He kissed a spot behind her ear and moved down her neck. Lightly, he laid his hand on her belly, feeling the ridges of muscles in her stomach as she arched against his hand. He traced his finger to the hollow at the base of her throat, which was half-hidden by the neckline of her silver cloak. The light was fading, but he could see a break in the design of her tattoo. The silhouette of a crouching cat encircled by twisting vines, it was so small that he couldn’t believe the artist could capture the details down to its tiny eye, a splash of green among the other black stokes.
“You stopped,” she protested. “Don’t stop.”
“What does the cat mean?”
“Cat? What cat?”
“Here, under your chin.”
“Not now. It’s complicated.”
“Do you have somewhere to go?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then we have all night,” Harp assured her. “So go on, tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What do the markings on your neck mean?” he asked. “The cat, the vines. They’re beautiful, but what do they mean?”
“Are you always so easily distracted? Or is it just me?”
“Believe me, I’m not distracted. My attention is utterly, completely on you. And soon, I’ll be happy to prove it. But for now, humor me.”
“Fine,” Liel said with mock exasperation. “But I expeet due compensation.”
“With pleasure,” Harp said.
“It’s the story of my life,” she told him. “It was written before I was born.”
“Really?” Harp said, intrigued by her answer. “What does it say?”
“Oh, that I’ll save the world,” Liel teased him. “And fall in love with an ill-bred pirate.”
“Ill-bred pirates are the best kind. What does your pirate do?”
Liel took Harp’s hand and began stroking his palm with her thumb. “He buys me a mast ship. One with a dragonhead and a golden sail.”
“What a nice pirate.”
“Yes,” Liel agreed. “A very nice pirate.”
Before he went back to kissing her, Harp pressed his fingertip against the cat silhouette. He could feel Liel’s heart beating. “So they are a pirate, a green-eyed cat, and a golden sail.”
“What are?”
“The keys to your heart.”
“As if you need a key,” she said. Tired of waiting, she kissed him instead.
Shakily, Harp pushed himself to his feet, bracing his hands on his knees until a wave of nausea passed. His life had been simple before he knew Liel. He’d had an innate sense of right and wrong that drove his actionslike a hidden compass that always told him which way to go. And all he had to do was make his way toward the horizon and things would work out all right. Take the Marderward. It was the obvious thing to get Kitto off that ship, and to save Liel in the process. No one was going to give him a crown for being noble, but he helped where he could and watched out for himself and his friends no matter what.
Being with Liel had mixed up the compass. Even after his moment of clarity that night on the Delmark, he’d opted for simplicity over truth. Keeping Liel at a distance, turning himself in to the authorities instead of fighting the mutiny chargethose were things that went against his instincts. He’d followed the wrong path, and it had landed him in the
Vankila Slab, the razor-sharp edge of death. And it had led him away from Liel, who took root in his mind as both the cause and the salvation of his eroded life. For the first time since he’d been chained to the floor in the Practitioner’s study, Harp’s directional sense had returned. Finally, he sensed true north.
If he were given the day on the Delmark again, he would tell Liel that he loved herhe might have lost her anyway, but at least she would have known. Harp paused in the center of the observatory, listening to the wind whistle through the hinges in the ceiling.-The incense still burned in the earthenware dish, so Harp thought it must be the same day, the same moment almost, since he had come up the spiral stair-wilh Majida.
Reaching for the door handle, he jerked his hand back in shock. Slowly, he stretched out his arm again. His skin was as smooth and as unmarred as when he’d been a child. Majida had done itshe’d removed the scars. She’d healed him and erased the Practitioner’s brand. How that was possible, he didn’t know, but she’d done it.
Trembling, Harp flung open the door and stumbled down the staircase. With his heart pounding and his head spinning, he steadied himself against the wall. Harp couldn’t fight the feeling that something was missing, that he had misplaced something important. He doubled over, fighting dizziness. And then he understood. What he felt was an absence of pain.
Since the Vankila Slab, Harp had lived with constant pain, like the incessant lapping of the tide. Now he felt the beating of his heart, the cool air against his skin, and the hum of his muscles as they moved. But nothing felt like claws against his skin, or needles into his musclesnothing hurt at all. Harp continued down the steps, enjoying the looseness of his joints and the fluid way his muscles moved. He felt like he could run for hours, move a mountain, or swim to Tethyr. But first, he was going to find Liel, no matter how small the chance that she was alive.
When Harp walked into the nearly deserted hub, Kitto and Boult were seated at one of the long tables eating breakfast with Zo. All three stared at him in silent awe as he sat down on the wooden bench beside Kitto. There was a tray of eggs and chopped pork, and Harp heaped the plate with more food than he would normally eat in a tenday.
“Where’s Verran?” Harp asked shoving the eggs into his mouth as the others gaped at him. “Come on now. Don’t stare. You’ll hurt my feelings.”
Boult recovered first. “What happened to your scars, Harp?”
“Majida’s healing touch,” Harp said casually. “I guess you know how fortunate you are to have her, Zo. I know mages in Waterdeep who would kill to have her study with them.”
“How did she do it?” Kitto asked, his black eyes abnormally wide as he stared at his friend.
“I’m not sure,” Harp replied. “Where is she? And where’s Verran?”
No one answered. They were still too busy gaping at him. Having seen his reflection in the sheen of Majida’s observatory, he understood their reaction. While he still had crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and creases in the center of his forehead, most of the signs of aging brought on by too much ale, hard living, and days under the hot sun were gone. He looked as if he’d been reborn a much younger man.
“Suddenly I’m not a scarred freak, and you all can’t stop looking at me.”
“I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself,” Boult said, turning his attention back to his food. “But you are very much changed.”
“But that’s a good thing, right?” Harp said, perplexed by the undercurrents of emotion in the room.
“Sure it is, Harp,” Boult said, exchanging glances with Kitto. “We’re just…”
“Happy for you,” Kitto said with a little grin.
“Yeah,” Boult agreed. “Since you have new skin, it’s a great time to make a new start. You can stop being such an idiot.”
“Ah, Boult,” Harp said between bites. “You know how to make any occasion special.”
“You’re a drunken fool,” Boult said sweetly.
“And you’re a vengeful scoundrel,” Harp replied, just as sweetly.
“Last son of a fat goblin,” Boult said.
“Arrogant goat,” Harp shot back, and Kitto laughed.
“What’s so funny, boyo?” Harp asked Kitto amicably.
“Everything’s changed,” Kitto said, smiling down at his plate. “But nothing’s changed too.”
Zo had been watching the exchange curiously. “I have no idea what any of you are talking about,” he said, pushing back from the table. “But if you’re going to the ruins, we don’t want to get started too late in the day.”..
