Kjell felt no ill effects from the sea. He’d recovered from his bout with fury, betrayal, and drugged wine by remaining above deck where there was little to do but stay out of the way, and he enjoyed the peace of having no one looking to him or depending on him, if just for a day or two. Instead of sleeping in the officers’ quarters or bunking with his men, he slept on the quarterdeck, climbing up to the crow’s nest on the second morning despite the warning jest from Pascal, the first mate, that he was so big he would tip the boat over if he climbed too high. Kjell was used to his size and had carried it around most of his life. It had never stopped him before. He ignored the first mate and scrambled up the rigging until he reached the lookout. Bracing his legs as wide as the little platform would allow, he spent an hour getting to know the sea through his spyglass.
The waters had grown steadily bluer as they’d traveled farther from land. Kjell had never seen a color like it and wondered if the creatures beneath the surface were as brilliantly hued. A pod of whales—so many he thought for a moment he was seeing an island comprised of great, glistening rocks—rose to the surface, and trailed the two ships at a benign distance. They were beautiful, nonthreatening, and peaceful, but his enjoyment of their simplistic existence was marred by his suspicion that every beast below them and every bird above them was a Changer with unpredictable intentions.
In the quiet of the second night, he was awakened by a hand on his sleeve and a timid voice in his ear. He shot to his feet, ready to do battle with a wolf who had morphed into a whale, but discovered a weary maid instead. She cowered below him, her hands raised to ward him off, and he scrubbed at his eyes and lowered his blade.
“I’m s-s-sorry for waking you, Captain,” she squeaked. “But the queen is so sick. She can’t keep anything down, and she’s burning up. She’s been burning up for two days. I’m afraid, and I don’t know what to do. I saw you heal the blacksmith. Maybe you can help her?”
He helped the poor woman to her feet and followed her down the hatch into the belly of the ship. The passages were made for smaller men, but he bent his head and dismissed the guard outside the queen’s cabin with directions to go to bed. He would take watch.
The two women traveling with the queen had kept Sasha clean and as comfortable as possible, but the stench of sickness clung to the air, and their fear was evident by the way they huddled and fussed. Sasha’s skin was so hot and dry he cursed. When her eyes fluttered open, misery-filled and feverish, he swore again.
“I’m just seasick, Captain. It happens every time,” she reassured weakly. “It will pass.”
He swooped her up, bringing her blankets with her, and the maids scrambled to open the small door and clear the way, hurrying behind him as he maneuvered sideways through the corridors, lifting the trailing covers like bridesmaids smoothing a veil.
“She needs fresh air. Bring me water, another pillow, and then try to get some rest. I will see to her until morning,” he instructed. The women wilted in relief and rushed to obey. He sat with his back against the rail, eschewing the barrels lining one side for the deck, sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, Sasha in his lap, her head against his chest. The temperature of her skin and the new frailty in her body made his stomach knot anxiously, but the air was clean and the breeze soft, lifting tendrils of her hair and stroking her cheeks sympathetically.
Her vision, her balance, her whole being was turned inside out, as if the gift that gave her second sight made her more sensitive to motion. Over and over he helped her stand and braced her as she leaned out over the glossy water and retched, her belly convulsing uselessly. He urged her to drink, even if she couldn’t keep the water down.
She begged him to go, humiliated by the endless roiling of her stomach, but Kjell held her as she quietly suffered, and searched his mind for a story to tell.
“I watched the whales today . . . so many of them . . . there were little ones and enormous ones . . . a family—families. It is like they haven’t seen ships in a very long time, and they are curious.” He spoke to distract her, to comfort her, and by doing so, comfort himself.
“Is the water just as blue?” she asked. The darkness made everything grey.
“The bluest I’ve ever seen.”
“The color of the sea is the only thing—besides being ill—that I really remember from the journey to Dendar and back again to Kilmorda. I remember the color of the sea . . . and I remember dreaming of you.” She grew quiet again, pensive, and Kjell knew she worried over him and her inability to keep him from Dendar.
“Can you drink a little more?” he pressed. He thought the air was helping. Her cramping had eased and she hadn’t thrown up for nigh on an hour. She sipped from his carafe and he blotted her chin, noting the easing of her fever and the growing confidence with which she drank.
“I thought you were angry with me,” she whispered.
“I am,” he admitted.
“But you are kind,” she whispered.
“I’m not kind.”
“And you are good,” she said, repeating the lines they’d exchanged once before.
“I am not good.” He felt like weeping. He was not good. He was not generous. He was not courageous or compassionate. He simply loved her. And love made him a better man. That was all.
“I have never met anyone like you.”
“You were a slave in Quondoon,” he whispered, and stopped. He couldn’t continue the banter or repeat the things he’d once said to her. The journey then was about discovery. The journey now was about delivery. He would deliver her to Dendar, to a king, another man, and he would go.
“I was a slave in Quondoon and a queen in Dendar,” she said, altering the original conversation. “I have changed. And yet . . . you are still Kjell of Jeru, and you have not changed toward me.”
“I made a promise.”
“To whom?”
“To you. I told you at the base of a cliff near Solemn, that if you came back I would try to love you.”
“You told me you lied,” she whispered, grief whisking away her words.
“It was not a lie, it was a promise. I intend to keep it, even when you make me angry. Even when you convince my men to act like idiots. Even though you are not . . . mine.”
She moaned, and he tried to help her stand, thinking her stomach was rebelling once more, but she buried her face and he realized it was not sickness but sadness, and he relaxed back against the rails.
“Sleep, Sasha.”
After a while she succumbed, becoming limp in his arms, lost in relief, and he listened to the waves caress the hull and whispered all the things he hadn’t told her and now wouldn’t ever tell her.
“It was not your face I fell in love with. It was not your great, sad eyes or your soft mouth, or the gold flecks on your skin or the shape of your body.” His heart quaked and his stomach tightened, acknowledging that he relished those things too. “I fell in love with you in pieces. Layer by layer, day by day, inch by inch.
“I love the part of you that shows compassion even though no compassion has been extended. I love the part of you that held my hand and helped me heal. I love the part of you that reassures others when you are afraid. The part that mourned for Maximus of Jeru and the boy who loved him. I love the pieces of the woman who was lost but never misplaced her dignity, who couldn’t remember, but never really forgot. Who was a slave but behaved like a queen.”
When dawn came, Kjell rigged the lowest sail to cast a shadow over Sasha, worried about her getting too warm but afraid to send her back below deck. She had slept deeply for three hours without vomiting, and Kjell began to relax, reassured that the worst had past.