At some point while they were waiting for the barge, Professor Pluramon’s teal mist had returned to the goggles strapped over Razor Skunch’s closed eyes. He had exchanged his good mornings with all present, but provided no explanation for what exactly he was doing or experiencing while being ‘away’. Nobody had asked. Arlo had wondered, and he was sure Placelle Lamella was on the verge of asking at one point herself. He felt like he could see the clockwork going in her mind while she examined the doctor and the beastman, tilting her head first one way and then twisting it the other. He was certain she was somehow perceiving something he couldn’t about the pair, and found himself intensely curious about what her question might be. Only, at the cusp of asking it, she was distracted by the lifestone barge coming alongside the boathouse. It was entirely unremarkable to Arlo aside from rousing a bit of nostalgia from his youth as he often would play in an empty one when he was a boy. No more than essentially a giant trough with a little pilot house on the back, Arlo could not see what was of so much interest to Placelle Lamella about it, but the moment she’d spotted it the Oathkeeper could think of nothing else. She looked down at the tons and tons of gently glowing rocks inside, seeming to count the different shades of them from teal and turquoise to a deep sea green. The uniform blue-green mist that seemed to rise from the whole pile enchanted her and even as they mounted the buzzer Darwin had put on the crane merely to use as a platform so they could be lowered to the barge Placelle Lamella stared down into the mist with such an intense luster that she almost seemed hungry.
Aboard the barge, Arlo stepped over the glowing uneven surface to the back as the crane took the buzzer away again so he could speak to the pilot. He was surprised to see the twelve year old midshipman from the day before manning the con, but he reminded himself that Darwin had been not much older than this girl when they’d met twenty years before and he’d been admirably suited to the work.
“Good morning, sire.” she greeted cheerfully.
“Good morning, mum. It was Miss Sally, was it not?” he replied.
She seemed to blush with pride that he even remembered her name, but answered still with a knuckled forelock, “If you like. If you prefer to tip it civil, I’m Junior Officer Saliana Gordon. Familiarity is as good as respect. I have no preference, sire, I’m only proud to serve.”
Arlo was an actual blood member of the Haradin clan and he had never felt the zeal this young creature seemed to possess. Unsure of whether to admire or pity her, he satisfied himself to simply ask, “If you don’t mind my asking, the barge sits fairly low in the water. How are we to ascend the ship?”
“I must board them myself and present the bill of lading,” she explained, seemingly growing even more happy for the opportunity to present information. “They will unroll a ladder. This is all very typical. Many crewmen come across this way. Saves on paperwork, it does.”
“Aye. Thank you, you are very good.” replied Arlo at length while considering the distant form of the Sunseeker. Sally sounded her air horn once and throttled the barge to life. It surged away from the Dawnstorm’s gentle burbling wake with a foaming wake of its own and they bore away from the massive homeship almost as though it were land. Arlo stepped carefully across the piled and glowing stones, though beneath his boots they did not seem to shift for how tightly they’d been packed. He found his way close to Placelle Lamella and tried to see what had gotten her so excited earlier. She was still in an apparent reverie with downturned eyes and her customary dopey smirk. Arlo watched her for a moment in silence before asking, “Do you like lifestone, Placelle Lamella?”
Her smile widened as her half-lidded gaze drew up to meet his. “I have just never seen so much at once. I used to deliver it from a warehouse to the chapel so people could bring in their nullstone and exchange it. But that…”
She sighed and shook her head. “That was a cart not even a quarter share of this barge and it would last so very long. This is a lot of lifestone.”
Arlo would have felt bad telling her that the stonebunker on a destroyer like the Sunseeker was tiny; and that eight of these barges would fuel a dreadnought like the Ravenheart. Instead, he suggested, “When we get back to the Dawnstorm, let me take you to one of the dredgehouses. If the workers will permit it, we could go out onto the dredge and you can see more of it than could fit in front of your eyes at once.”
The Oathkeeper’s eyes flitted down to Arlo’s badge and then back up to his before she simply said, as before, “I love you, Arlo.”
