Broken deck planks lay canted in churned earth, one side splintered open to the mud.
The wreck still shuddered with every groan. A long crack ran down the hull's spine, ribs bared to the air.
From the ruptured hold, cargo had vomited out across the deck.
Splintered beams. Coils of rope. Crates staved in and spilling grain and steel-edged things.
For a long breath, only the captain moved.
He dragged himself upright along a shattered railing and let his gaze walk the ruin.
Faces first. Counting. Then the cargo. He kicked aside a broken crate, then another.
Flip the lids. Check the stenciled marks. His veins bulged as he ripped planks free until he found the original box.
"This ought to be the crate for that parcel, aye?" the old captain murmured. "Storm like that, a box can go overboard... or walk off on two legs. Hard to say which."
No one answered him. Men aboard the ship avoided the spearman's gaze.
The sky sailors kept their truths behind their teeth, trading wary looks instead of speech, careful not to stir Simeon any further.
They all knew the spear master, Simeon, was unreasonable in his demands.
Captain Todd's anger burned hot in him. He turned away a few paces and spat.
To Simeon it could pass for habit, a sailor's tic, but the crew knew better. It was disdain.
Everyone knew rank put Simeon above a captain at his own helm, and only because the spearman wore a sect's colors.
Simeon's anger still boiled. His qi, gilded core and heavy, still pressed down on them all, drawing suppressed groans through clenched teeth.
Fay felt the weight in her lungs like wet wool, the same crushing presence that had dogged them since right after the crash.
Her nose burned, then bled. A hot trickle ran over her lip. Red threads crept into her vision as the veins around her eyes swelled.
She wiped the blood with the back of her hand and forced herself not to gasp too loud.
Across the wreckage, she spotted Radeon where he had gone down. He lay sprawled with his eyes open and empty, dead fish staring at the sky. His chest did not rise.
Fay did not know what he was playing at, but she was not blind to the tells she had caught before.
The way he handled a rope. The way he moved so people lost him even when he stood in plain sight.
This stillness was not death. It was a ploy. She was sure of it. Still, worry crept through all the same, pinching her brows tight.
"Cry. For. Help." Radeon said through voice transmission.
The words brushed the inside of Fay's skull. They came wrapped in qi, slipping through her skin instead of through the air. She knew that voice, so she played along.
Fay buried her face against his chest. Her hand crept up, found his cheek, and gave it a tug.
"S-Senior, please... do not leave this disciple here alone. Senior!"
Her voice came out hoarse and wet, the sound smearing over whatever smooth glaze a lady's tone was meant to have.
The world blurred as she shook against his chest.
"Bags," Ser Simeon barked. "Spill them. Turn every stitch inside out. That lumen-ginger's here! On one of you! Swollen in a purse or stuffed up a sleeve I bet."
Simeon did not wait. He tore through bags, boots kicking lids off boxes with every failed search.
His men, bruised and bound up in strips of torn cloth, limped after him and did the same.
Canvas ripped. Leather popped. The crash had not slowed their hands.
Simeon caught the captain by the collar and barked right into his face.
"Your crew, Captain Todd. Rouse them. Set those hands to work."
One of the sky sailors came to Fay, a young man with only the first spurt of beard shadowing his jaw.
He dropped to his knees beside her. His fingers found her wrist first, then her shoulder, then her ribs, prodding gentle as he could manage.
Then he pointed at the bags. Fay nodded.
The young man grabbed her pack and spilled it across the broken planks. Clothes. Rations. Paints and little craftwork trinkets.
"Nothing here!" the young man reported.
Then a guard under Simeon's command stepped in. His eyes did not trust such a young lad, and they did not trust Fay either.
The guard's hands went to work, roaming her sides and hips, sliding over the leather Radeon had strapped across her chest before the flight.
Fay felt every touch like grit under her skin. She said nothing, letting tears and trembling do her talking.
She kept her face buried, her hand still on Radeon's cheek. Indignation rose hot in her throat, but she did not know how to give it words without giving herself away.
"Don't think. Yell. Any face here works."
Radeon's voice slid through her head again. Fay lifted her face just enough for the guard to see blood and tears smeared together.
"Help! Anyone, please," she cried. "Please, save my Senior!"
The guard came back with his face soured by Fay's pleading.
"Useless scribe! Useless!" the guard snarled.
He kicked her pack so hard it split wider, jerky and hardtack tumbling into the wet and the splinters around her.
The guard's boot clipped her hip as he went by. Fay winced and bit her lip, trying to dam the tears, failing all the same.
She stared at the ruined food. With shaking fingers she wiped mud from the jerky and patted the hardtack dry on her sleeve.
'The senior's tales of travel had not been exaggerated in the least. Here, scribes and scholars were spoken of as rumor-mongers. Worthless as dust, to be swept from one's sleeve.' Fay thought.
In all her life she had never felt rage like this, hot and trapped with nowhere to go.
"Fay. Breathe. He's not worth it."
The search dragged on until the overcast above went from dull gray to bruised dusk.
Men picked through splinters and torn canvas until nothing on the broken deck lay untouched.
No ginger in the crates. No ginger in the torn packs. No ginger in the smeared cargo by the rail.
Captain Todd stood off to one side and watched their little play.
He was a gilded core too, but the years had crusted over any hope of rising higher.
Simeon felt the captain's gaze on him. He turned and let a slow sneer crawl across his face as he met it.
In Todd's eyes he found it, the tight, resentful fear of a man who knew he was outmatched. Simeon savored that fear like a fine taste on the tongue.
Captain Todd took the sneer and scoffed to himself. To him it looked like a boy checked and chastened, still smug, still arrogant, but manageable.
He swallowed his fury, squared his shoulders, and barked orders for the re organization to begin.
"Right then, you lot! Anything not smashed goes in one pile. Salvage what you can."
The captain barked the order, and his crew scattered, dragging what they could into rough piles.
Fay tried to move, and pain shot up her legs. Not broken. She knew that much.
When she dared a quick look under her bag, careful to keep it hidden from prying eyes, she found a bruise dark as old wine, palm sized, stamped into the side of her leg.
She clenched her teeth and stayed where she was, one hand still on Radeon.
Then a shadow fell across them. A broad shouldered smith dropped to one knee, hands blackened with old forge stains, eyes sharp in a face lined by heat and years.
The same blacksmith who had cheated Radeon out of a dagger. Fay did not know that.
She moved quick anyway, shifting to make herself a shield, and tested him with a question.
"Master smith, what are you up to?" Blood crust tugging when she spoke.
"Hoggs," he said, already stepping in. "Look at him, pale as quenched iron. He's choking on something. Move. Let me see the lad."
The man flipped Radeon over and brought a wooden mallet down against his back, hard and sure.
Radeon jerked, choking as he came back He made a show of it, worked the splinter loose with his tongue, then spat a shard of wood the size of a thumb into the mud.
Only then did he give them the wet coughing fit, ragged and convincing.
He blinked up at the smith and managed a weak smile.
"Thank you," he rasped.
His hand slipped into the inner fold of his robe and came out with a wrapped bundle. Twenty pale spirit stones clicked together in his palm.
"That's everything I've got. Take it," Radeon said respectfully.
The smith looked at the stones, mouth parting as if to speak, but Radeon cut him off.
"Stones you can earn again," he said. "A saving like that, even gods don't give twice."
With a small shrug, the master smith pried the bundle loose and tucked it away. Radeon let out a thin breath that might have been a laugh.
"Master Hoggs." He kept his voice low. "You got a map? Need to see where we went down."