Chapter Twenty-Four Take Her to Sea
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
TAKE HER TO SEA
Lay aloft and loose all sail!”
The crashing of waves fought to drown out the wind, though neither could drown out Kalúe’s shouting from the quarterdeck.
Her tattooed hands gripped the helm’s polished spokes, each carved into the shape of a different sea creature.
The captain was shorter than Reya, but she walked and spoke as though she were three times as tall.
Reya had been staring at Kalúe for the last five minutes, trying to figure out how her black leather tricorn hat with its long red feather didn’t fly off her head.
“You heard the captain! Move your arses!” Zantae shouted, directing traffic on the main deck.
Overhead, ropes flew faster than Reya could track. Men scaled the rigging and climbed out onto the yards, balancing on footropes to release the red sails. It was beautiful chaos.
Another command came from the helm: “Brace up fore and aft!” And above her, the yards began to turn.
Two days after departing Port Talluah, they’d anchored off a port on South Easterly Island for additional supplies.
The Acadia was gargantuan compared to the Balfour.
Its seven levels included a cargo hold complete with smuggler hatches, crew quarters, three rear balconies, two gun decks, a galley and mess hall, and private cabins.
Kalúe had a private study and dining room, plus an additional room where she slept.
On a ship, that much room was the equivalent of a palace.
Pirate princess indeed.
Reya and the Alethians had been given two rooms, one standard cabin and one storage space that had been converted into a berth. Omira had immediately claimed the actual bedroom for herself and her twin, throwing several death glares at Reya in the process.
If we die out here, I will find you in the afterlife, each one said.
That left Caelan and Reya rooming together.
While they had been sleeping next to each other on the ground for weeks, there was something very different about being in an enclosed space with him. It didn’t help that the room was minuscule, and the hammocks hung directly over each other.
“Move, lass!” a man snapped.
Realizing she was in the way, Reya leaped to her right, away from the complicated line of wooden beams and ropes she had been leaning against. The sailor glared at her before he went back to knotting his rope.
Reya had asked Kalúe and Zantae to keep quiet about who, or rather what, she was.
The request hadn’t gone over well. But Reya wanted to remain insignificant for as long as humanly possible.
She didn’t need anyone else looking at her like some kind of savior.
The crew was only aware they were Sages and that there was some sort of secret weapon in play.
“Weigh anchor!”
Men rushed toward the capstan, hauling wooden bars toward the axle in the center of the deck.
When they slid all the bars into the notches, someone shouted, “Haul home!” and they all began chanting as they pushed the turnstile in a large circle.
Metal clicked as the wheel began rotating, pulling up the anchor one chain link at a time.
Reya’s stomach growled. The first two nights on the ship, she’d taken meals in the mess hall while the Alethians ate together in the twins’ private quarters.
Reya told herself she was grateful for the solitude.
But even if she wouldn’t have accepted the invitation, it would have been nice to be asked.
She didn’t think they were deliberately trying to exclude her; they were simply a unit.
At night, the crew drank and played cards until at least half of them passed out—something she might have gladly participated in if, once again, she had been asked.
“Haul out the spanker and set the courses!” Kalúe roared over the wind that whipped the sails taut. The command echoed down the line, and a triangle-shaped sail at the stern of the ship snapped open.
Reya grabbed for purchase as the ship lurched. The golden sea serpent on the prow seemed to shriek as it plowed through the cresting waves. The seafoam-painted shallows bled into an aquamarine so clear she could still see the bottom.
It would take the Acadia two weeks to reach the Kasmore Deep.
If Reya was going to have any chance of paying off Lennox in time, Kalúe would have to sail them directly back to Edris, or as close as the captain would dare go to the Rhiterran capital.
With the blockades in place, it was risky enough crossing into the Boreal Sea, and they couldn’t dock in Rudrock Bay when it meant submitting to a possible inspection and risking Rhiterran soldiers discovering what they had brought back.
