Chapter 164: Moving Against The Wind

Beneath Malik the ocean stretched out in every direction, and he recognized it at once, even from that height and at a speed that should have frightened him more than it did.

These were the Ten Seas, with their characteristic swirl of currents, ten distinct bands of water that never quite mixed, each one a slightly different shade of blue or green or gray depending on what fed into it.

He spoke of these waters before, many lifetimes ago, if his memories were to be believed.

’At least I know where I am now.’

Wind screamed past his ears as he fell, and he twisted his body to scan the water below for anything solid, a ship or a reef or anything other than endless ocean waiting to swallow him whole.

’There.’

A speck in the distance, a ship by the look of it, its sails catching what little wind moved through the gray sky.

The rigging was Northern, if he remembered correctly, which meant traders, probably merchants making the long haul south before the season turned.

Malik adjusted his fall and angled himself towards it.

Not wanting to use his Rukh, he struck the water hard, and the impact drove the air from his lungs despite his body’s considerable resilience.

The cold closed over him as salt stung his eyes and his limbs went numb from the shock.

He surfaced and began to swim.

The ship was not far.

It was close enough that someone aboard eventually noticed the figure swimming through the waves.

Close enough that a rope ladder came tumbling down the hull toward him, and strong hands hauled him over the railing and set him down on the deck.

"You alright?"

Malik coughed up a mouthful of seawater and blinked up at the ring of concerned faces above him.

"Define alright."

A few of them laughed, more from relief than humor.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and took stock of his surroundings.

It was a modest trading vessel with perhaps thirty crew by the look of the deck, its cargo holds stacked with crates that smelled faintly of spice and salted fish.

The accents around him were thick with the clipped consonants of the upper continent, just as he had guessed.

Nobody here recognized him, and that was what mattered.

He caught his reflection in a puddle on the deck and understood why.

His appearance had shifted again, as it tended to do depending on how much Rukh he had circulating and how recently he had used his Stranger’s Ring.

He looked older than his true face, though he was nowhere near the withered, barely standing old man who had stumbled into the Abyss with Safira and Huda.

Malik was now somewhere in between, weathered and tired but not frail.

The beard helped.

He had not worn one the last time anyone in this world had looked properly at his face, but a few weeks of uninterrupted growth, or perhaps months, while his mind was dragged through Hell’s recollection of his past, had left a thick and unkempt mass of dark hair along his jaw.

’I will let it stay that way for now.’

"Where you from, stranger?"

A woman had crouched beside him, middle-aged and sun-weathered.

The way the others deferred to her without being asked marked her as the captain.

Malik considered his options for exactly one second before he answered:

"Fell off another ship. Storm a few days back."

It was hardly a lie, since he had in fact fallen, and the storm was only a small liberty.

It was the kind of story nobody questioned closely, because storms happened and sailors went overboard, and that made it the plainest and most forgettable explanation available.

The captain studied him, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"You don’t look like a sailor."

"I’m not. Passenger."

"Mm."

She did not seem entirely convinced, but she did not care enough to press, and Malik appreciated that in her.

"We’re headed south, towards the mainland ports. You’re welcome to work your passage if you want food that isn’t charity."

"That works for me."

And so Malik became a deckhand.

It was not glamorous work, with its coiling of rope and hauling of cargo and scrubbing of salt crust from the deck boards under two Suns that occasionally remembered to break through the clouds.

His hands, already calloused, gathered new calluses in new places, and he found he did not mind.

There was something almost meditative in it, in the absence of layers to navigate and of Corruption-laced fog trying to eat his Soul and of ancient things showing him visions of his own alternate deaths.

There was only rope and salt and the rhythmic creak of a ship moving through water.

’I could get used to this.’

Malik would not, of course.

He had a kingdom to run, and a wife and daughter waiting for him, and a war against the Corruption that would not win itself.

Still, for a few days, being nobody in particular on a nameless trading vessel felt close to peace... even if a Demon wave wasn’t far off.

The crew warmed to him quickly, as sailors always did toward someone willing to pull his weight without complaint, and by the second hour they had given him a name.

"Oi, Beard! Pass that line!"

Malik did not argue with it.

During the following hours, he fell into easy conversation with a few of them, learning names he had no real need to remember and hearing stories about ports he had never visited.

A young sailor named Tarek, barely out of his teens, was especially eager to talk, and he went on about everything from his hometown to his opinions on the best way to tie a bowline.

Malik let him talk.

It was a rare comfort to listen to someone whose greatest worry was whether they would make good time to the next port.

On the eighth hour the weather changed.

It came as a subtle shift in the air at first, a heaviness settling over the ship that had little to do with the clouds overhead, and Malik noticed it before anyone else did, his senses sharpened far beyond any sailor’s.

He straightened from the rope he had been coiling and looked towards the horizon, and something there felt wrong.

The captain saw the change in his posture and followed his gaze, squinting against the gray light.

"What is it?"

Malik did not answer right away.

He was watching a dark smudge rising from the water in the distance, too far to make out clearly but near enough that his instincts had already begun to warn him.

’They split off from the main wave.’

"Captain, how fast can this ship move?"

She blinked at the sudden change in his tone.

"Fast enough, why?"

Malik’s jaw tightened.

"We might want to find out."

The dark smudge on the horizon shifted, and it was no storm cloud.

It was moving against the wind.