Author's Notes: Now that Drift is complete, I am placing all relevant author's notes here at the beginning and deleting the others. I do not believe in pulling to publish so this will remain freely available on both AO3 and FFN so long as the platforms do not remove it. Anyone who wishes has permission to translate; all I ask is that you credit me as the author and link back to the original either at AO3 or FFN, and send me a message telling me you have done so. I can be reached by private message on FFN or CrisChalcedony on Twitter.

Trigger Warnings: PTSD, war, aftermath of war, gore, brief mentions of animal abuse (horses). Mild cultural/racial tensions, characters firmly rooted in binary genders.

Other Tags: No sexual content, no major character death, no original characters. Action/adventure, romance, hurt/comfort, magic/supernatural, war/aftermath of war, healing, emotional healing. I would not classify this as angst but others may disagree. This fic is darker than I usually write; the tagline was "PTSD, Season 2? Hold my beer."

Historical/Cultural Notes: While I try to be more historically and culturally accurate than the original show, I do take deliberate liberties and of course I have also made mistakes. Where the show's canon conflicts with cultural accuracy I tend to side with the show's canon, though not always. I am aware observant Muslims do not practice cremation; that's kind of (part of) the point I attempted to make.

Thank You: A huge thank you to readers and reviewers, especially those who read this in serial form as it posted. I didn't expect it to take a year to complete, but I also didn't expect a lot of what happened throughout 2020-22.

Drift

Pairing: Maeve/Sinbad
Rating: M (adult themes)
Setting: After Season 1, assuming Season 2 never happened
All standard disclaimers apply


The children are what break him.

He didn't expect it. Wasn't prepared.

He's seen darkness. Seen what he thought was the worst man could do to man. So when Omar of Basra called on him to help mop up the last of a force of invaders of one of his settlements, he agreed. Friends help friends, and Omar is a longstanding ally and benefactor. But the invaders of Omar's island outpost were vicious. Predators masquerading as men.

Sifting through the wreckage of what used to be a small city wouldn't be so bad if they didn't keep finding people. Whole people. Pieces of people. In various states of decay. Things he doesn't recognize by sight but by touch, the soft squelch of flesh left far too long under a thankless sun. The sweet-sick reek of death, melting-sweet, dripping-sweet, heavy as sap, coating him, coating everything he touches. In his mouth. Flies like a blanket and under even that the rats, fighting over things that used to be people, fighting even as skin swells and bursts, pouring forth gasses that can fell a living man, and the ever-growing spill of maggots.

The day the children begin to surface in the harbor, bloated and waterlogged, missing whichever limb was weighted down when they were pitched into the sea, he can't stop staring. One surfaces, then another. By the time he understands this was no mistake, no accidental drowning, he can't look away. Some float face-up, others face-down. They bob like little dolls around his ship, bumping the hull softly.

In the city death is red and black, blood and viscera, tearing and tearing and the aftermath, slippery-red, sticky-dark, pieces, not bodies, moving as if possessed until he nears and the rats flee. Here, in the sea, death is blue and green. Swollen. Sloughing skin, flowing features. Salt-stiff, but soft as water. Soft as the mercy of water. Infants. Bigger children, nearly grown. Boys and girls after days in the sea all look the same. Most eyes gone, a choice delicacy for sealife. Those that remain cloudy like marbles.

He hears nothing as the children drift. Not the wind. Not the dull, incessant rumble of the pyres. For a very long time, he watches. They move like baby spiders blown by the wind, like downy seedpods caught by the tide, trapped by the wrong element, sent somewhere they were never meant to go. But peaceful, too, like the seedpods, drifting without objection, all protest long silenced, long stolen by the sea. When they touch the hull of his ship, there's no fight in them. No grasping. No urgency. They touch; they drift. With the water. Easy as water. This is the first night he does not sleep.

The second night, he walks.

He's not pacing. He can't say he's pacing. At least, he doesn't think so. Pacing implies impatience, which implies waiting. He's not waiting.

Is he?

He braces his arms on the railing of his ship and leans back, taking his body weight into his shoulders, his triceps. They ache, but the stretch feels good. His eyes lift, as so often, to search for stars. Smoke from the pyres shrouds them. He cannot smell the sea. Ash drifts on the wind. It crunches in his teeth, a constant dull burn in his throat no amount of cool water can calm.

He wanted to let the sea keep the children. Omar insisted otherwise. Said those colonists still alive deserved the right to see them. Shroud them. Say goodbye. So Sinbad went into a boat, silent Rongar at his side. Went into the sea with the children. He did not want to disturb them. The sea resents giving up what it has claimed. He himself will be taken by it someday, he assumes. It's the end all sailors hope for.

