The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(56)

“I can’t sleep until I do.”

“It must be frightening,” I said. She tensed: too much. “I try to read every night, myself,” I added, looking down at my feet as though embarrassed. “To practice. I’m still learning how. But all my books are on the ship, so here I am, wandering the halls.” I lifted the handkerchief again, like I’d just remembered the reason for my visit. “May I?”

“Oh. Of course.” She gestured. At last I stepped into the room, walking not toward her, huddled in her bed, but askew, to the table at her side. I folded the handkerchief and placed it down neatly, giving it a pat.

“There. Well. I’ll let you sleep.” I started to leave, trying to think of another excuse to stay, but when I was halfway across the room, she spoke.

“What keeps you up at night?”

I turned back—but slowly, so she didn’t know how grateful I was for the opening. “That’s quite a personal question.”

She took a little breath. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no, don’t be.” I put my hand on the back of my neck and sighed. “It’s . . . Well. Sometimes I think about my own past. Where I came from. What my life was like before the ship.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Never,” I said. “Then again, I remember it. Or I think I do.”

Silence from her.

In the hearth, the ashes settled. The room was drafty, despite the rug on the floor. “May I build up your fire, princess?”

“Please.” She wrapped her arms around her knees as I knelt near the fireplace, snapping sticks and arranging them carefully. I blew on the coals, whispering the flame up from the embers. “Call me Dahut,” she added.

“Of course. Dahut,” I said. “Interesting name.”

“So is Kashmir. Is that where you’re from?”

“No.” I faltered. “I . . . I’ve never seen the place I’m from on any map.”

“Why not?”

“Well. I’m told it’s because the place I’m from is a fairy tale. Much like this place.”

She tilted her head. “Was it?”

“Not to me.” I smiled a little. “You look disappointed.”

“Well. Fairy tales aren’t so bad,” she said. “Quests and elixirs and finding your long-lost parents. I have no idea where I’m from.” She cast the words out, too freely, to make me think she didn’t care how they landed.

I couldn’t keep the surprise from my face. “You weren’t . . . born in Ker-Ys?”

“I’m not sure. My father says so, but . . .” Her lips twisted a little, half a smile, half a grimace. “I don’t exactly fit in here.”

I returned her look. “I know the feeling. They make it plain.”

“And it’s not just the . . .” Her vague gesture took in her dark skin, her black hair—different from my own dark skin, my own black hair, though not in the eyes of the people of Ker-Ys. “My accent is more like my father’s than anyone else’s. And no one else in Ker-Ys does this.” She opened her hands, showing me the design on her palms. “I must have learned it somewhere, but I don’t know where that would be.”

“Doesn’t your father know?”

“I think he does.” Her fingers knotted in the coverlet; the fire, brighter now, limned her hair and blackened her eyes. “What was your own past like?” she said then, unabashedly changing the subject.

My smile faded, and my answer was not manipulation. “Lonely. But I have a friend now.”

“You mean Nix.”

“Yes.” My answer was soft; it was too hard to mask the feeling there. But Dahut leaned forward, eager for the story.

“How did you meet?”

The memory rushed back as though it had been hiding close by—the guards with their shamshir, the girl with her ship. “I needed to escape,” I said simply. “So I climbed aboard the Temptation, and there she was.”

“And she helped you?”

“That’s what friends do, right?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I stood, coming closer, but still not too close. “We’ll be here at least another day. Perhaps if you write me down in your book, when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll remember I’m your friend.”

She watched me to see if I was lying—and after a moment, she smiled. Guilt twisted like a knife in my gut as she slipped her hand beneath the pillows and drew out her diary at last. “All right.”

The book was a little thing with a hard cover and a cheap lock; as she paged through, I peered over her shoulder as if to help. “It starts with a K.”

“I know.” She stopped on a blank page, but I touched her wrist.

“Wait. Go back.” She frowned up at me, but I flipped past pages covered in her delicate red script, stopping at one that had caught my eye: black ink, the letters crawling like ants across the paper. And there, the awkward space of something missing. “Who cut out these pages?”

“I don’t remember,” she said, but I could tell she had a guess.

I took the book from her hands, tilting it to the light. The story written there was the tale of Ker-Ys—the one Nix had told me. But Grandlon’s name was replaced with Crowhurst’s. “Dahut,” I whispered to her. “This is your father’s handwriting.”