Kindred let out a shaky sigh, relief and joy filling her. This new build was a mess, and it would never do for the long term, but for this moment, it was a victory.
* * *
“That is a terrible fucking idea.”
Kindred swallowed a gasp at Little Wing’s words. Captain Caraway may have given them permission to speak freely when she invited Kindred, Little Wing, and Ragged Sarah into her quarters, but it was still the kind of statement Kindred would have avoided, even now. That kind of language on deck, if directed at the captain, would have guaranteed chains and probably the green dive.
They were all seated around the table, which dominated the captain’s quarters, the map covering it having been reworked and added on to so much that it hung off the edges of the table at some points, thirty or forty sheets thick at others. In one corner of the room Kindred could see the captain’s bed, a simple hammock like her own. Other than that, the room was spare. The captain lived her life out on the deck.
Kindred wondered why the captain had invited Ragged Sarah. She wasn’t unhappy about it, and she was almost too aware of how close her feet were to Sarah’s under the table, but senior crew usually meant only captain, quartermaster, and keeper.
Only a few days earlier, Kindred had been suspended, and now here she was, at this table, bellied up to this map. Somehow, she thought with more than a little disbelief, senior crew now meant her, although she didn’t feel very senior.
“We have to consider every option, Little Wing,” the captain said, her voice steady, passionless. She gestured to the map; at the center lay Arcadia like an oversized boil, surrounded by the uneven circle of its flattened grasses. To the west was the enormous mass of the Mainland consuming the entire side of the map. The capital city, which Kindred had not returned to since the death of her parents and her exodus from the Mainland, was a star on the landmass’s edge.
To the north, the Mists. To the south, the barren Scrubwastes.
And to the east? The forever that gave the Sea its name. Rough grasses as far as any had ever been able to discover. Sure, boats had left for whatever lay beyond the eastern horizon and not returned, and some speculated that perhaps they’d found the end of forever, but there had never been any evidence of that.
“We can make it to the Mainland,” Little Wing said, sitting forward and drawing an arc from their current position—somewhere northeast of Arcadia, halfway out the line where the flattened grasses would give way to the Roughs. “Cantrev will have created defenses, sure, but that bastard thinks we’re traveling east. If we loop north, toward the Mists, we can pass by Cantrev’s ships and bypass Arcadian grasses completely. We’d be in the Roughs most of the way, but we can handle it, Captain.”
“And our water stores? Cantrev’s men took almost all of it. We have five days of sailing left. Six, maybe.”
“We ration. We ration the rations. We can make up for it by skimming dew each morning. And once we get into the Mists, we can open up the rain catches; I’ve heard sailors say it rains at least once a span there.”
The captain was staring hard at the map, her eyes tracing Little Wing’s arc over and over again.
“Even to get to the Mists from our current position would take two span or longer, and that’s if we burn hard,” the captain said. “And even if we could skim enough dew to keep us watered and put out the fires of mutiny the crew would have if I rationed their rations, there’s the eidolons of the Mists to worry about.”
Little Wing grimaced and said, “That’s all nonsense. The eidolons don’t exist.”
“Sailors don’t come back from the Mists,” Captain Caraway said quietly.
“We could,” Little Wing said, sitting up straighter in her chair, jaw jutting. “With this crew and this ship? With you leading us? We could.”
The captain turned to Ragged Sarah and Kindred, leaving behind Little Wing’s disagreements.
“And the two of you? What do you think? We either sail for the Mainland . . .”
The captain traced the same arc Little Wing had.
“. . . or we sail east, into the Roughs, into uncharted grasses, toward the Once-City.”
Little Wing held up her hand.
“I still think this is a terrible fucking idea.”
“We dock at the Once-City and beg sanctuary,” the captain continued, letting her finger slide into the ambiguously labeled Roughs on the map, never stopping on a single point. “Barter for water and supplies, and regroup. The Once-City has access to all kinds of plants and magics, the stories say; it may be that we can barter for even more than water. A fixed-up ship? New medical supplies? I don’t know, but it seems worth a try. And we don’t have the casting plants on board to stave off an assault from Cantrev, and even if we did, a bare handful of the crew can cast.”
Kindred looked to Ragged Sarah, who stared down into her lap, strangely silent and nervous. A smile—mischievous or genuine, playful or serious—never seemed far from Sarah’s face, and yet now she had the air of someone staring down into her own grave. Eyes wide, unable to still her hands.
New medical supplies? She glanced down at the nothingness that was her hand, hiding in the dark cloth of Sarah’s wrap.
“Well?” Captain Caraway said, looking at Kindred. “What do you think?”
Under any other circumstances, the captain asking for her opinion would have made Kindred sing with joy, but now, given the choice they were making there, she wished only for an order.
“Pirates live in the Once-City,” she said finally.
The captain nodded but said nothing, so Kindred pushed ahead.
“We’ll never reach it; if we don’t have enough casting plants to defend ourselves against one of Cantrev’s warships—and he’s certainly dispatched them by now—we won’t be able to fight off the pirates who will almost definitely intercept us on the way to the Once-City.”
She paused, but still the captain sat silent, watching her, waiting.
“And assuming we did manage to get there without being caught by pirates, we have to trust the rumors that safe passage is offered to any who ‘beg sanctuary,’” she said. “But what if that’s not true? Then we’re docked in a city full of pirates and there’s nothing to stop them from cutting our throats, stealing the plants and bones aboard, taking you, Captain, for your bones, and scuttling or stealing our ship.
“But that’s all assuming we can get there, because the Once-City is out in the Roughs, which none of us have sailed in before or are prepared for in the least . . .”
Kindred trailed off.
If you seek me, look below.