Swallowtail and Sword: The Scholar’s Book of Story and Song
The Empire Of Steam trilogy
Cold Stone & Ivy: The Ghost Club
Cold Stone & Ivy 2: The Crown Prince
Cold Stone & Ivy 3: The Seventh House
The Dragons Of Solunas
Dragon of Ash & Stars: Autobiography of a Night Dragon
Dragon of Sand & Storm: Autobiography of a Goddess
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To Jean E.
Friend, Fox, and First Mate of the Dawn Watch
Sorry for sinking your ship.
“Song
Glossary of Terms 399
UShip of Spells is an exhilarating adventure fantasy set in the dangerous and magikal waters of the Oversea, which includes elements regarding war, battle, perilous situations, blood, intense violence, brutal injuries, death, drowning, physical torture, and sexual activities that are shown on the page. Readers who may be sensitive to these elements, please take note, and prepare to board the Touchstone…
Song of the Dread
The privateer SunSdown to High Temple bore, With treasure from Nethersea, plunder of war.
“Sail at our stern!” our dear bosun he cries.
“Damned Rhi’A hR Dreadnought! She’ll take us a prize!”
“Fear not, my good lads,” the captain he swore, “We’ll slew the damned Dreadwall. Lay up on the shore!”
“It’s never been done, sir”—but he turns to me—
“We’ll do it—the SunSdown, thy captain, and thee!”
Dreadsky, Dreadwall, Dreadships, Dreadtown, What magik sends up, good men must cast down.
The Dreadnought is swift, but aye, swifter we be. Our sails snap the canvas both windward and lee.
Into the Dread Sheets now, our schooner she flies, Chased by the Dreadnought through thundering skies.
Two weeks and two more, under two burning suns, The SunSdown grows weary outracing their guns.
We pray to the suns now, pale Ember, bright Forge, We pray to the moons, Luna, Lyrik, and Lore.
Becalmed in the Silence, a-beaten, a-thirst, Our spirit is broken, our plunder a-cursed, Yet, sing we the song that we all learned as wee, The “Song of the Dread,” thy captain, and me.
The Dawn Watch
Iremember the first time I ever saw the Ship of Spells because, in fact, I didn’t.
It was a stormveil, conjured to keep the notorious ship unseen as she sat moored in the busy dockyard of Hodgetown. The day had been sunny, the eastern wind strong and heavy with salt. I’d just turned twenty-two and was celebrating alone in a tavern by the docks when I found my eyes looking everywhere but the empty slip on the pier. It’s subtle, my mother had said, back when I would listen. You see other things the crowds, the clouds, the colorful fluttering of guild flags. Even the dance of shore birds. Anything and everything except the thing you’re not supposed to see. It was the sign of an experienced mage, and once I’d set my mind to find it, the ship materialized like a vapor, a ghostly vision of ebony-stained oak and gold-shot sails.
So, I raised a glass to the skills of the crew.
I raised another because I was young and in a tavern. Some things don’t need magik to be understood.
After the third glass, I took up my commission as Ensign Bluemage Honor Renn, apprenticed to the blackmage of the Kingship Frigate Dawn Watch. We promptly left the harbor and that mysterious ship in our wake as we set off to the Lower Rim, hoping to claw back waters taken by the Rhi’Ahr armada. That was months ago, but I never forgot the sight of the infamous Ship of Spells or, more specifically, the lack of it.
Funny how such memories fl ashed through my mind as the world exploded beneath my feet.
Cannon fire took out the mainmast first, shattering the Dawn Watch’s rigging with a split-shot volley. Next, three rounds to the hull, low-set and lethal, smashed the port gundeck and the ship lurched to the side, the cries of my crewmates filling the air.
SHIP OF SPELLS
The Rhi’Ahr ship was a heavy cruiser, easily outgunning the smaller Dawn Watch on all counts, and, as with most Rhi’Ahr weapons the last few months, the shots were laced with chimeric. The deadly patterns traced like spyder webs, burning runes into every surface they struck—wood, iron, and flesh alike.
Our two ships had been playing cat-a-mouse for hours in the earlymorning fog, but now, the sky crackled as cannon fire blinded even the rising suns.
I heard a rumble behind me as the crew rolled another gun onto the deck, and again I cursed our lack of readiness. We had been working furiously since the enemy ship was spotted, but the Dawn Watch was only a patrolling frigate with a crew of eighty and a conjury of three. I was the youngest, with the least experience and the lowest commissioned rank, and I looked to the blackmage on the quarterdeck.
His name was Taran Vir, and he stood alongside the captain, spinning spells into shields and pitching them my way. I caught them, feeling the burn as they danced across my palms and seared my forearms with kinetic energy. It was my job to augment them and fl ing them in the paths of cannon fire as fast as they came. We had been at it for hours, and my hands were numb from the patterns and the heat.
It was violent and frenzied and far beyond my skill set, but the redmage had been stationed up in the nest—and she’d been taken out by that first blast. A strategic shot. We were down to two mages now, and I only an ensign Blue, inexperienced and raw. Still, I had more talent than the redmage ever did. Her removal had only been a matter of time.
My stomach tightened as I caught sight of the bow of the Rhi’Ahr ship bearing down on us.
The enemy vessel was too close, roaring past in a fury of sea spray and runic fire, but through it all, I could see the name carved into her hull. Endorathil. Beautiful name. Beautiful language. It rolled off the tongue like honey, soaked in something old and sharp. The Rhi’Ahr made war the way other people made love. Each arrow loosed with purpose. Each spear thrown with deadly grace. Their cannon decks made music, flash and roar, flash, flash, boom.
Another shot smashed through the rigging over my head, and I ducked to avoid the shards of wood that rained from above. Orange smoke leaped from mast to mizzen, crackling with arcane patterns, and my heart pounded
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
in my chest. Chimeric. It was the most lethal weapon in the Rhi’Ahr arsenal, as old as it was deadly, and it amplifi ed cannon fi re in a way that was impossible for us to fight.
My gaze widened as unfamiliar runes continued to sizzle across the sails, turning canvas to char long after the smoke had cleared.
