That was what Willa had meant when she said that she hadn’t chosen this life. West had chosen it for her. “And he agreed?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t throw me over. He said I’d learn to survive or I didn’t belong on the sea.”
“Do you ever wish he hadn’t brought you onto the ship?” I whispered.
“Every day,” she answered without hesitation. “But he didn’t want to leave me in Waterside. And now I don’t want to leave him on the Marigold.”
It was the curse that shackled anyone who loved anyone in the Narrows. Through the crack in the door, I could see West pinching his eyes closed as the physician snipped the length of thread he was stitching with.
“What’s with you and Saint, anyway?” Willa leaned in closer to me, lowering her voice.
I straightened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, why cross the Narrows to crew for a man like that? You couldn’t have honestly thought he’d take you on.”
I stared at her, my teeth clenched. “I—”
The physician pushed through the door with his bag clutched to his chest and went down the stairs grumbling, his white shirt now stained with fresh blood. Through the door, West had one hand pressed to his side as he drained another bottle of rye.
“Get in here.” His gravelly voice drifted out into the hallway.
The crew filed into the cramped room, all looking to West. He was mostly cleaned up, but he was covered in stitches and the bruising was only getting worse. If he’d been left in the maze of Waterside another day or two, he might have taken his last breaths there.
“Tell me.” He touched the corner of his swollen lip with his knuckle.
Hamish took a deep breath before he said, “The sails aren’t salvageable. If we patch them, they’ll give in at the first storm we see. And with the inventory losses, we don’t have enough coin to get back on the water.”
West’s gaze drifted past us as he thought. “What if we borrow until Sowan?”
Hamish shook his head. “No one will lend that much.”
“Let me see.” He held out his hand, and Hamish set his book into it.
We stood silently as West flipped through the pages, his finger dragging over the numbers. When he finally closed it, he sighed. “I’ll go to Saint.”
“No.” Willa’s hands dropped to her sides suddenly. “You already owe.”
“So, I’ll extend.”
“No, West,” she said again.
“You want to go back to crewing on whatever crew will take you?” he snapped.
Her eyes narrowed. “No. But at least this way, you can give him back the ship. Call it square.”
“And lose the Marigold?” He glared up at her incredulously.
“It’s better than selling the only bit of your soul you have left. It’s a debt you’ll never come out from under.”
West looked to the others. “What do you think?”
Hamish was the first to answer. “I think Willa’s right. But so are you. Saint is the only way out of this.”
Auster and Paj nodded in agreement, avoiding Willa’s fierce gaze.
West growled as he stood, his hand returning to the dark spread of blue on his ribs.
Willa reached out to steady him. “Where are you going?”
“To the Pinch. We’ll borrow from Saint and find another way out of this mess.”
“I, uh … I don’t think you need to go to the Pinch to talk to Saint,” Auster said, his eyes going wide as he leaned into the frame of the window.
I went to stand behind him, peering over his shoulder into the street. A figure in the rich blue of a fine coat was aglow in the darkening light, a sea of people like parting waters before him.
Saint.
“Get her out of here.” West ran a hand through his wild hair, tucking it behind his ears.
Willa took hold of my arm, shoving me across the room.
“Wait!” I pushed against her, but Paj took my other arm, pulling me back into the hallway.
“You want to make this worse?” Willa spat. She opened the door of the next room and pushed me inside.
“Is that even possible?” I wrenched free of her, and Paj closed the door, leaving us alone in the dark.
Willa lit the candle on the table, and I listened to the hum of the tavern quiet just before heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs.
“Move!” Saint’s booming voice bellowed in the hallway, followed by the door slamming on its hinges.
Willa and I pressed our ears to the thin wood-plank wall between our room and West’s, and an uncomfortable silence fell, making the sound of my heartbeat ring in my ears.
“Is this what you call being a helmsman?” Saint spoke calmly, but coldly.
I moved down the wall with light steps until I found a crack where the light was spilling through. My mouth twisted to one side as West came into view. He stood tall before the window, his chin lifted despite the pain he had to be in. He looked Saint in the eye, unmoving.
“We made a deal when I gave you the Marigold.”
“You didn’t give me the Marigold,” West interrupted.
“What?”
“You didn’t give me the Marigold,” he repeated.
Saint stared at him. “I gave you an opportunity—the chance to be the helmsman of your own crew and grow your own trade. Instead, my ship is down in the harbor with slashed sails, and your crew is dragging you out of Waterside half-dead.”
“Zola—”
“I don’t want to talk about Zola. I want to talk about you.” Saint’s voice rose. “You have a problem with another trader, you handle it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get back on the water and find a way to fix those ledgers.”
West’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I can’t.”
Saint stilled. “What?”
“I don’t have the coin for new sails. Not after the storm.”