But Omar reigns here, in this city of blood. So he slipped into the water and lifted the heavy, waterlogged bodies one by one over the side, Rongar receiving with gentle hands what Sinbad plucked from the sea, a silent harvest. Limbs are loose, flesh stiff. Skin slips and peels, little flecks and longer strips, thicker than he would have thought. But in the sea there is no blood. Missing limbs, yes. Missing fragments—fingers, eyes, lips. No blood. It's a tiny mercy.

Now he is still as the night moves around him, motionless save the gentle rocking of his ship. Weary muscles stretch and tremble. Minutes trickle past. He's never loathed the night before. Night brings warm fires and food, quiet talk or roaring laughter. Smiling women. Music. Wine.

No more. But he doesn't wish for day, either. Digging through the wreckage of lives, searching for the pieces left behind. He promised Omar, and he intends to see this through. But he didn't know, when he answered the call, just what it would mean. Most of Omar's colony perished; most of his army followed suit. For Sinbad and his crew this means cleanup duty. Trees to fell. Pyres to build. Bodies to find. The surviving colonists cannot begin again until their dead have been properly mourned.

When stillness becomes too much to bear, he pushes off the railing and heads for the stairs. This is his infinite loop, the cycle that keeps him from the abyss. He needs to hear them breathing.

He eases down the creaky steps into the galley, so in tune with his ship that the boards only sigh softly at his passing. They know their captain. He, in turn, knows every inch of this vessel. Where the floorboards lie unevenly, inviting stubbed toes, and where they squeal and bleat like sheep. He can make this walk in pitch-darkness. Wounded, half-asleep, or blackout drunk. The Nomad welcomes her captain, enfolding him in richer darkness as he steps below.

Last time he slept he woke from a discordant dream with the blinding certainty that his brother was dead. He knew it. His bones, his gut, his intuition, everything he uses to guide his actions knew it. His conviction was so strong, so deep, that he lay still for long minutes, numb with shock. The certainty soaked through him. He breathed it, the sick-sharp pang of loss, traversing the edge of unreality, psychic dissonance, his body caught somewhere between sleep and waking, drowning in a bewildered grief he couldn't understand but believed with his entire soul. When the paralysis of nightmare finally released his limbs he stumbled from his bunk, staggering through the night-dark hold, waking Doubar from much-needed sleep to prove he still lived.

He played the incident off. Barely. His crew watch him now. They don't know he watches them, too.

Or listens, actually. The innards of his ship are dark as Hades without a flame. He sees nothing; he only hears. He knows the sound of their breaths as they sleep. The high whine in Firouz's nose. The long draw of Rongar's deep lungs. Doubar's rumbling snores. From the hold where they sleep, up to search for nonexistent stars, then back down, he circles all night. When one position grows too distressing, he moves silently to the other. A steady meter through the night, iambs of duty, of love. Brother. Stars. Brother. It staves off the abyss. He's still sane. And while he listens to his brother sleep, the children without limbs cease drifting before his eyes.

He eases open the door separating him from his sleeping crew. The air is close, thick with the smell of unwashed male bodies. Stale sweat layered upon stale sweat, oily hair, filthy clothing. Sour breath ripe with wine or beer. He welcomes it. Better wine than smoke. Better sweat than the sick-sweet, fermented stench of death under a baking sun. He takes a willing breath, then another.

Firouz's high, whining snore skids and rattles. He flops to his other side, setting his hammock aswing. His breaths lengthen. The whine returns and he slides smoothly into deeper sleep.

Sinbad hovers near his brother. Doubar is a thundercloud of a sleeper, rumbling with sound, lashing out with occasional foot or fist, quick as lightning before subsiding. He's dumped himself to the floor many a time waking from a dream.

Sinbad leans against the wall. He listens. Deep, snuffling inhalations, sighing exhalations. He shared a bed with Doubar for the first ten years of his life. He knows his brother intimately—his sounds, his smells, the way his body sags a mattress. He wonders if his nightmares are the same now as then. Sinbad's aren't.

Or are they? As a young boy he dreamed of the sea. Stormy and unforgiving, hard waves that stole his breath, his sight, his mother. A flash of lightning. Golden hair illuminated, just for a moment, below in the deep. Now children bob before his eyes. Missing limbs. Missing eyes. Missing brother. The salt-sweet kiss of the ocean.

He still believes the sea should have kept those children.


Day dawns, sky low, heavy with ash and smoke. No one is hungry. No one speaks. They have nothing to say. They drink copious amounts of well water and watered wine but nothing soothes their throats. They ignore it. They work.

And at night, once more, Sinbad walks.

He's not pacing, he tells himself. Not waiting.

Still no stars. He heads below.

Three nights without sleep—or is it four? Five?—and his body aches for it, but he can't. He can't feel that certainty again, the absolute belief that his brother is dead. His body fights for rest as he leans against the wall. His head falls back on the rough planking, rolling to the side. He stretches his stiff neck and shoulders, then pushes away, refusing the alluring spectre of sleep. In his dreams Firouz does not whine. Doubar does not snore. If he goes too long without these sounds, he'll drown. The silence will drag him under as surely as rocks dragged the children, tethered to their living, struggling bodies.

