Twelve Hesten

TWELVE

Hesten

Nine Months Ago

SAMUEL

W armth seeped into every part of me from the fire and close-packed humanity, the rum in my belly and Mary, her arms wrapped around my bicep, her hair spilling onto my shoulder.

The fiddler lulling the tavern into somnolence drew the last note from her instrument. The clapping was heartfelt but slow, attesting to her success.

"Captain Rosser!"

Mary quickly disentangled as a man set his tankard down on our table then proceeded to shrug off his jacket.

"Damn hot in here," the man blustered as he sank into a chair and fanned himself expansively with his hat. He was a thin, fit fellow, with flushed cheeks in a pale-skinned face—Southern Aeadine, a Whallish if I ever saw one, with the personality to match.

"Please, join us," Mary muttered sardonically.

The man scowled at her, then squinted at me. "This your Stormsinger?"

"Ms. Firth," I said, sitting straight. "This is Captain Mercer of Fair Fortune , who encountered some less-than-fair fortune, and has been waiting for his ship to be repaired. How long now, Captain Mercer?"

Mercer seemed put out. He sniffed and buried his face in his tankard. "Another two weeks or so. So? This your witch or just a common whore? Or both? Ow!" He jumped and spilled ale down the front of his shirt.

"Oh, my apologies! I must have kicked you!" Mary crooned, leaning over the table and helpfully taking the tankard from his hands. She promptly dropped the whole vessel into his lap.

Mercer made a gargling sound, clutching himself out of sight.

Instinct had me half out of my seat—to defend Mary, help Mercer or punch him, I was not sure. But as Mary fussed, I sat slowly back down, trying to hide a smile.

"I'm so clumsy tonight! Too much wine. Let me get you a cloth." With that Mary swept past the man and merged with the crowd.

"She did that on purpose," Mercer raged, shooting me a heated look as he finally ceased clutching himself and tried, unsuccessfully, to mop up his shirt with a handkerchief. I heard a clatter under the table as the tankard rolled away, but Mercer seemed done with it. "You should control your people."

"You suggested she was a whore," I pointed out coolly.

"She's clinging to your arm in the middle of a public house, what else is she?"

Steel crept into my spine. "A woman to whom you should show more respect."

Mercer snorted. "So she's not your whore?"

"She is Hart 's Stormsinger."

Mercer threw his sodden handkerchief on the table and gave me an irritated pout. "Tart, whore, Stormsinger—there's a difference? Both end up under your belly."

All sound in the room faded, and all I saw was Mercer's face.

Whatever he saw on mine made even his rosy Whallish complexion blanch. "No need to take offense, Rosser, we've all taken liberties with witches."

"I have not," I ground out. "I would not."

Mercer's expression stuttered into a false smile that failed to hide his disbelief or even a scrap of pity. Gathering his hat and handkerchief with a muttered curse of farewell, he got up and left the table.

Mary did not come back until he had exited the tavern entirely.

"At last." She eased back into her chair and smiled at me, warm and soft and amused. "What an awful man."

She made to slip her arm around mine again. I imagined her touch, the gentleness of it, how I wanted to bundle her into my arms and hide her from the eyes of everyone else, from men like Mercer and every atrocity on the Winter Sea.

Instead, I rose, slipping her grasp with apparent distraction, and pulled on my coat. "I need some air."

She eyed me but grabbed her jacket.

Outside, where a long summer evening graced the street with pink-orange light and the good folk of Usti traversed clean, dry cobblestones, I breathed no easier. Mary still didn't speak, and, by silent agreement, we started back towards the ship.

It was not until Hart 's masts came into sight, rising amid some dozen others in one of Hesten's square wet docks, that I spoke again.

"We need to be different."

Mary looked at me sideways. "What do you mean?"

"The way we were tonight, how close we were." I had pondered this the whole walk back, but I still struggled for words. "You know I care for you. I know you care for me. But Stormsingers and their captains have a… reputation."

