Fable (Fable #1)(12)

A board creaked in the passageway, and my hand went straight to my belt, pulling my knife free. I stared into the shapeless, empty dark, waiting for another sound as I tucked the coppers back into the little pocket. But there was only the thrum of the storm creeping toward Jeval. The knock of a door closing as the ship tilted. I clutched the knife to my chest, listening.

Only a few days.

That’s how much longer I had to survive. Then, I’d be at my father’s door, asking him for what he promised me. What he owed me.

I reached beneath the sleeve of my shirt, finding the thickly roped scar that was carved into my arm. My finger followed it up like a maze of blood-filled veins in a pattern I had memorized. It was my father who’d given it to me, the day he left me on Jeval. I had watched in horror as he dragged the tip of his knife through my flesh without so much as a twitch of his hand. I told myself it was the madness of losing my mother that made him do it. That his mind had been fractured by grief.

But I remembered the soft set of his mouth as he cut me. The way his head tilted to the side as my blood ran over his fingers. I’d done nothing since the last time I saw him but dream of the moment I’d see him again. I’d thought of nothing else. And now that it was so close, my stomach turned, my pulse skipping unevenly. The man who’d taught me to tie knots and read maps wasn’t the same man who’d put the knife soaked with my blood back into his belt and sailed away.

Soon, I’d be in Ceros. And I wasn’t sure anymore which man I would find.





SEVEN



The sharp ping of a pulley hitting the deck jolted me from sleep. I blinked, rubbing at my eyes as the cabin came into view. The hammock swung back and forth as an empty bottle on the ground rolled over the wood planks, and I sat up, unfolding myself from the fraying fabric.

I braced myself on the wall, moving through the passageway slowly and squinting against the bright sunlight of midday coming down the steps. The crew was already well into their duties when I stepped out onto the deck. I turned in a circle, a lump coming up in my throat as I looked out to sea. In every direction, there was only blue. Only the hard line of the horizon and the wind and the saltwater thick in the air.

I leaned out over the railing, listening to the bilge cut through the water in a familiar whisper. A smile pulled at my lips, igniting the pain of the torn skin, and I reached up, touching the hot, swollen cut.

The feeling of eyes on me made me look up to where Willa sat in a sling high on the foremast with an adze in one hand. The thin, arched blade was set into a wooden handle at a right angle with one blunt end used as a hammer. It was the tool of a ship’s bosun—the member of the crew who kept the ship afloat.

“Move.”

I jumped, pressing my back against the rail before I looked up to see the young man with shorn hair and smooth obsidian skin standing over me with a case in his hands.

“Out of the way, dredger,” he muttered, shoving past me.

“Where are we at on time, Paj?” West stepped into the open breezeway, stopping midstride when he saw me.

“Checking now.” The man he called Paj set the case down at his feet, and the sunlight hit the bronze octant inside as he opened it. He was as broad as he was tall, the sleeves of his shirt too short for his long arms.

I looked between him and West, confused until I realized he must be the Marigold’s navigator. But he was too young to hold a position like that. Really, they were all too young to be anything other than deckhands. They were boys on the edge of being men.

Paj took the octant from the velvet lining carefully, bringing the eyepiece up and pointing the scope toward the horizon. The sunlight reflected off the little mirrors as he slid the arm forward and adjusted the knobs. After a moment, he stilled, doing the calculations in his head.

West leaned into the doorway, waiting. Behind him, I could see the corner of a desk and a pair of framed windows behind a neatly made cot. It was the helmsman’s quarters.

Paj lowered the octant, looking back at West. “The storm only put us half a day behind. We can make it up if the wind stays strong and Willa keeps the sails together.”

“The sails are fine,” she snapped, glaring down at us from where she was suspended on the boom.

West gave Paj a sharp nod before he disappeared into his quarters, closing the door behind him.

“Blasted birds!” Willa shouted, covering her head with her arms as an albatross hovered beside the sail. It picked up one of the twisted locks of her hair before she swatted it away.

At the top of the mainmast, the one with the long, dark hair laughed. He was perched in the lines with bare feet, holding a wooden bowl in his hands. The birds were gathered around him, their wings flapping against the wind as they fished out whatever was inside.

He was sowing good fortune for the ship, honoring the dead who had drowned in these waters. My father had always told me that seabirds were the souls of lost traders. To turn them away or not give them a place to land or nest was bad luck. And anyone who dared to sail the Narrows needed every bit of luck they could get.

Boots hit the deck behind me, and I turned to see Willa unbuckling the sling from around her waist. Her hair was twisted like rope in long, bronze strands falling over her shoulders, and in the light, her skin was the color of the tawny sandstone that crumbled over the cliffs of Jeval.

“I’m Fable,” I said, reaching out a hand to her.