Of course. She had been talking to birds.
“Wanted to talk with you,” Kindred finished as Sarah landed on the deck with surprisingly little sound.
“What is it?” Sarah asked, warily.
She looked miserable. Eyes red and tired, her nails worried away to almost nothing. Even as she stood there, she brought one hand to her mouth. It made her look young. And sad.
“I . . . Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Sarah said, not meeting her eyes.
“You know, Little Wing doesn’t—” Kindred began, but Ragged Sarah cut her off.
“I didn’t kill anyone, you know.” Her voice was urgent, the words spilling out, as if she’d been letting them build and expand and heat up inside of her all day. “I sailed on a few trips, and I stole some stuff from ships, but I never killed anyone, and I was never on a boat that did. I wouldn’t do that, and I left once I realized what we—they—were. I stopped being a pirate a long time ago.”
She paused to take a shaky breath, and it seemed to calm her down. Her chin rose a little, and she looked Kindred in the eyes.
“The captain knows, and it’s not anyone else’s business, but I want you to know the truth. Because I . . .”
Kindred took one of her hands. Testing for a new hearthfire keeper had made her feel bold, decisive, as if she were really senior there, despite still being younger than almost everyone. Even Sarah had at least three or four years on her.
But she took Sarah’s hand in her own, feeling the heat of it.
“I’m glad you told me,” she said, quietly.
They stood that way for a moment, feeling the last light of the sun on their cheeks, hand in hand, until a bawdy song from Cora filled the deck, filtering up from below, breaking the moment. Most were down at dinner, and the deck was blessedly empty, if no longer quiet.
“Have you told the captain your decision yet?” Kindred asked.
Kindred knew Sarah hadn’t been down from the nest since the meeting, but she wasn’t going to confess to having watched Sarah all day.
“No,” she said, looking everywhere but into Kindred’s eyes. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Me neither. And I’m sure Little Wing is really wrestling with the choice too.”
Sarah quirked a smile, small and tentative, but it disappeared quickly.
“I . . .” Kindred started, teetering on the edge of what she had to say.
If you seek me, look below, she heard in her mind, as she had since reading her grandmother’s letter, still snug in her pocket.
“Can we actually claim sanctuary at the Once-City without them killing us?”
“I think so, unless everything has changed in the ten or twelve years since I left. The Once-City is built on the bones of old traditions like that, and most people, especially the ones on the Council, stick closely to them.”
“And what about that thing the captain said about new medicines there? Do they have anything that could . . .” She raised her burned hand, holding it between the two of them.
Sarah stared at it, chewing at one lip.
“They could fix it,” she said finally, and Kindred’s breath stopped up in her chest. “But I don’t know that you would want that.”
“Why?”
“They have a very unconventional way of healing serious wounds in the Once-City. They could fix your hand, but the process, if it’s still the same as when I lived there, it would change you, Kindred. You wouldn’t be the same after.”
But Kindred was barely hearing her. If she was almost decided before, this gave her the weight of certainty.
“I’m voting for the Once-City,” she said, confident. She sucked in a big breath of prairie air, letting it fill her, before continuing. “If they can heal my hand, all the better, but you read my grandmother’s letter. She’s out there, Sarah. And I’m never going to find her by going back to the Mainland. If we go there, we’ll never leave. And that’s assuming we make it.
“But we’re not going to stay at the Once-City. Maybe afterward, we’ll cut out toward forever and the mythic dawn coast. Or down toward the southern mountains. All I know is that my grandmother left a note for me to follow her, and this is the first step toward that. It has to be. It has to.”
Did saying it make it true?
Sarah was watching her in the low light, very faint by then, some of that sadness still in her eyes.
“And you want me to vote for that, too?”
Kindred, after a moment, nodded.
“I swore I would never go back, Kindred,” she said finally. “That place has a way of trapping you in its web. Pulling you in closer, keeping you there. I barely got out the first time, Kindred.”
“We’ll get out,” Kindred said, leaning forward, her face close enough to see the bare twist of anxiety in Sarah’s lips, the worry tracing thin lines on her forehead. “We’ll have each other, and we’ll get out.”
* * *
“Mainland,” Little Wing said.
“The Once-City,” Ragged Sarah said.
The captain turned to Kindred, last in the line standing in front of where she sat at her table in her quarters. A plate with half the rationed portion of food sat forgotten on her bed. Instead, the maps on the table showed far more attention—lines and paths and the captain’s close, careful scribble filled the mostly undefined green space labeled The Roughs.
“Keeper?”
Kindred felt the weight of the decision, hers alone now.
Cantrev casting a net behind them and a pirate city lost in a swath of forever ahead, both tinged with the promise of death.
Doubt like a sudden cold rain caused her to pause. So many threads of life were pulled together by this ship, every crew member with their own hopes and fears and worries and futures bound together by The Errant.
I go to lose myself in it, she heard, her own voice in her head speaking her grandmother’s words.
“The Once-City,” she said.
Next to the wall, Little Wing cursed.
“Good,” the captain said, standing. “That’s settled. I’ll tell the crew and—”
A knock broke the tension of the room.
“What is it?” Captain Caraway asked, opening the door on Scindapse.
“Sorry, Captain,” the young girl—the young keeper, Kindred corrected herself—said. “Kindred, you told me to watch the fire and let you know if anything changed.”