Kingsbane

The boy stared at her castings.

For a moment, she lay there frozen. And then she remembered: she had taken off Harkan’s gloves earlier in the night to allow her bandaged hands a chance to breathe—and had forgotten to replace them.

“What are those?” The child looked up, a sharpness overtaking his expression. “I’ve never seen those before.”

“No, I don’t suppose you have.” Eliana swung her legs out of the hammock, ready to grab Arabeth. “They belonged to my mother. What do you want?”

The child considered her hands once more. “If I touch them, will they hurt me?”

“If you touch them, I’ll hurt you.”

The child’s gaze lifted, appraising her. “My name is Gerren. You snore in your sleep. If you don’t stop that, someone will pound your face in, probably.”

Then, quick as a kitten, he dropped a folded piece of paper into her palm, ducked under the hammock beside hers, and was gone.

The hold was dim—a few stubby candles throughout and a pale wash of light from the nearest hatch. Eliana opened the paper and squinted to read it.

Slop room. One hour.

We know who you are.

• • •

She found Harkan swabbing the portside deck, ignored the irritated bark of the boatswain, and held up the paper for Harkan to read.

He wiped his brow. The rising dawn illuminated the sheen of sweat on his skin.

“What did you tell him?” she said softly. “This man you found who secured us passage. Is this his doing?”

“I told him nothing of significance.” Harken frowned at the paper, then marched to the railing and tossed it overboard. “Who brought that to you?”

“A child. Gerren was his name. He saw my castings.”

Harkan was aghast. “How? My gloves—”

“I took them off to let my hands breathe, forgot to put them back on, and fell asleep.”

“El, you can’t be careless like that.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me that way,” she said, though she had been careless and was furious to realize it. “I was tired, all right? I’m so tired I can hardly think.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t driven yourself to the edge of death back in Astavar,” Harkan said, “you wouldn’t be in such a state now.”

She fixed him with a hard glare. “It’s astonishing to me that you feel you have any ground to stand on here. I did what I had to do to save Navi.”

Harkan rounded on her, his eyes glinting with tears. “And I did what I had to do to save you.”

Silence fell between them. Harkan turned away to watch the brightening sea. The sun fattened on the horizon; there was no land in sight.

When he spoke again, his voice was steady. “I suppose we’ll have to go meet them, whoever they are. Otherwise this could escalate.”

“I have to meet them, anyway.”

“You can’t possibly expect me to let you go alone.”

Eliana stilled, the lines of her body drawing tight with the urge to strike. “Let me? You’ll want to think very carefully about what you say next, Harkan.”

He was quiet for a long time, and when he finally looked back at her, there was a weariness to his expression, a sag of regret.

“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to apologize enough. And I accept that. But I also don’t think you should do anything alone—not here, not when we disembark. You have a target on your back, now more than ever, and we have no friends here, or anywhere. We have only each other.”

The terrible truth of that settled, spinning, into her gut.

She had only Harkan.

And she realized, watching him, that despite everything, she still loved him and always would. He had done something unforgivable, and she would see the memory of that act for the rest of her life, every time she set eyes on him.

But there had been a lifetime of friendship and devotion before that, and though she longed to discard those memories, wipe clean the slate of their history, she couldn’t. He was too much a part of her, and she of him. They were braided together, and if she untwined those threads, she would have nothing left to hold on to.

Wordlessly, she helped him finish his chores, and then, together, they climbed belowdecks.

• • •

The slop room was down the hall from the galley. Multiple times a day, the cook’s assistants dumped rotten food, refuse, and waste through a locked hatch in the slop room floor.

The narrow corridor outside the room was empty. All was silent, save for a raucous shout of laughter from the galley.

Eliana knocked on the door. It opened at once, admitting a foul odor that smelled exactly as she had expected the slop room to smell.

“You’re late,” said the woman inside—one Eliana had seen in passing aboard the ship. She was young, perhaps two or three years older than Eliana, lithe and reedy in a way that suggested she hardly ever stopped moving. Her eyes were quick and sharp, a honeyed brown to match her skin, which was dusted with freckles. Her long, braided brown hair had been dyed a rich scarlet—though that must have been some time ago, for much of the color had faded.

The woman’s gaze fell at once to Eliana’s hands. “So what are they?”

Eliana did not blink. “They were my mother’s.”

“Yes, so Gerren said. But what are they?”

“Odd, that you would care so much about jewelry,” said Harkan, at Eliana’s elbow.

The woman raised an eyebrow. “They’re rather ugly, for jewelry.”

“What do you want?” Eliana snapped.

The woman considered Eliana for a moment longer. “Your help,” she said and then stepped aside to reveal a man sitting behind her on an overturned pail. He was pale-skinned, with wild copper hair and a fresh red scar across his face, part of it obscured by a black eye patch.

Eliana stepped back, unbalanced. She felt as though she were lifting away from herself.

“Arris?” said Harkan, sounding surprised. “What is all this?”

“Harkan.” The man inclined his head, his voice slow and smooth, deeply amused. “When we met in Vintervok, you didn’t tell me what sort of company you keep.” He glanced at Eliana, his mouth twitching.

“His name isn’t Arris,” Eliana managed at last, forcing her shock to release its hold. “It’s Patrik. He’s Red Crown.”