Fable (Fable #1)(41)

He didn’t take it. He shifted on his feet before me, his gaze trailing everywhere except my face. “Keep the jacket buttoned up and keep your knife where you can reach it. Don’t trade your tools, not even to eat. And don’t sleep on the street.” He lifted my hood into place as I pulled the jacket closed and fastened the buttons up to my neck. “Don’t draw attention to yourself. It’s better to be no one than to be someone in this city.”

He thought better of whatever else he was going to say, closing his mouth and swallowing hard. I lifted my hand again, waiting for him to take it, and this time, he did. His fingers wrapped around my wrist and mine around his as I looked up into his face. “Thank you, West.” My voice was small.

He didn’t move. It looked as if he wasn’t even breathing. I tried to let go, but his grip tightened, holding me in place. The pulse at my wrist quickened as he pulled my hand toward him and the scar carved into my forearm peeked out from beneath my sleeve.

“I mean it, Fable,” he breathed. “Be careful.”

His fingers unwound from my arm, and I stepped back to put more space between us, my heart pounding in my chest. I dropped my eyes to the deck and lifted myself over the rail, onto the rungs. He watched me climb down, the ladder swinging, and as soon as my boots landed on the crowded dock, something crashed into my side. I flew forward, catching myself on the hull of the ship with my hands to keep from falling into the water.

“Watch it!” A broad-shouldered man barreled past me with a crate of fish on his shoulder, not even looking back.

I pushed into the crowd, pulling the sleeve of my jacket down to be sure my arm was covered. The docks were alive with the business of the port, at least six times the size of Dern’s harbor. I wove in and out of the pockets of people, and when I reached the main walkway that led up into the city, I looked back one last time to the Marigold. She sat in one of the last bays, her warm golden wood the color of honey. On the quarterdeck, West stood with his arms crossed, looking out at me.

I met his eyes one last time, hoping that even if I hadn’t said it, he knew.

I did owe him. I owed him everything.

He watched me for another moment before he finally turned, disappearing from the deck of the ship, and I breathed past the sting in my eyes.

I walked into the river of hucksters, swirling around one another up the ramp that led into Ceros’s Waterside. Crews that had just docked were already on their way up the hill where temporary companions and bottles of rye awaited them in the city’s taverns.

Saint’s outpost was nestled in the Pinch, a pitiful hollow where no respectable person lived or did business. Most everyone who did call it home survived off his patronage, which meant Saint collected a lot of favors. It was one of the reasons he’d been able to build all he had. He knew how to make people depend on him.

Another shoulder shoved into me, throwing me back, and I hit a post, stumbling. But the thought hissed like a faint whisper, my eyes following the polished boots beneath the length of a sapphire blue coat.

I looked up and the chaos of the dock halted, everything slowing with the stalled beat of my heart. The breath burned in my chest, my mind racing through a flood of memories that rushed in, drowning me.

The man looked over his shoulder as he passed me, the set of his angled jaw tight.

It was him. It was Saint.

The trader who’d built an empire. The father who’d left me behind. The man who’d loved my mother with the fury of a thousand merciless storms.

He blinked, his eyes sparkling beneath his hat for just a moment before his gaze fell back to the dock.

And as if I’d only imagined it, he kept walking.





TWENTY-ONE



He’d seen me.

He’d seen me and he knew exactly who I was. It was in the clench of his fist as he looked back over his shoulder. In the tick of his jaw when his eyes met mine. He’d recognized me.

Saint knew I’d made it to Ceros and he knew why. Just like I knew why he’d kept walking. I’d never broken the promise I’d made him. Not a single person in the Narrows knew that I was his daughter except for Clove, and Saint wouldn’t acknowledge me out in the open like that. He wouldn’t risk anyone wondering who I was.

He disappeared in the crowd of dock workers, his steps steady as he made his way to the large ship pulling into the bay. His crest was painted onto the sail at its bow.

I pulled my hood up tighter, my breath hitching in my chest. My throat burned, tears pricking behind my eyes. Because he looked the same. How was that possible? He was the exact same handsome, rugged man he was the last time I saw him.

The bell rang out, marking the opening of the merchant’s house, and I turned in a circle, steadying myself on the post with one hand. Saint would meet with the helmsmen of his arriving ships before he went back to his post at the Pinch. When he got there, I’d be waiting for him.

I climbed the steps up from the harbor and stood at the scrolling iron entry to Waterside. It was the worst of Ceros’s slums, a filthy stretch of burrows that ran the length of the shore past the harbor. Beyond that, the city was a maze. Streets and alleyways wound like tight knots, people spilling out of every window and doorway. The largest port city in the Narrows, it was a bustling hub of trade and enterprise, but it was nothing compared to the opulence of the cities that lay in the Unnamed Sea.

I pulled the map Hamish had given me from my satchel and unfolded it against the mud wall in the alley. If the harbor was behind me, then the Pinch was northeast. It wasn’t easy to get to, and maybe that was one of the reasons my father had chosen it for his post. No one expected a wealthy trader to hole up in the most squalid corner of the city.