Raef laid a hand to the mast and felt for the Ino’s pitch and yaw, her rhythm and response to the waves and wind.
“See anything?” he asked, peering out from the crow’s nest with a grin.
“No.” Kinos grumbled. “Same as the last twenty times you asked.”
Raef had thought he’d miss Versinae, but he liked the sun. He liked the sea. From up here, in the crow’s nest, he could see everything, and this view had none of Boat Town’s squalor. The prince was generous with provisions, and Raef especially liked having something to eat every day.
Leaving the city had mostly unknotted the ball of worries in his gut. The knights and the Grief were behind them, but Kinos didn’t seem happy.
“At least we’re headed in the right direction,” Raef reminded him.
“You’ve said that twenty times too,” Kinos said.
He only grew more tense as they approached their destination, like proximity to his island made it less possible, less real.
They’d passed islets and rocks, some home to birds, some dotted with ruins that might have meant something in another age.
“That’s what matters, isn’t it?” Raef asked, bristling. He wasn’t used to being the one finding the positive side of things. “That we’re sailing east?”
“And I can cook all the way,” Kinos groused.
He did have a point.
Cormac had fished them from the bay and taken Raef’s stash for payment, handing it off to the hulking quartermaster. It wasn’t enough to pay for their passage, so they earned their keep by working off the difference.
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Kinos had said.
“It wouldn’t be if we were just hauling cargo,” Cormac had answered. “But we’re at war.”
Raef and Kinos had exchanged glances while Cormac explained that the prince had given him a writ of privateering against Tethis. Versinae’s southern rival had long contested their trading routes to Delia, the eastern continent, and the Ino was allowed to attack any ship flying Tethean colors.
The crew were in it for the money, their cut of the spoils. They were a rough, superstitious lot, and Raef was glad that he and Kinos had a little room in the hold where they could lock the door. That they had the space to themselves, privacy and proximity, was a boon.
Stripped and dried, they’d laid down that first night with a finger’s distance between them. Despite the terror of the fire and his exhaustion, Raef had been restless, almost fevered, wanting to close the space.
Then Kinos had.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, he said Raef’s name, and it unlocked him.
“What’s that?” Kinos asked, leaning over the rail and snapping Raef back to the moment and out of the warm reverie.
Raef squinted.
Something bobbed on the horizon.
Sails came into view.
“A ship,” Raef said.
The hull rose, wider than the Ino, built more for transport and cargo. “Definitely a merchant.”
“You don’t have to tell them,” Kinos said.
Raef could see the merchant’s flags. She wore the trident of Tethis, bronze on a bottle green field.
“This isn’t our fight.”
Kinos wasn’t wrong, not exactly. Raef was from Versinae, not that he’d ever consider the prince his ruler or himself one of the man’s subjects. Raef couldn’t imagine killing people over trade routes and spoils.
They owed Cormac, but more than that, Raef did not trust the crew not to turn on them if they held back.
“It’s too risky,” he said. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt Kinos.
He rang the bell. The crew scrambled into motion, climbing into the rigging to sight the ship.
Raef put his hands to the new knife on his belt, a gift from Cormac. Most of the crew wore blades. They really had left Versinae where only the knights were allowed to openly carry cutting weapons.
Raef and Kinos’s clothes had been spoiled by their escape from the palace. Cormac had found them cast-offs from his quarters. Kinos’s were a little loose, but Raef’s fit him near perfectly. He wore a leather cuff, another gift from the captain, one wide enough to hide the shadowknife’s growing mark on his wrist.
The Ino was long and narrow, bigger than many of the warships Raef had seen at the docks. Her four masts gave her black hull the speed to cut the waves like a knife.
“Sails!” Cormac called from the wheelhouse.
As dark as her hull, they went taut with the wind.
The Ino rushed forward, the ram at her prow aimed toward the merchant. Wood creaked. The waves splashed, and Raef’s heart raced to match her stride.
Spotting the danger, the merchant turned, filling her sails, but they’d caught her unaware. She’d be no match for them.
Raef leaned out from the nest to watch the crew ready themselves.
“You’re enjoying this,” Kinos said.
