Endera smiled.
Giving a stiff bow, Vidarian turned to stalk away, but the priestess's voice caught him just as he lifted the velvet curtain.
“One more thing, Captain.”
Vidarian froze.
“You will have no steel that bears a polish near this priestess. The Vkortha who seek her are telepaths, and can sense any such metal when it comes near the life flame of a fire priestess. It acts as their eyes.”
“Priestess, you can't possibly be serious. Our anchors, the fittings for the ship-”
“Are all salt-encrusted and infused with the energy of the sea. These are no risk. Only any polished steel that your crew may bear will be. Steel, well cared-for, retains the memory of its origin; it recalls the flame that birthed it. Each fire priestess past the initiation rite carries within her a thread of the great Mother Flame, and it calls to all its brethren.”
Unthinking, Vidarian reached for his sword, and Endera's eyes followed his hand. “This sword was my father's, and his father's before him. I'll not leave it in any port.”
“Then keep it,” she said, “but keep it covered at all times when you are in the presence of Priestess Windhammer. Any consequences that follow should you fail are yours to deal with-but if there's anything left of you when the Vkortha are through,” she tapped her fingernails on the table, and for a moment they flared like tiny suns, “there won't be when I am.”
Vidarian bowed again, tight-lipped, and strode through the arch before he could ensnare himself further. The priestess's soft voice came to him as he paused to return his hat to his head, as if it were his fate.
“Protect her well, Vidarian.”
Vidarian left the Eye as though propelled by its unceasing wind. But as he passed through the final archway, the old air priestess lifted her narrow hand, and he stopped, just short of stumbling.
“I would never question a sworn Sister,” she said without preamble, gently stroking the chameleon's back. “Yet I have known Endera for many years. Her movements are her own. And she did not come here under the command of Sher'azar.” She drew a tiny crystal whistle from her wide belt. “Take this. If it hasn't yet faded, it summons a powerful wind, the Breath of Siane.” As she smiled, her eyes vanished into the vast wrinkles above her cheeks. “You cannot imagine its value. Carry it wisely.”
As she passed him the whistle its tightly coiled strand of braided linen came unwound, and Vidarian lifted his hat, partly in salute to the air priestess, partly to allow the whistle around his neck, where he tucked it behind his neckerchief. The thought of returning to his crew with this errand had thrown his thoughts into a gale, and he felt a rush of gratitude for the kindness from this priestess of that turbulent element.
“Go with the blessing of Siane, Captain, though your winds be fierce or fair.” Her pale eyes were distant, but deep within them, as in the gullet of a hurricane, there was the glow of distant lightning. She smiled. “I suspect you'll need it.”
Marielle, the Quest's first mate, was waiting at the alabaster bridge.
Vidarian bit back a sigh as he saw her. In truth, the sight of her was steadying, but they'd agreed her responsibility was with the crew, not on the island. And from the set of her shoulders, at the moment she was not Marielle, First Mate, but Marielle I-Changed-Your-Swaddling-Clothes, Captain Sir. He averted his eyes from her aggressive grey stare out of reflex, only for an instant, which of course made things much worse.
“Dare I ask, Captain Sir, what you have gotten us into this time?”
Batten and caulk. And forge ahead.
“We've taken a commission with the Sharli Priestesshood, an escort mission to bring one of their number to the Temple at Zal'nehara, where the Nistra followers there will take charge of her welfare.” Marielle's eyes widened at about every fourth word.
“Direct through the bloody Outwater? I presume you told them how mad an idea that is?”
“She invoked the Breakwater, Marielle.”
Marielle crooked three fingers in the sign of Nistra, warding. “A name your granddad had no business agreeing to! It's a bad affair, getting between goddesses, to say nothing of a call-the-waves-down-on-me bloody agreement name like that.”
As with all true many-decade friends, Vidarian and Marielle had small, specific, manageable habits that drove each other insane. For Vidarian, Marielle's was her unavoidable religious affectation. He battened down some more. “Please try to be reasonable, Marielle. Your superstitions-”
“Are nothing of the sort, they are concrete and provable and as old as the sea herself. The crew won't have it, sir, and I don't allow as I should either,” Marielle bristled, gripping the ends of her waist sash in agitation. “‘The Wake knows they've plenty of ships of their own, these priestesses. Why the Quest?”
“They do have their own ships. And you know my obligation to them.”
“Your granddad building some ships really don't-”
“This truly isn't up for discussion, Marielle.” He stared her down, and her mouth clicked shut, but sternly as ever. “I'm sorry. I don't like it any better than you do. But I can't take my family's name and ship without their obligations. You've sailed with enough Rulorats to know that.”
