“I can’t find the clasps,” one says on my right. I think he’s a fisherman, not a castle servant. I turn my head slightly and watch him run his knobby, calloused hands over my right arm. The steward comes over to inspect.
“It looks like it…” the fisherman says.
“That’s not possible,” the steward says. “Go light the fire. Brugias, come here. Polwec, run to the keep and fetch a change of clothes for our lady. A large shirt, with sleeves.”
Brugias, captain of the guard, strides towards me as one of the men trots back out the door.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Like the bits all melted together,” the fisherman says nervously from in front of the hearth. Brugias shoots him a look and the fisherman shuts up, turning to his task.
I stare down at my right arm. The ridges of the armor still have their definition, but the actual joints between the sections of the plate look like soft clay that somebody smoothed over, molding sets of interlocking pieces into a single block. It’s like it’s just pretending to be functional armor. With a frown, I try curling my fingers, then bending my arm. It works just like it used to, even though the metal shouldn’t move like that.
I had designs on my armor, a freedom the military only allows to knights. I chose feathered wings on my shoulder pauldrons and vines marching down the arm. But the metal melted and reformed without any hint of my designs. It’s gone back to the basic shape of the enchantment.
From my shoulder down to my fingertips, my arm is covered by enchanted metal plate. The soaked sleeve of my gray undershirt has burned off at the edges of where the melted metal begins.
Brugias bends over my arm, then shakes his head. Behind him, the hearth fire flares awake, brightening the room in a red glow.
“The enchantment found a way to save her arm,” the steward pronounces, but he sounds nervous. “We’ll just… let’s leave it be.”
Someone drops a canvas blanket over my shoulders and I’m shepherded to the kitchen table. I sink into a creaking bone-and-fishleather chair and feel the exhaustion rise up through me.
I think this is real. It feels real. I don’t have a strong enough imagination to be making it up so vividly. But I shouldn’t be alive, and I can’t be five hundred miles north of the attack.
Everytime I close my eyes I see the King of Witches, pinned beneath me, gazing up with a fearless curiosity. Whispering:who are you?
“Tell us what happened,” the steward prompts. I make myself focus on his words, but my head is still ringing.
“An attack.”
“Not…insidethe barrier?” He asks, as if that would even be possible. But then, he's probably wondering how else I could have washed up at Amkrieg.
“No.” My throat is so raw it feels like blades flay it open when I talk.
The fisherman sets a cup of fresh water in front of me. I grab it in my metal hand and chug it in one go. It soothes my raw throat, barely.
There’s salt crusting all of me, thick on my eyelashes and in my hair. I can feel a breeze through the window though, on the right side of my head. I reach up with my metal arm, then with my normal one.
Hair on the left side of my head, salty, damp, and tangled. No hair on the right. My skin on my bare scalp there feels… corded and rough, not smooth. Like scars. Like it burned off.
“What…?” I whisper. The accident can't have been long ago. Ijustwashed up. If I had scars that intense, the wound wouldn't have healed so quickly.
Maybe I'm dreaming after all. I squint at the cup, then at the steward, trying to find some proof this isn't real.
“We saw your ship go dark on the map, lady knight, two days ago. In the middle of the Wild Seas,” the steward says, voice shaking.
My throat goes tight. Rampage is gone, lost to the depths. Could anybody have escaped? Probably not, the witches don’t leave survivors. Harfor must be dead. And the sailors, and the Enchanted.
And all I managed to do was slash a shallow line across his chest with the knife I threw.
Did I live so I can have another chance to kill him, or is the death-god just mocking me, keeping me alive long enough to punish me for the Enchanted I’ve freed?
“Lady knight,” the steward says, leaning toward me. “You weren’t on that ship. It wouldn’t be possible.”
“I was,” I answer raggedly. “A witch attacked us, with the biggest dragon I’ve seen. Their king, I'm sure of it.”
I remember the expression on my enemy's face, cold and cruel as the sea, as his magic tossed me up into the air.