But if he lingers too long, he'll sleep. So he turns, easing the door shut as he forces his legs to leave them. Once more he heads for the deck, the nonexistent stars.

As always, when he crosses the galley, he tells himself he won't stop at her door. He won't even pause.

As always, he's lying.

As always, his legs bring him this far and no further. And as always, he holds his breath, straining to hear a sound, any sound. She's so silent. Putting his ear to her door gains him nothing. He knows she's there, asleep, two steps away. He knows it. But he can't hear it. And it's driving him insane.

This is his ship, but he doesn't violate her space in it—no one does. He has no reasonable excuse to do so now. If she catches him, she'll raise hell.

So he goes. His hands fist at his sides and he forces himself away from her door. He can go from his brother to the deck, back to his brother. Listen to the calm slumber of his men. Try to find the stars. He can do all of these things, but he can't open her door. She's alive, he knows she is. Dawn will prove it.

Something in him refuses to calm.

Smoke stings his throat. He emerges on deck, eyes dry and gritty, smoke and ash and lack of sleep. He stares up. The smoky sky has a hellish orange hue. No stars. No guides.

Was he wrong to make his people do this?

His conscience bites painfully, snapping at his heels like a baleful dog. He's the captain. If there's lasting damage, it's his fault. He seems to be the only one losing sleep, but people break in different ways. He could have refused Omar's call. Many did.

The smell of smoke and burn of ash swiftly become too strong and his constant, nagging fears drive him below once more. He won't stop at her door. He can't hear her; there's no point. He won't stop.

He stops.

Fear builds. It eats him like acid, a burning, rising pain. He can't hear her sleeping breaths, can't prove to his body what his brain knows: she's alive. She's fine. He knows it, but he doesn't believe it.

His hand is on the latch. He's going to lift it. It's a terrible idea; a catastrophic idea. She'll skin him alive.

A muffled cough sounds behind the door.

He freezes, rushing back to himself, the sea to an exposed tidal pool, water to watery creatures defenseless without it. He feels as if he's been asleep. Can a man sleepwalk without sleep?

The cough continues—not a soft, singular stutter of sleeping breath, but throaty and deep. She gasps a quick, protesting breath before another round bears down. Reason flees. He lifts the latch and opens the door.

The smell of Dim-Dim smacks him in the face. His knees give. He drops.

A shudder blows through him as if he's thin and pliable as a sail. Dried herbs. Beeswax. Old paper. Ink and magic. Of course her cabin smells like her master; they share a trade. But he didn't know. Hasn't been inside this cabin since their mentor vanished and it became hers. He inhales the only parent he's ever known, lost to him for over a year now.

His cheeks are wet. Is he crying? How did he not know he was crying?

Her coughs cease. Silence hovers, heavy and deep, deep as the smoke obscuring the stars. He's so close, the door no longer an impediment, but he still can't hear her breaths. Her cabin is tiny, a little sliver of space barely big enough for her bunk, her books. He inhales past the tight bands of memory, the rending knife of his mentor's loss. He listens for any sound. Her breaths. Her waking. If she wakes to an intruder she'll scream, reach for a blade.

But she doesn't. She sleeps.

He leans his back cautiously along the hard wooden box of her narrow bunk, holding his breath against the bittersweet scent of sorcery, listening for the soft susurration of sleeping breaths. He needs it. Violated her privacy for it. In this moment, straining for that faint reassurance, he believes he'd willingly die for it. But even here, resting near the foot of her bunk, so close to where he knows she must be, he can't hear her.

Once, then again, he inches toward the head of her bunk. Were she Doubar or literally anyone else, he'd touch. Reach a hand into the darkness, seeking the certainty of living flesh, warm skin. But this is Maeve. He dares much, but not that. He can't wake her, can't be discovered.

He finds the far wall with his shoulder, knows he's now level with the corner of the room, where her head rests. Still he hears nothing over the sea, his softly rocking ship.

But he can smell.

He leans his head against the frame of her bunk and closes his eyes to the darkness. Paper and magic, candles and ink. Dim-Dim. Under that, though, softer even than the sweet, powdery mildew that frosts the bindings of her books, is something else. Not Dim-Dim; not magic. At least, not the conjuring kind. He can't hear her sleeping breaths, but he can smell her.

They live closely intertwined on his ship, all of them, often literally on top of each other, as all sailors do. But Maeve doesn't share herself readily, doesn't invite physical intimacy, particularly from him. Doubar can wrap her in bear hugs. Sinbad can't. It rattles him, seated on the hard floor so close to where he knows she's sleeping, that he recognizes the scent of her instantly. It tugs at him, as painful in its own way as the memory of Dim-Dim.

She's not sweet or cloying, not drenched in artificial scents of flowers or spices. Like the rest of his people she's unwashed and will remain so until this job is done. Unlike the others, she smells like a woman. Sweat, yes. Leather and horse, sawdust and ashes. Honest work, toil and mourning. But not just that.

