White-flecked golden ice stretched out into the sky endlessly where it met the stirring green froth of the ocean. Placelle Lamella was at the fore gun deck, seated in her cassock cross-legged atop the turret itself with her hands buried between her legs to keep them warm while she took in the massive, wonderful border at the edge of the world. She looked to her left and it swam out infinitely into the horizon, so tall that it seemed to interrupt the sky itself. She looked to her right and it was the same, an infinite golden ribbon slicing into the sea. The Stone Unfurled ended here at this wall, and the wall itself was a majestic, awesome thing. The Oathkeeper had never seen it before today. Her trip out to the western frontier of the Empire had been at no expense to the church, but this meant that she was berthed on what ships would take her. Most ships would happily berth an Oathkeeper if they had the room for it, of course. Priests and Oathkeepers were good luck, after all. Conversely, many seamen seemed to think that a chaplain was somehow bad luck though many ships still carried them.
Placelle Lamella had travelled with a large shipping container on a series of trawlers, barges, little tramp freighters, and island hoppers nearly halfway across the Stone for almost a year to get to the Dawnstorm and meet Treistan Haradin. But here before her was the ice wall that would’ve (if a man named Darwin who she’d asked about it was correct) taken her the same distance in three days. She hunched forward on the ice-cold steel of the turret to squint her heavy eyelids at the ice. Dark shapes were frozen inside it behind the translucent golden mist, indistinct and of many sizes. She imagined they were great whales, sharks, or squids crystallized for all of eternity in that single flash of a moment when the wall formed. If, in fact, that had been how it had formed. It was difficult to rouse the depths of her mind from beyond the self-imposed fog of the Waking Rest, each thought passing through like treacle in a funnel, but Placelle Lamella could dimly remember reading a book about it once. They had speculated that the ice wall was formed in an instant during the great calamity that had unfurled the round world people lived on before, and they had presented some kind of evidence that was escaping her memory at the present moment.
The heartleech opened her eyelids a bit more, and as she let more light into herself she visualized a little valve inside her. It had been slowed to a drip, but she opened it just a hair to allow more. Her awareness of the people inside the turret beneath her, dim before, became keener now. They were bitterly cold, tired of working, curious about her, happy to be working together, and excited about the upcoming wallrun. Or at least she guessed they were based on how their frustration, joy, curiosity, and anticipation felt as they passed over her, through her, and into her. The little burst of energy from the feeding allowed her to dig deeper in her mind and dredge up a paraphrase of the passage she had read, but her distraction with the hands below had broken her interest in the subject.
Placelle Lamella wondered where her Arlo was.
She stoppered the valve inside her and crawled on all-fours across the top of the turret until she found the ladder she’d used to climb it. With her eyelids drooping again she managed the rungs and then wrapped her cassock around her to stride across the wooden deck beams. The Sunseeker had stopped to make preparations for its wallrun, so the bitter wind of the morning was gone, but the temperature here at the ice wall was so frigid that it seemed colder still.
When she had last left Arlo, he was cleaning himself in what Placelle Lamella had begun to think of quite affectionately as their cabin. She was lying on her back on the bed with her head hanging upside down, sinking into the deepest possible layer of the Waking Rest while she examined his skinny, nude body through a haze so thick and deep that she couldn’t even hear the faintest whisper of the urge to consume.
She loved his little round rump, the caramel skin of his sinewy form, and found it intensely amusing that he trimmed and groomed all the hair that grew on him. She loved the smell of the washing powder, the sound of the clicking ticking watch, and the taste of Arlo’s satisfaction in his work with the razor. In the end, though, she could also taste just how irritated he was by her placid gaze even through the fog of her muffled mind. He felt bashful, seen, leered at, and worst of all frustrated in his loins. She hated torturing her Arlo, so Placelle Lamella had told him to just step in the booth for a moment so she could step out of the cabin and give him some privacy.
