Exclusive Cover Reveal + Excerpt: H. Leighton Dickson Takes to the High Seas in Ship of Spells

1

THE DAWN WATCH

I remember the first time I ever saw the Ship of Spells because, in fact, I didn’t.

It was a stormveil, conjured to keep the notorious ship unseen as she sat moored in the busy dockyard of Hodgetown. The day had been sunny, the eastern wind strong and heavy with salt, and I found my eyes looking everywhere but the empty slip on the pier. It’s subtle, my mother had said, back when I would listen. You see other things—the crowds, the clouds, the colorful fluttering of guild flags. Even the dance of shore birds. Anything and everything except the thing you’re not supposed to see. It was the sign of an experienced mage, and once I’d set my mind to find it, the ship materialized like a vapor, a ghostly vision of ebony-stained oak and gold-shot sails.

So, I raised a glass to the skills of the crew.

I raised a second because I was young and in a tavern. Some things don’t need magik to be understood.

After the third glass, I took up my commission as Ensign Bluemage Honor Renn apprenticed to the Black of the Kingship Frigate Dawn Watch. We promptly set off to the Lower Rim, hoping to claw back waters taken by the Rhi’Ahr armada. But I never forgot the sight of the infamous Ship of Spells, or more specifically, the lack of it.

Funny how such memories flashed through my mind as the world exploded beneath my feet.

Cannon fire took out the main mast first, shattering the Dawn Watch’s rigging with a split-shot volley. Next, three rounds to the hull, low-set and lethal, crippled the larboard gundeck, and the ship lurched to the side, the cries of my crewmates filling the air. The Rhi’Ahr ship was a heavy cruiser, easily outgunning the smaller Dawn Watch on all counts, and, as with most Rhi’Ahr weapons, the shots were laced with chimeric. The deadly patterns traced like spyder webs, burning runes into every surface they struck—wood, iron, and flesh alike.

Our two ships had been playing cat and mouse for hours in the early morning fog, but now, the sky crackled as cannon fire blinded even the rising suns. I heard a rumble behind me as the crew rolled another gun onto the deck, and I cursed our lack of readiness. We had been working furiously since the enemy ship had been spotted, but the Dawn Watch was only a patrolling frigate with a crew of eighty and a conjury of three. I was the youngest, with the least experience and the lowest commissioned rank, and I looked to the blackmage on the quarterdeck. His name was Taran Vir, and he stood alongside the captain, spinning spells into shields and pitching them my way. I caught them, feeling the burn as they danced across my palms and seared my forearms with kinetic energy.

It was my job to augment them and fling them in the paths of cannon fire as fast as they came. We had been at it for no more than ten minutes, but already my hands were numb from the patterns and the heat. It was violent and frenzied and far beyond my skillset, but the redmage, a wiry dworgh called Firmir, had been stationed up in the nest, and she’d been taken out by that first blast. A strategic shot. We were down to two mages now, and I but an ensign blue, inexperienced and raw. Still, I had more talent than the redmage ever did. Her removal had only been a matter of time.

The Rhi’Ahr ship was close, roaring past in a fury of sea spray and runic fire, but through it all, I could see the name carved into her transom. Endorathil. Beautiful name. Beautiful language. It rolled off the tongue like honey, from a people just as golden. Golden and lethal, like the spears they carried, like the arrows they loosed. They made war the way other people made love. Their cannon decks made music, flash and roar, flash, flash, boom.

Another shot smashed through the rigging over my head, and I ducked to avoid the shards of wood that rained from above. Orange smoke leaped from mast to mizzen, crackling with arcane patterns. Chimeric. It was the secret weapon in the Rhi’Ahr arsenal, as old as it was deadly, and it amplified cannon fire in a way that was impossible for us to fight. Unfamiliar runes continued to sizzle across the sails, turning canvas to char long after the smoke had cleared.

