Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,22
smell. Got it. Fione, where do you want to sit?”
The duchess looks unsteady on her feet, and Lucien grabs her elbow to steady her when one of her gags wrenches her entire body to the left.
“Somewhere on the railing it is, then,” Lucien says, grinning back at me and helping her toward the side of the ship. The flame-haired captain and her crew come aboard. She nods at us as she passes on her way to the helm.
“No drinking, no smoking, and for the love of mercury piss in the buckets, not on the deck.”
“Yes, Cap’n,” Malachite salutes, and the red-haired woman launches an eyeball-inquiry my way.
“You. You look like trouble.”
“Astute and gorgeous,” I say, making my best Y’shennria curtsy. She’s buying none of it, her gaze narrowed.
“You’re the other bodyguard, then?”
I know better than to flicker a look at Malachite. “Yes.”
“No sword? No weapon?” She scoffs. “A bad one, then.”
“Oh, it’s all hand-to-hand combat from me. A bit of biting here and there.”
“She’s good for it,” Malachite jumps in, and when the woman throws him a nasty look, he adds, “Cap’n.”
The captain sizes me up one more time. The woman has the instincts of a wolf—she’s every inch right about me. Trouble is all I know how to make.
“You work for what you eat.” She grunts.
“Gladly.” I smile. And what I eat is you.
Finally, she turns and starts barking orders into the frigid air, and the crew scatters to haul rope. “You—” She points to me. “On the anchor. And you, beneather—you’re on winch release. The disc levers over there, the middle one. Get to it!”
“Aye-aye!” I salute, dashing over to the heavy iron clasp and the ten sailors attempting to haul it off the magnetic dock and wind it back into the airship. Malachite only breaks two levers before the captain realizes just how strong he is and has him hauling rope effortlessly instead.
By some combined miracle of our strength and the captain’s precise maneuvering, the airship starts to move, drifting away from the Breych docks and floating with generous creaks out of the mountain’s shadow and into the pale sunlight of Cavanos, the green of its grasslands beckoning us home.
I don’t get any time to breathe, though, because the captain has me running water and rations to the crew. They’re heading for Avel, passing over Cavanos to the south and only to the south, considering the news about the valkerax has quickly broken on Breych’s shore. They’re willing to stop for a bare few hours at a hilltop village in Cavanos called Trillmarc, and that’s when we’ll get off.
We agreed, in the sage’s tower, that Y’shennria’s letter was our best bet, and so we’re heading to Ravenshaunt, where Y’shennria said to visit when I’m free. I’m free now, in a manner of speaking. Freer, at least, than when I was chained to the idea of my heart and the guilt of killing.
But guilt never really goes. I made the graves for the fourteen men, but they aren’t gone. Just quieter. Maybe the guilt will never be gone, not completely. Maybe you just live with it, until it becomes as natural as part of your body, another limb you move through the world with.
Maybe guilt isn’t about mourning people but about making them a part of you as you go forward.
As the ship cuts to the right, Cavanos grows closer. Y’shennria grows closer. I try and fail to tame the constant pangs of giddiness that run through me at the idea of meeting her again. The hum and whir of the thrusters gets stronger toward the back of the ship, a lullaby that, in the quiet moments, nearly puts me to sleep. Fione, on the other hand, is having a far less soothing time. Her retches are so loud, they echo among the mountain ridges like queasy thunder. At some point, Malachite takes over my job of watching her and rubbing her back supportively, and Lucien finds me staring out at the view on the deck, lacing his hands around my waist like a quiet assurance.
“Busy?” he asks.
“Not anymore,” I say, leaning back into his chest. The wind whips his dark hair around his eyes. I rub a strand of it between my fingers. “Not as short as I remember it.”
“I’ll cut it again, if you like.”
“Absolutely not. Granted, the revolutionary gesture did make me fall for you harder, but your best look is long and shiny.”