Weight of Stone by Laura Anne Gilman

He would be so pleased to be off this ship, never crossing any body of water deeper or wider than the Ivy, ever again.
    Finished with her report, Mahault took an armful of the bedding off the rail and carried it belowdeck. She returned a moment later, an expression of rare pleasure on her normally solemn features. “Oh, that looks so much better. Smells much better, too. Now, if I could only take a bath …”
    Ao made a face, and Jerzy chuckled. The bathing rooms in Aleppan had been built on the old Ettonian style, sunken tubs that were filled via pipes that ran from a great furnace, giving everyone in the palazzo equal access to steaming hot water. Jerzy shared the maiar’s daughter’s longing for a long soak in water that didn’t smell of fish and salt, even if Ao thought it a foolish indulgence when there was so much bracing seawater around them, free for the taking.
    The heated baths were long behind them, now. Jerzy turned awayfrom the others, looking over the railing at the quiet shoreline, wishing again that he could be there, on solid land, not here on this boat, on the endless water.
    He realized then, suddenly, that his near-constant nausea had faded, and his legs did not wobble even as the ship bobbed up and down on the gentle swells of the cove. Sin Washer gave small blessings to go with great burdens, he supposed.
    “So, no news is good news, yes?” he asked, still watching the shore, but turning so that he could see his companions as well.
    Mahault nodded, but Ao shook his head.
    “I’d be happier if they were shouting it from rooftops,” the trader said. “It’s when bad news goes quiet that it’s worst news of all. It means that if they catch you, they don’t want anyone to know that they have you, or why. The charges were brought up so quickly, and the accusations confirmed without any real proof, no chance for your master to hear of it, much less defend you. They want to keep this quiet.”
    Jerzy had no response to that.
    “You think the Washers are involved in whatever is happening?” Mahl perched on an overturned cask next to Jerzy, her skirt, bedraggled and water-stained, gathered around her knees without shame. She was barefoot again, for better footing on the deck, the same as Jerzy, and her toes curled under against the slats of the cask as she split her attention between her companions. “Washers are Sin Washer’s heirs; they’re meant to ease pain and sorrow, not cause it.”
    “I don’t know,” Ao said. “We’ve been over it again and again, and I don’t know. They have nothing to gain on the surface, but the Collegium is deep, and anything could be happening below. If this were a negotiation, I would count all my fingers and then count all of yours, and I still wouldn’t swear we had them all still in our palms.”
    “So what do we do, Jerzy?” Mahl turned to him, her brown eyes intent. “We took on enough supplies today to last us another tenday, if we’re careful. Do we head back toward The Berengia? Or do we keep heading south? Or west?”
    “We can’t go west!” Ao protested. “Once past the tip of the Outer Lands, there’s nothing for weeks, and this ship isn’t made for that kind of travel.”
    The ship was a sleek, sweet vessel, just as the previous owner had promised, but they had already pushed her limits just coming this far. Ao was right: more would be folly.
    Jerzy shifted on his perch, uneasy with the way the question again weighed on him, the others looking to him to make a decision. Ao had more knowledge of sailing and foreign lands; Mahl was the more practical one, with better understanding of how the world worked. He was bare removed from a slave, torn too early from his training … and useless without his spellwines, his quiet-magic weak and suddenly strangely unpredictable. Panic threatened to rise up and engulf him, as it had while he was in the water, not allowing him to think, only react.
    And into that swirl of panic came a stone-cool