Rian seems to check every knot, every chain, every bolt, every plank. He could tell me he knows every stitch of every sail, and I’d believe him. As we stop at each mast, he stares up at the complicated assortment of ropes and chains and netting, then hands me his cup while he climbs to sort out some tangle or check some issue he’s spotted. I keep listening to his breathing, looking for any signs of the fever sickness of Kandala, but I hear nothing. No cough, no signs of fever.
When he climbs down from the second mast, I say, “Your crew was in Kandala for a few days. Has anyone shown signs of illness?”
“None at all.” He glances at me. “Are you concerned?”
“I was surprised when you were the only one on deck. I didn’t realize the captain himself would be checking each sail.”
He shrugs and takes his cup. “Usually Sablo does it, but they all worked late into the night to get ahead of this storm. We run a lean crew, so I’d rather they take extra sleep where they can find it.”
That must mean he took the morning duties for them. No wonder Rian’s crew is so loyal.
It rattles around in my head with the way he asked about whether Lochlan is one of Corrick’s people, too.
“I can help,” I say as we walk to the next mast. “Wherever you need.” I hesitate, wondering if this offer is out of place. “I mean—I’m not a sailor. But if you’re shorthanded.”
He looks startled, but he grins. “Sure.” He nods toward the last mast. “Climb on up and check those ropes for me.”
“All right.” I hold out my cup.
He loses the smile, and for a heartbeat of time, I expect him to say, I was joking, because he very clearly was.
But he takes the cup, and he says, “Look for signs of fraying, or anywhere it might be fouled. The sails—”
“Fouled?” I say.
“Tangled. The sails should each hang straight from the beam.” He points.
“Right.” I nod. Then, just as I saw him do on the other masts, I hook my fingers in the ropes, put my foot on the first rung, and begin to climb.
“It’s very high,” he warns.
“I’m not afraid of heights. I thought you heard the rumors about Tessa Cade scaling the walls of the Royal Sector.”
That grin is back. “I did indeed. Go ahead then.”
I begin to climb—but I quickly learn that this is very different from scaling a wall on solid ground. When I’m fifteen feet up, the wind is blasting at my cheeks, pulling tendrils free of my braid. The boat dips without warning, my foot slips off a rung, and the world spins. I catch myself in the netting, clutching tight. My breath is a wild rush in my lungs, my heart slamming in my chest, and I expect Rian to call me back down.
Instead, he calls, “Take a minute. Get your bearings.
Look at the horizon.”
His voice is steady. Patient. Unworried. I do as he says, and it helps.
My foot finds the next rung, and I keep climbing. I’m slower now, less confident. This seems higher than the sector walls ever did. If I let go, it seems that I would fall upward and lose myself in the morning sky.
By the time I’m two-thirds of the way there, I chance a glance down, and somehow there’s only water below me. I suck in a sharp breath. It must be an optical illusion caused by the sway of the ship—but everything seems so far. The ship rights itself for a moment, then tips again in the wind. I cling to the rigging and the mast and close my eyes, but that’s worse. I dip and sway and grip tight. For a minute. An hour. I have no idea.
“Come now, Miss Cade, you can’t be tired already.”
His voice is right in front of me, and I gasp. My eyes snap open to find Rian right there on the opposite side of the rigging, his fingers hooked in the same web of ropes. He’s not clinging for dear life like I am. He looks like he could stay up here all day.
“It’s possible I was too bold,” I say, and he smiles. “No,” he says. “Just bold enough.”
My fingers refuse to unclench. “If you could have meals sent up, I’ll just stay up here for the rest of our journey.”
He laughs. “That wouldn’t make for a very good story.” He looks up. “You’ve only got another ten feet.”
I take a deep breath and look up.
He’s right. It really only is about ten feet.
“Either way,” he adds, “you have to climb up or climb down. Ten feet won’t matter if you fall.”
I huff a startled laugh. “Well. That’s reassuring.” “I thought so, too.”
But in a way, it is reassuring. I take a deep breath and fix my eyes on the individual strands, then move my hand
up to the next stretch. And then another. And another. A minute later, my hand grasps the crossbeam that holds the sails, and I’m gasping, partly terrified, partly amazed. I still can’t make myself look away from the solid objects right in front of me. Just a stretch of wood. Just a few ropes.
