I could die happy with this taste on my tongue.
Malkin bites into hers and then wades out into the water without hesitation. Apple in one hand, plank and netting in the other, she drags the wreckage back to shore, then adds it to the pile.
“Three apples, some wood, and some netting,” she announces as she sits beside me. “He can’t betoomad.”
“Of course he can. He’s a small man with grand delusions,” I mutter, then take another bite. The apple’s half-gone already.
“I’ve known worse men,” Malkin says quietly. She frowns down at her apple. She’s getting lost in her memories again, as she often does.
“Look,” I say, and point out over the sea to distract her.
A sea-titan wheels overhead, the bird’s wingspan thirty feet at least, then skims out past the sunken edge of the rockfield and dives. We stare in silence as it comes up with a reaper, one of the large-jawed fish that will shred your flesh from your bones faster than you can say a prayer to any Exalted.
“Do you think the reapers ate whoever was on the boat?” Malkin asks.
“Maybe.” I finish my apple, gnawing all the way down the core, then chuck it as hard as I can towards the ocean.
A terror of reapers can devour you in under a minute. And it’s still far from the most horrifying thing that haunts the deep.
“My nursemaid told me the witches worship reapers, and sacrifice malformed children to them,” Malkin says. I snort.
“Reapers? No. Worse.”
“Worse?”she wrinkles her nose at me.
“The War-Father says dragons crave killing. To get them to bond, they have huge, ritual—”
“I don’t want to know,” Malkin interrupts with a shudder.
I lick the juice from my fingers as Malkin finishes hers.
“Is one apple really that different from three?” she whispers.
“You want to bring back a bag with just one apple in it?” I raise my eyebrows, though probably only the left moves; the right side of my face is too stiff from the dragonfire scars.
“Iwantto bring back an empty sack and gag him with it,” Malkin informs me sweetly.
I stifle a snort and stand.
“Let’s split the third and bring back two.”
While Malkin scrutinizes the apples to pick the best one, I wring what water I can out of my dress and begin to arrange the wood and rope we scavenged. She takes a bite and moans as I tie the smaller pieces in a bundle on top of the largest slab. I waste a moment searching the planks for any Hellion marks, even knowing the odds of one of Rampage's rowboats washing up here two years after the attack are slim to none. In any case, there are no marks on this boat's bones.
Someday, I’ll have revenge for everyone he killed.
I fashion the longest piece of rope into a harness to sling over my chest. Malkin hands me the apple, half-eaten.
She doesn’t deserve to be here any more than I do. And unlike most of the Bluff’s other inhabitants, she believed me immediately when I told her I wasnota witch and that the council had it wrong. It takes very little for Malkin to believe a man is an idiot.
I take a small bite and hand the apple back to her. Malkin smiles.
“That half’s yours,” she says.
“I don’t really like apples,” I lie, and keep my arm out until she takes it.
I wrap the rope around myself, and we begin to trudge home. It’s slow going, the wood constantly snagging on the uneven surfaces of the rockfield. Malkin walks behind me and kicks it loose when it gets caught. The Bluff isn’t big, and even from here we can see the top of the castle where we all live.
Dull blue light glows from the roof, from the power crystals growing there, cutting through the stormy gray sky like a beacon. White lines of paint are stark against the black stone of the castle. The building may have been constructed by the witches when they still ruled these lands, but the paint and crystals areouraddition: lines of enchantment extending our protections, drawing the barrier over from the larger islands to the east of the Bluff. To the farnorth, behind the wall we form, our people live in safety. And to the south, slowly pushing our borders further, is the navy I used to be part of.