“It is exciting,” Raef admitted, feeling the wind rush through his hair.
“People are going to die, Raef.”
“Maybe not,” Raef said, though his guts tightened.
They did not ease as the chase went on.
No one laid claim to this piece of sea, especially since the Grief had silenced powerful islands like Thiva.
Raef’s dread slackened and tightened as the merchant gained and lost distance. The merchants tossed items overboard, barrels and furniture, anything that might weigh them down.
“They’d drop their cargo if they were clever,” Raef said. “The crew would stop for that.”
Kinos didn’t say anything. The wind whipped his hair about his face.
“It’s not like we can stop it,” Raef said.
“We didn’t have to help make it happen,” Kinos snapped.
Raef didn’t answer that.
He didn’t say it, but part of him wanted a fight. He itched for action, any kind of action. The sea and sun were beautiful, the constant taste of salt fresher than the city’s air, but the days were long. They gave him too much time to remember the beach, the screams of the burning Sharks, and the sight of the priests, those he’d lost, who’d been there the entire time. If he’d known, he might have fed them blood, might have given them all of his own to keep them from joining the Grief. That was probably why they’d never revealed themselves to him. They’d known he’d sacrifice himself. There had been moments, far too many nights, when he might have done it just to see their faces one more time.
Raef welcomed the chance to act, to do something other than chores and wait for his nights with Kinos. He turned back and forth, scanning the horizon for other ships as the Ino closed with her prey.
Cormac shouted orders from the wheel, bringing them alongside the merchant. They’d have her soon.
“Come on,” Raef said. Worried about the impact between the ships shaking them from the nest, he tugged Kinos’s sleeve. “We don’t want to be up here when they collide.”
“Will we be safer down there?” Kinos asked.
“They’re merchants. I don’t think they’ll try to board us.”
Kinos squinted at the other crew as he reached for the rope ladder leading to the deck.
“They’re blue.”
“Yeah, they’re Tetheans.”
Spreading his feet when they reached the deck, Raef braced for the collision. Closer. Closer.
The ships slammed together, rattling Raef’s teeth. Kinos kept his footing, but Raef stumbled to the deck. He straightened as the Ino’s crew leaped the rail, crossing to the merchant.
The battle spilled back onto the Ino and Raef drew his knives.
“Then again, they are Tetheans,” he said.
“We should have stayed in the nest,” Kinos said.
“Climb up,” Raef said. “I’ll cover you.”
“Hardly,” Kinos said. He drew a pole from the rigging and gripped it with both hands.
A Tethean charged them, sword held over his head, his eyes mad with panic. Raef gripped his knives. He’d never killed anyone. He still didn’t want to, but he’d defend himself. He’d defend Kinos.
Raef’s stomach roiled and he tried to pretend it was the rocking of the ship and not his rising gorge. He tensed as the man came on.
Kinos jabbed out, popping the Tethean between the eyes with the butt of his improvised staff. The sailor staggered back and Kinos swung, sweeping the man’s legs out from under him. His sword clattered to the deck. Raef leaped forward to kick it away.
The man scrambled backward as Cormac stalked toward them.
“Not bad,” the captain said.
A pair of merchants charged them.
Cormac whirled to engage one. Raef did not have time to watch for Kinos as a large man came at him.
The sailor swung out, his sword as long as Raef’s arm.
Raef ducked inside his reach, jabbed his knife into the man’s side. The Tethean screamed and shifted his swing. His blade bit into Raef’s arm.
“Raef!” Kinos called from somewhere.
Raef dropped his knife to clasp the cut. Blood welled between his fingers.
The merchant took a heaving breath.
“Sorry, kid,” he said, raising his sword for a final blow.
Frozen, Raef could only watch, tasting his own terror.
The merchant’s eyes bulged. He choked and stilled as Cormac shoved him off the tip of his lean sword. Raef hadn’t seen the pirate captain dart in to stab the man from behind.
“Bad?” Cormac asked with a concerned look at Raef’s arm.
“I don’t think so,” Raef said.
“Good,” Cormac said. “I’ll be right back.”
He dove into the fray.