He can't describe it. Can't identify it. But as he sits so close to where she sleeps, something shifts. The precipice underneath him retreats. The darkness quiets. The children drift, but he doesn't have to disturb them.

So he stays. He can't hear his brother, but every now and then when Maeve coughs, he can hear her. For hours he sits on her floor, bathing recklessly in the smell of her, of Dim-Dim, shutting out the ash, the smoke. He leans on the hard wooden frame of her bunk, never seeking to touch, never asking for more. He's dared enough. Taken enough. He does not have permission to be here.

Dawn comes. It hums in his blood, his bones, as his night-blind eyes begin to find shapes in the darkness. The curve of a bare shoulder. The spine of a book. Leaving this momentary sanctuary is torment, but he has no choice. She can't find him, and they have a job to do. A promise to keep.


Omar works alongside them. He is a riddle of a monarch, a ruler with absolute power and a penchant for cruelty, quick to fury and retribution, but capable of deep compassion for his subjects. A fighting warlord in his younger years, he rode with his armies into battle, never asking more of his men than he himself was willing to give. Even now he toils, as the remnants of his troops toil, as Sinbad and his crew and everyone else who answered the call toils. He's lost weight since this war began, but the fire of the Savage Sultan still burns bright.

Sinbad admires Omar, and doesn't. Were he in charge, he would take the remaining colonists back to Basra. Abandon this speck of land, this attempt at occupation. More invaders will come. It's inevitable. The cycle will continue: assault, destruction, grief, repopulation. In another year, or five, Omar or his heir will call for aid again.

Will he answer?

He's too tired to guess. He pauses, ax in hand, shoulders screaming, the constant strain of muscle, heave and swing, heave and swing, over and over, incessant lift and fall until he dulls the edge, switches to another. A half-grown cabin boy from another ship carries the blunt axes to the whetstone. That there are many more tools than men says everything about the situation.

A light touch to his shoulder sets him reeling. He can't remember the last time someone touched him on purpose. Dead people, yes. Salt-stiff or melting with rot, liquefying putrescence. Not living. Not by choice. He whirls, ax rising automatically, defensively, head swimming with nothing, far too much nothing.

She jumps back, dark eyes wide, eyeing the heavy tool, the cutting edge. She's never backed away from him before.

His beauty.

Except not his, he acknowledges as he breathes deeply, struggling for comprehension as the children must have struggled for air, their last desperate moments before the sea took their breath, bubbles of desperation drifting for a surface too distant to permit their release. He stares, adrift. Finds solid ground once more when she steps toward him. She blinks. He blinks, as unconscious as a heartbeat. Sweat stings, but in those dark eyes, tawny-sweet, he finds footing. The waves drift around him. The children bump his hull. He's steady. He knows who he is.

And who she is. His crewmember. His friend. Not his beauty. Not his woman.

Wordlessly, she extends a skin of water—an offering, as if coaxing a vicious dog with kitchen scraps. She blinks again. He blinks. Sweat in his eyes. It coats his face, his body.

"You're not—" He coughs, spits black phlegm. "You're not on water duty." That's a cabin boy's job. Why doesn't he have a cabin boy?

"He needs a break." Her voice is rough with ash. "So do you."

He doesn't need a break. He just wants to finish this job, wants Omar to release them. He wants to go home, wherever that is. Like river-spawned fish drawn inexorably back to fresh water, to land, after life in the sea, he feels a tug in his gut, deep and inexorable, fierce as a gale. But to what? His ship is his home, and his ship is here. The last place in the world he wants to be.

He takes the water.

Does she know where he spent the night? He studies her face. She's a mess. They're all a mess. Sweat and dirt, ash and blood. She's tired; they're all tired. She looks at him the same way she always has. He thinks she doesn't know. Hopes she doesn't know. Last night was a momentary aberration. It won't happen again. He won't let it happen again.

As all sensible creatures, horses are afraid of fire. She is the only one they let lead them near the long pyres, lines of burning flesh, hauling wagonloads of wood from the treeline to the flames. Even for her they balk, and she must encourage them step by step, urging, cajoling, down among the heavy iron-shod hooves, where Sinbad feared at first she might be trampled, but they don't harm her. No creature ever harms her. They toss their heads and roll their eyes, squeal those eerie sea-creature squeals, but they offer her neither teeth nor hooves. And, in the end, they go where she tells them to go, despite the swirling ash thick as snowfall, the heat of the flames. They blow and sweat and flatten their ears, but despite their raw animal terror, despite the pain, they obey her. Two collapsed yesterday, drowned on dry land by bloody lungs. Omar ordered them butchered. Maeve will not eat her charges.

"Sit," she says. She looks at the ax still clenched in his fist. Looks at him.

Does she know?

