“Unhook the other end,” Sir Jayron said to Hinck.
He got up to obey, and soon the pulley lines sailed into the air. Hinck inched back to his seat beside Lady Mattenelle, but just as he settled down again, Lady Zenobia gave an order.
“Take up the oars, men. We have a long way to go.”
Wilek
Wilek woke the next morning to news that—save Cook Hara—all of the prisoners had escaped. Livid, he summoned Lady Pia, who swore Hinckdan had understood his instructions perfectly. Wilek had no reason to doubt her. He hadn’t told her where the others were being kept, nor could Hinckdan have known. Someone else must have helped them escape. Wilek had a guess who and hoped he might catch Kamran in some nefarious behavior very soon.
“Is that all, Your Highness?” Lady Pia asked.
“What happens to you now that Janek is gone?”
She curtsied. “My life is yours to command. Consider my training and your needs. How can I best serve you?”
She best served as a spy. Who did Wilek need to spy on now that Janek and all the traitors were gone?
Kamran DanSâr.
It felt wrong to ask such a thing of a woman not yet a full week free of Janek, but he took up a fresh sheet of parchment, in case any shadir were lurking about, and wrote:
I believe Kamran DanSâr is one of the traitors. I would like to catch him in his treachery. Could you become his concubine?
She nodded. “I know him well. He preferred Mattenelle, but with her gone, he will not refuse me.” She left in a swirl of robes, and Wilek felt glad to have her on his side.
But as the day wore on, Wilek had doubts about his choice. What would Zeroah have said if she knew what he’d done? There was likely another way to capture Kamran, though Wilek could not think of one.
Reluctantly, he ordered Cook Hara’s execution. He hated to do it, knowing she had been defending her daughter’s memory, but Wilek could not pardon a conspiracy to kill the king. Once that was done, he sent Rayim and a squadron of King’s Guards to bring the king back to the Seffynaw, then ordered the signalmen to relay messages to the rest of the fleet about the prisoners’ escape. Three squadrons of guards searched the Seffynaw for clues. None were found.
Waiting for morning to execute the traitors had been a risk. Wilek couldn’t believe he’d cleared the deck for Hinckdan and made it easy for the others. Hinckdan’s life was worth the lost prisoners, though, and they could not be so valuable to Rogedoth with Janek gone. He consoled himself that there should be no more shadir aboard the Seffynaw, save whatever creature Oli had secured. Though now that Oli’s root juice had finally been disposed of, even that creature should move on eventually.
Wilek’s father returned, nearly catatonic. By the time Wilek saw him resituated in the king’s cabin, he caught himself wishing the man would die. Thoughts of mercy killings flitted through his head, but that would be too charitable for a man who had killed so many innocents. Wilek supposed the king should suffer as long as Arman willed it.
He left the king and found Dendrick waiting for him with Master Granlee, the navigator, who informed Wilek that they had finally lost sight of Nivanreh’s Eye last night. While this seemed to upset the navigator, the news filled Wilek with hope. They could no longer be steered by the superstitions of the past. The future lay before them now, unhindered.
At lunch Zeroah mentioned that it might be time for Wilek to tell Trevn about the missing ship.
With the storm and the traitors, Wilek had ordered Rayim to keep Trevn sedated for his own safety. Twice now his brother had woken and stumbled from his bed, desperate to fetch Miss Mielle from the Rafayah. He must have sensed her absence. As Zeroah said, now was the time.
Wilek set out for his private cabin. He had insisted Trevn be kept there since the room had a framed bed, which was easier to get in and out of than Trevn’s hanging cot. He found Sir Cadoc standing outside the door, eyes drooping. Wilek set his hand on Cadoc’s shoulder, and the shield jumped to attention and grabbed the hilt of his sword.
“My pardon, Your Highness,” Cadoc said, yawning. “Might you send a trusted guard or two to relieve me for a few hours?”
“After my visit,” Wilek said. “How is he?”
“Awake but half dazed from so much soporific. He woke last night, tried to dress himself, ordered Captain Veralla to prepare the boat fall so he could look for Mielle. The captain got him sedated again, and I put him back to bed. He awoke again just a few minutes ago and tried to leave, so I’ve locked him in. He is not happy about it.”