The merchant Kinos had disarmed kept his hands up. He shook, clearly wanting no more trouble.
“Are you hurt?” Raef asked.
“No,” Kinos said, eyes fixed on Raef’s bloody arm.
The sun stood high above them, and no Grief gathered on the open sea, but Raef still eyed the shadows.
The merchants surrendered and the Ino’s crew tied them to their mast.
Kinos stared, his eyes fixed on the bodies.
The Tetheans followed the goddess of storm and surge, but most Aegeans would loathe a burial in water. There wasn’t a prayer to her in the blessing for the dead.
“They drink silver water to make their blood less palpable to the shades,” Raef said, though he could see from the dead man that it ran red enough. “That’s why they’re blue.”
“Does it work?” Kinos asked, his voice hoarse.
“I don’t know, but they say Tethis is particularly haunted. That’s why they’ve been moving farther north.”
They inched forward as the Ino’s crew swarmed over the captured ship like ants across a mouse. One pirate lay swooning on the Ino’s deck. His leg hung crushed and limp.
“What happened?” Raef asked a passing crewman.
The man didn’t answer.
“He got caught between the ships when they met,” Cormac said. The captain swigged from an open bottle. “Try not to let that happen to you.”
Raef’s blood began to cool. The battle had chased away the burning beach and his memories of fire. He hoped they would stay gone, but knew the merchant with his bulging eyes would join the Sharks and the other things he saw when he closed his eyes. Even lying in Kinos’s arms couldn’t completely chase them away.
“Are you all right?” Cormac asked.
“Yeah, just . . .” Raef trailed off.
“Let me see that cut.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
Cormac took Raef by the arm and dribbled wine into the wound. Raef winced.
“You don’t need stitches,” Cormac said. “But we should have the surgeon check to be certain.”
Raef felt Kinos watching as Cormac pulled the black scarf from around his neck. He tied it around Raef’s upper arm as a bandage.
“You should use a sword next time.” He still hadn’t let go of Raef’s arm. “It has better reach.”
“You’d have to teach me how to use it.”
“I can do that.” Cormac gave the scarf one last tug to tighten it. “But keep practicing with the knives. You’re good with one in each hand. Not everyone can say that.”
“Now what?” Raef asked.
“Now we see what they’re carrying,” Cormac said. “Go help.”
Before Raef could start walking, Cormac put a hand on his arm.
“I’m glad you’re all right.”
“Thanks,” Raef said.
Kinos kept his distance, clearly trying to look like he wasn’t watching.
“What?” Raef asked.
“Nothing.” Kinos shook his head. “I’ll tell you later.”
It took Raef a moment to match his balance to the heavier ship’s softer rhythm. He breathed deeply, relieved that the smell of fresh blood remained above.
The merchant’s hold was broader, with fewer bulkheads, to ease the storage of more cargo.
“I’ve always wanted a look inside one of these,” he said, eyeing the nets the crew used for bunks. “They don’t sail into Versinae anymore.”
“Have you been on a lot of ships?”
“Only for jobs with Maurin,” Raef said. “Come on, let’s see what we can find.”
He led Kinos into the lower hold.
“Stay here,” Raef said.
Leaving Kinos in the beam of daylight falling from above, Raef squeezed into the smaller spaces where the larger pirates couldn’t fit or wouldn’t be able to see.
The merchant ship was cleaner than the Ino, with none of the refuse and unwashed clothing that gave the black ship’s tighter spaces a sour odor.
Raef wriggled between the beams, letting instinct and the shadowsight carry him, exploring until his fingers brushed something pliant.
“Got you,” he said.
“What is it?” Kinos asked.
“Let’s find out,” Raef said.
He hooked a finger into a drawstring and tugged a thick leather purse free of its hiding place.
Raef opened the bag and dropped a heavy gold piece into Kinos’s palm. Kinos held it up to the light.
A golden Hierarch, the coin minted in Ilium with the man’s visage.
Raef took another from the bag. Everything was supposed to go into the common pile, but he could take some, maybe one for each shoe. They were worth a lot.
