I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
—Sea-Fever, John Masefield
—
Varric's generosity did not end there. He gave Fenris a cloak with a heavy hood to hide his stark white hair; he gave Hawke a new unburnt satchel, and a pen and a small traveling inkwell, and lent them access to both his bathing room and the inn's laundry. When the sun set he took them to the harbor and led them to a clipper at the end of the row, a swift-lined ship with furled white sails and a hull painted royal blue. He did not give their names to the captain, which suited Fenris, but she looked at them with more insight than he liked as they boarded.
Her name was Isabela, and her ship was named The Siren's Call. She had rich, dark skin and copper-coin eyes that flashed with a quick wit; her black hair hung in thick waves to her shoulders. Gold gleamed at her throat, her wrists, her ears, her lower lip. Her sailors leapt with alacrity at her command, and within a quarter-hour they were free with the tide, and Ostwick diminished rapidly behind them.
Isabela joined them at the rail where they watched the city recede. A coin danced over her knuckles, vanished, reappeared between thumb and forefinger. The setting orange sun caught its face in flashes of light, flicked over the edges of the Starkhaven cup. "Five days, kitten," she said, her voice thick with brazen amusement. "And I'll have your sweet faces in Starkhaven before you can kiss me in thanks."
Fenris rankled at the insolence, but Hawke stilled him with a hand. "Our gratitude, Captain."
"Mm. I'd rather have the kisses, honestly, but if you insist. Besides, I can't get you all the way to the city. The river runs shallow a few miles inland, and even if Varric swears by you, I'm not interested in Starkhaven tinmen searching my ship. Or Tevinter, or Cumberland, or whoever's after you. I'll land you in the South Esk Bay, as far north as we can get. From there it's two days' walk to Starkhaven by road, three if you take the woods. From the looks of you, that won't be much of a problem."
"No," Hawke said, "not at all. It's very generous."
"It is, and I am. It's still two weeks faster than walking. Where are you off to in such a hurry, anyway?"
Fenris's jaw clenched; he did not answer. Hawke, watching him, only gave a pained smile.
Isabela shrugged. "Fine, then. Keep all your secrets. Just stay out of the way of my men."
"Yes, Captain," Hawke said for them both, and watched as Isabela put the sun to port and sailed them north, the sky blazing overhead like fire.
—
Isabela captained her ship with a light hand and a ready smile. She did not pry seriously into their histories, and neither did she permit her men to do so, but her deflections were often so subtle Fenris did not realize they had been saved until later, like a rapier turning away the point of a blade. She cheated at cards and mocked Fenris for avoiding fish; she put bright beads in Hawke's hair and drew in her journal when she looked elsewhere. She could read the water like glass, see signs and warnings in the thinnest wisp of cloud. They drove across the sea with the wind behind them, arrow-true, and saw no one on the open waters in their wake.
Fenris could tell Hawke liked her very much. He found them often stood together at the rail, or sitting side by side at dinner, their heads close to each other and conspiracy on their faces. She had known sailors in Kirkwall, she said, had been friends with many, but never before this had she so much enjoyed watching one throw a knife ten times unerringly at the mast while blindfolded by an enormous feathered admiral's hat.
It pleased him to see Hawke happy, but his guard rose with proximity to Starkhaven, and the more she laughed the more solemn he grew.
"She's a pirate, Hawke," Fenris said one morning, his arms crossed as he stood against their door.
"I guessed as much. At least she's helping us."
"For coin." His jaw clenched, annoyed at his own peevish tone. "She can be bought."
"So could most people, for the right price." Hawke looked back at him from the porthole, and the daylight from the window curled down her cheek. "We're lucky Varric paid hers. We'll have to find a way to make him whole when this is over."
"Assuming she doesn't deliver us straight to Minrathous."
"Don't be silly. The Minanter doesn't run that far north, and you know it."
