Witchsign. Den Patrick

his nose. ‘I had to choose today for a hangover.’

      Maxim looked up with sleepy eyes. ‘Wha?’

      ‘Nothing, but if you throw up on me I’ll toss you overboard.’

      Maxim nodded with a solemn expression that said he would do the same if their places were reversed. The boy wriggled closer and went back to sleep.

      ‘How long does it take for a frigate to travel twenty miles anyway?’ muttered Steiner, just as a member of the crew climbed down from the deck above. She was a hard-looking woman with a black headscarf and a faded tunic the colour of mud. It was her britches Steiner liked the most: broad stripes in black and white.

      ‘I like your britches.’

      ‘Thanks. You Steiner?’

      ‘Am I in trouble?’

      ‘You tell me.’ The sailor shrugged. ‘Captain wants to see you. Follow me, and don’t get any fancy ideas. We’re already a good five miles from Cinderfell and I doubt you can swim that far.’

      Steiner cocked his head to one side and considered it.

      ‘Trust me,’ said the sailor. ‘The current is strong and you’d likely fetch up in Shanisrond. In a few months after the fishes had nibbled on your corpse.’

      Steiner dislodged the sleeping Maxim as gently as he could. ‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ he said when the boy whimpered.

      ‘Didn’t realize you had a little brother,’ said the sailor.

      ‘Neither did I.’ Steiner followed the sailor onto deck and was certain Romola had overheard him speaking to the children, just as he was certain she would have informed the Hierarchs. He didn’t relish another conversation with Khigir and Shirinov; they might suddenly realize the witchsign was mysteriously absent and throw him overboard. All these thoughts weighed on him like the coils of rope on deck, damp with mist and sea spray.

      ‘Here you are,’ said the sailor. She jerked her thumb at a door and then reached out a hand to steady herself as the ship lurched.

      ‘How much longer until we get there?’ asked Steiner.

      ‘The wind’s not on our side, so we’re not able to sail as the crow flies.’

      ‘What’s he like?’ asked Steiner.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘The captain. What’s he like?

      The sailor smiled. ‘Best you see for yourself.’ And with that she opened the door and ushered him into the gloomy cabin.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       Steiner

       The uprising against our draconic masters cost Vinterkveld dearly. Many men and women lost their lives. It should be noted that the various pockets of Spriggani, who infest the forests like fungus, did not answer the call of revolution against the dragons. It is for this reason they are not, nor will they ever be, members of the Empire.

      – From the field notes of Hierarch Khigir, Vigilant of the Imperial Synod.

      The cabin was full of curios and oddments from across Vinterkveld. Here a tankard with the embossed crest of Vannerånd, there a bone dagger with a hilt bound in lizard skin, while the floor was home to a yak-skin rug. The cabin’s two lanterns contained coloured glass, shedding red and blue light over everything, yet it was the music that entranced Steiner most of all.

      Romola sat with her back to him, one hand strumming the strings of a long-necked instrument with a rounded body. The tune was restful yet carried an undertow of melancholy. Each note was a tiny miracle, each chord a sound from dreaming. No one in Cinderfell had ever had the money for such things; there had barely been money for food when the winters were bad. Music had remained as rousing song and hearty claps to keep time, the stamp of boots and hollered choruses. Instruments belonged to another world somehow.

      ‘Where did you get such a thing?’ Steiner asked in a reverent whisper.

      Romola looked up from her playing and regarded Steiner from the corner of her eye. ‘I took it from an old lover. It’s called a domra.’ A sad smile touched her lips and she sighed. ‘He and I had a parting of the ways when I discovered he’d kept certain truths from me.’

      Sadness weighed on Steiner, recalling his father’s admission in the smithy and Kjellrunn’s revelation. That Verner too had kept his own secrets had only salted the wound.

      ‘Keeping certain truths,’ he said.

      ‘I never really said goodbye,’ added Romola, her eyes looking away to a corner of the cabin deep in shadow. ‘Just took his coin purse and the domra. And never looked back.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said Steiner. ‘It’s hard when—’

      ‘All of life is a game of cards. You bet big and you bet small.’ Romola cocked her head on one side. ‘You’ll never really know how things will play out until they play out.’

      Steiner nodded. He’d not been one for cards, but he understood the sentiment.

      ‘When will I meet the captain?’ His mind lingered on stone piers and the last angry glares he’d favoured his family with.

      Romola couldn’t hide her amusement. ‘The captain? You were expecting a burly man with a long beard and parrot, right?’ She stood and performed a bow.

      ‘You?’

      ‘No wooden legs here I’m afraid.’ Another smile, halfway mocking.

      ‘But you’re a storyteller?’

      ‘I tell stories on my nights off.’ She placed the domra on her bed with care. ‘It’s good to get off the ship, and I make it my business to sleep one night in every town we put in at. No point sailing the world if you’re not going to see it.’

      ‘There’s not much to see in Cinderfell.’

      ‘Something we agree on.’ She sat down and reclined, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, then narrowed her eyes.

      ‘You might have mentioned you were the ship’s captain when I saw you in Cinderfell.’ Steiner narrowed his eyes; he had the feeling he’d been made a fool of and didn’t care for it much.

      ‘And what would that have achieved? People are hardly going to thank me for bringing the Empire to their shores, are they?’

      ‘So why do it? Why bring Shirinov and Khigir to Cinderfell?’

      ‘Why does anyone do anything?’ Romola shrugged. ‘Money. And it keeps me in the good graces of the Empire.’

      Steiner clenched his fists and tried to think of something to say.

      ‘That was a good thing you did for the children in the hold,’ she said.

      ‘And I suppose you told Shirinov and Khigir.’

      ‘No. I don’t make trouble when I can help it.’ Romola poured herself a tumbler of wine. ‘But you need to be more careful when speaking out against the Empire. Men have been killed for less.’

      Steiner nodded. Difficult to argue with reason that sound.

      ‘And how does a storyweaver find herself working for the Solmindre Empire? If Shirinov caught you telling folk tales about dragons and—’

      ‘It’s forbidden to tell such stories in the Empire, but the same rules don’t apply in the Scorched Republics, part of the reason I gave up the Ashen Gulf for the Sommerende Ocean.’

      ‘So you gave up the life of a pirate so you could be