Fable (Fable #1)(19)

It was the way Saint had taught me to lie too—you always construct a lie from a truth. At least a few of them probably were Waterside strays. Trading crews often took on street kids who lived on Waterside of Ceros, offering food and training in exchange for dangerous labor. Most grew up to crew the ships they’d been brought up on, but I’d never heard of a Waterside stray becoming a helmsman.

Even more unbelievable was the idea that they’d been able to secure a license to trade. There were five guilds that controlled almost every aspect of life in the Narrows—the Rye Guild, the Shipwrights Guild, the Sailmakers Guild, the Smiths Guild, and the Gem Guild. Each had a master, and the five guild masters sat on the Trade Council. They were the only ones who could grant traders the licenses they needed to do business at every port, and there was no way this crew had been able to get one on their own. Whoever West was, he had at least one powerful friend.

When I said nothing, Paj turned back into the passageway, leaving Willa and me alone. Her eyes were half-closed, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen her sleep since I’d come onboard. I wasn’t sure how any of them were able to, when it seemed as if each of them had three jobs instead of one.

“How long have you been dredging?” Willa asked, her voice growing quiet.

“Forever. My mother started teaching me to dive as soon as I could swim.”

Saint always said she was the best dredger in the Narrows, and I believed him. He only took on the best, and the people who crewed his ships never left him. Not when they made more coin than anyone else in the Narrows.

But my mother had another reason.

I’d only ever seen Saint smile once, when I was spying on the two of them in his quarters. My mother took his hands from the maps he was working on and pulled his arms around her small frame. He set his chin on top of her head and smiled, and I remember thinking I’d never seen the spread of his teeth like that before. The frame of wrinkles around his eyes. He looked like a different person.

Saint broke his own rules when he fell in love with my mother. He broke them a hundred times over.

“Is she back on Jeval?”

I blinked, pushing the memory down. “No.” I let the single word hang in the air, answering more parts to her question than she’d asked. Before she could ask another, I changed the subject. “So, you’re the bosun?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’d you learn the trade?”

“Here and there.”

I wasn’t going to press. I didn’t want to know any more about any of them than I needed to, and I didn’t need them knowing anything about me either. I’d given away all I could afford to by telling them I was looking for Saint.

The best bosuns were usually women, able to climb high quickly and fit into small spaces. I’d always been bewildered, watching them from the main deck on the Lark. And there was no shortage of jobs for them, because every ship needed at least one.

The Marigold seemed to be getting by on the barest of crews—a helmsman, a coin master, a stryker, a bosun, and a navigator.

“You don’t have a dredger,” I said, eyeing the boots illuminated by a beam of sunlight on the wall.

Her voice dropped lower. “No. Not anymore.”

The gooseflesh returned to my skin, the air in the cabin feeling suddenly cold as I remembered what Auster said before I jumped the railing.

The last person who stole from us is at the bottom of the sea.

My eyes went back to the trunk against the wall, where the dredger’s belt and tools were left behind.

Because he or she didn’t need them anymore.

The unsettling silence that seemed to rise from Willa only confirmed it. She wanted me to put it together. She wanted me to know. I peered around the edge of my hammock, and she was still watching me, the dagger glinting in her hand.





TEN



Sunlight spilled through the cracks of the bulkhead above me, and the thick smell of lantern smoke and oil lingered in the cabin. As soon as my eyes opened, the ache in my jaw woke where I’d slammed into Koy’s skiff. I pinched my eyes closed, the bone throbbing as I clenched my teeth. It was followed by the burn on my skin that wrapped over my shoulder and down my back.

I sat up slowly and set my feet on the damp floorboards. Willa’s hammock was already empty.

Auster pried the lid off of a crate in the supply room as I passed the door, letting it fall on the ground before he started on another. He glanced over his shoulder at me, grunting as he pulled a jar of pickled fish from inside.

The humid wind spilled into the passageway as I climbed the ladder and I lifted a hand, letting it pull through my fingers. Warm but strong. I didn’t like the feel of it. Too sharp for the pale, cloudless sky that hung above us, which meant that a storm was most likely brewing past the horizon.

Willa and Paj were already working the sheets, trimming the sails to accommodate the push.

“You’re lazy, for a dredger.” Her voice fell down on me from where she stood in the nets above. She had one foot tangled in the ropes and the other propped against the mast, the black shine of tar on her fingers.

“How far until Dern?” I watched her climb down to the next sail.

She looked over me, to the west. “We’re here.”

I turned to see the little port village sprawled over a hill in the distance, where the sea met the shore in a long, rocky wall.