The Tide’s Song
12 Autumn 218
Sav
There’s been hardly room to breathe or think, these last few days. Between the battle, the cleanup, and the apportionment and discussion afterward, there’s always been one more thing to do, and then one more, and then another waiting just beyond it. And when there isn’t that, there’s the journal, waiting to have its secrets pried open.
Even Sav has her limits on work, though. Particularly when the work involves trying to dissect a mind like Kelwin’s. When she comes across a passage that casually refers to a mechanism that gnome Wirefinder made up, put to better use here, she bursts out, “Get tae fuck ya sleekit wankstain!” and hurls the book across the room. It thuds against the wall and clatters to the ground. Aloysius starts in alarm from a sound sleep, and Nurie’te swivels, whistling in distress.
She stares after the book for a second, before pulling on it to lift it back to her hand. Checking to make sure no pages creased or tore anything into illegibility, she sighs on finding it largely unharmed. Flipping back to the page she’d been on, she stares at Wirefinder’s name. Talith’s words from the day before bubble to the surface. Sometimes it still comes back to nag at me - the death of a friend, ya know? And her own: Have ye any good stories from her life?
Smoothing down Aloysius’ feathers in apology and whistling back at Nurie’te to reassure him, she rubs her eyes, pops her shoulders, drops the journal in her bag and mutters, “I needtae get outae here.”
Two hours later she’s broken into a keg of wine (fancier than she would have chosen, but what’s there is there), poured a few cups into herself and is well on her way to being roaring drunk when she burps her way through a portal, appearing on the Tide’s Song on the lowest deck. Her usually-excellent recollection being not quite as good right now, she shows up a few feet higher and over, dropping unexpectedly onto the stairs leading up and stumbling into the second level.
Stifling a giggle at her own clumsiness, she clatters her way through the crew quarters and over to the room that serves as both Vengeance’s isolation cell and Ethan’s room. Bracing herself on the doorframe with one hand, wineskins floating behind her like alcoholic ducklings, she knocks on the door with the other, a little harder than she intended to.
Ethan
The loud knock wakes Ethan from idle thoughts, bringing his wandering mind back to the present - a place he had been avoiding. He stares at the small wash bin filled with manure and the old shovel he is using to pack more in.
Depending on his mood, this duty seemed to either embarrass Vengeance (when they were on good terms) or served as a very effective substitute for a middle finger (whenever the two were annoyed with one another).
It is also possible the horse actually didn’t care either way. And while this was the safest - and likely sanest assumption to make - Ethan had long since accepted that this world was neither, and therefore based his assumptions accordingly.
“Open!” Ethan responds through the door.
Sav
She’s polite enough to wait for a response this time, rather than just barging in; if nothing else, it gives Vengeance some warning rather than startling him (between the two residents, Sav is a little more worried about startling the horse). Given the response, she shoulders her way in and announces, “I ha’—” A pause, as the scent of stall-cleaning time hits her nose, interrupting her train of thought. “More stories for ye.” She waves a hand vaguely. “War stories. For th’ identity. More war stories.” She pauses again, thinking about it. “Well. Mostly not about war, tell true. Mostly ‘bout sittin’ around in camp an trainin an the stupid stuff a buncha kids an’ almost-kids get up tae when bored an’ the ones tryin’ tae corral them.” She glances toward the droppings; the wineskins fall into her hands, and the manure begins to wobble up and float toward the bucket, unasked. “If ye’re no busy.”
Ethan
“Actually, I’ve got a bunch of shit that needs to get done…” he half jokes. “I was just taking a break from working on the new papers for the Tide’s Song. The pages are waiting for me in your old tinker space… Sylas’s space now, I guess.” His shovel pauses long enough for Ethan to offer a genuine smile—something that has come more regularly and with greater earnest since Danica’s rescue.
“But,” he says, “after staring at papers so long my eyes want to bleed and then shoveling literal shit for the last half candle, listening to more of your stories sounds like paradise!” He finishes up, shoveling the last few pieces with Sav’s magic helping to wrap up the task. He lifts the heavy, unpleasant bin and makes his way towards the door.
