“What is this, West?” A third man with skin the color of obsidian came down the steps beside me, one hand raking over his shaved head.
“It’s copper,” West snapped. “You have a problem with that?”
The girl they called Willa stared at West, her wide eyes expressionless. “Actually, I do.”
West turned to the coin master, his irritation visible in the hard set of his jaw. “Divide it among the crew, Hamish. I won’t report it. Drink your weight in rye when we get to Dern or buy yourself a new pair of boots. I don’t care what you do with it.”
That seemed to satisfy them for now, a hush falling over the deck. But the suspicion was still there in their side glances to one another. They weren’t going to argue with pocketing my coin, especially if it wasn’t going into the ship’s log. But they didn’t like the idea of me being on the Marigold, and they didn’t care if I knew it.
“Fifty-two coppers, five ways,” Hamish spoke beneath his breath, as if repeating the words made the decision final.
I glanced up to the two masts of the ship. I’d never been on deck or seen the rest of them, I’d only ever met West on the dock when they stopped in Jeval. From the looks of it, they crewed this ship with only five sets of hands, but a vessel like this should take at least ten crew members, maybe twelve.
“Four ways,” West corrected. “I don’t want a share.”
Hamish gave a single nod, and I studied West’s face, trying to read him. But there was no hint there of what he was thinking.
“You just said you took her on for the copper.” Willa glared at him.
He met her narrowed gaze, jerking his head in my direction before turning on his heel. His boots knocked against the deck as he walked past them and disappeared through an open door.
Willa let out a long breath, watching the darkened archway before she finally looked back at me. I cringed as the soft lantern light shifted to illuminate the other side of her face. Her left cheek was raw and pink, the skin healing from a bad burn. It reached up the length of her neck and over her jaw, coming to a point.
I knew exactly what it was. I’d seen wounds like that before—a long knife held over a fire until the blade glowed and pressed to someone’s face to teach a lesson. It was a punishment meant to humiliate you long after the pain subsided. Whatever crime she’d committed, she’d been made to pay for it.
It wasn’t until I looked her in the eye that I realized she was watching me inspect the mutilation. “Come on.” She dropped the lantern so that she was cloaked again in darkness and pushed past me into the archway.
I looked back once more, to the dock below. Koy would make it back to the beach any minute, and Speck wouldn’t wake from his rye-soaked stupor to find his boat gone until morning. Either way, I’d never see him or this island again.
I hoped.
The crew watched me as I pushed off the railing and followed Willa into the narrow passage, the weight of their stares pinned to my back. The handle of the lantern squeaked ahead, and I followed its light down the wooden steps and into the thick smell of pickled fish and over-ripened fruit. The crest of the Marigold was burned into the three doors that lined the wall. I lifted a finger as I passed, tracing the outline of a flower inside a wreath of leafed branches. In the center of the bloom lay a tiny, five-pointed star.
As a little girl sailing on my father’s trading ship, I knew every trader’s crest. But I’d never seen this one until the Marigold showed up two years ago on the barrier islands, looking to trade for pyre. Wherever they had come from, they had to be a low-rung crew just beginning to get their route established. But how they’d managed to get a ship and a license from the Trade Council was a question that couldn’t have a simple answer.
Willa pushed through an open doorway and hung the lantern on a rusted hook driven into the wall. I ducked inside, where patchwork hammocks swung from low-hanging beams in a small cabin.
“This is where you’ll sleep.” Willa leaned into one of the posts, her eyes trailing over me until they stopped, and I looked down to see she was eyeing the tip of the scar peeking out beneath my sleeve. “It’ll be a few days before we get to Ceros. We have to make a stop in Dern first.”
I nodded, keeping my back to the wall.
“Do you need to eat?”
“No,” I lied. I’d eaten only a single perch in two days, but I wasn’t stupid. She was trying to get me to owe them something.
“Good.” She smirked. “Because our stryker’s only stocked enough food to feed this crew. When you do need to eat, you’ll be expected to work for it.”
