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Rysn is carried out onto the quarterdeck and set in her seat, Chiri-Chiri limp in her arms, and tells the larkin softly that she has finally brought her home. The view through the gap in the spike-wall is unreal: a low flat island ringed by stone obelisks, fog beyond, a strange too-still sea — and what may be either a low natural plateau or honest-to-storms walls near the centre. The crew bunches at the rail, trailing red anticipationspren, and Rysn has to deliberately not pull herself along the rail to listen in; the floating chair has only been hers for days and she already leans on it. With the chair stowed in case they have to flee, and its gemstones in her pocket, the quarterdeck seat will have to do.

Captain Drlwan reports from the eel's nest: three spyglasses, no movement, definite structures further in, oddly little wind, treacherous-looking water. They can row through the gap if they go slowly and check depth as they go. The lookouts have also spotted gemhearts strewn on the beach among the bleached carapace of fallen greatshells, lying there as though dropped where the beasts died. Rysn authorises a slow approach, asks the captain to send for the Radiants and their party, and watches Lopen, Huio, Rushu and Cord chatting on the main deck.

The Wandersail glides in under oars, the only sound the dip of the blades — an eerie counterpoint to the storm they left behind. Cord reports luckspren in the air overhead, scattered out here in dozens but refusing to approach the island, and that Lopen thinks the shadow he glimpsed in the depths was something physical rather than something spren-side. Rysn does not entirely follow the distinction. The captain steers them through the gap and brings the ship in close enough that Rysn can pick out the husks of greatshells and the unlit diamond gemhearts among them with a borrowed spyglass; something about all that wealth lying loose nags at her. She holds Chiri-Chiri up hopefully, but the larkin only looks up at the sky, then chirps faintly when Rysn sets her in her lap and starts paying attention to something Rysn cannot see.

Rysn keeps command. She tells Rushu and Lopen she assumes they will want to be on with their secret mission inland, but suggests they let Kstled take a contingent of sailors to secure the beach first and report anything strange; non-combatants stay aboard. Rushu, technically not under Rysn's command, climbs into one of the rowboats anyway, with Lopen and Huio; Cord sensibly stays back and kneels beside Rysn's chair, attention turning between Chiri-Chiri and the sky.

Then Chiri-Chiri perks up for the first time in weeks. She stands in Rysn's lap, wings fluttering, eyes fixed upward. Cord confirms the luckspren are dropping lower. Rysn herself catches a glimpse of faint arrowhead shimmers in the air. The larkin takes off, flying with an energy Rysn has not seen in her since Hexi, chases the spren — and then, to Rysn and the captain's astonishment, dives straight off the side of the ship and into the water, vanishing beneath the rocks before anyone can react.

Rysn leans over the rail in panic. Cord whispers that the larkin followed the spren, that something is happening, something is odd. Drlwan asks, almost mildly, whether Rysn had known the creature could swim. Rysn has not. Sitting there with the loss spiking through her, she discovers a startling, fragile thing: she does not want Chiri-Chiri to find her freedom here and never come back. She has carried the larkin through her accident, her year of melancholy, and her brush with death at the hands of Voidbringers, and she does not know how to be the kind of trade-craft that lets a thing she loves go. She makes herself sit still and tells the captain she will wait here for the larkin to return, and asks to be brought word the moment the shore party reports.