A high-pitched sound on the waves below caught her attention, and she leaned over to see a family of dolphins racing along the starboard side.
She laughed for the first time in nearly a week despite the tears sliding down her cheeks as the dolphins leapt out of the waves in a rhythm of the deep.
She wiped them away with her sleeve before anyone saw.
It would be over a month until she saw Ash again.
The cattle ranch outside Port Talluah where she’d boarded Ash and Ciz with the rest of the money she’d pickpocketed had stretched for leagues along the coast, rolling and green.
It was the safest place for Ash, and she knew he had understood in his own special way that she would return for him.
But that didn’t stop her from missing him.
A cerulean deep yawed open before them. After retrieving her food rations from the galley, Reya climbed the steps to the forecastle deck and found a spot that was relatively out of the way to sit and dangle her feet through the railing.
South Easterly Island grew smaller behind them until at last the coastline disappeared into the horizon.
Thance’s white-blond hair emerged over the stairs.
“I thought I might find you up here,” he said, squinting against the sun’s reflection off the water. “Am I disturbing you?”
“Nope,” she said, gnawing on her biscuit, which was hard enough to cut her teeth on. They’d been given a helping of beans, vegetables, and cheese, with the promise of salted meat three days from now. Reya turned the sad bread over in her hand.
She would make a terrible pirate.
“It’s peaceful today,” Thance said, taking a seat beside her. “Which usually means there’s a storm coming.”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
“Me too. I get dreadfully seasick in a storm.”
“Good to know at least one of you has a weakness.”
Thance chuckled. “One of many.” After a long, awkward beat of silence, he said, “I haven’t had the chance…” He paused again. “What I mean to say is that I’ve been waiting for the right time to apologize for the day we met. I saw you panicking, and I truly thought I was helping.”
Her hair danced across her face, the strands shifting from deepest copper to gold in the brilliant sun. “How does it work? Perception.”
“In what way?”
She chewed on her lip. “I mean, how do you do it? Do you just… think really hard?”
“More like an extension of self.” He gave her a mischievous smile that made her wish she hadn’t asked. “Would you like me to teach you?”
She considered for a moment. “Perception isn’t going to help us against a Kraken. I should focus on my other… ability.”
“Some other time, then,” he said easily. “I would like us to be friends, Reya.”
Reya nearly choked on her biscuit. “Why?”
His smile was wide and beaming. “Because I like having friends.”
At the bald honesty, she shook her head in bewilderment, unsure how someone like Thance had survived centuries of this world and still kept his optimism. “Where the hell did you come from, Thance?”
The male laughed through his nose. “Did you know that Caelan said the exact same thing to me when we met?”
Her cheeks felt hot, and she wasn’t sure why. Wiping her hands on her pants, Reya went back to her plate.
“He often went off on his own, you know, searching for you in the far corners of the world. His thought was to track groups of migrant Sages, thinking perhaps someone didn’t know what kind of power they had.
I can only imagine his shock when he realized you were half human and he’d been looking in all the wrong places. Una works in mysterious ways.”
“You don’t think it was a cruel joke that she gave it to someone who’s half human? I’d think you would despise me.”
He frowned. “I don’t despise humans. I despise what they’ve done, yes. But I could never credit an entire people with the actions of a few.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Caelan told me you were raised by humans. Were they unkind to you?”
Reya looked down so he would not see the agony in her eyes. “They were the very best of this world. Not once in your immortal life have you ever met two people so kind and generous as them.”
Thance’s smile was warm. “There are good people on Ianess, many of whom I believe are simply afraid to speak out. Either that or they’re trying to protect those they love.
And I cannot fault a person for that. I still remember a time when we all lived in peace.
I have to believe that can happen again, and I know we will not see it done by fostering hate. ”
“Are you sure you and Omira are twins?”
The corners of his lips pulled up. “There are few people on this earth more stubborn and determined than my sister. I think she was hoping you would… I’m not sure.