It takes me a minute to realize I actually came up here with a job to do, and I trace my eyes over the lines. I feel a bit foolish, because Rian is obviously going to do the same thing, but my heart is pounding from the opportunity to do something wild and dangerous again. Wes and I spent so much time hiding from the night patrol and scurrying down darkened roads, while these last few weeks have been interminable palace meetings and measuring dosages with physicians and charting efficacy rates.
Wes.
I thought of Wes. Not Corrick.
Without warning, the memory makes my eyes sting. Of course Corrick can’t slink through the shadows and steal Moonflower from the Royal Sector anymore. The rumors are already wild enough. He could never go back. I don’t even know if he’d want to.
I blink away the emotion and study each individual rope. At first, they all look the same, but then I realize the second one from the end has a bit of a twist in the line.
“There!” I call, pointing. “I think that one is—”
I break off with a gasp when I realize Rian is right in front of me again, on the opposite side of the ropes.
He’s staring up at the line, too. “That one is all right. Just the wind.” He pauses and turns back to me, only a few inches of space between us. His eyes are lighter than Corrick’s, a blue so faded they’re gray. He studies me. “Good catch. I’m impressed.”
I feel my cheeks warm. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He pauses, and wind whips between us. “Look out from the ropes. The view is worth it. I promise.”
I hold my breath and cast my gaze to the left—and he’s right. The sea stretches out in all directions, the sky a fading purple overhead. Below us, the main sails billow out, hiding much of the deck from view. From up here, it’s like I’ve climbed a ladder to the heavens.
“It’s like flying,” I say.
“When I was a boy, I thought the same.” His smile turns a little sad. “My father used to say that if I wasn’t careful, I’d catch the right gust of wind and find myself in the clouds.”
He misses him. I can hear it in his voice. I wonder how long the former captain Blakemore has been dead, and how long Rian has had to play emissary—or spy.
Before I can ask, he has a question of his own. “Will Lochlan be a problem, Miss Cade?”
I look across the web of ropes and shake my head. “He hates Corrick—” I catch myself and wince, wondering if I need to be more formal now. “He hates Prince Corrick, but I don’t think he’ll be a problem for the ship.” I hesitate. “He said he used to take summer work around the docks. He might be willing to help, too. If you’re shorthanded.”
“No—I meant, will he be a problem for you.” Oh.
“I don’t know,” I say quietly. I inhale to say more, but my tongue stops on an explanation. I’m not entirely sure what I’d say anyway.
Lochlan took me and Corrick prisoner. He marched us through the mud to a waiting mob that wanted to kill the King’s Justice.
But Lochlan had no other options. As horrible as he was, I understood why he did it.
I swallow, and my throat feels tight.
Rian’s eyes search mine, and I know he’s trying to puzzle that out, to determine what kind of conflict we’ve brought aboard his ship.
“And the prince himself?” Rian says, and his voice is very careful.
I didn’t make you wait.
The words I said to Corrick burn in my heart, and warmth climbs up my cheeks again. “The prince wants the best for Kandala,” I say. “He won’t cause any problems. He’s eager to find a new supply of Moonflower.”
Rian rubs a hand across his jaw. “Again,” he says gently, “I meant for you.”
The wind whispers between us now, a brief lull in the sweeping gusts, and we’re almost close enough to share breath. I wasn’t prepared for these kinds of questions, especially not at the top of a mast.
“We’re flying,” Rian says. “No one can hear your words up here. Speak freely.”
“I’d speak freely on the decks,” I say. “Would you?”
My chest feels hot and tight, and I don’t know what to say. “Of course.”
But there’s really no of course about it.
“I saw the way people jumped when the king spoke at dinner,” Rian says. “I see the way you look to the prince before you say a word.” He hesitates. “I’ve told you before, I don’t mean to say things that will put you at risk.”
“I’m not at risk!” I snap, and then I scowl because I hate that he brought out my temper—when he’s not the one who deserves it. At the same time, I wonder if what he’s saying is true. Do I look like I’m deferring to Corrick and Harristan? Do I look like I’m at risk?
