Stonemaster

by C. E. Murphy

  "Find somewhere for them, and if it means you sleep on deck, you'd best find a place I can't see you. Kisia, Desimi, get your things below and get to work."

  All three of them echoed, "Yes, Captain," and even Desimi shot Rasim a slightly sympathetic glance as he and Kisia scurried to do Nasira's bidding. Rasim groaned. If Desimi was sympathetic, there were unknown depths to the trouble Rasim was in. He puffed his cheeks, then turned to examine the Stonemasters the king had thrust on them.

  They were not the ones Isidri had selected to participate in her cross-guild studies. All three of them looked faintly bewildered, even the gold-robed master, though she tried to mask it. She was of ordinary height but had good shoulders and arms that any sailor would admire, muscle built up from a lifetime of working with stone.

  Both of the journeymen were boys several years older than Rasim.

  One looked like the most typical Stonemaster imaginable: he was a broad chunk of youth, barrel-chested and thick-waisted, though Rasim bet four weeks at sea would take some of the thickness from

  his waist. Of the three, he looked the steadiest by far, his discomfort fading into fascination with the goings-on around him.

  The other boy was one of the tallest, thinnest people Rasim had ever seen. He was all knees and elbows, and as pale as any native Ilyaran could be, his skin a light golden-brown. He didn't, Rasim judged, spend much time outside, and hadn't for years. Besides being pale, though, he was pallid. Sweat beaded on his upper lip.

  Every time the ship rocked—and it did constantly, of course—he spread his hands widely, or grasped uselessly at the air. His feet were spread wide too, knees bent as he tried to steady himself on the shifting deck.

  "I'm afraid Journeyman Milu doesn't feel well," the Stonemaster said. "It may be a sickness of the sea."

  "He can't be seasick," Rasim said in astonishment. "We're still docked. "

  As if the very word was too much to be borne, Milu wrenched his feet up and raced for the ship's railing, knocking aside working sailors as he ran. A moment later he doubled over the rail and the sounds of his retching silenced all activity on deck.

  Rasim closed his eyes. It was going to be a very long journey.

  Chapter Five

  Hassin generously offered his cabin to Stonemaster Lusa, who made space in the small room for Milu and the broad journeyman, Telun.

  Not that it mattered to Milu: being below deck made his sickness even worse, and no one wanted to clean up the messes he left.

  After an incident that left Hassin's cabin smelling vinegary and vile, Milu returned to the deck and huddled miserably at the Waifia 's stern, where he said the sea's pitch was ever so slightly less noticeable. The Waifia's healer, Usia, had tended to Milu half a dozen times already, and came away sourly bemused.

  "It's as if the water in the lad's ears refuses to be stabilized," he told Nasira within Rasim's hearing. "Coluth's power is too strong in him. A stone god's disciple isn't meant to sail."

  Captain Nasira looked as disgusted as any human being could, and shot Rasim a positively filthy glance that sent him scurrying away. A little while later, between tending to Milu and his own shipside duties, he found Hassin and said, "The sea is barely rippled," to the first mate. "What's he going to do if it storms?"

  "Wish he was dead," Hassin said cheerfully. "It will storm, too.

  It's winter weather in the north. If he pleads enough, maybe we'll blast the whistle until a serpent comes, and we'll feed him to it."

  Rasim shuddered. "No."

  Hassin's teasing expression fell into apology and he put his hand on Rasim's shoulder. "No, you're right. I shouldn't joke. We lost too many people to that beast, and we'd have all been lost if it wasn't for you."

  "I thought you all had been.” Rasim didn't like to remember that part of the weeks after he'd been separated from the fleet.

  Captured by pirates was bad enough, but captured and believing himself to be the last survivor of the Seamasters' fleet had been numbing. He never wanted to encounter another serpent, or see his friends' lives risked that way. "I'll stay on deck with him. You take my berth, instead of your smelly cabin."

  "In the prow, where it pitches like crazy, and with Desimi snoring above me?"

  "Below," Rasim corrected with a brief smile. "Kisia got to the top berth first, then gave it to me when I finally made it down there. I thought Desimi's head would spin."

  "How is it with you two?" Hassin had broken up more fights—one-sided fights, with Desimi fighting and Rasim running—between the two of them than Rasim could count.

