The Coldest Sea

by Marian Perera

  She tucked the chinrest beneath her jaw and drew the bow over the strings, playing a ballad her father had forbidden her to learn when she’d been younger, because he considered it too suggestive.

  Closed the doors and drew the curtains, flung the windows wide.

  Wearing nothing but the dew, she let the night inside.

  That which hid in full of day could no more be concealed.

  Like a rose she was unfolded, like the Tree unsealed.

  She didn’t sing, but she didn’t need to, because she guessed Vinsen recognized the music. He seemed intent on the book, but by the time she finished, he hadn’t turned a page for several minutes. Oh, he wasn’t as indifferent as he might pretend.

  “What will you do after we dock at Half Moon?” she asked after the bow shivered over the strings for the last time and she lowered the violin.

  He closed the book and set it aside. “Board the next ship heading south at all speed, to report to the Admiralty. Fallstar is going to be decommissioned, anyway.”

  And there’s the rub. Much as she cared about him, she didn’t see how the two of them could have a future together. “Then you’ll retire?”

  “I’m not sure any more,” Vinsen said. “Why?”

  She managed a shrug. “I thought if you had shore leave, you could visit me in Lyrance.”

  “If you’re in Lyrance, I will.”

  She read between the lines at once; if she left, would it be to settle down in Skybeyond with someone else? For the last time, she imagined Anthny coming to Lyrance for her, but if he did so, she would refuse. As gently as she could, because she had nothing against him, but now she knew what it was like to be with a man who loved her enough to risk his life for her.

  For the first time, she understood what the songs meant when they spoke of loving someone to distraction and beyond.

  “I won’t be marrying him,” she said.

  Vinsen didn’t answer, but he had gone still, one hand resting along the arm of his chair. In case he thought she expected him to fill that gap, she went on quickly. “He might come to his senses, as my father put it, but I’d rather work in Lyrance—if that position is still open.”

  “And if not, you’ll go back home?”

  She nodded. Where else could she be? It wasn’t as though she had training as a sailor that would make her useful on board a ship.

  “So long as I know where to find you.” He smiled, but it faded fast. “Though I don’t know how long you’re prepared to wait until I do. And I’m selfish enough to ask you to do that, even though I have nothing to offer you.”

  “Nothing?” Maggie didn’t let go easily, not when she had something worth fighting for. “Do you love me?”

  “I’ve been in love with you ever since I found out you knew what a topgallant was. Thank the Unity you’ll never write a book like that one.”

  She laughed, but Vinsen went on more seriously. “I want you to have everything you deserve, Maggie. That means a home where you’ll never need to eat your meals off a packing crate—and if the ship is decommissioned, I might not have a crate.” But he didn’t sound as he’d done when they had shared that first meal together, with weariness beneath the indifference. He was calm, but a glint in the blue eyes spoke of looking forward to a challenge. Vinsen, she realized, was never more determined than when he had his back to a wall—and yes, something he thought was worth fighting for.

  “I’ll wait,” she said. For you, as long as it takes.

  He got up and took her hand, drawing her to her feet. “We still have tonight,” he said as his arm went around her, and she tilted her head back for his mouth.

  They did have the night, their need for each other sharpened by the end of their time together, and a desperate urgency in their coupling rode the edge of control. She would have bruises come the morning, just as he had the marks she’d left, and both were drowned by the intensity of a pleasure that left her shattered. Even sleep was only a few hours of dreamless exhaustion, lying in each other’s arms, before she woke to see raindrops sliding down the windows, and Vinsen stirred beside her.

  But by then, the coast was in sight. Rain lashed steadily by afternoon, so Maggie watched from the window as Astalda maneuvered slowly into the harbor. Despite the weather, people had gathered on the docks—a ship as damaged as Fallstar was unusual and the Bleakhavener vessel was unique.

  It was well into evening by the time Fallstar was finally secured to moorings, but she couldn’t eat dinner. Leaving Vinsen proved to be more difficult than she’d expected, and she would miss him deeply.

  “I’ll write to you when I can,” he said, “but it won’t be often.”

  “I understand.” She made herself smile. “Don’t worry about me, Vinsen.”

  His gaze dropped to her stomach, just for a moment. “If you’re pregnant and you want to let me know, write back. Don’t spell it out, because if you send the letter to the Admiralty, it’ll be passed on to me, but someone else might read it first. So the letter alone will be enough.”

  There was a tap on the door, and Joama opened it to let him know they had docked. Vinsen picked up her valise, and Maggie followed him topside. The rain was drenching cold, the flickers of lanterns like drowned fireflies through the gloom as they went down the gangplank.

  “There’s a carriage house.” She took the valise from him. Best get it over with. “I have money for the fare.”

  Vinsen glanced at the sign lit by a single lantern, as if to gauge whether she could travel half a dozen yards by herself, then nodded. “I have to see the harbormaster to find out which ship is heading south. Take care, Maggie.”