Arlo felt his nose wrinkling at that. Her explanation the day before had done little to satisfy him and he felt asking her again now would risk trapping him in another one of her horrible heartleech loops. So, instead of responding he simply quirked his face into a brief mirthless rictus of a smirk and turned to see what Irina and Pluramon were up to.
Their conversation was even more baffling to him, partly because it seemed so technical but mostly because Pluramon seemed to be explaining how Irina was to proceed if she needed to kill him for some reason.
“… twisting and removing that cap will expose the drain plug.” he was explaining in quite a calm, even tone, “Using that and draining the bloodstone-infused trilumiphane fluid from my primary holding tank would certainly also kill me, but it would be a much slower and more painful death for me than simply severing the primary outlay conduit from the lifestone bank.”
Irina’s eyes had long ago glazed over and Arlo could see that she was simply waiting for the trip to finish and using the lecture as simple background noise. Mechanically she raised a stick of shortbread to her mouth and nibbled it while her eyes just pointed back unfocused at the shrinking enormity of the Dawnstorm.
“Unplugging the cable leads from the upper section of the pack would be an efficient way to ‘arrest’ me, you might say,” Pluramon was continuing, “But I would highly recommend you dispatch Razor Skunch instantly afterwards, because those cable leads are also what I used to control the sedative delivery system and if he awakens I believe he will be very angry.”
“If I may ask, professor,” Arlo cut in, somewhat surprised to see how Irina started at the sound of his voice, “Why exactly is it you are explaining this to Madame Rathbone?”
Skunch was pivoted so the headset could face him and Pluramon answered, “Because she wanted to know.”
Arlo presented a finger to him. “One moment.”
Then he turned to Irina, “You asked him how you might kill him?”
Irina smirked and shrugged. “I was only making a joke about whether I should shoot the beastman or the backpack if he did something naughty. He’s the one who decided to go on the exposition.”
Arlo turned back to the beastman and lowered his finger. “So, you thought she wanted to know how to kill you from this?”
It was hard to tell whether or not the fluxing mist in the headset was a stand-in for eyes or a mouth, but Arlo imagined Pluramon to be blinking at him in that moment.
“Well…” he started somewhat awkwardly, “I had just explained that my holding tank is densely armored with multiple hulls so it would be resistant to all common conventional small arms. I suppose it simply naturally followed to explain what would work if I had been disloyal to her Most Divine Majesty.”
“And you felt comfortable giving this information over, even though it might protect your life?” Arlo asked now, rolling his hand in the air to encourage Pluramon to consider the next level in the logic chain.
But Pluramon already had. “Yes, I did. I am loyal to the Jade Queen. I currently believe the Corovokian Empire is extremely important to the fate of humanity. I do not think I will change my mind– which I remind you is all that I am– any time soon. It is of no harm to me, therefore, that a Tribune knows how to kill me.”
“Indubitably.” agreed Arlo, though without much feeling. In truth, it was just a chance for him to roll out the word. It was a good thing he liked the word so much, because Pluramon nodded Razor’s head and said it back to him.
“Indubitably.”
The Sunseeker up close was an even more impressive sight than it had been from a distance. The high draught and narrow beam of the vessel gave its hull much space above the waterline that had been used as a sort of canvas for green and gold laurel leaves in with a white border that some poor crewman had no doubt spent hours every week maintaining from the confines of a bosun’s chair. To the rear of the large conning tower near the front of the ship was a folded crane bisecting two upside-down buzzers and ending next to the shape of a Huber Bell beneath a tautly-stretched tarp. Over the wake of the screws, beneath the rear superstructure a small stern gallery could be seen. The fore and aft twin turrets were facing forward and backwards respectively, but a slight expression in their angle gave them a proud look until they disappeared over the side as the barge drew alongside the destroyer.