As expected, his guilt and shame followed her out the door, a little treat for her accommodation despite how she wished he would just be happy for a change. This had been multiple hours before, however. The heartleech slunk around the walkway at the conning tower and past the aft turret into the stern gallery with her mind probing out little feelers to seek out that by-now familiar and oh-so-comfy flavor of the young man who had given her some kind of purpose in serving House Haradin other than to just sit in a waiting room gathering dust. She checked the officers’ mess first, and found it empty. Usually there were one or two people in some corner or another, but this afternoon they were all gone. Only the gentle light of the sun flowing in through the grid-like panes of the bowed transom windows sat at any of the round wooden tables set up in the ornate dining room. Lunch must have come and gone for the rest of the people on the ship, the people who had to chew and swallow things if they wanted to eat. Placelle Lamella drifted into the galley next and found the cooks all gone as well with the exception of the ship’s head chef.
Ali the Implacable he was called, a man from an island called Galan. He was a short, but very fat man who absolutely radiated sheer piety at all times. It was an interesting flavor for the heartleech, a joyful supplication and eagerness mixed with unconditional constant gratitude. Galan had belonged to a pirate warlord before the Empire had arrived in its waters. Ali the Implacable had been Ali the Shit-Scrubbing-Slave-Who-Will-Forever-Do-As-He-Is-Told as far as his original masters were concerned, and all because he had the great misfortune of being fathered by a man who had seduced the warlord’s favorite concubine. Born into a life of misery, Ali had been ironically quite-easily placated in the simple act of being freed and allowed to serve on the ship that ferried his former owners to their new labor camp. He alone had been praised for his fair use of the lash, his quick adoption of the Divine Orderhood’s sacred teachings in her name. His love for the Jade Queen was a pure love, and his sincere unyielding desire to always do his best when he consented to his tasks was the true reason he was now called Implacable.
As always, he lit up intensely upon seeing Placelle Lamella squeeze herself into the narrow room amongst the piled vegetables, dangling sausages, knives, and hanging tools of every variety. She was an instrument of his goddess, after all. The fat little man dashed across the kitchen to lower himself and kiss the knuckles on her hands, greeting her vivaciously with, “Lady Oathkeeper! It is so good you are here! I must leave the kitchen soon, but I would be overjoyed if you might bless the curry!”
Placelle formed a crescent shape with one hand and gently brushed her fingertips over Ali’s forelock and temple before drawing the shape in the air in front of him. She smiled in her gentle way and replied, “Of course, Mister Implacable. I am always happy to do Her works. But surely such a blessed man already makes a blessed curry.”
Ali swooned as though this were praise from Her Most Divine Majesty given in person. Placelle Lamella could tell he was crushing his desire for the piety to continue, she could taste his hurry as he gently pinched her hand and led her to a great copper cauldron rising up out of the floor. A wooden spoon was fetched from some convenient hook and handed up to her. She carefully dipped the bottom of the spoon into the pot and coated it in the goopy red sludge within. Then, she flipped the spoon over and drew a sickle-moon shape in the sticky sauce with the tip of one finger. Finally, she used the tip of the spoon to draw another moon shape in the sauce itself. Then, with an indulgent grin she licked the back of the spoon and handed it back to an extremely delighted Ali, who held it across both upturned hands as though it were an object from a reliquary.
“It’s wonderful,” she lied, because it was far too overpowering for her somewhat underused palate. But she could tell that it would be good for Arlo, which meant in some way she was telling the truth. “Arlo likes it even spicier than this.”
Ali laughed with good cheer while he rinsed the spoon with a bit of seawater and returned it to its hook. “Ah, of course the blood nephew of the Clannarch himself would be blessed with a most refined sense of taste! Alas, there are officers here who will turn up their nose at even this, and woe unto Ali if they should have to sneeze! Ahaha!”
Placelle Lamella nodded sagely. There should be no woe for men like Ali the Implacable if she had her way. Still, she had a mission before her, so she pressed on, “Speaking of Arlo, have you seen him since I came in to bless that ham and lentils after breakfast, Mister Implacable?”
“Why, he came in freshly bathed, pretty as a flower and had some of your blessed ham and lentils, Lady Oathkeeper!” Ali replied with a slice of pride seasoning his overflowing piety, “And may I say he tucked right in and finished two whole helpings! It must have stuck well to his stomach.”
“Did he say where he was headed next?”
“Ah,” Ali seemed sad to report as he closed a wooden lid over the cauldron and strapped it down tight, “We did not speak, alas. I merely watched from the door. That boy is a brown skeleton, so I make sure he eats something, but I do not think he has words for one such as I.”
