The priestess's body language conveyed a blush, but with the current state of her skin it was impossible to tell. “Men were breaking into the lower hold,” she said, emotion coloring her hoarse voice. “They set off some kind of explosive. I-panicked a little, I'll admit. I called on Sharli. I did not expect her to answer-so forcefully. It was she who ascended the staircase.”
“And left your body like this?”
Ariadel nodded. “It will pass within a few days. I experienced this at my initiation rite, much more dramatically than this. Sharli is the Living Flame; we cannot host her in our mortal bodies without some aftereffect.”
Vidarian frowned, subdued. He finished his kava before answering, letting the warmth fill his stomach. “I have already directed our warrant officer to set a course for the nearest port. We will pick up medical supplies there. I have some here, of course, but none that would treat burns such as yours.”
The priestess straightened, wincing as her back thumped hard against the chair. “Captain, you said yourself, the Vkortha know our position. We cannot stop!”
Setting the empty cup on its tray, Vidarian shook his head. “I'm afraid we have no choice. There's only so much the ship's carpenter can do-one of their volleys cracked our aft mast, and we've sustained damage to the hull, not to mention the explosion site. Only the Empress's sound construction prevents her from taking on water even now. We must dock, if only for a little while.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I'm sorry, Priestess.”
Ariadel sank down into her chair, staring. “Do not be, Captain. Sharli's will or no, this is on my shoulders-and I have endangered your crew.”
Vidarian leaned forward earnestly. “Think not on it, Priestess. My crew does not fear the danger you bring-you've seen it yourself.”
She laughed bitterly. “And now they avoid me in the passages, Captain. It will not be the same after this.”
“They'll get past it,” Vidarian insisted, though his own heart caved with doubt. “We've seen more than you might think.” He smiled then, and would have reached to pat her hand out of reflex, but caught himself in time. Instead he stood and gave her a bow, reminding them both of his duty. “The crew of the Empress Quest remains at your disposal, priestess. We will see you safely to your destination, I promise you.”
They sailed through the night and approached Westhill Harbor just as dawn was pooling crimson on the eastern horizon. The crew worked with silent efficiency to bring the Empress into port, dropping anchor under Marielle's direction, though Ilsut had ordered her restricted to her quarters. Vidarian selected a dozen crewmembers to accompany him ashore, separated into two groups. One group he intended to return to the Empress after the supply run-the other he did not.
As they were making their preparations to disembark, Vidarian stood before the door to Marielle's cabin. He adjusted the boatswain's pipe-captain's gold-around his neck, running his thumb across the engraved Rulorat lettering on its throat. Then he knocked.
Marielle opened the door, and a jolt of surprise registered in her eyes, fast fading with her perfunctory nod and salute. “Captain,” she said only, and pulled the door further in wordless invitation. The reef charts for Westhill were spread across her cot, but this was the only defiance of neatness. She was, of course, already packed.
He stepped inside and shut the door, then spared a moment to see if she would permit awkward silence between them.
She did. In another officer, such silence might be nervous, searching-a hound seeking approval, fearing reprimand-but Marielle's clear grey stare was predator's patience. Vidarian had only seen a wolf once, a caged creature kept by a wealthy nobleman who had employed the Quest on occasion. Even confined, the animal had looked at him just like this.
“I intend to take half of the crew inland,” he began, and when she opened her mouth to remind him she'd already been briefed, he raised his hand in a request to continue. “We'll need lumber for the hull repairs, and I aim to be displeased with Westhill's lot.”
Marielle's eyebrows lifted. “Westhill has perfectly fine lumber, sir. The coastal hardwood.” The tiniest kernel of her old willfulness was there, but only just.