From the corner of my eye, I spied a rim protruding from an enemy porthole, and I glanced at Taran Vir. He hadn’t seen it, and I cursed to myself. As a blue, I wasn’t allowed to conjure my own spells, but I’d be damned if I let the Rhi’Ahr loose another shot unchecked. Without waiting, I flung a crackling shield across the water and over the cannon’s muzzle. Fire powder flashed from the port, but the ball was blocked and the bulwark of the Endorathil boomed inward. It was her first serious damage of the fight, and I did not stifle the swell of pride. I had caused it. Me. Not the redmage. Not even Taran Vir, the Black. They would never discipline me for it, so I’d begun to conjure a second spell when, suddenly, there was silence.

I thought it was a Tempus spell because now, everything slowed as if under water. I watched a sizzling black iron ball hurtle past me toward the prow. It hit, wood splintering and rising on the morning wind. I saw Vir’s hands, the runes spilling from his fingertips. Too slow. Too late. The captain’s mouth wide, his orders silenced by the blast, a horrific cloud of yellow and white and articulating chimeric. Both mage and captain lifted off their feet, arcing backward, becoming silhouettes in the brilliant flash that engulfed them.

Flash, flash, and boom. The deck beneath my feet bucked, struck by the music of the magik-filled shell.

Odd. It was that very moment when I remembered the Ship of Spells.

Sound returned along with a wall of blistering wind, and I felt my boots leave the deck, taking half of the rail with me. I sailed backward and down, the threads of my blue naval sash leaping with flame, and I hit the water hard between the hulls of both ships. The cold bit my back and shoulders, and I struggled to keep my hands above the waves. I couldn’t help without my hands, couldn’t weave the patterns needed to cast spells. I was a Navy mage. My hands were my life.

But the waves had other plans. They reached up to meet me and pulled me completely into their furious embrace. My chest burned as I was swept under and water crushed the breath from my lungs. For a moment, I was tempted to let it take me. I was miserable, poor, and young, but this was war, and it was the best hope of a life for a proud, skilled mage from an island the size of a pebble.

Underwater now, I fought the salt sting to open my eyes. The oaken bones of the Dawn Watch littered the waters, her beams and timbers slicing into the darkness as they sank. The black shape of a cannon plummeted past me, churning bubbles in its wake. Someone followed—arms flailing, legs thrashing—and with horror, I realized that it was Corwen, the powder boy, dragged down by a tangle of rope at his foot. I swiped for him, and our fingertips touched for the briefest of moments, but the rage of the water was too strong, and he slipped free. His terrified eyes were the last things I saw before he was swallowed by the darkness.

Gods, he was only twelve. Too young to meet Our Mother, the Sea. Still, she was mother to us all, her watery bosom a welcome home for weary swabs to lay their heads at the end of our days. I knew it was a blessing, but, as fine as she was, I wasn’t ready to let her welcome me yet.

So, I emptied my breath in a rush of bubbles, kicking and thrashing with all my strength. I broke the surface and swallowed the air in cold, greedy gulps. The world roared all around me as I rose and fell with the water’s swell—the thunder of fire, the screams of my crew, the crack of timber as the ship’s rigging swooped down from above. Shattered masts slapped the waves, and the sails filled with water, the canvas heavy and dragging like an anchor. I watched in horror as slowly, savagely, the Dawn Watch began to roll.

I could help her. I had to help her.

I flung my hands high, forced my fingers to begin the hold spell. Circles with the right hand, fist with the left. My teeth chattered the incantation, and the air hissed as the rune sprang to life, but the waves swelled and pulled me down again, and I choked as saltwater rushed into my mouth. I kicked my legs, forced myself up, and swore out loud. The pattern was disintegrating, so I was pushing my hands from the water when, once again, the Endorathil’s cannons boomed behind me.

I felt heat as a ball whipped through the disappearing spell, and I flung a second at it, seeing the chimeric catch with a crackle of sparks. Not fast enough. The ball smashed into the Dawn Watch’s hull, and splinters of wood sprayed outward like a volley of arrows. My fingers danced out a third spell, a Praesidium for protection, and it was purely instinct that brought my hands up to cover my face. It was also foolish. My hands were my life, my craft, my future. My face was merely an afterthought.

The force of the blast jerked me back, and I went under once more. But the moment my hands touched the water, the ocean boomed. Light radiated outward, and every fiber of my body caught fire. In that moment, I was flung out of myself the same way I’d been flung from the deck of the Dawn Watch. I saw the Endorathil and the shattered Dawn Watch. I saw the horizon and the sky and the smoke darkening the faces of the suns.

