The Wave Walker was small even for a caravel—an old Dagobari model at that, though attentively maintained. It sounded like Captain Balance Arcway had used her outside of the law when he first acquired her in his youth. However, he had taken care to bring aboard a certified cargo and proper docking papers for this voyage. And somewhere in the interim, he had outfitted her with a lateen mizzen on the quarter deck. Able was rather taken with her, which chuffed the Captain and amused Chestnut.
Yet, once they were out to sea, Able rarely emerged from the side cabin that had been granted for his and Chessie's use. He arranged himself on the floor with his notes and maps spread around and structured his manuscript. It was hard on his back without a desk, but just as he had told himself he could wait to rest his legs once they were away, he could wait to rest his neck and hand once they had landed. He only had this amount of time to pull everything he had together and could not afford to waste any of it.
Still, he was but a human, and he did not forget to eat or sleep, though Auntie Charity would still accuse him of both, nor did he neglect to take breaks to stretch his limbs and clear his head. The early evening when the crew would go below to have supper together before they changed shifts was the best time because the deck was relatively clear.
Usually, Chessie would eat with Arcway before bringing leftovers for Able in the cabin and turning in, but this night she was out on the deck as well. Unsurprising as, after several days of smattering rain, the sky was gloriously clear. The navigator was also making the most of the opportunity. Able nodded to him as he passed by to join Chessie at the prow.
Her usually wild hair was tied away from the wind, for she was playing her bowharp, an instrument played with a bow like a viol, but held against the breast like a cittern and with as many strings. He lingered to watch how she managed a dozen strings at once, but as the melody was lonesome and longing, he intended to leave her be. But after she drew out one last note, she turned the instrument upside down to show him the pegbox.
"These eight here are sympathetic," she explained. "They make the sound bigger, but I am only keying notes on these four."
A grin got away from him. "Have you been mind-reading longer than you've been fiddling?"
"About the same, I guess?" She laughed. "How about you try?"
"The bowharp?" He raised his eyebrows dubiously, but she was shaking her head with a knowing smile. "...put to it, I suppose I was thinking you've never left Borealund before. But is it really 'mind-reading' when you're literally performing your emotional state?"
"Isn't it? You were staring at my fingers."
"Fair enough." Able snorted with amusement and turned to take in the sky. They would not be going south enough for him to feel at home, but simply seeing this much of it made his troubles smaller. "I know you find a lot of meaning in the constellations, but I was wondering about the traveling lights. You have stories for the stars that wander the ecliptic, right?"
"I thought you had a book to write." But she was smiling companionably and idly plucking the bowharp, its tone shallow without the bow.
"What about just that one, then?" Able pointed to the planet of Brilliance, currently winking erratically on the western horizon.
"Illumination the Lantern-bearer. The Wanderers are heroes of old who set out to seek the treasures of existence. That one points the way to wisdom and true-knowing—can't imagine why you're drawn to it." Her smile might have been fond.
He leaned against the railing. "When it's flickering like that, if you were to look at it with a telescope with as little as a seven magnitude lens, it would appear like the young moon."
"...what?" She turned her head quizzically.
"You know how a telescope works?"
"Yes—the captain has one! Hold that thought." She turned and trotted off towards the aft.
"Ask him the magnitude!" Able called after her but the wind might have stolen the question from her ears.
He looked back to the stars, now knowing three names for many of them. Of all the peoples looking up for guidance, three interpretations were laughably few. And yet, his professors had chastised him for using the Dagobari names he'd found in their astronomy texts. How many viewpoints had Larbantry already swallowed up over the centuries?
Chessie returned with a spyglass in place of her bowharp. "He doesn't know," she answered. And with the enthusiasm and inproficiency of a child, she tried to look at the planet.
"All right, here—" Able moved to help. "Let it out all the way, then bring it in slowly until it's in focus."
"This is hard." She giggled as she used her eyes, then the glass, then again. "It's right there, and then I see nothing."