  I love you, she thought, but she had no chance to say it when he kissed her, his mouth the only warmth in the world, the rain wet on both their faces. Then he was gone. She stood with her eyes closed for one last moment, not wanting to watch him walk away, before she turned and headed for the carriage house.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Eastward

  The envelope in the polished wooden rack in the instructors’ common room said simply, Margreth Juell, Ferament Academy of Performing Arts, Lyrance. But the writing was familiar, and Maggie’s heart jolted when she saw it.

  So she ate her midday meal and talked to the others at her table, never once looking at the letter until a dancing instructor helpfully brought it over. Once she finished the last mouthful, she took the letter to her room and stared at it for a long moment before she slit it open with a hairpin.

  It had been a year and a half since she had last seen Vinsen, though that was only to be expected. He had told her he would find her. Until then, she had her life to lead, and in the Academy she could do just that.

  When she had first arrived and taken up her duties, she had thought being in Lyrance would be dull after everything that had happened on the way there—but curiously, it wasn’t. While she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life teaching, the Ferament Academy selected the brightest and most self-disciplined students, rather than children whose parents had pushed them into violin lessons. That made a difference. She listened to performances, explored the city and practiced the greatharp.

  Best of all, she was paid well.

  That made her wonder if she could have been happy marrying Vinsen. She would never have chosen money over him, but her earnings meant independence. They meant she was supporting herself. Whereas if she’d lived with him on Fallstar, what could she have done other than stay in their cabin and keep him company once his duties were done? She would have enjoyed sailing, but she would have been a nonpaying passenger again, rather than an integral part of a working whole, which was what the Ferament Academy offered her.

  Besides, although she hated to admit it to herself, let alone him, she liked the gracious refinement of the Academy. It was the same thing she would have looked forward to in Skybeyond, if she had married Anthny, and
the contrast between that and Fallstar was too sharp. She tried not to compare the two, because it was hardly fair to Vinsen, and Fallstar was being taken out of service anyway.

  But then his first letter arrived, saying Fallstar was being refitted rather than decommissioned, so the crew still had employment and would rejoin the ship once it was repaired. He mentioned he had been debriefed at the Admiralty headquarters, but gave no other details of the experience. The brief letter closed with a hope that she was well and an assurance that, as soon as he could, he would come to Lyrance.

  As soon as he could. She had known better than to expect any declarations of emotion, and sure enough, there were none. He signed the letter with his initials as he always did, and she had no way to reply.

  She shoved the letter into a pigeonhole and went back to her work. By that time she knew she wasn’t pregnant, which was a relief—she would have liked to have a child some day, Vinsen’s child especially—but she could imagine Lwisa Cadder’s reaction to that. Not to mention her father’s.

  It was the middle of spring by then, and she spent most of her spare time outside. She could never get enough of soaking up the sunlight. She wrote to her family, avoiding any mention of the iceberg, though it could hardly have worried them now she was safe. Anthny wrote, saying he was sorry for the pain he had caused her in breaking their betrothal and hoping they could remain good friends. Of course, she replied, with an ease she would never have imagined possible. But then again, he wasn’t the man she was in love with.

  The man who might be anywhere on the sea by then, and who might some day ask her to give up the life she was building if she wanted to be with him. Though summer ended without any further word from Vinsen.

  By the time snow covered the last of the fallen leaves, she had begun to wonder. Surely it couldn’t have taken him a year to get shore leave? She thought of writing to him, because after all that time, he wasn’t likely to take a letter as a hint that she’d had their child, but she wasn’t sure what to say. If she’d learned anything from comparing him to Anthny, it was that a man who really wanted her wouldn’t need any playing hard-to-get on her part to come after her.

  She received a small package that winter, though, and opened it to find a wide wooden bangle inlaid with flecks of nacre. Driftwood and mother-of-pearl, gifts from the sea. She hadn’t told Vinsen when her birthday was, but he seemed to have known that just as he knew the size of her wrist.

  The bangle was satin-smooth and fitted perfectly, but she couldn’t feel very happy, because there was no letter or note in the package. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who promised forever and backed out after a year, but she wished she had some idea when she would see Vinsen again. If the answer was never, that would still be easier to bear than not knowing.

  Winter was biting, but nothing as bad as being on an iceberg, and soon it melted into her second spring there. By summer, she felt comfortably attuned to her life, as though she’d been living in Lyrance for longer than a year and a half. Anthny wrote every two months or so, told her he’d been made a Voice of the Unity and tentatively inquired whether she would come back to Fossilver soon. No, she answered, though if she paid a visit, her brothers were likely to have news of Vinsen.

  But if he couldn’t bother to let her know he was alive, she sure as hell wasn’t going to her brothers for reassurance.

  Then she received the letter.

  Sitting on her neatly made bed, she replaced the hairpin—no one in the Academy had been too scandalized by her haircut, but she needed to keep it neatly confined—and wondered whether to read it. She was still in love with him, but being reminded of him was like a stone being thrown into a lake. It took a long time for the ripples to subside. And she now dreaded being forced to make a choice between him and her home in Lyrance.

