The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(11)

“The ship is home,” I said. “But we spend a lot of time docked here.”

“I see.” His eyes roamed over the page; behind them was a familiar look—curiosity. “Where is the colossus we passed on the way into the harbor?”

Blake was an explorer at heart, and once he started asking questions, he couldn’t help but be drawn in. As we studied the charts of the city, he twirled a pen around his fingers; it was only when he opened a blank Stillman sketchbook that I realized both the book and the pen were very modern, though neither of them were mine. “Where did you get those?”

“Ah.” He looked down at the pen. “Mr. Firas gave them to me. It seems I misjudged him too.”

Too? I caught the subtle implication—he had misjudged me, back in Hawaii—but I wasn’t about to start arguing again. Pressing my lips together, I sat back on my heels, suddenly exhausted. “It’s been a long day. I’ll let you rest.”

“Good night, then, Miss Song.” But he watched me as I rummaged in my trunk for a change of clothes, and when I went to the door, he called me back. “Miss Song . . .”

“Yes?”

He hesitated then, his blue eyes soft as they searched mine. “I am sorry about your mother,” he said at last. “I would have saved my own father, if I’d had the power to do so.”

I raised an eyebrow, glancing at the bloody linen rag of his old suit, crumpled on the floor. “Even though he shot you?”

Blake sighed, running his hand through his hair. “I’d like to be more than what I inherited. Wouldn’t you?”

I nodded and left him there, his sketchbook open to an unmarked page.





CHAPTER FOUR


KASHMIR

I’ve always tried to resemble a brave man.

It didn’t used to be so hard—and I’ve had so much practice pretending. After all, when you’re a thief, you’re always pretending not to be. The same is true when you’re poor. And sometimes also when you’re in love.

I still don’t know just how it happened. Usually I’m better at guarding what little I have. But one day, I went looking for my heart and found it in Nix’s hands.

I’ve never dared to tell her how I felt—at least, not in so many words. But then two weeks ago, we sat in the white sand as the sun melted into the sea, and . . . well.

Poets write often of love, but there is no poetry to match a kiss.

It was a promising start, but we hadn’t spoken of it since. First there was the petty matter of piracy to keep us occupied. And I was still trying to find the words for what I wanted. Petite amie, doost dokhtoram, girlfriend . . . that word fell flat in any language I knew, and “wife” was too weighty for this effervescent feeling—like Coca-Cola, like champagne. But when I’d fallen, she had jumped, and inshallah, I had a chance now to say the things I should have said long ago. All I had to do was be brave.

Or at least, pretend I was, long enough to blurt something out.

It was more difficult than it sounded.

Part of the problem was time. She hadn’t taken me up on my offer to share my cabin—but that had been a long shot, I knew. Still, it was hard to find a moment to talk; after we bound the Temptation to the docks, the whole crew bent their backs to making repairs under the fevered eye of the August sun. There were boards to sand, ropes to splice, supplies to stock—and the bilge to bail, which was a murky, mucky chore. I volunteered for the task—I knew Nix hated it, and it was a chance to sweat shirtless for her. But when I came up for meals, gleaming with saltwater and oil from repairing the pumps, she never spared me more than a glance.

At first I’d thought she was only brooding over the captain’s health, or the way his addiction dogged him. Despite knowing that Joss had seen his death, many years and miles from now, it hadn’t been pretty watching him sweat and shiver in his cabin, wracked with pain and fever. That first night, he’d even called me in to beg me to go on one of his “errands,” but when I finally agreed, he threw a mug at my head and cursed my name.

But as time passed and the captain improved, Nix’s demeanor did not. If anything, she grew more troubled, chewing her nails to stubs, pulling so hard on the pendant I’d given her that the chain bit the back of her neck.

So after I finished my chores early on the third day, I joined her in hers. Nix was on deck, sewing up the bullet holes in the mainsail. I watched her for a while, but she didn’t raise her eyes. “Your seams are crooked,” I said at last, coming to sit beside her. I reached for the bundle of canvas she held. “Give it here.”

She met my gaze then, and something in her look froze my smile. But she pursed her lips and handed me the needle. Under her scrutiny, I made doubly sure each row was perfect. “Slate should have had you do his ribs,” she said at last, her mouth twisting in a wry smile.

“Oh, he did.”

“Ugh.”

She gave a dramatic shudder, and I laughed, tying off the thread. “I might be cocky too, if I knew it couldn’t kill me.”

I waited for her response—“Might be?” The joke was so easy to make. But instead of laughter, there was a small sound from her, like a word caught in her throat. I looked up to see her anguished face—and were those tears, standing in her eyes?

“Amira?” I threw aside the canvas to take her hand, which was precisely the moment Bee decided to climb through the hatch.