Fable (Fable #1)(15)

The words stung, and I wasn’t sure why. He’d bought my pyre for the last two years, but West and I weren’t friends. He was right that he didn’t owe me anything, but when I’d run down that dock screaming his name, he’d saved my life. And somehow, I’d known he would.

Something had made him take the copper and go against his crew. Something changed his mind. Really, I didn’t care what it was. West didn’t want me on the Marigold, but the fact was that I was finally on my way to Ceros. That was all that mattered.





EIGHT



My knuckles bled as I wound the heavy ropes into neat stacks at the foot of the foremast. I’d been working since before dawn, stowing the stays as Paj changed them out with new lines. Both the foremast and the mainmast had been strained in the storm on the way to Jeval, and the weakened ropes might not hold if another came. And it would.

We were still sailing north, almost half a day off course on the route to Dern. It had been a number of years since I was on the water, but I still knew how to navigate by starlight, and I’d spent half the night out on the deck, mapping out the sea in my mind. The only two directions to sail from Jeval were north into the Narrows or south to the Unnamed Sea.

I’d never been to the Unnamed Sea, but my mother was born there. Her leathered skin and callused hands made her look as if she’d grown up on a ship, but she’d come to the Narrows on her own when she was no more than my age, finding a place on Saint’s crew as a dredger and leaving her past in the Unnamed Sea behind. She would wrap her arms around me as we sat up on the mast with our feet dangling, and she would tell me about Bastian, the port city she called home, and the huge ships that sailed those deep waters.

Once, I asked her if she’d ever go back. If she’d take me there one day. But she only said that she’d been born for a different life, and so had I.

My bare foot slid on the wet deck as the Marigold slowed, and I looked up to see Hamish, Willa, and Auster taking up the sails. Paj didn’t even look up from his work, tossing another pile of rope onto the deck. It landed in front of me as the door to the helmsman’s quarters opened and West came out of the breezeway.

He buttoned his jacket up to his throat, pulling a cap onto his head as he climbed the steps to the quarterdeck. From the look of him, we were headed into port. But we were in the middle of nowhere, hugging the edge of the waters that opened to the Unnamed Sea. Hamish followed on his heels, and as if he could feel my stare, he looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes narrowed in warning.

I dropped my gaze back to the ropes, watching from the corner of my eye as Auster unlocked the anchor and loosed the lines along the railing. Willa and Hamish worked the pulleys to the rowboat secured to the back of the ship and when it was free, West climbed down.

I set the next coil of rope down and leaned over the starboard side to look down the length of the ship. In the distance, a cluster of small coral islands sat atop the clear blue water like a pile of stacked stones. Below, West turned the rowboat about, leaning back and pulling the oars to his chest as it drifted away.

But the little islands were stark and bare, the coral whitewashed by the sun. I watched West disappear behind them. He’d gotten into the boat with nothing, and from the looks of it, there was nothing on the skeleton enclave.

“Eyes on the deck, dredger,” Paj muttered, throwing more rope toward me.

I obeyed, taking the lines up and dragging them to the foremast, but Paj’s eyes didn’t leave me.

He crossed his arms over his chest so that his shirt pulled across the expanse of his shoulders, watching as I carefully wound the rope and knotted its end. “We cast bets, you know.”

I shook out my hands as I stood, stretching my fingers and then clenching them. The raw skin stung as it pulled over the bone. “On what?”

“How long it will take you to steal something.” He grinned.

I realized then that Paj, too, had an accent that curled his words just slightly. But he was much better at hiding it than Auster.

Willa looked down at us from the quarterdeck as she locked the anchor’s crank, Hamish behind her.

“I’m not a thief,” I said. “You want to check my belt? Go ahead.”

“You wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep it in your belt, would you? Dredgers are cheats, but they aren’t stupid,” Auster spoke from behind me, and I turned, pressing myself against the mast.

All four of them stared at me as a silence stretched over the ship, leaving only the sound of the wind sliding over the canvas sails above us. They were baiting me, pulling at my edges to see what I was made of. And I didn’t blame them. They had no reason to trust me, and their helmsman had taken me on without asking them.

“I don’t care what you’ve got in your hull or what’s written in your ledgers. I just need to get across the Narrows,” I said.

“You’re lying.” Paj took a step forward, standing a whole head taller than me. “Not that you can help it. It’s in the Jevali’s nature.”

“I’m not Jevali,” I said. “And I’m not a thief.”

Auster threw the last trap over the side and it splashed in the water below. “The last person who stole from us is at the bottom of the sea.” His long, raven hair was unbound, falling over his shoulder. He raked it back, tying it as he came down the steps to the deck.