by John Bierce
Hugh hugged her back, and neither of them said anything for what felt like the longest silence yet.
Finally, Talia let go of him, and scooted back to her spot.
“So…” Hugh said. “I guess what I’m saying is that I honestly don’t know. I think I just need time to think about things. And I know that won’t be fun for you, because waiting is the worst, but…”
Talia reached out and squeezed his hand once, then let go and stood up.
“I’m going to go turn in for the night, I think,” Talia said. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Hugh said.
After Talia left, Hugh just sat there, staring out to sea. A few party-goers wandered past, but they somehow sensed that he didn’t want to speak to anyone at the moment, and they left him alone.
He watched the stars move across the sky, the waves crash on the rocks below him, and the moon rise.
When Hugh got up to return to the ship, the celebration had long since ended, and the eastern horizon was already turning light.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Oddly Timed Lightning
Talia wasn’t avoiding Hugh, she was just… giving him space. She didn’t want him to feel pressured or uncomfortable.
And, admittedly, perhaps walking barefoot to avoid having audible footsteps, checking around corners on the ship with mirrors to make sure she didn’t accidentally run into him, and avoiding long sight-lines on deck were slightly… aggressive methods of avoiding him.
She spent most of the morning finding places to hide. It wasn’t hard— she was small enough to fit in all sorts of places no one else but children could fit into. She tried to get a little reading done from her assigned homework from Alustin, but constant nervous checking for Hugh kept her from focusing.
Hugh didn’t trudge onto deck until well into the early afternoon, and Talia had grown complacent by that point.
The Cormorant had gotten off to a late start that morning, with a big chunk of the crew still hungover from the night before. The Radhan were still moving capably enough, but there was a lot more complaining going on, and everyone seemed to be moving just a little bit slower.
Hugh was yawning as he stepped onto the deck, and by the time he finished and looked around, Talia was well on her way up into the rigging of the mainmast.
She made it all the way to the drake’s nest, where an amused Radhan weather mage she vaguely recognized helped her up. The gentle rocking of the ship in the waves was greatly magnified up in the drake’s nest, and her stomach sent up a mild protest at it.
To her surprise, she found Sabae curled up in the bottom of the drake’s nest, wrapped in an old, weather-stained blanket that had obviously been up here for some time. The drake’s nest was quite cramped with all three of them in it.
“What are you doing up here?” Talia asked.
“Hiding,” Sabae said. She looked miserable.
“From what?” Talia asked.
Sabae gave her a dirty look. “Unanticipated consequences.”
The weather mage snorted at that, and Talia gave her a curious look.
“Your friend danced with and kissed both Tollin and Yarra last night,” the woman said. “She very much surprised the night watch by doing her magic jump thing from the cliff-top right into the water, then sneaking on board.”
“It was a cunning escape stratagem,” Sabae muttered, and pulled part of the blanket over her head.
The weather mage chuckled. “I heard you were aiming for the ship, and were drunk enough you missed by two ship lengths. You’re lucky you didn’t drown. Anyhow, you shouldn’t feel too bad, kid. Tollin and Yarra are trouble.”
Sabae made a miserable noise. “Dating should not be more complicated than politics. Or involve as much yelling.”
Talia gave the two of them confused looks.
“Tollin and Yarra date and break up every few months,” the Radhan woman explained, leaning against the mast where it jutted up through the floor of the drake’s nest. “I think they were legitimately impressed with your friend, and really do like her, but they were definitely also trying to make each other jealous. Not to mention, Tollin’s father is the first mate, and Yarra and Dell’s family captained the last ship they were on, and Captain Grepha doesn’t have an heir, and they’ve both been jockeying around that.”
“So they’re… enemies?” Talia asked. “Rivals for the captaincy after Grepha?”
“There are no enemies on a Radhan ship, kid,” the woman said. “Friendly rivals, maybe, but not for the captaincy. Neither family actually wants that, because that would bind them to the Cormorant, and there are rumors that there are several new ships being added to the fleets soon, and nice ones, at that. Both want a chance at those.”
