Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hedwyn's cooking had always been barely edible, yet somehow the food in the Blackwagon was worse without him; like somehow the love and care, the care he had put into the food had gone with him away. Chae did her best. Mister Reader made Rukey and Gilman do the dishes.

She tried not to bother him too much now. He missed him too, she could tell? He missed Jodi too, maybe not quite like she missed Jodi (an ache all sad in her chest like wandering alone through the Sandfolds), but he did, but that was the way he missed Hedwyn. The way they'd been close, it reminded her of Gol and Soliam. Always bent over the Book together, Mister Reader teaching Hedwyn how to make letters into words; or talking as he helped to scrub out a pan. But Mister Reader was the heart of the Blackwagon; the person everyone went to, even more than Mister Volfred. He could not be too sad to function, he couldn't.

She said it to Tariq, over tea in the cramped little room where she had started making meals, sort of a kitchen as much as the Blackwagon had a kitchen. Miz Bertrude had given them the tea, when they stopped by Big Bertrude's to get everything fixed again.

"Perhaps it could be said that he is the brain," Tariq suggested, pouring her another little cup. "For he guides us on our course, just as Master Volfred himself charted it."

"No, Mister Reader did that," she said. "Some of us, we never would have agreed if he hadn't said so. And Mister Volfred, he can come off.......really strong? And so I think, it was him who got us this far."

Tariq dipped his head to her, and she felt it would be bad to press him. For some reason he was very reluctant to say anything bad about Mister Volfred. And the Scribes, they wouldn't want her to be more rude than she needed.

"There must be something we can do to help," she said.

"Perhaps you could cheer him? Forgive me for suggesting it, madam, but your presence seems almost to lighten his burdens."

It was a nice thing to say, she hoped she did. "Maybe you can cheer him up too! I know he likes you a lot."

There was a pause. Tariq took another sip of his tea.

"You don't think so?"

"I join with the rest of the inhabitants of this Blackwagon in holding the Reader in very high esteem," he said. "I would not overstep in a time where my presence might not be required."

Chae did not understand him until later that day, when Mister Reader sighed so deeply the windows almost rattled and asked for a song. He sat at the table with his chin resting on his arms, staring unhappily into the middle of the air in front of him as Tariq played. And Tariq played beautifully, as beautifully as he always played, fingering the strings with care, and sometimes when he must have been sure he wasn't looking he glanced at him. But she did, she saw. And when he looked at the Reader, he played even more carefully than before.

"Shall I sing for you, Reader sir?" he asked eventually.

Mister Reader sighed again, and did not look up. "Thank you, Tariq. I'd like that."

And so Tariq sang for him, the song he'd sung when they were crossing the ocean, and then a song about the triumvirates and their founders, and then a third song that seemed to be about nothing at all with words she couldn't quite make out? And at that point Chae slipped out of the room to go clatter around the kitchen and think about what she saw.

Tariq liked him! It was all so obvious. Now that she saw him it was very obvious! And she supposed he thought he must be too sad about Hedwyn being gone to pay him any mind.

But that was a very silly way to think? It was very silly, she thought dismayed. Mister Reader wouldn't always be asking him for songs if he didn't like to speak to him. And this way Tariq would probably never say anything, and just keep playing songs carefully at him until everyone died. Or, Tariq wouldn't die; she didn't know if he could do that. But the rest of them would die.

It was all too much of a puzzle for her to understand. Chae stacked some of the cleaner dishes into a pile and went out on the deck to look at the water. She'd never been good at friends and people-- sometimes the Blackwagon's little family still scared her. But she would talk to her little brother about it, and tell the Scribes about it, with whom she'd always been more comfortable. Maybe somebody else would notice and say something? Maybe the Reader would notice. That would be best; nobody would have to embarrass Tariq.

The sea air was very crisp. She could see the Hulk of Ores on the horizon, where she knew the Azure Star burned bright. They were to compete there tomorrow evening, for the Scribes' sake, and she hoped-- music still on the breeze-- that they'd actually have a Reader for it.

Chapter Text

"The most important thing is that you relax, madam!!" said Gilman, whom Chae loved deeply but who was not very relaxing.

Gilman had been appalled when she told him she couldn't swim. As a wyrm, one of Underking Ores's people, and thus one of the foremost swimmers in the Downside according to him, he swore it was his solemn duty to teach her. And that was nice of him? But she was a little afraid, and he was shouting quite a bit, although she knew he didn't mean to. That was just sort of how Gilman's voice always came out.

"The most important thing to remember is that the Scribes will watch over you, madam," said Tariq, out on the deck.

"And that we're all right here and can swim, yeah?" said Rukey.

"Now take a deep breath, if you may! For this knight has been told this is important!"

