It snapped.
Another strike of lightning cracked overhead, and another, until the wind slowly calmed. The water steadied with each softening wave until they were pushing up around our feet in a final gasp.
West was already towing the tender back into the water.
I jumped in with the oars and handed them to Koy as soon as we were afloat. We glided over the shallows as the Marigold drifted farther. I could already see Willa up on the mast, a bronze scope shining in her hands.
By the time we made it past the break, she’d spotted us.
The crew was already waiting when we finally reached the ship, and I caught the lowest rung of the ladder and pulled myself up, my hands so numb that I couldn’t feel the rope against my skin.
West was right behind me, his hair stuck to his face. “Anchor?”
“Yeah,” Willa answered gravely. “Lost it in that last gust.”
He cursed as he went to the rail, peering into the water.
“Hamish?” I said, pulling the small purse from West’s belt. “I need the gem lamp.”
His eyes went wide as I opened it and dumped the gem into my palm. I turned it over before picking it up between two fingers.
“Is it…?” Auster stared at it.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like onyx, but there was a translucence to it that didn’t look right. And the vibration it gave off wasn’t familiar. It was a stone I didn’t know. But without ever having seen a piece of midnight for myself, there was only one way to be sure.
“I need the gem lamp,” I said again, pushing through them to the helmsman’s quarters.
I came through the door, setting the stone into the small bronze dish on the low table and West set the lantern on the desk, filling the cabin with light.
“What do you think?” Koy leaned into the wall next to me, drops of seawater glistening as they slid down his face.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Hamish came through the door with Paj on his heels, the gem lamp in his hands. He set it down onto the desk carefully, looking up at us through the fogged lenses of his spectacles.
I sat in West’s chair and lit a match, hovering its tip over the oil chamber beneath the glass. But my fingers shook furiously, quenching the flame before it took to the wick. West caught my hand with his, turning my fingers toward the light. They were the faintest shade of blue.
“I’m all right,” I said, answering his unspoken question. Somehow, his touch was still a bit warm.
He took the quilt from his cot and set it over my shoulders as Hamish took another match and lit the lamp with nimble fingers. The glow ignited beneath the glass and I opened my hand to let West pick up the stone. He crouched down onto his heels beside me before setting the small gem onto the mirror.
I sat up, holding my breath as I peered through the eyepiece, and adjusted the lens slowly. Everyone in the cabin fell silent and I squinted as it came into focus. The faintest glow lit in its center, surrounded by opaque edges. I turned the mirror, trying to manipulate the light, and the lump in my throat expanded.
No inclusions. Not one.
“It’s not midnight,” I muttered, biting down hard onto my lip.
Willa set her hands onto the desk, leaning into them to hover over me. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I answered, defeated. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not midnight. Some kind of spinel, maybe.”
Koy was hidden in the shadowed corner of the room. “We got through two reefs today.”
He didn’t need to explain his meaning. We only had one more day before we were supposed to be on our way to meet Holland. At our best, we’d still be close to eight reefs shy. If we didn’t find the midnight, we’d be sailing back to Sagsay Holm empty-handed.
“It’ll be dark in a few hours.” Paj looked to West, waiting for orders.
“Then we start again at sunup,” West said.
Auster caught Paj by the waist, pulling him toward the door without a word. Hamish and Willa followed them, leaving West and me with Koy. I could see on Koy’s face that he was frustrated. He couldn’t have had many failed dives in his life and by now, he was nearly as hungry to find the midnight as I was. He stared at the floor silently for another moment before he stood up off the wall and walked out the door.
“The anchor?” I asked, so tired I could cry.
“Willa’s on it.” West blew out the flame on the lamp before he opened the drawer of the chest and pulled out a clean shirt. Then he ducked out, leaving me alone at his desk.
I stared at the puddle of water on the floor that he’d left, the light flitting over its smooth surface as the lantern swung on the bulkhead.
There were enough stones in these reefs to last the gem traders of the Unnamed Sea another ten years.
