She reached back in her memory, seeking a moment of intimate comfort. All she recalled were evenings sitting close to Chane over a parchment, drinking mint tea, his strong hands tight around his cup. During the battle in Toret’s house, he had abandoned the fight and thrown her over his shoulder to flee. She had fought and kicked him, until she realized his true intention was to remove her from harm’s way.
Chap was watching her sternly.
Wynn flinched, hoping he had not been wandering in her memories. But when she settled beside him, handing out small wooden plates, her stomach rolled once more.
And I think of Lily.
She reached out to softly stroke his back.
Magiere took the plate Wynn offered, and another knock sounded at the cabin door. She waved Wynn back down as the sage started to rise and went to the door herself.
The last face she wanted to see outside was Sgäile’s.
He averted his eyes and clutched at a long and narrow paper-wrapped bundle. He also held a seamless wooden tube about the length of his forearm. The narrow container looked much like the wood of the rain barrels in elven homes—one perfect piece, except for the unadorned pewter cap.
“May I enter?” he asked.
Magiere almost slammed the door in his face. Six days with Sgäile, most of it blindfolded, left her with little patience, but she stepped back. He entered with a respectful nod and crouched near the pile of gifts.
“Before our ship left Ghoivne Ajhâjhe,” he said, “Brot’ân’duivé gave me things for you, Léshil.”
Both Leesil and Chap narrowed their eyes at the master anmaglâhk’s name.
“I did not understand their purpose,” Sgäile went on, setting down the wooden tube, “until I saw what the Chein’âs gave to you.”
He tore open the paper bundle, exposing a matched set of long padded bars of leather.
Magiere was mildly curious. Before she could ask, Sgäile picked up one silvery winged punching blade in the pile and then rolled one bar of padding over. Its backside was split cleanly down the center between its edge stitching.
Sgäile spread the slit with his thumb and carefully slid the back of the blade’s wing into it. There was a narrow ledge of metal along the wing’s back that Magiere hadn’t noticed before, and it slid smoothly into the leather. The padded bar settled perfectly along the back of the wing.
Magiere remembered the day Leesil had bolted across the border at Soladran.
He’d viciously assaulted Darmouth’s forces hunting down peasants who fled for safety. When he returned to the city, a blow from a sword had smashed one of his blade’s wings into his forearm, leaving him black and blue for days.
But with the padding, and those half-hoop braces sprouting midpoint from the wings, these new blades would be far more stable and sure on Leesil’s forearms. Still, she knew he wouldn’t touch them.
Magiere had no doubt who’d designed and requested those blades from the Chein’âs. And who better to improve on Leesil’s original blades than someone who’d been killing all his long life?
Brot’an was up to something—again.
Before Leesil spit out his rejection, Chap snarled and rose on all fours. Head low, he growled at Sgäile, and clacked his jaws sharply as he barked twice for “no.”
“Stop it!” Wynn said.
Chap ignored her, closing on Sgäile, who froze at the dog’s rage.
“Don’t bother,” Leesil added. “I prefer my own weapons.”
Sgäile stared at Leesil in bewilderment, as if he’d been insulted for no reason. He turned his eyes back on Chap and asked, “Why?”
“Because those are Brot’an’s doing,” Wynn said tiredly.
“Shut up, Wynn!” Leesil growled.
Magiere grabbed his arm, and Leesil turned his angry gaze on her.
“Brot’an’s the one who tricked Leesil,” Magiere explained, “into finishing his mission to kill Darmouth. And Leesil . . . doesn’t want anything to do with him. Neither does Chap.”
“Do you not understand?” Sgäile said and held up one silvery winged blade, turning it slowly in the air. “No such thing has ever been made by the Burning Ones . . . only anmaglâhk blades and rare items for elders and other honored ones. Brot’ân’duivé may have requested Léshil’s new blades— but that is all! No one
tells
the Chein’âs what to make.”
Magiere wasn’t sure she believed that, no matter that Sgäile did. But weapons were only tools, and these new blades looked better than Leesil’s own.
“They’re just weapons,” she said to him. “You choose how to use them . . . nobody is going to make you do anything.”
“Ah, so you’re perfectly comfortable with your ‘gifts,’ are you?” he returned.
Magiere clenched her teeth. She wanted to smack him for turning things back on her—and because she couldn’t think of a way around his counter.
She twisted about, looking to the hiltless dagger and that thing Wynn called a torc.
“The dagger needs a hilt,” she said suddenly.
Sgäile looked down at the blade and then to Chap, waiting.
Chap shook himself all over. With one last snarl, he circled away around Wynn.
Sgäile let out a deep breath as he set down Leesil’s new blade. He picked up the long dagger and, with a nod to Magiere, turned and left.
“Happy now?” Magiere asked Leesil.
He glared back at her. “Oh, I’m overjoyed.”
“But what about this?” Wynn said. “Sgäile brought something more for Leesil.”
Magiere glanced back to find Wynn had retrieved the wooden cylinder that Sgäile had left with the other items. The sage popped the pewter cap and peered into the narrow tube, then she frowned, glancing nervously at Leesil.
“Well?” Magiere asked.
With a sigh, Wynn tilted the tube, and out slid a narrow shaft of wood—a bare length of branch. And Magiere recognized it immediately— the branch of Roise Chârmune.
When Leesil had gone with Sgäile to the burial place of the an’Cróan ancestors, he’d been given more than a new name. Leafless and barkless—yet somehow alive—the slick, fine-grained slip of branch had been needed to prove Magiere’s innocence in the face of Most Aged Father’s claims against her. And here it was again.
Magiere heard Leesil’s groan even before she looked back to find him with his face buried in his hands.
