by Traci Chee
In our ship we sailed for years on the ocean,
Unfettered and totally free.
And he gave all his days to his endless devotion,
For he was in love with me.
I called it a phase and made endless delays,
Though he was in love with me.
One day the waves swept him right off the ship
And dropped him into the blue.
As his skin turned to water, his hair into fish,
He asked if I loved him too.
Too late I called through the wind and the water,
“I was always in love with you.”
I was always in love with you.
Chapter 31
The Red War
Later that evening, while Sefia was supposed to be resting, Meeks, Horse, and a couple members of the starboard watch crowded into the sick bay to play Ship of Fools, bringing coins and dice cups and a gaming table that Meeks and Theo wrestled into the cramped cabin.
Freckled and bespectacled, with unkempt cinnamon-colored hair, Theo was something of an amateur biologist, and had recently adopted Harison’s red lory, a small parrot with blue-tipped wings, which could now often be found perched on his shoulder. Sometimes he’d sing to her in his fine baritone voice, and she’d whistle back. As he grappled with the table, the brilliant red bird bobbled slightly and raised her wings for balance, chirping irritably.
Archer crawled onto the bunk beside Sefia, his knee resting against hers. Lifting a finger, he touched the green feather she’d tucked into her hair, and she watched the smile light up his face like a candle batting against the night.
“Here, Sef. Make yourself useful.” Meeks dropped a square of canvas in front of her, and Theo placed a brush and a small jar of black paint on the table.
“Hey!” She laughed. “You said you came here to play!”
Meeks grinned, revealing his chipped tooth. “Yeah, yeah. We’re here to play. But we also heard what you told Cap this afternoon, about us all bein’ in the book and such.”
“Yeah?”
“And we were wonderin’ if you’d write our names.”
Marmalade slid into the space beside the head of the bunk and tucked her honey-red hair behind her ears. She was Harison’s counterpart on the starboard watch, the ship’s girl, and not much older than Archer. She smiled hopefully, dimpling her cheeks.
“Of course,” Sefia said.
“Great!” Meeks clapped his hands. “Start with Harison.”
She nodded. She’d been hearing about Harison for days now, and finally she could contribute something to remember him by, something that might last beyond their words or their memory.
Too big to fit in the sick bay with the rest of them, Horse pulled up a stool and wedged himself in the doorway, his bulging muscles pressed against the walls. He winked at Sefia as she uncapped the jar of paint and dipped the brush.
While she wrote, the others leaned in, watching her sculpt the letters, each one a shivering architecture of dashes and curves. When she finished, she showed the scrap of cloth to Marmalade on her left before passing it to Archer on her other side. After a moment, he handed it to Theo, who slid it over to Meeks, who stared at it a long time before giving it to Horse.
The carpenter held the name between his thick tarry fingers and murmured, “You miss a man so much.”
The others nodded.
You miss a man so much.
“Now mine!” Meeks cried.
Archer winked at Sefia. She felt her cheeks go hot.
Rolling her eyes, Marmalade pulled a pile of canvas scraps from a pocket of her loose patchwork jacket and slapped them onto the table.
Sefia bent over her work while the others anted up coins of varying sizes and degrees of cleanliness: loys from Deliene, caspers and angs from Everica, someone even had a single squint coin from Roku. It was these tiny details that showed the littlest kingdom’s deep-rooted ties to its Oxscinian colonizers: it looked almost exactly like a copper kispe, except squints had square holes through their centers. Digging into his pocket, Archer added a few coins too.
“Where’d you get those?” Sefia asked.
“He won them last night! From me!” Theo exclaimed, upsetting the bird on his shoulder. “I loaned him some to get him started, but boy, was that a mistake. He’s nearly as good as Marmalade.”
Archer grinned.
Together, they rattled the wooden cubes and upturned their cups. Ship of Fools was a simple game played in seafaring vessels all across Kelanna. Players had five dice and three rounds to earn points, with betting before each of the rounds.
First, players tried to roll a six, a five, and a four in descending order. Each number represented something different: the six, a ship; the five, a captain; and the four, a crew. You couldn’t keep a crew without first having a captain, and you couldn’t keep a captain without first having a ship. Or so the logic went. Archer set aside two dice—a six and a five—and swept the other three off the table.
Sefia watched the fine hair on his forearms gleaming in the lamplight. Every short strand was pointed perfectly in the same direction, and for a moment she wanted nothing more than to trail the backs of her fingers along his arms, seeking out the shapes of muscles beneath his skin.
Her hand slipped, and a fat blotch appeared at the end of Meeks’s name. Blushing, she crumpled the piece of canvas in her hand and reached for another.
Horse leaned over the table. “How’re you feelin’, Sef? After what happened today?”
She shrugged as they bet and rolled their dice again. After you had a ship, captain, and crew, you rolled for cargo: three for a crate, two for a keg, and one for a gunnysack. Points were awarded for bigger cargo, and the best you could hope for was two crates, or six points. The trick was in deciding when to stop rolling and stick with your dice, because there was always a chance that you’d end up with nothing. Archer picked out a cube with four pips, dropping the last two in his cup and placing a copper coin in the pot.