From the corner of my eye, I spied a rim protruding from an enemy porthole, and I glanced at the blackmage. Taran Vir hadn’t seen it, and I cursed to myself. His back was to me, blond hair lashing in the wind. He’d shifted to cover the starboard side—and missed the threat dead ahead.
As a Blue, I wasn’t allowed to conjure my own spells, but I’d be damned if I let the Rhi’Ahr loose another shot unchecked. Without waiting, I flung a crackling shield across the water and over the cannon’s muzzle. Fire powder flashed from the port, but the ball was blocked and the bulwark of the Endorathil boomed inward. It was her first serious damage of the fight, and I did not stifle the swell of pride. I had caused it. Me. Not the redmage, not even Taran Vir, the Black.
If we lost this fight, there wouldn’t be anyone left to discipline me, so I began to conjure a second spell when, suddenly, there was silence.
I thought it was a Tempus spell because now, everything slowed as if underwater. I watched a sizzling black iron ball hurtle past me toward the prow. It hit, wood splintering and rising on the morning wind. I saw Vir’s hands, the runes spilling from his fingertips. Too slow. Too late. The captain’s mouth wide, his orders silenced by the blast, a horrific cloud of yellow and white and articulating chimeric. Both mage and captain lifted off their feet, arcing backward, becoming silhouettes in the brilliant flash that engulfed them.
Flash, flash, and boom. The deck beneath my feet bucked, struck by the music of the magik-filled shell.
Sound returned along with a wall of blistering wind, and I felt my boots leave the deck, taking half of the rail with me. I sailed backward and down, the threads of my blue woven sash leaping with flame, and I hit the water hard between the hulls of both ships. The cold bit my back and shoulders, and I struggled to keep my hands above the waves. I couldn’t help without my hands, couldn’t weave the patterns needed to cast spells. I was a Navy mage. My hands were my life.
But the waves had other plans. They reached up to meet me and pulled me completely into their furious embrace. My chest burned as I was swept
SHIP OF SPELLS
under, and water crushed the breath from my lungs. For a moment, I was tempted to let it take me. I was miserable, poor, and young, but this was war, and it was the best hope of a life for a proud, skilled mage from an island the size of a pebble.
Underwater now, I fought the salt sting to open my eyes. The Navy peacoat dragged at my shoulders, heavy with water, pulling me down like a lead anchor. I shrugged it off, shoving hard against the sodden wool, feeling it peel away in slow, useless folds. Better gone. I was tempted to kick off my boots as well, but something about exposing my toes to hungry mouths in the deep made me shudder. No, best to keep those on for now.
My breeches were black Navy issue but not as thick—they didn’t weigh me down as much. The blue sash still wrapped at my waist, ends fluttering like a flare, as if my rank mattered here in the deep. The linen tunic, though, was a second skin now, plastered to my curves as I kicked, hard and furious, straining for the surface.
The oaken bones of the Dawn Watch littered the depths as I swam up through them, her beams and timbers slicing into the darkness as they sank. The black shape of a cannon plummeted past me, churning bubbles in its wake. Someone followed—arms flailing, legs thrashing—and with horror, I realized that it was Corwen, the powder boy, dragged down by a tangle of rope at his foot. I swiped for him, and our fingertips touched for the briefest of moments, but the rage of the water was too strong, and he slipped free. His terrified eyes were the last things I saw before he was swallowed by the deep.
Suns, he was only twelve. Too young to meet Our Mother, the Sea. She was mother to us all, her watery bosom a welcome home for weary swabs to lay their heads at the end of our days. I knew it was a blessing, but, as fine as she was, I wasn’t ready to let her welcome me yet.
I emptied my breath in a rush of bubbles, kicking and thrashing with all my strength. I broke the surface and swallowed the air in cold, greedy gulps. The world roared all around me as I rose and fell with the water’s swell—the thunder of fire, the screams of my crew, the crack of timber as the ship’s rigging swooped down from above. Shattered masts slapped the waves, and the sails filled with water, the canvas heavy and dragging like an anchor. I watched in horror as slowly, savagely, the Dawn Watch began to roll.
I could stop her. I had to stop her.
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
I flung my hands high, forced my fingers to begin the hold spell. Circles with the right hand, fist with the left. My teeth chattered the incantation, and the air hissed as the rune sprang to life, but the waves swelled and pulled me down again, and I choked as saltwater rushed into my mouth. I kicked my legs, forced myself up, and swore out loud. The pattern was disintegrating, so I pushed my hands from the water as, once again, the Endorathil’s cannons boomed behind me.
I felt heat as a ball whipped through the disappearing spell, and I flung a second at it, seeing the chimeric catch with a crackle of sparks. Not fast enough. The ball smashed into the Dawn Watch’s hull, and splinters of wood sprayed outward like a volley of arrows. My fingers danced out a third spell, a Praesidium for protection, and it was purely instinct that brought my hands up to cover my face. It was also foolish. My hands were my life, my craft, my future. My face was merely an afterthought.
The force of the blast jerked me back, and I went under once more. But the moment my hands touched the water, the ocean boomed. Light radiated outward, and every fi ber of my body caught fi re. In that moment, I was fl ung out of myself the same way I’d been fl ung from the deck of the Dawn Watch . I saw the Endorathil and the shattered Dawn Watch . I saw the horizon and the sky and the smoke darkening the faces of the suns.
But then I saw things I had never seen—sparks racing through ice and snow, a white hawk with a golden staff in its talons, branches of a tree reaching for the stars. Rings and circles made of rune, an island filled with dying palms, a volcano spewing chimeric into the sky.
And then I was back, thrashing in the sea and waiting for the air to return.
Rise and fall, ebb and swell. I shook my head, spat the salt out of my mouth. I struggled against the weight of the water and the chimeric that was dancing across the surface. I needed my hands, but I could feel nothing at the ends of my leaden arms. With a cry, I pulled them from the waves and froze in horror at what I saw.
Dozens of splinters from the hull of the Dawn Watch had pierced my hands. Some were embedded in my palms; others stuck out of my wrists like spines. Secondhand chimeric crackled between my fingers, sizzling water-soaked patterns into my skin. The flesh was torn away like ribbons, revealing glimpses of thin white bones and long yellow tendons. My heart sank like the powder boy as I stared at the pin hodges that had once been my hands.