"Mercer is an awful man," Mary cut in. "Just because he assumed—"

"He assumed I, as a captain, was abusing you, my Stormsinger," I said bluntly. "And that is what everyone else will believe as well."

Her scowl was disgusted. "And? They're wrong."

"Are they?"

Mary's expression turned aghast. "Samuel, you haven't so much as kissed me properly. I am so profoundly unsullied by you, by anyone , I think my virginity has actually come back."

My cheeks flamed. I looked up and down the street, relieved to see no one listening to Mary's outburst, then tugged her into the mouth of an alley.

"Oh, was that all I had to say?" Mary grinned, a mixture of bravado and nervous excitement in her eyes.

I put a fist over my mouth and held my breath, trying to corral my thoughts.

"Mary," I began. "You are the first Stormsinger in centuries to have a contract. To be her own master. I am the first captain to hire a Stormsinger in just as long, instead of kidnapping or buying one. We must set an example."

As I spoke, the reality of my words sank in. It was not as though I had not considered such things before, but they had seemed distant concerns. As Mary had so tactfully put it, I had not so much as kissed her. Our relationship, the warmth between us, was still too young and we too busy for anything more.

"If we are openly intimate, even if our relationship is amiable, the world will misunderstand," I said. She watched me in silence now, a dangerous quiet I knew well. "They will misinterpret us and disregard what we have achieved. What you have achieved."

"They will think less of you," she translated. She laced her arms over her chest and leaned back against the opposite alley wall, careless of the filth. "And you've just gotten your honor back. Halfway back."

I opened my mouth to protest, but a spike of guilt cut me off. "Yes," I admitted, pulling the word like a fouled tooth. "But that is only one aspect. What I have said is true, you must see it."

"I see it," she said. "I, however, do not see how our relationship robs my contract of meaning. If you want me not to touch you in public, I won't. But what you and I are to one another behind closed doors? That is no one's concern but ours. We can be whatever we want."

"I want to believe that," I said, so honest it left me feeling raw. "But that is not how the world works. Rumors. Truth. Lies. Secrets. It always comes out. And this example we are trying to set, this security we might one day forge for Stormsingers? What you and I are could tear it down before we have even begun to build."

"People will think you a lecher," Mary added. She forced a smile, a hard expression that failed to hide how hurt she was.

"Mary, I am serious."

"So am I," she shot back. "I'll be clear, just this once, so listen to me. I joined your crew for the opportunity, yes. For the contract, yes. But I also joined because I care for you, and I am very curious to see where that goes. I have been engaged. I know what I want. I will not spend years dancing around your reservations, and I do not believe that you and I tangling here and there will destroy the future of all Stormsingers. So let me know when you decide that you want me more than you want shitlings like Captain Mercer to think you're better than them—because I assure you, they do not truly care."

Her words were knives, slowly pushed into my flesh, and I wanted them to stop. "Mary, be reasonable. This is not about Mercer, this—"

She ducked away and backed out into the street, smiling sweetly. " This is a conversation I'm no longer willing to have. Good night, Samuel."

With that, she strode away down the docks. As she went the blood roared through my ears, my control slipped, and the human world faded. Mary's form became one of grey-hedged teal light, and the Dark Water lapped around my heels, chased by errant dragonflies.

I grabbed the coin in my pocket. The human world solidified, and I sagged back against the alley wall, still harried by the sound of lapping water and dragonfly wings.

How could I forget? How, for one night, could I let myself disregard what I was and pretend that my condition was not a critical factor in why I needed to keep Mary at arm's length?

Even if Mary and I won the respect of the world, I could not offer her a broken man. But that, at least, I had hope of rectifying.

The next day, I went to a talisman maker's shop and made my request: a cure from Mere.

It was a week before the tension between Mary and I eased. Another month before I found the charred remains of the talisman maker's shop and, in my distress, embraced her again in the privacy of my cabin, though I did not risk telling her why. A few of the knives between us were sheathed, even if a little more of my hope died the same day.

And together, we sailed on.