“I’ll set this up near Warbler’s garden and come right back.” He stops before heading up to the main deck. “Well, I’ll also grab a little water and maybe some wine of my own…” He looks down at his hands that appear mostly clean before offering, “…and maybe take a minute to wash up just a little, too. But THEN, I’ll meet you wherever you like! Just tell me where you want to grab a seat and I’m yours for as many stories as you feel up to sharing.”
Sav
The genuine smile on Ethan’s face, a rare sight in most of the time she’s known him, pulls out a flash of a return smile before she snorts at the comment. “These latter days ‘twas half his as much as ‘twas mine. All his now, I s’pose.” Truth be told, she’s finding the greater space and silence of the new study surprisingly lonely. She hadn’t realized she’d grown accustomed to having Sylas in the same space half the time, working away on his own thing or being an available mind to bounce ideas off of, even if he could be irritatingly smug a lot of the time.
“Crow’s nest?” she offers, trailing Ethan out of the room. Warbler’s garden is nice, too, but - there’s something about the open space and height that offers comfort to her, for reasons opposite of but similar in effect to why she also likes holes in the ground. On assent, she nods and swarms up the rigging to the nest, shooing off whoever’s on watch and promising—with greatest sincerity, if perhaps not full ability—to keep watch for them while she’s up there.
By the time Ethan gets up there, one of the wineskins has fallen a little flatter and Aloysius has found her, fluttering in to perch on the nest’s railing and wolf down what looks like a ship biscuit. She waves at him, perched next to her owl with legs locked around the rails and wineskin in one hand. The other wineskin floats up to him in an offer of libations, if he hasn’t brought his own.
“Arjuvh Wirefinder,” she says, without preamble. “Greatest engineer ever tae live.” The skin in the air tips a little wine out. (In his sleep, Pelham stirs, troubled.) “Middle-aged as gnomes go, I reckon. Was only ‘leven, twelve or so when I met him so’s all big uns—an I use the term me-ta-phorically, ye ken—looked eld tae me. Yelled a lot but mostly on accountae losin’ the edge aff his hearin’ ages ago due tae his specialty also involvin’ a passel o’ explosives. He was a proper sook, despite the job, an took all the conscripted kids in as he could, those as had any kindae talent for it and as many as didnae.
“Like Kalikka. Ach, a bigger numpty I’ve never met.” Sav shakes her head and offers another tip, takes another swig. “She joined of her own will on accountae the wages bein’ better’n nowt an’ too many siblings back home tae support, but had two left feet an’ endangered everyone beside her if she held a spear. I dinnae ken what titled dunderheid reckoned the best place for her was a cannon unit—”
And she’s off to the races, telling, in a rambling, winding fashion that doubles back and leaps from one bridge to another when she’s reminded of a related incident, the stories of the 2nd Siege Unit, 12th Cohort, 7th Wing—the Two Shoes, as nobody but themselves called them. A brilliant mechanic, exiled to a nothing position in the backwaters of the barony, with a family who wrote ten-act epics of letters and received only ten-word cards in reply. A mute villager youth separated and swept up in a homeless draft on their first trading trip far from home, unable to send word home due to illiteracy, thought a dunce until Arjuvh saw their intelligence. A bitter widow, seeing no more options in life, who sold herself to the army to carry wood and handle horses and dig ditches and found an unexpected knack for the mathematics involved in ballistics. A wary boy on the cusp of adulthood, whose promise of food and shelter from a kindly-seeming orphanage head had turned into conscription, who never forgot the betrayal and never trusted a soft word again. A former merchant’s daughter, dropped into the poorhouse when her parents died destitute, possessed of the most prodigious mind and the laziest nature, who worked harder to get out of a job than the task itself would have taken. Many more, some of whom only receive a name in passing as they play background bits in other people’s stories.