SHIP OF SPELLS
The air boomed as the Dawn Watch cracked in two, but I swear I heard none of it.
I saw nothing as enemy cannons emptied fi nal rounds into her shattered, sinking hull. I heard no mates screaming, fl ailing, drowning. No sails flapping, ripping, sucking when the Dawn Watch slipped under the black water. Debris floated all around me, crackling with flame and chimeric, but I was merely one more piece. Broken, shattered, destined to follow the powder boy into the deep.
And just like that, the Endorathil swept away, riding the horizon like a proud seabird. I watched until she faded completely from view, until there was nothing but sky and clouds, smoke and loss. I was alone in the sea, rising and falling with the waves. The waters were cold but not freezing, and not cold enough to numb me while I drowned. I wasn’t versed in death spells yet, but even if I was, I doubted my hands could have formed a pattern.
I thought of the swabs who begged for beer at the doors of the dock taverns. I used to despise them, being young and proud and skilled and able. Now, without my hands, I would be one of them. A useless mage whose hands couldn’t even hold a coin, let alone a drink.
It didn’t matter. I’d never make it back to the docks.
After a while, my shoulders began to ache, and I realized I was still holding my hands above the surface. I lowered them, but the moment my hands touched the water, chimeric crackled, sending ripples across the waves and pain echoing down my body like lightning. I tried again. Same result. I narrowed my eyes to study what had become of my arms.
The sleeves were all but gone, the char turning linen into lace as it continued to burn. The splinters were sticks of glowing incense now, as chimeric runes dissolved the wood. My hands looked as though they had been branded in a forge, rune and flesh blending in a web of pattern. The designs for my hold and protection spells still sizzled, writing stories across my skin. I closed my eyes, wishing I were a graymage. I’d call a shark to bite off my arms. Hels, I’d call a whale to swallow me whole.
My mother had told a story once about a wayward girl who had swum away from home. A whale swallowed her whole, then spat her up on shore a year later. By then, she was a wyrmaid—half girl, half fish—and she died on the rocks. My mother swore it was true, but I never believed her. Now, with my head dipping in the waves, I almost wished it was.
A blackened deck plank floated nearby, caught in the web of chimeric
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
that rippled around me. It was etched with rune but wasn’t sizzling, and somehow, I knew it was from the Endorathil , damage from one of the few shots we’d landed. But I’d rather die than be saved by the enemy, so I kicked and flailed toward another plank, this time one of ours. I snagged it with my elbows, pulled it under my chest to rest my cheek on its grain.
My dark hair spilled over my face, becoming one with the wet timber. This was the last piece of the ship, my ship. My fi rst true posting, my last true hope. I bit back the stinging of my eyes and forced the ache deep down beneath the will that kept me afl oat. The Dawn Watch had been an insignificant frigate, I told myself, with an insignificant crew. The captain had never spoken a word to me, and Taran Vir maybe twenty, even though he’d been tasked with my training. The bosun had been hard, and the redmage had been harder. But despite all this, the Dawn Watch had been my home for eight months. More than that, she had been my future. Without a ship, I was nothing.
I bit my lip. Worse than nothing. My mother had been right.
The Rhi’Ahr plank was floating toward me yet again, as if drawn to my dying light. Rune patterns sizzled through the water, and I didn’t care. Let it take me, I thought darkly. Suns, just let me drown.
Rise and fall, ebb and swell.
The suns were high in the sky, Forge the Bold and Ember the Pale. Forge was large and white, while Ember was distant and dim. Twin suns of the Northhelm, emblems of our besieged empire. They watched as I floated, so I sent a prayer to Forge that day. I never prayed. I’d chosen the way of Forge just to be allowed to serve in the Navy, but I didn’t believe. My mother prayed to the Sister Moons, sacrifi ced to the Sister Moons, dedicated me to the Sister Moons at my birth. Declaring allegiance to Forge was the last, best rebellion I could have staged. Too bad it wouldn’t serve me now. Too bad she’d never know.
I can’t say how long I floated before I heard a splash on the waves. The sky was golden as the suns began to set, but I didn’t open my eyes. It could have been a ship. It could have been a shark. I didn’t care. My life was over regardless. It was only a matter of time and magik before my body caught up.
Another splash, so now, I looked. A huge winter hawk rested on the water before me, wings tucked across his back. His wingspan was probably twice my size, with feathers as white as salt. His eyes were an eerie white as
SHIP OF SPELLS
well, his beak black and hooked for tearing. I could see his talons through the water, paddling with swift, strong strokes. Like the Rhi’Ahr , winter hawks were born in the ice and snow and dread of the Nethersea. Figured that the last creature to see me alive would be Netherborn.
Once again, my eyes began to sting, and tears gathered behind my lashes. Tears for my short, miserable, wayward life. Tears for my sad, valiant, pathetic crew and for the horrible, useless way they died.
With no one but a seabird for company, I finally let the tears spill, quiet and stubborn, mixing with the salt of the ocean. I didn’t sob. Didn’t have the strength. I just drifted there, too tired to care, too numb to fight, yet somehow my feet kept paddling beneath the waves, slow and useless, as if they hadn’t heard I was done.
The winter hawk merely watched, content to rise and fall on the waves like me. Finally, I released a breath, then another. I looked up at him. He was magnifi cent and free, with only the sky for a master. He had only himself and the strength of his wings.
“Take me with you,” I pleaded.
He cocked his head, and I wondered if it was the first time he’d heard a voice.
“Let me be a bird,” I said. “Let me fl y away from everything and everyone and not have to die alone and broken on the sea.”
It felt good to be talking. I wasn’t sure why.
“There are mages who can call animals,” I told the bird. “But there are others, mirrormages, who can become animals. If I were a mirrormage, I would become a bird like you and never have to work a ship or live with people ever again.”
He didn’t blink, this great winter hawk, just stared at me with his strange white eyes. Then he opened his massive wings and launched into the sky without a splash. He didn’t even circle. He just flew away.
