. “Dream sweet.”
“When the moons meet,” they said as one. Forge, like the rum and the lime, both bitter and sweet.
The moment I left the wardroom, I was struck by the quietness in the ship.
I took my time wandering her corridors, listening for any whisper that said she was there.
I climbed up to the main, breathed the salt air, touched her boards, but heard no voice.
In fact, there were no voices at all now.
No stories in the galley, no watches changing shifts.
No laughter, no shanty, no thunder of the sheets. But she was home. Was that enough?
I wandered up and down and around some more, but I knew where I really wanted to go, and finally I found myself at the door to the captain’s cabin.
It was not nearly as grand as those on the Endorathil.
No, just white, simple, and now broken, and my heart bled through the splinters and the cracks.
Cannon fire had hit the room hard, and I could feel the wind biting behind the holes. I rapped softly on the wood.
“Come in, if you can,” he said from the other side, and I tried to slide the door. It popped from its track, so I leaned it against the bulwark.
There was a lone candle flickering on the floor, but other than that, most of the room was gone.
The transom was completely shattered, with glass and pane from the galley windows scattered across the floor.
There was now a gaping hole where the windows had been, and it was open to the bay and the waters below.
His desk was reduced to kindling, and dry papers fluttered in the night wind.
I realized those papers were all that remained of his library of books, and he was gathering them from the rubble with one hand.
Hels’ hooks, my heart.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I said.
“The moons have a time for everything,” he said.
My eyes stung as I knelt down, began to mound the papers into piles.
“We have all the wood,” I said. “We can repair her.”
“We can,” he said.
“And then we can bring her back,” I said, though my throat was tight and my chin quivered like a jellyhead.
“The Court is powerful, and I’ll have all the chimeric in the world on the island.
I heard her today, so I know she’s still here.
I can help her channel back. I can use all of it, and she can bleed me dry.
Maybe we can even help her become a Tree once again. ”
He looked up at me and blinked slowly, sadly.
“There was never any way back for her once she fell under the Impirius’s ax.”
I shook my head, tears spilling over my lashes.
“All timbered trees die,” he said. “It’s just taking longer for her.”
“Don’t say that.”
“There is no way back, for either of us, dear Aro’el. I do not belong in either helm. I must let go.”
He sighed, laid the papers down on the littered floor, and smoothed them with his remaining hand.
“And I have been letting her go, but she has been my world for so long. I need to let her go rightly. I need to let her go well.”
He rose to his feet, turned to gaze out the hole in the transom wall. Through it, I could see a berg floating silently past the stern and the moonslight reflected on the water. Three moons. Three sisters. Three gleams in the surface of the sea.
“The Channel is open,” he said, “and the Templemore will come.”
I remembered the swifts in Ilvalour’s cabin. He would have had time to send one before the end.
Thanavar looked down at the papers on the floor.
“But this time, he’ll bring a fleet.”
My gut twisted at the implication. Bracebridge would bring a fleet because of me. Before, he’d only been seeking revenge on Thanavar and hunting the Stolen Prince. But now, he’d come for the chimeric and the chaser who could wield it.
“The Touchstone is the best ship to take on Bracebridge and his fleet,” I said. “You can’t let him win.”
“Men like Bracebridge come and go,” he said. “They are nothing. No one. Ni allath.”
He was a silhouette in the moonslight, a shadow, a wraith, a lean blade of ocean tides and naval blue.
“Ilvalor spoke of a Rhi’Ahr armada that was joining him from the south,” he said. “Soon, they will meet in a battle over the Cloudgate, and they will fight for ownership of the chimeric. Whoever controls the chimeric controls the world.”
“I control the chimeric,” I said, slowly lifting my chin. “I could stay and protect it. Protect her. I would do that for her.”
“I will not leave you on the island alone,” he said.
“You could stay,” I said. “We could be alone together.”
“That is not life,” he said. “That is dread.”
Dread. Oh, my heart.
I rose to my feet now, the sharp wind lifting my dark hair into my eyes.
“The Court of Sand could protect it,” I said. “They plan to stay. They want to learn. They wouldn’t be alone.”
He grunted.
“They are broken and vain and arrogant to a fault, but they have saved my crew from the storm and the Dreadwall, so I owe them the chance to try.” He ran a hand across his battered jaw.
“But we need to stay sharp and focus on our original goal. There is a book we will need in the Heart of the Cloud, written by Brontari himself. In it, the patterns that are foundational to the creation of the Dreadwall. We should be able to restore it, close the gaps once and for all.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we cannot,” said Thanavar. “And we are all lost.”
He waved his fingers, and the pages disappeared in a swirl of ash and rune at his feet. As if proving the point.
“The crew of the Marelethan is still on the island,” he said. “Fifty. Perhaps more.”
I swore under my breath.
“I will try to go on ahead and make short work of them,” he said. “But I cannot make a proper wing, so flying will be a problem. I barely escaped the Endorathil…”
His voice caught, and I realized the loss of his hand had effectively ended his life as a hawk. For a man like him, that would be devastating. He cleared his throat.