“Fable!” Willa shouted as I came to the edge of the dock, swung my arms back behind me, and threw myself forward, leaping for the rungs.
I caught the ropes with both hands and hit the hull, my boots dragging in the water, but the glare of a torch was already flying overhead.
“Climb!” West appeared at the railing, his hand reaching for me.
I pulled myself up the swinging ladder and just as I made it halfway, it jerked and snapped, almost throwing me from the ropes. Below, a man had hold of the last rung. He launched himself up out of the water and grabbed my boot, pulling me back down. I kicked until the heel of my foot caught his jaw and he groaned, but he was already climbing. My elbows hooked into the ropes, and I grunted, trying to hold on against his weight as my fingers reached for my belt, but it was no use. I couldn’t get to my knife, and if I let go, I would fall.
A shadow fell from overhead and a body dropped through the air, splashing into the sea below us. When I looked down, West surfaced in the black water. He swam back toward the ship as the man wrenched me back by my shirt.
West climbed up the opposite side between the ship and the ladder, and when he was face-to-face with me, he reached around my waist, taking the knife from my belt. He swung his arm out wide, bringing the blade from the side, and sank it into the man’s ribs. He screamed, his hands trying to grab ahold of me before he slipped, but West kicked him in the chest, sending him backward.
The ladder swung, and I pressed my face into the ropes, gulping air as my arms shook.
“Are you all right?” West reached through the ropes, pushing my hair back from my face and checking me over.
I turned, the harbor drifting away from us, the silhouettes of at least a dozen men standing on the dock. When Zola heard about the sails, he’d sent his crew for blood. By morning, every trader in Ceros would know that we’d made it out of the port. And after his public display of putting the crew of the Marigold in its place, the humiliation of it would fall at Zola’s feet.
In the distance, the Luna sat anchored without a single lantern lit on its deck. But he was there, watching. He had to be. And now, he wasn’t just West’s enemy. He was mine.
But the flash of something on shore made me look up to the shadows of Waterside, where the deep blue of a coat almost glowed in the dark.
Saint.
He leaned into the post on the street, unmoving, except for the hem of his coat blowing in the wind. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel his eyes on me. And if he was watching, then he knew. His own copper had paid for the sails that now stretched out over the Marigold, pulling us out to sea. And it didn’t matter who I was or what had happened between us. For the first time in my life, we were on opposite sides of a line.
“Fable.” West’s voice shook me from the thought, and I blinked, finding his face before me again. Seawater still ran down his skin, his hands clamped onto the ropes below mine, where the bloodied blade of my knife caught the moonlight between us. “You all right?” he asked again.
I nodded, looking down into his face and letting the calm in his eyes steady me. That same smooth expression that was always there. Since we left Jeval, we’d come through a storm that almost swallowed us, and Zola had nearly killed him before stripping and almost sinking the Marigold. Nothing ever seemed to shake him.
“I’m fine,” I answered.
He nodded, sliding the wet knife back into my belt. “Then get your ass on the ship.”
THIRTY-FIVE
The sun shined on the sea in a slithering beam to the east like a lantern lighting our path.
I stood at the prow with Auster, rigging the crab traps into hauling baskets we could use to bring up the cargo of the Lark. I tied off a knot, watching the calm water, the sounds of sailing plucking at every memory I had from before Jeval. My father bent low over his maps, a pipe in his mouth and a rye glass in his hand. The splash of ropes and the glow of light on the shining deck.
My eyes trailed up the mast, to where my mother would be, lying back in the nets high up above the rest of us. She told stories of diving the remote reefs in the farthest reaches of the Unnamed Sea, but she’d never told me about her life in Bastian or her time crewing for Zola before she joined up with Saint. She’d never even told me what brought her to the Narrows. And since I sat across the table from Saint at Griff’s tavern, I couldn’t help wishing I’d asked more questions about her.
The first time Isolde took me diving, I was six years old. My father was waiting on the quarterdeck of the Lark when we surfaced, that rare smile reaching up one side of his face beneath his mustache. He lifted me up over the railing and took my hand, pulling me into the helmsman’s quarters where he poured me my very first glass of rye. That night, I slept in my mother’s hammock, curled against her warmth as the wind howled against the hull.
Tempest Snare was the last stretch of water before the Unnamed Sea and a favorite landing place for the storms that had made it into a graveyard. I could feel the Narrows widening around us, making the Marigold feel small in the vast sea. Soon, we would be at the edge of it, leaving us with no reachable land.
Paj appeared in the breezeway with his instruments, unpacking the octant carefully before he got to work, making notes into the open book set on the piles of rope. I watched him slide the arms until the light caught the mirror just right.
“How long?” I asked, setting the trap down at my feet.
“We should be there by morning if the wind picks back up.”
I squinted against the light to see Auster at the top of the mainmast, a cloud of seabirds flying in a circle around him as he pulled another perch from his bucket. “What’s with the birds, anyway?” I asked.
Paj lifted his eyes, a soft smile pulling at his lips before he laughed. “He likes them.”
“Looks like they like him too,” I said.
