Chapter 14
Cale Buys a Boat
Cale waited until four o’clock in the morning—the coldest part of the night. Hamal dressed as warmly as he could, layer upon layer, and he smiled encouragingly at Rosy, who was awake and sitting up in her bed. Blankets covered her head, her shoulders, everything. Only her face was visible.
“Cold, Rosy?” he asked.
A slight delay, and then the blankets moved as she nodded.
“Well, we’ll have you warm in a minute. My grandfather and Chestirad are going to stay with you. Chestirad is a flamemaker, you know. He can heat the air, so the room will be nice and warm.” Hamal grinned. “I hope you want to stay with us, Rosy—with Cale and me, even though we’re cold people. We’re not flamemakers.”
She smiled back shyly.
When he was ready to go, with his coat and gloves and hats and scarves in place, he went over to the bed and kissed Rosy’s forehead. She actually let him do it, though she looked as stiff as a fence post. “We will be back in a few hours. You can sleep. You can eat. And then you can sleep again, if you want to, and then you’ll see us. All right?”
She stared up at him with dark eyes, her smile completely gone. He didn’t know what this look was, not exactly, but it made his heart dip toward his boots. She had been much happier the last couple of days, but now she looked scared again. He could hear her heartbeat, and it wasn’t calm.
“It will be all right, Rosy,” he said. “We will see each other again tomorrow.”
He felt awful leaving her.
Outside the inn, there were no stars. The clouds had rolled in like smoke from a monstrous fire. Hamal took a big breath of the cold air and immediately regretted it. He hunkered down, pulling up his scarves and adjusting his coat as he squinted through the darkness. How could people live in a place that was always this cold?
Lord Rhyan stepped closer to him, and the bitter night air began to forget itself.
“Thank you,” Hamal whispered.
“You’re welcome,” the flamemaker whispered back.
Cale had chosen only a few men for this early morning venture. There was Rhyan, of course, and also Vincent and Ermond, who were both weathermakers, as well as Masly. To Hamal’s surprise, they didn’t head straight for the mine. Instead, they saddled their horses and went southwest, paralleling the beach. Aren’t we headed the wrong direction? Hamal wanted to ask, but it was too cold for him to do anything but try to stay in the saddle.
An hour later, the beach road turned inland, away from the sea, and followed a river that twisted through a small forest of pines trees and scraggly bushes before suddenly depositing them at a shipping yard. Lanterns revealed men at work, most of them flamemakers or weathermakers, judging by the lack of coats. In fact, most wore only breeches and boots, leaving their chests and arms bare.
Cale dismounted. “We are going to buy a boat,” he told Hamal.
A boat? For the mine they had left back in Dursen Head?
The seer said to Rhyan, “Make sure Hamal stays warm.” Then he, Vincent, and Masly took the wooden walkway down to the office—an old, rickety structure built over both land and water. Half of it hung across the river on poles, and the other half sat on the shore. A lamp burned in one window.
Rhyan urged his horse next to Hamal’s, and the shivering slowly released Hamal’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” Hamal said again. His wished for ten more scarves.
Rhyan nodded. He wasn’t wearing a coat.
When Cale and the others returned, they had with them a man with a large white beard and a hat that said “Watercress” across the front. He wasn’t a flamemaker; Hamal could tell by the thickness of his coat. The man seemed flustered, but perhaps it was just the cold.
“This way,” Cale directed the rest of them, taking the reins of his horse from Ermond.
Multiple small boats waited along the docks. They chose the dock that was the farthest away, and as they approached, the man with the white beard pointed to a small boat with a triangular sail. Hamal wasn’t good with boats, but he thought this one might be called a sloop. He remembered that word from a conversation he’d had a long time ago with his father, who liked boats.
They left their horses with the dock manager, raised the small sail, and set off. The river carried them back toward the coast. Vincent the weathermaker provided a wind that was good and steady but uncommonly wet, so wherever they were going, Hamal reasoned they would get there quickly. But where were they going? They were supposed to be headed to a mine. Instead, they were headed out to sea.
Despite the clouds, the sky was slowly lightening, and right when Hamal started to think about breakfast, Cale said Ermond’s name, and the weathermaker slid his pack off his shoulder. He took out a long, narrow tin from under his cloak and handed it politely to Lord Rhyan, who wrapped his hands around it. The skin of his hands reddened until they seemed almost to glow—in fact, Hamal thought his hands did glow—as he warmed the contents.
“Here you go, Hamal,” the flamemaker said and twisted off the cap for him. “Something to keep you warm.”
Steam rose from the tin’s mouth. It smelled like beef broth and spices, and Hamal grinned across the boat at Cale, who smiled in reply.
Ermond dug out several more tins, and Rhyan acted as their campfire and heated them. Everyone had breakfast as they continued on their strange journey.
Two hours later, Masly looked up from the map he was studying. That was the only signal he gave, but Cale saw it and responded.
“Hold, Vincent,” Cale said.
Vincent held up his hand and the wet, icy wind dropped away. Hamal didn’t realize how loud the wind had been until the sound disappeared, and the sea grew calm. The sloop slowed in the water.
“Here, my lord?” Vincent asked.
Cale and Masly stood up both together and stared over the side of the boat into the sea. Hamal looked too, but he didn’t see anything important. The water was dark and murky, and it made him wonder what sort of interesting things were stirring beneath the boat at that very moment. Several years had passed since he last traveled through the sea.
They had some very fine roads down there.
– H –
Author’s note: I am fond of the last sentence in this chapter. “They had some very fine roads down there.” How random and curious. ❤️
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Comment below or find us on Facebook. Copyright notice: © 2026 by Lauren Stinton. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or sapient plants is purely coincidental.