"No." He drops the ax. The dusty thud as the heavy head hits brittle grass is like a little death, like someone pulls the quick release on a slipknot and his insides fall to pieces. It's fine. She can't see his insides. He drinks, washing ash into his belly.

"Yes," she insists. "You're tired."

He's past tired. Past the giddiness that comes after tired. Now he's restless. Muddled. Nervous apprehension with no clear cause fills him. He feels like he does before a storm. But she doesn't know. How could she know? "I'll live."

She does not answer. She's tired, too. Whatever she might say curdles on her tongue, silence speaking the futility of wasted breath.

Ash falls on the water, confusing, then killing, the fish. They float, silver bellies, silver sides, where the children drifted in the harbor.


He tells himself he will not open her door. He will not violate her privacy again.

Before midnight, he does.

The smell of magic torments and soothes, provokes and calms. He sees nothing. Hears little. Ash drifts through the hatches above—she should have battened them for the night, sparing her throat, her lungs, but she dislikes the feeling of being penned so thoroughly. Sinbad understands. On good nights, clear, sweet sea air seeps through those holes in the decking, blue moonlight soft as water. He does his best sleeping then. But those nights don't come here. The smoke, the ash, the constant dull roar of the fires blocks them more effectively than the mightiest fortification. Even the memory of silver-blue light doesn't come as he struggles to remember the smell of the sea without waves of rotten, stinking fish, without smoke, without people and pieces of people drifting, constantly drifting, in and out on the tide.

He hides from it, choosing instead the agonizing sanctuary of magic. Dim-Dim. From earliest memory this is his grounding. Nightmares of stormy waves, wind and water, a hungry sea demanding appeasement. Waking to beeswax candles, gentle flickers of flame. Old paper and ink, the clean, sharp smell of magic. Soft incense, sweet herbs. The old man's dry, gentle hands touching his hair, resettling his blanket. Doubar's hot, sleeping bulk at his back.

Maeve shifts in her sleep. She coughs, rough and painful, deep in her chest. He hates that cough, but when he cannot hear her breathe and dare not touch her skin, it's the only link they share. It quiets the waves that threaten to steal his footing. Awakens new fears—fears of the horses drowned in their own blood. Are his men coughing like that, too? He listened to their sleeping breaths, watched the orange sky, tread his accustomed path across the night until he broke and returned to her side. Why can't he remember if they coughed?

He sits on the rough wooden floor, rests his head along the hard frame of her bunk. She breathes so silently when she's not coughing. He wishes she snored. She's so close. He knows she is. He can smell her, underneath the candles and ink. Living flesh, warm and female. But he can't see, can't touch. Can't hear anything save her deep, labored coughs, the whisper of skin against canvas when she moves in her sleep.

It's enough, he tells himself. More than he deserves. He should not be here.

His ship rocks under him, cradling his body. He's so tired. Children drift amid the rotting fish. One bumps the hull, rolls slowly over. A little girl with Leah's face. He tries to lift her free, treading water, struggling to grasp the body as slippery as a fish. Rongar waits in the boat, arms outstretched to receive her. But the sea will not relinquish what it has legitimately claimed.

Rongar looks at the shore, where Omar stands, impatient. The sultan says take, but the sea is the ultimate arbiter of this child's fate.

"It's okay, Sinbad."

Suddenly Maeve is with him, treading water, a beam of sunlight adrift on the sea. Beads of seawater drip from her eyelashes, turn to diamonds when she blinks, priceless stones that sink silently into the deep as the children sank, before their limbs detached and they resurfaced.

"It's okay." She holds something out to him, cupped in two dripping hands. "Fish can learn to fly."

Silver-finned, silver-winged, the thing wriggles from her gentle grasp. It skims the surface like a skipped pebble, shimmers of spray like the sheerest silk ever woven.

Maybe fish can learn to fly. But not children.

"How not?" She eases the child from the water, the little girl with Leah's face. The body would not come to him but it comes to her. She cradles it against her chest, buoyed by the sea. Green-blue death, sightless, milky eyes. She rocks the dead child as the sea rocked her, inexorably soothing. Leah is dead. This child is dead. But Maeve is alive. "Sleep, Sinbad. It's time to sleep now."

Wasn't he just sleeping?

No. He wasn't. He looks at Maeve. At Rongar. Their chests lift and settle; they're breathing. He hasn't slept in days. He can't.

Phantom hands touch his hair, sweetly gentle. Long fingers comb it back, easing out the snarls. Oh, that's so good. Soft-sweet. He's not asleep, but he's not adrift, either. Waxen candles, paper, magic. Hand in his hair. But he's not asleep, and Dim-Dim is gone.

Let it be. He's too tired to ask questions.

Morning breaks, orange-brown and weary. He opens his eyes. Not a phantom. Not a dream.

He wakes, sore cheek pressed to the hard wood of her bunk. Warm breath tickles his hair. He shifts, sensation rushing back to his body. She's there, blue-gray in the predawn murk, asleep, head nestled tight against his, soft breath in his hair. One hand rests warm on his shoulder, the collar of his filthy shirt.

