"No, no, no... agh!"
A sudden listing of the ship caused Braithe's inkwell to slide across her makeshift desk, but her fumbling attempts to catch the vessel ultimately knocked it over. The girl grumbled a litany of swears as she surveyed the damage: a puddle of pigment spilled across the surface of her red- and white-quartered shield. Defeated, she leaned back into her cot, away from the shield's surface. Throwing her head back, she thought to scream her discontent toward the ceiling and into the sky beyond, but thought better of it after a long, briny breath. She instead settled for one last oath, groan-sighed out with the last dregs of her initial anger.
"Maybe writin' ain't for you," she mumbled, raking leather-wrapped digits against matted hair. She glanced at the journal, at the page she meant to write about her experiences, and chuffed. All she'd managed before the spill was a splotch on the page where she'd let the nib of her quill rest.
Braithe turned her attention toward the rest of her room: a small bunkroom with a couple cots and a bucket. Her cot, the lowest of the bunch, smelled of sweat and oxidized blood. The bucket held numerous bloodied bandages and emptied phials. Beneath her cot rest what meager possessions she could smuggle along with her in her flight from Kelt -- cracked, worn leather armor and a sword, a brass medallion bearing a pair of scales and a shepherd's crook set into its crossguard. A deep gouge cleaved through Talathas's mark. The girl's mind caught on the rend, memory bleeding back in.
As her thoughts drifted, she traced two fingers along one of the mostly-healed lacerations on one of her arm. The sensation of pressing perhaps a bit too hard jolted her back from the liminal void between now and then. A hiss through her teeth announced her return to reality.
A familiar figure entered the room with a quiet, polite greeting. The woman was a fellow traveler, a clerk who hoped to find success as a merchant in Tiverton. Braithe offered a small smile and a nod in return. Her smile twisted into a grimace as she flexed her still-mending arm.
"Potions only do so much, I take it?" The woman kept a respectful distance. Her gaze flickered between the girl, the lamp, and a higher-up cot.
Braithe nodded. "Reckon so." She opened her mouth, thought to continue speaking, but stopped herself.
The woman caught the hesitation, tilted her head slightly. "You were going to say something?"
Braithe's jaw worked, chewing on words she couldn't quite form. Finally: "Just... potions patch you up, but they don't..." She gestured vaguely at herself, at the bandages, at everything. "Don't fix what's wrong underneath, I s'pose."
The merchant woman's expression softened. She moved to her own cot, sat down with practiced care. "No, they don't." A pause. "I saw you when they hauled you aboard. Thought you were dead, truth be told."
"Might've been easier." The words slipped out before Braithe could catch them. She grimaced. Her cot swayed as she shifted her weight.
"Maybe." The woman pulled a small leather pouch from her traveling bag, then unwrapped something that smelled of honey and herbs. "But then who would've helped me reset my accounts ledger when that sailor knocked it into the bilge water yesterday?"
Braithe blinked. "That was--"
"You, yes. You didn't have to. Most wouldn't have." The woman broke off a piece of what looked like candied ginger. "For the nausea." She held it out to Braithe. "Ship's motion gets worse when you're healing."
Braithe stared at the offered sweet like it might bite her. Kindness without transaction, without threat -- she'd almost forgotten what that looked like. Her fingers twitched toward it, but recoiled, as though reaching for a coal.
"Take it," the woman said gently. "No debts attached."
The words hit something raw in Braithe's chest. She thought of her mentor's lessons, always edged with reminder of what she owed him. I saved you from the gallows. I taught you letters. I made you more than a gutter rat. Every kindness a chain.
She took the ginger, popped it into her mouth, and let it dissolve on her tongue. The burn of it mixed with sweetness, settling her stomach and something else besides.
"Thanks," she managed, the word rusty from disuse.
The woman smiled--not the practiced merchant's smile Braithe expected, but something smaller, realer. "We're all just trying to make it to port, aren't we?"
Braithe nodded slowly. Through the porthole, she could see the horizon tilting with the waves. Somewhere behind them was Kelt, her mentor, and all her dead. Somewhere ahead was... what? More running? More fighting?
She glanced at her ruined journal, at the ink staining her shield like old blood. Maybe she'd try writing again tomorrow. Maybe she'd write about something other than vengeance.
"Your shield," the merchant woman observed. "The quarterings—are those your arms?"
Braithe barked a laugh that had no humor in it. "Nah. Belonged to..." She stopped, swallowed. "Someone who thought he could make me into somethin' I wasn't."
"And what are you, then?"
The question hung in the salt-thick air. Braithe pressed her thumb against the healing cut on her arm, just hard enough to ground herself.
"Still figurin' that out."
She hoped something in Edana would give her an answer.