Thirty

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.

There was nothing here but an echo of some part of Isolde that I hadn’t known and never would. I stared into the black water, feeling so alone that it seemed as if that darkness might pull me into it. As if maybe my mother was waiting there for me.