Six The Ess Noti

SIX

The Ess Noti

MARY

I found Samuel standing at the end of the dock where Hart was moored, staring out across the quiet harbor. He had his coat open and his hands shoved into his pockets, his attention somewhere beyond what I could see.

"Samuel," I said from a few paces away.

He glanced over his shoulder. The corners of his mouth moved as if he intended to conjure me a smile but lacked the will. "Hello."

"I heard about Benedict," I said, coming to stand just close enough that he could hear me without our voices carrying. I would tell him of Charles and the Uknaras later. "Monna was telling the truth."

"She was," he agreed, glancing over the waiting height of Hart to our left, then back out to sea. "I will write to the Admiralty to advise them Benedict has survived and any efforts to recover him will not be in vain."

I stepped closer, but stopped as his back stiffened. I took a second to measure my words.

"Monna was telling the truth," I repeated. The thought of the pirate, still languishing in our hold, made my stomach clench with thoughtless, irrational impulse. "Can we at least consider—"

"The Admiralty will take care of Ben. The Mereish may be our enemies, but they will offer a captain his parole," Samuel stated. "My uncle is Admiral of the North Fleet, remember. He will not let his nephew linger in captivity."

A spark of frustration lit in me. "I don't think you believe that."

Abruptly he turned on me. "Do you want to go to Mere? Do you want to crawl into some Saint-forsaken prison to save the kind of man who would gladly abuse anyone within reach, including you? Do you want to put everything you and I have built on the line for him ?"

I stared at him, taken aback by his outburst. Rarely was Samuel this open in the privacy of his cabin, let alone standing on the end of a dock with the water carrying our voices to the surrounding ships.

I finally replied, casting my voice lower. "If you let this opportunity go and he dies, it will torment you for the rest of your life. It will destroy you. He will destroy you, even from the grave. For him, I would risk nothing. But for you, I would do anything."

It was his turn to watch me in silence, his chest rising and falling with contained emotion. His eyes softened, yielding to me, even as he drew a deep breath and cloistered himself again.

"Leave me be, Mary," he said. "The matter is closed."

* * *

Monna squinted as I opened the door to her cramped cabin. Fatigue gave her expression a world-weary edge and she seemed resigned to her fate, tucked into a corner with chains on her wrists and ankles.

"Have the Usti arrived for my head?"

"They will soon," I said, stepping in and closing the door.

Monna's eyes flicked to the latch. "No Captain Rosser? No guards?"

I shook my head and leaned against the bulkhead, hands behind me, winter skirts heavy around my ankles. "No. He still intends to hand you over and abandon his brother."

Monna's lips tightened and I saw a shudder pass through her chest. "Do you understand what will happen to me?"

"The Usti will try you as a pirate."

"No, they will not," Monna cut back. There was real desperation in her voice, so much that I felt a tug of compassion. I'd stood on a gallows. I'd felt a noose around my neck. I knew what this woman feared.

"Fuck this. Girl, I am seuasa ." Monna leaned forward to rest her forearms on her knees, wrists dangling. "An oathbreaker, a traitor to the Mereish Crown. I sailed too close to the shoals—I know things I should not. The Usti do not want to hang me, witch. They want my mind. They want what I know. And the Ess Noti will not allow that to happen."

"The Ess Noti?" I plucked at the unfamiliar term. Even Tane did not know how to translate it. "What does that mean?"

Monna glared at me for a moment, then spat on the deck. "If what I heard about you and your captain is true? About your days beyond the Stormwall, and what Silvanus Lirr was? You will learn about the Ess Noti very soon."

Foreboding prickled up my neck. "Tell me everything you know, and perhaps my gratitude will save you. I am your last hope. And unlike my captain, I am willing to bend the law to set you free."

The truth of those words struck me as I spoke them, threaded with regret and more than a little frustration. Most days, I found Samuel's preoccupation with reputation and lawfulness both vexing and endearing, but today it felt like an immeasurable burden.

Monna took a second to breathe, watching my face. "The Ess Noti are the Mereish secret-keepers. They once served Ilaad, Saint of Unspoken Words, but have since… branched out. They are a hand on the throat of any Mereish who dare to make their home in another land. The more influential and educated those travelers were before they left Mere, the higher the likelihood that the Ess Noti are watching them, ready to squeeze.

"They also hunt and kill, or capture, foreigners who have come into possession of Mereish secrets and sorceries. Tales of particularly powerful mages would certainly catch their attention. A Stormsinger who interacts with ghistings—a ghiseau . A Sooth who summons monsters from the Other. Close to a thousand men and women from various nations witnessed what went on north of the Stormwall during the Bountiful Moons. Rumors spread, and people take notice when pirates who should have been sentenced to die—I speak of Lirr's ghiseau —disappear instead."

Monna knew I was ghiseau . Samuel and I had known that eventually the truth would come out, but, where we had feared renewed interest in my skills from the Winter Sea's naval powers, it seemed now Samuel, myself, and likely everyone we had sailed with faced a more uncertain threat.

"I thought James Demery arranged leniency for Lirr's pirates," I said, eager to pry the focus off myself. Hanging ghiseau would do little more than make a public spectacle and call attention to all of us, and Demery had sought to avoid that. "Perhaps the Usti simply… disposed of them some other way."

Monna's eyes seemed to glint. "Humans have a foolish habit of disregarding anything they do not understand. The Usti did try to hang some of Lirr's ghiseau , and lo, when they would not die? The Usti were given evidence they could not reject. Evidence of humans and ghistings bound to one flesh. Evidence of magics unknown and untapped."

I suddenly wished I was not alone with Monna, that Samuel were here and we could untangle this web together.

"So the Usti want you for your information, and the Ess Noti want to silence you before that happens?" I clarified. "And they will… do what, to us?"

Monna spoke with dread and an undercurrent of righteous anger. "They will take you if they can, kill you if they cannot. You are ghiseau —your very existence is a danger to Mere's sorcerous supremacy."

"But if the Usti already know about ghiseau … what is the point of the Mereish still trying to keep their secrets? As you said, word spreads."

Something shifted in Monna's face, a frown that told me there was more to the tale. And she had no intention of sharing.

"The Ess Noti may already be close," she said instead. "You and I are entwined now, and that, I suspect, will be a tipping point. You and your captain are in as much danger as I am, Mary Firth."

My mind roiled. I wanted to discard everything Monna was saying, to explain it away and laugh at her, but I couldn't. She believed this. She was afraid. And even if she was the greatest actress to ever take to the waves, could Samuel and I afford to doubt her?

"Where is Ben?" I asked.

"They were taking him to prison, but he will not be there long, either. They will realize who he is, what he is, and the Ess Noti will come for him too."

"What is he?" I asked, testing her.

"A Black Tide Son," she replied, holding my gaze fast. "The Mereish are well aware of your people's cult and their attempts at Mereish rituals."

My skin crawled. Tane, too, was restless. She slipped from my flesh and reformed beside me—at first, a spectral mirror image of me in a woolen winter gown with modest hip pads, a shawl tucked into my bodice and my hair in a windblown braid. Then her form shifted, her face aging, her body becoming a little taller, a little harsher. A little less human.

Monna's eyes rounded but her lips remained a hard, thin line.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys to Monna's manacles. I set them on the floor between us, outside her reach.

"Tell me where Ben is. Lead the Ess Noti away from us, distract them if they come," I said as my ghisting loomed and the cabin filled with indigo, Otherworldly light. "And I will set you free."