But then I saw things I had never seen—sparks racing through ice and snow, a white hawk with a golden staff in its talons, branches of a tree reaching for the stars. Rings and circles made of rune, an island filled with dying palms, a volcano coughing chimeric.

And then I was back, thrashing in the sea and waiting for the air to return.

Rise and fall, ebb and swell. I shook my head, spat the salt out of my mouth. I struggled against the weight of the water and the chimeric that was dancing across the surface. I needed my hands, but my arms were leaden. With a cry, I pulled them from the waves and froze in horror at what I saw.

Dozens of splinters from the hull of the Dawn Watch had pierced my hands. Some were embedded in my palms, and others stuck out of my wrists like spines. Secondhand chimeric crackled between my fingers, sizzling water-soaked patterns into my skin. The flesh was torn away like ribbons, revealing glimpses of thin white bones and long yellow tendons. My heart sank like the powder boy as I stared at the pin-hodges that had once been my hands.

The air boomed as the Dawn Watch cracked in two, but I swear I heard none of it.

I saw nothing as enemy cannons emptied final rounds into her shattered, sinking hull. I heard no mates screaming, flailing, drowning. No sails flapping, ripping, sucking when the Dawn Watch slipped under the black water. Debris floated all around me, crackling with flame and chimeric, but I was merely one more piece. Broken, shattered, destined to follow the powder boy into the deep.

And just like that, the Endorathil swept away, riding the horizon like a proud seabird. I watched until she faded completely from view, until there was nothing but sky and clouds, smoke and loss. I was alone in the sea, rising and falling with the waves. The waters weren’t freezing, but I wished they were. I wasn’t versed in death spells yet, but even if I was, I doubted my hands could have formed a pattern.

I thought of the swabs who begged for beer at the doors of the dock taverns. I used to despise them, being young and proud and skilled and able. Now, without my hands, I would be one of them, a useless mage whose hands couldn’t even hold a coin, let alone a drink.

It didn’t matter. I’d never make it back to the docks.

After a while, my shoulders began to ache, and I realized I was still holding my hands above the surface. I lowered them, but the moment my hands touched the water, chimeric crackled again, sending ripples across the waves. I tried again. Same result. I narrowed my eyes to study what had become of my arms.

The sleeves were all but gone, the char turning linen into lace as it continued to burn. The splinters were sticks of glowing incense now, as chimeric runes dissolved the wood. My hands looked as though they had been branded in a forge, rune and flesh blending in a web of pattern. The designs for my hold and protection spells still sizzled, writing stories across my skin.

I closed my eyes, wishing I were a graymage. I’d call a shark to bite my arms off. Hels, I’d call a whale to swallow me whole.

My mother had told me a story once about a wayward girl who had swum away from home. A whale swallowed her whole, then spat her up on shore a year later. By then, she was a wyrmaid—half girl, half fish—and she died on the rocks. My mother swore it was true, but I never believed her. Her stories got bigger with each telling, while I just swam farther away.

The Ship of Spells, the Powder Boy, and now the Whale that Swallowed the Girl. My final memories were as wayward as the girl, but I knew all along the girl was me.

A blackened deck plank floated nearby, caught in the web of chimeric that rippled around me. I snagged it, pulling it under my elbows to rest my cheek on its grain. My hair had loosed from its knot and spilled over my face, becoming one with the dark, wet timber. This was the last piece of the ship, my ship. My first true posting, my last hope. I bit back the stinging of my eyes and forced the ache deep down beneath the will that kept me afloat. The Dawn Watch had been an insignificant frigate, I told myself, with an insignificant crew. The captain had never spoken a word to me, and Taran Vir maybe twenty, even though he’d been tasked with my training. The bosun had been hard, and the redmage had been harder. But despite all this, the Dawn Watch had been my home for eight months. More than that, she had been my future. Without a ship, I was nothing.

Rise and fall, ebb and swell.

My mother had been right.

