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The Impera flowed below, the water flashing silver to reflect a sky white with heat.
Around her, the crew of the galley bustled, preparing to set sail for Ascal, shouting in a tangle of languages Corayne knew well enough. They were decent, not so skilled as her mother’s crew, but fine enough for a passenger ship. If she shut her eyes, she could pretend this was theTempestborn, that her mother was at the helm, the port of Lemarta looking down on them. Corayne would go back to shore soon, to wave the others off on their journey while she remained anchored, doomed to wait.
But her eyes were open. Those days were gone.
She felt the wind on her teeth before she realized she was smiling. Despite her fears and the sword hanging over them, her body went loose.This is what freedom feels like.
“You look like a horse who’s jumped the pen,” Sorasa said, her voice flat.
The Amhara stood at the rail a few feet away, somehow both watchful and uninterested. Even with her hood thrown back, her face was unreadable, impassive as stone. But the rest of her told an easy tale, from her gloved hands to her clothes laced tight up her throat. Her cloak hid her sword, and her knives were tucked away. Every inch of inked skin was covered, and her black hair was unbound, curling after so long in a braid. Her eyes were lined again, heavy with black powder and a single stripe of gold. She seemed a simple Ibalet woman, unremarkable but for her copper eyes, easy to overlook on a ship of travelers.
Corayne tried her best to tuck away her excitement, and her nerves as well. To slip behind a mask as easily as Sorasa could. She forced a shrug. “I want to see this,” she replied, indicating the city of Lecorra. “While I can.”
A bit of Sorasa’s mask slipped and something crossed her face. Not fear, but close to it. A wariness, a cat with fur on end, a charge in the air before a lightning storm. The Amhara had seen the Ashlanders plain as the rest of them, whether she wanted to admit it or not. It had set her on edge.
Corayne felt it too, beneath every breath. The Ashlanders, What Waits, her uncle hunting. She did not know Taristan’s face, but in her mind their eyes were the same, his and her own. An empty black, hungry and consuming.
“Have you ever seen anything like...them?” Corayne murmured. A woman raised in the Amhara Guild, a killer born, certainly knew more of the world than a pirate’s daughter bound to shore.
The assassin returned Corayne’s stare, her eyes hard again. “I’ve seen many things that would terrify most,” she replied. “Monsters and men. Mostly men.”
Corayne remembered her on the hilltop outside Lemarta, how she’d looked in the darkness when the creatures went up in smoke. The danger was gone, had never even existed in the first place. And yet Sorasa was afraid.
“So that’s a no,” Corayne scoffed.
“You are a long way from your safe harbor, Corayne an-Amarat.” Sorasa’s breath was cool, her eyes narrowing to slits. Corayne felt seen through and hated it. “With only farther to go.”
Corayne clenched her teeth and turned away from the city. She glanced at Sorasa’s neck again, remembering the scorpion, black as oil, its hooked stinger raised to strike.Was the tattoo a prize earned or a punishment endured?Corayne fought the urge to ask.
“You’re a long way from home too, Sorasa.”
The sun glowed in Sorasa’s hair, illuminating each bend of black. With the sky bright and her hood lowered, Corayne could see old scars on her exposed skin. Small cuts, long healed, from the nick of a blade or a fist. They spoke of many hard years in a place Corayne would never see. Her curiosity flared, not to be sated. It was annoying at best, like facing a puzzle she could not solve.
The assassin shifted. “Perhaps you should check on Dom. Make sure he hasn’t rotted down below, or been sick again,” she said, gesturing toward the hold. The Elder was not so adept at disguise and so would spend their journey to Ascal in a glorified cabinet below deck.
Instead Corayne curled her fingers on the railing, gripping the wood. She stood firm, refusing to be chased away.
“I don’t like the way he looks at me,” she muttered. “He sees my father. He sees death. He sees failure.” Corayne felt her shoulders bow with the weight of a person she had never known.
Sorasa glared at the sky. If there was one thing Corayne knew, the assassin hated the immortal. “I’d guess a Spindlerotten Elder isn’t used to such things.”
“I think he sees my uncle too,” Corayne added, shoving out the words, hoping to cast out her guilt with them. Her cheeks flared with heat. “I didn’t know I looked so much like them.”
The assassin didn’t answer, looking her over.Looking for the face of a fallen prince and a rising monster.
“I don’t belong anywhere,” Corayne said, her voice failing.
To her surprise, Sorasa cracked a smile. “There are plenty of people like that,” she said. “And nowhere is still a somewhere.”
“That’s foolish.”
“Well, if you don’t belong to a place, perhaps we belong to each other? We who belong nowhere?” Sorasa offered. Her copper eyes glimmered, dancing with the light off the river.
Despite the ugly feeling in the pit of her stomach, Corayne found herself smiling too. “Perhaps,” she echoed.
“I never knew my parents,” Sorasa pressed on. “I only know where they came from. Couldn’t tell you their names, who they were, if they are living or dead.” She spoke evenly, without emotion or attachment. It was a statement of fact, nothing more. Not even a secret worth keeping.
Corayne bobbed her head. She felt the key in the lock. She need only turn it to open a door into Sorasa, the Amhara, their ways. “The Guild is your family?” she asked, drawing closer.