So, where the hell was the midnight?
I couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that I wasn’t going to find it in Yuri’s Constellation. That it was no accident that Holland’s crews hadn’t run across a single piece of midnight in the years since Isolde brought it up from the depths.
But the ship logs were clear, without so much as a day left unaccounted for. The crew had been diving in Yuri’s Constellation for nearly thirty-two days before they went back to Bastian for supplies. A day later they’d returned, with no deviations off course.
I sat up, staring into the shadows, my mind working. The thin threads of an answer glimmered to life, taking shape in the dark.
If I was right, and Isolde hadn’t found the midnight in Yuri’s Constellation, then someone had lied. But how?
If the navigator had forged the logs, there’d be at least thirty people on Holland’s ship, including the helmsman, who would have been able to report the discrepancy in the days and weeks after the dive.
But maybe it was my mother who’d lied. If Isolde had any suspicion about the value of her discovery, maybe she’d kept the stone’s origin to herself. Maybe she’d found it when she was alone.
I stood abruptly, sending the chair tipping back. It clattered on the floor behind me as my hands slid over the maps, looking for the one I’d seen days ago. The one I hadn’t even looked twice at.
When I found it, I pulled it from under the others. The Bastian Coast. I took the lantern from the wall and set it at the corner, moving my fingers over the thick, soft parchment until I found it.
Fable’s Skerry.
“West!” I studied the depths and charts noted along the shore, the map of currents that slid around the little islet. “West!”
He appeared in the dark breezeway with a dry shirt pulled over one arm. “What is it?”
“What if she didn’t find it here?” I panted. “What if she lied?”
“What?”
“Why would Isolde steal the midnight? Why would she leave Bastian?” My voice sounded far away. “She didn’t trust Holland. Maybe she didn’t want her to know where she found it.”
He was listening now, sliding the other arm into the shirt as he walked toward me. “But where? She would have had to have a ship and a crew. The log says they were here.”
“They were,” I breathed, flipping through the parchments in the drawer until I found the log. I dropped it between us. “Except for one day.” I set my finger on Bastian.
“There’s no way she found it in Bastian. There are no reefs in those waters. There isn’t even so much as a sandbar for miles.”
I pointed to the islet.
“Fable’s Skerry?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just a rock with a lighthouse on it,” he said.
“What if it’s not just a rock?”
He picked up the chair, setting it upright before he looked at the map again, thinking. “It’s just offshore of Bastian. Don’t you think if there was something there, someone would have found it?”
I let out an exhausted breath. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re looking in the wrong place. I
don’t think it’s here, West.”
I didn’t know if I was making any sense. The lack of sleep and hours in the cold water had cast my mind in a fog. But still, that feeling was there. That doubt.
“Are you sure?” West said, studying me.
I clutched the quilt tighter around me. “No.”
It was a feeling, not a fact. I paced the floor in front of him, the warmth finally beginning to return beneath my skin as my cheeks flushed hot.
“I don’t think it’s here,” I said again, my voice a whisper.
His eyes jumped back and forth on mine and I watched as he weighed out my words. After a moment, he was walking toward the open door. And as soon as he disappeared into the breezeway, his voice rang out on the deck.
“Make ready!”
THIRTY
It had only taken Willa an hour to figure out our anchor problem. She sent Koy and West back into the water to fill one of the empty iron-framed crates from the cargo hold with rocks from the seafloor. Once it was rigged, we hauled it up and secured it to the ship.
It was a temporary fix, one that wouldn’t hold against another storm. When we got to Sagsay Holm we’d have to use the last of our coin to replace the anchor, giving everyone yet another reason to be angry about West’s orders.
I sat curled up in the netting of the jib with the quilt from West’s cabin pulled tight around me. I hadn’t been able to sleep as we sailed through the night, headed for Fable’s Skerry, abandoning our last day of dredging at Yuri’s Constellation. The reefs we’d spent the last four days diving were hours behind us, and even if we turned back now, our time would be up. It was a gamble. One that put Saint’s life on the line.