“I’m supposed to be the one scheming and manipulating,” Sabae muttered. “And yet I keep being the one manipulated lately.”
“What?” Talia said.
Sabae pulled the blanket off her face a little and sighed. “Nothing. So how’d last night go for you? Did you talk to Hugh?”
Talia glanced down automatically, seeing Hugh sitting in the prow. Godrick and Artur had just joined him, and the three appeared to be juggling chunks of rock between them with magic, presumably for training.
“I, uh…” Talia said, cautiously. She looked at the Radhan woman nervously.
“I can keep a secret, no need to worry,” the woman said. “My name’s Renna, by the way.”
“I’m…” Talia started, but the woman waved her off.
“Everyone on board knows who you lot are, Talia. Kinda hard after the craziness of this voyage,” Renna said.
“Well?” Sabae asked.
“Yeah, I talked to him,” Talia said, sitting down. There wasn’t much room, so she sat down on top of Sabae.
“Really?” Sabae asked.
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, Sabae.”
“About your feelings for him, or something totally unrelated?” Sabae asked.
“About my feelings,” Talia said, and sighed.
“Wait, really?” Sabae said, and pulled the blanket completely off her face.
“Yes, really,” Talia said, irritably. “Did you not believe I would?”
Sabae gave her an awkward look. “I was actually expecting a long, complicated comedy of errors. I take it Hugh shut you down, since you’re hiding up here with me?”
“Not… not exactly,” Talia said. She spent a while telling Sabae and Renna the story, though she left out a few details Renna didn’t need to know, like about Hugh’s eyes.
“Huh,” Renna said. “I feel like I’m missing a lot here, kid, but I’m cheering for you. And, uh, no offense, but… your friend Hugh seems a bit broken.”
Talia glowered off into space. “I pretty regularly fantasize about paying Hugh’s family in Emblin a visit, and not a friendly one. They’re monsters worse than the ones we faced down in the labyrinth, if you ask me.”
“You’re not the only one,” Sabae muttered. “Godrick and I have discussed the logistics of the expedition in detail. The main problem is keeping Hugh from noticing our absence for a couple months.”
Talia made a long, frustrated noise in the back of her throat.
Sabae patted Talia comfortingly, then pulled the blanket over her head. “I’m too hungover to give coherent advice right now. I’m going back to sleep.”
Talia just sighed.
The first storm hit them the day they finally passed the eastern edge of the Skyreach Range— which also happened to be Talia’s seventeenth birthday.
It had been three days since the party, and Talia had successfully avoided Hugh a lot of the time, save at lessons. Every time they did talk, it just felt awkward and terrifying, and part of Talia was worried that maybe she had damaged their friendship somehow.
The three days had been stressful for more than just that reason, though. On no less than five occasions, the water mages on guard duty had detected packs
of sea serpents. The ship mages steered around them, diverted them with water currents, and even killed a couple sea serpents, but it had everyone on edge. The sea serpent killings were far less dramatic than the first attack had been— the ship’s water mages just levitated a bubble of water containing a sea serpent out of the air, withdrew the water from their gills, and held them in the air near the ship until they suffocated, which took quite a while.
Everyone agreed that there were far, far too many serpents for this time of year. Even in winter, this many serpents would be unlikely to be seen in this region.
The mages also spotted various other sea monsters, including, ironically, a massive sea snake nearly as long as the ship. It paid them no attention, but it did surface nearby for a time, digesting some meal it had swallowed whole— a large shark, perhaps, or maybe a sea serpent. Its body was a brilliant scarlet mottled with burnt orange spots, and its tail flattened out towards the end, looking almost like a great paddle stood on its edge, which allowed the reptile to swim at great speeds. If Talia hadn’t seen how voracious sea serpents were, she’d have given the name to sea snakes instead. Sea serpents were, after all, just big elongated fish with weird fins. The serpents were, however, for all their smaller size, the far greater threat to ships and sailors than sea snakes. Sea snakes, and most other sea monsters, for that matter, simply didn’t like the taste of humans.