And I was alone once again.
Rise and fall, ebb and swell.
And so, I fl oated like that, clinging to the scrap of a ship that had once promised better. But after a time, the sun called Forge curved across the sky and brought stars in his wake, only to rise once again hours later, chased by his brother, Ember the Pale. Still, I clung to the beam, exhausted. I didn’t freeze in the cold ocean waters. No sharks came to eat me. No whale swallowed me whole.
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
I heard nothing of flapping sails, the creaking oak, the roar of displaced waves. I saw no face of a woman carved on the prow of a ship. I felt nothing as ropes were let down to snag my hapless body, even less as I was dragged over the side and onto the deck. I believe I was carried below and laid on a surgeon’s trunk, and I remember the face of a young man with black hair and brown eyes. Behind him, another man, this one tall and thin but with the curved horns of a faun. Behind them both stood a Rhi’Ahr man in a captain’s coat, arms folded across his chest.
It was a nightmare, clearly. All I needed was the whale. “Welcome,” said the enemy “To the Ship of Spells.” And like a whale, the nightmare swallowed me whole.
The Ship of Spells
T2
urned out the Ship of Spells had a name.
Touchstone
She was an old three-masted frigate, smaller even than the Dawn Watch, and she sailed under no flag. It made sense, I supposed, as she was technically a privateer in the employ of the king. I knew little of privateers, except that they weren’t actually pirates. They were the bane of the Navy, threading a lawless cord through legal waters and flaunting the rules of warfare whenever it suited their needs. Still, her lines were sound, and she smelled of linseed oil, pine soap, old oak, and the sea.
“So, what happened to your hands?” asked the faun. He was the ship’s surgeon, and he’d said his name was Echo.
I didn’t answer. I’d never spoken to a faun before. Hels, I’d never even met one. Berryburn Yard was a remote naval academy, and there’d been less of them on the roster than minotaurs or dworghs. Still, had I not just been plucked out of the ocean after losing my ship and my hands and my future, I’d probably have bought him a drink. Or vice versa, considering he was employed and I was not.
“Whatever it is,” he went on, “it’s having a curious effect on your healing. Your hands were little more than bones when we dragged you aboard, but now…”
He tugged the gauze around my thumb.
“…the flesh has healed. Curious.”
He was right. I should have been happy about it. I should have been grateful.
“Clearly, it’s a by-product of the chimeric.” The faun continued. He seemed to enjoy talking, so didn’t need my response. “But not one I’ve seen before. Does it hurt?”
I bit my tongue. It hurt like hooks, but I wouldn’t admit it. He turned
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
my hand over as he bandaged, and he frowned. At least, I think it was a frown. His forehead was wrinkled because of the horns, so it was hard to tell. He looked like he was always thinking. I didn’t care. I’d said nothing since I was brought aboard, but Echo talked enough for both of us.
“Well, I’ll try to be careful,” he said.
He had very long fingers. Funny—of all the things I noticed, the one I found the most interesting was his fingers. Not the horns nor his short, smooth hide of tan; not his wide nose, goatlike nostrils, or the rectangular pupils in his soft, brown eyes. His ears were large and pointed, and he wore a golden hoop in one of them. He also wore a thin golden ring around one of those long fingers, and I wondered if, like the earring, it was the mark of a privateer or if it was something more. No, it was his fi ngers that captivated me, and I watched them as, carefully, methodically, they wrapped my hands and wrists in gauze.
He peered up at me.
“You must be a Blue, yes?” he asked. “Most of your sash is still intact. Charred at the bottom, but with all that chimeric, it’s to be expected, I suppose.”
Blue threads mixed with undyed and wan, the rank of a junior officer and midshipmage. Not that it mattered now.
“Were you casting or holding?”
“Both,” I grunted, my fi rst word in hours. Or days. I wasn’t sure. I vaguely remembered a hawk on the sea.
“Hmm,” said the faun, and he bent back to his work.
I sighed and let my eyes wander around the cabin. We were in a surgeon’s pit deep within the ship. There were no windows, and light came by way of candle and mirror. The ceiling was low and the floor rough with bags of sand at the ready to sop up the blood. A young homani boy sat taking notes in the corner, and I knew he was the surgeon’s loblolly.
I could have been a loblolly when I’d first enlisted, but it reminded me too much of my mother. She was a greenmage healer, skilled but wylde, and I’d been her apprentice since I was three. I could stitch and bandage, tar and bleed, and could identify most of what was on Echo’s shelves. Tourniquets and splints, linseed and lime, plaster and soap and salve. I didn’t think this faun was a mage, however. So far, his treatment of my hands had been entirely traditional, with ice, bandages, and a bit of yellow grease.
SHIP
OF SPELLS
There was a small, bronzed mirror on one of the shelves, and I grimaced at my reflection. I rarely saw my face, except for glimpses in the water when I’d lean over a rail, but there I was in all my sea-soaked glory. Homani, like the loblolly, and tanned from months spent on a ship. Dark hair chopped at the chin. Gray eyes, thick brows, wide cheeks, square jaw. A scar beneath my eye from my first day on the Dawn Watch. A livid set of bruises from my last.
Echo was watching me. I tore my eyes away from the mirror, set them like stone on the canvas flap that served as a door.
“Arik,” he said. “Fetch Mr. Fahr, if you will.”
“Aye, sir,” said the boy, and he ducked through the canvas, with a glance back at me before going.
“Well,” said Echo. “I’m not sure if you’ll keep them like this or if the chimeric will continue to burn and you’ll lose both hands within a week. But they seem to be healing, so my coin is on the scars. Wiggle, please.”
Only my fingers were visible from the bandaging, and I hissed as they flexed beneath the gauze.
“Hmm,” he said again.
As he stood back to admire his work, my eyes flicked to his legs. Goat legs bent backward at the knee, and his breeches disappeared into boots from the hock down. He wore a belted tunic and a woolen vest but no sword or dagger. Then again, he was a surgeon. Surgeons were traditionally useless with anything larger than a scalpel. I did wonder about the horns, though, and, while they curled backward from his skull, they looked like they could do some damage were he provoked.
