The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(47)

Kash was right to warn me. Standing there with the leather case in my hand, I reloaded the gun.

From belowdecks, Billie started barking; automatically, I glanced to the captain, but his eyes stayed closed and his breathing did not change. A small, lost part of me wished he would wake. I wanted someone to talk to about Crowhurst, about Ker-Ys . . . about the past, and the future too. I wanted my father. I wanted his guidance. But I couldn’t have it, even if he’d been awake. He would ask his own questions, and I had no answers for him. Besides, he wouldn’t have the answers I needed, either. He never had.

Did Crowhurst? How had he done it? How had he changed the memories of the town—the very fabric of reality—to crown himself king? And out of all the possible things he might have done, why had he chosen this?

A soft knock at the cabin door interrupted my thoughts. Had Kashmir missed me downstairs? I stuffed the gun back into my pocket as I went to the door, but it wasn’t him.

“Dahut!” I blinked at her in the low light. Dusk had settled across the harbor the way ash drifts down from a fire, soft and reverent, but the light from the ship’s lanterns gleamed on the gold circlet in her hair, and the guarded, empty look in her eyes.

“You—you must be Nix.”

“Yes.” I faltered, suddenly off-balance; my heart sank.

“Yes,” she repeated, her eyes narrowing. “I have something for you.”

“Do you? Oh.” In her hands, a folded piece of paper. I recognized it immediately—my father’s map of Honolulu. I took it from her, inspecting it briefly, but it was whole and undamaged. My mouth twisted, wry. “How fitting.”

She watched me, suspicious. Her skirts whispered around her ankles as she shifted her weight. “We’ve met before.”

The way she said it, I knew it was a question. “In New York.”

“I’m sorry.” Dahut curled her fingers into fists. “I have a problem with my memory.”

“You told me.” A sudden realization: perhaps her condition wouldn’t have been listed in a medical dictionary. “You’re not a Navigator.”

“A what?”

“A Navigator. Someone who can use maps to travel through history? Through myths?”

“Am I? No. My father is.”

“The king.”

“Yes.” She said it like it should be obvious—this, from the same girl who told me not three days ago that there was no king in Ker-Ys. My frustration was rising like steam through a stack . . . but it wasn’t her fault. I tapped the map against my open palm. It seemed that whatever Crowhurst had done, it affected everyone around him, no matter if they were on his ship or no.

Or was that how Navigation always worked? Had Slate and I been imposing changes on the crew from place to place and era to era without even knowing it was happening? In the pit of my stomach, a whirlpool. Kashmir’s words came back to me. Some things should not be stolen. Had I ever seen such a blank look in his eyes?

No . . . there was a difference between Dahut’s missing memories and the way Blake and Kash remembered a whole new reality. But why? If Navigation caused memories to change, what could cause memories to vanish?

“Is something the matter?”

I took a breath, trying to compose myself. “You forget things often?”

“Usually I write things down in my diary so I don’t forget. But sometimes . . .” Dahut’s eyes flashed with sudden rage. “Sometimes my records are incomplete.”

I blinked at her, but as quickly as the storm came, it had passed; had it only been a trick of the fading light? I took hold of the pearl at my throat, rubbing its smooth surface between my fingers. What could I say? How to begin? “What’s the first thing you remember?”

“Coming into the harbor this morning.”

I stared at her, shocked. “That’s your first memory?” The thought of it took my breath away—automatically, my own mind riffled through the treasures of my past. My father teaching me to Navigate . . . a theft-day feast in Malta . . . kissing Kashmir on the beach. Now I knew why the idea of forgetting bothered him so much. “Ever?”

Dahut bit her lip; her eyes were faraway. “Before that? It’s hazy, but . . .asking for help. Asking someone to help me.”

I frowned. “You asked for my help in New York.”

“Did I?”

“Come.”

Tucking the Honolulu map into my pocket, I ushered her inside the cabin. Her dark eyes roamed the room, widening when she saw my father, sprawled on his bunk. “Is he all right?” she whispered.

I glanced at Slate. Was it so obvious? “He’s fine,” I lied.

“My own father barely sleeps.”

Ignoring her naked curiosity, I went to the desk, pushing aside the coffee cups and picking up the map of Ker-Ys. “Do you remember this?”

She studied the map. “This is my handwriting.”

“Is it?” A thin current of admiration trickled into my voice. “It’s beautiful work.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

I tilted my head. “How do you know that? I mean, how do you remember?”

“I wrote it down in my diary. It’s one of my father’s rules. He has me make a map every morning, for his records. He has a whole stack in his cabin.”