Trailing footsteps slid over the deck below and I leaned forward to see Koy at the bow. He pulled a small amber bottle from the pocket of his trousers and uncorked it, taking a sip.
“No rye on the ship,” I said, smiling when he jolted, almost dropping it.
He looked up at me, taking another drink before he climbed up and sat beside me on the jib. He handed me the bottle and I gave it a sniff, holding it up to the moonlight.
“Too good for Jevali rye?” He smirked.
It was the homebrewed stuff, and the scent called to life countless memories of Speck, one of the dredgers who ran a ferrying trade on the island. I’d wrecked his skiff the night I bartered for passage on the Marigold.
“You still haven’t told me why you took the job on the Luna,” I said, taking a swig. The burn of the rye raced down my throat, exploding into my chest. I winced, breathing through it.
“Coin,” Koy answered.
“Sure.” I laughed. Koy made more coin than anyone in Jeval, and his family was taken care of. If he was taking jobs on ships, he was after something else too.
He looked at me as if he was sizing me up. Weighing the risks of telling me. “Rumor has it trade between the Unnamed Sea and the Narrows is going to expand.”
“So?”
“That means more ships coming through our waters on Jeval.”
I grinned, understanding him. Koy wanted to be ready if the ships from the Unnamed Sea and the Narrows multiplied at the barrier islands, and they would.
“I figure it’s only a matter of time before Jeval is turned into a port.”
I handed the rye back to him. “You’re serious.”
He fit the cork back into the bottle, going quiet. “You think it’s stupid.”
He immediately wished he hadn’t said it, embarrassed. I’d never seen that look on Koy. Not ever. “No, I don’t. I think it’s brilliant.”
“You do.” He sounded skeptical.
“I mean it.”
Koy gave me a nod, leaning back into the ropes.
“Can I ask you something if I swear to never tell a soul your answer?”
His eyes narrowed at me.
I took his silence as a yes. “Why’d you cut the rope?”
He scoffed, pulling the cork from the bottle again. He was quiet a long time, taking three sips before he answered. “If anyone’s going to kill you, it’s going to be me.”
“I’m serious, Koy. Why?”
He shrugged. “You’re Jevali.”
“No, I’m not.”
His gaze was pinned to the sky. “I figure if you’ve ever fallen asleep on that island not sure if you’ll wake up again, that makes you a Jevali.”
I smiled in the dark. For the first time, my memory of those years didn’t make my heart ache. He was right. We’d survived together. And that was a bond not easily broken. In a few days he’d be headed back to Jeval, and I was surprised to find that I felt the faintest feeling of regret. I’d uncovered a part of Koy in the last two weeks I’d never seen in my four years on Jeval. I was overwhelmingly glad I’d pulled him from the water that day on the reef, even if it had ended with me running for my life on the docks.
“Get down here.” Willa’s sharp tone cut the silence.
Koy looked between his feet to see her.
She dropped a coil of knotted rope at her feet.
When she walked away, Koy arched an eyebrow at me. “I think she likes me.”
I laughed, and a look of triumph lit in his eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that it felt as if we were friends. I thought maybe the same thought occurred to him before he dropped the bottle in my lap and climbed down.
“Fable.” Auster called my name from where he stood beside Paj at the helm. He tipped a chin up toward the horizon and I sat up, looking for what he saw.
Fable’s Skerry came into view as the moon set, almost invisible on the black sea. The old lighthouse was a pristine white that glowed in the dark, sitting on a thin peninsula that reached out into the water from the east side of the islet.
I jumped from the jib as West came out onto the main deck. “Reef the sheets!” He pulled his cap over his unruly hair.
I climbed the mainmast, unwinding the lines so I could slide the canvas up. My heartbeat fluttered as the grommets sang against the ropes. On the foremast Hamish did the same, watching me from the corner of his eye. He was thinking the same thing I was. I was either brilliant or stupid for making the call to leave Yuri’s Constellation. We were all about to find out which it was.
