Fable (Fable #1)(11)

Willa let out a long breath, watching the darkened archway before she finally looked back at me. I cringed as the soft lantern light shifted to illuminate the other side of her face. Her left cheek was raw and pink, the skin healing from a bad burn. It reached up the length of her neck and over her jaw, coming to a point.

I knew exactly what it was. I’d seen wounds like that before—a long knife held over a fire until the blade glowed and pressed to someone’s face to teach a lesson. It was a punishment meant to humiliate you long after the pain subsided. Whatever crime she’d committed, she’d been made to pay for it.

It wasn’t until I looked her in the eye that I realized she was watching me inspect the mutilation. “Come on.” She dropped the lantern so that she was cloaked again in darkness and pushed past me into the archway.

I looked back once more, to the dock below. Koy would make it back to the beach any minute, and Speck wouldn’t wake from his rye-soaked stupor to find his boat gone until morning. Either way, I’d never see him or this island again.

I hoped.

The crew watched me as I pushed off the railing and followed Willa into the narrow passage, the weight of their stares pinned to my back. The handle of the lantern squeaked ahead, and I followed its light down the wooden steps and into the thick smell of pickled fish and over-ripened fruit. The crest of the Marigold was burned into the three doors that lined the wall. I lifted a finger as I passed, tracing the outline of a flower inside a wreath of leafed branches. In the center of the bloom lay a tiny, five-pointed star.

As a little girl sailing on my father’s trading ship, I knew every trader’s crest. But I’d never seen this one until the Marigold showed up two years ago on the barrier islands, looking to trade for pyre. Wherever they had come from, they had to be a low-rung crew just beginning to get their route established. But how they’d managed to get a ship and a license from the Trade Council was a question that couldn’t have a simple answer.

Willa pushed through an open doorway and hung the lantern on a rusted hook driven into the wall. I ducked inside, where patchwork hammocks swung from low-hanging beams in a small cabin.

“This is where you’ll sleep.” Willa leaned into one of the posts, her eyes trailing over me until they stopped, and I looked down to see she was eyeing the tip of the scar peeking out beneath my sleeve. “It’ll be a few days before we get to Ceros. We have to make a stop in Dern first.”

I nodded, keeping my back to the wall.

“Do you need to eat?”

“No,” I lied. I’d eaten only a single perch in two days, but I wasn’t stupid. She was trying to get me to owe them something.

“Good.” She smirked. “Because our stryker’s only stocked enough food to feed this crew. When you do need to eat, you’ll be expected to work for it.”

And there it was—the hook. I knew how this worked because I’d grown up on a ship. I’d known what game I’d have to play since I’d first made the plan to use the Marigold to get off Jeval, but I hadn’t counted on having nothing to barter with. I would have to keep my head down and do whatever was asked of me to pay the price of getting to Ceros.

But the way the girl looked at me now made me feel unsteady on my feet. I’d already gotten on the wrong side of the crew, and if I didn’t figure out a way to fix it, I’d find myself overboard before we crossed the Narrows.

I ducked below the bulkhead and found a hammock only half-hung, one end touching the wet ground. The wood and iron trunks lining the walls were bolted neatly into place, all secured with locks except for one, where the slow drip of water trickled in between the slats overhead. It sat open, a small, rusted chisel inside. Above it, a pair of boots hung by their laces on a crooked nail. Maybe the crew’s dredger.

Willa took the lantern from the wall and walked back into the passageway; the gleam of the jeweled dagger tucked into the back of her belt. She climbed the stairs, leaving me in the pitch-black as the sound of footsteps trailed across the deck. I secured the other end of the hammock on an iron hook and climbed in, my weight sinking into the thick, damp quilt.

The hum of the sea hugging the hull was the only sound except for the faint vibration of voices above. I pulled the musty air into my lungs, listening to the groan of the wood and the slosh of water. And suddenly, I was that little girl again, swaying in my hammock on the Lark.

I’d been asleep on my father’s ship when I heard the sharp ring of the bell echo out into the night. Only a few minutes later, the loud crack of the mast and the howl of an angry wind was followed by screaming. His hands had found me in the dark, his face peering down at me in the little sliver of moonlight coming from the slats above.

The night the Lark sank. The night my mother died.

And in a single moment, everything changed.

The next day, he left me behind on Jeval.

I reached into the tiny pocket I’d sewn into the waist of my pants, prying the last of my coppers free. I hadn’t given them every copper. Those six coins were the very first I’d ever earned, and I’d never spent them. I’d saved them for the most desperate of moments. Now, they were all I had left. But six coppers would only keep me fed and sheltered for a day or so in the city. If we were stopping in Dern, it would be my only chance to try and multiply my coin before we reached Ceros. If I didn’t, I’d have to show up on Saint’s doorstep empty-handed—something I swore to myself I’d never do.