Five

FIVE

“Three reefs!” Zola’s voice rang out over the ship before he’d even made it through the archway.

He unclasped his jacket, letting it drop from his shoulders, and tossed it to one of the Waterside strays standing at the foot of the mast. His hands caught the anchored ropes stretching from the bow, and he pulled himself up into the lines, looking out over the sea.

But my eyes were on Ryland and Wick. Both stood in the row of Jevalis, every ounce of fury over the disgrace making their muscles tense. They weren’t happy Zola had taken on extra dredgers. In fact, they were seething.

“Here, here, and here.” Zola followed the line of the reef crests below with his finger, drawing them on the surface of the water.

In the distance, a crescent-shaped islet was visible, floating like a half-submerged circle.

“Fable will head the dive.”

I blinked, turning back to the deck where the dredgers’ hard gazes were set on me.

“What?” Ryland snapped, his hands dropping from where they were tucked into the crooks of his arms.

Zola ignored him, looking at the islet. The wind pulled his silver-and-black hair across his rough face as I tried to read it. He said he’d given the crew instructions to leave me alone, but he was giving them plenty of reasons to come after me.

“The fourth reef is picked clean, but there’s plenty of tourmaline, palladin, and bloodstone in the others. Probably an emerald or two.” Zola jumped back down to the deck, walking down the line of dredgers. “Your hauls will be checked when you surface. First dredger to hit twenty carats of gemstones gets a bonus of double their coin.”

Koy stood a little taller as Zola said the words. The other Jevali dredgers looked up at the helmsman with brows raised, and Wick tightened his grip on his belt, his mouth twisting up on one side.

“I need at least three hundred carats of stone. You have until sundown tomorrow.”

“What?” Koy stepped forward, his voice finding an edge.

“Ships run on schedules.” Zola looked down at him. “You have a problem with that?”

“He’s right,” I said. Koy looked surprised that I’d agreed with him, but it was true. “We would have to dive back-to-back while we had the daylight if we were going to dredge enough gems to meet that quota.”

Zola seemed to consider it before he pulled the watch from his vest. He flicked it open. “Then I think you’d better be quick about it.” He dropped the timepiece back into his pocket and looked up at me. “Now, what do you see?”

He moved over to give me a place at the rail beside him, but I didn’t move. Zola was playing a game, but I wasn’t sure if anyone on this ship knew what it was. I didn’t like that feeling. He was clearly entertained by it all, and that made me want to shove him over the side.

“What do you see?” he asked again.

I curled my hands into fists and hooked my thumbs into my belt as I looked out over the water. It was moving smoothly inside the crest of the islet, almost still enough in places to reflect the shapes of the clouds. “It looks good. No riptide that I can see, but we obviously won’t know that until we’re down there.” I eyed the water on the other side of the ridge. The shape of the crater was angled perfectly to protect the interior from the current.

He met my eyes before he stepped around me. “Then get them down there.”

The boy holding his jacket held it up for him to slide his arms back in, and then Zola was walking back across the deck without even a glance at us. The door slammed behind him, and in the next breath, the dredgers turned to me. Ryland’s face was painted red, his gaze tight.

On the other side of the main mast, Clove stood silent.

There were fourteen of us in all, so the only thing that made sense was to put four or five dredgers on each of the reefs. I took a step forward, studying the Jevalis. They were a range of sizes and length of limb, but I could tell by looking at them who were the fastest swimmers. I also would have to split up the Luna’s dredgers if I wanted to keep them from pulling anything underwater.

The smart thing to do would be to have Koy head one of the groups. Whether I liked him or not, he was one of the most skilled dredgers I’d ever seen. He knew gems, and he knew reefs. But I’d made the mistake of letting him out of my sight before and I wasn’t going to do it again.

I stopped before Ryland, lifting a chin to him and the Jevali at his side. “You two with me and Koy.”

Koy arched one eyebrow up at me, suspicious. I didn’t want to dive with him either, but as long as he was on this ship, I needed to know exactly where he was and what he was doing at all times.