Kinos put his hand over Raef’s and shook his head.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
“You had that hungry look on your face. It’s not worth the risk.”
Raef sighed and dropped the coin back into the bag.
They searched for a while longer.
Kinos found a sack of dusty wine bottles squirreled beneath a bunk, but nothing else.
“That can’t be all of it,” the quartermaster said, bouncing the purse in his palm when Raef and Kinos took their loot topside. A broad-shouldered black man, he had a book and quill to take account of the crew’s finds.
“I didn’t take any,” Raef said.
“That’s not what I meant,” the quartermaster growled with a nod as Kinos put the wine with the rest of the tools and food.
“There’s no cargo, so there must be payment,” Cormac said, eyeing the captured survivors.
The youngest, a boy, stared at the deck like he wished to throw himself overboard. An open cut on his cheek bled freely, the line of red a stark contrast against his blue skin and yellow curls.
Cormac drew his sword a hand’s length from its scabbard.
“Where’s the rest?” he demanded. “Where’s your trade?”
The curly-haired boy’s eyes brimmed with tears. The captive beside him elbowed his ribs in warning.
“You gave us a good chase,” Cormac continued. He let the sword slide back into the scabbard, pulled it out a hand’s length and let it slide back. “I’d prefer to let you live, but my patience is slim.”
The merchants did not answer.
Kinos moved closer to Raef.
Cormac stopped playing with his sword and called over his shoulder, “Burn her mast.”
“No,” Raef said, unable to hold it in.
The pirates lit torches and the smell brought back the blistering heat, the screams, the tears of the orphans.
“Tell them what they want to know,” he begged. “Please.”
“There’s a compartment,” the man who’d elbowed the boy said. “Under the helm.”
The pirates raced to check, but Raef’s eyes stayed fixed on the torchbearers.
“Lamp oil!” someone cried. “Barrels of it!”
“Douse those torches!” Cormac shouted. “Quickly!”
“You’re shaking,” Kinos whispered in Raef’s ear.
“I need a drink.”
Kinos put a hand on his shoulder. Raef reached to grip it and steadied himself with the touch.
The quartermaster added the oil to his ledger, listing the spoils by crew member, and setting aside an extra portion for the injured man. Raef’s eyes widened at the amounts the crew would make. Versinae’s crown paid well for strikes against its rival.
The crew started in on the wine before the quartermaster put away his quill. One pirate, a ruddy-faced woman with cauliflower ears, offered Raef her cup.
He reached for it, but waved her off when he noticed Kinos’s frown.
The Ino’s crew were criminals and cutthroats, but they’d been kind, easygoing even. Raef admired Cormac’s hold over them. It stretched and slackened, tethered by his smile and the pitch of his voice as he moved among them, patting backs and checking injuries, tossing out praise and compliments.
The captain climbed the merchant’s mast, rising above the din with a bottle in his hand. A few strands of his glossy hair came free as the wind tossed it side to side. Beneath him, the bound merchants watched, wide-eyed and terrified.
“Do we keep her?” Cormac shouted.
“No!” the crew responded.
The woman with the swollen ears waved at the merchant ship as if shooing away a fly.
“Burn her!” she called.
Raef tried to keep his face neutral, to not let his feelings show, but he squeezed the hilts of his knives hard enough to leave marks pressed into his palms. He should have taken the drink.
A stain darkened the front of the curly-haired boy’s breeches. Cormac caught Raef staring and followed his gaze.
“Cut her loose,” he said.
The Ino’s crew booed and hissed their discontent.
Raef let out a long breath as the captain dropped to the deck. The sober ones among the crew worked at separating the entangled ships. Cormac tossed a knife at the prisoners. It skidded to a stop near their feet.
“With a little luck you’ll soon be free and underway,” he said. “Be grateful we left your sails.”
Raef did not know how the merchants could serve such a cruel goddess. Tethis was no friend.
He thought, as the ships parted, that he saw the blond boy give him her salute, three fingers spread in a trident. He lifted his hands to hold them before his chest as if a sphere rested between them but stopped himself in time. He could not risk making Phoebe’s sign, not even among pirates.
