He leans his cheek against hers. ‘It know it has to be done, Cog. It’s for the best.’
‘And who else to do it.’ Her fingers tighten on the back of his neck. ‘Too smart by half, boy.’ One thick-nailed finger ticks away at the back of his skull. ‘Too smart to be climbing ropes.’
He laughs. ‘It’s what I like.’
She sits spread-legged on a crate and takes two bottles from the sack on her back. With the palm of her hand she splits the tops off, and pats the splintered boards next to her. ‘Have a bit to swill the dust down before you go.’
They chink glass to glass.
She drinks deep, throat flexing. Rope sips, sets it aside. Something fierce with fizz, a guttural alcoholic scrape mixed up with liquorice and seed.
‘It’s good,’ he says.
‘Made it myself.’
Ropecharmer nods. ‘Of course you did.’ He watches a crew of dockworkers load cargo onto a much different ship, a wider, shallow-bottomed thing, with strange lines. Maybe one of those he’d begged, borrowed and bought with Shipwright’s coin and promises. His guts twist a little as he turns back to Cog. ‘Will this do it? Will it stop things getting worse?’
She smiles back at him. ‘Aye, Rope, it’ll do what we need it do.’
Rope wets his lips. ‘Need and want are two different things, Cog.’
She pulls again, swills the dregs with a critical eye. ‘Too smart, like I said. A shame you couldn’t just be a good arse on strong pins.’
He nudges her with a shoulder. ‘Why not both?’
She laughs, sucks on the pipe. ‘We can’t always have everything we want.’ And the mirth runs out the lines of her face.
He smiles softly. ‘This time though. We’ll make a better world this time.’
She pats his cheek. Calluses rough against a day of salt and stubble. ‘Oh babe, I can tell you’re young.’ She levers herself down from the crate with a groan. ‘Me though, I’ve got legs like a sucked bone.’ She rubs at her thighs one-handed. ‘I best get back before the Grey Lords notice I’m gone.’
‘Is that likely?’ he says.
Coglifter snickers. ‘No, but I didn’t get old and painful by being lazy.’
She watches the curve of his chest and the fall of his arm across the tight-wrapped package. ‘Stay safe, pretty boy. Get it done. Come home.’
His voice catches her on the heel as she turns to leave, ‘Cog.’
She pivots, fixes him with a glare.
‘The others. Have you heard from them?’
She shakes her head. ‘Dead or changed their minds, boy. So far as I know, we’re alone.’
Cog doesn’t watch him ascend the ship’s gangplank. She knows the set of his shoulders like the shape of any planted seed. Instead, she turns and takes Slitters Wynd back into the guts of the city. From the Towers, she hears the distant shrieks of falcons, the hammering of metal. The hot smell of burning rides downhill on the wind, and she keeps her hands tight in her pockets, feeling out the sharp edges of flint, the thinnest sliver of cat bone. Fingers whitened almost to bleeding, Coglifter turns away from the ship and slips on tired legs back into the streets of Hesper.
90
sweet departure
the ocean wide
my one true love
still by my side
—Port song of theVolante