The suns were high in the sky, Forge the Bold and Ember the Pale. Forge was large and white, while Ember was distant and dim. Twin suns of the Northhelm, emblems of our besieged empire. They watched as I floated, so I sent a prayer to Forge that day. I never prayed. I’d chosen the way of Forge just to be allowed to serve in the Navy, but I never believed. My mother prayed to the Sister Moons, sacrificed to the Sister Moons, dedicated me to the Sister Moons at my birth. Declaring allegiance to Forge was the last, best rebellion I could have staged. Too bad it wouldn’t serve me now. Too bad she’d never know.

I’m not sure how long I floated before I heard a splash on the waves. The sky was golden as the suns began to set, but I didn’t open my eyes. It could have been a ship. It could have been a shark. I didn’t care. My life was over, regardless. It was only a matter of time and magik before my body caught up.

Another splash, so this time, I looked. A huge winter hawk rested on the water before me, wings tucked across his back. He was almost as big as me, with feathers as white as salt. His eyes were white as well, but his hooked beak was gray. I could see his talons through the waters, paddling with swift, strong strokes. Like the Rhi’Ahr, winter hawks were born in the ice and snow and dread of Nethersea. Figured that the last creature to see me alive would be Netherborn.

Once again, my eyes began to sting, and tears gathered behind my lashes. Tears for my short, miserable, wayward life. Tears for my sad, valiant, pathetic crew, and for the horrible, useless way they died. With no one but a seabird for company, I finally let the tears spill.

I wept for a good long time, my shoulders heaving, my salt mixing with that of the ocean. The winter hawk merely watched, content to rise and fall on the waves like me. Finally, I released one breath, and then another. I looked up at him. He was magnificent and free, with only the sky for a master. He had only himself and the strength of his wings.

“Take me with you,” I croaked.

He cocked his head, and I wondered if it was the first time he’d heard a voice.

“Let me be a bird,” I said. “Let me fly away from everything and everyone and not have to die alone and broken on the sea.”

It felt good to be talking. I’m not sure why.

Rise and fall, ebb and swell.

“There are some mages that can call animals,” I told him. “But there are others, mirrormages, who can become animals. If I were a mirrormage, I would become a bird like you and never have to work a ship or live with people ever again.”

He didn’t blink, this great winter hawk, just stared at me with his strange white eyes. Then, he opened his wings and launched into the sky without a splash. He didn’t even circle. He just flew away.

And I was alone once again.

Rise and fall, ebb and swell.

And so, I floated like that, clinging to the scrap of a ship that had once promised better. But after a time, the sun called Forge curved across the sky and brought stars in his wake, only to rise once again hours later, chased by his brother, Ember the Pale. Still, I clung to the beam, exhausted. I didn’t freeze in the cold southern waters. No sharks came to eat me. No whale swallowed me whole.

I heard nothing of the flapping sails, the creaking oak, the roar of displaced waves. I saw no face of a woman-tree carved on the prow of a ship. I felt nothing as ropes were let down to snag my hapless body, even less as I was dragged over the side and onto the deck. I believe I was carried below and laid on a surgeon’s trunk, and I remember the face of a young man with black hair and stars for eyes. Behind him, another man, this one tall and thin but with the curved horns of a faun. Behind them both, a Rhi’Ahr watched everything with a dead white gaze.

It was a nightmare, clearly. All I needed was the whale.

“Welcome,” said the man with the starry eyes. “To the Ship of Spells.”

And like a whale, the nightmare swallowed me whole.

2

The Ship of Spells

Turned out the Ship of Spells had a name.

Touchstone.

She was an unregistered corvette, smaller even than the Dawn Watch, an old three-masted frigate that sailed under no flag. It made sense, I supposed, as she was technically a privateer in the employ of the king. I knew little of privateers. They weren’t pirates. They weren’t Navy. They threaded a cord through legal waters in a way that set my compass awry. Still, her lines were sound, and she smelled of linseed oil, pine soap, old oak, and the sea.

“So, what happened to your hands?” asked the faun. He was the ship’s surgeon, and he’d said his name was Echo.

