Chapter 16
Roderick Bryson
The rest of their sailing through the fisherfolk’s boundary waters was monotonous—a week of fair winds and blue skies.
He couldn’t even enjoy the spring breeze with a frigid princess on deck.
Every attempt to speak with her was met with silence.
He’d clearly misunderstood whatever they were doing in the captain’s quarters, but she wouldn’t let him explain.
Use your damn words! he wanted to scream. Talk to me!
While she was infuriating to engage with, receiving the cold shoulder was somehow worse. Even when he had a genuine, voyage-related question, she punted it to someone else. Today was no different.
“Anya, I think we should wait to batten the hatches until we’re closer to Aquillan waters.”
“Sir Oshfeldt!” she barked.
The knight sprinted over, breathless from her constant beck and call. “Yes, Your Highness?”
“Please tell Lord Bryson the batten strips need time to shape to the ship for ideal water tightness.”
“My Lord, Her Highness says—”
“I heard what she said!” he spat.
That insufferable cycle repeated the next two days until they reached the edge of Valerian seas.
Up to that point, he’d thought having a celestial navigator was a pointless addition.
Why not trace the coast until they found some sort of gate to the land?
Aquillas must have fisherfolk. They had to get in and out somehow.
That assumption died when he saw the roiling waves and razor-sharp rocks that forced them further and further away from the coast. Anya had seemed to expect it.
When he woke that morning, she had the sails angled and unfurled to allow themselves to be pushed further and further out until they couldn’t see the land.
So that was how Aquillas remained so secretive.
That fact was probably written in a book somewhere, but he never bothered to read about or dream of far-off places in his youth.
Or now. His kind had been banished to one.
His grandfather had gone to extraordinary lengths to save his family and Millicent’s from the same fate.
New names.
New homes.
Paying off clerics to forge Church records.
It would be blasphemous to wish for anything but his homeland.
The further they went from the coast, the smoother the sailing became. His life, too, became calmer as the days rolled on. Anya and Lady Rowan slept during the day and charted their course by night, which meant he didn’t have to worry about her icy gaze.
“My Lord! We need you up here!” Bernard Wainwright called down the stairs.
He winced mid-bite of breakfast, then swallowed.
The Lycanian man’s voice could carry through the entire ship.
If Bernard woke the Princess, there would be no escape from her ire.
He wiped his bowl of porridge clean with a piece of bread, then popped it into his mouth.
He stood with the dish in hand and turned to bring it back to the galley kitchen.
“I can get that, My Lord.” Annette Wainwright hurried up to his table, her tapered ears pinned back. “Bernard sounds quite worried.”
Roderick felt terrible handing the bowl over to her.
Annette had a newborn swaddled to her chest and still worked just as hard as any deckhand.
She was in the galley most of the time, sure.
But feeding and cleaning up after ravenous sailors was no easy task.
Add minding a child onto that, and Annette was probably one of the most hardworking folk he’d ever met.
Like him, she seemed to get joy from helping others. He couldn’t deny her that.
“All right. Thank you.” He handed the bowl over. She smiled and scurried off to the kitchen, her silver braid swinging back and forth.
He stretched his neck side to side and made for the main deck, then jogged to the bow, met with Bernard peering through a copper spyglass and Captain Verden staring into the horizon.
“Dear Divine, what is that?” Roderick asked, squinting into the distance. A jagged object was floating a few miles away, glistening blue and white in the rising sun.
“An iceberg.” Ornella’s sage voice came from behind them.
“Oh.” The tension drained from his shoulders. “It’s just ice. Why do you need me? Just go around it.”
Ornella shook her head. “Where there is one, there are more. And many cannot be seen until you are nearly upon them. They are occasionally seen in the waters north of Avonford. But not like this.”
He accepted the spyglass from Bernard and peered through it. “It doesn’t look that big.”
“It is nearly five miles away. At this rate, it is the size of the capital basilica,” Ornella said.
“What?” He dropped the fragile spyglass. Bernard saved it between two claws.
Captain Verden turned to him. “Doing anything but tight maneuvers ‘round the bergs will cost us time. I need you or Her Highness’s permission to alter our course. I hafta’ warn ya though, dodgin’ them’ll be a risk.”
“Should we wake Her Highness?” Bernard rubbed the lens of the spyglass on his half-unbuttoned shirt.
“No. No. Let me think a moment.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and paced the bow, taking deep breaths of salty air.
If I wake Anya, she’ll say there was an obvious answer I missed.
If I don’t wake her, she’ll accuse me of usurping her authority.
If I do nothing, I’m an idiot.
An idea struck him. Ingenious—Anya would never think of it.
“I’ll be right back!”
He sprinted to the stern where Yomira dozed away, waiting for the midday sun to warm her bones. She’d pushed herself to fly them to Little Wing in the middle of the night last week, so he’d let her sleep to her heart’s content, and she’d taken full advantage.
“Yomira.” He placed a hand on her snout. Heat radiated from her body like a warm brazier of coals. She huffed and pulled her snout closer to her flank, then covered it with her wing.
“Yomira, you’ve slept for over a week. I need your help.” He ducked under her membranous wing and knelt in front of her good eye. “Wake up!”
Her ruby eye peeked open.
I was about to eat the most delicious cow…
“I’ll get you all the cows you can eat when we finish the expedition. I need some flying firepower.”
Fine. She huffed through her nares. Shifting scales and cracking, behemoth joints filled his ears as she stood and stretched. Where am I going?
“The icebergs on the horizon. I need you to melt them down.”
Icebergs? Yomira tilted her head in confusion.
Right. The wyvern was either in a dungeon or living in the middle of the Valerian mainland all her life.
“Big chunks of ice. Bluish white.” He drew a jagged shape in the air with both hands. “That way.”
I’ll see what I can do.
The ship bucked back to front as it shed the wyvern’s weight. He gripped the baluster for balance and watched her dart above the clouds.
In a few minutes, Yomira was upon the iceberg, blasting it with multicolored tongues of flame. She was dwarfed in comparison to the floating mass. The streams became weaker and weaker as she approached the berg at different angles until she was spitting out mere sparks. So much for that plan.
He turned to the crew and sighed. “Steer us to the east. And unfurl the fore-and-aft sails. The further we get from the coast, the better. The icebergs must be splitting from the glacial wall. We’ll correct our course once we’re clear of them.
If the Princess gives any of you a hard time, direct her to me. ”
“Aye aye.” Ornella took the helm and adjusted their course.
Roderick gulped the knot forming in his throat.
The most treacherous berg was still asleep beneath his feet.