They all drank and ate, sighing at the relief of water coating their throats, of food filling their stomachs. Afterward, Barque showed them the rest of the house. Some of the rooms had beds in them, mattresses made of twice-woven grass snugged into the corners. Some held nothing but stories of time and disuse. Up and up they moved; Barque said little to nothing about the house, and Kindred found herself missing the kind chatter of Seraph, who, even if some found him annoying, had at least provided information.
Scindapse and Cora split off to explore a hallway that sloped down slightly and ended in three rooms, and Long Quixa stopped in a small, two-windowed room that contained a mattress.
“I’m going to sleep,” she announced to no one in particular. She was down and still before Kindred had time to leave.
In the end, Kindred settled in a room on the top floor, the roof partially eroded and giving her a view of the shields affixed to the ceiling of Breach, winking and shining down at her, escorting in the fading sunlight. A wind played through the air in this room, and Kindred let it move over and through her.
It was not her cabin aboard The Errant, which had probably shattered into nothing at the bottom of the Sea by now. There were no neat bookshelves, no hammock strung inside a wooden cocoon. Though the Sea was nearby and all around, she could not hear the shush of grass against hull that she had so loved while sailing. She swallowed back the rush of pain as she thought of The Errant, their home, sinking into the depths.
When she had sailed aboard Revenger, Kindred had been the little ghost, trailing after her grandmother and sneaking quietly around conversations. Aboard The Errant, she had become her own woman, capable and one of the crew. The young girl from the Mainland that had moved with deliberate, careful steps as she climbed aboard her first vessel was well and truly gone.
But was the Kindred who had longed for a place aboard her own vessel gone as well? Had that woman who suffered under Rhabdus’s instruction sunk with The Errant?
And if she was gone, who might Kindred become in this new place, so close to the darkness below?
I go to lose myself in it. The words from her grandmother’s letter mingled with the sound of the wind in her mind, and Kindred found herself laughing suddenly. Barque entered the room, alarmed, but Kindred didn’t care.
After a moment, a look of confusion and disgust on his face, he left Kindred alone to her madness.
“If this isn’t being lost,” she said, to this new room, to this new place, to no one in particular, “then nothing is.”
* * *
They all met up again downstairs after taking time alone. Quixa looked somewhat refreshed from her nap, and Cora the Wraith had regained some of her levity, but Scindapse appeared little recovered. Her eyes were clouded, dead pools. She said nothing, drank little, and ate not at all.
Kindred, though, felt a new energy, a light ghosting through her, stirring memories of being lowered to the Sea with the Marchess, breathing in the prairie’s air, and giving thanks for a stalk of bluestem that connected sky and ground.
They sat in silence mostly, punctuating their thoughts with occasional wonderings about the captain’s health, or Little Wing’s or Sarah’s. Free in a storied city, they did not know what to do.
Barque returned after a short time, a list of their assignments in his hand.
“When can we go visit our sick?” Kindred asked as soon as he walked in the door. She had been thinking of Ragged Sarah, of her fall from the crow’s nest.
“Kwee-ex-sa,” Barque said, ignoring her question and looking around. Kindred could tell he had mangled Quixa’s name on purpose. Mischief glinted in his eye, and the plants webbing his skin shifted slightly.
“It’s pronounced Quick-sa,” Quixa said, though without any real venom.
“You’ve been assigned to sail repair.” He handed her a leaf of green with charcoaled writing on it. “That’s got your new overseer to report to and a map to get there. The sail weavers can be found on this level, over in the Crook’d neighborhood, not far from here. Cora.”
“At your service, warden,” Cora said, sarcasm untarnished.
Barque grinned at her.
“You’ve been assigned bilge cleanup. You’ll join the other bilge crew above on the docks each morning.” He passed her a leaf, instructions scrawled there. “I’m sure you had water to help you clean your ships back on Arcadia. We dry-clean them here.” Barque’s grin widened.
“You’d be wrong there,” Cora said, shaking her head and sneering at Barque. “Waste water on cleaning a ship? Not likely.”
Barque’s smile soured for a moment as he stared at Cora, clearly trying to figure out if she was making fun of him or telling the truth. He moved on.
“You must be Scindapse,” Barque said, regarding the young crew member’s still form. When it became clear she would give him no satisfaction, he dropped the leaf with her assignment on her lap. “Cooks. Up here on Breach. Other side of the level.”
“And the hearthfire keeper. Performer of miracles.” Barque turned to Kindred, upper lip curling slightly. “You’re Councillor Seraph’s new pet. He’ll be by tomorrow to collect you.”
Barque dropped Kindred’s leaf to the floor as she reached to take it from him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cora asked, shaking her head and staring hard at Barque.
“The councillor wouldn’t stop talking about your dive,” Barque continued, ignoring Cora, eyes on Kindred. “How amazing it was. How incredible. But I was on the dreadnought, and all I saw was a scared boatful of Arcadian filth running from a fight.”
Not even Cora had a retort to that.
“And what about visiting our sick?” Kindred asked, as she bent to the floor to retrieve her leaf. It held only a single line of instructions in loopy, wide handwriting: I’ll come by in the morning! S
Kindred brought her eyes up to Barque’s and flinched back from the anger there.
“You don’t want to visit them, trust me,” he said, rubbing at a vine curling behind his ear.
“Don’t tell me what I want,” Kindred said, feeling her own anger rising. “When can we go visit them?”
“You can go visit your sick when I say you can and not before. This is my territory, my rules.”
* * *
Kindred looked down from the window of her room at the top of Cruel House. The crew had all drifted apart, some to meditations, some to sleep. They all waited for what was next, it seemed. But not Kindred.
Barque, promising that he merely wanted to be helpful, had stationed himself just outside the front door of Cruel House. He sat on a chair he’d taken from inside the house, his gaze drifting away. Kindred could see the anger still working through the tense line of his shoulders, the clench-unclench pull of his jaw.