Twenty-Seven

TWENTY-SEVEN

Yuri’s Constellation was invisible in the dark. I stood on the railing at the bow of the ship, watching the moonlight on the surface of the sea. Even from above, I could feel them—the soft songs of the gemstones hidden in the reef below.

The chain of islands was famous, supplying a major portion of the stones that made up the gem trade in the Unnamed Sea and the Narrows alike. From above, their crests looked like a tangle of veins, pulsing with a steady heartbeat.

The clang of metal rang out and I turned to see Koy at the stern, slinging his belt over his shoulder. He’d slept through the hours it had taken to get to Yuri’s Constellation and the moment he woke, the crew’s eyes were on him. He pretended not to notice as he came down the steps to the main deck.

The dredging tools I’d had Hamish track down for him gleamed in his hands as he slid them into the belt one at a time. We would be dredging from sunrise to sunset, without a chance to have picks sharpened or broken mallets repaired on shore. Hamish had purchased more than enough tools to last all three of us.

Koy fit the belt around his hips and tightened the buckle absently, his eyes on the water. “Looks tame enough.”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

He was talking about the currents and I’d thought the same. The tides were meticulously documented on the charts Holland had given us and we’d dealt with far more unpredictable water on Jeval.

“You going to tell me what I’m looking for down there?” he asked.

I’d been dreading this moment. In fact, I’d been sure that if I’d told Koy the truth at the tavern, that he wouldn’t have ever stepped foot on the Marigold. I pulled Holland’s ship logs from inside my jacket and slipped the parchment from under the leather cover.

Koy plucked it from my fingers, unfolding it. His eyes narrowed as they moved over the diagram. “Midnight.” He scoffed. “You’re even more insane than I thought.”

I ignored the insult. “Opaque black stone. Violet inclusions. That’s all you need to know.”

“Good thing you paid me in advance.” He handed me the parchment.

Auster came up from belowdecks with two steaming clay cups, and I jumped down from the railing to meet him. He set one into my hands, and the bitter scent of strong black tea rose to meet me.

I took a sip, wincing. “Better keep them coming.”

“I figured as much.” He smirked.

Paj untied one of the baskets from the railing on the quarterdeck and tossed it down to Hamish, who was stacking them. He glanced at me over his shoulder, eyeing the cup.

Of everyone on board, Paj would be the most difficult to make peace with. His love and his hate seemed to be intrinsically tied together, with little in between.

“What did Henrik mean when he said that Paj was your benefactor?” I asked, taking another sip.

Auster leaned onto the railing beside me, lowering his voice so that Paj couldn’t hear. “I met Paj down on the docks while I was working a job for Henrik. Paj was crewing as a deckhand for a mid-level trader, coming and going from Bastian nearly every week.” He swirled the tea in his cup. “Not a month had gone by before I started waiting for his ship at the harbor.” Even in the dark I could see him blushing.

“And?”

“And not long after, Paj started putting together that I worked for the Roths. When things got…” He trailed off, glancing over his shoulder again. “Henrik found out about us, and he didn’t approve. We were together for maybe a year when I almost got my throat cut stealing inventory from a rye merchant for my uncle. Paj had told me before that he wanted me to cut ties with my family, but he hadn’t drawn a line in the sand. Not until then. He came and found me one night before he left port, and he asked me to leave Bastian and the Roths behind. If I didn’t, we were done.”

“You had to choose. Between him and your family.”

“That’s right.” Auster’s eyes paled to the faintest shade of silver. “Paj heard there was a sailmaker willing to pay a lot of coin to be smuggled out of Bastian, and he took the job. Nearly got himself killed, but he pulled it off.”

“Leo?” My voice rose.

Auster smiled in answer.

Leo was the sailmaker-turned-tailor who’d set up shop in North Fyg in Ceros. He’d also been the one to save the Marigold by making us a set of sails when no one else would.

“He’d gotten into some kind of trouble with Holland and needed to disappear. Paj showed up at my door a few days later with three purses of coin and said he was leaving the Unnamed Sea and not coming back. He gave me a day to decide.”

“And you just disappeared? Without anyone knowing?”

“No one except Ezra. He was there the night I left, but he let me go. Pretended like he didn’t see me climbing out the window. If he’d told anyone I was gone, I wouldn’t have made it out of the harbor.”

So there was more to Ezra than Henrik and the Roths. “Would you ever change it? Go back and stay with your family?”

“The Roths share blood, but they’re not a family.”

I didn’t press. Something told me if I did, it would unearth whatever Auster had buried when he left Bastian behind.

“But I wouldn’t.” He leaned toward me, pressing his shoulder to mine. “You know, go back. Change it.”

I swallowed down the urge to cry. He wasn’t just talking about Paj or the Roths or Bastian. He was also talking about me. Auster had been the first one on the crew to trust me. Somehow, he still did. I shoved back into his shoulder with mine, not saying a word.

“Ready?” West’s voice sounded behind me and I turned to see him standing before the helm, both of our belts in his hands.

I handed Auster my cup before West tossed my belt into the air. I caught it, eyeing the straight line in the distance. Daylight was already swelling into the inky black sky, and in a few minutes the sun would appear like liquid gold, wavering on the seam of the horizon.

Up on the quarterdeck, Paj and Hamish were loosening the lines that secured the tender boat and dropping it into the water.

“I’ll mark, you follow,” I said, repeating the plan as I buckled my belt around me.