“It may be fine for Westhill, but not for my Empress,” he said, thumping the nearest bulkhead for emphasis. “I'll demand red teak, what she's built of.” She straightened to object again, and he spoke quickly to cut her off. “A week inland, I know, and more than that on return. But there I'll split the land crew again. Half will fetch the lumber and cross coastward to meet you here,” he moved to the Westhill chart and indicated a spot back up the coast from their current position. “In two days, I'll return with the other half, and we'll hire passage on the next ship to pass through.”
“You, and the priestess,” Marielle continued for him, quick on the uptake as usual, though her voice and humor remained low. Then she started. “The Quest will sail without you.”
Even though it was his own plan, her words made his stomach drop. “Yes,” he said. “It will. After I've seen the priestess to Zal'nehara, we'll meet you back at Val Harlon.”
Marielle went to the charts on her cot, stirred them, ostensibly reading routes but clearly searching her thoughts. “And doing this you aim to shake the pursuit,” she said carefully, her eyes racing with branching speculation.
“That's one reason,” he said, and she made a rough noise, a growl in preparation for protest, but he cut her short with a shake of his head. “By turning over command of the Quest to you, by returning her to sea with you alone at the helm, you will have a field promotion according to the naval codes. And field captains…”
Marielle sucked in her breath, and paled, then flushed. Several things warred on her face-the tight stubbornness of her lips, the outrage in her flared nose-but more than anything, the wide, vulnerable hope in her eyes. The hope of a woman who had given up such frivolous things. He hated it, deeply: what their destinies had done to them. But he was not about to go down without a fight, and neither, ultimately, would she. “Field captains…are exempt from qualification drills,” she finished for him, with awe and disbelief at her own words.
“The war code,” he agreed. It had never been rescinded. Neither, however, had it been invoked in eighty years-since the last of the sea wars, ended when Vidarian's grandfather was a young man.
Marielle was silent for a long moment, her clouded eyes betraying thoughts turned inward. Thinking madly, Vidarian was sure, of a reason he could be wrong.
He laughed, startling her. “This must be the first time I've actually seen you speechless,” he said.
“I don't like it,” she said, finally.
“There you are,” he said. “Back to normal.”
“I'm serious, Vidarian,” she said. “Captain.” The hope had faded into worry, and he spared a wistful moment for it, memorizing what it had been like to see her so alight. “You've never been away from this ship so long. Your father was never.”
“And it is my family's mandate, my grandfather's action, that binds me now to this task,” he said, all levity forgotten. “It does not bind the crew. Therefore my duty to protect them, weighed with my duty to fulfill the-” She looked at him sharply, and he skated around the inflammatory term. “The Agreement made by my grandfather,” and the outrage faded a touch from her eyes, “demands this course.”
She shook her head again, but sighed, and he knew he had won. “Duty,” she mused, putting vinegar into the word.
“Mine,” he agreed, and removed the golden boatswain's pipe and its chain from his neck. He picked up her hand and pressed the pipe into it, curling her fingers around its precious throat. “And yours.”
Marielle looked down at her folded hand with trepidation and wonder. Yet, again, these were short-lived, as her shrewdness took over once more. Her fingers loosened around the pipe. The echo of his father's identical motion ten years ago shot through him like lightning, but Marielle's worried eyes brought him back to himself. “You don't have to do this,” she said.“There's no need-”
“I don't have to,” he agreed, and closed her fingers around the pipe again. “But it's my decision.”
“I thought not to change it,” she said simply. “But I will thank you.” Her voice was suddenly hoarse, as she brushed the pipe chain with the tips of her fingers, tracing it. Making sure, Vidarian thought, that it was real. “Thank you, sir.”
Vidarian drew her into a rough, brief embrace, and she cleared her throat repeatedly, blinking. “We can't escape our destinies,” he said, then withdrew, but gripped her firmly by the shoulder. “But we can use what power we have for the benefit of those deserving.”
Marielle returned the embrace, her hand steady on his collarbone. “Aye.” She lifted the pipe in a little toast. “And may neither of us regret it.”
