Chapter 43 Aro’el
We ran for a day through the Dreadwall and her Halls.
The sickly green of the Silence and the raging storms of the Sheets.
I burned through three crates of chimeric, did not eat or drink or sleep.
So, when we finally rocked out of the Channel into open seas, I dropped to my knees, weak as a lamb, spent.
Smoke struck the sails then, and the ship rocked gently in calm waters. It was nice to have calm waters. No wall or current, no stormshear or wave as high as a mountain. No Sheets, no Silence, no Dreadtowns with wheels. Just calm seas, blue skies, and change on the wind.
Four of the six Navy warbirds had survived the Channel closing, and they currently floated in the waters off the Marelethan’s side.
The Templemore was off our port bow, the other two ships afore and abaft, an Emperial escort waiting to take the prince home.
No, not home. To High Temple. He had lost his home scuttled on the shores of the Cloudgate, just as I had lost my heart.
We had done it. We had closed the Channel and sealed the island off from raiders and warriors, killers and kings.
Kier had braced the spells from the Cloudgate while the spinners and I closed it as we ran.
It had been like a dream, watching the gap seal back up, seeing the line ripple into water and disappear.
We had done it, but some of us had lost.
I’d cried myself to sleep in the Marelethan’s great cabin that night, and I cried when I awoke.
My tears weren’t for me, for I was stubborn and willful and, above all, free.
I wept for him, for the man who had returned to the place that had forged him, a place of undeniable power and unfathomable loss.
He had been betrayed by our king and his people and, in return, had saved us all from the madness of war.
My heart broke for all our world, for the lure of power that drove men to fury and the lust for vengeance that made all else fade.
And worst of all, he was with the ironmages and my mother. Oh Forge, I couldn’t imagine a more horrible fate.
His very first joke.
The thought made me laugh, so I laughed and I laughed until I cried all over again.
A crab without a shell. So, so soft.
And so, I stood now on the prow of the Marelethan, waiting to be taken with a proposition for the king.
I’d already said my goodbyes to Neale and to Dik, and while I was not a sentimental swab, I’d miss dear Buck’s sardonic humour and Nan’s culinary magik.
No, the only ones left for goodbye were Echo and Smoke, who would see me off this new ship and onto another, though not a dory with untarred holes.
Bracebridge paced the Templemore’s quarterdeck like a cockerel, and even across ships, I could see the three-taloned scar.
He was waiting for his prize to come aboard, and while I know he longed to blow us out of the water, he had to weigh his priorities.
Dev was the reward, the lure, the gift for an indulgent king.
Bought and sold like a prized bull. I wondered if they’d let him keep the earring.
I doubted it, but I had learned the power of a stubborn heart and an iron will. We both had them by the shipload.
I turned as Dev stepped through the hatch onto the main.
He had a small kit over his shoulder, likely a blanket and Rhi’Ahr tunic, perhaps a second pair of boots.
His entire adult life had been on the Touchstone, so anything he took with him now would be from the Marelethan’s stores.
Naturally, he would have no need of a purse or coin.
By stepping onto the deck of the Templemore, Devanhan Fahr became Devhanus Bonavanczek, the richest man in Oversea.
He clapped arms with Ben and Neale, slapped the backs of Tripp and Nan and Buck. My throat grew tight when he turned to Echo, and I could see the tears brimming as he tried to find the words. They hugged, and it was a very long moment before either moved to let go.
Then Smoke, the one he’d known longest of all.
“Are you sure you won’t come?” asked Dev.
“Are you sure you won’t stay?” asked Smoke.
“Your father will be thrilled to know you’re still alive,” said Dev.
“My father was never thrilled I was alive to begin with,” said Smoke. “Besides, I’m the captain of me own ship now. I don’t need to be paid to play with you anymore.”
“Maybe I’ll pay you in rum.”
“Maybe I’ll steal me own. Maybe I’ll steal yours one day, too.”
“I’ll leave the ports open,” said Fahr.
“Forge, just hug me and be done.”
I could barely contain the flood behind my lashes when he did.
“Captain,” said Dev, knuckling a salute.
“Highness,” said Smoke.
“Fog you.”
“Not today.”
Dev grinned, turned, and stepped onto the plank.
But he threw a glance over his shoulder, sent me a swift nod.
It was a summons, I suppose, like calling a dog to heel.
Still, it was good form and a sound strategy.
Giving me independence and time while making sure the crew of the Templemore knew I was more than a steward or a swab.
I grabbed my kit and crossed the deck to follow him, but Smoke and Echo were waiting, so I stopped.
Oh suns, the tears threatened once again.
“Safe seas, Ensign Renn,” said Echo. “Be strong.”
I fell into his arms, sobbing like a child.
“Thank you,” I moaned through my ragged breaths. “For everything.”
“It was my delight,” he said. “I am so very proud of you.”
I wept and sobbed and clung to him like a life ring, but finally I pulled myself together and pushed out of his arms. He held me out for a moment and stepped back with a smile.
Forge, what a man.
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, took a deep breath, and turned.
“I see that snot,” said Smoke. “I ain’t a-huggin you.”
I sputtered and wiped my nose this time.
“If I had a dory, I’d throw myself over the side,” I said.
“Where all Blues go…”
Suns, my heart.
“Back with the Navy. Gads. You really did learn nothing.” And he eyed me from under a bushy brow. “Well, I hope they don’t shoot you.”
“I don’t care if they do,” I said.
“Blub, blub, blub.”
I almost smiled.
“What are you going to call her?”
