Perhaps it would have been enough if Ceri had come to him before Os. If Adeline had come to him herself, before Eda, before Simon, before the summons, before the saltwater call now stinging beneath his skin.
Now there was only that sting. Now there was only the call of the waters, and a softer, taunting call from so much farther away. Avette called to him from across the oceans. And with his chest numbed and the Mother’s hand guiding him by the green glow of the pendant, he would finally answer her.
???
By the time Kai made it through the steep streets of the Imperial City, a streak of pale blue had already cleaved the black sky from the black ocean. It had taken him the better part of an hour to peel away from Ceri, and more empty promises than he wanted to consider. Promises that he would wait. That he would think. That he would not steal away in the dead of night.
But he had waited for an hour. He had thought of Avette with every stinging breath through his charred lungs. And he was stealing away by the first light of dawn.
And as for the promise he had made Adeline …
He had sworn he would find her.
And he would.
He had no luggage to slow his stride as he crossed from the dead streets to the slowly stirring docks. It was easy to pick out the sleek ship of the Eisalaan Gard, with its billowing blue flags and body encased in the same shimmering, white ice as the summons in his pocket. It bobbed in the dark waters at the farthest end of the bay, stark as a spectre in the shadows, with not a soul yet roused from below deck.
Kai bowed his head against the surge of cold around his neck and made a determined path for the faraway ship.
Alone in his small boat, a sleepy fisherman cast a bleary glance at him from behind the net stretched wide in his arms. Farther up the pier, a handful of sailors gathered around a stack of large boxes, several of them struggling to shift one up the gangway of their tradeship as another stood by with his hands on his hips, making broad and unhelpful gestures. The sailor stepped blindly into Kai’s path, still waving his arms at his peers.
“Isa drown me, justpushfor fuck’s sake—”
The sailor staggered forth with anoomphas his back struck Kai’s chest.
“What do you think you’re—Oh.” Pike’s pale eyes flew wide, his sunworn brow rippling. His face froze that way, and perhaps that was why he bowed quite as low as he did, hiding his own shock beneath the sweep of his golden curls. “Your Majesty.”
“Pike,” said Kai.
His voice was still a ruin, still thick and rough; at the sound of it, Pike straightened and shot him a nervous glance.
“You’ve had your shoulder seen to. I’m glad it’s—well … Been seen to.”
He winced, then threw a hasty look behind him at the floundering sailors, now pressing their backs to the box and trying to shove it up the plank by bracing its weight with their thighs.
“Let me help,” said Kai.
The pale streak in the sky was blushing now as the dawn drew nearer, and he had little real desire to help, but he did feel an obligation of a sort. Pike had saved his life. He could weather the sting in his veins for a few moments longer; perhaps he could even relieve some of it; call the waters to help them somehow. He started forward, a hand on his pendant, and immediately hissed as Pike’s hand clapped down on his shoulder.
“Shit, sorry. But no, I can’t possibly let you—ah. Yes! Your shoulder!” Pike’s objection took an almost triumphant edge. He bowed his head, and went on in an oily, subservient tone that made Kai’s skin feel grotty even beneath the charred shirt and the coat of soot. “You’re injured, Your Majesty. You shouldn’t be lifting anything, and these goods areextremelyheavy.”
“More stolen wine?” Kai guessed dryly.
“Ha!” Pike gasped. “Wine. Yes.”
A holler behind them sent Pike spinning around, just in time to see his sailors dive off the plank and tumble onto the pier, narrowly avoiding the heavy thud of the box behind them.
“Pike, for fuck’s sake, this isn’t happening,” one of them shouted between panting breaths, “It’s solid fucking ice.”
Pike did not answer his crewmate. He revolved slowly, eyes twitching with the sheer effort of composing the rest of his face. His throat bobbed, but when he spoke, his voice was no less tight.
“It’s to keep the wine cold,” he wheezed.
The tide in Kai’s blood surged. He did not need to note the shift of Pike’s eyes, the speed with which they darted to the end of the bay and back, to understand why the man had lied to him. The boxes were familiar; it was only now that he noted the break in the warm air, their cool aura, the same clean, bitter cold of the cargo hold he had slept in for weeks in the crossing to Dhalias. Enchanted ice, Simon had told him, carved from the Machull Mountains.
From Eisalaan.
Pike’s strangled cry stirred a flock of gulls as Kai advanced on him, and he tripped back against the stack of boxes, hands grasping for purchase.