Arlo found himself peering down at the water passing between the barge and the ship when Sally sounded her horn to let them know she’d arrived. Both the barge and the destroyer were moving at a goodly little pace, but Sally had matched the speed and heading of the big ship so well that it was like the two were standing still in a flowing river. Arlo was impressed, and then he was hit in the head by a falling rope just hard enough to knock him over. While he was nursing his rising lump under the petting ministrations of a cooing Placelle Lamella, he saw Sally making ready to put the cable that had struck him through the nose of the barge. The crane above could be heard unfolding as well. Surprisingly, Irina was already pulling leads out of the corners of the massive cache of lifestone they were stood upon. Either the Tribune had done the work before or at least she’d seen it and knew what had to happen next. It was not something Arlo was accustomed to himself, and that went for both working and seeing a Tribune working at the same time.
“You have to get off the stones, Arlo.” Placelle Lamella was telling him while she gently ushered him to his feet. When he stepped onto the little platform next to the pilot house, she joined him and he found himself in such close proximity with her that he feared for her safety, imagining her falling into the water and being weighed down by that heavy armor plate, the gun, and the hammer. So, just as gently as she had guided him to his feet he took her hand and pulled her into the pilot house. He rolled his eyes that she continued to hold it after he was done leading her, but permitted it for the sake of expediency. Up front, Irina and Pluramon were moving up onto the capstan head at the bow. When everybody was clear, Sally sounded her horn again and the crane lifted at the leads. The wide, flat pile of lifestone transformed as it was lifted, the cargo netting beneath it curling around it and forming a sack shape as it passed into the air. A few stones rattled and fell out onto the deck of the slowly rising barge, one of which Irina picked up and casually tossed onto the rising shape. When it was too high for the barge to follow it up any further, Placelle poked out to peek down at the gaping chasm that all that stone used to be piled in and her jaw went slack while her half-lidded eyes seemed to almost come all the way open.
“It’s so deep. You could power a whole town for a year with this much lifestone. I cannot believe the ships use so much of it.” she told Arlo. He patted her shoulder and squeezed the hand she was holding onto his with.
“Remember, out here is where it comes from.” he explained gently, “Maybe they use a lot of it, but without ships there would be no way to get it back from the Ten Thousand Seas. The only reason it might seem so precious out East is that it has to travel a long way to get to you. But the homeship we just left has a dredge that pulls up so many of these barges’ full of it every single day.”
Placelle Lamella did not respond directly to this, but did squeeze his hand back when he was done talking. Her eyelids sank back in time down to their usual place and her face assumed a dopey neutrality. The two sat in the pilothouse for a short while until a rope ladder came unrolling down the side of the Sunseeker and Sally waved them over to ascend ahead of her. Arlo took the rungs and swung himself up, partly missing the shrouds on the Foamer that had been so easy to tear up and down, and partly just being in a hurry to get to his next berth. He felt somewhat embarrassed as he ascended to hear the trill of a bosun’s pipe as well as a drum and a bugle tooting out a Corovokian march. He was at a full nervous blush as he clambered onto the deck and found himself looking at a column of Haradin House Guard in stiff attention with their hands forming a sickle on their chests.
He was sure this rigmarole had to be for the Tribune rather than himself, so he stood aside and crudely mimed the men with a sickle of his own, even though he knew Irina so far to be the least ceremonial of her ilk that had ever been minted. Placelle Lamella arrived next and she took in the bugler and the men with an appearance of extreme good will while moving to stand next to Arlo. She even went so far as to raise the cowl of her cassock and lower her head as though this were a prayer instead of a paramilitary exaltation. When Irina finally ascended onto the deck, she stepped forward and became the Imperial officer they all wanted to see. With a graceful and fluid motion, she whipped off her peaked cap and curled it beneath her left arm. A pride entered her bearing that Arlo had not seen yet, and she stalked forward to meet the ranking officer at the head of the procession.
He was a young fellow wearing the only green uniform in the mass of those wearing House Haradin grey, and his tunic and the peaked cap he carried the same way as Irina styled him as an officer, a lieutenant of the Imperial Navy. When she reached him, Irina raised a crisp salute, holding one curved hand over her right eye. The lieutenant returned it with a different salute, his fingers curled in but his palm open as he knuckled his forelock. As soon as the song ended, Irina replaced her hat and extended a hand for the young man to shake.
