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.“You’d best be grateful.I can barely get him to eat or sleep as is.”Kamil feels his ears burn.He has to remind himself that, appearance notwithstanding, Shui is a lady and essential to his own needs.“I am grateful, but it isn’t as if he won’t be paid handsomely for his services, Miss Shui.Please don’t patronize me.”She just snorts and retreats to accomplish her duties as first mate, leaving Kamil in the care of the amicable, always mirthful medic, a man with umber-dark skin and a fluffy cloud of gray-black hair, from a kingdom neighboring Kamil’s own—a kingdom, like his, of heat and foliage and life.They bond over this, reminiscing together in the captain’s cabin as Ayzize applies poultices and fresh bandages to his foot, mitigating Kamil’s discomfort with relaxed talk.“I left Siro but a few months ago,” Kamil explains, “but I miss it more every passing day.”Tying the excess strips of Kamil’s bandage into a neat little bow, Ayzize releases his foot so he can right himself, then offers him a sympathetic smile.“The illness mustn’t help.” His accent lilts, almost nonexistent, his usage of Camlaan’s tongue elegant and musical, but it merely serves to remind Kamil how narcissistic he must sound.“I apologize for my selfishness, Ayzize,” he says, his smile self-deprecating.“Here I am, blathering on about my paltry woes, when you must have been away from Emwòd for many years yourself, much longer than I.”“Please, Kamil, don’t trouble yourself.” Ayzize beams at him.His eyes are warm and silvery, crinkled beyond just the corners, a sign of his advancing age.He uses Kamil’s name like a familiar, a friend, and that above anything puts Kamil at ease.For so long, he’s been Mr.Ramses, when at home he was only Kamil.It’s nice to have that again.“I’ve had many an adventure aboard the Galatea, and we’re always traveling, so I visit my motherland more than sufficiently.The captain and crew, however… they are my family.”Kamil ponders this, frowning.He has six sisters himself, and his mother, at least, is yet alive, clucking worriedly after his affairs as often as she’s able to despite the distance between them, keeping up with him via dozens upon dozens of letters, which he receives and sends even aboard the Galatea, thanks to the crew’s frequent supply runs into town.Although he loves this about her and longs for her hearth, he sees the serenity and contentment in Ayzize’s expression and doesn’t apologize anymore, cognizant that it will go unaccepted.“Captain Talos,” he says instead.“Why doesn’t he ever join us in the mess hall? He visits me before bed often enough, to take measurements and ask questions of me, but I….Is he really so occupied, or has he been avoiding my company?”Ayzize rumbles a melodic laugh and rises, smoothing out the velvety material of his long two-piece robe, more colorful than Kamil’s thawb.“I assure you, I’ve known Rory many years, since he was but a boy, but never have I seen him avoid an issue, even when it may have been wisest.Don’t let him vex you.” He inclines his head at Kamil and, still chortling, ambles out of the room.Kamil gawks after him, mind jumbled with thoughts.Rory.It suits the captain, a slip of a name, rolling off the tongue, a herald to glee and grins like his upbeat personality.“Rory….It’s a nice name,” he decides and promptly feels very chagrined.In an attempt to distract himself, he cracks opens the book he’d left on the bed, caressing its careworn pages and imagining Captain Talos doing the same.It’s a book of fairy tales.Most of the books on the shelf are, save some on the topics of aeronautics and automatons.Generally, he finds them all fascinating, an insight into Talos’s guarded mind and interests, but now, the words smudge together, shirking his focus.Against his better judgment, he sets it aside, laces up his boots, and makes to stand, bracing against the carpeted ground with his cane.Once in the hall, he realizes he doesn’t know where the captain has relocated to.“Captain Talos,” he calls out, propping his shoulder against the wall closest to the cabin to take some of the weight off his recovering foot.“Are you there, Captain?”A barrage of thumps reverberates below before the hatch a few feet from him, the entrance to the hold, pops up.Talos pokes his head out, sans his favored bomber hat for once, and grumbles, “What do you want?” Wisps of smoke smolder around him.“Oh, er….” Kamil gawks at the man.He looks paler than Kamil’s ever seen him in what insubstantial sunlight streaks through proximate portholes, the bluish bruises ringing his eyes and his slightly too-long red hair providing palpable foil for his sickly pallor.“I came to check your progress” is the excuse Kamil ultimately selects, and he feels it’s an appropriate one since he hasn’t really been privy to what the captain does with his prosthetic in private, “but now I can’t help wondering, which of us is truthfully ill? You look horrid, Captain.”An owlish blink greets his statement.It soon morphs into a rakish smirk.“Are you concerned about me, Mr.Ramses? How quaint.”“No,” retorts Kamil, quick and curt.“I simply question your ability to provide what I’m paying you for, if you’re liable to fall asleep at any given moment.”He regrets his scathing riposte when the man flinches, but the countenance, like the rest of the captain’s most vulnerable expressions, soon transforms into a mischievous grin.“Come down here, if you can.I’ve got something brilliant to show you.” He ducks back into the hold.Kamil doesn’t move at once.He wonders if being forced to climb down yet another ladder—something he hasn’t had recourse to do, luckily, since his first day on the airship—is punishment for his previous cheekiness.He barely knows the man, after all, so what can he really discern about his capacity for cruelness? Kamil sighs, grits his teeth, and commences his excruciating journey, too prideful to yield.Halfway down the four-rung ladder, he feels hands at his hips, which aid him along the remainder of the route, and he’s glad for a chance to compose himself before he turns to face Captain Talos.He doesn’t wear his solitary glove anymore.The adamantine surface of his mechanical arm glimmers despite the dimness, crossed with the other in front of his chest.Something flits between them and away, so swift that Kamil twists instinctively to get a glimpse of it: a strange birdlike creature, spiky feathers and beak agleam, chirping high and singsong.It darts behind one of several boilers and vanishes from view, but other fantastical sights remain: model boats in bottles; shelves stocked with nearly as many books as the Ramses’ home library; worktables like the one in the captain’s cabin piled with clockwork contraptions, from tiny animals to timepieces, some asleep, many in motion.“Did you….” Mouth an O of astonishment, Kamil cases the room.“Are all of these yours?”Captain Talos scratches his head at Kamil’s display of awe but nods.“Like I said, I’m a tinker, and damn good, in my humble opinion.”“Not to mention modest,” says Kamil, his tone dry.He’s smiling, though, and the captain beams in reply.A toy mouse scurries past them, back gray as its breathing brethren, but steely and without fur.It chases the bird till it once again abandons its sanctuary behind the boilers, and the red glow of burning coals chases their clever little bodies out of sight.Kamil regards the mechanical creatures and their inventor.“Although I suppose you have no need to be.Your work is… breathtaking.The best I’ve ever seen.You must be something of a virtuoso, Captain.”“Awww, shucks
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