In the light of day lancing in through the windows, the captain looked like a fresh corpse on the ground, her arms too straight, her body too still. The rise of her chest was the barest suggestion beneath the wrap swaddling her chest.
“Good,” Quixa said when she saw the captain, her voice slow and deep as ever. “She is breathing.”
“For now,” Sarah said from where she sat on the floor next to the captain. If Little Wing looked bad, Sarah looked worse. Eyes hung with bags of exhaustion, hands splayed on her legs, face waxen and slack.
If the captain looked dead, Ragged Sarah looked to be dying.
“We sail for the Once-City,” Little Wing said without preamble. “It’s what the captain wanted, and it’s what you two stupid shits voted for. Are you sure they can heal the captain there?”
This last she asked of Ragged Sarah, who only nodded. She looked on the edge of falling asleep where she sat, her clothes run through with sweat and blood and errant splashes of her medicines.
“Good. We’ll be to the Roughs in less than a day. How far past the Roughs is the Once-City?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said, eyes down on her hands. “It moves. I need to do a calling to find it. Probably somewhere between three and six days’ sailing, maybe more.”
“It better not be more,” Little Wing said, looking down at the captain, and Kindred felt a shock as she remembered her lie, tiny and passing though it was. A single, tenuous fiber pulling them east.
“It won’t be,” Kindred said. “We can burn harder if need be. We have the bones. We’ll make it.”
Little Wing gave her a nod before turning back to Sarah.
“You can beg sanctuary, is that right? And it will protect us for the stay? All those kids’ stories about that are true?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then here’s what we’ll do. We dock. You beg sanctuary. Me and a few others go with the captain to get her healed. Everyone else stays on board. Once she’s healed, we pay whatever we can, barter the rest for water and food, and get the fuck out.”
“Okay. That’s fine,” Sarah said, her voice breathy and tired.
“Anything goes wrong with you begging sanctuary, or I get the sense that you’re pulling us into some kind of trap, and—”
“You’ll kill me, I know.” Sarah’s eyelids hung heavy as she looked up at Little Wing looming over her. “I’m not those pirates who kill and steal. I left that life for this one. I’m part of this crew.”
She stood, or tried to. Her legs slid away beneath her, and Kindred darted forward to slide an arm around her. Sarah offered Kindred a look of sleepy appreciation. Together, they got her upright.
“The captain needs rest now, and there’s nothing more I can do for her. I’m going to sleep, and then I’ll do the calling. I’ll get us to the Once-City and get us inside. I want the captain to live just as much as you all do.”
Sarah pushed off from Kindred and walked out, unsteady.
“I should throw her in chains,” Little Wing said, staring after her.
“She saved the captain,” Kindred said. “You should give her a medal.”
“Maybe I should throw you in chains,” Little Wing said, rounding on Kindred. “For nearly killing the captain.”
“Maybe you should give me a medal for saving every person on board from that wyrm,” Kindred retorted. Sarah’s exhausted resistance had stirred something in Kindred, and she thought again of Sarah telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself.
Little Wing’s face hardened into something murderous and mad. Maybe this had not been the best time, with everyone on edge and Little Wing sleepless and stressed, to speak out.
“She’s right,” Quixa said, her wide eyes haunting in the afternoon light filling the cabin. “Without Kindred doing her magic with the fire, we would all be dead at the bottom of the Sea or in the wyrm’s stomach right now.”
Little Wing stared between them, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
“She’s going to get us there,” Kindred said. “You can trust her, Little Wing. We’re going to save the captain.”
“She’s part of the crew, Little Wing,” Quixa said. “No matter her past, she’s part of the crew.”
Little Wing must have told her, Kindred realized.
“Fine.” Little Wing spat the word at them both. “Quixa, take the wheel. True east. Kindred, get the fire in order for the Roughs. I need Scindapse for help with repairs.”
“Aye. I’ll tell her.”
As Kindred followed Quixa out, she turned to look once more at the captain.
Little Wing crouched next to her, holding one of the captain’s hands in her own, finally letting the mask of captain fall away to reveal the sailor, the friend, the person beneath it.
It was a near-perfect reflection of the scene Kindred had left the last time she had walked out of this room, Ragged Sarah and Little Wing watching over their captain in the only ways they knew how.
Kindred pulled the door closed as she left that moment behind.
The Roughs were coming.
* * *
Before sending Scindapse away for repair work, Kindred used her help to create a build of preparation. A strong construction with pockets and alleys that might be easily opened or closed off to deal with immediate changes in Sea level. Kindred used her one unburned hand to guide Scindapse as the younger keeper placed bones of all kinds inside the build, hidden potential that they might unlock when they reached the Roughs.
“That’s crazy,” Scindapse said after they’d finished, sitting back and surveying the complicated edifice of bone inside the fire. “Did you learn to do that from one of the books?”
“The books don’t have builds for sailing into the Roughs,” Kindred said, shaking her head. “The bookmavens have some vague ideas about what a Rough build should do, but they don’t really know.”
“Where did you learn it, then?” Scindapse asked.
“From my grandmother,” Kindred said. She had told Scindapse a little of her training but had carefully clipped off the bit about her failing out of the hearthkeeping schools. Scindapse was already anxious about keeping the fire; best she didn’t know that her teacher had been taught by a madwoman and knew few of the prescribed builds and theories.
“Did she sail into the Roughs a lot?”
“Only once,” Kindred said, thinking of Revenger at port in Arcadia, hull scored with great slashes.