  "Better," Rasim admitted. "The king's regard helped."

  "Good. Ah, Siliaria's child, there's Nasira. If she catches us chatting—" Hassin slipped away and swarmed up the mast. Rasim went back to his own duties, stopping often to insist poor Milu try a sip of water.

  "It just comes back up," Milu protested miserably.

  "I know, but if you dry up it'll be worse. Just a sip." And then Rasim was off again, doing the tasks assigned to him, and sometimes more than that. By sundown he was grateful to simply collapse on deck not too far from Milu, whose misery kept them both awake most of the night. Exhaustion won over in the small hours of the morning, and Rasim slept through whatever sickness Milu spat up.

  He woke to Sunmaster Endat squatting right beside him and examining him in the pre-dawn light. Rasim gave a strangled squeak of alarm, knowing anything louder would wake his sleeping crewmates and probably get him thrown off the ship. "What are you doing !"

  "Having a look at you," the Sunmaster said. "I'm supposed to take over your instruction during the journey, but I've barely laid eyes on you, lad. I had no idea a ship was so busy when it sailed."

  Rasim, only half awake, gave the Sunmaster a doubtful stare. "I thought you were one of the king's best diplomats. Haven't you been on a ship before?"

  "Certainly, but I've never needed to find time to teach a sailor while he was working before. It changes one's perspective. Have you been taught to feel the fire yet?"

  It was such a peculiar conversation that Rasim considered the possibility he wasn't yet awake. Rubbing his eyes, however, suggested he was, and after a tired moment of contemplation he sat up to squint at the Sunmaster.

  He didn't, in Rasim's estimation, look like much, and since that was a term often used to describe Rasim himself, he felt he knew what he was talking about. The Sunmaster was of no particular height, and large around the belly. He shifted from his squat into a sit, cross-legged on the deck. It made him look as big around as he was tall. His short curling grey hair had receded, and now revealing a shining and very round brown pate. Everything about him was round, in fact, including his face, which would be moon-shaped even if he wasn't fat. He'd abandoned Sunmaster-style robes and wore the calf-length pants and tunic of a sea witch, though his were whiter and of finer cloth than the usual stuff worn by the sailors. His expression was pleasantly curious, and Rasim couldn't help thinking that perhaps he wasn't too clever.

  "No," Rasim finally said. "No, no one has taught me to feel the fire yet. What does that even mean?"

  "Ah. Well, we'll have to begin with that. I suppose they've got you reading histories. That's all very well, but it's nothing like teaching you sun witchery. I'm Master Endat, by the way, and I'm pleased to meet you, Journeyman. The whole city has been gossiping about your adventures. Now, do you have a torch?"

  Master Endat definitely wasn't too bright. Rasim, carefully said,

  "Yes, Master. I know who you are. And no, Master. Only a few people on shipboard tend to fires. They're very dangerous at sea, you know."

  "With a ship full of sea witches who can douse one with a sneeze?

  Don't be absurd. And with three Sunmasters on board right now, if you burn this ship to the waterline you've more talent in you than anyone could have ever dreamed. Now go get a coal from your galley, boy, we've work to do."

  Rasim put his face in his hands. He was on second shift, from the second afternoon bell unti
l the tenth at night, and it wasn't yet sixth in the morning. He had no excuse beyond not wanting to do as Endat instructed, and knew it. "All right," he said into his palms, "but if Milu starts throwing up again I have to keep him out of the Captain's way."

  "A bargain is struck," Endat said with satisfaction. Rasim staggered off to get coals and, if Siliaria had pity on him, to learn to feel the fire.

  ~

  Siliaria, he reflected later, wasn't known for her pity, and what of it she had to spare had already been given to Rasim and the other Seamaster orphans. She had chosen not to drown them when they'd been cast into her waters during the Great Fire. That was as much as any sea witch could ask for. They certainly shouldn't dare hope for her pity in regards to learning sunwitchery, a magic that was anathema to her. Especially, perhaps, since Riorda, the sun goddess, had usurped Siliaria's place as the most beloved and highly esteemed Ilyaran deity. Whatever the reason, Rasim had clearly asked too much. He couldn't feel the fire except when it burned him, and after the third blister, Usia refused to tend to him any longer. It was one thing, Rasim was informed, to accidentally burn himself. It was something else to hold coals in his hand and expect to come out unscathed. If he hadn't the sense Siliaria gave a goldfish, then it wasn't Usia's duty to treat him.

