We began to rise along the canyon wall. The creatures that had been blown out of the way when the vent belched were returning to it. Do they worship their ocean volcano, Luvo?
I believe it is only you human meat creatures who worship things, Evumeimei. These animals eat the small creatures that live on its sides, the little gray ones that crawl there. They draw strength from the warmth of the volcano, as well. Volcanoes are good to those who live on them. The soil on the ones above water is richer for plants. Humans farm there, and animals come to graze, just as these sea creatures do.
Above us I saw the ripple of sunlight on the water’s surface. Have you ever been to a volcano, Luvo?
I was born in one. That was sufficient. Exposure to a second volcano would be the death of me, Evumeimei, just as it would be the death of you.
He let me go. I felt myself turning and twisting on his crystal paths again. Then heaviness clamped around me: a suit of hot, thick meat. That was my body. For a moment I didn’t enjoy it very much. Luvo calls humans “meat creatures.” For the first time I felt like one.
Someone breathed fish and garlic in my face. Hands shook me. A voice made ugly noises that banged in my ears. In the sea every noise was softened by the swish of water. These noises grated. I flinched. The hands grabbed me harder. I opened my eyes.
Terror flooded me. I forgot where I was. I thought I was a captive. A man’s face was too close to mine. I couldn’t breathe. Was I back in Gyongxe? That was it—I was the prisoner of the emperor’s soldiers. They beat me last time! They’d beat me again to make me tell on my friends!
I screamed and slammed my head forward, hard, into the soldier’s nose. Then I lashed sideways and bit deep into his arm. Except his arm wasn’t the silk-covered leather of an imperial warrior. I was biting into flesh covered by blue linen.
“Make her let go of me!” Dedicate Fusspot tried to shake me off. His voice was muffled.
“Evumeimei, you are far from Gyongxe,” Luvo said.
“Myrrhtide, I warned you not to lay hands on her.” Rosethorn sounded like she was close by.
I stopped biting Myrrhtide. My feet were throbbing. They were remembering the emperor’s soldiers, too.
“I thought she was having a fit.” Myrrhtide’s nose was bleeding. “I thought she was dying. I was trying to save her life. The ungrateful brat broke my nose!”
“When I told you don’t touch me to wake me, ever, because I’ve been in a war and I react violently, you respected me.” For a plant person, Rosethorn could sound like iron when she made a point with someone stupid. “Evvy was in that same war. She fought as hard as any adult—harder, sometimes. Yet you refuse to acknowledge that she may suffer the same effects. I told you not to grab her. I said she might panic if she saw a man’s face so close to hers when she came out of a trance—”
“She is too young to do a mage trance!” Myrrhtide groped his pockets for a handkerchief. He was bleeding all over his habit.
“Looked like a mage trance to me,” one of the sailors muttered.
Fusspot Myrrhtide glared at her. The sailor shrugged and gave me her water flask so I could rinse the taste of Myrrhtide from my mouth.
As I spat the water over the rail, Rosethorn dragged Myrrhtide’s hand away from his nose. “It’s bleeding, not broken. I have something that will fix it in a trice. Don’t touch Evvy again unless it’s a matter of life or death, understand?”
She looked at me sidelong. I knew what she wanted.
I sighed. The trouble with learning manners was that sometimes you had to do and say things that stank. “I’m sorry I almost broke your nose, Dedicate Myrrhtide.” I tried hard to sound truthful. “I thought you were one of the imperial soldiers who whipped my feet.”
He was about to say something mean, I could see it in his eyes. Suddenly he let all that air out in a whoosh. “They whipped your feet?” he whispered.
I nodded. “I knew where people were hiding. The soldiers tried to make me tell by hitting the bottoms of my feet with a cane. See?” I leaned on the rail to show him the scars on the sole of one foot. “I put crystal around my heart, so I wouldn’t tell. They gave up finally.”
He was going to ask something else, when the sailor up in the crow’s nest yelled, “Land ho!”
I turned and squinted northwest. In the distance rose a tall mountain, floating on the horizon. We were in sight of the Battle Islands at last.
“Enough reminiscing.” Rosethorn wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “Evvy, time to pack. Myrrhtide, come below and I’ll fix your nose.”
I had little to pack: clothes, books, my mage kit, and the stone alphabet that Briar gave me. Soon Luvo and I were back on deck, watching as the Battle Islands grew larger ahead. They were a clump of islands in the middle of the Pebbled Sea. Their reputation was shady. Briar said people came there when they got tired of their home countries interfering in their business. Lark just said that island people liked to keep to themselves. They must be really nervous if they were sending for Rosethorn.
“The place used to swarm with pirates.” Myrrhtide’s nose was as good as new. Rosethorn’s medicines really are the best. And he’d surprised me. I had thought he’d be packing until after we had docked, but here he was, all ready to go. “It was a pesthole. Any vice you can think of was available here. I served in a temple on one of the northern islands, and I got quite the education. Then Duke Vedris of Emelan led three attacks on the Islands, to break up the pirate nations. He was joined by navies and soldiers from the other Pebbled Sea lands who were sick of pirate raids. The place is almost respectable, these days.”