The sky that morning was the same vivid, uncomplicated blue it had been for most of the voyage.
I had loved the colour blue for as long as I could remember. I was, increasingly, developing a complicated relationship with it.
When you are in the middle of the ocean, the world is made of almost nothing else — every shade of blue from the pale ice of the horizon to the deep, almost violet darkness directly below the hull, and the sky above completing the arrangement so that you exist inside a blue that has no edges. It was extraordinary, the first time. By the third week, I found myself genuinely grateful for clouds, solely because they were white.
But that morning, the horizon had offered something different.
A green mass, small with distance but unmistakably solid, floating in the endless blue. I had been watching it since I first noticed it, willing it to grow larger with the particular focus of someone who has been on a ship for several weeks and has become personally invested in the concept of land.
"We'll reach it in an hour or two," Benedict said, appearing at the railing beside me without announcement.
"Are we stopping to resupply?" I asked.
He made a sound of profound contempt.
"That island couldn't supply a family of five, let alone a ship's crew. If anything, it'll go the other way — those people will be asking us for supplies the moment we anchor. Their crops have been struggling." He shook his head. "Not enough to starve them, but not enough to satisfy them either. The only things the stop is good for are solid ground beneath your feet and fresh water."
I looked at him.
"Then why are we stopping?"
He looked back at me with the expression of a man who considers this a self-evident question.
"The Heilan flower season," he said, as though this explained everything, and walked away.
---
We reached the island in just over two hours. 'The Lady' moved with the easy confidence of a vessel that knew where it was going and had no doubts about its ability to get there — which was perhaps explained by the fact that she was navigated entirely by engraving magic rather than any human hand. No captain, no designated crew working the rigging. The speed and direction were determined by Rei, and the ship went where he sent her, which she did without complaint.
I had expected this arrangement to show in him — some accumulation of fatigue from the sustained magical output of directing a ship across an ocean. It didn't. He seemed to have reserves that didn't deplete in any visible way, which was either very reassuring or very interesting, depending on how you thought about it.
The island resolved itself as we drew close: small, considerably smaller than I had been told to expect, though being told it took two hours to cross on foot and seeing it from the water were different experiences. A crescent of white sand beach along one side, the interior rising into dense, dark green. The anchor went down with a sound of splashing chain, and 'The Lady' settled into position.
I looked down at the beach with the eagerness of someone who has been waiting longer than is comfortable to have firm ground under her feet.
Nobody moved.
The entire crew simply stood at the deck rail and looked down at the beach. Not with anticipation. With the particular blank patience of people waiting for something they have been through before.
I was about to ask what we were waiting for when my senses sharpened on their own.
Footsteps. Three of them, coming through the treeline toward the beach — moving with deliberate, practiced quietness that would have been entirely imperceptible to ordinary hearing. They were trying very hard not to be heard.
They were armed. I could detect the dry rustle of arrow fletching and the faint, distinctive creak of a bowstring drawn taut.
"Here we go," Ivanna murmured beside me, with the tone of someone watching a predictable scene unfold.
"Old habits," Benedict said, with the resigned irritation of a man who has filed a complaint about this before and received no results. "Old habits never die. Not with these people."
I looked between them. We were apparently about to be shot at. The crew's response to this was annoyance, not alarm, which I found somewhat difficult to calibrate to.
Three arrows hit the hull in quick succession — thud, thud, thud — buried themselves in the wood, and stayed there.
Three figures emerged from the treeline.
Two women and one man, all somewhere in their fifties, with the compact, sturdy build of people who have spent their whole lives in physical activity. Darker skin, light eyes, dark hair, wearing clothing that covered what needed covering and nothing more — as though fabric were a resource they were careful with, which it might well have been on an island this size. They moved toward the ship with the cautious, measured steps of people who have decided they are approaching but have not fully committed to being relaxed about it.
The crew watched them come with the communal expression of people enduring a process they find tedious.
"The oath!" one of the women called out, with the practiced volume of someone who shouts this regularly.
Collective groaning from the deck. Actual, audible groaning.
Benedict squared his shoulders with the air of a man accepting a particularly pointless duty.
"We will not take anyone from the island aboard our ship," he recited, with the flat delivery of something so thoroughly memorised it has stopped carrying meaning. "We will not damage a single tree on the island. We will not cause disturbance on the island. We arrive in peace and we depart in peace."
He exhaled the breath he had apparently been holding throughout this recitation.
Then he leaned over the railing and made sure his voice would carry to the treeline and possibly slightly beyond it.
"And can I say — for the record, for what must be the thirtieth time — do you see the holes in our hull? Do you see them? We are the only crew in the known world that considers stopping at this island worth the trouble, and every single time you welcome us with arrows! Every time! Our ship is full of holes because of you lot! Do it again and we will sail straight past on our next route, and I mean it this time, so help me!"
The three islanders, having apparently received this speech before as well, gave no indication of having heard it. They crossed the remaining distance to the ship's side and climbed aboard with a combination of agility and complete disregard for the conventions of boarding a vessel that frankly would have been impressive in younger people.
Then they walked, with absolute directness, to Rei.
"You have returned, great sorcerer," the man said.
Rei inclined his head with the contained dignity of someone accepting an acknowledgement without endorsing the title.
He opened his mouth to respond.
He didn't get the chance.
The two women on either side of him each took an arm, and without any further ceremony, stepped off the side of the ship, taking him with them.
I stood at the railing and watched this happen.
My mind refused, for a full three seconds, to process it as an event that had actually occurred in the real world in front of my eyes.
Then I looked down at the beach.
The three islanders were already at the treeline, moving at a pace that was remarkable for people their age, and Rei — being transported by two elderly women who had apparently decided the formality of his cooperation was optional — was disappearing between the trees with them.
"Did they just—" I started.
"Yes," Benedict said.
"Every time?" I asked.
"Every time," he confirmed, and went to find something to eat.