  Endat looked encouraging every time Rasim failed, assuring him he would succeed next time. That was almost worse than jeers and mockery. Escaping to support poor sick Milu became a relief, at least until one morning when Rasim returned from that duty to find Kisia sitting cross-legged and thoughtful before Endat's pyre of coals. Desimi leaned on a huge coil of rope just a few feet away, his toes dug into it for support and his arms folded over his chest as he glowered at the coals. Rasim's mouth got dry, like he'd bitten into one of those coals, and a taste nearly as bad as charcoal rose from the back of his throat.

  Kisia looked up with a smile that faded at Rasim's expression.

  "What? There's no point in only one of us trying, right? Isn't Isidri and Taishm's whole idea—"

  "His Majesty," Endat said severely.

  Kisia paused, then said, "Isn't Isidri and the king's whole idea to see if anyone, everyone, else can learn more than one magic?"

  through her teeth. Endat looked no more happy than she did with the compromise, but he didn't correct her again. Desimi smirked, though, catching Rasim's eye for a heartbeat. Neither of them said out loud that they thought Kisia had more than earned the right to refer to Taishm casually if she wanted. It didn't seem like an argument they could win.

  Rasim couldn't even make himself admit that she was right, that they were supposed to be finding out if the journeymen could learn more than one magic. Of course Kisia—and Desimi, and everyone else, even miserable Milu—should be studying with Endat too. So it didn't make any sense for him to feel betrayed, like

  he'd been hit right in the stomach with a ball of frustration and jealousy. It didn't make sense, and he knew it.

  It still took him a long time to even be able to nod an admission that she was right. Her eyes were large and stricken with worry, but he didn't care. He left her to study, and for the first time on the week-long journey, clambered the mast to the distant crow's nest.

  Sesin, a slightly older journeyman, was there, keeping watch.

  Rasim jerked a thumb, indicating she could leave. She hesitated, surprised. "You're not on shift until second bell."

  "I know, but I need some fresh air. I guess it's your lucky day."

  Sesin's gaze fell to Kisia and Endat, hunched together near the prow, and Desimi watching them like a sea hawk, before she met Rasim's eyes. "I guess it is. Thanks, Rasi."

  Nobody had called him by that nickname in years, not even Kisia.

  Rasim smiled and Sesin's face lit up. "I could stay if you wanted company."

  "No, it's..." Suddenly Rasim did want company. He slumped down into the bowl of the crow's nest, sitting on a coil of ropes and putting his head on his knees. "Yeah, that'd be good."

  Sesin balanced her backside on the edge of the nest, wrapped a rope around her ribs to keep herself steady, and put her feet on the opposite edge of the nest, above Rasim's head. "I can see what it is plain enough. You're afraid she'll succeed."

  "No!" Rasim buried his head further against his knees. "Yes. I mean, it's not that I want her to fail, it's just..."

  "That you want to be good at something, and you want to be good at it first. Come on, Rasi." Sesin crooked a sympathetic smile when he looked up, surprised at her understanding. "We grew up together. Don't you think I noticed how hard you worked at being..."

  "Barely good enough? Well, no. Why would you? There are hundreds of us fire orphans, and you're older and..." Very pretty, was what he'd been going to say, but all of a sudden it sounded ridiculous. His face heated and he glared at his bare toes instead of continuing. Sesin was pretty, with a kind of softness in her manner and her brown eyes, and in her quiet smile. He'd expect a young journeyman like himself to know who she was, but not for her, several years older, to have ever noticed anything about him at all.

  "Well, I did," Sesin said. "Maybe because you worked so hard when Desimi was playing around. And you still weren't very good."

  "Is this supposed to be making me feel better?"

  Sesin laughed and leaned back, trusting the rope around her waist to keep her from falling. "No. I just meant I understand why you want to succeed with sun witchery before Kisia or anyone else does. It probably means more to you than almost anyone else."

  Rasim mumbled, "I don't know," into his knees. "Kisia's got a lot to prove too."