“—ye could tell Kalikka the sky was green an’ she’d doubt herself fur at least a second afore gaun tae check, an’ Minara knew that an’ wid run it oot hard—”
“—so Sergeant Patterson, see, he was a radgey bastart but wi’ a brain ‘bout as big as a bawhair, an’ one time, after, what was it, ten candles’ marchin’—”
“—’twas th’ firs’ time we’d e’er seen Arjuvh jis pure mad wi’ it, absolutely blootered, an’ he up an’ skelped the clarty fucker, but bein’ a gnome an’ aw he was perfect positioned tae hit—”
Stories of hard labor and long hours in all conditions; of games played and pranks pulled, tears shed and fights started, opportunities seized and stupid things done for no discernible reason but boredom; stories of the first time some had realized death was a real option, and others who had never had the chance to come to the realization before death found them, usually in ignoble ways; stories of those who came and left, were swept up and died, and those whose existence had brushed hers only in passing. Stories of that last morning on the outskirts of the forbidding, nigh-impregnable keep of Lord Harven, shying just short of the attack itself. She speaks of those whose time has gone in smiles and in scowls, gesticulations dismissive and emphatic, her opinion of them still seeping through her expressions and words; and every so often in stuttering pauses she covers over with pulls on the wineskin.
She does not tell all of the stories, of course. Some aren’t hers to tell, even with those involved dead and gone. Some are too fragile, liable to shatter if she exposes them to the unforgiving view of an outsider. How could she recount the inhuman howls Skelta had pressed into the earth when they buried her stillborn, or how the recovering light in Temios’ soul snuffed out when they found Will had deserted without him? How to even put into words the way Lenn had looked at her, or that clumsy, tooth-clashing attempt at a kiss that left them falling over themselves laughing, Lenn’s ruined throat transforming theirs into a rasping huff of a chortle?
By the time the words finally slow to a trickle, she’s slid down from the railing, back pressed up against the mast and bare feet sticking through the rails to dangle over the edge of the nest, past drunk into positively blootered. Aloysius has left to find something else to eat, the biscuit not enough to sustain him (he doesn’t really need to eat, but that never stops him no matter how much she tells him that).
She’s quiet for a minute, almost excruciatingly long compared to the torrent she’d maintained before. “Aw tha’,” she says, “wiped out by tha’ man.” In the depths of her drunkenness, her dialect has softened into a mushy stew of phonemes, textured by a voice gone hoarse from talking. “I came tae realize—it wasnae jis’ abandonin us oot there tae be slaughtered. He’d trapped th’ siege weapons, too. Boom—like the cannons i’ th’ mountains. Like the wagon. One-trick pony. But noo he’s gone, fucked aff tae where they’ve aw gone. An Harvest willin’,” she kisses her palm and slaps it down on the wood, overestimates how far the wood is and hits it stingingly hard, winces, “their stories an’ memories will remain for longer’n his.” She turns over the well-flattened skin and shakes it out one last time, surreptitiously dashing away the incipient glimmer of tears with the back of her hand as she does so. She is rather proud, in the back of her warm, swimming mind, that she has managed to avoid spilling them at all in this rush of reminiscence.
She glances over at Ethan, then, and covers a sheepish laugh with a hand as she ducks her head. “… sorry. Mayhap ‘twas a wee bit more’n ye needed fur simple backstories.”
Ethan
Sav speaks and drinks; drinks and speaks. She jumps from one memory to another, one story inspiring others, details bringing to mind characters and places from a past that obviously carries tremendous weight.
As he listens, Ethan is grateful her attention is completely focused on the memories she’s sharing, her mind lost in recollection. Because Ethan’s face appears cold and focused; his eyes stare intensely as he takes in her words and gestures. Absorbed by her task, Ethan could be transparent about what he was doing - this session was work.
He was absorbing every detail he could about the parts she shared - the memories that stood out and the ones she left out, intentional or otherwise.
This, this, was a soldier telling her story - drunk and open and honest, yet obviously still holding back things that even in this state she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) share.
Not now. Maybe never.
This was how a soldier would speak. This is what they remembered. This is what they would share.
He noted the gestures and intonations - the unconscious acts that betrayed emotions beyond her words; the shifting of her eyes and the difference between the earnestly inspired tangents and those fueled by the anxious realization that she’d begun to share things she wanted or needed to keep hidden.
He would need this, Ethan realized. When or how, he didn’t know. But all of this was essential for playing a particular role.
As she winds down and the tears finally began to trickle, Ethan’s posture relaxes; he leans back against the railing of the crows nest and humanity seeps back into his eyes.