Sgäile closed the cabin door and paused in the hallway. Between Léshil and Chap’s deep hatred of Brot’ân’duivé and the rejection of gifts he himself could not fathom, he felt at a loss. Magiere’s contentious nature had broken the stalemate, but the whole exchange had left him exhausted.
He stepped down the passage to the hatch stairs, and when he reached the deck, he headed for the aftcastle stairwell. As he passed under the lanterns hanging there, his gaze caught on the dagger glinting in the light. He noticed a crack down the blade’s center.
No, a seam.
It ran perfectly straight, ending well short of the tip and the cross-guard. Sgäile studied it more closely.
The black-filled seam was so thin he could barely run a fingernail along it, and the char-colored material that filled it was as hard as the blade itself. He lifted it closer to his face and caught a whiff of cinders—or perhaps it was just the lingering smell of the heated cavern.
Sgäile headed onward for the one place a proper hilt could be made. When he reached the center of three doors in the ship’s aft, he knocked gently upon it.
“Enter . . . Sgäilsheilleache,” a deep voice answered from within.
Sgäile had not met the ship’s hkœda, yet the man called him by name. He grasped the latch, peering around the door’s edge.
Inside the ship’s heart-room chamber was a tall elf dressed in plain canvas tunic and breeches. His feet were bare, and he stood beside the large bulge in the floor that was the root-tail of the vessel, this living Päirvänean.
By the lantern’s light, he appeared gaunt but young. With his own hands, he massaged the root-tail’s base with fresh seawater. Sgäile smelled the strong aroma of herbal oil permeating the chamber.
“What do you need?” the hkœda asked.
But Sgäile was looking beyond him.
Below the side walls’ higher ledges, two long tanks stretched the full length of the heart-room. From forewall to the stern, their shorter walls flowed out of the floor, and each was filled with seawater. Within those two containers, something moved beneath the water’s surface.
Like the ship’s own tawny root, yet ending in roundly pointed heads, their tails undulated and flexed, making the tanks’ waters ripple gently.
“You have ‘swimmers’?” Sgäile asked, distracted from his purpose.
“Yes.” The hkœda’s soft smile faded. “I once served on a military Päirvänean and grew accustomed to their company.”
Sgäile hesitated. Hkœda lived out their lives on the Päirvänean with which they bonded. If this one had once served another vessel, then he had suffered a great loss—no less than one suffered in the loss of a life-mate, and not all survived such a loss. But Sgäile had never seen “swimmers” except on vessels guarding the open waters of his people.
Perhaps they were an added blessing, but he hoped there would be no need of such on this journey.
“I would ask you to grow wood for a hilt,” he said, and held up the long dagger.
The hkœda’s melancholy faded. He stepped closer, bare feet slapping wetly across the floor, and took the blade, raising one eyebrow slyly at Sgäile.
“Well . . . this is unusual.” His smirk only rankled Sgäile more. “Not a typical blade for an anmaglâhk.”
Sgäile had never cared for the inappropriate joviality of hkœda.
“Just the same,” he said shortly, “please treat it as such in preparation. And when the wood is fitted, wrap it thoroughly in gut-hide, so the wood is not exposed.”
The hkœda nodded and turned away. He placed a hand on the bulge in the floor, still shimmering wet with seawater, and laid the blade atop the root-tail’s center.
“We have something new to do,” he whispered to it, and then, seeing Sgäile still in the doorway, he flipped a hand in dismissal. “Off with you. We will let you know when your new toy is ready.”
Sgäile shook his head as he left. And perhaps he closed the door a little too hard.
This had been a very, very long day.
CHAPTER NINE
Magiere stood on deck with her companions as the crew loaded boxes and barrels into two skiffs. After three days, their ship had reached its next layover.
The cargo grate was still open, and she looked down to see the hold was nearly empty. She turned back to the wild coastline where one dock served a small settlement upon the rocky shore. Leesil stepped up beside her, and everything seemed peaceful.
But it wasn’t. She could feel it.
The crew stole furtive glances at them. They were far too quiet, even considering the presence of humans on their ship.
Sgäile, Osha, Chap, and Wynn joined Magiere at the rail-wall.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.
Wynn kept her eyes down.
“Last stop,” she whispered. “We have reached the end of an’Cróan waters. If not for us, the ship and crew would turn back north for Ghoivne Ajhâjhe. Because of us, they cannot go home.”
Magiere didn’t doubt Wynn—as her explanation made sense—but sometimes the sage’s interpretations weren’t completely on the mark.
“Is that true?” she asked Sgäile.
His thick hair hung loose today, blowing around his face in coarse, white-blond strands. The effect made him look less proper and civilized. Before he answered, the hkomas closed on all of them, speaking short, clipped Elvish. His leathery skin looked rough next to Sgäile’s, and the two conversed in careful tones.
Chap stood near Wynn, watching them.
“What’s this about?” Leesil asked.
Sgäile glanced at him and then Magiere. “It is true—we have completed the last stop. The hkomas agreed to take you wherever you asked, but now he . . . requests a more specific destination. He has sailed out of our waters a few times, but the southern coastline is perilous for his ship and crew.”
“Is the weather more severe beyond your waters?” Wynn asked.
“No,” Sgaile answered slowly. “It is a matter of protecting this vessel, as it is not military.”
“So you have other ships guarding your people?” Leesil suggested.
“We have vessels which patrol,” Sgaile confirmed and returned his attention to Magiere. “I must tell the hkomas something. Willing or not, he expects to know how far he is to go and where he leads his crew and this ship.”
Helplessness made Magiere almost as angry as did fear. She studied the hkomas, who stared back with hard eyes. He looked about fifty in human years—which meant he was much older for an elf. He crossed his sinewy arms in stiff challenge, and for all Magiere’s frustration, she couldn’t blame him. She’d have felt the same in his place.