Chae took a deep breath and tried to listen to Gilman. He and Rukey had decided that the first thing to teach her was how to float, in case she fell off the Blackwagon; he now stretched under her, holding a coil of his tail against her back while the other two watched from the side. Water lapped at her face and sunk into the roots of her hair. Deep breaths. Focus on the sky above. It was very blue today, no sign of storm clouds from the Deathless Tempest to their north.

"Tonight we will face-- the Essence! A most dangerous and infamous group of Harps duly feared by this knight! Should the Master-Reader select you to stand in competition against them on the Hulk of Ores, madam, he has no doubt they will attempt some bold stratagem. Should they seize you in their talons and hurl you over the side, you must be prepared!"

"That would be, against the rules?"

"It would, begging your pardon, Gilman sir," Tariq said. "Although triumvirates have tampered with Rites in the past."

"And the Essence in particular! Did the Master-Reader not say in our first bout against them that their fearsome leader attempted a single duel against Pamitha?"

"I thought you said we were doing this in case she fell off the side, chum."

Chae gave Rukey a grateful look.

"Ah. Yes, perhaps." Gilman shook out his coils a little and seemed to calm himself. "Now, the first thing is that you must be one with the sea! You must understand the sea."

"I thought the first thing was that she was going to float."

"Yes," Gilman said, glaring at him, "but first, to float, she must understand the sea. Now, madam, focus your mind on the sea and its nature!"

The sea? It was cold, the water was, and tasted salty against her lips; and countlessly deep, it was that too, she could feel it under her. It stretched for hundreds of miles, and who knew every island and rock? She had seen only some of them. On her back in the bright sun, blue above her, blue beneath, Chae felt suddenly lonely and afraid, a spine in her heart.

"The sea is the domain of Underking Ores," Gilman said gently. "Can you tell this knight once more of his deeds?"

"Um! The Underking, he is known as the Sea-Sojourner, and the seventh Scribe. Mister Reader says he wrote a chapter of the Book of Rites. He slew Unfathomed Plurness on the prow of the ship Dazraban! And that is where we are headed." Sensing that he maybe, that he wanted more? She searched in her mind for something else she could say. How to explain what the Scribes meant to her?

"He can be, a bit loud I think. But his intentions are good! Like you, Sir Gilman. And he wants other people to be brave, the way he is brave. He wants to be the bravest of the brave, not to make other people scared, but so they have nothing to fear."

Gilman beamed. "Excellent!! And within the Underking's realm, are we not most truly close to him? To feel the currents against one's scales, the water through one's gills........ah, it makes this knight feel wonderfully alive!"

She let out a single chuckle before she realized it might be rude to laugh. Gilman, he could be a little funny sometimes, couldn't he?

"You might arch your back a little, and imagine a string pulling your body to the surface of the water," Tariq said.

She tried to do that, and it maybe helped? And Rukey shucked off his clothes and jumped in, where he paddled laps around her and Gilman and said encouraging things. When they suggested she close her eyes, she was calm enough to do it. To breathe deep, and feel the water slosh around her head and shoulders, the waves breathing deep too, gently under her. When she thought of that she thought the sea was an animal with her lying on its back. The waves were its fur, or maybe its scales, with white foam at the tips, and as it breathed they ruffled around her, and it was solid beneath. Solid and strong, like a big animal. Listen, the sound she thought she heard when she concentrated? Not just the lap of waves, but the sound of water underneath her, that was it snoring in its sleep. It might have been sleeping deep for a thousand years, as gentle as it was. She could relax like this. She could be safe on the back of this animal.

When Chae opened her eyes Gilman had moved away and there was nothing under her back. She was floating amid the waves. He was still there, and Rukey, she saw when she oh-so-carefully turned her head to one side; still watching her to make sure she was safe, but not holding her. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again. Still floating.

Laughing, she stretched out on the sea like a bed, spread her legs and arms wide as they could go. She dipped a little, but came back up. Floating!

She was just beginning to splash her feet and toes a bit when something passed under her.

Gilman was so quick, quick to catch her as she tried to sit up in the water. The ocean was barely up to her chin when his tail was around her holding her up. Rukey was by her side in the next moment, her hand finding his back to steady herself. She splashed wildly, trying to turn her head, to get a glimpse--

"What happened?" Rukey asked.

She hadn't seen, but she'd felt. A long, muscular thing under her back, almost touching her, touching her through the ripples of the waves as it slid through them. The two of them hauled her up on the side of the Blackwagon next to Tariq, who's calm as ever. According to Gilman, there were monsters in these straits, colossal toothed fish, some said even the ghostly tentacles of Unfathomed Plurness herself. Rukey smacked him and told him to read the room.

Chae believed she had maybe imagined it. Certainly she wasn't scared, though maybe Rukey was now? But she hadn't felt scared, she'd been calm. She'd just wanted to see, to get a look.

They sat on the deck a while longer, watching the sun begin to go down under the waves, and it wasn't until they turned to go inside and prepare for the Rite that she saw what it was-- a long rippling shape disappearing under the hull of the Blackwagon, like an enormous wyrm.