I assigned the rest of them, putting together swimmers of varying body sizes in hopes that what one of them lacked, the others might make up for. When they were grouped together on the deck I turned back to the islet, unbuttoning the top of my shirt to pull it over my head. Koy’s arm brushed against mine as he came to stand beside me and I stilled, putting more space between us.

“This bastard has no idea what he’s doing,” he muttered, running his thumb over the picks at his hip and counting them silently. The ones he’d plucked from the crate were shining bright between the rusted ones he’d used on Jeval.

I didn’t answer, doing the same on my own belt. Koy and I weren’t friends. We weren’t even allies. If he was being nice, there was a reason, and one I wouldn’t like.

“What? You’re not going to talk to me?”

When I looked up into his face, I flinched at the sinister smile that stretched across his lips. “What are you doing here, Koy?”

He leaned into the rail with both hands and the muscles in his arms took shape under his skin. “I’m here to dive.”

“What else?”

“That’s it.” He shrugged.

My eyes narrowed as I studied him. Koy had a skiff and a ferrying trade on Jeval that put coin in his pocket every single day. He was likely the wealthiest dredger on the island, and in the time I’d known him, he’d never once left Jeval. He was after something.

“Come on, Fay. We Jevalis have to stick together.” He grinned.

I squared my shoulders to him, stepping so close I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “I’m not Jevali. Now, get in the water.”

“Urchins,” Wick muttered, moving around us.

Ryland followed on his heels, leaning over me as he hung his shirt on the mast. I had to step back to keep him from touching me. I knew exactly what he was doing. Even if I had the charge from Zola, he wanted me to know who held the power between us. I was no match for him. For any of them, really. And no one on this ship was going to have my back if it came to that.

I felt small beneath him, and that feeling made my stomach turn.

“Better watch yourself down there. Tides are fickle.” The look in Ryland’s eyes didn’t change as he said the words. He climbed up onto the side and jumped, holding his tools in place as he fell through the air. A moment later, Wick jumped in behind him, and they both disappeared beneath the sparkling blue.

Koy watched him surface, his face expressionless. “You’re not going to take your eyes off me, are you?” The dark humor bled into the words as he climbed up, and I followed.

I waited for him to step into the air before I sucked in a breath and jumped, crashing into the cold water beside him. The rush of bubbles raced over my skin toward the surface above and my eyes lit with the sting of salt as I turned in a circle, trying to get my bearings. The reef below snaked in a tangled labyrinth, deepening the farther it pulled from the islet in the distance.

Clusters of fish in every color swarmed the crests, catching the light with iridescent scales and rippling fins. The coral was heaped like the domes of an otherworldly palace, some of which I’d never seen before.

We were definitely out of the Narrows now. But the songs of the gemstones were something I knew. They bled together in the water around me and once I began to unravel them from one another, we could get to work.

I broke the surface, sucking in the air and rubbing the salt from my eyes. I could taste it in the back of my throat. “Start on the deeper end of each ridge. We’ll use our strength in the first half of the day and can work the shallower crests in the afternoon. The same tomorrow, so mark your tracks. And watch that south side. It looks like the current wraps around the tip of the reef there.”

Two of the Jevali dredgers answered with a nod and started their breathing, pulling in the air to fill their chests and squeezing it back out. Koy did the same, tying his hair back, and I kicked against the weight of my belt as I worked my lungs.

The familiar stretch behind my ribs, surrounded by the sound of the dredgers’ breath, made me shiver. It was too like my memories of diving the reefs on Jeval and the crippling fear that had followed me in those years.

It wasn’t until I stepped foot on the Marigold that I felt it lift from me.

I slipped my fingers into the neck of my shirt, pulling West’s ring from inside the collar. It sat in the center of my palm, glinting in the sunlight. We were well out of the Narrows, and I could feel the distance like a taut string between me and the Marigold.

I pushed the air from my chest, the amber light of West’s quarters illuminating in the back of my mind. He tasted like rye and sea wind, and the sound that woke in his chest when my fingertips dragged over his ribs made that night come back to life inside of me.

My breath hitched as I pulled it in and I tipped my head back, taking a last sip of air. And before the thought of him could curl like a fist in my chest, I dove.