I took a chance in saying it. “You know Isolde would hate you, right?” I took a step toward him.
He didn’t blink as I looked him in the eye, but the courage I’d had flickered out the moment I invoked her name. He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t immune to Isolde’s memory. It snaked around me and squeezed.
Clove’s hands slid into the pockets of his jacket. “Get on that dock. Now.”
I looked at him for another moment before I shoved the chest back into his hands and pulled the hood of my jacket up. I said nothing as I climbed over the rail and down the ladder into a crowd of dockworkers on the slip. Zola stood at the edge before the harbor master, unfolding a parchment with the fake crest imprinted at its corner. I watched the man closely, wondering if he would catch it. Sailing under a false crest was a crime that would get you barred from stepping foot on another ship for as long as you lived.
The harbor master scribbled into his book, double checking the document before he closed it. “I don’t like unscheduled ships on this dock,” he grunted.
“We’ll be in and out. Just need a few supplies before we get to Bastian,” Zola said, his manner civil and cool.
The harbor master was ready to argue, but a moment later Zola pulled a small purse from the pocket of his jacket, holding it between them. The harbor master looked over his shoulder to the main dock before he took it without another word.
Clove landed on the dock beside me, and Zola gave him a nod before he started toward the village. I followed on Clove’s heels, weaving in and out of the hucksters and shipwrights until we made it to the street.
The cobblestones were wide and flat, unlike the round ones in Ceros, but more than that, they were clean. Not a single smear of mud or even a pile of discarded harbor supplies lay on the street, and the windows of every building sparkled.
The mist was beginning to thin in the brightening sunlight, and I looked up to the redbrick buildings as we passed. Round windows were set into their faces, reflecting Clove and me as we passed. It was a familiar scene, the two of us. One that I didn’t want to look at.
I’d heard almost nothing about the port town of Sagsay Holm except that my father had been here a few times when the Trade Council of the Narrows met with the Trade Council of the Unnamed Sea. Back then, he’d been playing hand after hand to get a license to trade in these waters. Whatever he’d done to finally make it happen probably wasn’t legal, but in the end, he’d gotten what he wanted.
Clove shouldered through the crowd and I stayed close, following in the wake of his steps. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, taking turn after turn without looking at the hand-painted signs that marked the streets and alleys. When he finally stopped, we were standing beneath a faceted, circular window. The panes were fit together like a puzzle, reflecting the deepening blue of the sky behind us.
Clove shifted the chest beneath one arm and reached up to tap the brass knocker. The sound of it echoed with a ping around us, but it was quiet behind the door, the window dark. When he knocked again, it suddenly opened.
A small woman clad in a worn leather apron stood before us. Her face was flushed red, a bit of dark hair sticking to her wide forehead. “Yes?”
“Looking to turn over,” Clove answered, not mincing words.
“All right.” She let the door swing open, pulling a stack of papers from the pocket of her apron. Her nose scrunched until her spectacles fell into place. “We’re a little tight this week.”
“I need them today.”
Her hands froze, and she looked at him over the rim of her spectacles before she laughed. “Not possible.” When he said nothing, she set one hand on her hip. “Look, we have a schedule—”
“I understand.” Clove was already reaching into his jacket. He pulled out a sizable purse, holding it out without a word. “For the trouble.” When her eyes narrowed, he pushed it toward her. “In addition to the fee, of course.”
She seemed to think about that, her mouth twisting up on one side.
It was one of many purses I’d seen him and Zola pull from their pockets, and I was beginning to wonder if Zola had wagered his entire fortune on this venture. He was clearly in a hurry, and he was willing to take chances. What required a two-day dive and a rush turnover in Sagsay Holm? He’d risen a fake crest over the Luna and whatever documents he used to make port had to be forgeries. What could possibly be worth losing his trade license?
The woman hesitated for another breath before she finally took the purse and disappeared in the doorway. Clove climbed the steps, following her inside, and I closed the door behind us.
