Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(28)

Gil turns and shouts down at her, his voice crackling like a lit match: “Narwhals.”

Above deck, all is chaos, and Isbe gets instantly turned around. She is shuffled this way and that. She falls to her knees. The vessel rears up like a giant startled horse. Men are screaming directions at one another. The rack of weapons clangs loudly as they grab for spears. She thinks of the foreign weapon rigged to the helm, and its name and purpose emerge out of all those days spent learning from Aurora, not just about fascinating devices used for warfare but also those used for hunting. This one could slay enormous sea creatures, from five feet long to thirty.

A harpoon.

She scrambles to her feet, feeling like such a fool for not realizing sooner: all these men and all these weapons . . . this isn’t just a merchant vessel bearing oil from one shore to another. It’s an active whaling ship.

And now they’ve discovered a pod of narwhals, which are among the most treasured creatures of the sea because of their long, unicornlike tusks. Isbe remembers Aurora telling her the famous White Throne—on which the North Faerie was murdered years ago—was carved and constructed solely from their ivory.

“Isbe!” she hears, and Gilbert grabs her arm again.

“What is that sound?” she shouts, trying to understand why it’s as though sixty men, and not twenty, are pounding across the deck.

“Drums.”

Isbe pauses, understanding. “To lure the animal.”

Through the noise, she can hear the captain shouting “All hands!” A thrill flies through her, and she hardly feels the cold wind lashing her. She used to think adventure was sneaking out her window to play in the fields with Gil. Or stealing strips of meat from the kitchens to try and lure the sharp-toothed foxes in the royal forest. But for the first time since leaving the palace, it strikes her how far she has come. With the roar of the sea in her ears and the violent sway of the boat beneath her, she realizes that the very notion of adventure is a lie, for it predicts an arc that ends in its hero triumphing over challenge. This? This is no adventure; this is life, pure and raw, and she can feel the difference, can taste it—its elation and its terror, but most of all, its wild uncertainty.

“Iz,” Gil whispers close to her ear.

Her hands find his. She feels the strength of his arms and shoulders as he tries to steady them both, to steer her back toward the shelter of the hatch. The boat sways and they stumble together; her back hits a low wall. He pulls her down to the floor again, leaning over her, protecting her from the spray and the wind and the sailors pushing past them.

He puts a rope in her hands. “Stay here. Hold this. Wait for me.”

“But—”

His hands are on her shoulders, on her chin, cupping her face. “Wait here.” The whisper is so quiet and yet so clear, it is like a cloak finding its hook.

She pulls him closer. They cling to each other and she finds his ear. “Gil . . . what are you . . .”

But his head turns before she can finish, and his mouth brushes her jaw. Instinct, as unplanned as a breath, guides her lips to his. His cheeks and jaw are slick with ocean spray. Salt stings her tongue. The kiss is hungry and hard and over before she can understand it.

She grasps for him, but he slips out of her hands. Another sailor is there, trying to move past them, shoving them forward and apart. “Quick like!” he barks, and Isbe finds herself banging her elbows and legs as she’s thrown to the side and then down into a wooden basin, which is being rapidly lowered.

It’s one of the dinghies at the side of the ship, she realizes quickly, and there are several other men on board who are passing around weapons and oars.

“Gil! Gilbert!” she cries out, flailing her arms.

But she has lost him, and it feels like she has lost herself. The tiny lifeboat tosses in the rough waves, and she falls again. And again. Metal slashes the air just beside her face. Saltwater stings and burns like ice. She kneels and clutches at the air but can’t get steady. She can’t think, between the howling of the sea and the shouts of the sailors and the thrumming of blood in her ears and the conviction that she is going to die out here in the water’s vast, roiling, unknowable passion.

A spear is thrust into her open, shaking palms. Most of the crew knows she is blind. Why would one of them give her a weapon? How could they not realize . . .

But ah—it is night, and dark, and sighted men do not do well where they cannot clearly see.

More barked orders—formations and directions in words she doesn’t comprehend. Something about smallest men to the bow. She is shoved to the front of the tiny craft. Fear clenches down inside her, becomes an iron nail hammered tight to her heart. As she grips the rusted handle of the spear in one hand and hangs on to the side of the dinghy with the other, she at last grasps what’s happening. She is part of the hunt.

The drums are beating. The sailors shout their commands. “Lean into it, lad!” a man commands from just behind her. He’s talking to her, but she doesn’t have an oar, doesn’t understand the command. Does he mean lean into the motion of the boat? Perhaps it’s like riding a horse, where one must allow one’s body to move with and not counter to it.

Though she cannot see, there are things Isbe knows. She knows, for instance, that the man who just gave her orders has a thick beard. Even amid all this madness, she can smell how it traps the rancid odor of his last several meals. She knows his muscles are likely bulging from the effort of rowing the dinghy—she can tell this from the arrhythmic thrashing of wood against wave, the pauses, the creaks, the panting of effort, the warble of worry in all the men’s voices.