The spirit ship had not simply fallen. It had torn open in the air, then come down in pieces.
The wreck shuddered with every groan. The hull lay cracked along her spine, ribs bared. The hold had vomited its guts across the tilted deck.
Splintered beams. Coils of rope. Crates staved in and spilling grain and steel-edged things.
Only the captain moved. He dragged himself upright along a shattered railing and let his gaze walk the ruin.
Faces first. Counting. Then the cargo. He kicked aside a broken crate, then another.
Flip the lids. Check the stenciled marks. His veins bulged as he ripped planks free until he found the original box.
"This ought to be the crate for that parcel, aye?" the old captain murmured. "Storm like that, a box can go overboard… or walk off on two legs. Hard to say which."
No one gave him the truth. The crew kept their answers behind their teeth, trading looks instead of words as their eyes slid to the man with the spear.
They all knew he was being unreasonable, the captain most of all. Rank put a spear above a captain's helm, and that was enough to keep every mouth shut.
Tension did the rest. It smothered the deck, pressed every word flat. Men held their breath without meaning to.
Stay quiet. Make no sound. Even the groan of the broken hull seemed to bite its own tongue.
Fay felt it in her body before she named it. The air thickened as qi crowded in, heavy as wet wool in her lungs.
Her nose burned, then bled. A hot trickle ran over her lip. Threads of red crept into her vision as the veins around her eyes swelled. Each breath cost more than it gave.
She wiped the blood with the back of her hand and forced herself not to gasp. Across the wreckage, she saw Radeon where he had fallen.
He lay sprawled with his eyes open and empty. Dead fish eyes. His chest did not rise.
Fay did not know how he worked such tricks, but she was not blind to the signs she had seen in him before.
The way he handled a rope. The way he moved so others lost him even when he stood in plain sight.
This stillness was not death. It was a ploy. She was sure of it.
"Cry for me."
The words brushed the inside of her skull. She knew that voice. Yet with blood in her eyes and the air thick around her, she began to doubt everyone.
She did it anyway. If she wanted to live, she had to play along. She hid her face against his chest and let her shoulders shake.
Her hand crept up to Radeon and tugged at his cheek.
"S-Senior, please… do not leave this disciple here alone. Senior."
Her voice came hoarse and wet, smearing over the smooth glaze of a lady's tone. The world blurred as she shook against his chest.
"Bags," the knight barked. "Turn them out. That lumen ginger's bulging on someone here, and I'll crack ribs till I see it."
A shout cut through the wreck. The man with the spear strode among the scattered crates, tore at bags, and kicked lids off boxes.
His men, bruised and bandaged with torn cloth, limped after him and did the same. Canvas ripped. Leather popped. The crash had not slowed their hands.
He caught the captain by the collar and slapped him hard enough to send spit flying.
"Your crew, captain. I've seen corpses move quicker. Put their idle hands to work."
Then he shoved him toward the cargo and barked at him to help. Rank made partners of them in that moment.
They came to Fay at last. A mate of the spirit ship knelt beside her. His fingers prodded her wrist, her shoulder, her ribs, feeling bone through bruised flesh.
"Mortal bone, nothing refined here."
He grunted, then hooked her pack and spilled it over the broken planks. Clothes, rations, paints, and crafts.
Then the young guard under the spearman stepped in. His hands did not ask leave.
They roamed her sides and hips and slid across the leather that Radeon had strapped over her chest before the flight.
He did not stay long. He had not seen through her disguise.
Fay felt every touch like grit under her skin. Violation with witnesses. She said nothing.
Let the tears and shaking do her talking.
Fay did not know if Radeon had anything to do with the damn ginger.
If he had tucked it away on his person, then any real search should have found it.
Fay kept her face buried and her hand on his cheek, and wondered how any guard could look right at him and still pass him by.
"Don't overthink it. Ask that rough guard for water. Anyone can pour it on me. Not you."
The thought slid through her head in his voice. Fay lifted her face just enough for the rough guard to see the blood and tears.
"Water," she whispered. "Please. For my senior."
The guard came back with his face soured. His eyes swept the wreck with growing anger and landed on her again.
"Useless scribe. Useless!" the guard snarled.
He kicked her pack so hard it burst wider, jerky and hardtack tumbling into the wet and splinters around her. His boot caught her hip on the way past.
Fay stared at the ruined food. She wiped mud from the jerky with shaking fingers and patted the hardtack dry on her sleeve.
The stories the seniors told of journeys had not been exaggerated. Scribes and scholars were treated like gossip peddlers, like sweepings from the floor.
In all her life she had never felt rage like this, hot and trapped with nowhere to go.
"Fay. Breathe. He's not worth it."
The search dragged on until the overcast above turned from dull to bruised. Men picked through splinters and torn canvas until nothing on the broken deck lay untouched.
No ginger in the crates. No ginger in the torn packs. No ginger in the smear of cargo at the rail.
The captain stood off to one side and watched their little play. His jaw worked. His eyes burned with insult and age, yet he held it in.
He carried a gilded core of his own, but the years had crusted over any hope of rising further.
The big man with the spear felt it. He turned and let a slow sneer crawl across his face as he met the captain's gaze. He knew the captain feared him, and he liked that knowledge well.
"Right then, you lot! Anything not smashed goes in one pile. Salvage what you can."
The captain barked the order and his crew scattered, dragging what they liked into rough piles.
Fay tried to move, but pain shot up her legs. Not broken. She knew that much. But every step felt like walking on stone bruises.
She clenched her teeth and stayed where she was, one hand still on Radeon.
A shadow fell across them. Voice aged yet serene.
"Let him drink," a rough voice said.
A broad-shouldered smith knelt beside them, hands blackened with old forge stains, eyes sharp in a face lined by heat and years.
He uncapped his own skin and tipped water to Radeon's lips. Radeon took it in slow, careful swallows, then let his eyes flutter open.
The dead fish went out of them. He blinked up at the smith and managed a weak smile. The delay had been deliberate, a way to water down the sense of presence around both him and Fay.
"Thank you," he rasped.
His hand slipped into the inner fold of his robe and came out with a small, wrapped bundle. Twenty pale spirit stones clicked together in his palm.
"That's everything I've got. Take it."
The smith looked at the stones, then at Radeon's face.
"Stones you can earn again," he said. "A saving like that, even gods don't give twice."
He smiled as he spoke, yet he still closed Radeon's hand back over the stones.
Then he seemed to think better of it. With a small shrug he pried the bundle loose and tucked it away.
"Aye, then. I'll hold these for you, same as I'd guard a good hammer."
Radeon let out a thin breath that might have been a laugh.
"Master." He kept his voice low. "Got a map? I want to see where we crashed."