“He wanted to go to the boat fall again?”
“This time to the mainmast. Said if he could get to the crow’s nest, he’d find the ship that everyone was too blind to see.”
“He’s heard the news, then?”
“Ottee told him a day or two ago when he was conscious,” Cadoc said. “That boy has a bigger mouth on him than the Bay of Jeruka.”
Immense relief filled Wilek at one nasty job he didn’t have to do. “How did he take it?”
Cadoc snorted. “First he railed at Ottee for jokes of bad taste and dismissed him from his service as onesent. The boy ran off in tears and hasn’t returned. Then the sâr kept trying to leave and see for himself. He demanded to speak with you a few times. I told him you’d be here when you could, and he didn’t like that. Captain Veralla and I have done a fair job of keeping him sedated. The captain says his hand is healing well.”
“Thank you, Sir Cadoc.”
Wilek went inside. The sunlight coming in the curtained window cast a golden haze over the room. Trevn was sitting up in bed, propped against a half-dozen pillows, a tray of food balanced on his lap. His body was leaning drastically to the right, his head drooping so low it looked uncomfortable. Sleeping.
Wilek examined his brother’s hand, which lay on top of the blanket at his side. The swelling had gone almost completely down. Captain Veralla had said that only two fingers had been broken, but all four fingers were splinted and had turned a deep purple shade that was quite ghastly.
“I must find the Rafayah.”
Wilek lifted his gaze to Trevn’s face. His brother’s eyes were puffy and lidded. “You must stay in bed until you are well.”
“Would you?”
Wilek glanced at the shell marking on Trevn’s palm, remembering the pull Charlon had on him when they’d been soul-bound. “Can you feel her? Hear her thoughts?” Wilek asked. “There were times when I could do that with Charlon.”
With one purpled finger Trevn traced along the shell lines on his embossed hand. “We are too far apart to hear thoughts,” he said. “When I came to the Seffynaw just before the storm, I noticed that distance changes the magic.”
“Yes, I remember that,” Wilek said. It had been both a blessing and a curse.
“My chest aches constantly, like it did when Father Tomek died. I cannot hear her, though I sense she is worried. No. She thinks I am worried.”
“That’s good, then,” Wilek said. “I don’t think you would feel like that if she were—” He stopped himself. “We’re keeping a close watch on the seas. It’s likely that the missing ships were merely blown off course. Perhaps they will soon find their way back to us.”
A quiet knock and Rayim entered, tiny black box in hand.
Trevn’s gaze fixed on the box and his face crumpled. “No,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to sleep anymore. Please don’t make me.”
But Rayim set about pricking Trevn in the neck. “Another day. Maybe two. It’s for the best,” he said.
Trevn moaned, shook his head as if trying to scare off a fly. “Mielle . . .”
Plagued by feelings of guilt, Wilek sat with Trevn until he fell asleep. He could not bring himself to mention any of the happenings of the past week with Janek’s shipping and the traitors. And Hinckdan . . . Wilek would have to tell Trevn about that at some point.
“Under no circumstances should Sâr Trevn be left alone, Sir Cadoc,” Wilek said. “Make sure that any guards w
ho relieve you know that.” His brother was probably a greater danger to himself at present than Kamran was to their father. “I’ll ask my mother if she and the sârahs might take turns sitting with him until we convince Ottee he wasn’t dismissed permanently.”
“It will be done, Your Highness,” Cadoc said.
Wilek departed for his mother’s cabin. He left Novan with the honor maidens and the pack of tiny dogs and retreated with his mother into her bedchamber for a private talk.
“I am sorry that the prisoners got away,” she said. “It is a frustrating defeat. But you must give yourself some grace. Both you and Sâr Trevn are grieving. You have lost people dear to you. Such an experience is not so easily overcome.”
“Who have I lost? Surely you don’t mean Janek?”
She frowned. “I mean Sir Kalenek.”