I didn’t answer. I’d never spoken to a faun before. Hels, I’d never even met one. I’d been told at Berryburn Yard that they were a private people, perhaps to cover up the fact that they made my people uncomfortable. He didn’t make me uncomfortable, though, and had I not just been plucked out of the ocean after losing my ship and my hands and my future, I’d probably have bought him a drink. Or vice versa, considering he was employed and I was not.

“Whatever it is,” he went on, “it’s having a curious effect on your healing. Your hands were little more than bones when we dragged you aboard, but now…”

He tugged the gauze around my thumb.

“…the flesh has healed. Curious.”

He was right. I should have been happy about it. I should have been grateful.

“Clearly, it’s a by-product of the chimeric,” the faun continued. “But not one I’ve seen before. Does it hurt?”

I bit my tongue. It hurt like the devils, but I wouldn’t admit it. He turned my hand over as he bandaged, and he frowned. At least, I think it was a frown. His forehead was wrinkled because of the horns, so it was hard to tell. He looked like he was always thinking. I didn’t care. I’d said nothing since I was brought aboard, but Echo talked enough for both of us.

“Well, I’ll try to be careful,” he said.

He had very long fingers. Funny—of all the things I noticed, it was his fingers. Not the horns, the leathery skin, or the hair braided in intricate patterns along his neck and shoulders. He wore a thin golden ring around one of those fingers and had a golden hoop on his large left ear. Not regulation, but he was a privateer, and I knew even less of privateers than I did of fauns. No, it was his fingers that captivated me, and I watched them as, carefully, methodically, they wrapped my hands and wrists in gauze.

He peered up at me.

“You must be a blue, yes?” he asked. “Most of your sash is still intact. Charred at the bottom, but with all that chimeric, that’s to be expected, I suppose.”

Blue threads mixed with undyed and wan, the rank of a junior officer and midshipmage. Not that it mattered now.

“Were you casting or holding?”

“Both,” I grunted, my first word in hours. Or days. I wasn’t sure. I vaguely remembered a hawk on the sea.

“Hm,” said the faun, and he bent back to his work.

I sighed and let my eyes wander around the cabin. We were in a surgeon’s pit deep within the ship. There were no windows, and light came by way of chandle and mirror. The ceiling was low and the floor rough with bags of sand at the ready to sop up the blood. A young homani boy sat taking notes in the corner, and I knew he was the surgeon’s loblolly.

I could have been a loblolly when I’d first enlisted, but it reminded me too much of my mother. She was a greenmage healer, Archaic and wylde, and I’d been her apprentice since I was three. I could stitch and bandage, tar and bleed, and could identify most of what was on Echo’s shelves. Tourniquets and splints, linseed and lime, plaster and soap and salve. I didn’t think this faun was a mage, however. So far, his treatment of my hands had been entirely traditional, with ice, bandages, and a bit of yellow grease.

There was a small bronze mirror on one of the shelves, and I grimaced at my reflection. I rarely saw my face, except for glimpses in the water when I’d lean over a rail, but there I was in all my sea-soaked glory. Homani, like the loblolly, and tanned from months spent on a ship. Dark hair chopped at the chin. Gray eyes, thick brows, wide cheeks, square jaw. A scar beneath my eye from my first day on the Dawn Watch. A set of livid scrapes from my last.

Echo was watching me. I tore my eyes away from the mirror, set them like stone on the canvas flap that served as a door.

“Arik,” he said. “Fetch Mr. Fahr, if you will.”

“Aye, sir,” said the boy, and he ducked through the canvas with a glance back at me before going.

“Well,” said Echo. “I’m not sure if you’ll keep them like this or if the chimeric will continue to burn and you’ll lose both hands within a week. But they seem to be healing, so my coin is on the scars. Wiggle, please.”

Only my fingers were visible from the bandaging, and I hissed as they flexed beneath the gauze.

“Hm,” he said again.

As he stood back to admire his work, my eyes flicked to his legs. Goat legs bent backward at the knee, hairy pelt that disappeared into boots from the hock down. He wore breeches, a belted tunic, and a woolen vest. No sword or dagger, but then again, he was a surgeon. They were traditionally useless with anything larger than a scalpel. I did wonder about the horns, though, and, while they curled backward from his skull, they looked like they could do damage were he provoked.