Immediately, the hum of gemstone woke in the air. The deep reverberation of carnelian and the high-pitched song of amber. The low and steady buzz of onyx. The sounds pressed around me like the pressure of water on a dive.
She led us to a small sitting room lit only by a large window.
“Tea?” The woman pulled the apron over her head and hung it on the wall. “It’s going to be a while.”
Clove answered with a nod and she opened a sliding door, where a man was sitting at a wooden table in the workshop.
“It’s a rush.” She dropped the purse onto the wooden table and he looked up, eyeing us through the open door.
The woman leaned over the table, speaking too low for us to hear, and the man set the piece of quartz he was working on into the box in front of him. The stone in his merchant’s ring flashed. The metal was worn and scraped, which meant he’d been a merchant for some time.
I took the seat beside the cold fireplace so I had a good view of him. It wasn’t unheard of for low-level gem merchants to make swaps here and there when they cleaned and cut hauls. It was one of a few ways fakes made it into the gem trade.
He cleared the table quickly, looking us up and down. “You just come from the Narrows?”
A teapot lid clinked on the other side of the wall.
“We did,” Clove answered, clearly suspicious.
“You better not be bringing any of that trouble here,” he grunted.
“What trouble?” I asked, but Clove gave me a sharp look as if to silence me.
“That business with the burning ships,” the man said. “Was all I heard about yesterday at the merchant’s house.”
Clove’s eyes drifted back to me.
“Some trader in the Narrows is going port to port, setting fire to ships. Looking for a vessel called the Luna.”
I froze, my heart jumping up into my throat.
Saint. Or West. It had to be.
But West and the crew of the Marigold wouldn’t be able to do anything so brazen without catching the Trade Council’s retribution. If they were looking for me, they’d do it quietly. But ships burning at every port in the Narrows … that was something my father would do.
I let out a shaking breath. A timid smile lifted on my trembling lips, and I turned toward the window to brush a tear from the corner of my eye before Clove caught sight of me. He couldn’t be surprised. He knew my father better than even I did.
I hadn’t even let myself hope for it, but somehow I’d known deep down that he would come for me.
The man at the table opened the chest, and his eyes widened before he picked up the first stone—a piece of black tourmaline. He didn’t waste any time, lowering the eyeglass and getting straight to work with a fine pick.
Clove sank into a chair beside the bricked fireplace across the room, setting one foot up onto his knee. “You going to tell me what happened on that dive yesterday?”
I kept my voice low, not taking my eyes off the merchant. “You going to tell me what Saint did to make you join up with Zola?” I could feel Clove’s stare narrow on me. “That’s what happened, right? Saint betrayed you somehow and you thought you’d get revenge. No one knows Saint’s operation like you do, and no one else knows about the daughter he fathered. That makes you quite the prize for Zola.”
The woman pushed back into the sitting room with a tray of tea, setting it on th
e low table with a clatter. She filled Clove’s cup before she filled mine, but I only stared into it, watching the ripple of light on its surface.
“Anything else I can get you?”
Clove dismissed her with a flick of his hand, and she took the apron from the hook before making her way into the workshop. She sat across the table from the man, picking up the next stone on the pile.
“I saw Saint. In Ceros,” I said. “He told me you were gone.”
Clove brought the cup to his lips, sipping sharply.
“I thought that meant you were dead.” The words fell heavy in the silent room.
“Well, I’m not.”
I picked up the cup, following the vine of hand-painted flowers along the rim with the tip of my finger. “Can’t help but think,” I said, bringing it to my lips and meeting his eyes through the wisp of steam curling into the air between us, “you might as well be.”
TEN
The deck of the Luna was washed in lantern light by the time we made it back to the ship.
Clove had me check the gems twice before we left the merchant, putting us well after sundown. They’d done a good job in the time they’d been given, so I didn’t point out that a few of the edges and points weren’t as sharp as they should be. Gems were gems. As long as they weighed out, I couldn’t care less what they looked like.
