And heard—
Nothing. Rainwater dripped from the leaves, and a fish flipped over on the surface of the pond with a soft plop. Unseen creatures splashed along the bank. If this was the language of small things, it wasn’t something I could understand.
Eight generations of Oresteias were favored by the river god, so why not me? Was it something I’d done? A tear squeezed out of my eye to spill hotly on my arm.
Back inside the cabin I changed into dry clothes, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. Rain battered the windows. For the first time since my fingers closed around that blasted letter of marque, I felt truly hopeless.
The curtain dividing Pa’s bunk from the rest of the cabin was pulled all the way across. Fee fixed a mug of tea with a dash of brandy and knocked on the beam next to the curtain. Tilting her head to one side, she chirped.
Markos didn’t answer.
I propped my head up, watching the tea grow cold on the table. I uncorked the brandy bottle and took a chug. My throat burned, but the heat was only superficial. It did nothing to thaw the chill in my heart. Fee slipped up the steps to go sit in the rain, leaving me alone. Frogmen aren’t bothered by being wet the way human people are.
The clock had ticked almost to midnight when the canvas curtain slammed across, rattling its rings. I jumped at the sound.
Markos slid into the bench across from me, a bundle tucked under his arm. Noting his red-rimmed eyes and clenched jaw, a wary fear crept through me. Something about him put me in mind of a rope stretched taut. Sooner or later, everything meets its snapping point.
“I just wanted to thank you for conveying me this far.” He took a ragged breath. “I’m leaving. For Casteria. Tonight.”
I snorted. “What are you going to do, wade there?” I rubbed my aching temples. “What’s so important about Casteria?”
He was quiet for a moment. “If I were to tell you, would you consider taking me there?”
“No.”
“What if someone’s life depended on it?” He added, “Not mine.”
I bristled at that. “What do you mean, ‘Not mine’? Do you think I would let you die, just because I don’t like you?”
“I don’t think that,” he said quickly.
“Yes, you do.” I was determined not to let him see how his words had hurt me. “Or you wouldn’t have felt you had to say it.”
It was true I hadn’t been very nice to him, but I was still responsible for him. He didn’t know the riverlands, and he wasn’t good at—well, anything. If he left Cormorant, he’d likely end up lost in the marshes. Or killed.
“What is this anyway?” I seized the bundle, dragging it across the table. He reached out to stop me, but I was too fast. I flicked the rope that bound it together, and the knot fell apart. “That’s not even a real knot.”
I unrolled the bundle, revealing two shirts, a loaf of bread, and Pa’s flintlock pistol.
My mouth fell open. “How dare you steal from us?”
“I—I’ll reimburse you, of course,” he stammered. “For these things, and for—for the oilskin coat.”
I stared incredulously at him. “You can’t take the oilskin coat.”
“It’s raining.”
My throat tightened. “You think I care about this—this stuff?” I swept the bundle onto the floor. “What about my father? How can you be so selfish—”
“I’m the one being selfish?” he roared, lunging to his feet. “They burned my mother alive!”
I was certain he could hear the rapid thump of my heartbeat. “Your parents are dead.” My voice was suddenly thick. “My pa isn’t. I made a promise. I’m taking you to Valonikos.”
He loomed over me. “So that’s it, then.” Muscles stood out in his hands as he gripped the table. “You don’t intend to let me leave.”
An uneasy feeling skittered through me. Tension breathed in the air between us. I swallowed. “No.”
We both dove for the gun at once.
He beat me to it, yanking it out of my reach. “I told you I need to get to Casteria,” he panted as he scrambled to his feet. “Perhaps you’ll take me seriously now.”
I took a step back. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of green on the cabin stairs.
Markos reacted immediately, pointing the pistol at my head. His blue eyes were like ice. “Sorry, Fee. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, but you’d better keep out of this.” I inhaled, my breath a strangled gasp, as he stepped toward me. “Or I will have to shoot her.”
