The Whale's Breath, which Rissa had decided was a far more accurate name for the ship than whatever was painted on the hull, creaked rhythmically as it cut through the swells. The shoreline was now a thin, charcoal smudge against the horizon.
Rissa leaned over the railing, watching the white foam churned up by the bow. Her reflection in the moving water was mercifully distorted, unlike the soul-crushing clarity Aeryn had faced at the docks.
Aeryn herself was a silhouette of stillness. She sat on the very edge of the forward deck, her legs tucked beneath her, staring straight ahead into the blue infinite. To the crew, she looked like a passenger lost in thought; to Rissa, she looked like a candle flame fighting a gale, thin, bright, and dangerously close to flickering out.
A thick cloud of acrid, sweet-smelling smoke drifted across Rissa's vision. She didn't have to look up to know who it was. The heavy, rhythmic thud of a wooden peg-leg announced the Captain's arrival. He leaned against the rail next to her, his pipe held loosely in his scarred hand. He took a long draw, exhaling a grey plume that the sea breeze snatched away.
"I thought you were sisters," he started, his voice a low rumble beneath the sound of the waves.
Rissa's head snapped up. "Me and her?" she exclaimed, her voice jumping an octave in genuine shock. "Really??? Look at her! She's... she's like a sunset or a really expensive piece of silk! She is so beautiful!"
She looked over at Aeryn lovingly, her expression softening for a heartbeat before she caught herself and put her defensive mask back on.
"Yeah. Well," the Captain grunted, tapping his pipe against the wood. "If I hadn't heard you calling her 'My Lady' back on the docks, we all would have thought you were kin. All of us did. Am I right, Finn?"
He didn't turn around, but looked back over his shoulder toward a spindly sailor who was methodically swabbing the deck nearby. Finn didn't stop his work, didn't look up, and didn't change his expressionless stare. He simply gave a single, sharp nod of confirmation.
"Haha..." Rissa chuckled nervously, her fingers beginning to fidget with the frayed edges of her leather tunic. "No. No, we aren't."
The Captain let out another puff, his one good eye tracking the nervous movement of her hands. "A rift between you two?"
The humor drained out of Rissa's face. She looked back at the water, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Yeah. I hurt her."
"Hmm. Happens," the Captain said. He took a long, satisfying drawing on his pipe, the rich aroma of cherry-wood and old sea-salt filling the air between them.
"I didn't mean to!" Rissa snapped suddenly, wiping her face hard with both hands as if trying to scrub away the memory of the hut. "I was... I was trying to help, and I just made everything worse. I always make it worse."
"Hmph." The Captain let out a slow, deliberate puff of smoke. "But you see, child... hurt, pain, hate... all of these things only exist when there is love, admiration, hope. You don't get the sting without the honey."
Rissa froze, her hand still pressed against her cheek. She turned her head slowly to look at him. "You mean... you think she loves me?"
The Captain immediately raised his hands in a mock gesture of defense, the pipe clutched between two fingers. "I didn't say anything! Don't go putting your girlish fancies in my mouth."
Rissa sighed, her shoulders slumping. "I don't believe that, Grandpa. We have a difference. A big one. A sister! haha... if she even think of me her as aide, even that will be enough for me... And honestly? We barely know each other. A few weeks ago, she was just a name in a story to me."
"And yet," the Captain said, his voice turning gravelly and serious, "you believe in each other enough to take a journey with a crew of unknown, rowdy men into the middle of nowhere."
Rissa went silent. She looked toward the bow. Aeryn hadn't moved an inch. She was like a statue, staring into the infinite water as if she could see the very edge of the world.
For a long time, the only sounds were the creaking of the masts and the snapping of the sails. Then, the Captain leaned in closer. The smell of tobacco was suddenly overpowering.
"She's the missing Queen, ain't she? The Witch of the Red Spire?"
The transition was so fast Rissa's brain almost stalled. "NO!" she shouted, then immediately hissed, "NO! No... noooo... who said this! No..."
In a blur of motion, Rissa surged forward. Her humor was gone, replaced by a feral, cornered-animal intensity. She closed the distance between them, her hand flying to the small hilt at her waist, her eyes wide and boring straight into the Captain's. She was inches from his face, her voice a lethal, jagged whisper.
"Who told you? How do you know?"
The Captain didn't flinch. He didn't even drop his pipe. He looked at her with a terrifyingly calm amusement.
"I know, child. I know," he murmured. "We are beings of the water. The tides carry whispers from one end of the world to the other. We have to know everything to survive out here. But our rule is to stay away from anything and everything... unless we have a reason not to."
He looked down at her hands, one on her weapon, other flexed and ready to attack, then back up at her eyes. He let out a small, raspy cough that might have been a laugh.
"And do you really think you can win against me with that measly power of yours?" He took another long draw of smoke, looking at her with an expression that was almost fatherly, yet entirely dangerous.
Rissa felt the weight of the sea in his gaze. She realized then that this man wasn't just a sailor; he was a king of this rotting wooden castle, and she was a guest on sufferance. She slowly backed off, her shoulders relaxing as she realized the futility of the threat.
"I cannot say about me," Rissa said, a slow, sharp smirk spreading across her face as she glanced toward the silent woman at the bow. "But I don't think all of you combined, with every ship in this harbor, would be a match for her if she decided to let go."
The Captain paused, he smoke curling around his beard. He looked at the frail, white-haired girl sitting alone at the front of his ship, then back at Rissa.
"Well," he said, letting out a final, massive puff that obscured his face. "That, I cannot disagree with."
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