  When that happened, she didn’t know if he would win. Miri, her brother Alyster’s wife, seemed quite happy with a husband who was away at sea, but Miri always seemed to be busy with a dozen different things. Besides, with a baby on the way, Alyster had requested to be assigned to shorter runs. Maggie felt differently. If she couldn’t live with the man she wanted, it would be better to make a clean end to whatever was between them, rather than drawing it out with yearly letters and keeping both of them in a neither-here-nor-there situation.

  Bracing herself, she unfolded the letter. It had been written three weeks ago.

  Dear Maggie,

  I’ll be docking in Half Moon Harbor within the month and will pay you a call. The Admiralty was pleased to hear about how we dealt with the Bleakhaveners. Fallstar was fully refitted and has returned to active duty, taking on a cargo of wood, coal and brimstone peppers. I hope you’re well and look forward to seeing you again.

  VS

  Maggie breathed out audibly, feeling as though she’d eaten one of those brimstone peppers whole. She’d have to deal with this once and for all when he arrived, and she didn’t look forward to it. The prospect hung over her like a single thunderhead in a clear sky, not doing anything—yet—but always making her aware of its presence.

  She put it out of her mind and went to her favorite music room to practice. All the music rooms had been designed with acoustics in mind, but she especially liked the ones with windows wide enough to let sunlight spill in, concentrating it so the rooms were naturally warm. Closing her eyes, she let her fingers glide down the harp strings, soothing the tension from her.

  A week later, she was in the same room, but that time she kept the door closed so she could sing. Her voice wasn’t bad, but compared to the instructors who had trained from childhood, she was no siren. The melody filled the room, liquid as a waterfall, but a knock interrupted her.

  Hopefully whoever it was didn’t want to use the room, because she’d reserved it for the next hour. “Come in.”

  A maid was outside. “E-excuse me, Miss Juell,” she said, “but there’s someone downstairs to see you. He says his name is Captain Solarcis.”

  Maggie heard an odd ping and realized her finger had plucked one of the strings. There was a faint rise of color in the maid’s face, and she was flustered, as though she had just met a cool, commanding man with stunning good looks. Maggie could only hope she herself had never reacted the same way and never would.

  So she nodded. She was, after all, an instructor at the highly respected Ferament Academy, in complete control of herself. “You may show him in here.”

  That wasn’t usually done, since there was a parlor downstairs, but that wasn’t exactly private. Her friends among the other instructors would find out and inquire into her gentleman caller. Best to deal with the matter in a music room instead, her territory. No refreshments could be served there to prolong the process, and there wasn’t even a place for him to be seated, other than the little padded bench she occupied.

  She played scales, partly to give her hands something to do and partly to calm herself with the easy predictability of the music, until the maid knocked again. Vinsen stepped in, his boots silent on the carpeted floor, and the door shut.

  The notes fell away without an echo. Maggie got to her feet without quite knowing why she did so—perhaps out of sheer courtesy, because there were certain expectations of behavior in the Academy—but she stayed next to the bench. It pressed against her knee in a subtle but solid reminder of where she was.

  She’d expected Vinsen to look as he’d done when he had left her on the docks in the rain, but he wasn’t wearing the same colors. A deep blue-grey jacket was casually unbuttoned, and his white shirt open at the throat. Maybe he was off-duty. He certainly didn’t appear retired, since he was closely shaved and wearing boots so polished they gleamed like ice. The silver chain of his watch hung from a pocket.

  “It’s good to see you again, Maggie,” he said.

  “You too.” She managed a smile.

  His gaze traveled over her from face to foot, then returne
d. “I like your dress.”

  Maggie’s skin grew warm. Instructors were supposed to dress modestly but stylishly, as befitted their place of employment, and she was paid well enough to afford a few nice clothes. The dress was wine-colored, molding her figure and flaring out from the hips, yet almost austere in its lack of ornamentation except for the edges of lace, in the same deep shade, that just showed from under the long sleeves and hem.

  Before that moment she would have thought it the perfect dress in which to deal with him, since it made her look poised but not exactly approachable. Now, she remembered he had seen her naked, and the dress might as well have been made of gossamer.

  “Thank you.” Best not to comment on his appearance, because the Unity alone knew what that might lead to. “For the birthday gift as well. I received that and both your letters.”

  Vinsen looked relieved. “Oh, good.”

  Had he been in doubt? She felt slightly guilty. “I would have replied, but…”

  “How could you have? You didn’t know where I was, so I didn’t expect a reply unless…you know. I expected to see you well settled, doing your chosen work superlatively and looking lovely into the bargain.”

  That time, the heat traveled all the way up to the tips of her ears. Damn him, she thought, trying to recover some control. Compliments and polite chitchat would only prolong this; they both needed to get it over and done with. If he knew she was well settled, then he had to be aware she couldn’t simply uproot herself to move into his cabin on Fallstar.

  “Vinsen, why did you come here?” she said bluntly, changing that at the last moment from What do you want? Which sounded far too blatant.

  “To marry you.” He didn’t seem in the least fazed, and the cool, pleasant tone of his voice didn’t change. “Well, to propose to you. But I daresay you’ll accept.”