As if he could hear my thoughts, he smiled suddenly, giving me a wink.
I smirked, climbing back down the mast while the crew unlatched the anchor crank. Every bit of my body screamed with the ache of the last four days as I pulled my shirt off. West took it, handing me my belt, and I fit it around me silently. I was nervous, and that was something I never felt on a dive.
Willa’s makeshift anchor splashed into the water. When West started to buckle his own belt around his waist, I stopped him. “Let me take a look first.”
Dark circles hung beneath his eyes and the cut on his shoulder was swollen despite Auster’s best attempt at cleaning it. He was exhausted. And if I was wrong about the skerry, I didn’t need West there to see it.
He didn’t argue, giving me a nod in answer. I pulled myself up onto the side and stepped off before I even had time to think about it. I hit the water, and every dull pain resurfaced in my arms and legs as I kicked. When I came up, the entire crew was watching.
I turned away from them, trying to smooth the hitch in my breath. I wasn’t just letting Saint down if I screwed this up. I was letting all of them down. Again.
I dropped down into the water with my chest full of air, and froze when I felt it.
When I felt her.
All around me, the warm, melting drip of some whisper fell to the back of my mind, winding around me in the cold deep. I could feel Isolde. Feel her as if she was right there, diving beside me.
My heart raced as I swam, carving through the still water with my arms. The sea was an eerie calm, protected by the rocky, curved shores of the skerry. From what I could tell, the storm hadn’t come this far east, leaving the water clear and crisp. It shimmered in the folds of light piercing the soft blue.
The sea bottom
was nothing but pale silt that lay in parallel ripples far below. There wasn’t a reef or anything like one in sight. The expanse of sand was hedged in by the walls of black, craggy rock that climbed up toward the surface at an angle, where the waves foamed white.
If there were any gemstones to be found here, I had no clue where they would be. And I couldn’t feel them. When I made it almost halfway around the skerry, I peered into the distance only to find more of the same. I followed the tide, coming up for air when my lungs twisted in my chest, then sinking back down. Instantly I felt it again, that familiar hush, like the sound of my mother’s voice humming as I fell into sleep. I let myself sink to the bottom, the pressure of the depth pushing against my skin as I inspected the rim of rock encircling the island.
It opened to a wide cavern that dropped off into deeper waters. The color bled to black, where the shadows seemed to shift and curl. Above it, the wall of rock crept up in harsh, jagged ridges.
A trail of cold water skimmed past, and I reached out, feeling it. The thin slip of a wayward current. Soft, but there nonetheless. My brow pulled, watching the water around me, and something moved in the corner of my eye, making me still.
Over the lip of the rock’s edge, a wisp of dark red hair flashed in the moonbeam casting through the water. The air burned in my chest as I turned, spinning in the current so that I could look around me. Frantic. Because for a moment, I could have sworn she was there. Like a thread of smoke thinning into the air.
Isolde.
I found the rock beneath my feet and pushed off, my hair waving away from my face as I swam back toward the surface. The underwater cliff jutted straight up, and when I made it to the ledge, I reached out to catch the corner of the rock. The outcropping opened into a cavity, but there was nothing inside but darkness. No gem song. No glow of distant light.
If Holland was telling the truth, Isolde had found a refuge on this rock. Away from the shining streets of Bastian and out from under the eye of her mother. Maybe this was the place she’d dreamed of the day she would leave them both behind. Of sun-soaked days on the deck of a ship, and nights in its hull. Maybe she’d dreamed of me.
My pulse hammered in my ears, the last of my breath threatening to flicker out. The heat burned in my face despite the cold, and I pressed my lips together, watching the light skip on the surface above. She was here, somehow. My mother’s ghost was bled into these waters. But even in Tempest Snare, where she’d found her end, I hadn’t felt this.
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