"That is good to hear."
"It won't last," I say. "The storm is coming."
They both stare at me. I drop my gaze, my face heating.
"Yeah, well, maybe 'better' was a little strong," the ghost says after a moment.
"Your brother struggles," says the other, the weather-witch. "Do not blame him for that."
"Oh, I don't." The ghost sounds weary. "I just… I don't know."
"I'm sorry," I say, my voice a choked whisper.
"Oh, Kethe, no. Powers, I'm such a fuck-up." The ghost touches my arm gently, and I look up at him. The colors around him are darker now, deeper. "Felix, it's okay. It ain't your fault."
The weather-witch asks, "How long has he been this way?"
"I don't know. Don't think he knows either."
There is a silence; I look up at the stars, serene and brilliant and out of reach. I can remember standing, looking at them, somewhere else, in some other time, but they have never been as clear to me as they are now.
The ghost says, "He's getting worse."
"We will reach Haigisikhora soon," the weather-witch says. "The celebrants of the Gardens are both wise and learned. They will help."
"Thanks, Vasili," the ghost says.
"For what? I have done nothing."
"Yeah. You didn't run screaming."
"There is nothing here to flee from," the weather-witch says gently. "Neither in you nor in him."
The ghost snorts, but does not answer.
"In any event," the weather-witch says, "he was right about one thing. There's a storm coming."
"A bad one?"
"Could be. It's early to tell."
"Well, better get you below regardless," the ghost says to me. "Come on, then."
Obediently, I start back down the ladder. I have shamed my ghost-brother; from the way he and the weather-witch speak, I know it is not the first time. He stays behind me down the passageway, follows me into the cabin, and locks the door behind him.
"If there's a storm coming, you better sleep now." He is always brusque, but I hear an edge of contempt, of impatience in his voice.
"I'm sorry," I say again, sitting down.
"It ain't your fault."
"But I…"
"I shouldn't've said what I did. I'm just tired." He sighs and runs one hand across his muzzle. "The curse, you know."
I remember the vicious thorns and nod.
"Go to sleep, Felix," he says, taking off his boots and lying down on the other bed. "Once we're at the Gardens and you're better, we can take an afternoon and say we're sorry to each other 'til it evens out. Let it go 'til then. I'm sorry and you're sorry and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it." He rolls over to face the wall; he is done talking to me.
I lie down and watch the black anger flapping slowly across the ceiling. It feels the storm coming, too. It is waiting.
Mildmay
We'd had some storms, the first two decads of the
Morskaiakrov's
voyage. Ilia'd said as how we were coming up on the worst of the storm season, and once they'd done with their business in Haigisikhora, they'd be putting in at Yaga, their home island—wherever the fuck that was—and staying a month or three. So I figured me and Felix were lucky we'd reached the ocean when we had, and I tried to remember to be grateful for that, too.
It was the second or third day of the third decad since we'd left Kekropia, and everybody said we should be sighting Troia in the next day or so. That made me feel way better, because it meant I'd be that much closer to handing Felix over to people who could help him. I felt like something inside me had unkinked just a little, and I was still feeling that way when I went up on deck in the morning and saw the big black smudge of cloud on the horizon.
It was just like fucking Nera all over again. I looked at Fiodor, the nearest guy to me, and I didn't have to ask. He said, "Yes, Vasili has been up all night working the weather. But Dmitri has cut things perhaps too fine, and there is only so much Vasili can do. It is hard to swerve Ocean and Sky from their deepest desires."
"Right," I said. "Can I help?"
I could, of course, and I spent I don't know how many hours doing this, that, and the other thing while Dmitri tried to outrace the storm. I got to confess I never did understand above half of what it was that went on with the ropes in that ship, but the Merrows were all real good about saying exactly what they wanted, and I didn't do nothing wrong. But the
Morskaiakrov
just wasn't fast enough, and you didn't need to know nothing about ships to see it. Them black clouds were crawling up our ass, and we weren't even close enough to see Troia yet.