The memory of Corrick holding a dagger to that man’s throat in the candy shop is seared into my brain as clearly as the time I found him in the rubble of the Hold after one of the first rebel attacks. He’d cut two prisoners’ throats, then. I keep thinking of Lochlan’s warnings in the hallway. They feel a little too accurate all of a sudden.
Or the way Karri leaned in to whisper in the candy shop.
He’s still terrifying.
Rian studies me for a long moment. “Around the docks, there are dozens of rumors about a girl named Tessa who used to work with a man named Wes to steal Moonflower to help the people. That she was one of the bravest outlaws the people had ever known. That she risked her life to sneak into the palace to bring news of better medicine.”
That wasn’t why I snuck in, but it’s a better story than saying I hoped to assassinate the king after I thought “Wes” had been killed by Prince Corrick.
“Their doses were too high,” I say. “We’re trying to convince people that more could be done with less. No one trusts the Crown yet.”
“But they trust you.” He pauses. “Even though Wes and Tessa disappeared from the Wilds.”
He says that like he knows the truth—but the prince has never directly confirmed his involvement. Everything happened so quickly that night, and certainly no one could prove it. I don’t know what to say.
“They do trust you,” Rian says. “Not just the people either. Prince Corrick brought you along to ensure the Moonflower in Ostriary is the same as what you have in Kandala. The guardsman said you’ve earned the king’s favor and protection, too. I sense that’s not a small thing.”
“No,” I say softly. “It’s not a small thing.”
His eyes search my face. “What I heard about you is vastly different from rumors about the King’s Justice.” He
pauses. “Surely you can understand my confusion about the company you keep, and whether you’re at risk—or whether you’re at his side by your own choosing. Did Prince Corrick really hang bodies along the gates of the Royal Sector? To prevent thieving?”
There’s no disguising the judgment in his voice.
I can’t even deny it. I wish I could. I’ll never forget the bodies, the daggers protruding from the eye sockets, the Moonflower blossoms planted on the corpses that hung in the summer sun. Sometimes I smell something rotten, and it triggers memories of the stench, the buzzing of the flies, the guards mocking me for staring in horror. It triggers memories of my panic and grief, to see my friend’s body displayed in such a way.
Corrick, I think. Corrick did that.
The corpse I saw wasn’t Wes. Not really. And the man he hung in his place truly was a criminal. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that.
But he wants to be better. He wants to do better. In the candy shop, he could have executed that man right there, but he didn’t. He had him arrested and taken to the Hold.
Though I don’t know what he did with him after that. “I’ve upset you,” Rian says.
“No.” But maybe he has. “Corrick was trying to maintain order.” My voice is rough. “The sectors—the consuls—” I break off with a frustrated sound. “You don’t know what it was like. Everyone had a different idea of what was right.”
“Sometimes what’s right isn’t debatable, or a matter of opinion. Clearly you didn’t think what they were doing was right.”
He doesn’t say it like a question. He says it like he knows. He says it like he agrees.
“No,” I say, and my voice is so quiet it’s nearly pulled away with the wind. “I didn’t.”
“It’s hard to take from people who feel like they have nothing to lose,” he says. “I saw what happened during the war in Ostriary.”
That’s right. He survived a war. We merely postponed a revolution.
“We aren’t far from war in Kandala,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I’m hoping we can prevent that.”
We. He’s talking about the Ostrian court allying with Kandala, trading steel for Moonflower petals.
But for a flicker of time, with his eyes so close, it sounds like he’s talking about us. Rian and me.
The wind steals my breath, and the ship dips and tilts, and my fingers tighten on the ropes. I close my eyes and swallow.
Rian rests his fingers over mine, his grip warm and secure. “Easy,” he says. “You won’t fall.”
“Oi, Captain!” a woman’s voice calls from below, and my eyes snap open.
Another man yells, “Is she stuck? Or do you reckon he tied her up there?”
Someone else laughs.
Rian smiles. “My crew is awake.”
I flush, realizing just how closely we were suspended together. “I suppose we should get down.”
He nods, but he makes no move to descend. “I’m usually the first one on deck, Miss Cade.” He pauses. “If you’d like to help me check the rigging tomorrow.”
I take a deep breath and look into his eyes. “Of course, Captain Blakemore. I’m happy to help.”
