Fable (Fable #1)(45)

“The Marigold.”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

The floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he stood and went to the shelf, picking up his pipe and filling it with mullein leaves.

“Where’s Clove?” My father’s navigator was never far from Saint, and I wondered what he’d say when he saw me.

“Gone.”

“Gone?”

He hunched over the flame, puffing until the leaves smoldered.

But that couldn’t be right. Clove and Saint had crewed together since before I was born. There was no way he’d moved on from my father’s ship. Unless …

I wiped a stray tear from the corner of my eye when I realized what he meant. Clove was dead. And if Clove was dead, Saint was alone. The thought made me feel like I was back under that dark water, the flash of lightning silent above me.

“I saw your ships in Dern and down in the harbor.” I sniffed, changing the subject. “How many are there now?”

He sat in the chair before me. “Twenty-eight.”

My eyes widened. I’d thought maybe twenty. But almost thirty ships sailing under your crest was something more than a trading outfit. If he had that many ships, then he wasn’t the rising trader I’d known four years ago. He was the at the top of that ladder now.

“You did it,” I whispered, a smile pulling at my lips.

“I did what?”

“You opened your route to the Unnamed Sea.”

He drew in a mouth full of smoke, and it rippled out through his lips slowly.

“Just like Isolde—”

“Don’t say her name.” He stiffened, his eyes narrowing.

I tilted my head, trying to read him. But Saint was a fortress. An abyss with no end. Very few things put him on edge, and I hadn’t suspected my mother’s name would be one of them.

It wasn’t the greeting I’d expected. He wasn’t a warm man, and I didn’t need an embrace or a display of emotion, but he hadn’t even asked me what happened after he left me on Jeval. How I’d survived. How I got to Ceros.

“I’ve come for what you promised me,” I said, the anger bleeding out into the words.

The lines around his eyes carved deeper as he surveyed me for a long moment. He bit down on the pipe and stood again, sending the chair scraping over the floor, and went back to the shelf. He picked up stacks of dusty books by the armful, setting them on the desk. “Your inheritance,” he said.

I leaned forward. “My what?”

He pulled a thickly rolled parchment from the back of the shelf and dropped it onto the desk in front of me. I picked it up slowly, a tingle running over my skin. He watched me unroll it, and the candlelight spilled over a faded map. It was Tempest Snare.

“I don’t understand.”

Saint pulled a single copper from his jacket pocket and set it on a point in the upper right section of the map. “The Lark.”

The sting on my skin grew, traveling over the whole of me until I was buzzing with the heat of a storm. “What?”

He set the tip of his finger onto the coin. “She’s there. And she’s yours.”

I looked up at him through my eyelashes.

“I saved her for you.”

“You never went back?”

“Once.” He cleared his throat and my fingers tightened around the necklace in my pocket. That’s how he had it. He’d gone back. For Isolde. “But I left the cargo.”

“There was a fortune in the hull of that ship…” My voice trailed off.

“There are only three people who survived that night.” For a moment, it looked like the flash of memory pained him. “Only three people who knew where the Lark went down.”

Me, Saint, and Clove.

“It belongs to you,” he said.

I stood, moving around the corner of the desk and wrapped my arms around him. I pressed my face into his shoulder and he stood erect, the tension widening throughout him. But I didn’t care. I’d spent every day of the last four years trying to get back to him. And I’d spent every day wondering if he’d keep his promise to me.

He had.

The Lark slept in Tempest Snare with my mother, waiting for me. For us.

There was enough coin and gems there to do whatever I wanted. After four years of scraping every single day, I would want for nothing.

I let him go, wiping my eyes. “When do we go?”

But his face changed then, the slant leaving his eyes. “We’re not.”

I stared at him.

“I left that ship at the bottom of the sea for you. If you want it, then go get it.”

“But I thought…” The words broke off. “You said you would give me what’s mine.”

“And I have.”

“I thought you meant a place here.” My voice strained. “I came back to be with you. To crew for you.”

“Crew for me?”

“I’m a good dredger and an even better gem sage. I’m not as good as Isolde was, but—”

“Don’t … say … her name,” his voice clipped.

“I don’t understand,” I breathed.

“I never should have let your mother step foot on my ship. I’m not making the same mistake twice.” He stood, walking to the window. I watched the muscles in his neck tense as his jaw clenched.