There was a rap on the wall, and someone stepped through the canvas flap. It was the man with brown eyes who had pulled me onto the ship. He looked only a few years older than me, with black hair and eyes that danced like starlight. He wore the informal clothes of a ranking officer, his white tunic and flaxen vest a regal contrast to his dark amber skin. His thick brows rivaled mine, as did the scars along his cheek and jawline. But unlike me, it seemed his smile came easily.
Like the faun, he wore an earring but no sash to signify a magik.
“So, she’s not a wyrmaid, then,” he said. “Pity. Buck’s running a wager.”
“No wyrmaid, Dev,” said Echo. “Settle your bets.”
And he gave the gauze a last tug.
“I’m not sure whether she’ll keep her hands, but she seems to have had
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
no ill effects from prolonged exposure to either sea or chimeric.”
“It was chimeric, then?”
“Of that, I am convinced.”
The officer squared his shoulders toward me.
“I’m Devanhan Fahr, First Mate of the privateer Touchstone under Captain Gavriel Thanavar.” His eyes flicked first to my bandaged hands, then to my face. “What happened to your ship?”
I met those eyes and said nothing.
“She was serving on the frigate Dawn Watch ,” said Echo. “It was attacked by the Endorathil in open seas.”
“What? How?” I gaped at him. “I said nothing!”
He smiled and tapped his head with a long finger.
“You were right,” he said. “Not a mage.”
I growled to myself. Clearseer. My mother had told me about them. They could hear thoughts the way people heard words. Dangerous types, she insisted, for you never knew when they were spinning.
Devanhan Fahr raised a brow and grinned.
“Now, would you like to tell me your name, or shall I ask our surgeon?”
“Honor Renn,” I said. “Ensign Bluemage of the Kingship Frigate Dawn Watch .”
“Captain?”
“Lagerheim.”
“Understudy?”
“Taran Vir, Blackmage.”
“How long deployed?”
“Eight months,” I said. “I was conscripted as a bluemage from the Berryburn Naval Yard.”
“I don’t believe you finished the curriculum,” said Echo.
“I was better than all of them,” I said with a shrug.
“You quit?” asked Fahr.
I raised my chin. “The magister said I was ready. All I needed was the ship.”
“Remember your rank, Ensign,” said the faun. “Dev is First Mate. You do need to call him sir.”
“I went from Wan to Blue in less than a year. They were jealous.”
“Jealous, sir,” Echo repeated.
I snorted.
“I’m Navy. You’re privateers. I outrank all of you.”
SHIP
“Privateers at the hire of King Bonavanczek himself,” said Fahr. “Would you like to inspect our Letter of Marque?”
Damn. I looked down. Stephanus Bonavanczek IV was the King of Oversea, lawful ruler of the Northhelm and all its colonies. That gave them rank, even outside the Navy’s chain of command, and I appreciated that chain, that structure, that rule of law.
“No, sir,” I said, finally using the customary honorific.
“Good call, Ensign,” Fahr said. “Now, where can we drop you?”
“Drop me?”
“You can’t stay with us,” he said. “You’re Navy, after all. We’re just lowly privateers.”
“Where did you accept your commission? Hodgetown?” asked Echo. “That’s generally a good place to begin again.”
“Suns have mercy,” said Fahr. “I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to a rathole like Hodgetown. Still, she is Navy…”
And he laughed. A most unusual trait for a privateer, but I was beginning to believe that the Touchstone was a most unusual ship.
“I can’t go back,” I said, glancing between them. “My hands… I need… I can’t…”
“Well, she can’t stay here,” came another voice, and another man pushed through under the canvas. He was a dworgh, several hands shorter than I but built of solid muscle and iron, with a barrel chest, strong arms, and calloused hands. His thick hair and full beard were the color of nutmeg, his brown eyes expressive and large, and his brows were as bushy as a bear in winter.
“Bad luck to have a castaway on board,” he said with the polished accent of someone who’d grown up far from the docks. “Especially a Navy bird. The crew’s already jumpy.”
I noticed he was wearing only one boot.
“She’s a mage,” said Fahr.
“A mage who can’t foggin’ spin. What the hels’s she gonna do on my ship?” he muttered. His accent was fine silver, but his mouth was all sea.
“Smoke…” said Fahr.
“She can’t haul. She can’t braid. She can’t hoist. Hels, I doubt she can even scrub.” He began to hunt around the surgeon’s pit, lifting packs, moving blankets. “And I, for one, ain’t no mother hen. If she don’t work, I have a dory just her size that’ll do.”
“Ensign, this is Smoke Oakum,” said Fahr. “Our quartermaster, coxon,
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
and Magister of Magiks.”
“I do everything,” the quartermaster grunted.
“Except beat me at Able Whacks,” said Echo.
“Foggin’ impossible to beat a clearseer at Able Whacks. Pretty, prancing hornswaggler, you are.” The quartermaster shoved two barrels to the side. “Ah, there it is.”
He pulled a boot from under a shelf and shook out the sand. I noticed he was also wearing an earring and a thin gold ring around the same finger as the doctor.
“Forge-damned fauns. More like thieving fae, I say.”
“Don’t leave your boots in my pit,” said Echo with a flick of an ear. “I don’t ask much.”
The dworgh grunted again, but I could have sworn he blushed. Suddenly, I knew the identical rings meant they were more than mates, and as close to married as one could get on the sea.
“The question is, lads,” said Fahr, “where do we drop her? Hodgetown is not on the captain’s books.”
My heart pounded in my chest. I was nothing without a ship.
“As I said, Dev, I have a dory…”
I sat forward, ignoring the bite from the chimeric.
“I can stay.”
“Bells, no,” said Fahr.
“I may be only a bluemage, but I’m a damned good one,” I insisted, my gaze darting between all three men. “And this is the Ship of Spells! The things I could learn! The spells I could cast!”
“Not without your hands,” said Fahr.
It cut me to the quick, and I fought the tightening of my throat.
There was silence for a moment when Echo looked up.
“Perhaps the Touchstone chose her?”