But Arlo was more curious to see how Razor Skunch was being controlled on the ladder, so instead of following the conversation, he peered over and watched the somewhat robotic way the beastman ascended the ladder with his head straight forward. Little Sally was also on the ladder by now, though she seemed to have to slow herself down to keep from catching up to Pluramon and Skunch. When Arlo turned back to look forward again, Irina and the lieutenant were in front of him and he gasped, “Oh, hello.”
The young lieutenant had a smile that perfectly reached his eyes, they a vibrant hazel to match the dirty-blonde frizz of his close-cropped plunging hairline. He extended a hand to Arlo like Irina had before and Arlo took it by the wrist. They shook and the man introduced himself. “I’m Lieutenant Alistair Parsons of the Holy Fencibles, acting First Lieutenant of the Sunseeker. Captain Hardwick is on the bridge running final checks on your requested course, sir.”
“Ah.” Arlo replied as though he knew what that entailed. He gestured to the men at attention and then commented, “The ceremony is impressive, but I was not expecting to see a Naval officer aboard a clan warship.”
Parsons grinned. “I’m lucky to be here, sir. By bonded decree, your Uncle was requested to take on a few of my number to get some real experience out here before assuming command of the Blessed Vessels that will protect the mainland.”
“That’s excellent news for both of us, then.” Arlo responded, then gestured around to the assembled House Guards. “I am sure that the crew will benefit from your fresh education in the most recent techniques as much as you will from their experience. Shall we ascend to the bridge, sir?”
The bridge was much smaller than the cavernous observation deck of the Dawnstorm, but it was still larger than most Arlo had ever set foot upon. The navigator’s conning station was on a platform above a bank of terminals. Unlike the vast array of wood panels with vacuum tubes, lights, and knobs swooping through the larger ship, the Sunseeker only seemed to require a radiography station, an engine-room readout, and a gunnery relay station. At the rear of the bridge overlooking it all was a backlit table with a tall leather chair up a few steps. Two other backless leather stools were bolted to the deck at either end of the table and two more jump seats were folded up into the wall behind it. Despite this, Captain Hardwick chose to stand. He leaned against the table looking down at the transparent map that had been laid over it. It was showing the nearby archipelago and using a few slips of film the shapes of the various ships in both the Imperial task force and House Haradin’s homeship fleet were arranged in their approximate locations.
With his coat open and no neckcloth to speak of, Elroyal Hardwick carried the image of the grizzled merchant veteran to its full extent between his scruffy brown beard and the unlit pipe he was clenching between his teeth and moving around in small circles in the air. Still, he broke out in a broad grin when he saw his guests arrive.
“Cousin Arlo!” he called cheerfully from the table, beckoning with the pipe in his hand. “Welcome aboard, lad. Yourselves as well, Madame Tribune, Lady Oathkeeper, and, uh…”
“Professor Pluramon.” answered the headset genially, “Doctor of Biomechanical Science. Well met and good day.”
“Right!” Hardwick seemed satisfied to roll with the punches and just left it at that. He leaned away from the map table and pointed the stem of his pipe down at it to say, “We will be under way presently. I hope you will stay on the bridge a while and chat.”
“Thank you, I will.” replied Arlo with a half-bow. He actually wanted to be shown to his berth, but considering that this was a new relative of his that he was meeting for the first time, it seemed like a wise idea to make a good impression. He gestured to his companions next.
“I have the distinct pleasure to present our government observer Madame Irina Rathbone, Tribune, First Degree.”
“In Her Name We Seek.” recited the Tribune with a respectful nod.
“And The Lady Oathkeeper Placelle Lamella of Saint Tetra, from Saint Tetra’s Cathedral, who is accompanying me as a favor to the clan.”
Without a catchphrase other than declaring her love for Arlo, Placelle Lamella was left just holding up a crescent-shaped pair of hands over the golden hellebore on her cuirass and bowing with her typical look of gentle bovine good will. The collection of associates seemed to impress the captain, or he was of good enough graces to at least school himself into an impression of impression; or so Arlo told himself.