And there it was—the hook. I knew how this worked because I’d grown up on a ship. I’d known what game I’d have to play since I’d first made the plan to use the Marigold to get off Jeval, but I hadn’t counted on having nothing to barter with. I would have to keep my head down and do whatever was asked of me to pay the price of getting to Ceros.
But the way the girl looked at me now made me feel unsteady on my feet. I’d already gotten on the wrong side of the crew, and if I didn’t figure out a way to fix it, I’d find myself overboard before we crossed the Narrows.
I ducked below the bulkhead and found a hammock only half-hung, one end touching the wet ground. The wood and iron trunks lining the walls were bolted neatly into place, all secured with locks except for one, where the slow drip of water trickled in between the slats overhead. It sat open, a small, rusted chisel inside. Above it, a pair of boots hung by their laces on a crooked nail. Maybe the crew’s dredger.
Willa took the lantern from the wall and walked back into the passageway; the gleam of the jeweled dagger tucked into the back of her belt. She climbed the stairs, leaving me in the pitch-black as the sound of footsteps trailed across the deck. I secured the other end of the hammock on an iron hook and climbed in, my weight sinking into the thick, damp quilt.
The hum of the sea hugging the hull was the only sound except for the faint vibration of voices above. I pulled the musty air into my lungs, listening to the groan of the wood and the slosh of water. And suddenly, I was that little girl again, swaying in my hammock on the Lark.
I’d been asleep on my father’s ship when I heard the sharp ring of the bell echo out into the night. Only a few minutes later, the loud crack of the mast and the howl of an angry wind was followed by screaming. His hands had found me in the dark, his face peering down at me in the little sliver of moonlight coming from the slats above.
The night the Lark sank. The night my mother died.
And in a single moment, everything changed.
The next day, he left me behind on Jeval.
I reached into the tiny pocket I’d sewn into the waist of my pants, prying the last of my coppers free. I hadn’t given them every copper. Those six coins were the very first I’d ever earned, and I’d never spent them. I’d saved them for the most desperate of moments. Now, they were all I had left. But six coppers would only keep me fed and sheltered for a day or so in the city. If we were stopping in Dern, it would be my only chance to try and multiply my coin before we reached Ceros. If I didn’t, I’d have to show up on Saint’s doorstep empty-handed—something I swore to myself I’d never do.
A board creaked in the passageway, and my hand went straight to my belt, pulling my knife free. I stared into the shapeless, empty dark, waiting for another sound as I tucked the coppers back into the little pocket. But there was only the thrum of the storm creeping toward Jeval. The knock of a door closing as the ship tilted. I clutched the knife to my chest, listening.
Only a few days.
That’s how much longer I had to survive. Then, I’d be at my father’s door, asking him for what he promised me. What he owed me.
I reached beneath the sleeve of my shirt, finding the thickly roped scar that was carved into my arm. My finger followed it up like a maze of blood-filled veins in a pattern I had memorized. It was my father who’d given it to me, the day he left me on Jeval. I had watched in horror as he dragged the tip
of his knife through my flesh without so much as a twitch of his hand. I told myself it was the madness of losing my mother that made him do it. That his mind had been fractured by grief.
But I remembered the soft set of his mouth as he cut me. The way his head tilted to the side as my blood ran over his fingers. I’d done nothing since the last time I saw him but dream of the moment I’d see him again. I’d thought of nothing else. And now that it was so close, my stomach turned, my pulse skipping unevenly. The man who’d taught me to tie knots and read maps wasn’t the same man who’d put the knife soaked with my blood back into his belt and sailed away.
Soon, I’d be in Ceros. And I wasn’t sure anymore which man I would find.
SEVEN
The sharp ping of a pulley hitting the deck jolted me from sleep. I blinked, rubbing at my eyes as the cabin came into view. The hammock swung back and forth as an empty bottle on the ground rolled over the wood planks, and I sat up, unfolding myself from the fraying fabric.