“Rubbish,” said Oakum. He slid the boot over a nubby, callused foot. “She’s a sea-soaked, spit-licked Navy castaway. Bad luck on all counts.”
But the first mate folded his arms across his chest and studied me.
“The captain says the Touchstone was drawn to the chimeric patterns in the water.”
“And she,” Echo said with a wave of his hand, “was the cause of them. Those patterns are repeated along her fingers and palms.”
“It was probably just echoes from the Endorathil,” said Fahr. “Next to
SHIP
the Touchstone, she’s the most arcane bird in the sea.”
“I’m afraid I disagree,” said Echo. “Her scars are still spinning.”
I felt a rush of gratitude. I would buy this faun a drink now, regardless of my state of employ.
“Into the sea,” muttered Oakum over his shoulder. “That’s what we do with flotsam and the peels.”
And he disappeared through the canvas that served as a door.
Fahr studied me for a long moment.
“Well, maybe the Touchstone knows something we don’t,” he said. “I’ll take her to the captain. He can decide.”
I nodded swiftly. I would not beg. Not now. Not ever. But I didn’t want to go back to Hodgetown, broken as I was by the sea.
“The captain’s a hard man, but he’s fair,” he said, holding my gaze. “His decision will be binding. Is that understood, Bluemage?”
“Aye, sir.”
I moved to hop off the surgeon’s trunk, but the cabin spun as my boots hit the deck. I was forced to clutch the table’s edge so that I didn’t fall.
No one tried to catch me, for which I was grateful.
We moved to leave, and I threw a glance over my shoulder at Echo. He smiled at me, and I knew I’d found more kindness in my few hours on the Touchstone than I had in months spent on the Dawn Watch. Then, I was out and into the dark hold of a companionway.
I paused at the sight of the stepladder and looked at my bandaged hands, unsure if they would hold. The mate was already up, and he glanced down at me from the rungs. I could have sworn he was smirking.
“They have ladders on a Navy ship, Blue?”
I swore at him and reached out to take the rung.
Fire. Fire and wood. Fire and wood and ships and trees and snow and feathers and branches and rings and flash and boom and blackness—
“AWnd the ladder?”
“Like wisps of patterned char.” I recognized the voice, but it was speaking as if underwater. “Buck and Ben have begun repairs.”
I opened my eyes, blinked to clear the ripples from my mind.
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
“Are you certain she is not simply a firespinner?” came a voice to my far left, soft-spoken but deep, the kind of voice that didn’t need to raise itself to be obeyed.
“No red threads in the sash. Besides, the runes are still burning,” the first voice replied.
Fahr. That’s right. His name was Fahr.
I was in another cabin this time, large and well-lit, and I knew it was the captain’s quarters. The great cabin, it was called, with fine furniture, ornate lanterns with sweet-smelling wax. Dozens of maps were spread out across an old wooden desk. Books and journals were crammed on shelves between the bones of the ship’s hull. I noticed a cyr propped in the corner—the fabled golden pikestaff of a Rhi’Ahr warrior. Odd. At the far end of the room, there was a wide bank of port windows with mullioned glass and a man with his back turned, silhouetted in sunslight.
“She’s awake.” Fahr peered down at me. “Ensign Renn, did you mean to set fire to the hatch?”
I was seated in a wooden chair, my arms wrapped across my bosom in slings. I had no idea how I’d gotten there or when.
“Ensign Renn?”
I looked up at him.
“No, sir. I—I don’t know what happened, sir.”
He turned to the silhouette. “Shall I stay?”
“I will call for you when we are done,” said the man in that same low voice. “And please, have Worley bring in a bottle. I aim to sleep tonight.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Dismissed, Mr. Fahr.”
Before turning to leave, the mate held my gaze again. His eyes spoke volumes, but I just didn’t know the words. Quietly, he slipped from the room.
I sat, simply breathing in and out, marshaling my thoughts, deadening my fear. There was a rap at the sliding panel of the door, and a thin man slipped in. He set a bottle on the desk, poured a glass, and passed it to the man at the window.
“Only one, mind, sir,” said the steward. “The spirit’s right savage.”
“Thank you, Mr. Worley.”
The man named Worley did smile at me on the way out, however, and I took some small measure of comfort in that.
SHIP OF SPELLS
It was hard to make out the captain in the distance because of the sunslight and the deep, deep shadows cast, but I could tell that he was tall and lean, his coat the deepest blue. But then he shifted in the sunslight, and my heart thudded as he took shape, clear and sharp, like the sea carving out a coastline.
“Honor Renn,” he said, not turning. “Bluemage, is it?”
Perfect posture. Regal air. Broad shoulders, narrow waist. One hand behind his back, the other holding the wine. Both hands were elegant, just the hint of a gold in his skin, making them rare for one who lived for the sea.
“Aye, sir. Of the Dawn Watch, sir,” I said.
“Wan to Blue in eight months, I’m told.”
His voice was deep and lyrical, beating my blood like an ancient drum, but his accent was unfamiliar, and my mind tried to place it.
“Aye, sir.”
“That’s fast. Were you cheating?”
“I’m good, sir.” And I swallowed back my nerves. “Very good.”
He seemed far too young to captain a ship like this, no more than five or six years my senior, but I couldn’t be sure. Arcane power rolled off his shoulders. Ancient runes whispered in my ears. The runescars on my broken hands ached in his presence, as if he were a balm that was needed to heal or a blade that was needed to slice.
Regardless of age, I knew in my bones that I was in the presence of a powerful mage. I’d have to be very careful now.
“Better than all the others,” he said.
“Aye, sir. It’s the truth.”
“I believe you.”
But there was something else.
He raised the glass of spirits to his lips, and I fought the urge to sit forward. I wanted to see his face, to get a bearing, but this angle was all wrong.
“And now you are tangled in chimeric.” His voice held a hint of something that made my skin bristle. Amusement? Sarcasm? Disdain?
“What do you know of chimeric, Ensign?”
I swallowed, using the pause to steady myself. These were deep waters, dark and dangerous like a riptide.
“Only what I learned in the Yard, sir,” I said.
“And what was that?”