I’d work my way down the reefs in order, flagging areas that could hold the midnight with strips of pink silk I’d torn from Holland’s frock. West and Koy would follow, dredging. When we were finished with one reef, we’d start the next. But there were over twenty in the tangle of banks and ridges below. We’d have to get through at least six a day if we were going to finish in time to meet Holland.

“When I get to the end, I’ll double back to dredge.” I raked my hair to one side, braiding it over my shoulder and tying it off with a strip of leather.

Willa came down the steps with the oars to the tender boat. When Koy reached for them, she dropped them on the deck between them.

He grinned at her before he bent low to pick them up.

I’d been worried that problems would arise between the crew and Koy, but he looked more amused by Willa’s antics than he was annoyed. Still, I couldn’t afford for any of them to get under his skin. The last thing I needed was for him to draw his knife on someone.

Koy climbed the railing as the glow of sunlight bled up into the sky. He stood against the wind, pulling the shirt over his head before dropping it to the deck next to Willa. She stared at it, dragging her incredulous gaze up and pinning it on him.

West waited for me to climb up before he followed. We stood shoulder to shoulder, the three of us looking down at the dark water.

“Ready?” I looked to West, then Koy.

Koy answered with a nod, and West didn’t answer at all, stepping off first to drop through the air and plunge into the sea. Koy and I stepped off together and the warm wind whipped around us before we hit the water side by side.

West was coming up when I opened my eyes beneath the surface, and I blinked furiously against the sting of salt before kicking after him. Already the sky was lighter, and in minutes, we’d have enough visibility to start working the reef.

The tender boat was floating just near the stern, and as soon as the oars hit the water beside us we swam toward it, lifting ourselves over its side. The reef system grew more twisted beneath us as Koy rowed toward the island and the crew watched us silently from the portside above. These waters were too shallow for the Marigold, so they’d have to stay anchored in the deep.

When we reached the first reef on our list, West dropped anchor and jumped back out.

The water was warmer in the shallows and the buzz of gemstones was heavier. I could feel it over every inch of my skin as I took the first of a series of deep, quick breaths, working my lungs to stretch. I was already dreading the deep chill that I knew was waiting for me after hours of diving. It was the kind of cold that lingered for days.

West treaded water beside me, tipping his head back to take a last sip of air into his throat before he disappeared. I did the same, sinking into the ink-blue water after him.

Below, he was already kicking in the direction of the farthest edge of a reef that disappeared into the darkness. His hair rippled back from his face as he wove between beams of sunlight, and I let myself float down until I felt the pressure of the water rise.

The reverberation swelling around us was like the chorus of a hundred singing voices, blending in an unsettling tone. I’d never heard it before, like the sharpest strike of metal felt deep in the bones.

This was an old reef, wrought with time, and the color of the rock bled one to the next like the haphazard patchwork of the rye fields north of Ceros.

West reached the tip of the reef and I watched his hand drift out to touch the shelf of ancient coral gently. There was evidence of dredging all along its ridges, but this reef was a monster, regenerating at a pace that made each break in the rock glow white with new growth. Fish swarmed around pointed crests, where delicate sea fans, bubble coral, and purple death anemone were scattered in brilliant shapes and colors.

Somewhere in the tangle of shoals, Isolde had found midnight.

The tips of West’s fingers grazed my arm as I sank below him to the tip of the ridge. The color of the sea bottom told me that the bedrock was limestone. Caches of calcite, fluorite, and onyx would litter the reef in pockets, and I could hear their distinct calls all around me, humming from where they lay beneath the rock.

I set my hands on the shelf before me and closed my eyes, letting a string of bubbles trail up from my lips. The place between my eyebrows pinched as I listened, sorting through the sounds one at a time until I found the deep, resonant ring of something that didn’t belong. Some sort of agate? Maybe tiger’s eye. I couldn’t tell.

My eyes opened and I swam over the ridge, trying to find it. The sound grew, more a feeling in my chest than something I could hear, and when it was so close that I felt as if it was writhing within me, I stopped, touching the bulbous piece of broken basalt that eyed me from beneath a growth of branching coral.

I pulled at a strip of pink silk from my belt and tied it loosely around the frond so that its ends rippled in the pull of the current. Koy came down beside me, getting to work. He inspected the spot before he chose a pick and a chisel. When he slid his mallet free, I kicked off, making my way farther down the reef.

West’s shadow followed mine, and when I found another suspicious cache, I stopped, fitting myself into a corner of the ridge so I could tie another marker. West watched me, taking a pick from his belt, and when I turned to start again, he caught my hand, pulling me back through the current toward him.

The edges of the silk kissed my feet as he looked up at me and his fingers tightened around my arm. It was the first time he’d touched me since I’d made my deal with Holland and I could see that he was waiting. For what, I didn’t know. West was adrift, lost without the anchor of the crew and the ship. The guilt of knowing I’d been a part of that made it feel as if the air in my chest was on fire.

I threaded my fingers into his and squeezed. The corners of his mouth softened and he let me go, letting the tow of water take me over the shelf, away from him. In another moment, he was gone.

I looked down as the tide carried me over the coral, watching the reef run past me until another gemstone song caught my ear. Then another. And another. And when I looked back to the end of the reef where Koy and West had been, it vanished in the murky blue. It was the color of a sleeping sea, my mother would say, because the water only ever looked like that before dawn.

The labyrinth of reefs held everything from black diamonds to the rarest of sapphires, and most of the stories my mother had told me about dredging in the Unnamed Sea were born in these waters.

This place had known my mother.

The thought made a sinking feeling drop between my ribs as I tied another strip of silk and kicked off, letting the current take me again. She’d never told a soul where she’d found the midnight. What other secrets had she left here?