I didn’t need anyone to tell me what had happened. I knew—I had worked too hard, for too long. I hadn’t tested my body’s ability to keep pace with my casting capabilities, not like this. On Fen the work had been controlled, slow, and with malleable materials. The hard grain of the ships’ hulls fought my casting, and the speed with which I had tried to cast had been too much.
I stared at the stained gray canvas ceiling above me, frustration building. If this had been too much, what use was I? I had produced the charmed uniforms, but I was beginning to feel, painfully, the limits of my casting. I always knew it wasn’t a panacea, that it wasn’t all-powerful fairy-tale sorcery. But I had allowed myself to forget, briefly.
And if I couldn’t help by casting, what could I do? I was a minor celebrity, or perhaps more accurate, an oddity, but not a figurehead like Theodor. I wasn’t a visionary like Kristos, and I wasn’t a military expert like Sianh. I certainly wasn’t a leader like Niko.
“You ready for some tea?” Hamish shuffled into the tent. “Maybe a biscuit? I can get Lara to toast some of that brown bread on the brazier for you if you’re keen.”
“No,” I said, pushing myself back onto my elbows, ignoring the roaring protest in my head. “I should get back.”
“To the ship?” He snorted. “Not likely.”
“To my own room, then,” I argued. “I should free the bed for someone who truly requires it.”
“A lugheaded tar rat carried you in here, with the former princess in tow, saying you dropped like a stone on their deck. No warning, no symptoms beforehand. Now what am I supposed to think, that you don’t ‘truly require’ my expertise?”
“I don’t,” I snapped. “I know exactly what’s wrong.”
He didn’t rise to the bait, didn’t demand an explanation of my self-diagnosis. “And knowing exactly what’s wrong means you’re feeling better? All right, trot on up to the house, then.”
I set my jaw and swung my legs over the side, but the headache flared like fat poured on flame, and I nearly heaved.
“Ah. So you’re not feeling too chipper. Perhaps if you told me what ails you, I’d have something for it.”
I swallowed hard on both bile and pride. “My head. It’s as though there’s a spike running from the back of my neck through my eye.”
“Rather like a migraine or occipital inflammation,” he muttered. “Either way, it’s got your stomach in knots, too?” I nodded. “Then ginger tea for the stomach.” He shouted something to one of the nurses outside—I assumed about the ginger tea. “And my headache balm.”
“Balm?” I asked, unconvinced. The Pellian women I knew chewed catmint for headaches, and Galatines swore by a bitter powder some of the apothecaries sold.
“It’s never failed,” Hamish boasted. “And besides, worst it can do is make you smell pretty.” He produced a tin of what looked like hair pomade from his chest.
He offered the open tin. “Just rub it on your neck and forehead. I’ll be back shortly with that ginger tea.” He paused, and added, “And toast. I’d like some toast, anyway.”
I rubbed doubtful circles of the balm, which I had to admit did smell like a kitchen herb garden, into the knot at the back of my neck where the headache seemed to originate. Useless, I breathed in each exhale. I’m useless.
The tent flap opened, but instead of Hamish with the tea and toast, Kristos poked his head inside. “You’re all right,” he said in greeting.
“Of course I am,” I replied, cross. “Annette overreacted.”
“I have a feeling,” Kristos said, crossing the tent with two strides of his long legs, “that the woman who commands our fleet isn’t the type to overreact. You collapsed.”
“I—” I intended to say something noncommittal, something vague about overwork. Instead, I half sobbed, “I’m of such little use here. I can’t even cast effective protection charms.”
Kristos pursed his lips. “You can’t, huh? Well thank every corner of sweet hell, because now I can ditch this uniform. No, no, I don’t look good in gray, and if the charm that’s supposed to be woven in here is useless, why…” He cocked his head at me with a chiding look that he must have inherited directly from our mother.
“No, those charms are good. You know that, don’t be an ass.”
“I’m being an ass?” He snorted. “You make charmed uniforms for an entire damned army, then question your usefulness, and I’m being an ass?”
“I meant now,” I whispered. “Maybe my part in this is done.”
“You can still charm our ships. Just take your time?” he suggested.
I nodded, still miserable. “And when that’s done?”
“You thought you could directly cast during engagements,” he reminded me.
I sighed. “I don’t know. It’s difficult, maintaining direct casting, and I don’t know—I don’t know if I can do it long enough.”
“Anything is better than not,” Kristos asserted confidently. “Besides, you don’t have to maintain curses, do you?”
My stomach sank. “That depends. But I also can’t cast from a long way away. I’m afraid by the time we were close enough, my help would come too late.”
“We’ll find a way—”
“We might not,” I retorted. “It’s not witches with cauldrons and sorcerers with magic wands. There are limits, more than you realize.”
Kristos fell silent, and I wallowed in the misery of knowing he knew I was right. My magic might not be the turning point he had hoped for. It might not even level the field with the Royalists and their Serafan allies. With more time, with years of development and research in the Serafan archive and the library of Alba’s house, with an army of casters, perhaps, but I was alone.
“There’s limits to everything,” Kristos finally said. “But mark me, if we can do anything to help you work within these particular limits, you tell me.”
I nodded. The only worth I had here was the light and dark I controlled; I owed everyone the full reach of what I could do. “Sometimes I wonder,” I said softly, “that what frightened me the most about your protests and pamphlets, back before the revolt, was that I would end up useless.”
“What?” Kristos said, brows constricting. “How do you mean?”
“I had a life with some purpose,” I said, trying to pick the right words, “a vocation. I was learning how to use that vocation to the best of my ability, to help others. In a small way, maybe. And you admit, you needed me.” I smiled wanly.
Kristos laughed ruefully. “I did. You kept food on the table and a roof over my head. I probably should have admitted a long time ago that I would have been living in a gutter if it hadn’t been for you. And your shop,” he added.
“All the changes you wanted—they could have meant the end of that vocation. And you wouldn’t need me anymore.” I stared at my hands, the calluses and the dirt under the nails.
“Ah, Sophie,” he sighed. “I thought I didn’t, maybe, before the revolt. But I do. You’re the other side of me. My balance. My friend.” He reached awkwardly for my hand, and I let him take it. “There’s no apology sufficient for what I did. But I didn’t realize I hadn’t apologized for this—for not acknowledging how much I needed you then, and how much I still need you.”