"You're making the sky appear many times larger and minding the motion of the ship."
"Oh my—no, let me...oh."
Able stepped back to let her fuss with it, as he couldn't point it any better without looking himself. Her determination was heartening, her enthusiasm infectious. Finally, she slowly lowered the telescope and looked to him.
"It's a crescent, like a young moon," she confirmed, eyes wide. "But...only when it flickers like this, you said?"
Able nodded. "It goes through phases, like the moon does, though it takes much longer." He folded his arms against the railing and leaned on them. "There's some debate as to what this means in the astronomy schools, but some decades ago Professor Victory Smelter over at Godmount had proposed a mathematical model of the cosmos that claims the sun is the center of the universe and all the planets are worlds that revolve around it—including ours. The discovery that this planet has phases goes a long way towards suggesting he's correct."
"Worlds?" She frowned deeply. "You mean to say...that star is a world like ours?"
"Well, who's to say it's like ours?" Able grinned. "We needed to invent a telescope just to be able to see that's what it is! Maybe that planet is the cursed land the Prophets speak of, and the Capricious planet is the land of trials, and the sun, the center of the universe itself, the blessed land. There are already scholars saying so."
"You don't sound convinced." She really could kill the mood with that piercing gaze of hers.
But Able just shrugged. "As I said, who can know?"
"Mm." She tried again with the spyglass. "I'll need to show this to the others when I get back. I hope before the solstice."
"Is that an important holy day?"
"Days." She looked back at him with a wistful smile. "All of winter, really, is a spiritual time. The rest of the year there's so much work and everyone's busy, but in winter, there's not much to do but sit by the fire or stare at the stars and reflect."
"...oddly enough...I also hope we get back soon." Able turned to look at the black stretch of the northern horizon and touched his mouth where the ghost of Lark's once again lingered. He both yearned for the chance of another kiss and recoiled from the myriad ways that chance would never come. He took a breath to clear his mind, as thoughts of either option would work him into an anxious state.
"He's fine." Chessie smiled that certain, somewhat amused smile. "All right?"
"Or she." Able wished he could have any certainty at all.
"Huh." Chessie raised an eyebrow Able. "I never understood his preoccupation with that."
"I'm still trying to," Able admitted. "I at least understand that there have always been certain expectations of me, as a man, that I've sought ways to wiggle out of. That he has the wherewithal to simply stand and say 'No, I won't' rather astonishes me."
"Hm." She tilted her head to the side and her eyes up to the stars. "I guess I am more of a wiggler too, at that. I always saw what Lark does as creating needless conflict."
"I used to. But maybe he's onto something. There's no room in this world for someone like him unless he makes it, you know?"
"That I know. It's why I am out here."
"Room for...you?" He frowned. "Why would you say there's no room for you?"
"Able," she said with her patient smile, "what use does your Larbant society have for someone like me? I can't be a priest or a prophet, can I? Not in this female body." Why did the reality that Larbantry was still conquering Borealund keep slipping his mind? Was it just too much?
"Larbantry minimizes opportunities for women." Able heaved a sigh and rubbed his eyebrow. "I used to take that for granted, that men are one way and women another. All the evidence was before my eyes, you see. They looked different, they dressed differently, did different jobs. Then I fell for this girl. And she was brilliant, more so than the majority of my classmates. And I asked her a few times what she was doing, settling for a menial job at the university just to be close to the books—shouldn't she go to a women's college? After all, I was lower class and still worked my way into the fold. She was evasive about it, said I didn't understand, so I looked into it myself. I was prepared to help her any way I could, but...there was no way. Those colleges were for gentry ladies only. Larbantry made it hard for me, but impossible for her."
"You were in love with a girl?"
"That's what you got out of that?" Able looked her sidelong, incredulous.
"I got a lot out of that." She chuckled. "But I just realized I assumed something I shouldn't have, about you and Lark."
"Huh, so you do assume things and don't simply see everything?"
"One of the things I assumed is you wouldn't like me seeking vision into your private life." Her grin was wry.