The name tightened Wilek’s chest. Kal had been slowly weaned away from Wilek—first by his resignation—but now he was gone completely, and thinking of the man made it difficult to breathe. Perhaps his mother was right.
“I don’t know how to grieve.” When Lebetta had died, he’d kept busy, and with the Woes, before he’d realized it, months had passed and the pain no longer stabbed. “I wish he hadn’t confessed. If I didn’t know what he’d intended, it would have been easier.”
“We all make choices,” Mother said, “but they do not define us. Besides, he is not dead, so you don’t have to let go completely. Think of him as being on a special mission for you, like when you sent him into Magonia. Ask Arman to watch over him. To help him in that dark place.”
“That is a good idea.” And not so far from the truth.
“You should also talk about him. Tell Zeroah stories about some of your exploits together. These things will help, little by little. Just remember, you never stop grieving death. You learn to live with it. Grief is not an illness; it’s a transition.”
Wilek thought of Chadek, his brother who had been sacrificed to Barthos at age ten. Though the memory of his brother on that platform still haunted him, the pain hadn’t flared for years. Still, that experience had shaped everything about the rest of Wilek’s life.
“I’m worried about Trevn. If we never recover Miss Mielle, with the soul-binding spell he might never learn to live with his grief. I’ve dealt with that magic. I know how it feels.”
“Arman’s ways are beyond understanding,” Mother said, chilling Wilek with the same words Zeroah liked to say. “We might not understand now why these things happened, we might never understand, but we will survive.”
Wilek hoped so. For all their sakes.
Trevn
Trevn awoke recalling a dream about riding the roof of a carriage with Mielle. The memory brought a smile to his face until the familiar ache reminded him that she was gone.
Every day since Ottee had told him the Rafayah was missing, it had been the same. For a few blissful seconds he would wake, not yet remembering, and for the space of a breath or two, life would seem normal.
But it wasn’t.
Wilek had told him about Hinck and all that had happened while he slept, and there was still no sign of the Rafayah.
He felt Mielle’s concern rise up in the back of his mind. I’m fine. He tried to think calming thoughts.
His distance from Mielle was slowly killing something inside him, and being confined to his room didn’t help. Wilek had agreed to stop sedating him and let him out of the cabin if he promised not to leave the ship. So Trevn had promised, yet his oath plagued him. He daydreamed about commandeering a smaller ship from the fleet and taking it out to look for the Rafayah, certain the soul-binding would work like magnets and lead them to each other.
Trevn climbed from bed and didn’t bother to wake Ottee as he dressed in his blacks. He forced himself from the room and met Cadoc outside. The man’s eyes were red, and he looked exhausted.
“Is something wrong, Cadoc?” he asked.
“I was thinking of my parents, Your Highness.”
Trevn felt ashamed. He had been so absorbed in his own grief that he had forgotten Cadoc’s parents had been aboard the Rafayah. “The ship did not go down, my friend,” he said. “If Mielle had died, I would have felt it. Trust the Magonian’s magic in me as proof of that.”
Cadoc merely nodded. Trevn set off for the king’s galley. There he grabbed a handful of rolls, then made his way topside. The best thing he could do was to continue his apprenticeship and help Wilek find land. Once their people had a safe place to live, Trevn could focus on finding Mielle. And Cadoc’s parents.
Captain Bussie sent Trevn to shadow the carpenter and caulker. These men he found on the carpenter’s walk, patching up leaks gained after the storm. Trevn’s hand kept him from helping, and he soon wandered topside again. Trevn hated the sympathetic looks people gave him. His blacks were for mourning Janek, not Mielle. People thought Mielle was dead, but she was not dead. He would know.
On the quarterdeck Bonds and Rzasa were splicing rope into pieces long enough to use for sheets and halyards.
“Boots!” Bonds hollered. “Come end an argument. Now that we no longer see Nivanreh’s Eye, half the ship is certain we will sail off the edge of the sea.”
“I never said the world was flat,” Rzasa said. “Everyone knows it’s a bowl.”
