The Marchess had sailed out into the Roughs before stepping into the Sea. The Roughs, where the flattening, stultifying magic of Arcadia and the Mainland had not yet reached. The Roughs, where wondrous stories grew from seeds into mighty myths, some perhaps even gilded with an edge of truth.
The wonder of the Roughs, the Marchess had said in her letter. Did she sail all the way to the Once-City, looking for answers to the Greys? Did she parlay with pirates, converse with their dangerous captains? It was an insane thought, but if Kindred could imagine anyone sailing up to the mythical Once-City and finding a welcome there that didn’t involve swords and death, it was the Marchess.
Kindred’s first steps had been on the Mainland. The house she’d grown up in. The holes she’d watched her parents buried in. Every bit of the person Kindred had once been was back there. The prairie wind had scoured her clean, had greened her breath and her imagination. There was no going back.
“Yes? It’s out in the Roughs. Keep going,” the captain said after a moment, a small smile on her face.
“What? Oh, right,” Kindred said, pulling herself back to this moment. But her certainty that the plan was a bad one had evaporated, and the fire in her voice had gone too.
“I was saying the Once-City is out in the Roughs, which none of us have sailed in. Not that we couldn’t, but The Errant would take damage. And even after we sail through the Roughs—if we do—there’s the problem of finding the Once-City, which is apparently only discoverable by someone who has already been there, if you believe the stories.”
She finished with a note of uncertainty, suddenly unsure where she stood. Little Wing was nodding, as if Kindred had only validated her point, but the captain was still smiling, broader now.
“I happen to believe the stories. And we have someone aboard who has been to the Once-City.”
Kindred stared at the captain for a moment, trying to understand what she was saying, but Captain Caraway said nothing more, her single eye alive with that same manic energy from before, that same need to push further, that same wild light.
“But only pirates have been to the Once-City,” Kindred said, speaking slowly. “You’re saying we have a pirate aboard?”
Captain Caraway said nothing.
Little Wing shook her head, frowning.
Ragged Sarah held Kindred’s eyes with her own for a moment and then, with a sigh, said, “Me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Silence commanded the room, weighty and uncertain.
“You’re a pirate?” Kindred felt far away from this room, this conversation. She floated, confused but unaffected by it somehow.
“No,” Ragged Sarah said, eyes wide. “No. Not anymore.”
“Not anymore?”
“I was born in the Once-City, but I left as soon as I could. I hated it there.”
Kindred thought of the pirates who had chased them into port only a few days before, of the pirates who had stolen ships and killed friends of hers, of Little Wing’s friend aboard The Blue Sky.
“But you were a pirate at one point?” The question came out of her mouth in a dry, emotionless tumble. She floated.
“I . . .” Sarah looked around, eyes small, quick things. She leaned forward toward Kindred and, her voice soft and pleading, said, “Just when I was younger. But only for a few years, and then I left, Kindred. I moved to Arcadia and lived there, doing small jobs and going on single tours with ships when I could.”
Sarah had created a conversation just for the two of them, but Kindred listened as if she were on the outside of it. She saw the colored strands of Ragged Sarah’s hair anew, the tattoos ranging across her skin, the quick flash of her teeth as she spoke.
“Did you know when you hired her?” Little Wing asked, and Kindred realized another conversation was going on. Little Wing spoke as if Ragged Sarah didn’t exist, her body fully turned toward Captain Caraway. One hand, Kindred saw, rested on the hilt of a sword.
“I did,” Captain Caraway said, speaking to everyone in the room, stomping out the smaller conversations.
“You’ve known this whole time? And never told the crew?” Little Wing’s eyes were hard, and she sat dangerously still, a spring curled tight.
This was Captain Little Wing, Kindred thought. This was a woman ready to command her own vessel, to lead a crew, to make decisions.
“Ragged Sarah has my full confidence,” Captain Caraway said, speaking slowly. She stared back until Little Wing looked away. “And none of you were brought in here to question Sarah’s fitness to serve. We have a decision to make, and it’s one I don’t take lightly, which is why I’m not making it.”
This had been the arrangement as the captain had explained it. She would abstain from voting, and the three of them would decide. A group decision for a group action.
“I vote—” Little Wing began, but Captain Caraway raised a hand, cutting her off.
“I want you to take the rest of the day to think about this. It’s a decision that will change our fates, and I want none of us”—she cut a look toward Little Wing—“making it without full consideration. We will meet again at sunset, and I expect your answers then.”
A knock at the door pulled Captain Caraway to her feet. Outside, Cora the Wraith stood.
“A quick question, Captain, if you have a moment.”
With a calculated look at the three of them, the captain stepped out of her quarters and closed the door.
Little Wing stood up, one hand still on a sword, the other planted on the map as she looked down, shaking her head slowly.
“You’re a pirate?”
“No,” Ragged Sarah said. “I was a pirate. Was. I was a teenager, and yes, I did some things I’m ashamed of, things a dumb teenager raised in that place would have done. But I turned my back on all of that. I gave it all up and left when I realized what it meant to be a pirate and what my life would be like.”
“Did you know the pirates who were chasing us into port two days ago?”
“What? No, of course not,” Sarah said.
“Canticle was captured by pirates twenty days ago. The Nettle just a few days ago. Did you know the pirates who did that?”
“No, I don’t know any—”
But Little Wing continued, her voice building like a storm.
“We’re not sure, since no one survived, but if that pirate attack is like any of the others actually witnessed, the pirates took the captain for her bones and tossed the keeper overboard. Without her aboard, the hearthfire would eventually die away, so Canticle’s crew probably watched as their captain sailed away, already getting butchered for her bones, all while they sank into the Sea.”