"That—that's a good assumption." He rubbed his eyes and couldn't help but laugh. "I'm still trying to come to terms with it, honestly. Is it very strange to feel desire towards both sexes, do you think?"
"No stranger than for one or the other." She shrugged. "To be blunt, I don't understand what you people are on about. Doesn't sound...uh, good to me."
"So you've never even wanted to? Ever?"
Chessie wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
"Can we trade?"
She laughed and said, "If we were also trading bodies, I'd consider it."
"Ooh." He winced, almost involuntarily. "Upping the stakes."
"Is it your body you feel attached to or your status as a man?"
"Sure, beat around the bush, there." Able snorted but leaned back against the railing to consider the question. "Those are two things that are difficult to untangle. You don't feel attached to your body?"
"That this body is female is only important to me in that it can bear children, and with the world the way it is, it's a gift I won't be using."
"But you would if your society wasn't burning down around you?" Able cocked his head as he watched her. "Even though it would require something you find so distasteful?"
"Maybe." Chessie frowned thoughtfully. "Say we save Borealund, where else do we get another generation of Borealunders?"
"Huh, there's a rationalization that might convince even me."
"Good thing Larbantry isn't burning down around you?" she guessed with a sardonic smile.
"If it's about to, I'd be one of the first to go," Able replied with a shrug. "So nothing I'd end up worrying about."
"Oh, still having doubts, over there?" She did not sound surprised.
Able took a long inhale then tried to let his reluctance to share his anxiety out with his breath. Maybe she could help. "It's this letter. My failsafe is...lacking. Logically, that Reeve gave it to me and released me is fair proof that he is simply and quietly passing the issue up the chain, and this business of not letting me know what it says is just a mind-game to establish his dominance. Worst case, I get spooked and go to ground or I was lying all along and rejoin the Rebels—do neither of those really concern him? This would suggest so, but maybe despite his frequent proclamations that he does not understand me, he realized my nature would demand I follow through, and now I'm walking into a trap. This is an elaborate and petty idea that looks like one he'd disregard the moment he had it, but that's what makes it kind of perfect, isn't it?"
She raised an eyebrow. "And you can't skeptic your way out of that?"
"I know," he grumbled. "It's...moving parts theory. The more parts a machine has, the more likely something will break. In any conspiracy, the more people you require to pull something off, the more likely one person will buckle under the weight of it. I think that's why Driver threw down and cut her losses. The prince buckled. She had too many people to keep track of, and the likelihood that they were all capable of murdering bunkmates and acting like they didn't is extremely low. Honestly, the number of people she had involved in her schemes defied my own sense of probability. So, in this scenario, involving only the sheriff, myself, and the general? I suppose I am feeling shaken."
"Hm." Chessie stared at the horizon and turned the telescope over in her hands a while. "Trying to do this the way you do... I think it hinges on two possibilities. The first is Reeve doesn't care what becomes of you, and the second is he really does and wants to stick it to you."
Able nodded. "I know that sounds silly and self-important."
She turned to look at him now. "Are you capable of caring so much about getting poetic revenge that you don't mind not being around to see it delivered?"
"Hm, an appeal to human nature?" Able rubbed his mouth. "...I don't know what I was expecting you to say, but that's pretty good."
"Glad I could help?" She looked perplexed.
"Compliment—sorry." And that only made it worse, so he winced. "I'm sorry."
She shrugged like she was unbothered. "You're not convinced."
"I'm staying the course, aren't I?" He rubbed his tired eyes again. "But this constant working without all contingencies covered is wearing me down."
"I think you're more resilient than all that!" She laughed lightly.
"I'm complaining, aren't I? Sorry."
"Nah, stay out here a little longer, you turtle." She grinned and elbowed his arm. "Why don't you come have supper with me and the Captain for once? Get out of your head for a damn minute."
Able raised an eyebrow then gave in to a chuckle. She was nothing if not right. "Yeah, okay."