He could feel Corayne’s eyes hard on his face, watching him instead of the sea. “Your mother will be in Aegironos by now,” she said, the wind in her hair again. “The ships bound for Kasa replenish supplies in the Gulf of Farers. Safe waves. A beautiful city.”
He tried to picture it. Tried to see his mother smiling beneath a warmer sun, her skin glowing again, even as she curled in her chair. He knew she wanted this, wanted to see home again, and had for years. She’s getting her wish, he told himself, trying to ease the shame beneath every inch of his body. And she’ll be safe.
“Have you been to the southern continent?” he asked.
Corayne shook her head, her lips in her teeth. “My mother has southern blood and so do I, but I’ve only heard stories of the world, from the people allowed to see it.”
“You’re seeing it now.”
She gave him a withering look. “I don’t think this counts, Trelland.”
“Maybe after.” He shrugged. After seemed so foolish and impossible, far beyond reach. They would probably die trying to save the realm, or in the doom that followed their failure. But the hope of after, distant as it was, felt like a balm on fevered skin. Andry leaned into it, chasing the sensation.
“I can’t exactly be a squire anymore.” Not for a queen trying to kill me. “Before he died, one of the Companions—a knight of Kasa, his name was Okran—he invited me to Benai.” Perhaps my last happy memory, before everything went to ashes. Andry wished he could step back, take Okran’s horse by the reins, drag him away from the temple and his doom. “He promised to show me the land of my mother, and her people.”
A stillness crossed Corayne’s face, only her eyes moving. Andry felt searched. She read him like her maps, connecting one point to another, reaching a conclusion he could not see.
All the same, he saw understanding. Corayne thirsted for the world more than he did. She knew what it was to look to the horizon and want.
“Maybe after,” she murmured. “Your mother can show you herself.”
The hope guttered in his chest, slipping through his fingers. It left behind an ache. Something told him that dream would never come to pass.
Andry did not sleep down below, where the air was tight and the sailors stank, belching and breaking wind all night. Only Charlon and Sigil could bear it, though perhaps the bounty hunter kept close should her fugitive take any opportunity to attempt escape. Even if they were in the middle of the sea. Valtik was gods-knew-where, somehow able to disappear even on a trade galley. Probably hanging from a rope over the side, luring turtles for their shells.
Instead, Andry slept on deck. The ship rocked in an easy lull. He felt himself suspended between sleep and waking, reluctant to dream of the temple, the feel of the sword, and the red, ruined hands on his skin. In his nightmares, the horse faltered. The sword fell. He slipped from the saddle and was eaten, the hope of the realm dying with him. Starlight bled through his eyelids, brighter than he had ever seen. So far from land, from smoke and candlelight, the stars were like needles through the heavens, pinpricks from their realm to the heaven of the gods. He tried to ignore Corayne dozing only a few yards away, half obscured by Domacridhan sitting next to her. She was little more than a lump in her cloak, the sword half hidden beside her, a spit of black hair curling out of her hood.
The first jolt felt like nothing. An errant wave. A gust of wind filling the sail.
Andry opened his eyes to find the sail flat, the sea calm. A trick of sleep, he thought. Like when you think you’re falling. Even Dom didn’t stir, the constant sentinel staring at his boots.
Andry settled back again, warm in his cloak, the salt air cool on his face. I don’t know why people complain about sailing so much. It’s quite pleasant.
The second jolt made the hull creak, the ship tipping beneath Andry’s body. Still gentle, an easy, steady movement. One of the crewmen on watch whispered to another, their Larsian harsh and hissing with confusion. Another looked over the side of the galley, staring into the black waters.
Andry narrowed his eyes as Dom straightened. His white face paled in the dim light; his lips twitched beneath his golden beard. The Elder stared toward the prow, where Sorasa slept upright, her arms folded over her body in a tight embrace.
Something unfurled in the dark, outside the weak spheres of light swaying from the mast, prow, and stern. Andry stared, squinting.
The Elder was on his feet in a second, his voice raised in warning, already lunging.
For once, the immortal was not quick enough.