Saint’s eyes turned to slits, his nostrils flaring. “Are you telling me you’re dead in the water?”
West gave a single nod.
“And you want me to get you new sails?”
“You can add it to my debt.”
“No,” Willa whispered beside me.
A second later, Saint echoed the word. “No.”
West looked up, clearly surprised by his answer.
“You don’t bring your mess to my door, and you don’t use my coin to clean it up. If you can’t fix this, you have no business sailing that ship.”
The muscles in West’s jaw clenched, but he bit back the fury that was jumping under his skin.
“I have business you’re getting in the way of.” The hem of his coat circled his boots as he turned, but he stopped, his hand on the latch of the door. “And if I find out a single soul knows about the cargo you brought back from Jeval, you’ll be finding the pieces of your crew all over this city.”
West’s hands tightened on his belt. “That’s what this is about? Her?”
The feeling of fire writhed in my chest, and I realized suddenly that I was holding my breath.
“So, this is a punishment.” West took a step toward Saint.
“Call it what you want. Your job is to do what I tell you to. You don’t make a move without my permission. If you don’t like those arrangements, there are a hundred men down on those docks who will take your place.”
“If I hadn’t taken her off Jeval, she’d be tied to the reef right now, her bones picked clean.”
“Fable can take care of herself.” Saint’s voice deepened.
Willa’s face turned toward me, her eyes wide.
“Then why have I been bleeding coin going to that island every two weeks for the last two years? If something happened to her, we both know whose throat would be cut. I saved both our lives by bringing her here.”
My father gritted his teeth, the full brunt of his anger filling the silence. “I don’t want to see your face again until you’ve cleaned this up. If you don’t, it won’t be Zol
a coming for you. It will be me. And I won’t leave you breathing.”
The door slammed again, shaking the walls, and Saint’s footsteps moved back down the stairs. I went to the window and watched him step out into the alley. He buttoned the top of his jacket methodically before he slipped into the darkness without looking back.
Willa crossed her arms, eyeing me. “Is there something you want to tell us?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “We need to talk.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
West stood at the window as we came through the door, his eyes on the street.
“West…” Willa lifted a hand toward him, but he moved from her reach.
“He’s not going to lend us the coin. We can use the stake.”
They all went silent, their gazes pinned on him.
“We can’t,” Auster said. “We agreed we would never use it.”
“We swore,” Paj murmured behind him.
A thin silence fell between us and for the first time, I could see the faintest of cracks in the wall of this crew. “What’s the stake?” I asked.
“It’s the coin we’ve been pocketing from a side trade we’ve been running. It’s for … after.” To my surprise, Hamish was the one to answer. Maybe because it didn’t matter anymore.
“After?”
He pulled the spectacles from his face, letting them dangle from his fingers. “After we’ve bought out from Saint.”
“Only if we all agree,” West amended. “There’s enough to buy sails and cover our losses from the storm. We can get back on the sea and make the coin back.” He was trying to sound sure. “I can hire a ship to take me to the coral islands tomorrow.”
Of course. The coral islands were a cache.
Every crew had them. It was foolish to keep everything you had in one place when ships could sink and city posts could be raided while you were out to sea. Any crew with half a brain had more than one cache to spread out their coin.
“It’s taken us two years to save that much,” Willa said.
West shrugged. “It’s our only choice.”
But that wasn’t true. And if I was going to make a play for a place on the crew, now was my best chance. I reached into the opening of my jacket, finding the sea dragon with my fingertips, my stomach dropping as I opened my mouth.
“It’s not the only choice,” I said, meeting West’s eyes.
Silence fell over the room again, and my skin flushed hot as their eyes landed on me. There was no going back once I said it.
“What?” Hamish looked suspicious.
“I have another way out of this,” I said, standing up straighter. “If you want it.”
He pushed the spectacles back into place. “What do you mean?”
“Take me on as the Marigold’s dredger and I’ll get your sails,” I said, the words running together in a single breath.
“No.” West’s answer was heavy on his lips.
But Willa was curious. “And how exactly are you going to do that?”
“Does it matter? I can get you the sails. Take me on as your dredger, and I’ll get you enough copper to buy yourself out from under Saint in one trade.”
Auster stood up off the wall. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s the deal.” My attention was still trained on West.
“No,” he said again, this time with a flash of anger.
Willa looked between us. “Why not? If she has a way to—”
“There’s no one better for this crew. I’m a skilled dredger,” I added.
“No!”
I recoiled, stepping back. The others looked to one another, confused.
Willa gaped at him. “We don’t have a dredger. She says she’ll front the cost of sails and buy us out from Saint. And you say no?”
“That’s right. We’re not taking her on.”
“Why not?” Willa pushed.
I gave West one last chance, letting the silence fall again. The secret burned in my throat like the rye I’d drowned in only the night before. It was something I’d never said aloud. Something I swore I’d never do. But Saint had broken his promise to me. He’d left me the Lark, but he hadn’t given me what was mine. Not what he owed me.