He scowled, and Hawke laughed. She moved to sit on the narrow cot pressed against the wall of their tiny cabin; there was barely enough room for Fenris to stretch out on the floor at night, his sheathed sword tucked neatly beneath the bed, and even still she tripped over the hilt. "Be careful, Hawke."
"How right you are. Embarrassing beyond measure, to get so far only to lose me to myself."
He shifted his weight to one leg and back again as the ship rocked in the sea. "I don't trust her crew."
"Fenris, you don't trust anyone. This is neither ringing endorsement nor condemnation."
I trust Sebastian, he wanted to say, but she watched him with the same faint annoyance she showed when he woke her too early in the morning, or when he had said something particularly disparaging of himself, so he did not. The next thought came swiftly, before he could stop it: I trust you.
"Stubborn man," Hawke said, more to herself, then abandoned the cot and went back to the porthole. She had spent most of the past two days writing in her small journal, her narrow elegant hand filling page after page after page; Fenris had tried not to watch and could not help himself, and more than once he'd seen his own name jump from the text. Now, though, it had been put safely away in her new satchel, and she stood pensively in the round light. She combed her fingers through her hair until it was loose and began to rebraid it.
"I wonder if he'll recognize me," she said, and the words hung gently in the air. "I hardly recognize myself these days."
"No?" Fenris said, and she looked at him over her shoulder. "I have seen you stand against men trying to kill you. I watched you pull a dozen perch from the river. You distracted Decimus and called fire without burning. You have carried the day each time it was needed." He cut himself off, embarrassed. And yet—how could she not see it? "I have every faith in you, Hawke," he said at last, though he could not meet her eyes. "Do not doubt it."
There was a little silence; then she smiled and the moment eased. "With these panegyrics, who needs heralds and sycophants? Besides, they weren't all perch." She ran her fingers over her hair again, swept a loose lock from her eyes. "Thank you, Fenris. I'm sorry. We're so close; I suppose I'm just getting nervous."
"A few days more." He meant it as encouragement; it came out melancholy.
"Yes," she said, her brow pinched as she watched him, and she tied off the braid at last. "Tell me something about Sebastian while we wait."
—
It stormed the last day at sea. Fenris and Hawke had been confined to their cabin for the duration, summarily useless. The princess knocked her head badly against the wall when the ship pitched down into the trough of a wave, and Fenris singed his fingers when the lamp's glass cover shattered before Hawke could tell the fire to go out, but it passed in less than an hour. When they emerged on the deck the rain had slowed to a light drizzle, the sky become a flat sheet of unbroken grey, and a cool mist rose from the surface of the churning sea. Hawke joined the sailors near the mainmast, congratulating them on their superb navigation through the storm; Fenris went to the rail, eager for respite from the endless water.
"There," Isabela said, joining him suddenly, and she pointed to a flat brown strip on the far horizon of something that might be land. Her eyes were still storm-bright and hectic, and her blue bandana had come loose, the knot tangled in her hair. "Your final destination, my little lordling."
His lip curled, but he could already hear Hawke's admonition in his head. "Thank you," he said instead, grudgingly, and she beamed. "But I am no lordling."
"There, I knew he had some civility in him! Anyway, even if you aren't yet, I hear the prince bestows lands and titles and great gifts upon retirement. At least for those he loves."
Fenris glanced at her sharply, then to where Hawke stood a few yards away in the light rain talking to the crew. "I don't know what you mean."
"You're a perfect little fool," said Isabela, scoffing. "But yes, why not? You have no idea what I mean, and neither does your friend with a forehead made for a crown."
"How much do you wish to test that luck of yours?"
"Ooh, how you smolder when you're angry. I adore it."
He let out a sharp sigh. She was needling him, and he was allowing it. "Can you take nothing seriously? You have no idea what we've done to reach this point." His mouth twisted. "No idea how it feels to have her survival at this last step depend upon a stranger's mercy."
"Hers. Not yours."
