Chapter 6 – Part 5

“So we are one day out from Blood Crescent,” Orphan said again.

“Yes,” the Captain replied patiently, holding the ship’s wheel steady. In the two days since the warforged had woken, he’d asked the Captain the same series of questions in different ways, trying to find a lie. The fiend, who according to Ois really wasn’t evil after all had patiently answered some, and ignored others.

“We appeared back in time in the year 994?”

“You call this day the tenth of Zarantyr, yes,” the Captain said. Again. “Thomas caught me off guard due to Delegado’s arrows, and the ship’s ability to move reality around itself suffered. We jumped out of time. We barely made it back.”

“You think someone opened a window.”

“I think someone left me a beacon. Maybe it is one of your gods.” The Captain seemed totally uninterested in how they had all survived. “I don’t care. I do care that in less than 24 hours you will all be off my ship.”

“How did you find us?” Orphan asked. The Captain ignored him. It was one of the questions that would not be answered. Similarly the captain had ignored requests about why, if he was so connected to waterborne travel, he did not worship the Traveler. The Captain spoke little about himself, merely stating that like all fiends he was trapped by his nature, but that he had chosen a nature of travel rather than evil or good, and that he had made his peace with the dragons long ago. “It’s because you are attracted to conflict, right?”

“It is my price,” the Captain said. “One that my passengers usually pay. I am not used to being a combatant.”

“Of course,” Orphan said. “And you think that the fiends of the Wastes think us dead?”

“For now,” the Captain said. “Doubtless they were looking for you when we jumped through time, and doubtless they concluded that you were dead. They will know eventually, and one day they will seek revenge on you, have no doubt of this.”

“Joy,” Orphan said. “We were in their city, you know.”

“You told me,” the Captain said sarcastically. “And I wish that you had not. I prefer not to know. I refused to participate in the building of Ashtakala, and I really do not wish to hear about it at all. Please stop.”

Orphan considered this, quickly running through the index in his mind. He’d gotten used to the headband, and realized that its potential was enormous. It seemed to add to his natural level of perception and intuition, and to expand his monk abilities, even as it functioned as a great library for all things arcane or religious. He had no idea how much knowledge it held, but he was getting better at accessing it.

“What do you want to know?” Orphan asked. “I would feel better if I traded knowledge for knowledge with you, to repay your generosity.”

“Quit trying to flatter me,” the Captain replied. “You have not the gift for it.” Orphan heard that, but he waited there. Something told him that this time the Captain would give, if only somewhat. The wait was a long one, nearly an hour. Orphan stood next to the Captain, watching, waiting. The Captain watched the sea as the sun began to sink to the horizon behind the Crimson Ship. Whispers of conversation between Delegado and Ois, who were at the other end of the ship, sometimes drifted forward.

Orphan thought about those two. Both were in great pain. Both would not talk if he was around. Ois would not let Delegado touch her, or come in her cabin. Orphan had heard both weeping in the late of the night. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. He now spent his nights on deck, usually alone. Feather stayed below, comforting his master, and guarding the body of Delegado’s father. Orphan did not know what to say, so he stayed away. At least everyone seemed fully healed and mobile now.

The only company that Orphan had was in the one-sided conversation with the Captain. Most of the ship was off-limits to passengers, so if there was any other crew the monk did not know of them. This left Orphan quite alone when the captain went below decks (presumably to sleep, but who knew for sure).

“Alright,” the Captain said finally. “I will answer one question of yours, then I will ask a question of you, and then you will go below decks to the storage room that I allow you all to use until we dock. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes!” Orphan said. “Hm, one question. Very well, do you know, other than a sense of territory, what the fiends were trying to protect by keeping Bartemain prisoner?”

“The fiends have never been very united,” the Captain told him. “And less so now that you disrupted the plans of the one who sought to get the rod of power from the ghost of the coutal Sentry. They are convinced that some of their own number smuggled you in, and now their plans have slowed down tremendously.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” accused the warforged.

“You didn’t understand my answer,” the Captain replied. “And your question implied that the fiends themselves know why they always do things, did it not?” As Orphan considered this he asked his own question. “Tell me, new body for an old soul, what is it like to be touched by prophecy every day?”

“Are you referring to my actions based on what the halfling sorcerer told me?” asked Orphan. “As I told you when I was trying to interest you in our origins –”

“And as I told you, I don’t want to know all that,” interjected the Captain harshly. “Just answer my question.”

“My answer would be ‘I do not know,’ quite honestly,” the warforged responded.

“That tells me more than you know it does,” smiled the Captain. “Now get below.”

Orphan studied the fiend, then turned and went below. He looked briefly at Delegado and Ois, noting their pain as he went down the stairs.

The darkness of the storage room comforted him as he wondered how one healed a broken spirit.