“Nonsense,” tittered Placelle Lamella, “Arlo is a man of the people almost as much as Madame Tribune Rathbone is. And there are few better people on the Sunseeker than Worthy Ali the Implacable.”
“Worthy Ali? Worthy Ali! You do me too much honor, Lady Oathkeeper!”
Placelle Lamella blessed him again, and glided out of the kitchen to descend to Arlo’s cabin. She passed a uniformed man in the corridor who stopped after she had passed to look at her from behind. She could feel his pining lust washing over her, a joyful hunger much more jolly than the strange curiosity tinged with bitterness she felt beneath Arlo’s similar attraction or the sharp animal appetite in Gainstrom’s affection. Since the man seemed nice enough, she turned over one shoulder and smiled at him with a little wave. After he waved back, she added a slight sway in her walk to exaggerate the motion of her hips. Though she was unsure if the shape of her backside could be made out in the billowing cassock, the emotion the man was feeling certainly surged for her.
Even before she opened the door, Placelle Lamella could tell that Arlo was not in their room. She knew every one of his emotions by now, and even when he was asleep there was a certain tone to it. But someone was inside. The Oathkeeper opened the door slowly, but noisily, in hope of neither startling nor alarming whoever was inside. Irina Rathbone stood in front of Arlo’s desk in her greatcoat and peaked cap, bent half over and writing a note on some stationary. When the door opened, she looked up with a mischievous smirk that instantly melted once she saw who had entered.
“Is it true, then?” Irina asked, pacing around the Oathkeeper with a curious expression, “The both of you in here and one bed between yuz. So you got him hooked like you lot always do, and now you can feed off him every night.”
Placelle Lamella let her half-lidded gaze travel to her right periphery to follow the Tribune and then slunk it back over to her left to await the little woman’s return. There was at least a full pace height difference between them, but the Oathkeeper admired how Irina wore the shameless courage of her office despite her stature. The Tribune toyed with her boarding axe in its frog between thumb and forefinger while she walked a circle around the larger woman in the only open space of the little room. Placelle Lamella tried her best to smile as sweetly as she could, because she did like Irina, even if the feeling was not mutual. Then, of course, there was that lust the other woman felt for her. Irina loved to view Placelle Lamella in profile when she wasn’t in her armor. Every time the smaller woman’s eyes traveled over her generous bust, she felt a stab of hungry indecency in the woman’s heart. This was almost always followed by a self-imposed internal slap, a flash of shame, and something deeper or darker like immense regret.
It was delicious, but sad.
“Nothin’ to say for yourself, hey?” Irina asked next, tucking her arms behind her back and rocking from her heel to her toe and back again with the look of a beat cop who had just caught a truant child. “You don’t deny seducing that poor, innocent young toff?”
“I invited him to, if he wanted.” came the candid reply, with the Oathkeeper’s typical pastoral demeanor. “He said he did not want to be with me unless I could love him. And I cannot, so he did not.”
“Heh.” The revelation seemed to please Irina immensely, and she relaxed somewhat and returned to fiddling with her boarding axe with an air of smug self-complacency. “I suppose the lad does have some lick of sense in him after all. Worse the luck for you, though, am I right?”
There was no immediate response. Placelle Lamella reached up to her neck and unclasped her cassock. With a gentle shimmy of her shoulders, she let it fall off one side and swept it into her other hand. She was wearing her sleeveless tunic underneath, but with the cassock off she could lean her head over and show her neck while reaching up to lift her hair with a false stretch. As it fell over her shoulder in a cascade, with Irina’s lust mounting, Placelle Lamella offered, “If you want, you could touch me. You could see I won’t hurt you, and maybe you would have some fun. I would be happy to pleasure you, Madame Rathbone. I know how lonely you are.”
Seething, growling, the Tribune reached up and balled her fists in the tunic to yank the taller woman down to her level. When they were eye-to-eye, at great discomfort to Placelle Lamella, Irina said in a very even, level tone, “You listen up, and you listen good, soul-sucker. I have been fooled by your kind before and I will not be fooled again. You must feed to live, and I grant you that. You just eat off Harkon and the lads who want to pinch your bottom in the halls enough to get by, and we will get on just fine. But you best stay out of my head, and the moment you lose control and eat too much– like you types always do; I will blow your pretty little head off and sleep better than I have in weeks.”