“I welcome you all aboard the Arr-cee-ess Sunseeker,” the captain told them with a sweeping gesture to the rest of the bridge. “I look forward to working with each of you in Her name.”
Arlo felt an odd sense of camaraderie washing over him as he found himself muttering in unison with the two women, “She watches.”
Of the two faces of Imperial fealty, Arlo had always leaned more towards patriotism than piety but even that was done with the muscle memory of youthful practice. He had never really thought of his place in the grander scheme; and still did not know if he even had one except that now when he found himself automatically returning some common theocratic slogan there were other people doing it with him and they were all about the same business. Arlo rested his hand on the grip of the new sabre at his hip, feeling the shape of the carved ivory hound head that served as its pommel while they strode as a group to stand behind the master at the ship’s wheel.
The mass of Peppernuts filled one side of the horizon, while the other was taken up with Imperial Navy ships parting from formation to create a lane for the Sunseeker to pass through. The master pushed the throttle forward, but it was several seconds before Arlo could tell they had started to move. Curiously, he stepped to the doorway leading out to the balcony around the conning tower to see if they were still towing the empty barge, but easily picked out Sally zipping back across to the Dawnstorm at a much faster pace than they’d come in. She was already almost at the keel of the Skyfinder and without the load the slab of a boat was happily bouncing up and down across the water at seemingly no inconvenience to its pilot. When Arlo stepped back onto the bridge he was surprised to find everybody looking at him. He said nothing, but did put on a confused face and held a single finger turned inwards to his solar plexus.
“Mister Haradin-Harkon!” A young man at the radiographer’s station was waving at him.
Arlo turned to the fellow with his finger still pointing at his chest. “Yes?”
“Three messages for you, sire.” came the reply.
Arlo hurriedly shuffled over to the station with even more confusion dawning on his face. “Already? But I’ve only just gotten here.”
“Two of ‘em are the same.” the radioman said by way of explanation. “The body is the same, but one was forwarded from Dawnstorm while the other was sent direct. Probably Dawnstorm told them you were here.”
“May I see them?”
A trio of tickets were handed up to Arlo with the messiest handwriting and the most indecipherable shorthand he’d ever seen. He tugged at his ponytail with one hand while he tried to decipher the tickets, and then seeing the impatient face of the radioman over the top of them he handed them back and said, “Perhaps you could read them to me instead.”
The report was read in robotic, stilted tones, but Arlo felt his heart rising as though it were bardic verse in high chant: “From the You-eff-tee Lemur: Moriah Culverin sends her compliments and regrets that she was not able to meet His Excellency the Governor for dinner last night, as she was busy with the vittling of the ship. They are leaving against the morning red-tide, she wishes to pass Sunseeker in the bay, there she will wave the handkerchief she wears around her waist.”
After reading it a second time, the operator made a confused face and said, “Maybe I got it wrong after all, sire, sorry, I was writing fast. I’ll ring down and ask again.”
“No, no,” chuckled Arlo, beaming radiantly, “That’s exactly right. She would have said this, I’m sure. What’s the third message?”
Without hesitation, the radioman read the third message in the same plain tone: “Direct message from Clannarch Treistan Haradin to his Agent, Arlo Haradin-Harkon. Safe travels and fair fortunes to my nephew. Jade Queen watch over you on your first last chance.”
Because Arlo did not know the title of the book he was in, he nodded gratefully and took in his uncle’s words a little more thoughtfully than he otherwise would’ve. It was a reference to their conversation the day before, where Arlo had dug into some patriotic sensibility deep in his core and told Treistan and Agatha that he wanted as many chances as it would take to make him into the Jade Queen’s champion. It seemed ludicrous at the time, and the idea had not aged at all in the intervening hours. It wasn’t that he had been insincere, per se, it was just that the entire concept seemed ridiculous to him. Arlo Haradin-Harkon, the gawky tall buffoon in silk and lace, a champion? He preferred instead to think of Moriah’s message, of the playful way she would tease up a corner of her skirt, or of the softness of her lips during their kiss, and of the evidence her kind message gave him that he actually had a chance of winning her friendship or even her affection. This thought was what he used to warm his stomach as he returned to the wheel and examined the oncoming side of the island.