Now, I would break my promise to him.
“Don’t,” West whispered, reading my thoughts.
“Saint is my father.”
The tension in the room pulled tighter and a chill ran over my skin. It was something I could never unsay.
“What the—” Willa gasped.
“That’s why West had the Marigold coming to Jeval every two weeks. That’s why you traded pyre with me and only me. Saint had you checking on the daughter he abandoned across the Narrows. I didn’t know you were working for him until we were in Dern.”
I could see by the looks on their faces that they knew it was true. It was too insane not to be true.
“I was part of his deal with West when he gave him the Marigold. And you were right.” I looked to Willa. “You’ve sold your soul to a man who doesn’t have one. You’ll never buy out the Marigold. He’ll always find a way to keep you owing him. That’s what he does.”
“If Saint is your father, then…” Willa’s voice trailed off.
“Isolde was my mother. That’s why I can do what I do with the gems.”
“You’re a gem sage.”
I nodded.
“You’re not dredging for the Marigold.” West spoke evenly, but he looked as if he was using every ounce of energy he had left to do so. “Saint would never allow it. And even if he did, he’d cut all our throats if something happened to you. Taking you on is a death wish.”
But beside him, Auster looked amused. “What’s in it for you?”
I shifted on my feet, swallowing down the shame of it. “I don’t have anything else. Saint doesn’t want me.”
They all stared at me.
“If you take me on, I’ll get the Marigold back on the water and fill the hull with enough coin to pay every debt you have. That’s my offer.”
“How are you going to do that?” Hamish asked, careful not to look at West.
“I have something. Something no one knows about. It’s just waiting underwater for me to come get it.”
“What is it?” Paj finally spoke.
“I’m not telling you unless you agree to the deal.”
Paj sighed. “Dredging a reef isn’t going to get us out of this mess, Fable.”
“It’s not a reef. And it’s more than enough to buy you out from Saint.”
A smile pulled at Willa’s mouth, her eyes sparkling.
“Leave us.” West turned back to the window. When the crew didn’t move, he shouted. “Leave us!”
The others filed out without another word. I clicked the latch closed and leaned into the door, watching him. The stitches snaked over his shoulder, breaking before they picked back up below his shoulder blade. Even like that, he was beautiful.
“How did it work?” I asked softly.
He looked out to the street, only half of his face catching the light. “How did what work?”
“You buy pyre from me on Jeval, sell it in Dern, and give Saint the profit?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t give him the profit. He didn’t want it.”
“So, you kept it?”
“It’s in the cache. Every copper. The coin I gave you when we got to Ceros is part of it.”
So that’s why we stopped at the coral islands on the way to Dern. “All this time, I thought I was making my own way. I thought I’d found a way to survive,” I whispered.
“You did.”
“No, I didn’t. The only reason I didn’t starve to death on that island is because of you.” The words seemed to embarrass him. His eyes dropped to the ground between us. “You could have lied to Saint about going. He would have never known.”
“I wouldn’t do that to him.”
“But you’ll run your own side trade and pocket off his ledgers?”
“That’s
different,” he said simply.
“Don’t tell me you admire the man who’s got you pinned under his thumb?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered.
“Are you sure about that?”
He seemed to really consider the question before he answered. “A trader picked me up out of Waterside and put me on a ship when I was nine years old. He taught me everything I know about sailing and trading, but he was a bad man. Saint bought me off that ship and put me on his. He’s a rotten bastard, but he’s the only reason I’m not scraping barnacles off hulls down on the docks or rotting at the bottom of the sea.”
I didn’t want to imagine what West meant when he said the trader was a bad man. I could see by the way he swallowed between the words that he was ashamed of it, whatever it was.
“That’s how he knew he could trust you,” I said. “He’s good at that—making sure everyone owes him just enough.”
“He’s smart.”
I shook my head. “How can you defend him after what he just did? He cut you loose.”
“Because he was right. I’m responsible for my crew and my ship. I messed up. And he didn’t cut us loose; he’s just not going to bail us out.”
I stared at him, speechless. West was actually defending him.
“You’re right—I admire him. The traders in the Unnamed Sea think the Narrows is eventually going to fall into their hands. Saint is showing them that we can stand on our own.”
I would never admit it, but there was a part of me that felt proud, even if the rest of me hated him. And I realized in that moment that West was maybe the only other person who could understand how both of those feelings could exist together.
“How long until you buy out from under him?”
He didn’t answer.
“How long?”
West reached up, pressing one hand to his side again as if it hurt. I wasn’t sure how he was still standing. “Sixteen years.”
I took a step toward him, waiting for him to meet my eyes before I said it. “Sixteen years or one night?”
Fable Page 17