There was a rap on the wall, and someone stepped through the canvas flap. It was the man with the starry eyes who had welcomed me to the ship. He looked only a few years older than me, with sea-dark skin, black hair in a regulation queue, and the informal clothes of a ranking officer. His thick brows rivaled mine, as did the scars along his cheek and jawline. But unlike me, it seemed his smile came easily, and he wore his naval blue like a comfortable peacoat.

Like the faun, he wore an earring but no sash to signify a magik.

“So, she’s not a wyrmaid, then,” he said. “Pity. Buck’s running a wager.”

“Not a wyrmaid, Dev,” said Echo. “Collect your bets.”

And he gave the gauze a last tug.

“I’m not sure whether she’ll keep her hands, but she seems to have had no ill effects from prolonged exposure to either sea or chimeric.”

“It was chimeric, then?”

“Of that, I am convinced.”

The officer squared his shoulders toward me.

“I’m Devanhan Fahr, First Lieutenant of the Touchstone under Captain Gavriel Thanavar.” His eyes flicked first to my bandaged arms, then to my face. “What happened to your ship?”

I met those eyes and said nothing.

“She was serving on the frigate Dawn Watch,” said Echo. “It was attacked by the Endorathil in open seas.”

“What? How?” I gaped at him. “I said nothing!”

He smiled and tapped his head with a long finger.

“You were right,” he said. “Not a mage.”

I growled to myself. Clearseer. My mother had told me about them. They could hear thoughts the way people heard words, and sometimes they had visions of past and future events. Dangerous types, she insisted, for you never knew when they were spinning.

Devanhan Fahr raised a brow and grinned. It was lopsided, pulling into one scruffy cheek.

“Now, would you like to tell me your name, or shall I ask our surgeon?”

“Honor Renn,” I said. “Ensign bluemage of the King’s Frigate Dawn Watch.”

“Understudy?”

“To Taran Vir, blackmage.”

“Captain?”

“Lagerheim.”

“How long deployed?”

“Eight months,” I said. “I was conscripted as a wanmage from the Berryburn Naval Yard.”

“I don’t believe you finished the curriculum,” said Echo.

“I was better than all of them,” I said.

“You quit?” asked Fahr.

“The magister said I was ready. All I needed was the ship.”

“Remember your rank, Ensign,” said the faun. “Dev is First Mate, so you do need to call him sir.”

“I went from wan to blue in eight months. They were jealous.”

“Your rank.”

I snorted.

“I’m Navy. You’re privateers. I outrank all of you.”

“Privateers at the hire of King Bonavanczek himself,” said Fahr. “Would you like to inspect our Letter of Marque, Wan-to-Blue? Make sure it’s spelled all goodly and grammared aright?”

Damn. I looked down. Stephanus Bonavanczek IV was the Emperor of Oversea, lawful ruler of the Northhelm and all its colonies. However, until I’d joined the Guild of Naval Mages in Berryburn Yard, I’d never heard of him, never even seen a painting of his fancy, frilled face.

I peered up. Fahr was smirking at me. I felt my hackles rise.

“No, sir,” I said, finally using the customary honorific. “Your word is fair.”

“Good save. Now, where can we drop you, Ensign?”

“Drop me?”

“You can’t stay with us,” he said. “You’re Navy, after all. We’re just lowly privateers.”

“Where did you accept your commission? Hodgetown?” asked Echo. “That’s generally a good place to begin again.”

“Suns have mercy,” said Fahr. “I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to a rathole like Hodgetown. Still, she is Navy…”

And he laughed. A most unusual trait for a privateer, but I was beginning to believe that the Touchstone was a most unusual ship.

“No! I can’t go back,” I said, glancing between them. “My hands… I need… I can’t…”

“Well, she can’t stay here,” came another voice, and a dworgh pushed through under the canvas. He had large eyes, a full beard, and the build of a barrel pit dog.

“Bad luck to have a castaway on board,” he said. “Especially a Navy bird. The crew’s already jumpy.”

I noticed he was wearing only one boot.

“She’s a mage,” said Fahr.

