The sun rose higher, and Talia and Wen shared half a bottle of water between them. Talia adjusted the sail for the hundredth time, then took a sight with the sextant. Wen took another look at her charts. Then they both sat down again and stared at each other.
“You studied the book of Words you found, didn’t you?” said Talia.
“Before I even went into the mirror room,” he admitted. “I picked up the translation where my mother had left off. The Words are like music—they make sense to me, like they’ve been burning in my head since I was born.”
“And you can … do things with them?”
Wen shrugged. “I haven’t really tried. My father would have lost his mind if he knew.”
“You tried last night.”
“I’m not sure it helped.”
“I’m not sure it didn’t. What kind of Words did you study?”
He met her eyes. “As many as I could, though some of them seem more impossible than others.”
“Like what?”
He looked out across the sea. “There are Words of protection and destruction. Words to change your shape and to drive someone else mad. Words to make things grow. Words to move mountains.”
“Do you think they’re all possible?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She considered this, watching the play of light in the waves. “What were the Words you sang into the storm? Can you teach them to me?”
Wen met her eyes. “Words of protection,” he said. “And I can try.”
So he did, as the hours passed and Endain’s Heart slid through the gray waters of the Northern Sea. He sounded out the Words for her and explained what they meant. Talia was impressed by how many he remembered. She couldn’t hold onto a single Word; when she tried to say one it slipped away from her, just beyond her reach.
But he kept trying, his fingers brushing gently against her face, teaching her mouth the proper shape.
By the afternoon, the impromptu lesson had run its course, and they settled on opposite ends of the boat—Talia by the tiller, Wen leaning back against the mast. Her head felt clearer, away from him.
Light dazzled off the water in the afternoon sun, a cool wind whispering past Talia’s face.
“Tell me about your mother,” Wen said unexpectedly.
She glanced at him. “My mother was—my mother was strong, and kind. She demanded respect, and you had to earn her praise. She took things very seriously, but she laughed louder than anyone.”
“And she loved you,” said Wen, watching her.
Talia thought of the stories by the fireplace, the vigil in her palace room when she was so ill, the gift of the red horse for her birthday. Leaping into the sea to save her from Rahn’s anger. Talia took a steadying breath. “Very much.”
“Do you really think you can bring her back to life?”
The question twisted into her and she looked away, out into the iron sea. She didn’t know. How could she? “It’s been done before. In the old stories. But at the very least I mean to free her soul from Rahn’s Hall. She deserves to be at peace.”
He had no answer for that.
She drew a breath. “Tell me about University.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything you gave up to stop me sailing off in this ship.”
A smile touched his lips. “There are dozens of libraries, rooms filled with instruments, masters to tutor you and refine your skills, trained musicians to play your pieces. The best students tour the world, bringing their music to every continent. They do nothing but make music, all day, every day.” He fell silent again, but his eyes didn’t leave her face.
“You could have had all that.”
His intense gaze caught her, held her. “None of that matters more than this.”
She heard the echo of his unspoken words: more than you. She tried not to see Wen falling limp to the shore, Rahn’s Star blazing in his eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said quietly. “I can’t protect you.”
“You don’t have to protect me. We can protect each other.”
The ship rocked gently beneath them, and Talia was suddenly, profoundly glad that she wasn’t alone out here.
Chapter Forty-Two
DAYS SLIPPED BY, AND TALIA AND WEN settled into a quiet rhythm. At night, they slept in turns, holding the ship on a steady course and keeping an eye out for storms. During the day, they fished, and, if the sea was still enough, they roasted their catch in the coals of a small cooking pot. The weather was mostly fair, with a squall or two some evenings, but none as bad as the storm the night they’d left the coast. Talia rigged up the tarp to catch the rain and refill their water bottles, which eased her mind.
They spent long hours in silence—the comfortable kind that didn’t demand anything. Most often, Talia sat in the stern, her hand at the tiller, while Wen sat in the hull with his legs stretched out and his head tipped against the mast, lips moving silently. She figured out after a few days of this that he was composing music in his head, and she offered him the backs of her charts and the margins of her books so he could write it down. After that, he was constantly scribbling notes.
The hardest part was Wen being there with her. His company made her happier than she really understood, but she still hadn’t told him about the things she’d seen in the mirror room. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the image of his death playing out in endless repetition.
She was afraid that if she said it out loud, it would come true.
Late afternoon sunlight danced across the water, bathing the little ship in liquid gold. Talia sat, laughing, at her usual place in the stern, waving her hands around as she told Wen about one of her and Ayah’s escapades. “We snuck off into the hills without telling anyone and camped out for three days in the desert, waiting for Ayah’s dratted constellation to line up with the moon. She swore up and down that it had been prophesied in one of her ancient books, but I didn’t believe her. It did, of course, that third night. I’d never seen anything more beautiful, though I refused to admit to Ayah that it had anything to do with the old stories.”
“You are marvelously stubborn,” Wen teased.
Talia stuck out her tongue at him. “When we got back—gods, was my mother angry! She wouldn’t let me out of the palace for a week, and made me copy out an entire book of horrendously dull lists: household accounts, provincial taxes, shipping reports. I would have died of boredom if Ayah hadn’t helped me.”
Wen laughed, shaking his head. “You weren’t at all the well-behaved young lady I took you for.”
“What gave you the idea I was ever well-behaved?” Talia grinned. “I was in trouble with every single person in the palace at one time or another.”
He grinned too, scratching at his nose. The sunburn he’d gotten their first few days at sea had faded into a slight tan and an explosion of new freckles, and there were cuts on his chin from his most recent attempt at shaving with Talia’s knife. She realized suddenly that he was rather handsome.