Is this love? It hurts more than he can describe. He prays it won't ever stop.


The children do not readily burn. They smolder, resisting the flame. Layered with wood above and below, anointed with oil and incense, still they smoke and smell like seaweed.

This is wrong. Everything in him says so. Ashes to ashes, but the sea is forever. The sea will remember what they've stolen. Little bodies in their winding sheets, yards and yards of finely woven white linen, the best Omar would give. Cloth burns, flame pale and clean, but skin chars slowly, smokes, reluctant. It remembers the sea.

But this is Omar's place. Omar's people. He owns those children as surely as if he fathered them. Sinbad cannot interfere. He looks to his right, soft billowing of once-white sleeves like froth-topped waves. She stands silently, holding the lead of a towering warhorse, a creature meant for battle, not drudgery. Red horse, red hair. The beast lowers his head over her shoulder, a gesture of submission. Of kinship. Sinbad would do the same if he could. The tide tugs at him even now as he stands on dry ground, ripples stronger and stronger as he watches the children smolder, smells burning seaweed. Salt and flesh, charred hair. Maeve coughs. A flash of red wets her lip before she licks it away.

She blinks. He blinks. His heartbeat. She watches the fire, then turns away. Presses her forehead to the forehead of her horse. Her eyes clench tight as she seeks solace, as she so often does, in a living creature that is not human. The horse lowers its tired head, lets her wrap dirty, splintered arms around its face. She hugs the creature as it shoves its soft nose into her soft belly. Tears shine on her cheeks, salt-wet and real. Not diamonds.

Suddenly he's angry. At her tears. The beauty of salt water. Her refusal to hide them. She is a woman. She may weep openly without fault. No one chides her, scorns her. He stares into the burning wind. This is a freedom she has that he does not, and for a moment he hates her for it.

Doubar shoves roughly past him. Doubar can touch her. Sinbad cannot. His body aches when his brother jars him. Something inside does, too. The waves rise, gaining strength. "Maeve, girl…." Doubar's filthy hand on her shoulder. Maybe he hates his brother, too.

She flinches back, drawing away, startling the horse, which shies. "Leave me alone." Her hair lifts with the wind, mixes with the horse's mane, both bright as flame. "I'm fine."

She's not. No one is.

Omar is coming. He travels the barren ground, each step stirring ash like drifts of ancient dust. "You have magic." He points at her. "Fire. You can fix this. Make them burn."

The wet streaks on her cheeks glitter. Not diamonds. Sinbad wants to lick them, to taste the honest salt. He's never thought such a thing before. She's not his to touch. She wasn't even awake this morning when he left her cabin, pulling from her sleep-heavy hand. She touched him in a dream—hers, his, or a combination thereof. Flying fish and falling diamonds, a child given unto her for safekeeping. Did she actually touch him at all? Or did he dream that part, too?

"No." She wipes at her eyes with filthy sleeves, linen ripped and speckled red-brown with blood. Was she torn and bloody in the sea? He remembers diamonds. Not blood.

Omar's face sets. "No?"

"Mixing death and magic is never right, and I'm only a student. You don't want me to try." Soft hands stroke the nervous horse, hold the rein firm. His nostrils bleed into her palm.

"I do want it. I am not asking for necromancy. Nothing so powerful, nothing so dark. Dead they are, dead they shall stay. Just make the pyres burn."

"No." She kisses the horse's broad, flat cheek. Cracked lips, sleek pelt. She rests her cheek against his.

"Yes." Omar lifts his spine, flares his shoulders. He is not a big man, and past his prime, but he earned his reputation honestly, in blood.

"No." She will not bend. She acts upon emotion, her greatest beauty and her biggest fault. It may be her death if she pushes Omar too far, and Sinbad will not survive that loss. The tide tugs at him, rising higher, threatening his footing. "I won't risk what few living souls remain in this accursed place."

Omar's face is a thundercloud, a storm about to break. "Your captain likes that mouth. I don't. Be very careful, woman. I'll have it sewn shut."

"I'm not yours to command!" She coughs, wipes her lip, flecks of human and horse blood indistinguishable on her fingers.

She isn't. She's Dim-Dim's, and nominally Sinbad's. Should he intervene? She won't thank him for it.

"The longer you delay, the longer we all toil in this smoke! The longer that beast does." Omar points at the horse. "The human tragedy seems to elude you, but my horses bear the burden as much as the rest of us. Will you be the cause of more death?"

That isn't fair. Omar doesn't care about beasts of burden. Maeve does. "I hate you," she hisses, the sizzle of water poured over hot rocks.

"You're entitled. Many do. It makes no difference." He points. "Fan the flames. Make the pyres burn."

"No. Give the children back to the sea. Even I know that much."