“It, it’s…” I struggled to recall the Navy’s words. The teachings were
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
vague because no one knew a damned thing about chimeric. “It’s an arcane, alchemical powder used with unbridled liberality by the Rhi’Ahr fleet. It gives their shot an unstable, unstoppable flame.”
“Unbridled liberality.” He hummed. “Can you bridle freedom, Ensign? Can you tame power?”
He shifted his weight onto his heels, and the sunslight hit the back of his head fully, making my breath catch in my throat.
His hair tumbled across his shoulders, cut in jagged lines as if with a dagger. But it wasn’t the way he wore his hair that alarmed me. No, it was the color.
“And were you taught where this ‘arcane alchemy’ comes from?”
Black with shifting undertones of blue and violet and dark green, like oil on water just waiting for a match.
“No, sir,” I said, my stomach growing queasy.
His hair was dark as night. Dark as the deep. Dark as the colors the sea keeps for itself.
“Indeed, the erthe trembled when it was spun.”
I could see the pointed tips of his elven ears peeking out beneath the tousled strands. In one of those ears, an earring.
“But the moons…” He turned now, squared himself before me, and the suns gleamed off his sharp, angular face. His brows arched over eyes both green and blue and shot with gold. They looked like an undersea reef, ebbing and flowing, and panic began to rise up my throat.
“The moons,” he said, holding my gaze, “they sang.”
I’m sure I looked like the powder boy, caught up in the rigging and sinking into the depths. The dory was sounding good. In fact, the dory was sounding great. I would slip away and never look back. Wayward girl, just waiting on the whale.
“I am Gavriel Thanavar, captain of the Touchstone. I understand you wish to join my conjury.”
My heart thundered in my ears. But I couldn’t look away from his eyes. Light as the surface, dark as the deep, gold like the treasure scattered under the sand.
It’s subtle, my mother had said a lifetime ago. You see other things the crowds, the clouds, the colorful fluttering of guild flags. Even the dance of shore birds. Anything and everything except the thing you’re not supposed to see.
SHIP
OF SPELLS
He smiled thinly, dangerously, like a cat about to eat a mouse, and all my boldness melted away like a sugardrop on the tongue. I was that mouse, small and insignificant, awaiting the fang of the sleek black cat. I was a fish in the talons of a winter hawk.
“But the answer to your question is no,” he said. “You will not now, or ever, be permitted to do so.”
I wanted to flee. I wanted to hide, but I could not look away from his terrifying, ethereal, enemy face.
“You are far too proud for the Ship of Spells.”
Fear seized the back of my throat. For, standing before me in the boots of an Oversea captain, was a Rhi’Ahr.
The Carmen Lumiere
Turncoats. Traitors. Ship of spies.
3
I hated them all and wanted to go home.
It seemed a mutual sentiment, as that very hour, we set our sail for Hodgetown. There would be no drinks raised when I returned to the docks, though. I doubted I’d even have the coin to book a barge back to the Spits, and thoughts of begging at the tavern doors haunted my waking thoughts.
Echo worked with Smoke Oakum to fix a pair of leather gloves that had been infused with a hold spell. They said it was to protect my hands as they healed, but I knew it was to protect the ship from this rogue magik.
No one seemed to have an explanation.
I knew the chimeric from the cannonball had somehow reacted with the three near-simultaneous spells I’d cast, and now they were as one. None of the spells on their own would have caused this. Chimeric was indeed an “arcane alchemy,” an ancient element mined by the enemy and traded in shadow across the seas.
And so, I sat under the fife rail until evening, gloved hands folded across my knees, studying the strange figurehead on the bowsprit. It was the face of a woman carved into a slab of dense, dark wood. But that face was haunting, with curved ridges for a shroud and empty eyes that stared at the sea before her. Runes gleamed across her grain—the same as those that were seared into my skin—and I wondered if she was forged in chimeric as well. Just like the blackened board that had dogged me in the waters, I wanted nothing to do with her if that was the case.
I turned my face away to watch the crew with begrudging interest.
It wasn’t a large conjury, and like on the Dawn Watch, all the nations of Oversea were visible on deck. While there were fauns and minotaurs and dworghs aplenty, most were homani like me. We’re a lack-skinned people, diverse of complexion but unhorned and unhooved, with no pelt,
SHIP OF SPELLS
tusk, or wing to protect us. I was sure it was only our stubbornness that helped us survive.
For the most part, the Touchstone ran like any other ship, with watchstanders and navigators, officers and swabs. Decks were scrubbed, line was mended, sails hauled to catch the prevailing winds. Still, I saw a seamage tangle a foot in the rigging, and his mate burned the rope clear with an Ignateus spell. I watched another cast a targeted Praesidium while he cleaned the cannon’s bore. None wore colored sashes that signifi ed the various magecrafts and their levels, but I suspected they were all able to cast spells when needed or directed. The Navy wasn’t like that, and the thought of this appealed to me very much. Though I was bound for Hodgetown, so what “appealed to me” meant nothing.
Besides, serving under an enemy captain did not sit well, even with a King’s Letter of Marque.
I watched as a man stepped up to the gunwale. It was Worley, the captain’s steward. He had a basket in his hands and was speaking softly as he unclasped the latch. To my surprise, he pulled out a bird, all black save a slash of white at its throat. I recognized it as a swift, used for carrying messages between ship and shore. Sure enough, there was a tiny parchment at her leg.
“For king and for country,” he said. “Safe skies, my love.”
He kissed the top of her head and released her into the sky. With that, he turned and left the forecastle, abandoning me to my wretched thoughts and the shadow.
The night was cool; the stars, clear; and the Sister Moons, Luna, Lyrik, and Lore, smiled in a rich, dark sky, watching the night like three owls. I stared up at them from my little nook, draped in a peacoat three sizes too large. Echo had brought me rations, but I had refused once again. Now, if he’d brought me rum and lime, or even a cup of warm, briny beer, I would have accepted. I could drink the heartiest seamage under the table. A trait that my father had apparently given me—and the only one that I was thankful for.
I heard a quiet step and looked up. Echo smiled down at me, his goatlike mane waving in the night breeze.
“I don’t mean to listen,” he said, handing me a cup. “But your thoughts are very loud.”
