“Evvy! There, you see? I warn and warn you, and now it’s happened. You never listen.”
That was Dedicate Fusspot calling out from the deck. His real name was Myrrhtide. I called him Fusspot, for good reasons.
“You went over the rail. You nearly dropped straight into the ocean just now. How many times have I said dangling like a monkey is a good way to drown. You never know when a swell like that one will overtake us!” Myrrhtide was coming closer to me from the sound of his voice. I dragged myself back on deck and faced him. Myrrhtide annoyed me. He wasn’t old. He wasn’t in his forties, like Rosethorn—more like his early thirties. Yet he always moaned about his gray hairs. I couldn’t even see any among his red ones. He just carried on about being old, when he hadn’t earned the right to do so.
He also couldn’t learn that I don’t like to be touched. The first time he bothered me about hanging over the rail, he had grabbed me by my sash. I forgot that I was supposed to behave. I drew a knife on him. Rosethorn got angry. Since Lark and my first teacher, Briar, had ordered me never to upset Rosethorn, I was careful not to let Myrrhtide grab me after that.
I got on deck just in time. He was reaching out to take hold of me. “Swell?” I asked him, keeping my hands behind me, away from my dagger. “What swell? Luvo says it was a waking tremor.”
“Myrrhtide sensed the same thing in water that you felt in stone, Evvy.” Rosethorn came forward to join us. She had to talk extra-carefully because she was dead once. Briar and his sisters made her alive again, but everyone knows that Mohun, who guards the dead, has to be paid something for his trouble. For Rosethorn, he didn’t take the sharpness from her tongue, but he did take some quickness in her talking. “Evvy, I thought you couldn’t feel the stone at the bottom of the ocean.”
“This was too big for me not to feel. It was like the whole bottom rose up, only it was underneath.”
Myrrhtide sniffed. “It was power transferred through the water, not under it.”
“And I know when stone’s moving.” I hate it when he corrects me.
“Don’t start, either one of you.” Rosethorn glared at us so hard I felt crisp around the edges. “The world’s strength was on the move. Leave it at that.”
“I don’t know why you support her.” Myrrhtide could never let anything be. “She is only a child. I am a dedicate mage of Winding Circle. I am far better able to judge the movement and manner of power below us.”
Rosethorn’s eyes sparked. She was going to say something dreadful, I knew it. Then the breeze puffed and blew her wide-brimmed hat overboard, into the sea. “Blight and beetles. Myrrhtide, Evvy has had specialized education. Now would you mind? My hat?” She pointed as it floated on down the length of the ship.
Myrrhtide stared at her. Then he walked off, his Water-blue habit fluttering behind him. I heard him mutter, “Specialized education, indeed!”
Rosethorn ran her fingers through her hair. She kept it cropped short like a man’s, which I didn’t understand. It was a beautiful dark carnelian red. I’d have let it grow even longer than my own black hair, which came down to my waist when I let it out of its braid. Not Rosethorn. Except for keeping her skin white and soft with creams, and wearing hats, Rosethorn didn’t care about her looks, and she had looks. She didn’t have a long, flat-ended nose, like mine. Hers was nice and small. Her lips were even a natural reddish color. Mine were just wide. My skin is Yanjing gold brown, so I don’t have to worry about the sun as much as she does, but if I ever get interested in romance, I’ll have to pay attention to my looks.
“You could try harder to get along with him,” Rosethorn told me. “You’re a stone mage. You could borrow patience from your rocks.”
“I’m no butter of his,” I grumbled. “He doesn’t have to try and churn me all the time. Don’t worry about Myrrhtide and me, Rosethorn.”
“I’m not worried. I just don’t want him carrying bad reports of you to Winding Circle.”
I didn’t like that thought, so I changed the subject. I looked at Luvo, who sat on the deck between Rosethorn and me. “Does the earth do waking tremors often?” I asked him. “It’s not like ordinary earthquakes, where two slabs of rock are slipping together. This is more like—”
“Molten rock. Magma,” said Luvo. “It is moving. I have sensed such tremors for several days, but not of this strength. Prepare yourselves. Another comes.”
I put my feet on the deck and gripped the rail. Luvo hardly ever gives orders. Far below the ship, stone power rose to meet the outermost feelers of my magic. It felt so strange, pressing like hot, solid water on me. I gasped. The wave passed on, but the sense of stone didn’t die, not completely. I felt touches of mica at the fringes of my power, and quartz, and granite. I was brushing ocean floor.
A ridge! There was a ridge underneath the ship, three hundred yards below! I could feel basalt—good, calm, steady old basalt, long slabs of it!
Myrrhtide came back. Alongside the ship came a long arm of seawater with Rosethorn’s hat on top of it. It passed the hat to Myrrhtide, who patted the tentacle as he’d pet a good dog. The water dropped back into the sea. Myrrhtide offered the hat to Rosethorn.
“Thank you.” She ran her fingers over the hat. The seawater dropped out of it. I guess she made the straw chase it out: She could get plants, or things that had been plants, to do almost anything.