Instead, I rested. I hauled a small barrel to a tucked-away corner of the deck, even though the salt spray was biting cold, and watched the waves beat ahead of us and the sea birds fight the wind above us. I sewed, mending tears in my petticoats, knowing that these two worsted wool skirts and the jacket I wore would have to serve for a long time. I took a length of linen from the hold—it was, I reasoned, for the Reformist army and I was part of that army—and sewed a spare shift for myself. I sewed long seams, turned raw edges over and felled them carefully against fraying, hemmed in narrow, tight lines. No charms, even if that might have been wise. Just the rote motions of sewing soothing me until my hands grew too cold and my fingers too stiff to continue.
The sailors noticed me, quietly sitting for long hours every day, often with a needle in hand. One wearing a dark blue jacket carefully patched with red-striped linen finally approached me with a length of torn sailcloth and a thick needle. I assessed the damage and accepted the unspoken and likely unpaid commission. He sat next to me and took up a rip on the other end.
Exactly like a morning in the atelier, except on the deck of a ship with a ragtag sailor and a length of heavy linen sailcloth in hand instead of silk. Still, it felt strangely right.
The meditation of needle and thread ended abruptly as the mate shouted something in Fenian and the sailor dropped his end of the cloth like it had burned him and rushed toward the rigging behind us. I gathered the cloth and carefully worked his needle into the weave, ready for him to pick up again when whatever urgent task he had been set to had been completed. Then I noticed how every sailor around me had jumped to attention, not only my sewing companion, and stowed my needle, as well.
Alba intercepted the captain, who forcefully shoved her aside before remembering himself with a senior member of the Order of the Golden Sphere and tersely barking a few words of explanation. She set her mouth in a thin line.
“We’ve a bit of trouble with what may be a Galatine ship, I fear,” she said.
“Galatine?”
“Royal Navy.”
“Royalist navy, you might say.” I peered across the waves toward the ship, and could just barely discern the blue and gold of the Royalist battle flag.
“In any case. They’re intercepting vessels bound for Galitha.”
“Fenian vessels?” I asked, shocked. “Couldn’t that lead to an international war?”
“War is international,” she snorted. “But yes. Anyone carrying cargo for Galitha, boarded and searched and questioned, and if the vessel is bound for the Reformist army, the cargo is captured as a prize.”
“Why am I only hearing about this now?” I exhaled through my nose.
“I ought to have guessed. But I hadn’t gotten any reports from Galitha, and neither had you. The captain seems aware of the problem, though, and didn’t deign to tell us. Neither did Erdwin, that rat. And we can have a nice long talk over tea later if you’d like, but for now I’d like to avoid capture.”
“Back in the hold?”
“I’m debating. You see, if we’re in the hold, we’re certainly hiding. What sort of people hide? Fugitives, spies, highly valuable enemy passengers.”
“Yes, I see,” I said. “So we stay on deck? Hope for the best?”
“If we’re boarded, they may only take the valuables. They may not bother with the ship itself—they probably won’t bother hauling this broken-down old barnacle back to port.” She softened. “If we were recognized and caught, it’s you who stands the most to lose. They might send me home—they probably would. You…”
“Captured most certainly, probably executed.” The salt air I inhaled was cold and painfully bracing.
“And so much for what you can do for Galitha.” She hesitated. “Not that I don’t value you, very much so, but I know you undervalue yourself. You are most certainly not expendable. Still. It is your life. So I won’t pretend to make the choice for us.”
Alba had made most of our choices thus far, guiding me past my inexperience and ignorance. I took one slow, steadying breath—the last time I could be slow, deliberate, until this ordeal was over, I acknowledged. “If we’re on deck,” I said, grudging the words I knew were necessary even as I said them, “I could cast.”
11
DESPITE THE FENIAN VESSEL’S ATTEMPTS TO MANEUVER AWAY FROM the privateer, we were not nearly as swift and maneuverable as the Galatine ship. Alba was right—the Fenian ship was old, and though her broad belly was a pragmatic hold for goods, it made her slow under sail.
“She’s maneuvering to intercept, I think,” Alba commented, almost conversationally. Meanwhile, my heart was racing. “Not necessarily a position to destroy us—that is, I believe her priority will be capturing our cargo, which is good for our chances of survival. She won’t much want to damage her prize.” She could have been chatting about the weather, or choir rehearsal, or hedgeberry pie.
“How are you so calm?” I demanded. “We could be dead within the hour.”
She barely flinched. “I suppose I’m quite assured of my mortality,” she replied.
I blanched. “That is not helpful.”
“How so? It is only logical to be aware that this corporeal vessel of mine will rot away—not unlike this ship already appears to be doing. The creation is mortal, the Creator immortal, and there is nothing unnatural in that.”
I swallowed against a dry mouth. “I really didn’t need the reminder of my own, potentially very rapidly approaching, death.”
“You asked,” Alba said. “Death is merely the natural outcome of life.”
“Can we stop talking about death, please?” I eyed the Galatine ship, sails taut and prow now turning her nose in course to meet us.
“Of course.” She faced me. “Are you going to cast?”
I nodded. My strategy was only half-formed; had I known that we could be intercepted by enemy ships, I could have considered my options better. I could have, but perhaps I wouldn’t, I acknowledged. My understanding of shipboard tactics was shallow at best, and I had thus far resisted every thought of militarizing my magic.
If I was going to survive to help the Reform, I was going to have to let go of those niceties now.
Charms first, I decided without thinking very deeply at all. Charms were what I was comfortable with, and where I knew how to predict the results. I drew quickly, long threads of thick golden light from the ether. They rushed toward me strong and fast, the practice honed by the long hours in the Fenian factories. I twisted them into rings, huge rings as big as the ship, my fingers making the motion of the glowing discs in miniature. I cast three of them tight around the ship, hovering over the hull below, the deck surrounding me, and above, the sails. I drove the magic first into the willing fibers of the sails and then, with effort that made my forehead bead sweat, into the wood. It was barely etched into the surface and I saw the pale white light leaking into the water and dissipating as soon as I’d tethered the magic to the hull.
Sailors ran past, either not noticing or not bothering about me, though I might well have been in the way, interrupting their precise and vital movements. Alba stood, a silent sentry, beside me.