Trevn sat cross-legged on the deck, happy to distract his mind with intellectual pursuits. He’d been intrigued by the new north-guiding stars. Rather than sitting at their backs as Nivanreh’s Eye had, the trio rose before them like a beacon. To him this was proof that the world was spherical. But he must use a different type of logic with Rzasa. “The sun and moon and stars all appear to travel around us in circular fashion. It’s the same every day.”
“Which means the bowl’s round,” Rzasa said. “Doesn’t mean it’s a ball.”
“When a ship is at the horizon, its hull is obscured due to the curvature of the earth,” Trevn said. “That is all that has happened with Nivanreh’s Eye.”
Rzasa, who was also sitting cross-legged, smoothed out a wrinkle in his red socks. “If we’ve traveled over the side of the world, why haven’t we fallen off?”
“Because we are on the surface of the sphere,” Trevn said, “and the nature of most objects pulls them toward the Lowerworld, which exists in the sphere’s center. Very few substances rise toward Shamayim. Smoke does. And steam.”
“Cotton?” Bonds asked.
“No,” Trevn said. “Cotton floats on the wind, but when there is no wind, it falls to the earth like any of us.”
A shadow fell over Trevn. “Hey, Boots,” Nietz said. “Cap’n wants you to go help Master Bylar in the forward hold.”
“The world is a sphere,” Trevn said, standing. “And it will soon carry us to land. I promise you.”
He found the steward in the forward hold working on an assessment of the cargo. The man had started in the aft and was nearly finished by the time Trevn arrived. This compartment was filled with barrels, which were topsy-turvy when they should have been stacked. Several were broken, and among the shards of wood were apples, some kind of dried meat, and swaths of crumpled fabric.
A squadron of ten soldiers worked hard to move the good barrels out into the corridors. Master Bylar stood on the left side of the entrance, wax tablet in hand as he carefully logged each food item. He wore on his belt the keys to the food compartments, never letting them leave his person. Such authority gave him nearly as much power as Wilek, when one considered the ship filled with slowly starving souls.
“I did not realize you kept such close tallies on the cargo,” Trevn said.
“Oh yes, I must,” Master Bylar said. “If I allow people to help themselves to an extra bite here and there, what will we eat next month? No, I must take care to pass out our provisions sparingly so that they last as long as possible. It does not make me popular. Many despise the jingle of my belt. But it has kept us fed so far.”
Trevn caught the edge in the man’s voice. “How much longer can we last on w
hat’s here?”
The man answered without hesitation. “Three weeks, unless we start catching fish again.”
Trevn carried that cheery news back to the quarterdeck, wishing he could speak with Mielle about this. The morning fog had left everything wet, and the moisture still hadn’t burned off. The farther north they sailed, the cooler the temperatures. Was Mielle cold? He spotted Admiral Livina at the rail, grow lens to his eye.
“He see something?” Trevn asked Captain Bussie, who was at the whip.
“Ahead on the water,” Bussie said. “Looks like more wreckage.”
Mielle. Trevn’s heart leapt, and he joined Admiral Livina. The man passed Trevn the grow lens.
“Looks like it’s been tied together,” Trevn said. “I think I see movement.” They were too far out to recognize any of the people, but his bond with Mielle did not speak. “Pirates again?”
“Could be,” the admiral said.
What would Randmuir of the Omatta need with so many ships?
But when the Seffynaw heaved alongside, it turned out not to be wreckage at all but three waterlogged dinghies lashed together. Inside, some twenty white-skinned passengers stared upon the great ship.
A chill ran over Trevn at the sight of them. And he’d been so certain that anyone but Mielle would have been a terrible disappointment. “They’re pale, like Miss Onika.”
“Which means they’re not of our fleet,” Admiral Livina said, excitement in his voice.
Trevn caught his meaning at once. These people had to have come from somewhere. Perhaps they would be able to lead the fleet to their homeland.
The pales, however, were in a dismal state. Their sallow, thin faces made it look as if they had been drifting for several weeks. They had lashed the dinghies with one in the lead and two behind and fashioned a mainmast of an oar. It carried no sail, however, merely a frayed and sun-bleached windsock made from a sleeve of what had once been a dark-colored tunic or jacket. The sleeve flipped about in the low wind.
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