Page 27

THE COLOURS ON THE SILVERSWIFT WERE TENSE, THE shades of distant storms, purple and bruising.

Inara’s weren’t hard to read: her fear was black and hung like smoke.

Arlo was dead, and another crewmate whose name Skedi could not recall had been so badly burned they had left her with a medic from another ship.

Three more crew were injured, and Aleda would not stop nursing the blistering on her arm and muttering about getting involved with foolish wars of gods.

‘Kissen will be all right, Inara,’ said Skedi for the hundredth time, sitting in the porthole in the warmth of the sun setting over the water. ‘She’s indestructible.’

‘She’s not.’

Inara had been trying to mend the chipped bits of Kissen’s leg, filing them down and rubbing the bubbles out of the boiled leather. Skedi was fairly certain that Kissen didn’t care what her leg looked like, as long as it worked, but doing something made Inara feel better.

The veiga had woken twice but had muttered in Talic and Middric. Sometimes names that neither of them knew, sometimes names they did. Tidean, Mell, Lunsen, Inara, Osidisen, Yatho, Telle, Pato.

‘It’s my fault,’ said Inara. ‘We should have listened to Mama.’

Skedi shook his head, shivering at the thought of that great god. ‘I’ve never imagined a god who hated humans,’ he said. Was that true? Skedi himself had once seen humans as weak, manipulable. Could he have become like Satuan?

‘Or hated things like me,’ said Inara quietly.

Skedi sat up. ‘You’re not a thing.’

‘He said I was a monster.’ She sighed and put Kissen’s leg down. ‘Maybe he’s right. I’ve killed gods and people. Hurt them. Let them die.’

Skedi thought back to what Kissen had said to him. I’ll give her honesty; you give her love. And if Kissen wasn’t around? Who would give her honesty? Could he change his own nature to be what she needed? He was just a god.

At least he could try.

‘You’re still human, Inara,’ said Skedi. ‘With room to change and grow. That’s what humans do.’

It wasn’t a lie; it wasn’t a truth either. It was something different. She looked at him with troubled eyes, and what little of his heart there was broke for her.

There was a knock at the door, and Inara tensed. ‘Come in,’ she said.

It was Lertes.

‘Captain,’ said Inara, then remembered herself and stood respectfully. Lertes nodded at her.

‘Is the godkiller awake?’ he asked.

Inara frowned, moving defensively in front of Kissen.

‘She’ll wake soon,’ lied Skedi, but the captain’s colours didn’t look aggressive, instead they were soft carnelian, like a polished gem.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘when she does.’ He held out a cloth-wrapped bundle, and Skedi recognised Kissen’s cutlass. ‘Rhiyande found it,’ he said, unwrapping the pommel, which had been bound in green. ‘Had it ground back and reshaped. And I’ve asked Graemar to make her some more of that cool broth.’

‘I thought you all hated her,’ said Inara.

Lertes scratched his scruffy chin. The lines of his eyes were deep cut, like cracks in the surface of the earth. ‘I do not hold with killing gods,’ he said. ‘But no sailor forgets a debt. It isn’t our way.’

Kissen had drawn Satuan away from the crew on the cliffs. Whether she had intended it or not, that act of courage might just have won them to her. At least a little.

‘Lertes?’ came Lessa’s voice from the doorway. She was stood there holding a bowl, her brows raised in surprise at seeing him. The captain frowned at her, his colours darkening with anger.

So Kissen had won some respect, but Lessa had won the captain’s ire. Skedi understood that he blamed her for putting his crew in danger. Worse: putting his beloved wife at risk.

‘You best still refer to me as captain, my lady,’ he said. ‘In case we forget who makes decisions for the safety of this ship.’

Lessa narrowed her eyes, just slightly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We best not forget the order of command.’

Before, only Aleda had truly grated at Lessa’s hold over the Silverswift . Now, his body stiffened at her comment, the reminder that the ship was still hers. But then he softened, and stood aside to let her pass.

‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do, captain,’ he said quietly, calling her such for the first time in Skedi’s hearing.

His words were barely audible over the creak of the ship as it dipped and shifted on the waves, sending the light from the porthole dancing over the walls.

‘I backed you when Commander Samin gave you this ship for saving her life. You were but a child, rash sometimes, but decisive. Different. I gave my word to serve you, and I will keep it, as long as you keep yours to us.’

Lessa passed the bowl to Inara, who was keeping quiet, her eyes darting between her mother and her captain, the one who owned the ship and the one who ran it. The lady turned back to Lertes, hands on her hips, chin high.