Her angled eyebrows said she was almost convinced. “Will you at least consent to asking the sea witch for Nistra's forecast on this? I'll warrant you weren't foolish enough to take this on without advance payment.”
Vidarian folded his arms, instinctively moving to brush the velvet pouch in his front pocket, surreptitiously. “I'll allow it if you insist. Though nothing changes, Marielle. The Quest is committed already.”
“It'll be a forewarning, at least. Captain Sir.”
Marielle's cabin was as large as Vidarian's, being in previous generations allocated to his grandmother, when she and his grandfather had captained the ship together, all except in formality. Marielle had it so stuffed with gear and paraphernalia that it looked perhaps a third its true size.
In the back of the cabin, bolted to a table near the bed cabinet, was a large glass shelter that contained a currently purple-spotted green octopus and a large quantity of salt water. Marielle had acquired the sea witch, a peculiar southern sea creature quite famously expensive (and invaluable on ships of any merit), in a wager many decades ago.
Wordlessly, Marielle pulled her prayer book from a shelf beneath the table and opened it to the section on prophecy via sea witch. Nistra followers had discovered the sea witch's unique capabilities over a hundred years ago and instituted their use wherever possible. They needed a steady diet of small crustaceans, fresh and alive, which presented some problem to followers that lived too far inland, but Marielle kept a ready supply pulled up from the sea floor at all times. Now she pulled a leather pouch from a rack beside the bookshelf and dropped a handful of calcified sand into the water. The witch turned completely and unsettlingly transparent.
Still not speaking, she reached out a hand, palm up, toward Vidarian. He frowned just to register his disapproval and pulled the velvet pouch from his pocket, then slid the emerald from it and into her waiting fingers. Without looking at it, as if she instinctively knew its hypnotic properties, she dropped it into the tank.
From the initial flash of bubbles the emerald dropped straight down, sinking with barely a drift to right or left to rest, glowing, among the rocks at the base of the tank. The octopus writhed, reaching for the glass borders of its tiny domain like a man thrown overboard in a tempest. Then it turned the deep red of a flesh wound aged in the sun.
Marielle's face was impassive as she quickly turned the wax-slick pages in her prayer book. Carefully inked illuminations played out identical octopi in a spectrum of colors. When at last she came to the shade that closest matched the octopus's current color, with some flipping back and forth of pages to be sure, she froze and bent over the description. The prognosis was not good. Vidarian only caught the words “…except in great defiance to your safety of mind and body will…”
He prepared for the explosion as she gently, carefully closed the book. But her voice was unexpectedly low and soft.
“It ain't never come to good, your family and Sharli, Sir. Never.”
As the sun bloodied the sky to the west of Val Harlon the next evening, the Empress Quest bobbed in green water at dock nine. A slender black knife of a rivership bearing the banner of Temple Kara'zul rested beside her, and as twilight settled in, a hooded figure descended from the ramp next to the dock ten marker.
Endera's charge wore a sweeping skirt of burgundy crushed velvet and a cloak of the same, seeming not to notice the cloying heat that kept all of the sailors and passersby displaying maximum skin, even in the wind-chased evening. A belt of carved onyx cinched her narrow waist, matched by a glittering pendant around her neck. Where Endera had been a polished, silvery flame with alabaster skin and golden hair and eyes, this Priestess Windhammer was a dusky ember, dark gold her complexion and raven black the long braid whose tail brushed past her hips.
“Ariadel Windhammer,” she said, hesitating slightly upon reaching him. She extended her hand-a small, petite thing. Delicate though she might be, the priestess had a strong, firm grip. She was complete and total trouble.
Finally, he managed, “Vidarian Rulorat, captain of the Empress Quest.”
Her smile was morning breaking over the eastern sea. “Rulorat, truly? I should have trusted Endera to find me a stalwart guardian. Your family is renowned on the seas.”
Vidarian was about to answer when a soft, plaintive mew echoed up from one of the crates stacked beside the pier.
Ariadel blinked. “Do you hear that?”
“Just a dock cat.”
“Nonsense. I doubt if its eyes are even open yet.” Like a predator herself she crouched and listened intently, moving silently among the crates on the dock. The source of the mew made the mistake of scuttling from one crate to the next, and Ariadel pounced.
She pulled it from the crates as one might an unsuspected treasure. The molten light of the setting sun flashed in the kitten's green eyes, and then across Ariadel's dark ones.