“Make ready!” Sagsay Holm glittered behind us as Zola called out the orders and the crew snapped into rhythm, unleashing the ship from the harbor.
Three figures climbed the masts in lockstep, working the lines to bring down the sheets, and before we’d even cleared the dock, the wind filled them into perfect white arcs against the black sky. The sails on the Luna made the ones on the Marigold seem small, and as soon as I thought it, I pushed the vision of the golden ship from my mind, ignoring the feeling that writhed inside me.
When the ship made it out of the bay, Zola murmured something under his breath to his navigator, and Clove dropped his hands from the helm and followed Zola into his quarters. The door closed behind them, and I studied the string of stars lifting up over the horizon. We were bearing north, not south.
I watched the shadows slide beneath the door of the helmsman’s quarters, thinking. We were farther from the Narrows than I’d ever been. The Unnamed Sea was a thing painted in my mind by the bright colors of my mother’s stories, but like the Narrows, it was filled with cutthroat traders, devious merchants, and powerful guilds. By the time Zola finished what he was doing, he’d probably be dead. And when the price for his sins was called in, I didn’t want to be anywhere near the Luna.
I went up the steps to the quarterdeck and leaned over the stern. The ship carved a gentle wake in the sea below, folding the dark water into white foam. Calla was stowing the lines, watching me warily as she wound the ropes. When she was finished she took the steps down to the main deck, and I looked around me before I flung one leg over the rail.
The ornate carving of the Luna’s wooden hull rose and fell in sweeping waves around the window of the helmsman’s quarters. I followed its shape with the toes of my boots, sliding across the stern until I could see the light from Zola’s cabin slicing through the dark between the slats of closed shutters.
I reached up, finding the lip of the window, and held close to the ship so I could wedge myself against the wood. The candlelit room came into view, and I squinted, eyeing the mirror that hung beside the door. In its reflection I could see Clove standing beside the small wooden table in the corner, a green glass of rye clutched in his big hand.
Zola sat at the desk before him, looking over the ledgers carefully. “It’s enough.”
“How do you know?” Clove asked, his worn voice barely audible over the sound of the water rushing below.
“Because it has to be enough.”
Clove answered with a silent nod, bringing the rye to his lips. The light glinted off the glass like a stone in a gem lamp.
Zola picked up the rye bottle. “What else?”
It took me a moment to realize that Clove was hesitating, staring into the corner of the room absently before he spoke. “There was talk in the village.”
“Oh?” Zola’s tone turned up, and when I caught his reflection in the mirror again, his face was lit in sly humor.
“Word reached Sagsay Holm yesterday that someone’s going port to port in the Narrows.” He paused. “Burning ships.”
Zola paled, and I wasn’t sure why. He had to know it wasn’t safe to leave his fleet behind in the Narrows. Whatever had brought him to the Unnamed Sea had to have been worth it to him. His hand shook just enough to spill a little of the rye on the desk, but he didn’t look up.
“Your ships, I suspect,” Clove added.
My fingers clamped down harder on the sill of the window.
“Saint?”
“West,” Clove breathed.
My breath hitched, the swift flare of fear making me still. If West was burning ships in the Narrows, he was putting the Marigold and its crew at risk. He couldn’t hide something like that from the Trade Council like Saint could.
“At least six ships gone,” Clove said. “Several crew dead. Probably more by now.”
I breathed through the sting lighting my eyes. Zola said that night in his quarters that West had enough blood on his hands to paint the Marigold red. I didn’t want to believe it, but there was some small part of me that already did.
“It doesn’t matter.” Zola was doing a poor job of keeping his fury at bay. “Our future and our fortune both lie in Bastian.”
“Bastian.” My mouth moved around the word.
We weren’t headed south because we weren’t taking this haul back to the Narrows. The Luna was going to Bastian.