The eastern edge of the Skyreach Range trailed off much less impressively than the western edge. In the west, Skyhold and the other mountains rose almost straight out of the ground, with comparatively little in the way of foothills. Many of them approached the size of the largest mountains towards the center of the range. In the east, however, the mountains slowly decreased in size, trailing off into foothills.
It was still a majestic sight, though. The great rainforests of Southeast Ithos started right in those foothills.
The increasing humidity, however, Talia could have lived without. She had enough trouble with the heat.
The storm didn’t come from the sea. It rolled right off the Skyreach Range, almost without warning. The crew had less than an hour to prepare for its arrival, and Talia’s birthday dinner had to be put off.
Not that Talia particularly minded the delay. She had bigger problems at the moment— the storm had proven that, in fact, she was still vulnerable to seasickness on the water as well as on sand. The creaking and shuddering of the Rising Cormorant were, if anything, even worse than they had been on the Moonless Owl during the sandstorm.
Godrick and Alustin were both banished to the lower decks with her during the storm. Godrick was quite content with that fate— his affinities weren’t particularly useful in a storm, and it didn’t seem to wound his pride very much not to be able to help on deck. He seemed quite happy just to be able to be there to help Talia— as happy, anyhow, as someone could be when holding a chamber pot for someone to vomit into, or using his scent magic to help deal with the results.
Interestingly, a couple of the ship’s cats didn’t seem to mind the smell either, and had curled up with her and Godrick.
Alustin, meanwhile, was anything but content. Unlike Godrick, he clearly was used to being able to help in any situation, but Captain Grepha had been quite clear that they didn’t need a paper mage in a wind storm. Every now and then, the captain would send a runner to have him scry some detail of the storm, but it was clear they didn’t consider it vital— for all the unusual timing and direction of this storm, the Radhan were more than capable of weathering it on their own. He paced around the passageways relentlessly, muttering to himself and taking frequent breaks to scry on the events above deck. At one point, he wanted to give them a lecture on how various nations and city-states deal with the introduction of invasive new species into their territory from labyrinths, but Talia just locked eyes with him and glared while she dry-heaved until Alustin got the message and left.
The others, however, were still useful on deck, and each took an opportunity to come visit when they were on break.
Artur’s affinities were no more useful than Godrick’s, but as had long since become clear, for all he hated ships, he had experience as a sailor, and the more sailors that were on duty during a storm, the better. The Radhan were, thanks to their ships being crewed by families, fanatically opposed to losing crew-members during a storm, and made sure to rotate sailors frequently so as few people were working while exhausted as possible. Artur always made sure to stop in on Godrick and Talia to check on them. His huge beard and hair never actually seemed to dry out during the storm— even drying cantrips couldn’t seem to get all the water out.
Sabae, meanwhile, was kept on rescue duty. Her magic made her uniquely suited towards rescuing anyone swept off the decks by a wave or blown from the rigging. Other water mages could pluck them from the water if need be, but having Sabae on duty left them to use their strength to help weather the storm instead. She was the only one who was dry when she came to visit, thanks to her wind armor. She didn’t even need to use it at full force to keep dry, so she could keep it up almost indefinitely. Her visits were few and far between, since she was by far the least exhausted, given that she hadn’t been called on to do anything yet.
Hugh wasn’t being used as a warder, surprisingly. The Radhan of the Cormorant didn’t want a storm ward on the ship. They didn’t know how the ship would handle with a storm ward, and they didn’t want to test it in a storm this fierce— according to Captain Grepha, the sea was far more treacherous than the sand.
Instead, Hugh was being used for his stellar magic. Kanderon had recently provided him with a new spellform— one similar to his flare spell, but which released light slowly, instead of in a blinding burst. The added light was a blessing in the murk of the storm.
