Scindapse’s grin sparked with pride, and Kindred felt a sudden drop in her gut. What if she was wrong to push them out to the Once-City? What if Little Wing’s fears were right? Had she just lied her way to the death of everyone on board, including Scindapse, whose joy was a bubble of brightness against the dark of the night and wreckage of the wyrm’s attack?
You did what you needed to do, Ragged Sarah had said. Somewhere inside her, in the cave where her wind and wishes roared together, Kindred knew she needed to do this, too. Something was killing the Sea, some sickness that moved in it, and she would not find the answer on Arcadia. Her grandmother had told her to follow, and so it would be the Roughs, the wilderness beyond. Nothing would stand in Little Wing’s way when it came to what she wanted, and nothing would stand in Kindred’s way, either.
In her letter, the Marchess had written of something calling to her, something from below, something that she suspected called to Kindred to.
If you seek me, look below, she had written. The Once-City was not below, not truly, but it was a step.
Kindred would answer that call, the world be damned.
As dawn caught fire on the edge of the world, and after giving the young keeper a chance at a short nap, Kindred worked with Scindapse, rejecting the style of Rhabdus, offering advice instead of sneering condescension. Like her approach to the fire itself, Rhabdus had believed a keeper had to be broken, subjected to a teacher’s will, before any real education could happen.
She had force-fed her ideas to Kindred.
The Marchess had been the opposite, giving Kindred tiny scraps of knowledge, enough to pull her further into the craft. The rest, though, Kindred had stolen in glimpses and interpretation, through watching and mimicking, through failure after failure after failure, until her own success bloomed before her.
“Do it as I do, but as you would do,” Kindred said. The words were the Marchess’s, and Kindred almost laughed as Scindapse stared back at her in familiar confusion. The Marchess had never responded, never relented to Kindred’s questions—What does that even mean? Can’t you just tell me how to do it? Why do I have to steal it from you? Why can’t you just give it to me?
But when Scindapse said, “I still don’t understand,” Kindred found that she couldn’t offer vague wisdom as the Marchess had always done. It wasn’t that she couldn’t regurgitate the sayings she had heard from her grandmother most of her life. Instead, she didn’t want to. She could offer help to this person, and so why not? Was there a line between Rhabdus’s forever-closed fist and the Marchess’s forever-open one?
“Try it like this.”
“Two bones are better near dawn.”
“You need to think about what you’re singing in relation to how you’re singing it—fast or slow, high or low, smooth or choppy. All of it matters. Here, I’ll draw a chart for you.”
On and on she answered questions, trying to give Scindapse room to experiment but enough knowledge to do so with confidence.
With the sun lighting a calm morning on the Forever Sea, Kindred stood and surveyed Scindapse’s work.
Everything about it—her technique, her singing, her movements—left room for improvement. Her build, too, still looked like a poor drawing dictated by a person who had seen a hearthfire once or twice.
But she was improving, and she smiled when she worked, which made all the difference.
“You’re picking this up far quicker than I did. Soon enough, you’re going to put me out of work,” Kindred said, grinning.
Scindapse blushed and shook her head even as a small, bright smile lit her face.
“I’m going to get some sleep,” Kindred said. “Just until noon, and then you can get some rest. Keep the build simple and let me know if you run into any trouble at all, okay?”
Scindapse nodded at her before singing again, the melody and tone all wrong, but the heart right where it ought to be.
She would be fine.
Kindred caught Little Wing’s eye as she walked toward the steps. How she was still standing, still so strong and unflagging, Kindred didn’t know. There was no evidence that Little Wing, like everyone else aboard, had fought off a wyrm below the surface of the Sea only the previous night.
The remaining crew had all already taken a turn at rest. Once the majority of the destruction had been cleared away, they had begun dropping away in twos and threes, snatching at slips of sleep. Only Little Wing remained, the cornerstone of the crew.
And Ragged Sarah.
The door of the captain’s quarters remained shut, and Kindred had seen no sign of Sarah since leaving. She itched to knock on the door, to peek inside and know what was going on with the captain, if there had been any developments.
But there was nothing more she could do. They sailed east, toward the Roughs and the Once-City beyond. Everyone aboard had been told, and there had been no mutiny, at least not yet.
Her cabin was quiet and calm as she entered, the dream of the ruined reality on the deck above. She sank into sleep immediately and had no dreams of her own.
* * *
When she woke to take over from Scindapse, Kindred’s body felt ragged, every stretch of muscle and fat and skin and bone and tendon bruised and singing with pain. It took effort to simply stand and endeavor to climb the stairs. Scindapse, when Kindred put a hand on her shoulder, looked just as bad. Exhausted and cramped from sitting too long without stretching. She walked off to get some food and sleep, holding her back like a woman three times her age.
The Errant still sailed on Arcadian grasses, flat and easy, sails filled, running with a cool tailwind. Sailing like this, fast despite the damage aboard, Kindred built for a fire that offered stability and let the wind do the work.
“It’s time,” Little Wing said, squatting down next to her. “We’re meeting in the captain’s quarters.”
“Have you slept yet?” Kindred asked, squinting up at Little Wing, whose mouth hung slightly open, whose eyes roved restlessly, whose face had become a haggard mess.
“No time,” Little Wing said, shaking her head. “I made Quixa my second, but she needs sleep more than I do. And there’s too many repairs to manage with the Roughs coming up.”
The Roughs.
A shiver of excitement rushed through Kindred at the thought. This was forward. This was onward.
She followed Little Wing into the captain’s quarters, giving Cora the Wraith, who held the wheel, a wave before entering.
Inside, the room smelled of death and medicine.
Whatever Sarah had done with the wound was now hidden away, wrapped up beneath layers of the same dark cloth that hugged Kindred’s burned hand.
But the evidence of injury littered the room—the stinging stench of medicine, the crumpled, soiled remains of once-clean cloth, knives flecked with blood and skin.