Abovedeck, a clamor from the main deck drew Vidarian from making a final check of the carpenter's repair plan. The shouts from the crew were concerned, not panicked, and so he did not run, but moved quickly nonetheless for the foremast.
The crew had been loading supplies into the dories for their trip inland. Among the tools had been an ice barrel; Marks was supervising the unpacking of several measures of meat and fish for the land journey, and consolidating their ice to help preserve what remained. Ice, floated down the river from Kara'zul, was easily found in Val Harlon, and they'd taken on a quantity of it to ease the journey through the Outwater.
Ariadel had, beyond any sane explanation, doused herself in the reserved ice awaiting consolidation, and the water that the ice had melted into over the weeks at sea. She was drenched and shivering from top to waist, and was now being swathed in linen run up hurriedly from the hold.
“No accounting for ‘em,” Calgrath muttered as he passed, shaking his head, “the whims of priestesses.” Doutbless a thousand new superstitions would spring up around her latest escapade.
Vidarian went to see to her himself, aiming to find out why in the world she'd dunk herself in ice water, but as he accepted a quickly offered stack of linen from young Lifan, Ariadel spoke first, bringing him up short.
“You're nowhere near as sure of this plan as you'd like them to think,” she murmured, teeth chattering, and he looked around rapidly to see if anyone else had heard. “It's all right,” she added. “I understand.” And her quiet smile, given the impertinence of the observation, was entirely too warming.
As they disembarked into the dories, Marielle stood at the winch, captain's pipe in hand. Vidarian was sure she was unaware of how tightly she clenched it. At her right hand, Malloray Underbridge, a mute who'd served on the Quest since Vidarian's father's days, stood watching the distant harbor nervously, mouthing silent meditation chants. In the twenty-odd years Vidarian had known him he had never once set foot on shore-an odd fellow, but with an uncanny intuition for sea conditions and trade commodities that had kept him aboard on his own terms.
“Fair seas, Captain,” Vidarian said as his dory descended toward the water, saluting Marielle. At his accolade, Marielle straightened, saluting in return, and most of the crew couldn't hide their enthusiasm, grinning and returning her salute in kind. Whispered explanations passed through the group for those who looked around, not understanding, and then they took up their own shouted farewells and cat-calls. By the time the small passenger boats touched water, Marielle was shouting commands, her tone daring any who might test her authority, and quick footfalls echoed down from the deck as those left aboard leapt to. And in spite of their downward passage throwing the ship's damage into sharp relief, her side listing in a way that made Vidarian's heart lurch, he smiled as they set off across the harbor.
In Westhill, Vidarian made a great show of his dissatisfaction with the local hardwood, oscillating between the genteel apologies of a tradesman who dared not burn bridges in any port and the ravings of a foam-addled seafarer. In the end, he threw up his hands in mock surrender, by turns apologizing to the logging master and haranguing the quality of his product. When they left for the harbor's small livery stable to rent carts for the journey inland, despite the loss of business the loggers seemed relieved to see their backs.
Two men sat in the back of the last cart armed with muskets; they would be marked, no doubt, by passersby, but no more (or so Vidarian hoped) than the average commodity-bearing caravan. To further mask their intentions, they had also taken on a quantity of extra fruit in the carts; true merchantmen, on such a “tedious” mission, would have made the most of it by carrying goods to their inland destination, and so they did.
The priestess sat cloaked beside Vidarian as he drove the leading cart. Her color had improved somewhat, and her eyes looked less sore and watery. By midday, though she remained somewhat subdued, she carried her half of a conversation that helped pass the time (as only so much amusement could be derived from watching the back end of their grey mule).
As the road continued to stretch long before them, the topics grew increasingly familiar. “Priestess,” Vidarian said at last, “I really must know. Your, er, display with the ice barrel…” Ariadel flushed, opening her mouth for an obvious refutation, and Vidarian reminded her, “You pledged your honesty, for my ears if no other's.”