I braced myself on the wall, moving through the passageway slowly and squinting against the bright sunlight of midday coming down the steps. The crew was already well into their duties when I stepped out onto the deck. I turned in a circle, a lump coming up in my throat as I looked out to sea. In every direction, there was only blue. Only the hard line of the horizon and the wind and the saltwater thick in the air.
I leaned out over the railing, listening to the bilge cut through the water in a familiar whisper. A smile pulled at my lips, igniting the pain of the torn skin, and I reached up, touching the hot, swollen cut.
The feeling of eyes on me made me look up to where Willa sat in a sling high on the foremast with an adze in one hand. The thin, arched blade was set into a wooden handle at a right angle with one blunt end used as a hammer. It was the tool of a ship’s bosun—the member of the crew who kept the ship afloat.
“Move.”
I jumped, pressing my back against the rail before I looked up to see the young man with shorn hair and smooth obsidian skin standing over me with a case in his hands.
“Out of the way, dredger,” he muttered, shoving past me.
“Where are we at on time, Paj?” West stepped into the open breezeway, stopping midstride when he saw me.
“Checking now.” The man he called Paj set the case down at his feet, and the sunlight hit the bronze octant inside as he opened it. He was as broad as he was tall, the sleeves of his shirt too short for his long arms.
I looked between him and West, confused until I realized he must be the Marigold’s navigator. But he was too young to hold a position like that. Really, they were all too young to be anything other than deckhands. They were boys on the edge of being men.
Paj took the octant from the velvet lining carefully, bringing the eyepiece up and pointing the scope toward the horizon. The sunlight reflected off the little mirrors as he slid the arm forward and adjusted the knobs. After a moment, he stilled, doing the calculations in his head.
West leaned into the doorway, waiting. Behind him, I could see the corner of a desk and a pair of framed windows behind a neatly made cot. It was the helmsman’s quarters.
Paj lowered the octant, looking back at West. “The storm only put us half a day behind. We can make it up if the wind stays strong and Willa keeps the sails together.”
“The sails are fine,” she snapped, glaring down at us from where she was suspended on the boom.
West gave Paj a sharp nod before he disappeared into his quarters, closing the door behind him.
“Blasted birds!” Willa shouted, covering her head with her arms as an albatross hovered beside the sail. It picked up one of the twisted locks of her hair before she swatted it away.
At the top of the mainmast, the one with the long, dark hair laughed. He was perched in the lines with bare feet, holding a wooden bowl in his hands. The birds were gathered around him, their wings flapping against the wind as they fished out whatever was inside.
He was sowing good fortune for the ship, honoring the dead who had drowned in these waters. My father had always told me that seabirds were the souls of lost traders. To turn them away or not give them a place to land or nest was bad luck. And anyone who dared to sail the Narrows needed every bit of luck they could get.
Boots hit the deck behind me, and I turned to see Willa unbuckling the sling from around her waist. Her hair was twisted like rope in long, bronze strands falling over her shoulders, and in the light, her skin was the color of the tawny sandstone that crumbled over the cliffs of Jeval.
“I’m Fable,” I said, reaching out a hand to her.
She only stared at it as she threw the sling over her shoulder. The burn on her face unfolded over her jaw, coming to a perfect point on her cheek. “You think because I’m the only girl on this ship that I want to be your friend?”
I dropped my hand. “No.”
“Then get out of my way.” She said the words through a bitter smile, waiting for me to move aside.
I took a step toward the mainmast, and she climbed the steps to the quarterdeck without looking back. It was only then that I got a good look at the ship.
The Marigold was a lorcha, just small enough to maneuver in the storms that haunted these waters, but with a hull big enough to hold decent inventory for a small trade operation. Its unique sails were what made the ship easy to spot out on the sea—like sheets of white canvas with wooden ribs, their shapes arced a bit like bat’s wings. Saint’s ship, the Lark, had been much bigger with five times as many crew. But the smell of stained wood and salty rope was something that was on every ship.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was there again. My mother up in the masts. Saint at the helm. But the memory wasn’t painted in the brilliant colors it once had been. Not like my memories of Jeval.