“A mage who can’t foggin’ spin. What the hels’s she going to do on my ship?”

“Smoke…” said Fahr.

“She can’t haul. She can’t braid. She can’t hoist. Hels, I doubt she can even scrub.” He began to hunt around the surgeon’s pit, lifting packs, moving blankets. “And I, for one, ain’t no mother hen. If she don’t work, I have a dory just her size that do.”

His accent was fine silver, but his mouth was all sea.

“Ensign, this is Smoke Oakum,” said Fahr. “Our quartermaster, coxun, and Magister of Magiks.”

“I do everything.”

“Except beat me at Able Whacks,” said Echo.

“Foggin’ impossible to beat a clearseer at Able Whacks. Pretty, prancing hornswaggler, you are. Ah, there it is.”

He pulled a boot from under a shelf and shook out the sand. I noticed he was also wearing an earring and a thin gold ring around the same finger as the faun.

“Forge-damned fauns. More like thieving fae, I say.”

“Don’t leave your boots in my pit,” said Echo. “I don’t ask much.”

“The question is, lads,” said Fahr, “where do we drop her? Hodgetown is not on the captain’s books.”

“As I said, Dev, I have a dory…”

I sat forward, ignoring the bite from the chimeric.

“I can stay.”

“Bells, no,” said Fahr.

“I may be only a bluemage, but I’m a damned good one,” I snapped. “And this is the Ship of Spells! The things I could learn! The spells I could cast!”

“Not without your hands,” said Fahr.

It cut me to the quick, and I fought the tightening of my throat.

There was silence for a moment before Echo looked up.

“Perhaps the Touchstone chose her?”

“Rubbish,” said Oakum. He slid the boot over a nubby, callused foot. “She’s a sea-soaked Navy castaway. Bad luck on all counts.”

But the first mate folded his arms across his chest and studied me.

“The captain says the Touchstone was drawn to the chimeric patterns in the water.”

“And she,” Echo said with a wave of his elegant hand, “was the cause of them. Those patterns are repeated along her fingers and palms.”

“It was probably just echoes from the Endorathil,” said Fahr. “Next to the Touchstone, she’s the most arcane bird in the sea.”

“I disagree,” said Echo. “Her scars are still spinning.”

I felt a rush of gratitude. I would buy this faun a drink now, regardless of my state of employ.

“Into the sea,” muttered Oakum over his shoulder. “That’s what we do with flotsam and the peels.”

And he disappeared beyond the canvas that served as a door.

Fahr studied me for a long moment. His eyes were dark and sharp, and they really did remind me of stars, glittering like the waters on a moonslit night. I could dive in those waters. If I let myself, I could surely swim.

“Hm,” said Echo, and I cursed myself for forgetting.

“Well, maybe the Touchstone knows something we don’t,” said Fahr. “I’ll take her to the captain. He can decide.”

I nodded swiftly. I would not beg. Not now. Not ever. But I didn’t want to go back to Hodgetown, broken as I was by the sea.

“The captain’s a hard man, but he’s fair,” he said. “His decision will be binding. Is that understood, Bluemage?”

“Aye, sir.”

I moved to hop off the surgeon’s trunk, but the cabin spun as my boots hit the deck. I was forced to clutch the table’s edge so that I didn’t fall.

No one tried to catch me, for which I was grateful.

We moved to leave, and I threw a glance over my shoulder at Echo. He smiled at me, and I knew I’d found more kindness in my few hours on the Ship of Spells than I had in months spent on the Dawn Watch. Then, I was out and into the dark hold of a companionway. I paused at the sight of the stepladder, and I looked at my hands, unsure if they would hold. The mate was already up, and he glanced down at me from the rungs. I could have sworn he was smirking.

“They have ladders on a Navy ship, Blue?”

I swore at him and reached out to take the rung.

Fire. Fire and wood. Fire and wood and ships and trees and snow and feathers and branches and rings and flash and boom and blackness—

 Excerpted from Ship of Spells by H. Leighton Dickson. Reprinted with permission from Red Tower Books, an imprint of Entangled Publishing. All rights reserved.

  Ship of Spells will be released on November 4, 2025, but you can pre-order it right now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB