Page 18 - UnderEarth

cheerful roar of approval. Lake walked to the side of the ship. “Trickster!” he shouted to the seas. “Dolphin! Spirit of Water! Ruler of the Seas! Drink deep on the blood of Yanlin! Greet our newest sailors, who enter the Inner Sea for the first time. Grant them the right to sail upon your Element. Don’t trick away their lives, for they have already given you their blood. All this we ask, in the name of the Unknowable One!” And he tilted the bucket of water and blood upside down and poured its contents into the waves.
Storm stood stiffly, sandwiched between the boys. She stared into the water. Her thumb throbbed in time to her heartbeat as she watched the dark shape of a huge creature pass far below, swimming beneath the shadow of the Wayfarer.
P
“I wanted a word,” said her uncle, carefully extinguishing the lighting stick in the bucket of water beside the door. In the flare of lamplight, he studied her face. They were in the chart room – the captain’s sleeping quarters and the only private place aboard ship. “Without your shadow listening in. Although, come to think of it, Cloud hasn’t been underfoot lately. You two fallen out?”
“No.” Storm shrugged. “Not really.”
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