“Okay, I guess,” Sefia said.
Meeks shook his head. “Must be a strange thing, seein’ your past.”
“Yeah . . .” She finished the S at the end of his name with a flourish and set the piece of canvas aside.
“You ever seen your future in the book?”
“What? No.”
They rolled for a third time. Horse grimaced at his dice and dumped them all back into his cup. Theo cursed and did the same. The bird chirped. Marmalade lined up a six, a five, a four, a three, and a one, glanced at Archer’s dice, and laughed gleefully, gathering up the coins in the center of the table and stacking them into neat piles in front of her.
“But Cap said the book had the whole history of everything inside it,” Meeks said, scratching his head.
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen it all.”
“So Cap’s still the only one I ever met who knows his future.” He shook his head incredulously. Then, to Archer: “’Sides you, of course.”
Surprised, Archer touched the ring of white skin around his neck.
“Yeah. You know—the boy with the scar.”
Theo and Marmalade glanced uncomfortably from Meeks to Archer and back again.
“We know the story,” Sefia said wearily. “Serakeen wants him to lead a great army or some such.”
Puzzled, Meeks sat up a little straighter and cocked his head. “What about the rest?”
“Let it go, Meeks,” Horse warned.
“What do you mean?” Sefia asked.
The second mate frowned. “There’s more to the story, Sef.”
Theo adjusted his glasses uneasily. “It’s just a story, though. No point in tellin’ it if you haven’t heard it.”
“Right,” Horse growled.
The bird bobbed its head.
Sefia looked to Archer, who nodded. “No. We want
to hear it.”
Meeks sighed heavily and tucked his dreadlocks away from his face. “They say he will lead a great army, and he will overcome many foes. He will be the greatest military leader the world has ever seen, and he will conquer all Five Islands in a bloody altercation known as the Red War.” His voice grew softer and softer as he spoke, and the last sentence came out as little more than a whisper. “He will be young when he does it, but . . .”
Archer had gone a sickly greenish-gray. They’d heard the part about the army, but none of the rest. The Red War. An escalation of the war between Oxscini and Everica? Or some new horror? They hadn’t known. He hunched over, one hand tap-tapping at his scar.
“But what?” Sefia demanded.
The second mate’s dark eyes gleamed sadly. “But he will die soon after his last campaign—alone.”
There was silence in the cabin.
“I’m sorry, Archer.” Apologetically, Meeks reached across the table, but Sefia smacked his hand away. Paint spattered over the gaming surface.
“I don’t believe that and you shouldn’t either,” she snapped. “He isn’t that boy. And don’t you ever say anything like that again.”
If Meeks hadn’t already been pressed against the surgeon’s workbench, he would have taken a step back. As it was, he nodded miserably. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
Sefia thrust the brush back into the paint and crossed her fingers, one over the other. “I meant it when I said you’d never have to fight again,” she said to Archer. “Never.”
He traced the backs of her fingers and nodded.
She wrapped her hand around his and squeezed once before turning to Meeks again. “How d’you know all of this anyway?”
The second mate tugged sheepishly at the ends of his dreadlocks. “I collect stories.”
Horse leaned toward Archer, tipping the table so the coins and dice began to slide toward him. The others scrambled to stop them. “It ain’t you, all right?” His voice was low and deep and urgent. “It ain’t you.”
“I don’t want it to be Archer, Sef. But I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t want to be part of that story.” Meeks didn’t look at her as he studied the scrap of his name. “We got such a short time in this world, you know? Cut shorter by the blasted foolishness of men. Tavern brawls, rival outlaws, wars that claim the lives of thousands. Our existence is so small that most of us only matter to a handful of folks: the captain, the crew, maybe a couple others. But bein’ part of a story like that? A story that’d blow all others outta the water in its greatness and scope? It wouldn’t give me more time here, but if I was part of something like that, maybe my life wouldn’t be so small. Maybe I could make a difference before my time ran out. Maybe I’d matter.”
Sefia wanted to stay mad at him, but there was such sad desperation to his words, the same desperation she’d seen in Captain Reed when he asked to see himself in the book, the same desperation she’d heard at Harison’s funeral when they sang his body into the sea, that her anger evaporated like water. She took up the brush again and met Meeks’s gaze across the table.
He smiled sadly.
“But Serakeen isn’t mentioned in the prophecy?” Sefia asked.
Meeks shook his head. “Just the boy.”
“But if he controls the boy, he wins the war,” she said.
Theo made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Outlaws used to have principles. You could claim your ship, you could claim your spoils. But the ocean was for all of us.”
“Serakeen wants more than the ocean, though,” Sefia said. “Why else would he be kidnapping all those boys? He wants the kingdoms as well as the seas.”
To her surprise, the others laughed.
“No one would stand for it,” Marmalade said. “No way, no how.”
Theo nodded so vigorously the little lory raised her wings and scuttled sideways down his arm. “Oxscini and Everica’d even set aside their differences to put him in his place,” he said.
The bird climbed from Theo to the table and onto Archer’s hand. He straightened with surprise.
“But all those boys—” she began.
