Winia staggered along the corridor, then leaned against the wall. The ship was rocking gently on the water. She used to find that comforting; it helped her sleep. But now...damned inconvenient. The rocking was what made Anawyn ill. Winia had never met anyone who spent their time on ship so thoroughly and violently sick.
She smiled sourly. She hadn't slept since that first night after Vessadial's death. For all that he was terrifying, the lich had not haunted her dreams - it had been a dark, blank sleep terrible in its emptiness. Still, Winia had not dared sleep since then, not with the ward over her eye destroyed. She had seen Vessadial's soul pulled from his body; claimed by hell. The last time she had borne witness to such...no. No, she refused to remember.
The eye patch she wore now was simple cloth. The eye beneath it was closed. But Winia knew that at any moment he could open it. Before she'd met Raekar and he'd confined the Eye beneath its ward - before, the Eye had let demons see not just into her world, but into her dreams, as well.
She had learned a lot from her time with Raekar, but she didn't want to find out if she'd learned enough to deal with that. Winia silently cursed the ship's gentle motion: the slow rocking that made Anawyn ill had been lulling herself to sleep, prompting Winia to get up and empty the bucket of bile the elf had so gracelessly filled. Anything to move around and stave off sleep.
She stumbled again and the bucket sloshed dangerously, but an arm appeared in front of her, catching her. Winia blinked blearily at her rescuer.
Lumin frowned back at her. "Are you all right? You look like hell in a cold snap."
Winia frowned. "I'm fine," she mumbled. "Gotta empty this."
"Let me," Lumin grimaced. "You look like you should be sleeping off whatever brought this on."
"It's not my mess." Winia did her best to glare, but Lumin seemed unimpressed. Just a couple days familiarity was breeding too much...familiarity...in the boy. Or perhaps she was just too tired to do it right. In either case, she was dangerous and he needed to know that. But Winia was too weary to explain. "I need to bring the pail back and I want to take a walk."
Lumin reached down and took the bucket's handle from her. "Fine. But let me carry this. You don't seem to have your sea legs back, and its peons like me who'll have to scrub the decks if you spill."
Winia was too tired to argue. She let the bucket change hands with something akin to relief, and let Lumin lead the way on deck. The sun was still up, but it wouldn't be long before twilight fell. She followed him across to the rail, and he cast the bucket's contents out to sea. Winia stood there, staring at the sun across the waves, and Lumin waited beside her.
After a moment he stirred. "You should get back below decks."
Winia glanced at him, but he was watching something over his shoulder. When she turned, an older sailor who'd been staring at them snapped his gaze away. She sighed and looked back out over the sea. So many rumors always followed her. But at least the other sailors treated her with caution, even if for the wrong reasons. Lumin would do well to follow their lead.
"Very well," Winia said, stepping back from the rail. Lumin followed her to Raekar's cabin and passed back the empty pail. Winia did not thank him. Too weary to be truly rude but unwilling to encourage his foolish kindness, she simply accepted it, slipped into the cabin and closed the door, leaving Lumin in the hall.
On Winia's bunk, Anawyn moaned softly in response to the door clicking shut and twisted away from the sound. Winia dropped the bucket on the floor by the head of the bunk and then returned to Raekar's chair. He was still out: purifying sea water so that drink, at least, would not have to be rationed.
Winia settled into the overstuffed seat and slipped one of Raekar's books from a stack. Not a scholarly volume, but a bardic history: full of adventure and romance. Please, she implored the tome as she flipped to the first page, be so fascinating I cannot sleep until the end.
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