She sent her pet hawk—her familiar, whatever he is—to safety elsewhere, for which Sinbad is very glad. Omar would be missing his face for threatening her otherwise. She turns to the horse as she has never turned to Sinbad, has never turned to any human so far as he knows, holding it tightly. Warhorses do not like this, but this one remains still. For her.

"She's just an apprentice." Sinbad steps toward the sultan. Toward her. His footing holds. The tide doesn't overwhelm his balance, doesn't take him. Not yet. A cough barks from his throat. "And she belongs to me. Let her be."

She belongs to Dim-Dim, not him. She's never belonged to him. But she's more his than she is Omar's.

Omar does not like this. "You wear a token of my esteem, captain."

"And I answered your call. Leave her be."

Tears shimmer. Not diamonds. Far more beautiful. She blinks. He blinks. Automatic, almost easy. His chin lowers fractionally: acknowledgment. Omar stalks away. Her blood-speckled hand strokes her horse's nose.

He has to get her out of here.


"Thank you, by the way. For backing me." Words land softly on his skin, smooth as wind against a sail.

The galley feels like the inside of a smith's forge. Stinking and still, heavy and dense. The deck is no better.

Doubar rests at the table, draped over it like a man past his limit at a tavern, though the watered-down wine ran out days ago. Rongar leans along a wall, Firouz already in his hammock in the crew's cabin. Sinbad knows where his people are. He always does these days. The solid ground beneath him is measured only by their breaths, their heartbeats. What he doesn't know will sink him.

"You know what you know. Omar doesn't." He sinks to the bench, watching her. Not close. Never too close. She doesn't know where he's spent the last two nights. At least, he thinks she doesn't. She hasn't killed him yet.

She rolls filthy, torn sleeves past her elbows, lank linen that used to gleam white like froth-topped waves. Milk-pale forearms appear, long and sleek, elegant as the legs of a doe. Flesh torn and scabbed, splinters punched through skin like needles through cloth. She's loaded and unloaded countless wagons of rough-split wood, built pyres tall. The cabin boys from the few other ships shelter under her care, preferring to fetch and carry at her command, not their captains'. She will not coddle them, but she spares them the worst. Every boy is in love with her—a missing mother made manifest and a sexual dream barely understood. Sinbad envies them their soft, moon-eyed stares.

"You should protect yourself better."

Tiny metal pincers gleam in her hand. She rests her non-dominant arm near a candle, pale underside studded with splinters and blood. She doesn't look at him. "I'll live."

His gut lurches, a dull rush of panic stealing his body. The visceral, harsh reaction to her reflexive retort stuns him. He hates it, her negligent rejection, the dark twin spectre hanging above her automatic words. Splinters will not kill her. But something could. A felled tree toppled wrong. A bolting horse. Omar. And he will not survive that loss.

She plucks slivers of wood from her flesh by candlelight, swift and methodical, Firouz's tool put to better use than tinkering. She does not flinch as blood wells. Sinbad does, bracing against the plunging of his belly, the abject, pointless fear when her blood runs red. She's fine. She doesn't even wince. But he loathes it.

"I'm sending you to resupply." The words leave his mouth before the thought is fully formed.

She looks at him in silence. He loves her eyes. Dark, yes, but not inky-flat. Deep as a forest, full of small rustles and birdsong. When she blinks, her lashes move like wings. Did she really tell him fish could fly?

"Since when do I do your marketing?"

"Since you made Omar angry."

She blinks. He blinks. Her fingers move, pincers tug. A tiny dagger of wood pulls free.

"Am I in trouble?"

"Have I ever disciplined you?" Could he? He doubts it. "It's not punishment. It's to prevent another row and the fallout thereof."

"You should be happy to go," Doubar grunts, closing weary eyes. "I would. In fact, I'll volunteer."

But Sinbad can't stomach this. The truth, no matter how much he flinches from it, is that he cannot allow both girl and brother so far away. He has before. Not now. The tide rises, swirling at his knees, threatening him with a silent, insidious undertow.

"I need you here. Rongar will go with her." This is almost as bad. The tide swirls, stinking eddies of froth and dead fish. But she can't helm this craft alone.

Rongar lifts a hand in assent. No one has the energy to ask questions.

"Let me." He shifts closer to her, as he knew he would, as is inevitable with her. He's no better than the moon-eyed cabin boys.

She hands him Firouz's little pincer tool without a fuss, rests her forearm between them, soft side up, an offering. She was swift at this task with her dominant hand but the other is clumsier.

The air is thick with scent and silence, ash and fatigue. She's so close. She does not, as a rule, invite his touch, but in this moment she doesn't resist it, either. His rough fingertip glides the upturned plane of her forearm, the tender underside hairless and soft as water. Hers is the first living flesh he's touched in...he doesn't know. Too long. Callused fingertips dull the feeling. Even so he exhales swiftly, specks of ash dancing in the wash of air. She shivers, a ripple of sensation visible when his breath touches her skin.