Every day I’d watched the green ridge of the island lifting up from the water in a slant, reaching for the sky before it dropped down at the cliffs. The trees below hid the hovels of the dredgers, but the smoke from their fires lifted up in twisting, white strands. I tried to carve the memory out of my mind. The crystal, teal waters. The way the wind sounded moving through the branches.
I didn’t want to remember it.
“Time to pay rent.”
I turned back against the wind. The young man who’d been at the top of the mast was suddenly beside me, half of his thick hair unraveling from where it was pulled back. His dark lashes rimmed gray eyes set against a warm ivory complexion. Altogether, he had the coloring of driftwood. He stood with a pile of nets in his arms, the rope crusted white with dry salt.
“Rent? I already paid West.”
“That was for passage. If you want to sleep in that hammock, it’ll be an extra charge.” He winked, his deep voice turning the words up just slightly at the ends. He was trying to hide the accent, but I could hear it. He wasn’t born in the Narrows. “And West told me to see to that.” His hand lifted, gesturing toward my face.
“So that you can add it to my tab?” I said, sucking the swollen lip between my teeth. “It’s fine.”
He turned, not waiting for me to follow. “Come on.”
I matched his gait, trying to keep up, and I saw him glance down at my bare feet on the hot deck. They were callused from the years walking on the sunbaked beach. Boots were a luxury I hadn’t been able to afford, but more than that, they didn’t have much use on Jeval.
He led me up the stairs to the quarterdeck, dropping the nets in a heaping pile at my feet. “I assume you know how to mend nets.” He didn’t wait for me to answer, handing me a white bone needle before he went back to the stack of crab traps.
The truth was that I didn’t know anything about nets. I’d only fished with traps and lines on the island because there hadn’t been anyone willing to teach me how to make them.
He unclamped the trap at his feet and got to work. I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d never used a needle or that entrusting me with the nets would probably mean losing fish. Instead,
I sat and acted like I knew exactly what I was doing.
Finding the breaks was easy enough. The fraying, splitting strands of rope were scattered but numerous. I set the needle on the deck beside me and inspected the knots, turning the net over to see every side before I cut away the damaged bits.
“You’re the stryker,” I said, not really meaning it as a question. The only one who handled the nets and traps on the Lark when I was growing up was the crew member responsible for feeding everyone. If West asked him to stitch up my lip, he was probably also entrusted with tending to wounds and sickness.
“I’m Auster.” He tossed a piece of broken wood overboard. “Ceros, huh?”
My hands stilled on the net, but he didn’t look up from the traps. “That’s right,” I answered, pulling the threads free.
“You had enough of dredging on Jeval?”
I threaded the twine through the needle and pulled to tighten it. “Sure.”
That seemed to be enough for him. He pried the broken latch from the trap and replaced it with a new one as I compared the nets to try and find out how the knots were made. We worked in the long afternoon hours, and it only took me a few tries to figure out how to stretch the net to weave the needle left to right, tightening the new sections. I caught Auster watching my hands more than once, but he said nothing, pretending not to notice each time I pulled the wrong way or missed a loop and had to redo it.
Paj reappeared below, taking the helm with West at his side, and I watched as they bore the ship east. They talked in hushed voices, West’s eyes on the horizon, and I studied the sky.
“I thought we were going to Dern,” I said, looking to Auster.
His gaze narrowed at me as he looked up from the trap. “If I were you, I wouldn’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to.”
West and Paj talked at the helm for another few minutes, watching the others climb up the masts to adjust the sails. They were changing course.
I worked on the nets until we were losing the daylight and the air turned cool, soothing my hot skin. My back and shoulders ached, my fingers starting to blister, but I finished off the line of knots I was working before I let Auster take them.
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