Fourteen… maybe fifteen years.
I don't know.
Time flew faster than I ever thought it could.
I'm not the little bird anymore. I'm flame in the sky, the Talonflame.
...
I cut the wind and level out. Body's longer, chest deep, wings broad and hard at the edges. Feathers run dark red along the neck, slate over the back, bright on the belly. The right wing still carries a faint nick from a night that almost went wrong for a little bird. Heat ripples when I push. The air knows me now.
Below, the old cog is long gone. Two lean longships ride in step, and the main ship holds the lane like a bull whale. New crews, new faces. On the big deck, Captain Garrad's hair has gone grey; he still stands square by the quarter. On the second ship off our starboard, Hobb: once skinny, gap-toothed, now barks orders with a adult's voice. Men move because he says so. Good for him.
I bank and slide toward the third hull, the smallest but the fastest. Flag snaps at her masthead: a red firebird stitched flag. At the tiller stands her captain.
Rhaenys, Rae on the sea. Sun-brown skin; violet eyes steady under wind-tossed hair tied with blue silk. good jawline, healed nick on her eyebrow, a thin white line across one knuckle. She wears a plain sailor's shirt, leather jerkin, a coil of line at her hip. No jewels. She doesn't need them. Because she is the jewel. The jewel of great seas.
I flare and land near her boot. Men pause. They always do. They never stop being wary of a bird that's half a man height and can set a deck alight.
She glances down, mouth tugging up. "Vel," she says, warm and teasing, "you know you could burn my ship by breathing wrong."
I blink slow, tilt my head, give her the smallest, most innocent chirp I own. Crime partners, you and me. She rolls her eyes and keeps one hand on the tiller.
"Look at us," she says, gaze on the strait ahead. "I never thought there'd be a day I'd go back. Yet here we are."
I settle, talons clicking on the rail. Don't jinx it. Keep it calm. Keep moving.
She keeps her voice low. "Three were meant for death that day. One lived. Me." A silence stretched. She swallows. "Wind is kind today."
I press my shoulder to her wrist, a brief touch. She breathes out, steadier.
"You think my little aunt is well?" she asks after a time. "I hope she found kindness. " Her mouth quirks. "And my uncle." She shakes her head. "I wonder what kind of man he's become."
Viserys. I don't waste a chirp.
"He'd be near my years now, wouldn't he?" she asks, still not looking at me.
I turn my head and give her the stare. That one. Targaryen thoughts in the old tight drawer: age, blood, marriage, all stacked together. Gods.
She huffs through her nose. "Don't glare at me. I'm only counting. I never know what goes on in your head."
Fair. Half the time neither do I. I tap her knuckles: here, now.
Across the water, Garrad raises two fingers in a small salute. Hobb answers with a chin. Men who've seen too much weather. Garrad's look lingers on Rae, then on me. Respect there, and the old caution that kept his crew breathing many night, the days I burnt hundreds in the sea. Fine. Let it stay.
Deck crew move like they belong: women with quick hands at the pins, boys who've made men's backs, a graybeard who talks to the mainsail under his breath. Now and then someone glances up at me and then away. Wary. Never mind.
Rae's voice drops. "Is it right to ask them to follow where I mean to go?"
I lift the wing, shade her for a heartbeat, fold it again. We ask. We pay. We don't lie.
She nods once, as if I'd spoken. "We ask," she says. "We pay."
The whistles pass down the line, Garrad, then Hobb, two short, one long. Sheets ease, then bite. The ships lean into the westing.
Rae's fingers tighten on the tiller. "Narrow Sea," she says. The words are level, but her throat works once. "It isn't the runaway girl and her little bird now."
I hop to the flag cleat and look up at our stitchwork, firebird against the sky.
"It's Captain Rae," she says, more to the sea than to me, "and the one who rules the wind."
I launch clean, catch the lift off the mainsail, and climb until the three hulls draw a straight line below. Heat hums quiet under feather and bone. Spreaded the wings with a screech, took into the sky, again.
Yi Ti fades to haze behind. West in front. Home, if it still fits.