“They don’t even come close to what the other kingdoms got,” Theo said.
“Yeah,” Meeks added, “and if you think Cap or any selfrespectin’ outlaw would bow to any man, you got another think comin’.”
Theo adjusted his glasses. “You don’t have to worry, Archer. Like Marmalade said, no one would stand for it. The Red War’s a myth.”
Horse nodded. “Got that, Meeks? A myth.”
The second mate raised his hands. “I hear ya, Horsey. But Serakeen believes it’s true. He ain’t gonna stop just because someone tells him he’s chasin’ a lie.”
Marmalade rattled her dice cup impatiently. “We gonna play or what?”
While they rolled their dice, Sefia looked to Archer, who met her gaze. A muscle twitched in his cheek.
“No,” she murmured. “But someone has to stop him.”
Chapter 32
Outlaws
Tufts of Jaunty’s straw-colored hair stuck out around his ears and under the brim of his hat like tussocks of dry grass. He scratched the side of his face, his fingernails scraping along the patchy stubble of his jaw. The planes of his lined, wind-hardened face were dark in the afternoon sun.
Captain Reed stood beside him, tall and lanky, with his hat shading his ocean-blue eyes from the sun. Deep creases curved around his generous mouth, showing signs of humor, though he was studying the sea, and not smiling now.
Swaying slightly at the gentle rocking of the ship, Archer watched them both. Jaunty never said much to him during the long, four-hour watches, and when the captain joined them, he didn’t add much to the conversation either, but that was all right. Archer didn’t mind silence.
He scanned the deck, as he did every few minutes, and picked out Sefia perched on the edge of the quarterdeck, hunched over the book in her lap. Her long black hair was in a ponytail, but the wind kept whisking locks of it across her face, into her eyes. She drew it back with her fingers, but she was so engrossed in the reading that soon her hand dropped to the page and her hair escaped again, flying wildly in the wind. Archer smiled.
Jaunty turned the helm three spokes to the port side, going hand over hand on the wheel. A minute later the breeze grew stronger, filling the sails with the huge rippling sounds of stretching canvas. The ship began to speed faster and faster through the sea, pushed along by the new wind.
The old helmsman winked at Archer.
“Been a week since we met with the assassin and we still ain’t found the ship she came from,” the captain said abruptly, his voice coarse as sandpaper. “That strike you as peculiar?”
Archer nodded. Something should have happened by now. If whoever sent the assassin had been desperate enough to send someone onto the Current of Faith, they shouldn’t have given up so easily.
“Makes you wonder, don’t it?” Captain Reed said. “You reckon you scared ’em off?”
Archer shrugged.
Jaunty laughed. Even his laughter was gruff, more like a bark than a laugh.
The captain chuckled. “Don’t be modest, kid. Horse said you flung that knife straight through the steps into that woman’s arm.”
Archer tapped the edge of his scar uncertainly, prodding the uneven, knotted skin.
“I heard Meeks stuck his foot in his mouth again, tellin’ you about the Red War.”
He nodded.
Captain Reed sucked at his teeth. “Did you know about it, before he told you?”
Archer shook his head. His memory only really began the night Sefia had opened the crate. He remembered the light on the floor, the cool biting air, and her voice: Come with me. Please, come with me. But before that . . . flashes. Different flavors of pain. Shouting. Darkness. Whatever his life had been before she rescued him, i
t hadn’t been worth remembering.
“D’you think it’s about you?” the captain asked.
Archer rubbed his arm, counting the burns. Fifteen. And then he’d killed those men in the forest, two more on the dock. But he was afraid he’d killed more than that. He was too good at it. But he didn’t like it. He did it only because he had to.
“I saw you fight on Black Boar Pier. You coulda killed ’em all.”
Jaunty grunted in agreement, but Archer shook his head. He wouldn’t have been fast enough to save her, to stop Hatchet from killing her. He’d dropped the knife.
He stuck his hand into his pocket and grasped the piece of quartz Sefia had given him. With slow, deliberate strokes, he began running his thumb over the crystal’s faces, once across each plane before rotating it and beginning again.
Captain Reed eyed him thoughtfully. “I built my whole life around the stories they tell about me. You know what I learned?”
Archer shook his head.
“What you do makes you who you are. If all you do is kill, then you’re a killer.”
Archer nodded and pointed to his neck.
The captain snorted. “I seen you do more than that, kid. You saved Horse. You protected your girl. A killer woulda let her die on the docks so he could get at his enemies. But you didn’t.”
Archer turned toward the quarterdeck, where Sefia was sitting. She’d barely moved—her hand was slightly off center on the page, and more of her hair had come loose from its ties, but she had that same familiar crease to her forehead, that same purse of her lips he’d come to know so well: pressed together lightly at the corners, making them a little rounder in the center. Slowly, he let the worry stone go, and felt it fall to the bottom of his pocket as he withdrew his hand.
“I ran away from home when I was sixteen,” the captain said. He frowned at the water, and the lines on his forehead and under his eyes became more pronounced. “I reckon you know that from the stories about me.”
Archer nodded. Jaunty adjusted his grip on the wheel, extending his index finger ever so slightly to feel the wind.