All these years we’ve searched and waited for Una to play her hand.
We built up in our minds a glorious victory for ourselves.
When we finally found you, you didn’t care to know us.
It wasn’t what we were expecting. Then again, things in life rarely are. ”
“You mean you weren’t expecting a thief.”
He looked sidelong at her. “We all do what we need to survive in this world. I’ve done things since the Fall I will live with for the rest of my days.
” Thance looked down at his hands. “I will ask you to be patient with Omira. She never talks about what happened to her after the Fall. I swore never to invade her privacy by looking into her mind. But I can tell the scars from those years run deep. It was years before she would even allow herself to be touched.”
“She never told you what happened?”
“Only that she was taken captive by the Rhiterrans while trying to find what became of our mother. Losing someone you love is agonizing enough. But when there is no closure of knowing how they died, whether it was painful or quick, no body to put to rest… Death, at least, is finite. It makes me envy humans. A mortal’s torment can only last so long.
For a Sage, the torment can last two thousand years or more. ”
“I hope one day you get the answers you deserve,” Reya said.
“I don’t think our mother would want us to dwell on the past, so I try not to. But Omira…” He trailed off. “Some days it feels like she’s still back there, forever at war.”
Unsure of what to say, Reya looked out at the sea. Then, because she had been dying to say it to someone, she said, “Have I doomed us all?” Reya wasn’t talking entirely about the Kraken, but rather her choice to leave them to their war.
Those old, kind eyes bored into her. “If this is where we meet our end, then so be it. But I do not think it will be.”
“How can you have such faith?”
A careful shrug. “This is all part of the path. It was foretold long ago that the next Guardian would remake this world. It is not up to me to decide how that should or will unfold. Whatever it is you plan to do when this is over, wherever you plan to go—that, too, is essential. Drop a pebble in the ocean, and it will ripple until the waves touch the shore of every continent. My role in this has always been clear—to serve and protect.” When she didn’t reply, he added, “Is it so wrong to have faith in you?”
She gave him a sideways glance. If he only knew what she was, what she’d done to survive. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Silence stretched, broken only by the sound of the waves washing against the sides of the Acadia.
“Humans have this saying: I’m only human,” Thance said.
“As if somehow their mortality gives them permission to be imperfect, and by extension, our immortality excludes us from that. But having an exorbitant number of years does not mean they will make you wise. We are as entitled to our imperfections as anyone else. I don’t know you very well, but I can’t imagine your life has been easy. ”
“What did Caelan tell you?”
Thance shook his head. “Caelan would never betray your trust. But anyone who’s known loss can recognize it in another person’s eyes. You have known much of it. Yet still you charge ahead, undaunted. You are willing to sail into death if it might save Caelan’s life. I quite admire your bravery.”
Her heart strained at the words even as she said, “Is it still bravery if I get an entire ship of people killed in the process?”
“No one was chained to this ship and forced to come along.”
“Kalúe gave the crew a choice?”
“Yes. And they all chose to come, understanding the risks.”
“They are loyal to their captain,” Reya said. “And I persuaded her to trust me.”
Thance shrugged. “You can still earn the trust that’s been placed in you.”
She snorted. “So far, I’ve only managed to wield the God Power safely in small amounts. I can’t even shield. I don’t know if I can kill the Kraken without going into a Rage.”
“Caelan told us what happened with Kalúe. You seemed well in control of your power then.”
She swallowed. “That was an anomaly.”
“Was it?” His face gave nothing away, but his eyes were sparkling. “Una is the All-Goddess of light and life. There will always be a pull in you to protect that life.”
Then why am I only capable of destruction? She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question aloud, but she had a feeling Thance heard it anyway. “Maybe Una isn’t the loving All-Goddess everyone thinks she is.”
Thance nodded, but his eyes, so blue she could see the coming of winter, still gleamed. “Or maybe love is fierce. When those we care for are in danger—maybe love has teeth.”