Captain Hardwick was explaining their plan of action for the voyage.
“It shouldn’t be too much actual sailing,” he explained, pointing ahead and to the left where the sun was by now well up in the southern sky. “We have a man from the Gilded Ice Society aboard, so we can run down to the ice wall; nearest point is three days south of here at full power. We will probably do it in five to save fuel. From there we wallrun to just about there. The clan has a small colony at the leap-off point on a fairly cold island that siphons gas for methsel straight out the ground.”
“No wood needed?” Arlo felt compelled to ask. “I thought methsel was made from wood alcohol.”
This prompted a brief lecture from Professor Pluramon that Hardwick patiently waited through, choosing to scan the horizon instead.
“Actually, the substance you call ‘wood alcohol’ is almost the entirety of methsel. The other ingredients are fairly few in the most common combustion engine application.” the headset said in a series of strobing pulsations while Razor stood stock still like a red-skinned statue, “However, even though it is called ‘wood alcohol’ that substance can be gathered not only from pyrolysis and wood distillation, but also as a byproduct of alcohol distillation and most recently synthesis by way of a careful mixture of naturally occurring gasses found in underground pockets.”
Joylessly, Arlo said, “Thank you, Professor.”
Hardwick took a deep breath through his nose and went on, “Right, so we shall throw a stopover on this little gas island. It is called Lortar. There we shall water, top off our food, and collate radiographic data with the region before proceeding to Hookthorn. That should only take us a few hours, and all told we should be on Hookthorn in less than two weeks. Does that suit your needs, or shall I put a rush on it?”
Arlo cupped his chin and looked out at the water for a moment. He stepped closer to the window panes and peered around the bay at the rest of the Imperial flotilla outside before asking, “Do you think this will allow us to stay out of Uncle Treistan’s way until the siege is completed?”
Hardwick seemed to frown at this prospect, and for the first time Arlo realized that his uncle’s little favor may have been robbing the man of a shot at glory. Still, the captain mustered the best of his good will and replied, “The government is waiting for a detachment from a separate task force to arrive before moving on the island, to guarantee their numbers and to have an occupation force that can be left behind once the fighting is over. They are still about five weeks out, but if they make good time there is a chance they could arrive in time that the siege will be finished before we return.”
Arlo nodded and kept his face circumspect. He turned back to the sea and crossed his hands behind his back, trying his best not to sigh. So that was why Hardwick was offering to ‘put a rush on’ things. He was hoping Arlo wanted to be back in time to kill cultists as badly as he did. Arlo hated to disappoint the man, but he wished to be as far away from the cultists as he could. Still, he considered that the sort of flimsy diplomatic half-truths that passed for false promises could earn him a bit of extra cooperation on the captain’s part. He gestured to his companions as he turned around again and said, “Cousin, our Clannarch bade me to take these people and care for them, see to their needs, and keep them away from him so he could focus on preparing for the siege of Redbrook Bay. Those are my orders, and I hope to obey them as best I can. If we can cut it as close as possible, it should be well enough for us to show up right in time for the battle itself.”
Hardwick nodded, and Arlo noted there was no respect lost in the gesture. He was relieved his cousin didn’t think of him as a coward– even if on some level he thought of himself as one. The nod he was given was the nod of a comrade in the same foxhole. The way Elroyal Hardwick saw it, they were both being denied a chance to distinguish themselves over one of Treistan’s infamous volatile whims. Inwardly, Arlo thanked the Jade Queen that he had such an unpredictable reputation to lean on. Outwardly, he smiled graciously and said, “But for now, let’s make the best of it and enjoy the journey. How often do you get an independent cruise, cousin?”
“Not as often as I’d like!” Hardwick agreed.