He worked a few more minutes before he opened the box and set the octant inside. “You were really on the Lark when it went down?” he asked suddenly, slipping the book back into his vest.
I nodded, looking out at the pink and purple clouds, the sun seeming to grow and swell as it began to sink down the sky. I didn’t know if they’d heard stories about that night, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell them. It was a tale I was afraid would come alive within me if I spoke it aloud. There was a distance between the girl I was, standing on the deck of the Marigold, and the one who’d jumped from the Lark in Clove’s arms.
West came up the steps in the passageway, rolling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. He and Willa had been working in the hull since we left Ceros, seeing to the last of the damage from the storm that we couldn’t afford to hire repairmen for. He hadn’t said a word to me since we pushed off the dock. He hadn’t even looked in my direction.
“Let me see,” he said, coming to stand beside Paj.
Paj obeyed, taking the book back out and opening it to the last page he’d written on. West’s eyes ran over the numbers slowly, and a piece of his hair loosed itself, blowing across his face.
“Let’s drop anchor while the wind is weak. We’ll make up the time.”
Paj nodded.
“And the crates?” West asked Auster, even though it was clearly my job.
“Done,” Auster answered for me.
“Check the knots again.” And again, he didn’t meet my eyes. I gritted my teeth.
I came around the mast. “West—”
But he turned on his heel, walking across the deck to the breezeway. I followed him to the helmsman’s quarters, where he began working the compass over the map, checking Paj’s measurements against his own. His mouth twisted as he bit the inside of his cheek.
“What’s wrong?” I came to stand beside him, looking over the parchments.
“Nothing,” he said in a breath, dropping his compass.
I eyed him, waiting.
He thought for a moment before he came to the other side of the desk, setting a finger on the map. “This.”
The turn that sat at the center of Tempest Snare was a hard right angle, a difficult maneuver for any vessel bigger than a fishing boat. It would take expert precision to pull it off.
“Is there a way around it?” He studied the shapes of the reefs.
“I don’t think so,” I answered. “Not without scraping bottom.”
“It will have to be perfect,” he murmured.
“Then it will be.”
He leaned into both hands, the muscles in his arms surfacing beneath his gold-painted skin. “We need to be back in Dern in the next few days if we’re going to make this trade without notice.”
He was right. We’d have to work fast, but if Paj’s calculations were good, we could get the haul up onto the Marigold before the next day was out.
“That’s how he did it, isn’t it?” West sat in the chair, looking up at me.
“What?”
“Tempest Snare. That’s how Saint built his fortune and started his trade.”
“Yes,” I answered. “He spent years mapping the Snare before he started his first route. He used the coin from dredging shipwrecks to buy his first vessel.”
West was quiet, as if he was picturing it. As if he was imagining himself in Saint’s shoes.
The string of white adder stones chimed together as they swayed in the open window behind him. “Do you think they really bring luck?” I asked.
He looked amused by the question. “They’ve worked so far.”
The set of his mouth changed, pulling up on one side, and I could hear an unspoken answer in the words, but I didn’t know what it was.
I picked up the white stone at the corner of his desk. “What is this?”
“It’s from Waterside.”
“Oh.” I set it back down, feeling suddenly embarrassed.
His eyes flickered up to me. “Saint gave it to me when I got the Marigold. To remind me where I came from.”
I sat on the edge of the desk, smirking incredulously. Saint had wanted West to remember his place. And for some reason, West had kept it.
“I know that you know Willa’s my sister,” he said, his voice hardening again. “And I know you went to see our mother.”
I tried to read him, looking for any trace of the anger that was usually lit on his face. But he still looked up at me with eyes that were full of words he wasn’t saying.
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know where we were—”
“It doesn’t matter.” He set his elbows on the desk, scratching at his jaw, and I wondered why he said it. It did matter. It was likely one of the only things that really mattered to him.
“How have you kept it from the others all this time?”
“Maybe they do know, but they aren’t going to say it. They don’t ask questions. But Willa and I agreed a long time ago to never tell anyone we knew each other.”
I nodded. To tell someone that Willa was his sister was to give them power over him. And her. It was the same reason why no one outside of this ship knew about Auster and Paj.
“Willa had a better chance crewing on a ship than staying in Waterside, so I made it happen.” He said it as if he had to justify it. As if he knew it had come at a cost to her.
“What about your father?” I asked, my voice small.
But that pushed too far. And I wasn’t sure why I’d even asked except that I really wanted to know. “We’ll lose the light in a few hours.” He stood, going to the trunk against the wall and opening it.
“What else needs doing? I’ll help you.”
He looked over his shoulder at me, and for a moment, I thought he smiled. “I’ve got it.” He pulled a wide, flat scraper from the trunk, sliding its handle into his belt.
If he was using that tool, then he was going to clean the hull. Barnacles, mussels, seaweed, and a number of other creatures made their homes on the bottom of ships, creating their own kind of traveling reef. But in the Snare, we couldn’t afford to catch on anything. We needed the hull to slide over the seafloor.
