Fable (Fable #1)(13)

She only stared at it as she threw the sling over her shoulder. The burn on her face unfolded over her jaw, coming to a perfect point on her cheek. “You think because I’m the only girl on this ship that I want to be your friend?”

I dropped my hand. “No.”

“Then get out of my way.” She said the words through a bitter smile, waiting for me to move aside.

I took a step toward the mainmast, and she climbed the steps to the quarterdeck without looking back. It was only then that I got a good look at the ship.

The Marigold was a lorcha, just small enough to maneuver in the storms that haunted these waters, but with a hull big enough to hold decent inventory for a small trade operation. Its unique sails were what made the ship easy to spot out on the sea—like sheets of white canvas with wooden ribs, their shapes arced a bit like bat’s wings. Saint’s ship, the Lark, had been much bigger with five times as many crew. But the smell of stained wood and salty rope was something that was on every ship.

If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was there again. My mother up in the masts. Saint at the helm. But the memory wasn’t painted in the brilliant colors it once had been. Not like my memories of Jeval.

Every day I’d watched the green ridge of the island lifting up from the water in a slant, reaching for the sky before it dropped down at the cliffs. The trees below hid the hovels of the dredgers, but the smoke from their fires lifted up in twisting, white strands. I tried to carve the memory out of my mind. The crystal, teal waters. The way the wind sounded moving through the branches.

I didn’t want to remember it.

“Time to pay rent.”

I turned back against the wind. The young man who’d been at the top of the mast was suddenly beside me, half of his thick hair unraveling from where it was pulled back. His dark lashes rimmed gray eyes set against a warm ivory complexion. Altogether, he had the coloring of driftwood. He stood with a pile of nets in his arms, the rope crusted white with dry salt.

“Rent? I already paid West.”

“That was for passage. If you want to sleep in that hammock, it’ll be an extra charge.” He winked, his deep voice turning the words up just slightly at the ends. He was trying to hide the accent, but I could hear it. He wasn’t born in the Narrows. “And West told me to see to that.” His hand lifted, gesturing toward my face.

“So that you can add it to my tab?” I said, sucking the swollen lip between my teeth. “It’s fine.”

He turned, not waiting for me to follow. “Come on.”

I matched his gait, trying to keep up, and I saw him glance down at my bare feet on the hot deck. They were callused from the years walking on the sunbaked beach. Boots were a luxury I hadn’t been able to afford, but more than that, they didn’t have much use on Jeval.

He led me up the stairs to the quarterdeck, dropping the nets in a heaping pile at my feet. “I assume you know how to mend nets.” He didn’t wait for me to answer, handing me a white bone needle before he went back to the stack of crab traps.

The truth was that I didn’t know anything about nets. I’d only fished with traps and lines on the island because there hadn’t been anyone willing to teach me how to make them.

He unclamped the trap at his feet and got to work. I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d never used a needle or that entrusting me with the nets would probably mean losing fish. Instead, I sat and acted like I knew exactly what I was doing.

Finding the breaks was easy enough. The fraying, splitting strands of rope were scattered but numerous. I set the needle on the deck beside me and inspected the knots, turning the net over to see every side before I cut away the damaged bits.

“You’re the stryker,” I said, not really meaning it as a question. The only one who handled the nets and traps on the Lark when I was growing up was the crew member responsible for feeding everyone. If West asked him to stitch up my lip, he was probably also entrusted with tending to wounds and sickness.

“I’m Auster.” He tossed a piece of broken wood overboard. “Ceros, huh?”

My hands stilled on the net, but he didn’t look up from the traps. “That’s right,” I answered, pulling the threads free.

“You had enough of dredging on Jeval?”

I threaded the twine through the needle and pulled to tighten it. “Sure.”

That seemed to be enough for him. He pried the broken latch from the trap and replaced it with a new one as I compared the nets to try and find out how the knots were made. We worked in the long afternoon hours, and it only took me a few tries to figure out how to stretch the net to weave the needle left to right, tightening the new sections. I caught Auster watching my hands more than once, but he said nothing, pretending not to notice each time I pulled the wrong way or missed a loop and had to redo it.

Paj reappeared below, taking the helm with West at his side, and I watched as they bore the ship east. They talked in hushed voices, West’s eyes on the horizon, and I studied the sky.

“I thought we were going to Dern,” I said, looking to Auster.

His gaze narrowed at me as he looked up from the trap. “If I were you, I wouldn’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to.”

West and Paj talked at the helm for another few minutes, watching the others climb up the masts to adjust the sails. They were changing course.