At some point I went down to help Ilia with the gallons and gallons of hot tea that everybody needed, because the wind was getting harder and colder and meaner every time you had to stand up in it, and I asked him straight out, "Are we fucked?"
"Maybe," he said. "She is a stout ship, our
Morskaiakrov
, and Dmitri is a canny captain. We may yet elude Sky's anger. But I admit I would not place any large bets on it."
"Thanks," I said, and I was turning to get the tea urn to take on deck when Ilia said, "Mildmay."
I looked around fast, because they none of them hardly ever used my name. He said, "If she sinks… there is room for only one extra in the longboat."
"Kethe." Everything inside my chest squeezed up like a fist.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Truly. It should not have mattered."
"No, 'course not. You weren't planning on getting caught in this bitch of a storm."
"Dmitri says that we will do as you wish. If you want your brother to have that place, we will do our best, although many of us are frightened of him. But we will not blame you if you wish that place for yourself. You would be welcome to come back to Yaga with us."
And be pointed out as the guy who'd let his brother die to save his own skin? "Thanks," I said. "But you can tell Dmitri that if it comes to that, you pack food or something in that space."
Ilia's eyebrows went up, and I wished that didn't make me wonder what he thought of me. "Are you sure?"
"I won't leave him. And you'd never get him in the boat without me." That maybe wasn't strictly true, but I'd got Dmitri's measure. He wasn't no bad guy, but the second time Felix had a screaming fit because of all the water, Dmitri would dump him over the side. And I ain't saying he'd be wrong, neither. He had his crew to look out for, and if Felix capsized them, they were all going to be in a world of trouble.
"If you change your mind—"
"I know, I know. And thanks." And I grabbed the urn and went back up on deck.
The storm hit us around about sunset. And when I say hit, I ain't kidding. It was like getting clocked with a sledgehammer, and I swear by all the powers and saints it was raining straight sideways. The waves were more like cliffs, and you could feel the smack of the
Morskaiakrov
coming down again all the way up at the top of your skull. And it was pitch-black and the wind was howling so loud you couldn't hear nothing unless somebody yelled right straight into your ear.
But I heard it just fine when the ship started groaning. It was a terrible noise, and I didn't have to be no sailor to guess what it meant. I'd been helping Ilia pack the stores, and I looked up at him, and he nodded back at me. I kind of lurched my way over to him and yelled, "Y'all go on. Don't worry about us."
He gave me a look, but it wasn't the sort of thing anybody'd be inclined to argue about with the ship clearly getting ready to come apart around our ears. He made a flapping gesture—
go on to your
brother
—and since there wasn't nothing else neither of us could say, I shook his hand and went.
Now, if you'd asked, I'd have to admit I didn't have nothing even resembling a plan. I wasn't keen on dying, and it was really fucking annoying to get Felix this close to this damn fucking place he'd been nagging my head off about for what felt like half my life, and then let him drown. I mean, it was just such a stupid waste. But how I was going to get him to land when I didn't know quite where land was? Not a clue. All I could do was keep moving forward and hope for the best, and the next thing forward from where I was standing was to get Felix out of Dmitri's cabin, because if he was still locked in there when the ship sank, he
would
drown, no two ways about it.
So I got to the door and unlocked it and opened it, and then I was on the floor with Felix's fingers digging into my neck. The only light I had was 'from the lantern I'd been carrying, and that was now three feet back down the passageway, so I couldn't see but hints of his face, but that was enough to pick out the bared teeth and the way his eyes were showing white all the way around. And I didn't need to see him at all to know he was trying to kill me.
I couldn't think what had set him off, but it was only about a half-centime worth of my head that even cared. We thrashed back and forth, and I was praying the lantern wasn't setting the ship on fire and praying I wouldn't break Felix's fingers and praying he didn't know just where the big arteries in the neck were or was at least too far gone to think of them. And he really didn't know much about fighting, because I went for the cheap quick, and dirty way out and he didn't know enough to block my thigh with his. A hard enough kick in the balls will take the fight out of just about anybody—least anybody male—and he went limp as the decad's washing, and I was glad I couldn't hear the noises he was making, because I was sure they were awful, and I felt like the world's worst prick without that.
