Karris was asleep. Gavin slipped his mother’s huge ruby ring on Karris’s finger. She still didn’t wake. Strangely, the ring fit perfectly. Gavin could have sworn his mother’s fingers were wider than Karris’s delicate digits. He looked at the ring.
His mother had resized it to Karris’s ring size. Gavin smiled. Thank you, mother. He could just imagine her mischievous grin, knowing he would figure it out. He hadn’t gotten all of his smarts from his father, she’d say. Still smiling as tears gathered in his eyes, he kissed Karris’s forehead. He held his wife’s hand and sat with her. His wife’s hand. His wife.
After all they’d been through together. The fights with each other, against wights. The darkness and despair. He tucked a wisp of her hair behind her ear. Touched her face gently. Memorized her. He took a breath, and it was pure.
In a world where every danger was growing and his own strength was failing, Karris had his back. She’d always had his back. And somehow, dying though he was, power fractured, doom looming, he felt more whole than ever.
The yoke of responsibility lay hanging off the bedpost. Gavin kissed his sleeping wife’s forehead, cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and picked the damn thing back up. Slipped it on. It felt good. It felt like it was made for him.
Marissia was waiting at the door. Her face was carefully composed, hands folded, ready to serve. Gavin handed her the note for the tower register to record his mother freeing her slave. Marissia took it silently, but there was a touch of hesitancy in her stance.
“Marissia,” Gavin said quietly. “I… if you’re gone when I get back, I understand, but you will always have a place here.”
She bowed jerkily, and he could tell she was doing it to cover her sudden tears. She practically fled the room. Gavin rubbed the bridge of his nose and stepped into the hallway, doing his best not to look after her. Commander Ironfist was there, waiting silently.
“Commander,” Gavin said. “How do you feel about doing a little skimming? Flirt-with-death dangerous.”
Ironfist said nothing, but his mouth quirked up in a little grin.
Chapter 97
Though much is taken, much abides, Gevison had once said.
Gavin hated poets. He and Ironfist had gathered food and weapons and taken a scull out into open waters.
“You going to suit up?” Gavin asked, pulling on armor.
“I’ve skimmed with you before,” Ironfist said.
“And?”
“I prefer not to strap on weights when I may have to swim.”
Ah yes, not everyone could swim in full armor. Benefit of being me.
“Rough weather today,” Ironfist said.
That was all he said, but Gavin could tell he wasn’t looking forward to going at extremely high speed over large waves. No wonder he didn’t want his armor.
But in another minute, they were off across the waves. As before, Ironfist made an excellent partner on the skimmer, and their combined effort made them move quickly enough that Gavin was able to use the foils to lift the skimmer mostly free of the water. That was good, because the chop was rough today, up to two paces high. With the skimmer’s foils just right, Gavin was able to keep the boat mostly level. If they’d been right on the surface, it would have been a horrendous trip, impossible, really.
After a few hours, though, they escaped the poor weather.
They found the Atashian coast, and Gavin skimmed west until he saw a bay that he recognized. Between the incredible speed at which they’d traveled and the impossibility of taking accurate navigational readings while in the middle of the chop, they’d ended up thirty leagues off course. That much error for a normal ship could mean an extra day at sea. Not for them.
They’d overshot the Color Prince’s army, going too far south. Ironfist drafted a binocle, and they saw several Ilytian ships. Traders, supplying the army. Civilians, but civilians possibly carrying guns and powder that would wreak havoc on the peaceful innocents of Ru.
Gavin looked at Ironfist. Ironfist shook his head.
He was right. Scout first. Fight later.
They skimmed through the emerald waters off Idoss, giving it a wide berth. People in towers with spyglasses with fine lenses would see them long before they could gather any intelligence. They passed more ships, almost all of them heading west, supplying the army, too, no doubt.
It wasn’t good. A few Ilytian ships could simply be enterprising traders who knew they could make a quick profit. But seeing dozens of galleys from Idoss, coccas from Ruthgar (meaningless because many merchants owned those), and caravels from Garriston meant that whatever government the advancing army had left behind was actually doing its best to support the invasion. That meant reasonably good governance. As Gavin knew, the first sign of trouble is when those cities you’ve subdued stop sending you supplies. If Garriston had been turned into a city that could export goods in only a few months, that meant that the Color Prince was doing a better job governing it when he wasn’t there than the rapacious Ruthgari governor had done when he was there. Not good news.