At that moment, Placelle Lamella loved Irina so much! The determination, the bravery, the sincerity, the absolute lack of doubt; the sheer intensity of these wonderful emotions pouring off the woman in sheets and the unyielding certainty of purpose. Raw justice itself was like a synergistic force with the woman’s very being. Placelle Lamella felt herself salivating, and resisted letting her dopey smiling mouth hang open to drool. Even through the Waking Rest, a primal voice called from somewhere within her commanding the heartleech to enkindle even more emotion in the little woman, to drive Irina mad with overwhelming feeling and feast.
“Are we copacetic, soul-sucker!?” Irina demanded now, shaking her by the scuffed tunic.
“Of course,” mooed the Oathkeeper sweetly, “Cruelty is only for Her enemies, and it would break my heart to hurt my Arlo. I do feel remorse, you know.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” spat Irina, releasing her. The Oathkeeper imagined Irina would probably be the jury and executioner as well, though at present she was not entirely sure what a jury was for. In the fog of the Waking Rest it felt like it was either some sort of archaic justice system or something you did if the mast broke on a sailboat. Obviously the justice system made more sense, but either way Placelle Lamella was sure that she had thought something very funny and wished she could have heard Arlo say it.
Speaking of Arlo, once Irina had huffed and stomped out of the cabin, the heartleech made her way over to the bed to plow into it face-first and take a deep sniff of his pillow. It still smelled like him, so she nuzzled it with the side of her face before leaping back to her feet and going to his desk. The note Irina left was a stern warning:
‘Princeling,
When we stop off at Lortar to top off, you and I shall go in and check on her citizens. Your clan has a colony there, and it is your duty as well as mine to make sure its meek are treated well. I will observe your efforts, and you shall answer the contrary at your peril.
Her Most Affectionate Servant,
Irina Rathbone
Tribune, First Degree
In Her Name We Seek’
The little bar of shortbread weighing down the threatening note added a bit of Irina’s bluff charm to the gesture. Placelle Lamella opened one drawer of the desk after the other and eventually found the vaunted tin of dog biscuits. Something to get the sweet and spicy taste of the curry out of her mouth would be grand. Since she was going to see Arlo, the heartleech took a few extras and tucked them into a pouch on her belt. Then, with the one she’d selected for herself in her mouth she retrieved her cassock and happily trotted out of the room and went to seek Arlo in the last place she thought he could be: The ship’s bridge.
As she was huddling inside her cassock out in the cold again, an alarm bell rang from above the hatch behind her and others like it were going off around the ship. Lieutenant Parson’s voice could be heard over the loudspeaker, announcing, “Attention all hands: We are in final stages of launch preparation. All hands to wallrunning stations. Clear the decks for wallrunning.”
With a bit more urgency in her step, though her eyelids still drooped and she had not finished the dog treat in her mouth, Placelle Lamella crossed her arms over her chest under the cassock and jogged up the tall shipladder that ascended the forward superstructure. When she reached the top stair, she was frustrated to find that the hatch leading to the bridge was closed, unusual for the Sunseeker as she’d known it thus far. She turned the wheel with her dog treat stirring the air in front of her mouth and then yanked open the door with a soft, unladylike grunt. On the other side, all eyes were turned to her in surprise. She finally finished her bite from the biscuit and pulled the rest of it from her mouth with one hand while she waved with the other.
The officers on the bridge returned to their work, once Captain Hardwick caught their ear with a polite clearing of his throat. Placelle Lamella slipped into the bridge and pulled the hatch shut behind her, turning the handle on it so it would be just like she’d found it. She looked around the bridge with some interest to watch the final procedures but also primarily to seek out her Arlo. He was in the rearmost portion of the bridge, the raised area with the map table, seated primly strapped into one of the folding jump seats on the rear bulkhead with a book open in his hand and his eyes rapidly bouncing from side-to-side while he read. Placelle Lamella felt a surge of excitement the instant she saw him, and it blossomed into joy as she tasted the first morsel of his feeling; anticipation about the wallrun mingled with pleasant surprise over how enjoyable his book was. Next to Arlo was the huge beastman, Razor Skunch, and the strange mechanical backpack that contained the mind of Professor Pluramon.