You ain't leaving him here to drown, Milly-Fox. You can say that much for yourself.
I rolled him off me and started to get up, and something jabbed into my thigh. I knew what it was even before I reached into my pocket, but I was still thinking stupidly, Oh fuck, oh, Kethe, no, please, when I brought my hand out again and opened it and saw my palm was bleeding and there was a septad bits of glass, all of 'em with razor-sharp edges, and that was all that was left of the spell Felix had made Gideon do in Hermione to keep off the Mirador's curse.
"Oh fuck me sideways 'til I cry," I said, just because it was all too much and there wasn't nothing else I
could
say. Then since I wasn't a hocus and didn't know and couldn't ask the only hocus that happened to be handy, I wrapped the bits of glass in my handkerchief and stuck 'em back in my pocket. Because, I mean, my guess was the virtue'd gone out of that piece of glass when it broke, but I didn't
know
that, and if there was even half a chance I was wrong, I wasn't going to waste it.
Then I staggered upright—the
Morskaiakrov
was pitching worse than ever—and grabbed the lantern. Which turned out not to be broken after all. Small favors, I thought, although it felt more like a bad joke, and dragged Felix to his feet. His face was whitish green, and he was still gasping like a landed fish, so I figured he wouldn't be interested enough in me to put up a fight for a while yet. I started back down the passage for the ladder with a fine fuck-you-all to our bag and everything in it.
And that's when the
Morskaiakrov
shuddered and lurched like a foundering horse, and I knew she was going down. I knew it, the same way I knew water was wet and I couldn't breathe it. I didn't know if the Merrows got off the
Morskaiakrov
okay before it sank, and I ain't got the least little idea how
we
got off. I mean, you could tell me giant pelicans flew down and grabbed us, and I'd believe you. I remember having to coldcock Felix somewhere in the middle of it all, but how I figured out a hatch cover would float, and how I got it ripped free of the ship, I will just never know. Some of that was the curse waking up, I think, because when I caught up with myself again, I felt pretty damn weird.
Of course, I was also in the ocean, without my boots and with one arm across this hatch cover I didn't remember making friends with and the other arm trying to keep Felix's head out of the water. Which was enough to make anybody feel weird, especially seeing as how it was just about as black as pitch and still trying to rain sideways.
But there was more to it than that, and I only wished I could believe I was imagining it. But when you're up to your neck in seawater in the middle of a storm and you feel
hot
, you know there's something wrong with you, and it ain't small potatoes, neither. And there was this weird, deep feeling, sort of dull and sparky all at the same time, running along the bones in my arms and legs. So between the cussing and the praying, there wasn't much going on in my head in the way of actual thought. But that was okay, I guess, since there wasn't nothing I could do but wait out the storm and hope we were both alive at the end of it.
I can't tell you how long it lasted, neither. My time sense had stripped its gears, so I don't know if it was hours feeling like minutes or minutes feeling like hours. Either way it was putrid, especially since I could never figure how long it had been since I'd checked to see if Felix was breathing. And since he felt way colder than me, along of me being, like I said, too fucking hot, I couldn't quit worrying about it. So I kept feeling for his pulse or craning around—and getting a faceful of salt water, likely as not—to try and feel or hear or see if he was breathing. I must've looked crazy myself, only of course there wasn't nobody around to notice. But I kept thinking about me dragging a cold, stiff, blue-faced corpse to land, and it was just more than I could handle.
And it turned out to be a good thing I was doing my sheepdog-with-one-lamb routine, because it meant that when he started to come 'round again, I knew about it. There wasn't nothing I could
do
, mind. I just hung on to him and the hatch cover and basically prayed he wouldn't wake up in the same mood he'd been in when I knocked him out.
I felt it when Felix came 'round for real. He went stiff as a board, and I thought, Oh fuck, and there wasn't time for nothing more because all at once it was like hanging on to a wolverine that really feels it's got better places to be. He was snarling and clawing, and I think he tried to bite me.