“You spared them,” Raef said when Cormac came near again.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Cormac asked. “The battle was over. We got what we wanted from them.”
“The crew didn’t want to let them live,” Kinos said.
“The crew aren’t in charge.”
“But they have a say,” Kinos argued.
“They do,” Cormac agreed.
Raef snaked out an arm to catch Cormac before he could dash off.
“We’re still heading east, right?” Raef asked.
“They have a say,” Cormac said with a smile. “But I set the course.”
They stayed on deck until the merchant had slipped beneath the horizon and the Ino sat alone on the Shallow Sea. The calm came too quickly, as if there hadn’t been blood and the threat of fire moments ago. True, few of either crew had died, but Raef could not shake the look of terror on the blue boy’s face.
The crew scrubbed the blood from the deck with seawater and brushes as Raef and Kinos descended into the hold. Screams met them as the surgeon sawed off the ruined leg of the man who’d been crushed between the ships.
Raef exhaled as they left the noise behind. Their little cabin was near the aft, somewhere beneath Cormac’s own.
Raef’s stomach fluttered every time they approached it. It was barely large enough for the single bed they shared.
Cormac had given them the room without comment, another odd gift that Raef had accepted but did not know how to take.
After days at sea, he’d become accustomed to sleeping beside Kinos, breathing the same air, occupying the same narrow space. They slept tangled up in one another, skin to skin, and Raef knew every bit of Kinos’s body by sight and touch.
His thin beard had almost grown back. He scratched at it now.
The light from the little window was bright enough that Raef did not need the shadowsight. Music, badly played on a pipe and violin, drifted in with the light.
“Hungry?” Raef asked as he closed the door. He hoped not. He did not want to be among the crew while they celebrated their victory, especially with the wine flowing so freely.
“No,” Kinos said.
He frowned, and Raef hoped it was because he felt the same about the crew.
“We should check your arm,” Kinos added.
Raef flexed it and barely felt the sting.
Kinos moved closer. He pulled up the scarf to check the red line of the cut.
“I thought it was worse.” He tugged the scarf tight again. “I’m glad you didn’t hurt anyone.”
This near, Raef could smell Kinos. Spice from the kitchen and salt from their baths in the sea. Not bad, just human—alive. Raef shifted nearer and Kinos trailed fingertips from his shoulder to his palm. He took Raef’s hand in his. They stood together, swaying with the ship. It almost felt like they were dancing.
“I cut that one man,” Raef said.
“At least you didn’t kill him.”
“I couldn’t let him hurt you.”
“I appreciate that, but I’d rather we weren’t in a situation where it could happen.”
“We need to pull our weight,” Raef said. “We’re still a long way from Eastlight.”
“We’ll be there soon.”
Kinos didn’t sound excited.
“What is it?” Raef asked.
“I—I don’t know what we’ll find, Raef. I don’t know if they’re all right.”
“We have to hope,” Raef said. “The knights are a lot of things, but they’re honest.”
“And . . .” Kinos stammered. “I don’t know what you’ll make of it, of me, when we get there. It’s not at all like Versinae.”
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” Raef said.
These days and nights together had given him something he hadn’t had before, and he could, maybe someday, love Kinos too. But he wasn’t ready for that. He held those words back, just like he’d held back telling Kinos about the shadowknife. It felt too soon, like a leap off a cliff. It also felt inevitable, but he wasn’t ready to take that step.
“How far is it now?” he asked instead.
Kinos looked to the bed. He made it each morning, though Raef didn’t see the point.
“We’re here,” Kinos said, using his fingertip to draw an X on the blanket. He drew a large shape to the south. “And here’s Thiva.”
Kinos dragged his fingers toward the foot of the bed and made a smaller dip with his thumb.
“That’s Eastlight.”
Then he sat, looking over his shoulder at the rough map, then at Raef from the corner of his eye. He smiled, inviting Raef to join him.
Raef sat and Kinos moved his hand, brushed it down Raef’s back, settling it just behind him.
Raef leaned closer, offering an invitation. He could feel Kinos’s breath, warm and a little ragged on his lips.
“Raef,” Kinos whispered, once, before leaning to kiss him.