The pair was always worth a quick sniff at least, though it seemed Razor’s emotions never changed and the good doctor had very little to speak of. But still it was very interesting to see the two so closely intertwined; Razor a muffled elegy of a distant dreamer in a bittersweet fantasy land and Pluramon frequently switching back and forth between mild calculating consternation and excruciating boredom. Placelle Lamella ascended two steps onto the low platform and tried to sit next to Arlo. To her great satisfaction, he smiled when he noticed her and she felt a warmth and comfort enter him. To her great dissatisfaction, the seat next to him was too small for her. She felt her gentle smile drooping like her eyelids as she attempted to contort herself into the proper shape for the little jump seat, only to find herself too tall and too wide. Worse, when she tried to pull the safety belt around herself like Arlo had for himself, she had to choose whether to lower herself to an uncomfortable slump with the shoulder belt between her breasts or sit up straight and have one of them painfully deformed. Finally, she managed to get the cross belt underneath her bust entirely, only to now have the waist belt crushing her legs against the seat.
“Hey,” Arlo scolded in a stage whisper, “You’re too big for that one. Razor couldn’t fit in it, either. I’m about as tall as most people get, you know. There’s ones for beastfolk and big heartleeches who spent too much time hanging around whorehouses and therapists’ offices growing up over there.”
He pointed to where Skunch was seated on the side wall of the alcove, taking up a wide, tall-backed outside seat and leaving a corner spot for her. Placelle Lamella frowned at the empty seat, then gave Arlo a withering look before freeing herself from the entrapment and moving to sit in the much larger corner chair. He watched her strap herself in with his book tented over one knee as though she were a child who couldn’t be trusted with such things. Once she was properly strapped in, she met his eyes and then meaningfully tilted her head towards the jump seat nearest to her. He looked back at her quizzically, so she repeated the gesture more emphatically. Finally, after a third repetition understanding dawned on the young man’s face and he threw his head back in an exasperated sigh before unbuckling himself to scoot over to the seat perpendicular to hers.
Placelle Lamella’s smile returned at once and she performed her customary wiggling dance.
Now, she could finally focus on the crew and figure out what was happening on the bridge. The ship’s wheel at the front of the space was being locked in place with a sturdy metal bar, and the Captain was carefully checking over each station with a clipboard in his hand to make sure some checklist had been completed properly. The emotions of the bridge were excitement and anticipation with a touch of nerves thrown in for good measure, but most of the crew was especially excited because there were guests aboard and they all hoped to show off. Placelle Lamella took particular note as Lieutenant Parsons’ voice echoed through the bridge in another announcement that the executive officer was not on the bridge with them.
“Attention all hands: The Wallrunner’s Suite is occupied. Repeat: Master Mirana is at his station. The Wallrunner’s Suite is occupied. This is your final warning. Clear all decks for departure. Prepare for wallrunning in less than two minutes.”
The swelling pride on the bridge set Placelle Lamella’s head tilting curiously. Did they not normally announce things so officially? She leaned over to Arlo and tried to match his stage whisper from before as she asked, “Is this your first time Wallrunning?”
Arlo looked up from his book and had to blink a few times before he could answer. “Ah, no. But I have always been tucked away in a private cabin somewhere. Since this is such a short hop, Cousin Roy suggested it would be excellent for me to watch so I could see it without having to be stuck on the bridge all night.”
“Oh?” Placelle Lamella had a follow-up question more about whether this was a special occasion of some kind for the rest of the ship, but she was interrupted by the voice of Professor Pluramon issuing from the teal mist in Razor’s headset.
“This particular jump is estimated to be completed in as little as four hours and twenty-six minutes.” the scientist explained helpfully, which prompted Arlo to fish out his watch. Pluramon went on while Placelle Lamella leaned over to look at the time and found it was nearing six of the Day Watch. “Our speed will be slowed during the Life Watch, but usually ships continue wallrunning up until the start of the Blood Watch due to increased lifestone efficiency. Once we are appropriately under way, you will be free to stand from your seat and observe the environment outside. Under no circumstances should you exit the interior compartments and set foot on the weather deck, however, or you will be blown off the ship and almost certainly fall to your death.”