  " Keesha," Sesin said, emphasizing Kisia's original merchant name, "has already proved she can be Kisia. She's turned the whole idea of who can learn magic, and when, upside-down , and that's really as much as she'll ever need to do. You, on the other hand...well, you're clever, Rasi. But that's not the same as being powerful, is it?"

  "I don't care about powerful. I just want to be good at something

  . " It was true. At least, Rasim thought it was true, but the knot of frustration and uncertainty in his belly twisted even harder. It wasn't power he wanted. He didn't care if he could trounce Desimi magically, or at all. He just wanted to be good at something magical, not just telling other people what to do.

  Anybody could do that, if they thought fast enough, but magic needed a talent. He could keep water in a bucket and keep it out of an air bubble, but that was about it. Even if he only learned to light a candle, being able to master two magics would be something new, something unique, something special to him. That was all he wanted. A small special magic, like everyone around him seemed to have. If that meant being able to feel the stupid fire, whatever Endat meant by that, then that was what Rasim wanted. He wanted to feel its quick flickering life, its constant fear of dying, so completely unlike water's patient and persistent wearing away of everything that attempted to thwart it.

  "But I don't know how !" Rasim thrust his hands down, palms slamming against the ropes he sat on. At the same time, down below, Kisia and Desimi both shouted, and every rope on the ship disintegrated into flame.

  Chapter Six

  Sesin fell backward, her feet over her head and surprise greater than fear in the instant Rasim could see her expression. He surged forward, clawing at her ankle, and felt the fabric of her trousers brush his fingers, but he couldn't clench them in time.

  He was still bent double over the crow's nest railing, reaching for her, as salvation unfolded.

  The massive sails, no longer bound to the mast, fell with Sesin.

  One billowed open beneath her, heavy canvas slowing her fall. She twisted, quick as a fish in the water, seizing the sail in clenched fists. Her weight slammed it back against the main mast, and one of the crosspieces caught her in the belly. She doubled over it, making a retching sound. Fabric settled over and around

  her, but Rasim could see from the shape wriggling in the sails that she had thrown a leg over the crosspiece and was clinging to it, safe
from falling.

  His knees turned to water and he would have collapsed if he hadn't already been bent over the railing. Relieved exhaustion trembled every muscle in his body, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, whispering a prayer of thanks to Siliaria. Then, still shaking, he pushed himself upright and forced his eyes open to stare at the disaster below.

  It had happened so quickly the crew was mostly still gaping upward, wondering what was going on. Great swaths of the ship were covered by sails, making Rasim appreciate their size in a way he'd never done before. It wasn't that he hadn't handled them hundreds of times, on and off ship, or seen them being completed and inspected before bringing them inboard. But they weren't normally spread open across the deck and draping over the sides of a ship. They dwarfed the Waifia, making her vulnerability without them very clear.

  As he watched, one of the upper-most sails finally settled to the deck, but the bulk of its weight was over the ship's rail. The Waifia 's forward momentum, as yet unchecked, allowed the large piece of cloth to be dragged overboard. Rasim swung around, realizing there were other huge chunks of sail already in the water. He spread his hands toward them in a desperate attempt to call enough magic to save them.

  Sailcloth was heavy, though, and soaked sailcloth much heavier than that. Even trying to lift them was enough to drag Rasim to his knees. A sob of frustration broke in his throat. He had dived with a sea serpent. He had scuttled across the bottom of an icy Northern harbor. He had to save the sails, or the Waifia would be becalmed and lost at sea for good. His heart pounded, sweat rolling into his eyes as he strained to keep the sails from sinking. For a desperate moment he imagined blowing the ship's whistle until sea serpents came, imagining that they would rise up directly below the sails and save them.

  Then suddenly the weight of magic was in the air and Rasim's strain lessened. Hassin, Captain Nasira, Desimi—the whole crew working together as they struggled out from under fallen sails and came to understand the problem. They didn't just lift the sails from the water, but lifted the water around the sails, separating them from the depths. It was much easier, then, to skim the enormous pieces of cloth back to the ship, excess water streaming away like tiny rainstorms. As the nearest sail approached the ship, it swung around to offer a narrow end, and half a dozen sailors scrambled to lay hands on it. The crew twisted the very water, making the sail twist too. As it became damp instead of drenched, the sailors pulled it in, folding it with quick efficient moves. They would force the rest of the water from it through witchery once the other sails were saved.