Chapter 135: Going Home
The work itself mostly fell to Elisa. She leaned over the great table where a map was spread, tracing lines with her finger as she and Frisk debated loudly about distances, currents, and warning times. Marco stood nearby, listening intently. He caught the names of towns and settlements he half‑remembered from tavern tales and half‑forgotten lessons. Every once in a while, he heard ones that meant something to him, like Quillton, Barrow’s Reach, and the Gulf Isles. Still, he listened, trying to follow their argument, because the worry in Frisk’s voice made it clear that understanding would soon matter.
Eventually the shouting and arguing dulled, each objection meeting a counter until the lines on the map grew thick with marks and notations. Frisk leaned back, rubbing at his jaw, while Elisa tapped the paper with one last flourish of ink. She exhaled through her nose, satisfied enough to call it a plan. Then she looked over to Marco and crooked a finger.
“Captain,” she said, formal in the presence of another captain of Marco's caliber, “how much input do you want to have on these decisions? We can set the objectives ourselves, but it’s your ship. You do get a say.”
"I trust you," Marco said. "Just tell me where to go, and try to keep Gulf Isle in the plans."
"Way ahead of you. Frisk, the last version stands. You sail one way, we sail the other." Elisa turned to the crew. "We are sailing towards Riv's home first and spending a day there to see if anyone shows up. That's more or less the most distant part of that cluster of islands on one side, and it has good communications. Then we are going to Gulf Isle and asking around. Then we'll clear every settlement's waters on the way from there to the capital. We just need to hurry."
"We're leaving… right now?" Aethe asked. "In a hurry?"
"That's what all this mapwork was about, young woman," Frisk said. "We need to make sure, absolutely sure, that nobody is getting killed at this very moment and that nobody will get killed moving forward. That's a lot of ground to cover and a lot of danger. Elisa managed to convince me there's a way to do that without changing your itinerary much. But you are going to have to move fast. Whatever vacation you were expecting is effectively over. Sorry."
The war room was near enough to the elevator back down to The Foolish Endeavor that things took on a feel of moving even more quickly. They were in the water with Frisk in his little boat before Marco had a chance to take a breath, and a few paddles covered most of the distance to the ship by the time he had taken it. There was really only time for one question.
"Do you think we can actually do it? Just the two of us?" Marco asked.
"Maybe," Frisk said. "But if one of us can, it's you. Don't get me wrong. I still think my ship hits harder."
"But?" Marco could tell there was a but coming. "But what?"
"But I was never called out to sea. It never felt like a good idea to me, and I never went. The help I'm giving here is because I'm just here, in a good position to help. But you? You were called there, and now back. You and your friends got stronger." Frisk looked down and smiled at Marco's new ring, the one Aethe had given him. "And closer. If there's one person who is supposed to be doing the bulk of the work here, it's you."
—
The Foolish Endeavor cut back across the waves, sails full as Marco set her prow once again towards the horizon.
For most of the day they kept a steady pace, Frisk’s ship fading into the distance behind them. It was midafternoon when they passed a fishing settlement tucked against a rocky coast. For a moment Marco’s chest tightened in anticipation of the worst, but the place looked intact. Their rooftops were whole, smoke curled from chimneys, and docks were busy with workers hauling nets. Shouted queries carried over the water, and men on the piers were quick to assure them all was well. No enemy ships had been that way, at least not yet. The crew waved back, relief softening the lines of worry that had been drawn on their faces since morning.
Not long after that, night settled in, and the sea turned dark beneath the cloud-covered sky. Marco took the wheel himself, letting the others rest. Alone with the creak of timbers and the hiss of water along the hull, he kept the ship steady, eyes scanning the stars as much as the horizon.
A creak of boards came from behind him. Aethe often wandered the deck when sleep escaped her, making a quick sentry round of the rails and shadowed corners before joining him at the fore. Her presence was steadying. The rhythm of her steps reassured him the ship was watched, even when the others dreamed below.
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These steps were a bit different, though. He didn't notice until they got close, but these were heavier steps than even Aethe's sleepy ones. Marco wasn't entirely surprised when he turned to see Riv there. The big man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking like he didn’t want to admit he had something on his mind. Marco watched him approach and thought back to Riv’s past and the island he had left behind on poor terms. The only people Marco had ever met from there had been Riv’s tormentors, bullies who tried to trick him into injury or worse. It would make sense if some of that history clung to Riv, even now, and Marco braced himself for what his friend might finally want to say.