They chatted for a while then about some of the other adventures the Sunseeker had been on since Elroyal had been given command of her. He had clashed with the Guild off the coast of Malachra, and then again right in the bay at Singerhorn. There was a nasty fleet action with a gang of organized pirates led by some separatists who had stolen ships from the Beastfolk Tribal Council. In none of these actions had the Sunseeker actually managed to take an enemy vessel, having sunk both the Guilders and then played second fiddle to the local fencibles in the latter encounter. But it had blooded the House Guards on the Sunseeker, and Elroyal was clearly proud of his work. They had moved onto the topic of Tribunes with Irina’s aid next, and Elroyal claimed to have witnessed a Tribune denouncing an island governor and taking the entire island with a mere standard detachment of forty stormtroopers.
Irina had politely said she had heard similar tales, but expressed doubt as to many of her colleagues’ abilities to live up to them. This prompted Elroyal to ask what action had given her the burn scar on her face, and the question caused Irina to immediately fall silent, sigh, and turn towards the window in instantaneous detachment from the conversation.
The awkwardness led the captain therefore to invite them all to the stern gallery to dine in the officer’s mess, though it was obvious that this served little purpose other than to change the subject and the scenery. Still, perhaps in a show of good will, Irina agreed to join him and Pluramon trotted off after them while Arlo and Placelle Lamella stayed on the bridge.
For Arlo, it was because of the hope that he might see the Lemur pulling away from Peppernuts at the last moment. He wasn’t sure why Placelle Lamella might want to stay with him, other than her apparent fascination by him or her inability to get anything from food. Still, there was something somewhat comforting for the young man to find himself standing on the balcony around the conning tower with the Oathkeeper at his side. He had been loaned a modern monocular with a dark green steel casing by the master’s mate as well as a brass tube of a naval telescope from the master himself. The monocular was said to be twenty-power, extremely impressive especially considering its size, but the naval telescope was said to give a better view. Arlo took turns trying them out on the distant shore of the island and he had to admit that he had trouble deciding which he preferred. In the end, he decided he would love whichever let him get a better view of Moriah.
Placelle Lamella must have ‘tasted’ his hopefulness, because at that instant he felt her rest her hand on his shoulder and give him a gentle squeeze. He looked back at her, still unused to the way she seemed to read him with her curse, but some scruple in him propelled him to explain, “I’m thinking of a girl I like who I recently met. She is very kind, and very pretty to me. There’s a chance I might see her ship today.”
The Oathkeeper smiled down at him in her usual way and used the arm she’d squeezed his shoulder with to give him a half-embrace. “I really like it for you to feel this way. I want you to be happy like this.”
Arlo felt surprised to hear it. “You don’t think you will get fat if I am feeding you junk food all the time?”
Placelle Lamella shook her head slowly. “If I get fat, I can go swimming in the sea or spend a few days alone. If you get any more sad, you might never get better. Your family has done so much for my order, and your mother’s loss has wounded you all so much.”
It was odd to hear it from a person he’d never talked about it with, and whom he knew his uncle had certainly never confided in. Arlo looked down at the two optics in his hands and turned them up at himself as though the answer were engraved on their sides. Then, he looked back up at Placelle Lamella and said, “It’s been four years. My parents’ loss should have faded by now. I do not think of them often any more. Though, I confess I have thought of my mother more since arriving here than I had in the last year.”
Instead of telling Arlo how he was feeling about his own mother, Placelle Lamella put her hands on his shoulders, slightly inclined her head and gave him a searching look for a moment, and then turned him to face the sea. She stuck her arm out over his shoulder so he could see her gauntleted finger pointing to a little white arrowhead of wake painted on the edge of the ocean laid out before them. Excitedly, Arlo handed her the telescope so he could kneel and brace the monocular against the rail of the balcony. Even with the powerful device fixed to his eye and held steady, he could only just barely make out the silhouette of the ship ahead of them. He watched it for some time, with his neck painfully craned before he finally caught definite sight of that ridiculous figurehead, the wooden ramming prow with the cartoon face on it.
“It’s them!” Arlo cried, leaping to his feet and dashing past the Oathkeeper to get back onto the bridge and then to the shipladder that would take him down onto the weather deck.
