Beyond the Endless Sky

Chapter 13

"Clarissa, would you tell me about the Monastery?" Yannick asked. He wore his now familiar earnestness, and even though one eye was still an inch behind his telescope, his smile was wonderfully genuine.

It made Clarissa wonder if she had ever seen anyone else smile before.

Clarissa considered the request, weighing it against the various imperatives of secrecy set upon her by both the Monastery and by Captain Locklear. "I can't talk about everything. There's a lot I'm not supposed to say."

"Oh," Yannick nodded, and that earnest smile vanished. "I'm sorry."

As reflexively as if trying to catch something falling from a shelf, Clarissa opened her mouth to soothe the hurt on the young navigator's face. "No no, that's my fault. I can tell you some things. I just might pause before I answer, and I might tell you I can't talk about certain parts. But I'd love to tell you what I can."

Clarissa found a silly bit of happiness washed through her — like drinking tea on a cold day — when Yannick smiled again. He turned to face her and pushed the messy curls out of his eyes. "That would be nice. The Captain doesn't talk about his time there."

Clarissa beamed, and asked, "what did you want to know?"

"What did you learn? What were your classes like?" Yannick asked.

"Letters and numbers, first," Clarissa admitted. She thought back to the earliest lessons she could remember, being read simple stories and shown simple arithmetic involving candies. "The Abbess always said it was best to learn indisputable things first, so we were better prepared. So we learned sums and stories, working our way up to algebra and calculus, as well as the Olencian philosophists and the Volentian playwrights. Once in a while, we would get a guest lecturer from one of the academies of the Great Isles."

"What were you learning before you were sent with us?" Yannick asked.

"We had just started classes on metallurgy. The additions to iron that make different kinds of steel. Start with adding carbon, but how much and under what heats will give you different tempers, that sort of thing," Clarissa explained. The classes at the time had been rather dry, and she struggled to remember what she had been taught. But as Yannick hung on her words, she regretted her lacklustre interest in the subject.

"Really? Wow," Yannick said, and he pointed with his thumb to the now covered up Banshee. "Because the steel in that gun doesn't exist anywhere else under the sky. I don't even know what they used to make it, and the Captain is really keen to keep naval officers from knowing it exists."

"Really? It all seemed so..." Clarissa frowned and looked back at the cannon. It bothered her now, when she thought of herself leaning on her hand, twirling her hair, and wondering if she could watch the boys swim between classes. What she had glossed over was the science behind a gun the Monastery had made for the Ravens' Child, and both the science and the political implications were profound.

Her gaze fell to the deck, and she had a hard time raising it again to look Yannick in the eyes. It was humbling, to find that a life she had partially resented, would have been a precious gift to the earnest boy standing beside her.

And he would have shone in the Monastery.

"I didn't realize the skies were so cruel," Clarissa mused.

"Children of unkindness," Yannick replied, nodding as if he understood where Clarissa's thoughts were sailing to.

The wind swept Yannick's curls back, and Clarissa could see his eyes were wet.

"Yannick," Clarissa said. "Did the Captain ever ask the Monastery to take you in?"

Yannick's smile faded again, his bottom lip quivered, and his hands were clenched. "He, he did. I was turned away, they said I was too old, and I didn't have the right head for their schooling."