‘I have kept my word,’ she said. ‘I have protected you from attack, from treachery, from poverty, and from gods. I turned you honest traders, rich ones, while keeping you your freedom. You can remind Aleda of that. I assume she is the source of these mutterings?’

Lertes swallowed, but made no denial. ‘Then how is it that two are lost in one day at Iska?’ he said. ‘Our place of safety? Of rest? You have entangled us in the business of gods and kings when we are but commonfolk and cut-throats. I warn you now that they do not think it right.’

Skedi shrank, sharing a glance with Inara. She caught her breath.

‘We are fighting a war,’ said Lessa.

‘It’s not our war, lady.’

‘It will be if we lose.’ Lertes swallowed at the certainty in her tone. ‘I told you of Blenraden, I have seen what less powerful gods can do when they have blood in their teeth. I am loyal to my crew, those on this ship, and those on my land. You agreed that you would all be one and the same.’

Skedi stretched his wings, trying to think of a way to ease the tension, but he did not know enough about Lessa’s and Lertes’s lives before Inara to come up with the right lie.

‘It is as you say,’ said Lertes at last. ‘Just be careful, captain, that you do not forsake this crew for loyalty to another.’

He glanced towards Inara, briefly, but then nodded to Lessa and ducked out through the door. Lessa watched him go for a moment, her brow troubled, but then consciously tried to smooth it, to cover her feeling. Another little white lie. Skedi felt it in his heart.

‘I never expected to be reprimanded by the captain I employ,’ she said wryly, turning back inside and putting a touch of humour carefully into her tone.

She’s hiding something, said Inara, straight into Skedi’s mind. He pricked up his ears.

Not exactly, Ina, he said. She’s pretending she’s not afraid so you won’t be.

Inara sighed.

‘Any change?’ her mother asked, nodding towards Kissen.

‘Not yet,’ said Inara. The wounds of Kissen’s flesh were healing, but they did not know how far injury had spread inside her.

The veiga looked more vulnerable than Skedi could ever have imagined.

When the light moved through the porthole, he could see the skin peeling around her neck and face, and her head and arms were covered in scratches.

It was too hot in the cabin, too pressing, but all the seawater in the world was not enough to keep it cool.

Occasionally, he fanned her with his wings, which seemed to ease her breathing.

He was starting to think that he quite liked her alive.

Lessa sighed. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have been better prepared.’

‘I was the one who angered him,’ said Inara.

‘You said to stay away.’ She put the cool broth on the floor.

Seaweed floated in it, along with some lumps of softened grain.

Its spoon was an oyster shell, and Skedi had heard the crew talk of how drinking from it was good for healing, as it was the symbol of the Curlish god of medicine.

‘I still thought he would help us.’ Lessa sat down on the edge of Kissen’s bed as she spoke. ‘I was wrong.’ She frowned at the veiga as though she was a riddle she couldn’t solve.

‘I underestimated her,’ the lady added at last. ‘She could have saved herself, but she saved us. Me. I owe her my life now, as well as yours.’

‘She helped me,’ said Inara, sitting back on the stool she had brought in, beside the bucket of boiled salt water she had been using to bathe Kissen’s burns. ‘Before she even knew me. Her sisters too.’ She hugged her knees.

‘Oddly generous for a woman who kills other people’s gods.’

Inara frowned and looked somewhat like her mother in doing so. The ship creaked again, Skedi could hear the straining of the sails to catch wind enough to keep them going south. Irisia was not far away now.

‘Her family was killed by Hseth,’ said Inara. ‘When she was small. A sacrifice. No one else survived.’

Lessa was silent, then managed a very quiet, ‘Oh.’

‘Do you know what he meant,’ Inara said, changing the subject, ‘by breaking the faith in Hseth?’

Lessa paused, then hummed under her breath.

‘Something King Arren does understand is that nations are built on faith. If not in a god, then in whoever is in control. Armies are much the same. But it takes more than one action, one moment. Breaking faith in Hseth will take more than a single battle, and even then it may not be enough.’ She shook her head.

‘Without gods on our side, without being able to use briddite to fight Hseth herself, I don’t know what we can do against the faith of thousands. ’

‘Last time …’ said Skedi, ‘Kissen dragged Hseth into the sea. Like Satuan.’

Lessa nodded. ‘Elemental gods dislike their opposite. She’s clever.’

‘But she used briddite on her hands,’ said Inara. ‘Had blessed water from the river god to stop her getting burned and used a promise from a sea god to kill her.’ She bit her lip. ‘What about Yusef?’ she asked. ‘Gods can hurt gods.’

Lessa smoothed her hair back from her face. For a moment, Skedi saw a flurry of her colours, whites and blues, spikes and swirls. Complications.