Chapter 36
Gangplank
The first day of autumn arrived on a chill wind with gorgeous sunny skies. I wanted to rip the clear sky open until the weather bled out to match my mood. Any minute the hellishly bright sunlight would tear my skull open.
I might have overdone it a bit last night. I could remember what we’d done up until the fifth drink. Or was it the eighth?
Cyrthei had once been a beautiful natural beach, but society had encroached on its wild splendor.
Thick palm trees had fallen and been replaced with food stalls and merchant shops.
The appetite for commercial goods had levelled out the sandy dunes into a flat plain of sand, interspersed with flagstone pathways.
The volume of the shouting vendors hawking wares aggravated the hammering inside my skull. On my left someone had a tincture to cure fatigue and impotence, on my right someone was selling unbreakable rope.
Anything you could dare to dream was being sold here, apparently. If it existed, I would part with an absurdly large sum for a hangover cure.
As a child, these wharves had been full of wonder and magic, not charlatans. It was an enchanted playground that teleported itself between different parts of Mesmoria, belching out impossibilities. Now, I shouldered my way through with a quickened step and a grimace.
I went through the gates to the perimeter. My nerves were already alive from the shouting of everyone in the Cyrthei market, but being this close to the miasma set them alight.
That’s when I laid eyes on the Shadowtide.
It towered over me, sturdy lumber of the hull’s underside freckled with rounded windows and Cragscales.
Planks of garnet wood gleamed in the sunlight, unblemished near the bow, as if they’d never felt the rough touch of weather.
Defensive Starshell metal spikes protruded out from beneath its rails like fearsome gills.
A fountaining carving framed the crows nest, which stood above the central enclosure on the main deck like a guardian beast. This was closer than I’d ever been to an Arc.
Miasma lapped harmlessly against the side of the hull.
Knowing something is different than seeing it.
It was the definition of faith to know something without witnessing it.
I’d known my entire life that Arcs were immune to miasma’s corrosion.
But seeing the smoky wisps of miasma rising off the sandy foam where the waves collided, while simultaneously not seeing any reaction at all from it against the ship was shocking in an affirming way.
By miracle or magic, the Arcs were truly impervious to miasma.
From here, miasma stretched out in an ethereal carpet to the horizon, dazzling in its splendor. Under direct sunlight, it glittered like it was made up of thousands of diamonds rolling against each other, a rainbow of hues fracturing and fluttering on its surface.
The harshening light was exacerbating the pounding in my head. No way was I going to stand around admiring the Arc when I could be inside it sleeping off this hangover.
Nearby, a massive gangplank stretched between the shore and the Shadowtide.
It was several feet across, with a guard rail rope stretched between each end. It extended out several yards between me and the Arc, with more between the wood and the ground below. And the burning miasma.
With no disrupting vegetation, the breeze here was much more powerful. A dragonfly caught in a particularly violent gust went careening past me.
I gulped. The uncoordinated and dragging gait I’d maintained to get here wouldn’t suffice across the gangway.
No turning back now. Don’t think about it.
I stepped onto the wood.
It quivered underneath me, reverberating with each step forward. I swallowed down my rising anxiety. The acrid smell of miasma wafted toward me.
Okay, the floor is lava. The lava wants your attention, but don’t give it any.
Veridiana and someone else beyond her were both crossing ahead of me. She moseyed across the plank without a care in the world.
My bag was an unwieldy boulder on my back. I tightened the straps securing it to my shoulders. Dizziness was harassing me while my vision pulsated with each pound of my headache.
Cautiously, I moved along the makeshift bridge. This was easy compared to fighting Sanguirs. Nothing to it. Just one step at a time until I reached the other side.
I felt like I was part of a circus act, except this acrobat didn’t have a net, or any discernible talent. And the landing strategy was to hope for the best.
Stop thinking about it.
I kept walking forward.
The wind picked up, tugging me hard to the side. The boards beneath me groaned. I tipped sideways, fingers wrapping around the rope railing before an untimely demise.
My heart tried to escape through my rib cage. I sucked in a greedy gulp of air. My head still throbbed, both from fear and the migraine trying to crack my skull open from the inside out.
