Fable (Fable #1)(55)

“Zola—”

“I don’t want to talk about Zola. I want to talk about you.” Saint’s voice rose. “You have a problem with another trader, you handle it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get back on the water and find a way to fix those ledgers.”

West’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I can’t.”

Saint stilled. “What?”

“I don’t have the coin for new sails. Not after the storm.”

Saint’s eyes turned to slits, his nostrils flaring. “Are you telling me you’re dead in the water?”

West gave a single nod.

“And you want me to get you new sails?”

“You can add it to my debt.”

“No,” Willa whispered beside me.

A second later, Saint echoed the word. “No.”

West looked up, clearly surprised by his answer.

“You don’t bring your mess to my door, and you don’t use my coin to clean it up. If you can’t fix this, you have no business sailing that ship.”

The muscles in West’s jaw clenched, but he bit back the fury that was jumping under his skin.

“I have business you’re getting in the way of.” The hem of his coat circled his boots as he turned, but he stopped, his hand on the latch of the door. “And if I find out a single soul knows about the cargo you brought back from Jeval, you’ll be finding the pieces of your crew all over this city.”

West’s hands tightened on his belt. “That’s what this is about? Her?”

The feeling of fire writhed in my chest, and I realized suddenly that I was holding my breath.

“So, this is a punishment.” West took a step toward Saint.

“Call it what you want. Your job is to do what I tell you to. You don’t make a move without my permission. If you don’t like those arrangements, there are a hundred men down on those docks who will take your place.”

“If I hadn’t taken her off Jeval, she’d be tied to the reef right now, her bones picked clean.”

“Fable can take care of herself.” Saint’s voice deepened.

Willa’s face turned toward me, her eyes wide.

“Then why have I been bleeding coin going to that island every two weeks for the last two years? If something happened to her, we both know whose throat would be cut. I saved both our lives by bringing her here.”

My father gritted his teeth, the full brunt of his anger filling the silence. “I don’t want to see your face again until you’ve cleaned this up. If you don’t, it won’t be Zola coming for you. It will be me. And I won’t leave you breathing.”

The door slammed again, shaking the walls, and Saint’s footsteps moved back down the stairs. I went to the window and watched him step out into the alley. He buttoned the top of his jacket methodically before he slipped into the darkness without looking back.

Willa crossed her arms, eyeing me. “Is there something you want to tell us?”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “We need to talk.”





TWENTY-EIGHT



West stood at the window as we came through the door, his eyes on the street.

“West…” Willa lifted a hand toward him, but he moved from her reach.

“He’s not going to lend us the coin. We can use the stake.”

They all went silent, their gazes pinned on him.

“We can’t,” Auster said. “We agreed we would never use it.”

“We swore,” Paj murmured behind him.

A thin silence fell between us and for the first time, I could see the faintest of cracks in the wall of this crew. “What’s the stake?” I asked.

“It’s the coin we’ve been pocketing from a side trade we’ve been running. It’s for … after.” To my surprise, Hamish was the one to answer. Maybe because it didn’t matter anymore.

“After?”

He pulled the spectacles from his face, letting them dangle from his fingers. “After we’ve bought out from Saint.”

“Only if we all agree,” West amended. “There’s enough to buy sails and cover our losses from the storm. We can get back on the sea and make the coin back.” He was trying to sound sure. “I can hire a ship to take me to the coral islands tomorrow.”

Of course. The coral islands were a cache.

Every crew had them. It was foolish to keep everything you had in one place when ships could sink and city posts could be raided while you were out to sea. Any crew with half a brain had more than one cache to spread out their coin.

“It’s taken us two years to save that much,” Willa said.

West shrugged. “It’s our only choice.”

But that wasn’t true. And if I was going to make a play for a place on the crew, now was my best chance. I reached into the opening of my jacket, finding the sea dragon with my fingertips, my stomach dropping as I opened my mouth.

“It’s not the only choice,” I said, meeting West’s eyes.

Silence fell over the room again, and my skin flushed hot as their eyes landed on me. There was no going back once I said it.

“What?” Hamish looked suspicious.

“I have another way out of this,” I said, standing up straighter. “If you want it.”