You Miss a Man So Much
When Sefia returned to the Brother after saving the Apprentice Politician’s life, she found a book lying on her bunk. It was a slim black volume, with gold tooling she recognized as Keon’s, and a note clipped to the first page.
Sorcerer—
We started work on this after you returned from the Library. He hoped you wouldn’t need it, but He knew how much you wanted to hear from Nin and your parents again, and in case he he didn’t want you to wonder.
—Aljan
Her vision blurred as she turned the page. Beautiful black lettering spiraled across the paper—Aljan’s handwriting; Archer’s words.
Memories from his childhood in Jocoxa.
Lists of his favorite colors, foods, festivals.
Adventures he’d hoped to have.
Catalogues of regrets.
Letters to his mother, his grandfather, his aunt and uncle, his little cousin Riki, to Annabel, to Scarza and Griegi and Aljan and the bloodletters.
But most of all, letters to Sefia.
Ruminations, meanderings, random thoughts. Things he might have said to her while they were washing pots, or conversations they might have had during the early-morning watches, staring out to sea.
Sefia—
Did I ever tell you the moment I knew I loved you? It was that day on the Current , after Meeks told us about the Red War. You were sitting on the edge of the quarterdeck, reading, with the wind in your hair.
You were so beautiful.
Then a lock of hair flew into your face, and I went to brush it away. I felt so brave, and so scared, so sure you’d pull away.
But you didn’t.
And as I slid your hair back around your ear, you smiled.
I couldn’t remember wanting anything so badly as I wanted to kiss you then. It was like I’d never really wanted anything before then, and now this wanting was blazing inside me like a lamp, bright as a beam from a lighthouse.
That was the moment I knew.
I love you.
—Archer
She leafed through the pages, trying to avoid staining them with her tears. This was what he had been working on while she repaired ships and fortified turrets. She could have been spending that time with him. She could have had more time with him. But she’d squandered it. She’d always assumed they’d have more time.
But Archer had known. You have only a short time in this world, such a short time, before you’re gone, and he’d wanted to leave her something before he went.
Messages from the dead.
When the funerals finally began, it was a gray morning, and the sea was a chipped shield, glinting in the fragile sun.
Mourners lined the road from the crypt to the beach, tossing bouquets of tiny white flowers, brittle as matchsticks, beneath the wheels of the funeral carts.
Body after body arrived on the beach, where they were loaded onto barges and sent flaming onto the sea.
Everyone paid tribute to the dead in their own way. Delieneans lit sticks of incense, perfuming the salty air with trailing vines of smoke. Oxscinians brought offerings of folded paper, pleated into the shapes of flowers and fantastic sea creatures. Evericans left palm-size stones on the beach, one for each of the dead, creating eerie sentinels of rock at the edge of the water. Outlaws on the beach fired their six-guns. Outlaws on the water fired their cannons.
But it was those from Roku who bid farewell in the most spectacular fashion.
After the stories—
After the songs—
After the lists of names—
After the barges were set ablaze and carried off by the tide, the Rokuines raised handheld fireworks and loosed long jets of flame into the sky. Sparks showered the beach like rain.
Somewhere on those barges were Tanin, Dotan, and Braca. Serakeen’s body still hadn’t been found.
The candidates who had fallen in battle were sent off by the bloodletters, who saluted them like brothers—heads bowed, forearms crossed.
On the cliffs above the beach, Sefia watched. She heard the words of mourning.
You miss a man so much.
She didn’t repeat them.
She was a specter, a shadow, there and not there, with the breeze tangling in her hair, tugging at her clothes.
And Archer’s book in her arms.
The next day, the funerals continued—enemies, allies, friends. The skies darkened with ash.
The bloodletters bid farewell to Keon and the other boys who’d died at the watchtower. Face streaked with tears, Griegi laid a small parcel of Keon’s favorite foods beside him on the bier.
The crew of the Current said good-bye to Cooky and Killian and half a dozen other sailors.
With the red lory on his shoulder, the only speck of color among the mourning white, Theo sang in his aching baritone, with Marmalade plucking out a few plaintive notes on Jules’s old mandolin.
Sefia should have gone down there, she knew. She should have joined the crew in their grief.
She didn’t. She couldn’t.
But that didn’t stop her from regretting it later.
There was no floating pyre for Cannek Reed, but Captain Meeks recited his name among those the Current had lost.
Sefia clenched her jaw and dug her palms into the corners of Archer’s book.
There was a tapping sound behind her, and she turned as the chief mate, led by Aly, came slowly up the path to the cliff top.
His head was bandaged; his arm in a sling.
But he was here, on land, using a cane to navigate over the rough ground, the metal tip clicking softly against rocks and dips in the path.
He’d left the ship.
For Reed? she wondered.
But she knew. For me.