“Her?”
“The ship. You can’t run her under a Rhi’Ahr name,” I said. “She’s your ship now.”
“Ah,” said Smoke. “I was thinking the Woodraven.”
Back in the days when my heart did not break…
“Well, it’s either that or the Fastidious Faun.”
“Tosh,” said Echo.
I grinned wide now, not needing to hide the quiver of my chin.
“I don’t know. Woodraven, Faun, or something entirely new?” He blew a ring of smoke that floated across the fore. “Maybe I’ll paint her entire hull with stars or something silly like that. I’m sure I’ll think of something…”
He dug in his pocket.
“Aha!”
Pulled out a leather flap with a string, slid it over his head.
An eyepatch. Echo had made him an eyepatch. He looked up at me.
“Seas may be rough, but you’ll chart your course,” he said. “You have the map.”
“I did,” I said. “When I had the chimeric.”
“The map’s not in your hands, Ensign,” said Echo. “It’s in here.”
And he reached up to touch my forehead with his long, beautiful finger.
“And here.”
He touched my breastbone next, right over my heart.
How far I’d come aboard this ship. I turned to Smoke.
“Permission to disembark, sir?” I asked.
“Permission granted,” he said. “Now get your Spits-scrawny, chimeric-pocked arse off me scraggy-addled deck!”
Echo rolled his eyes and flicked an ear.
“Aye, Captain,” I said, and I knuckled a salute.
He beamed at me before turning to cast his eye over the crew of the currently unnamed ship.
“Get to work, ye lubberly, lice-livered snot kerchiefs! I’ll sack any swab who slacks on my sloop!”
And he swaggered off across the main, a captain in full command of his ship, his life, his destiny. Which was more than anyone could ask for, really. As for me, I was where I had been when all this started. No ship, no magik, no future. But how I had lived on the journey. Oh, how I had lived.
All because I was plucked out of the sea by the Ship of Spells.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the pendant with the carved raven. It wasn’t regulation, but then again, neither was I. I slipped it over my head and crossed the plank. Bracebridge was waiting for me.
“Permission to come aboard, sir?” I asked.
“Permission granted, Ensign…Renn, is it? Bluemage?”
“Aye, sir. Ensign Bluemage Honor Renn, sir.”
His eye flicked over my tattered uniform and the ragged sash. He scowled.
“Your coat is not regulation.”
“It was made by an emissary from Braithe, commissioned by Devhanus Bonavanczek, the Crown Prince of Oversea.”
I had been schooled by the best liars on the sea.
“And you will have to remove that earring.”
“There’s only one way it comes out, sir,” I said, quoting Smoke. “And it ain’t pretty.”
He leaned toward me.
“I know what you are, runechaser,” he hissed, his voice low and hostile. “And I will not abide sedition on my ship. If it weren’t for Prince Bonavanczek, you’d be in the brig by now. As a matter of fact, you’d be swinging from the yardarms, and the birds would be feasting on your eyes.”
“Speaking of birds,” I said. “Are those swifts?”
Over by the hatch, a cage swung from the post.
“I knew two men who had swifts,” I said. “One was a captain’s steward. The other was Rhi’Ahr. They’re both dead, by the way. Killed by Gavriel Thanavar.”
He stiffened, lips pursed like he was sucking a limon, and clasped his hands behind his back.
“The prince has offered you a berth in the royal cabin, but I would suggest the galley with the rest of the crew. No point in riling the swabs without reason. Playing favorites is no way to earn your place on a ship.”
Be swift and be strong.
“Thank you, sir, but I’ll take the cabin.”
His three-taloned scar burned bright red.
“Our coxun’s mate, Mr. Theon, will show you the way.”
A faun knuckled a salute.
“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better on the way home, Ensign Renn,” Bracebridge said. “You seem like delightful company. I’m sure we will become quite close.”
With that, he spun on his heel and quitted the deck. The coxun’s mate looked at me.
“Allow me a moment, Mr. Theon,” I said, and I stepped to the rail.
The plank had been drawn, and it was all I could do to stay on my feet as the Marelethan’s sails thundered down her masts.
With whistles and pips and the shouting of the crew, she caught the wind and was off, gliding through the waters like a seabird.
She was a shimmering slip on the horizon, and still, I watched her go.
I scried that horizon now, praying for a flash of white.
Nothing but blue sky and blue seas and a bluemage between them both.
I looked down at my runescars. They gleamed and they burned, but I was glad they were there.
They were the story of my life, written in magik across the canvas of my skin.
From the Dawn Watch to the Touchstone, Echo and Smoke, Buck and Kit.
Even Bracebridge and Ilvalour. They were all my story.
My mother, the Court of Sand, and the Stolen Prince of Oversea.
And it was all because of Kier Gavriel Thanavar, Moon Weaver and captain of my soul. He was marooned on the Cloudgate, too far for a winter hawk to fly.
But even if he did manage to cross oceans and find me, he’d be shot the moment he set foot on land.
No. It was safer for him if he stayed away. At least until I made my trade with the king. At least until I got a Letter of Marque. I could play this great game. I had the bones. They sure as hels had mutiny in them. Besides, I’d make my own rules, just like him.
I released a deep breath, needing a new shell to grow again around my soft heart. For I needed to be strong and stubborn and wayward just a bit longer if my plan had a hope of working.
I turned, about to ask the faun to show me to the royal cabin, when a breeze picked up from the canvas above, whispering and snapping like birds in the trees and sending a shiver racing along my skin.
Aro’el.
Not the end...