Placelle Lamella nodded respectfully at the wise advice, but it ignited another question altogether within her.
“So if Arlo is here to see Wallrunning up close, why are you here, Professor?” she asked politely, “You seem to be very familiar with it already.”
Though there was no way to see it, the emotional resonance of a knowing smile leaked out of the brass carapace that housed Pluramon. “I am here to observe its effect on the humans here on the bridge; though perhaps observe is a somewhat crude term with my current pseudocorporeal state. Think of it more as ‘feeling the vibrations of the human physiological response’.”
That sounded suspiciously like what a heartleech did to the Oathkeeper, but she considered that the scientist in his much-reduced state most likely was perceiving the world through the use of some complicated instruments that it would never interest her to understand. Before she could even finish processing the thought, the radioman unplugged his headset and speakers in his station cracked to life. Captain Hardwick raised a fist in the air as soon as he heard it and called out, “Silence! Silence, fore an’ aft! Silence, all!”
“Captain, this is Lef’tenant Parsons in the citadel.” Parsons was reporting, his voice distorted and crackling, but perfectly legible. “Master Mirana is in the control throne, and the doctor has him rigged up to the life monitor. He is giving his blessing to continue.”
“Thank you, Mister Parsons,” Elroyal shot back into the microphone the radioman raised for him before striding forward to the ship’s wheel and pushing the throttle lever all the way forward. The Sunseeker lurched to life beneath them with surprising responsiveness as the throttle bells sounded throughout the compartment.
“Acceleration!” called the woman manning the engineering section, “lifestone response in rear engine chamber.”
“Bring up the citadel motors.” ordered Hardwick mechanically, even though the woman who’d spoken was already reaching for the lever. She could be heard in hushed tones giving more complicated orders over her headset to the men below for a brief while and then there was silence.
A long moment passed on the bridge and suddenly with tension mounting it became clear that the ice wall was approaching. With no hand at the wheel, the ship was also twisting slowly in place somehow, as though some other force were guiding the rudder. The view outside the windows shifted glacially left, and after a second full minute had passed, the engineering station reported, “Eight knots and gaining, sir. lifestone response confirmed amidships.”
“Strap in, everyone.” ordered Hardwick as he turned on his heel and approached the rear of the bridge. He seemed to catch sight of Placelle Lamella for the first time on his way up onto the platform and into the jump seat Arlo had occupied before.
“I’m glad you decided to join us, Lady Oathkeeper.” he told her with a proud, sincere grin spreading across his bearded face. “As I was just saying to Cousin Arlo, it’s not often we make such a short hop of it, and it’s something everyone ought to see at least once.”
“I’m honored to share this with you all.” Placelle Lamella replied with her hands wrapping around one of Arlo’s and Razor’s each. Razor’s hand was as limp as she expected it to be, but Arlo at least put up a decent effort at squeezing her back.
“Fifteen knots and gaining, sir!” reported the woman at the engineering console.
“Master Mirana has given the final signal,” Parsons’ voice reported over the loudspeaker, “We are launching presently. May Her Most Divine Majesty guide and watch over us.”
Instinctively, Placelle Lamella held her hands in a crescent shape over her chest and inclined her head in a brief prayer for safe travels. Tension mounted in the emotions of everyone present, and it slipped into her like water down a drain, purpose and pride joining it and filling her while all-at-once the ship began to list.
The world outside was turning, tilting leftwards but inside everyone felt pulled down. A heavy rumbling filled the whole ship from her jackstaff all the way down her bowsprit and along her keel to the freely turning screws rising impossibly out of the water. Ice scraped along the bottom of the whining, protesting hull as the ship like magic seemed to sail right up the icewall itself.
Brilliant golden light shone from between the Sunseeker and the great icewall, casting a bright yellowish corona that seemed to grow the closer they got to lying completely on their side. Then, all-at-once there was a shift, a sense of raw compression or of somehow painlessly being crushed as the entire world turned onto its side and now the ice wall was beneath them, scrolling like the inside of a turning wheel as it bore away ahead like an infinite hill. The sound of the grinding was replaced with a rushing wind, impossible forces straining the hull and creaking the seams of the metal, and a smooth gentle skimming noise.