Too late, I remembered that Veridiana had received the Balance Skinscript. And she wasn’t hungover.
The wind hauled hair into my face. I was almost halfway across.
And I had Skinscript too. It couldn’t hurt to use it. Focusing on Luck, faint warmth spread from my forearm.
I looked down.
Sinister splotches writhed beneath the diaphanous deadly sheen of miasma, small blurry shapes. My stomach forgot it belonged inside me. Bile spewed in a sickening rush into my throat. Swallowing past my sour pulse, I forced it back down.
I spat hair out of my mouth, trying to blink it from my eyes.
There wasn’t much farther to go.
I closed my eyes, breathing until my pounding heartbeat slowed. This would be easy if I didn’t feel like a poorly preserved patchwork of human meat.
Steadying myself, I lifted one foot and planted it firmly on the wood.
I took another step. Then another.
Stumbling the final distance onto the main deck, I collapsed onto my hands and knees. I could have kissed the floorboards, it was so good to be off that gangplank. The ground was gently swaying beneath me, mirroring the movement of the miasma below.
Crossing that plank every time we came ashore would be a frequent occurrence. And on most of those trips back across, I’d be hauling Starshells too. With punishing weather accompaniment, too.
But hopefully never hungover ever again.
I groaned, rolling onto my back and letting my arms flop out beside me.
There was still an hour left before departure. Time enough to pull myself together, find an available cabin below deck, and familiarize myself with the Shadowtide.
Henrik’s face swung into my view. “Lisia. I wanted to apologize. About the box.”
I groaned again, rolling myself away from him. “Not now, Henrik.”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry! I really didn’t mean to get you tangled up in my mess. I was already at rock bottom, and the only way I could see out was to keep digging down.”
“But you dragged me into the hole with you,” I said. “And you’re still too caught up in your own mess to hear me. I told you I didn’t want excuses and apologies, and not to bother me right now, and yet here you are, still trying to apologize.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it again. As he opened it again, Corra rounded the edge of the mast, heading toward us.
“There you are,” she said. “Quick, come with me before he sees you.”
I was too hungover for this. “Before who sees me?”
She grabbed my upper arm, tugging me up without waiting for me. “Instructor Tyrell.”
My headache violently throbbed from the jerking movement. “Easy with me, I’m unwell.”
She let out an undignified snort. “After last night, I’m surprised you were able to get outta bed on your own.”
I put a hand up to my head to try to stop the radiating pain that was chewing its way between my eyebrows. “What happened last night anyway?”
“Before the singing, or after the dancing?”
I groaned again. I was a terrible singer, and an even worse dancer. “Why don’t you just tell me everything, so I can die from humiliation before I have to endure anymore of this hangover.”
She steered us around the main mast, heading for a door to the lower quarters.
“Well, we all went to O’Malley’s Brewing together and started drinking.
Benji and I started playing Point Throw while you, Izaiah and Instructor Tyrell kept drinking.
When we finished our game, you were standing on the table, crooning some love song.
” A dull memory of this remained, Izaiah had looked like he was being tortured.
“Then you started singing some shanty about how you knew how to raise sails.” I knew the one, it was graphic and lewd.
“And telling everyone, quite loudly, how you were back on the market and priced to move fast.”
I slid my hand from cradling my head to covering my face.
“Then you started gyrating. I think you were trying to dance, honestly it was hard to tell.”
Devourer, kill me.
I wouldn’t live this down anytime soon, especially since my new crew mates had witnessed it.
“Instructor Tyrell pulled you off the table, and you two started fighting.”
“Like our usual verbal spats?” I asked, hopefulness plain in my voice.
“More like it was time to party and you were bringing the punch. And the knuckle sandwiches.” I buried my face in both hands.
At least the headache was dimmer inside the Arc than it had been under the direct sun outside. The interior of the Shadowtide was shockingly spacious. “He pinned your arms pretty quickly, and then you told him to take you.”
Devourer, please. I’ll pay you. Just make it quick.
I choked the words out. “To take me? Like somewhere else?”
“Maybe somewhere private,” a smooth low drawl cut in from one of the nearby cabin’s doors.
Corra yanked me behind her, putting herself between me and Zevrial. “Don’t come any closer.”