Fable (Fable #1)(34)

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

But I already knew.

She set the nail at the corner, slamming the adze down to drive it into the wood with one hit before she pulled out another. She did the same at each corner, and when she was finished, West, Hamish, Paj, and Auster each picked up a side of the crate, lifting it from the deck like pallbearers.

“No.” My lips formed the word but no sound came. “West, you can’t just…”

He wasn’t listening. None of them were.

The man screamed once more as he was raised up and over the side of the ship. At the same moment, every finger slipped from the crate and they let it go. It fell through the air, splashing into the dark water below, and I ran to the railing, peering over as it sank into the black.

The shaking in my hands crept up my arms, and I wrapped them around me, clutching the fabric of my shirt into my fists. When I turned back to the others, Willa’s fingers were on the burn reaching across her cheek, her stare blank.

I’d guessed that Zola had something to do with the burn on her face. And I knew that every action demanded a reaction in the Narrows. A few times, I’d seen verdicts like this carried out on my father’s ship. Once, I’d crept onto the deck in the dead of night and saw him cut the hand off a thief with the same knife he used to cut his meat at supper. But I had forgotten what it felt like. I’d forgotten what the sound of a grown man screaming sounded like.

That’s what West had been doing at the merchant’s house. Whoever he’d been talking to was probably delivering on an order to find the man who’d hurt Willa. When he told her that he’d take care of it at the gambit’s, this is what he meant.

She walked across the deck, stopping before West and lifting up onto her toes to kiss him on the cheek as more tears streamed down her face. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that lovers shared, but there were a hundred secrets in the way that they looked at each other. A hundred stories.

His hand went to the back of his shirt and he pulled her dagger free, holding it between them. She wiped her face with the back of her arm before she took it, turning it over in the moonlight so the gems twinkled.

“Thank you,” she said.

They stood in silence as the wind picked back up, and West watched her slide the dagger back into her own belt. I stood at the railing, every bit of warmth draining from my body. Below us, a man was sinking into the deep. But Willa tied the length of her bronze hair back with a strand of leather, as if they hadn’t just committed murder. As if the whisper of death wasn’t still lingering on the ship.

That was the way of life in the Narrows. And for the first time, I thought that maybe Saint had been right.

You weren’t made for this world, Fable.

A roaring wind came over the starboard side, making me shiver, and I looked up to see the lightning was right over us now.

“Secure the decks!” West shouted, climbing the stairs.

And everyone went back to work. Willa climbed up the mainmast, and Paj and Auster scrambled to finish tying down the cargo. I looked for something to do. A task that would pull the vision of the sinking crate from the front of my mind. I flew down the steps in the passageway, closing the trunks in the cabin and checking the doors.

When I came back up the steps, West didn’t look at me, standing there in the flashing light. But he could feel me. It was in the way he turned just slightly away, his eyes on the deck where my feet were planted. Maybe he was ashamed of what he’d done. Or ashamed of not being ashamed. Maybe he imagined that I thought him a monster. And he would be right.

I looked up into the blinding flash of lightning overhead.

He was. We all were. And now this storm was going to make us pay for it.





SEVENTEEN



I tried not to watch it.

I fixed my gaze on the ropes, ignoring the growl of the wind and the swell of the waves. But as the chill bled into the air, my heart began to sprint. Cold rain poured from the sky, filling the deck with water. It raced down the stairs to the passageway in a flood.

My eyes flitted up to the snapping sails, and I swallowed hard, keeping my head down.

“West!” Paj was on the mainmast, one arm hooked into the lines and leaning out to look behind us.

He was watching the clouds. They looked like a rising plume of black smoke, their edges curling under. I let out a long breath, waiting for West to call out the order before I moved an inch. Any second, he was going to realize what this storm was.

“Reef the jibs!” West’s voice was drowned in the sound of thunder.

I didn’t wait for Auster to make it down the ladder from the quarterdeck. I climbed the foremast, reaching for the lines just as the first gale slammed into the ship. The Marigold heeled, and my boot slipped from the peg, sending me dangling over the deck thirty feet below.

In the distance, West stood at the helm, bracing against the spray.

I held my breath, kicking through the air as the boat tilted farther and the dark blue of the sea came beneath me. When West saw me, his eyes went wide, his mouth moving around words I couldn’t hear. They were lost in the roar of wind.

I pulled myself up, hooking my arm into the ropes just as the ship righted, sending me crashing into the mast. As soon as my boots found the pegs, I reached for the lines, bound tightly around the cleats. My fingers pulled at the wet knots until the skin at my knuckles broke, but they were too tight.