“I want every inch of this ship cleaned and polished before we dock, understand? Every set of hands better be working from the time the sun comes up to the moment I see land on the horizon. I’m not making port in Bastian looking like a Waterside stray,” Zola muttered, taking the rye in one shot and pouring another.
Clove looked into his glass, swirling what was left of the amber spirit. “She’ll know the moment we dock. She knows everything that happens in that harbor.”
“Good.” Zola smirked. “Then she’ll be expecting us.”
I studied Zola’s face, confused. But slowly, the pieces began to fit together, the thoughts swirling in my mind before landing.
Holland.
He wasn’t using the haul to start a new venture beyond the Narrows. Zola was paying a debt. For years, he hadn’t been able to sail these waters without getting his throat cut by Holland. He’d finally found a way to make good with her, but how? Three hundred carats of gemstone was nothing to the most powerful gem trader in the Unnamed Sea.
Zola wasn’t lying when he said that this wasn’t about me or West. It wasn’t even about Saint.
My fingers slipped on the dew-slicked frame and I caught myself on the shutter, clinging to the hull.
When I looked back up, Clove’s eyes were on the window, and I held my breath, hidden in the darkness. His eyes narrowed, as if they were pinned on mine. He was stalking across the cabin in the next moment, and I swung back, pressing myself to the carving beside the window. The shutter swung open, slamming on the wood, and I watched his hand appear on the sill, the moonlight catching the gold ring on his finger. I tried not to move, the pain in my leg throbbing as I pushed the heel of my boot into the ledge to keep myself still.
But a moment later, the shutters closed, locking in place.
He hadn’t seen me. He couldn’t have seen me. But the beat of my heart faltered, my blood running hot.
I reached up, hauling myself back to the railing, and threw myself onto the quarterdeck. I raced to the steps and swung myself over them, landing on the deck with both feet, and the stitches in my thigh pulled, stinging. The men at the helm looked up at me wide-eyed as I walked to the passageway and slipped into the darkness.
The door to the helmsman’s quarters was alre
ady opening, and I stepped around the light it painted on the deck before I made my way below. Footsteps sounded overhead as I ran down the hallway to the crew’s cabin, weaving between the hammocks until I found the third row. Ryland was asleep and I ducked under him, not bothering with my boots as I sank back into the quilted fabric of my own hammock. I pulled my knees to my chest, shaking.
The shadows in the darkened doorway moved, and I found the knife at my belt, waiting. Zola had taken great care to hide what he was doing in the Unnamed Sea, and if he thought I’d found him out, there was no way he was letting me go back to the Narrows. There was no way he was going to let me leave this ship alive.
I stared into the darkness, clutching the knife against my chest as a figure took shape beneath the bulkhead. I squinted my eyes, trying to make it out. When a beam of light flashed over a head of silvery blond hair, I swallowed to keep from crying out.
Clove. He had seen me.
His shadow moved slowly through the hammocks, his footsteps silent as he crept closer. He peered into each one before he moved on, and when he made it to the next row, I pressed a hand over my mouth, trying to stay still. If I was quick enough, I could strike first. Drive the blade of my knife up into his gut before he could get his hands on me. But the thought made my stomach roil, a single tear rolling from the corner of my eye.
He was a bastard and he was a traitor. But he was still Clove.
I swallowed down a cry as he stopped at the hammock beside mine. Another step, and his legs were next to me as he looked into Ryland’s hammock. He stopped then, and I lifted the knife, measuring the angle. If I stabbed him beneath the ribs, catching a lung, it would be enough to keep him from running after me. I hoped.
The blade shook as I lifted it, waiting for him to come low, but he wasn’t moving. The glint of a knife shone in the darkness as Clove lifted his hands, reaching into Ryland’s hammock. I went still, watching his face from below and trying not to breathe. But Clove’s eyes were expressionless, the cool set of his mouth relaxed, his eyes soft.
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