She covers a sheepish laugh with a hand as she ducks her head. “… sorry. Mayhap ‘twas a wee bit more’n ye needed for simple backstories.”
As she looks up, his eyes are warm and compassionate. He was glad she had been distracted - that he had been allowed to work freely and without the wasted energy of wearing a mask of a sympathetic friend. Because now he didn’t need to pretend at all. He genuinely liked Sav. And while he was intensely focused on absorbing everything as though his life depended on it (as it very well could) he still heard the pain and joy and regret of a very personal past from a very private friend.
He recalled something he’d said to his brother. Some of the last words the two ever shared while sitting in a bar in another part of the world
“…we take comfort that the burdens of life may be lessened by their telling, lightened by understanding, and absolved by another’s compassion.”
Those may not all be true - not for Sav, not in this specific moment - but he hoped at least the essence of each might be. That she might sleep better and feel lighter by the simple act of sharing the weight of her past with someone else.
He said this with his eyes because he felt it, and because he hoped it to be true.
“No,” he reassured her. “It was perfect.”
He paused long enough to take a drink from a flask he’d temporarily borrowed from Roux without his knowledge. A familiar burning sensation cleaned his mouth and cleared his throat before it came to rest warmly inside his stomach.
“Life only exists in moments and in stories… and you gave me just the right amount of both.”
Sav
“Heh.” Sav smiles lopsidedly. “Sounds full wise fur ye. Ye steal tha’ fra a book, noo that they’re open tae ye?”
Then she’s silent for a while, thinking about it, restlessly drawing the empty skin between her fingers. The realization filters dimly through the wine fog: restoring a partial life to remembered friends is about what she’d done for Talith. And now, what Ethan has done for her, under the guise—well, actual need, but also a guise—of filling in believable history for a fake identity. She shifts a little, almost seems ready to get up, goes so far as to roll forward to sit on her knees—then pauses and looks at him. “I’ve nae doubt ye’ll remember it,” she says. “An’ I tellt ye partly on accountae that. Partly on accountae I reckon ye one of the likeliest tae come out o’ this still breathin’. An’ partly on accountae, if ye’ll be playin’ this role, ye’ll be tellin’ stories o’ your own t’others who’ve no heard o’ them. Tell it true. The person ye’ll be might be fake, but the stories neednae be.” There was nothing that could change their end—a stupid waste of life, an unwitting sacrifice on a battlefield they didn’t care about—but maybe they wouldn’t die forgotten.
She couldn’t do much for them any more, but she could at least give them this.
She studies him for a moment longer, head listing to the side a little, before she adds conversationally, apropos of naught, “I reckon I unnerstaun yer choices noo, that nicht a time ago wi’ the card game an aw. Least I’m no full fashed about it any more. Wi’ how tight-fast ye keep control an’ how little ye trust, I reckon as tha ye widnae ha been able tae make any other choice. In the same position, I couldnae say under full oath tae the Three that I widnae ha made the same picks.” This admission seems to give her a bit of a sour stomach, as she grimaces. “But I havnae forgot, seein as I’ve had some shite times bein’ part o’ plans where I wasnae aware of the true aim.” She laughs again, half-dry, half-real.
Ethan
The smile fades slightly as hears about the ruse from Northgate; the new expression is difficult to read.
That Sav would remember what happened was obvious; that she better understood his reasons for misleading everyone was comforting; but that it still left her sore - at least sore enough to mention it - was understandable… and unfortunate. He wasn’t certain what to say at first.
So he was honest.
“I don’t really know what to say. I’d say, ‘I’ll be as honest with you as I can - share whatever plans and information I’m able to,’ but that’s not really saying much of anything, is it?”
He sighed, ruffled his shaggy, now unkempt hair and scratched his chin through a majestic, sagely beard.
“I’m sorry you got fucked over - you and all the other Two Shoes. I’m not going to tell you that I’ll never lie or keep information from you but…I’m not him, Sav. I’m not Kelwin.” This wasn’t Sav’s point or her accusation so he continued quickly.