"What happens to me doesn't matter."
Isabela let out a long, low whistle. "Now that isn't true, pet. And I think you know it." Behind them, Hawke laughed at some sailor's joke, and the captain's eyes flicked away to her, then back. "I think you'd die to protect her, and I think you know she'd hate you for it forever."
He stiffened. "I didn't ask for your judgment. Nor is it welcome."
"Lucky for you, I'm a giver." She tore off her bandana and retied it. The storm still tangled in her soaked black hair, in the heavy grey of the clouds above them. "Look. I can't pretend to know what the two of you have come through. I've heard a few things here and there. I know it can't have been easy." She set the knot, tugged it firmly into place at the back of her gold-collared neck. "I've seen sailors gone a year weep from despair at having to wait one more day to make landfall. You're awfully close yourself, and sometimes being stuck that close to the edge is the worst thing in the world."
Fenris snorted. "The brink of safety. The edge of restoration. A formidable fate indeed."
She rolled her eyes. "Ugh. What she sees in you, I have no idea. Outside of the spine-tingling glares, anyway."
"It doesn't matter," he snapped, and a sailor called something from the crow's nest that made the rest of the crew cheer. "You have your ship. You have your coin. Be satisfied with that."
"With that and your gratitude, sweet thing, I'm rich as a queen."
"And we'll be gone soon enough." He set his jaw, managed with some effort to temper his tone. "Discretion would be welcome, but I gather that's not one of your talents."
"You haven't the faintest idea," the captain purred, leaning close enough he sneered. "But you needn't worry. I prefer my indiscretions free to give me their undivided attention. You're quite safe from me."
Fenris turned away abruptly. Hawke laughed again, and it was a warm sound, merry, generous; he wished to be nearer that sound and glared instead at the misty sea, as if that might defend him against Isabela's coiling smile. The waves beat against the hull, hollow and insistent, and his markings trembled with uneasy power. "You talk a great deal about things you don't understand. It must please you to invent such stories."
"There are very few things I prize above my pleasure," Isabela said, but when he glanced at her, her face grew somber. Rainwater slid down the slope of her dark cheek, glinted wetly at the gold bead beneath her lip. "Varric was right. You've made a rough storm for yourself, haven't you? And she's caught up in it just as badly. Hard to help it, I guess, handsome as you both are under the mud and starvation, but it's a tight spot all the same. You'd better be careful, or you'll both go down drowning."
Ice spread around his ribs, over the back of his neck. He knew at once what she meant and refused it, horrified. One thing to risk only his—only him—but if she—if she, too, somehow—
"Here, now, get yourself together," Isabela said, and the squeeze she gave his arm was sympathetic. "I mean, not just because you're upset, but because you're starting to glow, just a little. You'll make her worry. No good for either of you, not here."
He swallowed, took a breath, held it, let it out again. Rain fell unsteadily over his shoulders, the back of his neck; the markings over his hands, clasped white-knuckled atop the ship's rail, shimmered, yielded, and went out. "I'm fine. I will be—there is nothing to discuss."
Isabela only looked at him. He felt her pity, chafed under the steady copper gaze, could not bring himself to meet her eyes. This was different than Varric's incisive understanding; this was shark's teeth instead of a slender knife, ripping him open. Worse, he had not seen it coming. He was not in the habit of being frequently surprised, but it seemed Hawke's friendship exposed him to ambush at every turn.
At last she sighed, flicked a gold-disc earring into better position, and shaded her eyes from the rain as she looked out over the water. "Less than an hour," she said thoughtfully, and turned to him once more. "Come on, then. Shore up. Set that handsome jaw and get your feet steady under you." She winked. "It'll work out, pet. I have a good feeling about you, and not even the tingly kind."
"Captain," he said, his throat tight, and she left him at the sodden rail, watching the strip of land slowly resolve itself through the mist to the dense brown hawthorns and wych elms of Starkhaven.