Coming that close was a mistake. I kicked him between the legs. He grunted, grabbing himself with one hand. I seized the barrel of the pistol, jerking it away. He made an off-balance pass at the gun and missed, hitting me hard in the face.
Reeling back, I slammed into the sideboard.
Markos lunged after me, but I twisted to the side. The latches rattled as he hit the lockers. I sidestepped across the cabin, putting the table between us. Snarling, he advanced on me again, only to be brought up short by Fee’s knife, its point hovering between his ribs.
She shot Markos a reproachful look. It was the same one she gave me when she was disappointed in me.
I wiped blood from my lip. “Nice try.” My breath was coming hard.
His eyes widened in shock at the sight of the blood. I supposed he’d never hit a girl before. Too ungentlemanly.
He inhaled through his teeth. “A man of honor wouldn’t do that,” he muttered, adjusting his trousers. “It wasn’t a fair move.”
“Ayah?” I glanced at Fee. “Well, I try never to get into a fair fight.” And I was not a man of honor. Not even close. I swung the flintlock open. “The gun’s not loaded. And there’s a safety lever, which means even if it were loaded, it can’t be fired.”
His chest heaved. “Is there anything I can say that will convince you to take me to Casteria?”
“Yes,” I said, my throat knotting up. “Tell me the truth.”
“Caroline, please.” A strange ripple of surprise went through me. It was the first time he’d ever called me by my name, his accent rolling the r in a way that made it different from how everyone else said it. “What is it you want most in all the world?” he whispered, studying my face. “Is it coin? Your own ship? I’ll give you anything.”
I swallowed hard. “The. Truth.”
Fee cocked her head, chirping encouragingly at him.
Markos’s eyes met mine. He took a deep breath.
“I swear on the lion god, everything I am about to say is true. My name is Markos. I am the Emparch of Akhaia.” His voice broke. “My eight-year-old sister is in Casteria, and I will do anything to get to her before the Black Dogs do. I will kill anyone who stands in my way.” Tears shone in his eyes. “Even you.”
I stared at him, my heart sinking. I saw Cormorant, dilapidated and rotting in a shipyard. I saw Pa struggling against chains as the Margravina’s men hauled him away. I saw his beard growing longer, as he waited first days and then weeks. Waited for his daughter, who would never come for him.
I saw all these things, and still the choice wasn’t hard. I slumped into the bench. Across the cabin, Fee lowered the knife. It wasn’t even a choice.
“Oh gods, Markos.” Propping my elbows on the table, I dropped my head into my hands. “You’re such an idiot.”
“What does that mean?” Markos asked. His damp hair clung to his head, emphasizing his hollow eyes.
I lifted my head. “It means we’re going to Casteria.”
He turned abruptly to face the wall. For several long seconds he didn’t say anything, as his shoulders moved up and down.
“Thank you,” he finally managed, drawing an unsteady breath. “You asked for the truth. There’s only a little more to the story of what happened that night in the palace. With my father and brother dead on the floor, I ran to my mother’s rooms. My sister was already there. We traveled through a secret passage to the wine cellar where the boxes were kept.”
From the way he choked out
the story, I knew it was difficult for him, but I couldn’t help interrupting. “If Cleandros is a traitor, why didn’t he just kill you all then?”
“Our family had several escape plans. The only explanation is he didn’t know which one we would choose. Of course, he would have known the moment the crates were sealed and the magic activated.” Tugging the jewel in his ear, he continued. “I helped my mother and sister into their boxes, one stamped for Iantiporos and the other for Casteria. My mother’s maid was the one who stayed behind to have the servants load the boxes onto a cart bound for the docks. You know,” he said after a pause, “it’s only just now occurring to me to wonder what happened to her.”
“Likely she was killed,” I said sourly.
“You think I’m unfeeling.” His voice was thick. “But I thought only of my sister. My—my only hope was that she wasn’t important enough to the Theucinians, being the youngest child and a girl.”
“Markos.” Icy dread sliced through me. “Captain Melanos asked if they were going to Casteria next.”
“That’s why we need to leave now.” He stared out the window into the dark. “I have to get there first.”