"Sorry."

"For what?"

For everything. For answering Omar's call. For invading her privacy, sitting by her bunk when he knows he shouldn't. For her tears earlier. The beauty he found in her pain. For hating her because she can cry.

The secret skin at the inside of her wrist, the shadow at the hollow of her elbow: these things are unspeakably beautiful. That her arm remains connected to the rest of her, not torn loose, rolling on the tide. A tendon flickers, visible for an instant under her skin as she tenses and eases the smooth muscle. She's as powerful as the warhorses she leads, and put to as unnatural a use here among the dead.

Don't die.

He catches the plea on his tongue, swallows the prayer before it leaves his lungs. Dark-forest eyes watch him. She blinks. He blinks. Maybe she heard him anyway.

The big slivers are easy. They resist the pull of the pincers, resist his tug, as unwilling to part from her as everything else, but inevitably he's stronger. Blood wells, tiny drops and longer flows like spattered wine, scattered rubies as the candlelight winks and gleams. She breathes. He breathes. Near the wall Rongar snores.

"There's spare canvas in the hold." He can see tiny splinters still embedded in her skin, fine as hairs in candlelight, too small and too numerous for Firouz's tool. "Take as much as you need. Wrap your arms tight before you handle split wood again. I'd give you leather if I had it."

She lifts a shoulder, deflecting his concern as neatly as a general diverting an attack. "It doesn't matter."

But it does. In this moment the world exists only in her heartbeat, the pulse he can almost see in her wrist, her throat, the dim wash of moving candlelight on skin. Beyond her, Doubar's eyes fall shut.

He slips his fingers under her upturned arm, strokes his thumb lightly along her skin. Hot with life, ever so slightly sweat-damp in the close galley. He knows exactly how she would taste if he touched his tongue to the blue lines at her wrist, sweaty salt, female-sweet. But he won't. He knows better. He adores her, and he doesn't want to die today.

She allows his thumb, the movement soft along the sleek line of bone, the delicate knob of her wrist. So warm. So beautiful. How does she work? How do they all? Are they just intricate machines made of muscle and bone, as Firouz insists? Or is there something greater at play? Children—things which were once children—fell apart in his arms when he lifted them from the sea, fell to pieces, the machinery broken, the mechanism no longer functioning.

The flicker of light on the hollow of her collarbone distracts him, holds his attention like a flash of movement in the woods. He does not like how clearly he can see her lovely bones. She is not pieces. Not parts. He resists this violently despite the evidence of his eyes, despite knowing what he knows. If she went into the sea and did not resurface, she would come to pieces, too. Like the children. If Omar had her flayed for disobedience, her layers, her pieces, would be revealed, just as the people whose bodies now burn on pyres, whose ghosts wander what used to be streets. Skin and muscle, sinew and ligament, bone and deeper still, soft, quivering organs. She's no different than any other body.

Except she is. He resists cold facts, denies Firouz's voice in his head. She's different; she has to be. The way he feels when she smiles—he does not feel that way about pieces. Bodies once human, now fallen and rotting, or beasts slaughtered and gutted. She is not that. She is something else; there's no other explanation. The dissonance when his eyes find the shape of her beautiful skull under her skin makes him furious. He rejects the proof of sight.

The tide laps the hull. His ship rocks softly. She told him fish could fly, but no one here has wings. All he smells is death.

"This won't last forever, Sinbad."

His thumb strokes her skin. For this touch he'd almost be willing to let it. She's so warm. Smooth-soft. Alive.

"Do you trust me?"

Forest-dark, forest-deep, her eyes watch him. When she turns to the light he sees veins of gold in the brown, sunlight filtered through a dense canopy. Birdsong. The flicker of feathered wings. Her arm does not flinch in his hand.

He releases her. Doing so is a tiny death. She stays where she is.

He draws his knife. A double-sided dagger, sharpened earlier today. Mirror-bright, the blade bounces candlelight back into her eyes. She does not move.

"I won't hurt you." He never could.

"I know."

Her soft breaths remain even. No tremble mars her gaze. He lays the flat of the blade against her upturned forearm, cold metal, warm flesh. Goosebumps prickle her arm. He tilts the honed edge ever so slightly down.

"Don't move."

She doesn't need the warning.

He glides the blade slowly along her skin. Tiny splinters gather and pull free, like tawny little hairs. He doesn't breathe. One pass. Two. Three long, smooth strokes. She doesn't flinch, even as he nears her blue veins.

He releases her, scrapes his knife against the edge of the table. Wordlessly, she extends her other arm.

He's never shaved another man, never put his blade so close to living skin he does not intend to harm. But she watches him calmly, fearless as the tide.

"Thank you." She watches him sheath his knife. Her fingers trace her skin, streaks of red where he disrupted half-congealed droplets, but he told the truth. He didn't hurt her. He never would.

"Sleep. I want you and Rongar out on the early tide."