Crossed Blades by Kelly McCullough Page B

ago. It was surprisingly gentle. I’ve been slipping through into the hold to listen to the common sailors. I’ve only been getting dribs and drabs, but as I understand it we lost the rudder at the height of the storm. They tried to make do after that with something they called sweeps, but it wasn’t really working and they were deathly afraid of running into some bad patch of reefs. So when they hit a lull in the storm, they beached us.”
    “What happens now?” I hadn’t the vaguest idea of how they might handle something like that.
    “Once the sun’s up, they’re planning on emptying the holds and refloating the ship. Then they’re heading on to Kanjuri.”
    “Which means that even if they don’t open up the smuggling compartments, we need to get ashore. I have to get back to Faran. What time is it?”
    “Judging by the taste of the night, it’s a few hours before dawn.”
    “So, thirty hours since the fight in the cemetery, more or less.” I reached out a hand and touched Jax’s ankle. “Time to get up.”
    She jerked at my touch, then said, “Ow! Shit, my head feels worse than my side. Is that normal?”
    “It is if you drink like Aral,” said Triss.
    “Then why does anyone drink like Aral? Aral excepted, of course, because he’s obviously a fool and madman. He’d have to be, to give up efik for this stuff.”
    “I have no idea,” replied Triss, sounding entirely too smug.
    “The priests were right. Drink is a demon. This is the worst I’ve felt short of actual torture. I’m never doing this again.”
    “Entirely sensible,” said Triss.
    “Then why in the name of all that’s holy did you tell me it could be a good idea? I’d never have even tried the stuff if it was just Aral saying it.”
    “When did I say anything like that?” asked Triss.
    “Right after Aral said ‘spirits for the drained spirit.’”
    “Oh right. Sorry about that, but it really can help under a very specialized set of circumstances, save your life even.”
    “Hmph, I think dying might be less traumatic. Never again. Hey, the boat stopped moving. What’s happening?”
    Fifteen minutes later, we were slipping out through the half-flooded ballast tank to the still-open ports. Half an hour after that, we were holed up in a patch of thornbushes on the shore—the best defense against the restless dead we could find there in the middle of nowhere. I was just telling Jax to wait and rest her wounds while I went to see if I could find us some sort of transport back to Tien, when she reached up and touched my cheek.
    “Aral, what have you done to yourself? I
thought
you looked a little odd when we were trying to get the hatch open to get into the compartment back there, but I’d assumed it was exhaustion and the hole in my side making me see things. But it’s not, and that’s more than makeup.”
    “It is. The last job I took exposed my face to the whole . . . well you know all about that. The stories and wanted posters that came out of that mess are what brought you up here to look for me. Fortunately, the same job also gave me the tools I needed to reshape the bones of my face.”
    “I didn’t even think that was possible.” Jax ran a finger down my cheek to my jaw and then back up the other side, pressing at the corner of my mouth and the orbit of my eye before suddenly pulling her hand back as if she’d burned it. “I’m so sorry it came to this. There’s hardly any of the old you left in your face.”
    There wasn’t much of the old me left on the inside either, but I didn’t have the heart to say it. “Things are better this way. It gives me a chance at a new start.”
    But Jax just shook her head. “I expected you to have taken on some sort of disguise—you’d have to—but I was sure I’d recognize you no matter what you tried. I was wrong. I could have looked you straight in the eye without ever knowing you.”
    “You did, at the Gryphon’s Head. I was—”
    “Sitting at the table in