It was a disgusting, tedious job. One that West either thought I couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
“Are you worried about the draught?” I asked. The depth at which the ship sat in the water was the first thing that could take us down on the reefs. But the Marigold’s hull was empty and with the new sails, she was moving smooth over the sea.
“Right now, I’m worried about everything.” The lid to the trunk fell closed, and he pulled his shirt over his head, wincing against the pain that erupted in his body as he lifted his arms. It dropped to his cot before he pushed past me, going out onto the deck.
I stared at the open doorway, thinking, before I followed after him. Just as I came around the corner, he stood on the rail and stepped off, disappearing over the side. A splash sounded below, and I peered back through the open door of his quarters, eyeing the white stone that sat at the corner of his desk.
I went back into the breezeway, turning the lock of the cabinet on the wall and riffling through the shelves until I found another scraper and a mallet.
Willa watched me from the quarterdeck as I kicked off my boots and climbed up onto the rail, filling my chest with air. I jumped, falling into the sea with my arms up over my head and the tools clutched in my fists. The water stirred around me, and I spun, turning under the surface until I spotted West, floating near the stern in the vast blue expanse that reached out around us. Long ribbons of seaweed trailed beneath the ship and his hands stilled on the hull as I swam to him.
The hiss and snap of the mussels adhered to the ship clicked around us, and I took the place beside West, fitting the scraper against the thick crust of barnacles and hitting it with the mallet. It broke into pieces, erupting in a white cloud before drifting down into the deep below us.
He watched me work for a moment before he lifted his tools again. He wasn’t going to let me in, like the others. He’d told me as much when he agreed to vote me on. But if I was going to be on this crew, I had to find a way to make him trust me.
Even if it meant breaking another one of Saint’s rules.
Never, under any circumstances, reveal who or what matters to you.
I was taking a risk when I jumped into the water. I was showing my hand. That I didn’t just care about the Lark or joining a crew. I cared about West. And I was becoming less and less afraid of what he might do if he knew it.
THIRTY-SIX
Tempest Snare rose above the calm water like the ridged backs of submerged dragons.
Paj stood at the prow, a wide grin on his face, the early sunlight reflecting in his eyes. His calculations had been perfect, to the hour, and we’d spotted the reefs just as dawn broke on the horizon. The labyrinth sprawled out before us for miles, the water so clear that the sand on the bottom seemed to shimmer.
Willa, Auster, and Hamish stood portside, shoulder to shoulder, and silence fell over the ship, leaving the Marigold quiet. I looked up to West, standing on the quarterdeck alone. His arms were crossed, his cap pulled low over his eyes.
The same unreadable expression was cast over his face that had been there since we’d left Ceros. And it was only now that I was beginning to see beneath it.
West stood at the edge of something. In a matter of hours, everything was going to change. For him. For the crew. The day he’d come to Jeval through that storm, he hadn’t known where it would lead. He didn’t know that when he agreed to give me passage, the winds were shifting.
There was so much about this world that couldn’t be predicted. And yet, we all knew exactly how it worked. Now, West would have choices before him that maybe he thought he’d never have. And that was enough to shake even the most stone-faced in the Narrows.
Paj took the helm, turning into the wind, and the path of the Marigold angled until the sails began to flap above us. When she began to lose speed, he let the handles spin over his fingers one way and then the other so that the rudder hinged from side to side. In a matter of moments, the ship slowed to a crawl.
�
�What’s our way in?” Paj called out to West.
West studied the reef ahead before he looked over his shoulder at me. I climbed the steps to the quarterdeck and went to the railing, pulling the map from inside my jacket. I unrolled it before me and West took one side, holding it in place.
His eyes ran over the parchment before he pointed to the opening in the reef to our left. The ridges lifted above the surface unevenly before they disappeared, making an opening.
“Once we go in, there’s no going back. Not till we get to the atoll,” he said, almost to himself.
I followed our path on the map, understanding what he meant. There would be nowhere wide enough to turn about until we made it to the Lark. If we ran aground, we were stuck, with no way out of the Snare.
“Get up there, dredger!” Auster looked up at me from the main deck, Willa at his side.
“You ready?” West’s deep voice sounded beside me, and I looked up, meeting his eyes.
Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with the need to know he believed I could do it. That I could keep my promise. To all of them. I’d thought he didn’t trust me, but what he was doing now had required every bit of his faith. He was putting the fate of the crew and the Marigold into my hands.
“Ready,” I whispered.
He rolled up the map and followed me down the steps from the quarterdeck, and I went to the mainmast, taking hold of the pegs and pulling in a deep breath before I began the climb. My heart ticked unevenly in my chest as I rose higher into the wind.
West took the helm from Paj, looking up at me as I settled against the ropes and cast my gaze out over Tempest Snare. The last time I’d seen the Snare, it was seething with the storm that sank the Lark. Now, it was sparkling beneath a clear blue sky, as if it didn’t hold the corpses of countless ship crews beneath its surface. The blue-green waters were filled with walls of craggy reef, narrow passageways winding under its façade in infinite veins. It was a maze—one that only I knew the way through.
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