She was silent as Aly paused beside her—there was a glimmer of silver along the curve of her ear: Cooky’s earrings. Patting the chief mate on the hand, she released his arm and embraced Sefia quickly before retreating a little ways down the trail, leaving Sefia and the mate alone on the cliff.
They stood together for a moment, as Sefia imagined what the chief mate had come all this way to say to her.
To accuse her. To blame her. To tell her she’d made a mistake, taking Reed’s tattoos.
To tell her she’d done the right thing.
But he said nothing, and after a moment, he drew her into a hug so quick and hard that for a second Sefia wasn’t sure if it was a blow or an embrace or some combination of the two.
She tensed.
But when he didn’t let her go, she felt herself turn watery, felt her sorrow and her anger and her guilt boiling up inside her again.
Down on the beach, Meeks was telling the story of Reed’s single-handed assault on the Amalthea.
Tears ran down Sefia’s face. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I’m sorry I betrayed him.”
The mate rubbed her arm roughly. “You didn’t.”
“He hated me for it.”
“No, girl.” The chief mate clicked his tongue, chiding her with unexpected gentleness. “He loved you like you were his own.”
“I should’ve told him I was sorry.”
“He knew. And he was sorry too, in the end.”
With a sob, she buried her face in the crook of his shoulder, and he held tight to her as she cried and cried and cried and the bodies of her friends floated out to sea.
On the third day, there was only one funeral—Archer’s.
The capital was quiet. There was no sawing or hammering from the harbor. There was no conversation from the deserted market. Over closed doors and empty gardens, white banners snapped and cracked in the wind.
The road from the crypt was so full of flowers that, from a distance, it appeared to be covered in snow.
Clouds of mourners flocked from the city—Oxscinians, Delieneans, Rokuines, outlaws—settling on the hills, overlooking the road, on the cliffs opposite Sefia, on the pebbled beach. Everyone had turned out to pay their respects to the boy with the scar.
The boy who’d saved them.
The boy she loved.
But they left Sefia alone on her cliff, as if she were untouchable in her grief.
Below, the remaining bloodletters and the sparse crew of the Current gathered around the floating bier.
Maybe there was a song or two, one of those old battle tunes from the frozen north.
. . . Through the waves, we ride.
To our deaths, we ride.
Our foes will not forget how we fight . . .
Maybe there was a story.
“It’s the same with stories as it is with people: they get better as they get older. But not every story is remembered, and not all people grow old.”
Maybe there was more, but she couldn’t remember.
What she remembered was the size of Archer’s body, swathed in those layers of white cloth. Small. Too small for the boy who had climbed out of the fighting pit in the Cage. Too small for the boy who’d leaned her back on a cot while the snow came down outside. Too small for the boy silhouetted against the stars with the whole red desert laid bare before him.
What she remembered were his white-wrapped hands. Still. Too still for the boy marching out of the jungle, snapping necks, throwing swords. Too still for the boy rubbing a piece of quartz in the firelight. Too still for the boy who’d ridden across the Heartland on a chestnut horse.
Every so often, the others—Scarza and Frey and Aljan, Meeks and Horse and Marmalade—would look up at her, where she stood on the edge of the cliff, as if offering her a chance to speak.
But what could she say?
I left him.
I let him die.
I killed him.
One by one, they turned away again.
There were offerings of rubies and river stones, paper flowers and sticks of incense. Aljan tucked a letter among the kindling. Frey left one of her switchblades. Scarza retired his rifle. Everyone who wanted to give something for the boy who’d sacrificed himself for them placed their gifts at the edge of the water, beside the floating bier.
Sefia kept thinking she’d get some sign from him, some signal that he was there, that he was with her. The smell of rain and lightning. A phantom touch on the elbow. A whisper of her name on the wind.
But there was nothing. For hours, as the mourners came and retreated again like a tide, there was nothing.
And at last it was time to return him to the water.
Aly and Doc loosed the mooring lines.
Scarza lifted the torch, the light playing across his handsome, grief-stricken features. His hand shook, and Jaunty, the taciturn helmsman who’d shared long hours of silence with Archer, before he could speak, stepped forward to steady him.
And then, with a wave of her arms, Sefia was down there, teleporting in among them, crying, “Don’t. Don’t. Not yet.”
She climbed onto the bier with Archer, burying her face in his swaddled arms.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I wasted the time we had. I should have shown you every day, every hour, every breath, how much I loved you. I love you, Archer. You were so, so loved.”
She choked on the words.
“How do I go on without you?” she asked, rubbing her cheek against the coarse linen, damp with her tears. “How can anything ever be the same as it was? How do I survive this?”
Somehow, the others helped her from the funeral bier, clasping Archer’s book to her chest. She remembered collapsing into someone’s arms as they set fire to Archer’s body and sent him burning onto the waves.
The Rokuine candles flared.
The cannons of the Crux and all the remaining outlaw ships went off in salute.
Reaching for her neck, Sefia grasped the worry stone so hard its point dug into her palm, drawing blood.
On the water, Archer burned.