Was it even possible? The Black Dogs, believing we’d somehow slipped past them, were going to hunt for Markos up the River Kars. If we made it to Siscema, we could offload our cargo at the lumberyard and pick up a good bit of speed. We might run down through Nemertes Water to the River Hanu, and then south to the Neck.
Maybe. If everything fell together perfectly.
When we blew out the lantern it was long past midnight, but I couldn’t sleep. I heard Markos in the forward cabin, flinging his weight around on the mattress.
I sat upright, swinging my legs over the edge of the bunk. Moving the pillow to the opposite end, I flopped down with my head against the timber that divided my cabin from Pa’s.
I rapped softly with my knuckle.
“I’m sorry about your mother. Did—did you love her very much?” I squirmed, the words sounding uncomfortable and false to my ears.
“Of course I didn’t love her.”
That sounded like the Markos I knew, both in the tone and general horribleness of the sentiment. Taken aback, I hesitated. “Well, if you want to talk …”
“I don’t,” he said in a strangled gulp.
“It’s just you sound upset.”
“I’m not upset, and I don’t want to talk about it.” His voice wavered. “Go away.”
Some minutes later, he spoke again. “Once my mother did her duty to my father and gave him two sons, she went to our summer house in the mountains. She only visited a few weeks out of the year.” The rhythm of his words was slow and measured, as if he recited the story of someone else’s life. “My father didn’t take an interest in me until my eighteenth birthday. It’s ironic, really—I look just like him. You’d think that would matter to my father,” he said, his voice still strangely devoid of emotion, “but it didn’t. To him I was just the spare. The only purpose of a second son, you see, is to take the first son’s place, if necessary. That isn’t to say he neglected me,” he hastened to add. “He hired the very best people …”
Hiring the best people didn’t sound like love. It sounded kind of sad.
“I am perfectly aware you think I’m cold,” he said. “But how do you mourn someone you didn’t really know? I miss the idea of my mother and father, but I miss my old life more.” He exhaled. “That’s selfish, isn’t it?”
“I think,” I said carefully, “your parents were who they were. You can’t feel guilty about that. It’s not your fault.”
“I don’t think I ever knew what it was to love someone, until Daria was born.”
I realized it was the first time he’d spoken his sister’s name. His voice had softened, making him seem sympathetic, almost likable.
“My brother, Loukas, was many years older than me.” He laughed bitterly. “Gods, I was desperate for him to pay attention to me. I was always—always running around after him. He mostly ignored me.” He took a rasping breath. “Perhaps we were a cold family. But I couldn’t be cold to Daria.” He sniffed. “Why are you being nice to me? You’ve made it clear what you think of me. You don’t have to pretend.”
“Because,” I said, “you were crying.”
The cabin was so pitch dark I couldn’t have seen my own hand in front of my face. It was easy to feel alone in that kind of dark.
“I was not.” I heard a muffled thud. If I had to guess, he’d punched the pillow. “If I was, that would be stupid, wouldn’t it? Crying because I don’t feel anything for them.”
“I said a prayer to the river god for her,” I whispered. “For your mother.”
After that, so much time went by that I began to think he was asleep. I was drifting off myself, eyes heavy and sandy. Cormorant gently rocked and creaked at anchor. Out on deck, I thought I heard Fee softly whistling a song.
“You say your god in the river talks to the wherrymen?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” I whispered, so low he couldn’t hear me. A hot tear escaped the corner of my eye, running down my temple and onto the pillow.
“I envy you,” he said quietly. “I wish Akhaia’s god talked to me.”
I don’t know whether he fell asleep then, but I did. My sleep was not restful. The pillow felt like a rock under my head, and I dropped in and out of fitful dreaming.
It began with one image that flashed over and over. My hand, skimming along the smooth rail of a ship. From the roll of the deck, I knew we were at sea. I smelled rope and tar and brine.
In a fine waistcoat and a shirt with billowing sleeves, I walked the deck. I wore a three-cornered hat and a matched set of gold pistols with engraved bone handles.