In the cup, rum and lime.
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
“Don’t drink it too quickly. You haven’t eaten, and the rum will go straight to your blood. You’ll be dancing in the crow’s nest before you know it, and you’ll hate me in the morning, all because I was kind.”
I reached up to take it, wondering if it would burst into sudden, alcoholic flame in my hand.
“I’m sorry you can’t stay,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You’re lying, but that’s to be expected, I suppose,” he said. “Life is a funny thing, sweet like rum and bitter like the lime. That’s why we like it.”
“I’ve had my fill of bitter,” I said. “I’ll take your word about the sweet.”
“Listening to fauns is the beginning of wisdom.”
And he smiled. I couldn’t help it. Wearily, I smiled back.
“Ahoy, Doc!” came a voice across the main. “Able Whacks at Dog Eight. Wardroom!”
“I’ll be there!” He twisted the ring on his left hand. “Smoke never learns, but I get his rum, so I don’t mind.”
I watched him walk away with his bobbing, goatlike gait.
And so I sat, cupping the rum with gloved hands, sipping it slowly, breathing the deep salt air, and relishing the rock and sway of the ocean. It was on nights like these that I would think about home, the poor little pebble of land on the shoals of the Spits. I thought about my mother, a wylde greenmage, trained by no one but skilled beyond reason. She had battled the contempt of the people to become a sought-after healer. To them, she was beautiful and bewitching, but to me, she was hard and unyielding and cruel. All to make me stronger, she had said. All to give me the hope of a life beyond the Spits. Well, she was right, and I was gone, and I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived.
Plenty of bitter. Still waiting on the sweet.
There was another step, and I opened my eyes, hoping to see the faun with another cup, but it was Devanhan Fahr. He hadn’t seen me, huddled as I was under the fife rail, wrapped in peacoats and shadow, as he stood, facing the horizon. He was a puzzle of a man, with his laughing eyes and crooked smile, regulation hair and lawless earring, yet he cut a fine figure at the prow of this ship. If I’d come across him in a tavern or shipyard, I’d have fogged him in a heartbeat and been gone before the sunsrise. But he sailed with the enemy, so I could just as easily put a shiv in his ribs and call it a day.
SHIP
OF SPELLS
Slowly, he pulled his hands from his pockets and began to form the patterns for lightspinning. His lips moved, and sparks traced from his fi ngertips as he drew runes in the dark sky. Soon, a fl are erupted between his hands, illuminating his face in fl ickering light. He folded it into his palm and softly blew across it, sending sparks along the waves. As if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he didn’t sail with a Rhi’Ahr for captain.
“Traitor,” I spat.
“Hels’ hooks!” he exclaimed, stepping back. “Why are you there?”
“Where am I to go? Don’t have a berth, and despite the quartermaster’s kind offer, I don’t think the dory is as comfortable as he makes it sound.” I fought his eyes with mine. I was good at that. “Besides, the air stinks of Rhi’Ahr down there. I’ll take my chances with the sea.”
He shook his head. “It’s not what you think,” he said.
“I don’t need to think,” I said. “It’s pretty damned clear.”
It’d been ten years since the Nethersea lit this war, and still each day fl ung another ember into the blaze. We’d burned through too much death already, and now my people, my bones, ached for the same blood in return.
“Is it now, Bluemage?” He tossed the light to the other hand, his gaze holding mine. “Tell me what you can see without thinking.”
“The infamous Ship of Spells is captained by the enemy. Who do you serve?”
“The king, Oversea, and the Northhelm itself.”
“Liar.”
He grinned. “One of the best you’ll ever meet, I’ll wager.”
“How in the hels did you get a slip at Hodgetown?”
“That’s the king’s business, Blue,” he said. “Not yours.”
“That’s convenient.”
“That’s the crown.” He turned to let the light dance along the wind again.
I leaned my back against the rail. “It doesn’t matter. I will tell everyone at Hodgetown that you’re spies, and I will keep telling them until they send a fleet to sink you hard.”
“Eight months at sea, and you know more than the king.” He laughed, and I had the sudden urge to kick him in the shin. “Perhaps we should drop you at High Temple instead. I hear his court is easily breached. Wasn’t a princeling stolen once?”
H. LEIGHTON DICKSON
I bit my tongue, cupping my rum so tightly that I thought I might turn it to sugar in my palms. The Stolen Prince of Oversea was old news, a far-fetched fable for cold nights and warm beer. It had been one of my mother’s favorites, however, and likely why I had no patience for the telling.
“Trust me, Blue,” he said finally. “We would keep you if we could, even just to teach you a thing or two about seeing.”
I studied my feet. Sparks from his magik flickered against my boots. He was clearly a mage but, like the rest of them, wore no sash.
“How do you spin the light like that?” I asked, and he looked back at his hands, appearing relieved at the change of topic.
“It’s a basic luminary line with a Carmen incantation. A bit beyond the skill of a blue.”
“Teach me,” I said.
“I can’t.”
I narrowed my gaze on his. “You mean you won’t because I’m Navy.”
He shrugged. “What I mean is, Blue, there’s no point.”
“Why?” I growled. “Because the captain thinks I’m too proud for a privateer ship? Or because he knows I’ll kill him when his back is turned or when he’s tucked deep in his bed?”
“Because we’ll be at port by morning…and learning half a spell is worse than learning none at all.”
I wouldn’t lie. That made a bit of sense. Though I was still mad as hels he wouldn’t teach me half anyway. Anything to keep my thoughts from drifting to the man in the cabin below.
“You should kill him and be captain yourself,” I said, a corner of my mouth turning up before I could stop it. “Maybe I’d follow you, then.”
“You’d follow a mutineer who killed his captain? That’s low, even for Navy.”
Any semblance of cunning was instantly replaced.
“His people sank my ship!” I barked, my chest heaving as I spat out each word. “I couldn’t save any of them. I watched my powder boy get swallowed by the sea. Corwen was twelve. Twelve!”
It was his turn to look away now, and I was glad, for tears were stinging my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.
I sank back into the shadow and wiped my cheeks, marshaling my