“I know, I know - you’re not saying that I am. But, he is the reason why my choice left such an impression: I made a plan; I took your money and your trust and I did exactly what I said I was going to do. But there’s no question I wasn’t honest about it. I had a plan, and you weren’t a part of it. Found yourself just along for the ride instead of up front helping to steer the coach.”
Ethan was never good at this type of stuff. He always managed to fuck up apologies by offering explanations in place of a simple ‘sorry.’ But he didn’t feel sorry for doing what he did, so he wouldn’t fake it; besides, a false apology for someone like Sav was likely to be sussed out and make things even worse. She expected bullshit from people - the world seemed to have taught her to be ready for it.
“But, unlike men like Kelwin, I don’t have an ego in all this. It’s why I was shoveling shit when you found me. It’s why my hands will be stained with ink for the next week. Why I peel potatoes and help swab decks. I do all that because it has to get done.”
He looked her in the eyes now, focused and calm.
“And I’ll lie for the same reason - because I have to.” He didn’t try to read her response before he continued. “But, it’s also why you can trust that I’m not going to try to blow you up or fuck you over for personal gain. Or because I just want something. I won’t butcher you or anyone else for ‘glory’.”
He stood to stretch out his legs and rolled the tension from the muscles in his shoulders.
“I don’t expect you to forget that I kept you in the dark back then… but I am glad you understand better now why I did.”
He looked out over the side, staring at the open river, the dark night sky punctuated with stars and the shattered moon. He glanced at the deck below and began to think of the climb down and the sleep that was calling to him.
May as well say it all - she won’t believe it, but then again, that’s just the way of things. You can make any truth sound like lies; it’s probably why the lies come out sounding like truth. You’re all kinds of backwards, my friend… he thought to himself.
Still looking away he took a deep breath. He thought back briefly to when he had attempted similar sentiments with Vanja. But unlike then, he was prepared to say these things simply because he wanted to, not because Sav needed (or possibly even wanted) to hear them.
Whether his words would have a similarly unremarkable effect was for fate to decide.
“Sav… you are… an incredible person. You can do incredible things. You’re an asset, an ally… and a friend. I’m glad you’re here. I hope you live plenty long to carry those stories around and keep their memories alive along with you.
“And I hope the next time I piss you off - for whatever reason - you’ll assume I had good reason for it. And, if that’s too much, or if you’re still sore about it regardless, I hope you’ll offer me the opportunity of giving me a piece of your mind and few harsh words before you consider running off on your own and leaving us all behind. Because we’re all better off having you around… even if you insist on doing weird magic experiments on me… even if you make York’s worst drunken ramblings sound like diction lessons in Common with that bloody accent of yours.”
He turns back to her, smiling.
Sav
It hadn’t been the point, or a pointed accusation—but the implication had been there, hadn’t it? She thinks back to the Guard Captain—not as she had last seen him, gray-skinned and slack-jawed, but when he’d been a figure of terror for her, broad-shouldered and rough-faced and with that abominable smirk. She places the image of him next to Ethan as he turns toward her, smiling—
—and bursts out laughing, mostly at herself, the image dissipating. The expressions might be roughly similar, the analytical set of mind and willingness to use others, but only in the same way that a bull and a cat could be said to be the same because they both had four legs and a tail.
She doesn’t think to explain her sudden fit of giggles, but she does calm down after a short spate, ducking her chin into her coat collar and pressing her mouth against the back of her fist. That, along with the wine-flush, also has the side benefit of mostly papering over the flush that creeps over her ears and the threatening welling in her eyes at his words.
He could be saying it out of a desire to keep her satisfied and committed to the group, to be sure. He’s said at least part of this same thing early in their acquaintance, that he’d do almost anything to keep her abilities with them. But it seems almost too over-the-top to be believable—which, paradoxically, makes her trust it more. She has little doubt that he’s figured out she instinctively distrusts kind things said to her; she knows herself well enough to know she’s not that hard a read in that regard. A better play from most would have been to downplay her contribution in a bantering manner and not mention any of that gooey stuff. That he hadn’t taken that route suggests that… perhaps it’s true?
