Alexis Glaciermage's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

The harbor shrank to a smudge behind them. Alexis took her post above the canvas and felt the wind settle against her wings. Below, the deck moved without argument. No one looked at her like a liability. The crew had chosen, same as the captain had. She held the sky and waited to see what that choice would cost them next. At midday she dropped to the deck to report a wind shift. The crew did not move aside. They closed around her instead, arms hooked at the elbows, a wall of shoulders and grins. Rosa stood at the front. Raihan behind her. The captain leaned on the mast and watched. "Sit," Rosa said. "You've been trying to walk yourself off this ship since dawn. We saw it." Alexis sat on the coiled rope they pushed under her. She had been ready to ask for a longboat at the next island. She had not said it yet. They had read it anyway. Above her, two new flags ran up the lines together — a bright teal banner with a red fox stitched bold across it, and beside it a black banner showing a white fox plain and calm. One to claim her. One to warn anyone who came looking. "We're not putting you off," Raihan said. "Not at the next port. Not at any port. Sit down and read the wind from here for a while." She looked up at the two flags snapping against the sky. Her name was a liability on every board ashore. Out here, it was stitched into cloth and flown above her head. She wiped her face with the back of her wrist and stood up anyway, because the wind was shifting and someone had to call it. But she did not ask for the longboat. The ship was hers now, whether she had agreed to it or not.