Corayne stuffed her ledger away, returning the precious pages to her satchel. “All right, that’s more than enough. I have a lot of information to keep straight, and this is certainly not worth committing to my memory.”
Laughing again, Meliz took her daughter’s face in her hands. She stepped with a swaying motion, her heart still aboard the deck of a ship.
Though she loved Meliz, Corayne felt small and young in her grasp. And she hated it.
“You’re radiant when you blush,” Meliz said, all the truth she could muster in her words.
Such is the way of mothers, to think the sun and the moon of their children. Like the Long Sea on a clear morning, Corayne held no illusions. Meliz an-Amarat was the radiant one, beautiful and magnificent. Lovely as any queen, but Meliz was common-born of the Ward, a smuggler’s daughter, a child of the Sea and the Strait and every country they touched. She was made for the waves, the only other thing in this world as fierce and bold as she was.
Not like me. Corayne knew herself, and while she was her mother’s daughter, she was not her mother’s equal. Their coloring was the same. Golden skin that went bronze in the summer, black hair that shone deep red beneath sunlight. But Corayne had thin lips, a short nose, a graver face than her mother, who smiled like a sunbeam. Her eyes were unremarkable, black all the way through, flat and empty as a starless night. Inscrutable, distant. As Corayne felt apart from the world, her eyes showed it.
It did not bother her, to think such things. It is good to know your own measure. Especially in a world where women were as much what they looked like as what they could do. Corayne would never persuade a fleet patrol with a bat of her eyelashes. But the right coin to the right hands, the right pull of the right string—that Corayne could do, and do well.
“You’re perfect when you lie,” the girl said, kindly pulling away.
“I have lots of practice,” Meliz replied. “Of course, I never lie to you.”
“You and I both know that is realms away from the truth,” Corayne said without accusation. It took all her resolve to keep her face still and measured, unaffected by her mother’s life—and the trust they could never truly share. “But I know you have your reasons.”
Meliz was good enough not to argue. There was truth in admitting her lies. “I do,” she murmured. “And they are always, always, to keep you safe, my dearest girl.”
Though the words stuck in her throat, Corayne forced them out anyway, her cheeks flushing with heat. “I need to ask you—” she began.
Only for Galeri’s thumping boots to cut her off.
Mother and daughter turned at his approach, false smiles donned with ease.
“Officer Galeri, you honor us with your attention,” the captain said, inclining her head politely. Theirs was a pleasant arrangement, and small-minded men were quick to take slights from women, even imagined.
Galeri basked in the glow of Captain an-Amarat. He drew close, closer than he had to Corayne. Meliz did not flinch, well accustomed to the leers of men. Even fresh from a voyage, dressed in salt-eaten clothes, she could turn many eyes.
Corayne swallowed her disgust.
“You came from Aegironos, your daughter told me,” Galeri said. He jabbed a thumb back at the crates piling on the dock. Runes marked the wood. “Strange, the Aegir usually don’t mark their crates in Jydi wolf scratch.”
Sighing inwardly, Corayne began to count the coins left in her satchel and wondered if enough could be swept together to appease Galeri’s curiosity.
Her mother’s smile only widened. “I thought that odd as well.”
Corayne had seen her mother flirt many times. This is not that.
Galeri’s face fell, the workings of his mind easy to read. His soldiers were few, unready, and mostly useless. Captain an-Amarat had her entire crew behind her, and her own sword at her hip. She could kill him and be off with the current before the officers on the next dock even noticed he was dead. Or he could simply move on with the coin already earned, with more to be earned again after the next voyage. His eyes trembled, just for a second, to pass over Corayne herself. The only thing in the world he could hold over Meliz an-Amarat, should things go ill.
Corayne curled a fist, though she had no clue what to do with it.
“Good to have you back in port, Hell Mel,” Galeri forced out, matching her grin. A bead of sweat rolled down his scalp as he stepped aside, bowing to the pair of them.
Meliz watched him go, her teeth bared and lips curled into a frightful smile. Who she was on the waves never stood on land, not for long. Corayne rarely saw that woman, the fierce captain of a fiercer crew, who crossed the waters without regard for law or danger. That woman was not her mother, not Meliz an-Amarat. That was Hell Mel.