The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(26)
“Land!” Rotgut sang out from the crow’s nest. The icy fog did not lift so much as thin in the golden light of morning. The sun was burning cold in the east, sparkling through the crystalline air and silhouetting the spires of Ker-Ys.
There, on the horizon: a sugarplum city, rising up from the silvery waves like a confection on a tray. The compact little town of slate roofs and Gothic steeples surrounded an elegant castle embroidered with stone carved like lace. The towers and turrets, cottages and cobbled streets—all were set inside the sun-gilded granite seawalls like a bezel of rough crystal, and around the wall, waves washed white as they broke on the stone.
Blake came back above, wearing a long coat of felted wool; when he glanced off the prow toward the city, I could hear his intake of breath.
“It looks like something out of a fairy tale,” he said softly.
“Well.” Pride bloomed in my chest; automatically, I glanced over my shoulder, looking for my father, before I realized he was not on deck. I took a deep breath and turned back toward the city on the horizon. “It is.”
CHAPTER NINE
We were out of the mist of the Margins, but the winter sun did little to warm us, and the wind purled in fitful gusts, pressing through my thin shirt as though it were made of gauze. Through chattering teeth, I called for the crew to spell off for warmer gear. Bee went below first, returning with an extra coat for Rotgut; Kash went next, bringing me my good red cloak.
“Here, Captain,” he said, settling the heavy velvet around my shoulders as I held the wheel.
I blinked at the honorific. “Thank you, Kash.”
He smiled, but only a little. Then he jogged back to the main deck as I turned the rudder to meet a current that drew us toward Ker-Ys on a path laced with creamy foam.
The city seemed to float on the white waves, stately: a castle in the clouds. Crowhurst was there, and so were the answers I needed. As we approached the island, my heart was beating like an oarsman’s drum. But I kept a weather eye as Kash and Bee adjusted the sails to catch the capricious wind. It puffed in the sheets and scuffed the whitecaps, pushing us unsteadily east as the ship rocked on the rolling gray. The restless seas of the Margins had given way to the tumultuous Mer d’Iroise.
Here, locals claimed the tides rose at the speed of a galloping horse, the high water climbing fifty feet above the lurking rocks of low tide. Currents raced through the English Channel, harsh storms raked the coast, and patches of pale gray water hinted at rocky reefs under the shifting surface.
Tall menhir jutted out of the swirling water; we passed a pile of rock where the bones of old shipwrecks glittered under a crust of salt. The north side of the island was thick with twisted trees; nesting in them were creatures I mistook for cormorants until we came closer and I saw they were guivres. Souvestre had mentioned them too—a local sort of dragonlet that made a home near bodies of water.
The guivres circled out over the sea to fish, coasting on wings flung wide, until they folded like knives and tipped down into the sea. I smiled to see them emerging victorious, silver fish twisting in their jaws; they reminded me of Swag, the little sea dragon that had once belonged to both me and my mother.
The tide continued falling as we neared the island. The waves licked up the stones; pulling back, they revealed seaweed like glossy mounds of jade at the base of the wall. We came about to the south, where the bronze doors protected the little harbor. They were enormous, easily three feet thick and fifty feet tall, though the dark algal stain of the high-water mark was only a few feet from the top.
As we waited, the bells began to toll the changing tides—the fabled bells of Ker-Ys. A deep rumble vibrated through the deck of the ship, and little whirlpools formed in the foam at the base of the wall as the gates began to roll open.
Would Crowhurst meet us at the dock? It was only midmorning, and the island was small—even if I had to seek him out, I could certainly find him before evening. I leaned forward, eager to enter the harbor, but as the gates slid back, a little flotilla of fishing boats splashed out into the open water. They swarmed around us like goslings around a swan, slow and clumsy; in their bellies, red water sloshed from buckets of chum.
Rotgut called down from the crow’s nest. “What do you catch in these waters?”
An oarsman squinted back with hard eyes in a weathered face. “Everything we can.”
The fishing boats swept toward deeper water as we continued into the harbor. I searched the wharf for a glimpse of Crowhurst, but he was not there. Still, there was activity aboard a sleek corvette docked at the pier—the other tall ship in harbor.
Was this his vessel? I scanned her deck, but I did not see him at the helm or among the busy crew. They hopped and hefted, making ready to sail. The corvette was much bigger than the Temptation, maybe a hundred twenty feet at the waterline, but built with grace. Though it had been worn by the water and scraped by some sort of blade, the name Santé was barely visible in peeling paint along her prow, and her striped sails gave her a devil-may-care appearance, countered by the rotting head hanging in a net from the tip of her bowsprit.
I narrowed my eyes. This was the golden age of piracy, and corsairs schooled like sharks between San Malo and the Barbary Coasts. But the prim harbormaster directed us to a berth beside the corvette, and as we pulled up to the pier, her captain hailed us.
“Ho, Temptation!” She was a tall woman in her twenties, with freckled cheeks and wild curls barely contained by a French cocked hat. Her crew swarmed around her, but she stood still, one hand up, the breeze toying with the ostrich feathers in her cap.