The ship was the cutter Victorianos. I hadn’t recognized her at first with her square topsail unfurled, and three foresails bulging out above the bowsprit. She was running before a following sea, her bow slicing the water with a slip-splash, slip-splash. My heart sang with the waves.
Gulls circled and dove around the cutter. One landed, gray wings flapping, on the rail.
It swiveled its head and looked right at me.
And whispered my name.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
As we lowered Cormorant’s mast to go under Gallos Bridge, the old man on the toll boat watched us through his foggy cabin window. Wet clouds hovered low over the marsh, spitting out cold raindrops.
“Who’s that?” Markos stared, his eyes hollowed from lack of sleep.
“That’s the man who works the toll boat.”
“What does he do there?”
I shrugged. “Collects the toll. If it’s dark he makes sure the lamps are lit. If it’s a big ship, he gets them to move the bridge.”
“Is that what Victorianos had to do?”
“Yes. They attach a team of horses to the turnstile, and it spins the bridge so the ship can get through.”
He looked up at the bridge with a new appreciation. “It’s too bad our mast comes down. I should’ve liked to see how they do it.”
The toll man came out of his cabin to stand at the rail. Smoke curling from the end of his pipe, he gave me a nod. “There was a cutter come through at morning tide as was looking for a wherry.” He spoke in the rolling tones of an old man who has seen all manner of things come up and down the river and won’t be bothered or hurried by any of them. “A wherry called Cormorant.”
I tried to sound casual, despite my buzzing ears and racing heart. “They said Cormorant? The last I seen of Cormorant was up at Hespera’s Watch.” I stretched over the side, dropping a coin in the toll man’s net. “Must be four days ago.”
“Them brigands been a-roaming the river. They was searching the wherries at the docks. His eyes settled on Markos. “Asking questions about a boy. But I guess you missed all the ruckus.”
Abruptly turning his face away, Markos picked up a rope end and began to coil it around a cleat. I winced. He was doing it all wrong.
The toll man blew out pipe smoke. “I told ’em, I says, ‘I ain’t seen any such boat.’ But I don’t think folk here will look kindly on them Black Dogs if they come back.” He pulled his oilskin coat aside to reveal the pistol tucked in his belt. “We looks after our own in Gallos.”
“Current carry you, sir,” I called.
As we slipped under the bridge, Markos and I exchanged grave glances. The smell of wet moss and muck surrounded us, water droplets falling with little plinks from the stone overhead. Then light poured over us, and I blinked. Cormorant had cleared the bridge.
“Up mast!” I called out. “Up sail!”
When the wind filled the sail again, I snatched the halyard from Markos’s hands. “Don’t touch the ropes.”
“I was only—”
“Making a mess.” He’d wrapped it in big, sloppy circles around the cleat. I sighed. “Look, just don’t—don’t touch anything.”
“Do you think he knew who we were?” Wiping his hands on Pa’s trousers, he nodded at the bridge as it retreated astern.
I looked grimly at Fee. “I know he did.”
“What?” His voice jumped up an octave. “Is that why he showed you the gun? As a threat?”
“That pistol wasn’t for us. He was showing me he knew who we are, and he isn’t going to tell.”
“You’re sure he knew?”
“I’ve been sailing up and down this river since I were the size of a minnow,” I said. “He knows my face and he knows Cormorant, even without her name. And he also knows if Pa isn’t with us, there must be trouble. You heard him.” A lump swelled up in my throat. I looked back, but the toll boat was out of sight. “He said we look after our own.”
It rained the rest of that day and into the night. I didn’t mind—the gray weather echoed my mood. Markos made himself scarce, only coming out of the cabin to pick listlessly at his meals.
I spent most of my time brooding alone on deck. Drops pattered on the water, ringing its surface, and thick fog hung over the riverlands. With the hood of my oilskin jacket pulled down low, I watched Fee squat by the tiller, rain streaming down her slippery face. Occasionally she tilted her head, chirping at the river. Once again I wondered what she heard that I could not.
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