“Launch complete! Master Mirana’s condition is stable.” Parsons’ voice declared from the radio as Captain Hardwick unbuckled himself and got to his feet. It somehow made sense for him to be walking with stable footing even though every common logic said they were all sideways now and he should tumble over onto the wall.
Hardwick approached the radio station with pride in his eyes and took up the operator’s headset with one hand resting on the man’s shoulder. “Launch confirmed, citadel. We are under way. See you in four hours, Alistair.”
Once he was done signing off, Hardwick went around the bridge congratulating the officers on a job well-done before beckoning to his guests at the rear of the bridge. “Come on, guys, come and take a look. See what so few get to see.”
Arlo and Placelle Lamella unbuckled themselves with interest while Razor and Pluramon remained strapped in. When they’d finally finished transitioning to the wall, Pluramon’s teal mist had even exited Razor’s goggles; a signal Placelle Lamella was still trying to decipher since emotionally the good doctor was still very much present as far as she could tell. Instead of worrying about that, however, she followed Arlo up to the front of the bridge and watched with some amusement as he pressed himself against the glass like a boy on a train. Once she saw what was out the starboard window, however, she found herself doing the same.
They were so high up on the wall that the Ten-Thousand Seas were no more than a distant change of color on the horizon. The eyes almost refused to focus on it, but then they passed over an island. It was so far below them that it looked like a smudge on the blue-green ‘sky’ that was actually an ocean, and they passed over it so fast that it seemed like little more than a pebble one would pass going downhill on a bicycle. Placelle Lamella felt Arlo’s wonder and awe pouring out of him and gratefully merged it with her own. She briefly considered putting her hand on the back of his hand so they could be touching during this moment of unity, but thought better of it in light of his ardent desire for her to somehow fall in love with him. Instead of touching him like she wanted, the Oathkeeper satisfied herself to say, in a hushed tone, “I like it for you to feel this way, Arlo.”
When he blushed in spite of himself, she gave him an easy smile and added, “I’m glad you let me be your friend.”
Then, before he could answer and before she could embarrass him anymore in front of Captain Hardwick, Placelle Lamella turned and gave the captain a respectful bow before crossing to the other side of the bridge to satisfy her curiosity about the view of the sky above. It was just as magnificent in its own way and surprising to boot. For her entire life, looking up at the night sky Placelle Lamella had only ever see the green glow of the Jade Moon in the eastern sky or the red pall of the Blood Moon in the west; the color tinting the whole sky and even changing the shimmering pricks of starlight looking down over the Stone Unfurled. But here, so high up on the ice wall and with one’s eyes so naturally pointed at the zenith of the sky, even with the sun still so high in the northern sky there was darkness and stars. Placelle Lamella put her hand on the glass and touched with her pointer finger the brightest one she could see, as though she could take it in her hand like a snowflake. The sky was rich, dark blue and the stars were pure white flecks against it. For the first time in her life, the Oathkeeper considered what the Stone would be like without the two moons on either end of it that so strangely affected its tides and the properties of the minerals found in the ground and on the sea floor. Placelle Lamella rose out of the Waking Rest for a moment and asked herself why this could be.
For just a second, she asked herself if the sky was meant to be blue.
Then, her upbringing came back to her. With no Jade Moon, there was no Jade Queen. With no Jade Queen there was neither Corovokian Empire nor Divine Orderhood. No Orderhood meant no Order to raise her, to raise people like her, to take care of any Wayward of any variety. The beggars, the crippled, the idiots, the mutes, the people who were just plain unlikable; all of the world’s unwanted folk would be condemned to persecution or starvation.
So, instead of giving in to her curiosity, Placelle Lamella stoppered the valve once more and let her eyelids grow heavy. She backed away from the window and cupped her hands into the shape miming the holding of an orb while bowing her head and giving a short prayer of thanks.
She thanked The Goddess that the sky was green when the sun set and red until it rose. She thanked The Goddess for taking form in the world and showing humans how to live in it. She thanked The Goddess that instead of starving in isolation, or being left to give in to her baser urges to manipulate people into suffering for her sustenance, or being hanged for wickedness that she would have never learned to control on her own– Instead of all these horrible fates, she had been blessed to grow up in the church, to be given as a gift to House Haradin, and to get her very own Arlo to take care of.