Talia was actually surprised when Hugh came to visit her and Godrick. Maybe she was just too miserable to feel awkward and nervous, but his visit made her feel a little better.
Of course, Hugh loaning Talia his stink-absorbing glass marble helped even more. It was more powerful and reliable than Godrick’s scent affinity, even though Godrick had helped manufacture it.
The inside of the hollow sphere had once been clear, but there was now visible grime filling the spellforms etched into the inside surface, and unpleasant looking vapors filled it. According to Godrick, though, it would work fine until the whole inside of the sphere was filled with the gunk. Then, of course, it would need to be very carefully disposed of.
Talia was too sick and exhausted to remember exactly what they talked about, but the last thing she remembered before falling asleep in Godrick’s lap was Hugh wishing her a happy birthday.
By the end of the storm, Artur was exhausted. Physically, yes, but even more so emotionally.
Part of him had forgotten how much he’d once loved the sea, and the camaraderie of working together alongside other sailors to fight through a storm.
Part of him was in constant terror. Artur had to keep fighting to remind himself that he wasn’t on the Hydra’s Kiss again. That he didn’t need to be on constant guard, that he was safe from everything but the storm around them.
No matter how hard he pushed against them, though, his fears wouldn’t go away.
But the Rising Cormorant was just a ship, not the mad ruin of a wood lich that had been ambitious enough to try and make a ship its demesne, whose mind had fragmented at being forced into a demesne too small for it. The Rising Cormorant had no vicious illusionist for a captain, as mad as her ship, who delighted in trapping her sailors in nauseating, terrifying visions at the least sign of insubordination.
The Rising Cormorant had no decks stained with blood. It was a merchant vessel, not a pirate ship.
He wasn’t onboard the Hydra’s Kiss anymore.
Artur shuddered and forced the memories aside as he adjusted the lashings holding tight a sail locker that had flown open in the storm’s chill winds.
A great circle of calmer waters stretched around the ship, two ship-lengths in dia
meter. Calmer was a relative term, of course— the waves were still twice his own height and more, and the larger ones still regularly washed onto the deck.
The waves outside the circle were monsters, one and all. Without the ship’s complement of water and wind mages, they’d surely have swamped the ship by now.
In all the years Artur had spent at sea, he’d only twice seen a storm like this. It wasn’t that this storm was the worst he’d ever seen— in fact, not even close. The great typhoons that struck the southern shores of Ithonia dwarfed even this one. Most sailors, at least in the southwest, were able to shelter in the lee of the Kaen Das magics, which could turn aside even those immense spiral storms.
No, this storm wasn’t alarming due to its power. It was alarming, rather, due to the fact that it was so clearly and obviously unnatural. Part of it was just the fact that the storm’s existence was just so untimely. A storm this fierce shouldn’t be rolling off the Skyreach Range at this time of year. Or at all, really. And it definitely shouldn’t be heading to sea, carrying frigid mountain air. What’s more, the waves and wind all traveled in an astonishingly straight line towards the southeast.
And the lightning was entirely wrong. Great stretches of time would pass without a single bolt, the only lights the pale glow of the mage lights and the actinic, burning light of the starfire sphere Hugh held aloft above the stern. That light reached out across the sea around them, illuminating their circle of safety and casting shadows among the immense waves past it.
Then, as if out of nowhere, the sky would erupt with lightning, as though it had been storing it all for a single moment. Dozens if not hundreds of lightning bolts would hammer into the sea at once in every direction. It was so loud that not just the lightning was visible, but the thunder as well, as it blasted the driving rain sideways. Then, just as fast, the lightning would be gone again, for another long period of darkness, wind, and torrential rain.
The Cormorant, as befit a ship of its size, bore enchantments to repel lightning, but the ship’s mages in charge of monitoring them were clearly growing nervous. They were built to prevent periodical strikes over long periods of time, not entire forests of lightning.