The descent was irritating at first, with Arlo in his lubberly way trying to take the steep stairs facing outwards and having to carefully place his heels to keep from falling. Halfway down, however, he figured out that he could just look before he leapt and turned to take them on an angle. No sooner was he at the base of the funnel at the rear of the bridge than did Arlo whip around and jog across the weatherdeck. He was from midships to forecastle in a matter of seconds, then around the back of the deck gun and onto the stem. Just the brisk little run had brought him so much closer to the oncoming Lemur, or so it seemed. Arlo climbed onto the platform at the base of the jackstaff and wrapped an arm around it. The sound of the Imperial Standard fluttering wildly in the wind above him mingled with the flapping of his bolero while he brought the eyepiece of the monocular up to his face.
At first he could only catch little flashes of the ship passing under his lens. The gentle movement of the calm waters helped him stay steady enough, but his hands still trembled with excitement and exertion. Catching his breath at last, Arlo was able to pick out the whole vessel at once. From this distance, it was hard to pick out individuals, but it looked like the long weatherdeck was packed with crates and people alike. Arlo panned across the shape of the ship and tried to figure out its heading, considering that he would have to go to the stern gallery to get the best look. After raising and lowering his glass, however, it seemed to Arlo that the Sunseeker traveling south would cross the eastbound Lemur’s wake. With their general heading in mind, Arlo went back to manning the jackstaff in a long vigil of the distant corvette as it grew nearer. Soon, the ship was filling up the entire viewfinder and he found himself having trouble focusing on the details of the individual people and faces materializing on the faraway but tantalizingly familiar deck.
Placelle Lamella had since arrived and sat at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Arlo’s little platform at the base of the jackstaff. Now, she nudged him gently from below and passed up the telescope so they could trade. Arlo took it gratefully, and after some adjustments of the barlow he found himself happily gazing at the people gathered on the long deck behind the Lemur’s turret. Tall stacks of crates were strung down to deadeyes all along the expanse in twos and threes. They were of so many shapes and sizes that Arlo was certain they had all come from different sources. The last-minute nature of the people’s flight from Peppernuts was inherent in the very way the few passengers milling on the deck stood. They all faced back, staring at the island they were leaving behind with unsure faces wearing fear and doubt. Arlo noted that despite J’zan’s explanation that he would be offering berths to beastfolk there were many unmutated humans in the small crowd as well. Arlo wondered how many of them were Corovokian citizens, but quickly gave up trying to get a good count with the shaky view he could manage through the telescope.
Soon, the Lemur passed across the Sunseeker’s bow and Arlo slithered around to switch which side of the jackstaff he was slumped against. As the prow and the capstan head eased into his field of view once more, Arlo finally saw her.
Moriah was perched on the seat of the turret wearing a beautiful pink and white dress pinned up with bustles and a swooping neckline. Her idea of shoregoing wear was finer that he had expected, and certainly finer than anything she had ever worn on the ship. Little painted foam balls were impaled on the ends of her quills, giving them more the air of a decorative hat than her natural hair. She had also donned tall black boots and white stockings topped with gingerbread work of lace. Her red-brown whiteless eyes stared almost directly back at him and he felt his cheeks coloring at the thought. He imagined she was sitting there watching the Sunseeker go by, knowing he was aboard. He raised a hand out towards her, wishing she could see him. He stared at her until his eye watered and switched eyes to start all over again.
More than his uncle’s hospitality, more than the air of patriotic determination he was attempting to cultivate at breakneck speed, Arlo felt that Moriah was his one real chance at starting over again. He agonized thinking of how he had not at least tried to amuse her excitement, how he had waited until his last day to make amends with her, how she had kissed him there in his cabin even though he was salted like a roasting hen and bearded beyond anything like civility.
Arlo hated to admit it, but of his old life the thing he missed the most was not the fine wines or exquisite clothing. It was the reassuring touch of a lover always close at hand. Moriah offered the slimmest chance for him to have that once more with her unjudging kindness and her deep honest eyes.
Arlo watched her until he couldn’t see her anymore, then lowered the telescope and watched the Lemur until it was nothing more than an orange berm rising out of the horizon. Only then did he stand up and let Placelle Lamella embrace him before heading to the stern gallery for the meal that he’d put off so long.
