Page 37 of Among the Burning Flowers
They made decent pace under cover of night. Despite its bulk, theRose Eternalwas swift. Most of the crew stayed awake, but a few rested in hammocks, Liyat and Melaugo among them. Liyat seemed to drift off, but Melaugo could not, despite her exhaustion.
For the first time in her life, she was not in Yscalin.
Before they descended, a gunner had shown them both around the ship by the light of a single lantern. They had been provided with bread and beef stew, though neither of them had the stomach for it.
In the small hours, Melaugo gave up and made her way to the deck, too sore of limb and soul to rest. The scarred Hróthi woman, whose name was Bara, brought her a cup of hot mead. Melaugo decided to ignore the obvious risks of a stove on a wooden ship. It was a trifling danger compared to wyverns. Nursing the mead, she took a slow walk along the deck, taking in the iron capstan, the rigging and cannons, the harpoon gun that had helped save their lives.
She had never realised how many people were needed to keep a man-of-war moving. Harlowe commanded a crew of hundreds. At least a quarter of them were Northerners, like Bara, one of several carpenters. The Hróthi had a longhistory of seafaring. The others seemed to come from all over, including the East, which had startled the wits out of Melaugo. Most people of Virtudom would never meet or see an Easterner.
Harlowe wanted her to be the voice of this entire crew. To secure their respect, she would have to learn quickly and find her sea legs. It all looked complex, but perhaps that was what she needed. A distraction to keep her from losing her mind.
TheRose Eternalcreaked as she cut through the waves, sails billowing in the wind. They made a sound like a drumbeat. To her own surprise, Melaugo found it soothing. So was the motion underfoot. If not for her aching body, and her fear, she might have slept very well in the hammock.
In silence, she went to the right side of the ship. They had been sailing for hours, and there seemed to be no end to the destruction on the western coast. The wyverns had torched almost every harbour.
Her breath came in a fog. Before long, she wished she had brought the bedding from the hammock. She had never been this cold, even on the worst nights in Triyenas, but she could not rip her gaze away. There was a dreadful beauty in that fire. The stars twinkled overhead, blurring every time she blinked, bright and piercing even with the red haze far below.
Liyat came to stand beside her, wrapped in a heavy woollen blanket. ‘Could you not sleep?’
Melaugo shook her head. ‘Could you?’
‘Not well.’ Liyat sipped from her own cup. ‘Long ago, my people lived beyond the great salt desert. A group of them followed Suttu the Dreamer, knowing they might neverreturn. I often wonder how they felt when they looked back for the last time.’
She rarely opened up like this. Melaugo had no wish to interrupt her.
‘I imagine my shop has already burned.’ Liyat paused. ‘But perhaps it is for the best.’
‘How so?’ Melaugo asked. ‘You loved the shop.’
Liyat looked at the blazing coastline.
‘A few years ago, an ancient compass came into my keeping. At some point in time, its needle had rusted in place,’ she said. ‘I was like that compass when you found me. I had finally established a safe place, a home, in Perunta. But the longer you remain still, the more rust starts to cover you, and underneath, you become fragile. And soon it hurts to move at all.’
‘You never stopped moving. How many times did you leave Perunta to find relics?’
‘Yes, but it was always there, waiting for me to return. My work could be dangerous, but it was what I knew, and even the risks were predictable. Perhaps that was why you frightened me so much. Because you were different. I wanted to make space for you in my life, but I fought, because it hurt.’
Melaugo kept listening.
‘For me, change is difficult. It is paralysing. It makes me feel vulnerable,’ Liyat said quietly. ‘I live in fear of making the wrong choice, because I have seen how badly that can go.’
‘And you … thought I might be the wrong choice.’
‘I would have felt the same about anyone who made me feel the way you do.’ She drank again. ‘But now the burdenof choice has been taken from me. All of our lives have been shattered this day. The rust has been stripped. I am free to chart a different course. To start anew.’
‘What about your work?’
‘Harlowe will help me continue with it, but he will also train me as a cartographer.’ Liyat looked her in the eyes. ‘Estina, if I have ever made you feel unwanted or burdensome, I apologise. You are neither. You brought laughter and joy to my life, which lacked both for too long.’
Melaugo returned her gaze, a lump rising in her throat.
‘I cannot promise I will heal. Perhaps it is in my nature to rust,’ Liyat said. ‘But life on theRosewill be different, I think. Always on the move, yet always home. And whatever happens next, I want us to face it together. Before, I think that I could only ever have held out a cup for your wine, and a small one, at that. Now look what we have. The depths of an ocean.’
To demonstrate her point, she threw her tankard overboard. Melaugo looked after it with a small huff of laughter, and Liyat smiled in a way Melaugo had never seen her smile before.
‘But perhaps an ocean is too big,’ she said. ‘Perhaps this ship will be enough to hold both of our wine, so it can grow finer each year.’ She looked Melaugo in the eyes. ‘Do you agree?’
Before Melaugo could stop it, a tear had slid down her cheek, tasting of the sea. She was the winemakers’ daughter and the urchin, the smuggler and the culler, and Liyat was accepting them all.