(Unless he’s taken that into account as well, and deliberately gone effusive to counteract her suspicions of him acting in exactly the way that makes her most comfortable - no. Down that way madness and Sicilians lie.)
Besides, the secret heart of who she is remains: she wouldn’t have abandoned them. Not even when her despair and fundamental rejection of the presence of Vanja had driven her away had she planned to fully leave; she’d intended to tail them, keeping watch for the betrayal she’d fully expected to come and planning to help when needed. Additional kind words and warmth are unnecessary to keep her alongside them.
Even he couldn’t have guessed that at that time, though. And this she keeps to herself for now, a little embarrassed, and a little scared, at the strength of the connection she’s built—perhaps mostly in her head, perhaps not—toward this odd crew.
Outwardly, she raises a skeptical brow and sniffs, jerking her chin in a dismissive gesture. “Ach, pish. Ye say that tae all the lasses who’ve plumbed the secrets o‘ the world an’ made it dance tae their will. And it int tae my account ye country pumpkins cannae handle a rich tongue wi’ a much better grasp o’ cussin.”
She rolls off her knees to her feet, grabbing at the rail as her own balance and the sway of the ship, magnified at the tip of the mast, fights for a second. Turning to lean back on the rail, she says, sobering, “Mind, I still dinnae agree wi’ the picks ye made that night, e’en wi’ the possibility I’d ha done the same i’ the same place. But I reckon I unnerstaun ‘em better now, after near a year’s more watchin’ ye tick, an tha’ goes well far tae makin me easier wi’ it. Couldnae vow I wouldnae get radged if th same sort o situation popped up once more, neither—but aye, I’ll at least cuss ye out afore slippin oot, especially since ‘tis a fair chance ‘Star would try tae follow as well, an Talith her.” She grimaces a little; it’s clear she has mixed feelings on wielding so much unwittingly-gained power over where multiple people might go.
She’s silent for a few moments, then turns more fully toward him. “Funny thing,” she says, her lips quirking faintly. “Durin the, wha’, Turn or so between Vanja revealing what she’d told an’ her bein forced awae. I realized a hing summat queer once. I liked her—ye’d find nary a larger heart than hers save mayhap the halfling’s—but after what she’d done jist the first time, I couldnae trust her tae see what I see. But I realized I held ye in the exact opposite—I didnae like ye, for usin’ folk an that stunt ye pulled, but I could at least trust ye tae dae what I reckoned right, in aim if no in method. An’ that sortae summed up the two ae ye—all heart, nae heid; all heid, nae heart.
“I reckon now since she’s awae, that leaves a spare likin’ floatin’ about. An I’ve seen ye ha’ at least a wee scrap ae heart.” She glances down, toward where the crew quarters—and their recent rescue, most likely—are located. “I s’pose I needs must use that leftover an’ like ye as well as trust ye.” She sighs exaggeratedly as she completes the tortured figure of speech, the huff ending in a low note that opens up a sparkling portal behind her, right where the railing is. Beyond lies a barebones ship’s room, filled with only a hammock immediately on the other side of the portal and a paper-filled desk on the far side, the blue glow of Nurie’te pulsing gently near the desk.
She hesitates one more second. “But. Hey,” she says softly. “Thanks, Ethan.” The faint smile broadens to a bright, blurry one as she tips backward through the portal to the Pride’s Fall study, arms spreading to land in bed. The last thing heard before the portal hums shut is a thud and a pained exclamation as the hammock, never a stable place in the best of times, twists and dumps her to the floor.
Ethan
As the portal closes behind her, the extra wide smile brought by the humorous sounds of a collapsed hammock begins to fade as Ethan looks around the crows nest, now alone. Earlier, Sav dismissed whoever was on watch. Now, she was gone. So that role became his.
He frowned. “Oh, gods dammit…” he cursed, settling in. Exhausted, he leans his head against the railing as his feet hung out the side as Sav’s had earlier.
Bishop just laughed.
Sleep when you’re dead, son. Sleep when you’re dead…
Ethan closed his eyes for just a moment, breathing in the cool, fresh air and listening to the gentle, peaceful sounds of the sails and they pulled the ship through the dark, still waters. Then he opens his eyes and began the remainder of the evening’s watch.
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