"Hey," Riv said at last.
"Hey."
Riv’s gaze drifted out toward the horizon. "How far out are we from home?" He didn’t need to say whose home he meant.
Marco adjusted the wheel. "Hard to say. Last time I sailed these waters, I was a lot slower at it. Elisa would know better, but she’s asleep."
Riv took a look back towards the hatch leading to their sleeping quarters. He seemed to consider waking Elisa up, then, but changed his mind pretty quickly.
"I’m not afraid of them anymore," Riv said suddenly.
"Yeah?"
"No. Haven’t been for a long time. Whatever they’ve been through, it hasn’t been anything like what we’ve been through. I’m stronger now. Strong enough I could beat all three of them, easy." His jaw tightened as he said it, eyes fixed on the horizon. Marco thought he might be thinking of what it would feel like to do just that.
"Yeah?" Marco asked again, quiet but steady.
Riv drew in a deep breath, readying himself to keep going.
"I’m not even sure they could still hurt me," he said. "I might be able to stand there and let them stab me, and my regeneration and armor would just keep up. Whatever they are now, they aren’t a threat to me anymore."
Marco shifted his stance at the wheel. "That’s physically. What about mentally? It wasn’t like they were ever kind people."
Riv shook his head. "I don’t think that would be a problem. I’ve got friends now, a life now. I’ve got you, Elisa, Aethe. I’ve got chickens to take care of." His mouth pulled into something like a smile. He motioned at the ship around them. "And I like taking care of all this. Tying knots, patching boards, helping her fix herself. I like being able to fight, being able to actually contribute. That’s my life now. I'm fine with it."
Marco glanced over, considered letting that last statement lay, and decided against it. "Then why are you worried, Riv?"
"I’m not worried."
"I can tell you are. You’ve hardly said a word about going home since we set it in the plans. Can you talk about it now?"
"I think so." Riv scuffed the deck with the toe of his boot. "It's like this. I had a life there. It wasn't exciting, but I liked it well enough. I was a Sturdy, I was growing, and I had friends. I could have kept doing that forever."
"But you didn't," Marco said. "We whisked you away. Did you ever think that something like that might happen? That you might go to sea?"
"Not at all. I wasn't against it, I guess. I just never thought about it. Not once. Not even a little. Then, once it was happening, I had no way out of it, so I didn't think about that much, either."
Marco exhaled, long and silently. To the extent he worried about Riv, this was the way he worried about him. Of all of them, the Sturdy had chosen this life the least. A reasonable person might expect that to make him the most likely to leave the team, and Marco worried about that on one side of things. On the other side, he just worried that in some way or another he had ripped Riv away from his own destiny, supplanting his own in the process.
"It's not like you are thinking," Riv said. "I know that face. It's the did I hurt Riv face you get when I talk about this. It's part of why I don't talk about it a lot. It's like I said. I like my life here. I like being with you all. I like being useful. It's just that I don't know, you know, what the island is like, anymore. I know how I remember it, I just don't see things exactly the same anymore. I don't know how it's going to look through my eyes now that I've seen so many other things."
"Are you worried it will look better, or worse?"
"Both and neither," Riv said. "Mostly I don't know what to expect from it. It's home, you know. It always has been. So is The Foolish Endeavor, but it's not the same."
Marco knew he wasn't quite the same as Riv, when it came down to it. He had spent his entire life dreaming of going out to sea. Whenever he had thought of himself as an adult, it had been an imagining of some bigger, stronger version of himself standing on a ship or some unknown island, fighting some terrifying beast or killing some impossibly evil pirate. He had wanted this in a way Riv hadn't, and probably still didn't.
They were very different people, but that also didn't mean that Riv's point of view was entirely alien to him, he hoped. He had some of the same apprehensions about going back to Gulf Isle, even if they were much weaker than what Riv seemed to feel. His time on Gulf Isle had been spent working towards a very specific goal in a very specific way, and even on the day he had achieved that goal, a lot of the island had begun to feel hollow to him.
Those feelings had, of course, been covered up by the fact that he was almost immediately sent reeling by events, forced to flee for his life, and then deeply entrenched in a life of danger and intrigue. But they were still there. He was different now, which meant Gulf Isle was probably very different than he was, whether he liked it or not.