But why would a man like Lirr need to buy a Stormsinger? Everyone knew he had a singer aboard and something of a cache of them back in the Mereish Southern Isles, where he lived like a king. Had his current singer unexpectedly died, perhaps, leaving him stuck in Aeadine in an early winter?
I stirred. If Lirr was short a Stormsinger, our chances of capturing him had vastly increased.
The woman spoke again. “We’ll have her before they leave free waters,” she said in a tone that forbade further discussion, then turned away to supervise the unloading of the cart.
I looked at Penn and saw my own urgency reflected in his eyes.
“Mr. Penn, please recall all the scouts and return to the horses.” I spoke in a low voice, already retreating across the forest floor. “Then make for the ship with all haste. Warn Captain Slader that our quarry is here, preparing to depart, and intends to attack John Randalf’s Juliette.”
“Yessir. And you, sir?” Penn whispered.
“I will warn Captain Randalf myself.”
*
My coat snapped around me as a storm descended upon the docks. It came from the heavens in a great waterfall of snow and grey cloud, striking the waves and billowing out in tumbling swirls. These clawed towards Whallum’s huddled houses and bobbing ships, and walled off the entirety of the harbor mouth in a deafening, muffling roar.
Breathless, I skidded to a halt on the end of the dock where Randalf’s schooner ought to have been. Snow swallowed me in a whirl of bone-cracking cold, peppering my face with ice and freezing the sweat on my skin.
I threw up an arm to shield my eyes and squinted through the tempest. The ship was gone. I realized that at the same time as I heard a voice on the wind, low and sweet and sad. I lowered my arm, staring as if I could make out Mary Firth singing down the storm and bearing Randalf’s vessel out of Whallum.
The smuggler must have already learned Lirr was coming for her. Relief, trepidation, and a spark of disappointment turned in my stomach. The Stormsinger was gone. All that was left was her voice on the wind, her indistinct words teasing the edges of my hearing.
Slowly the wind lessened, and a form materialized beside me. He was hatless, the wind tossing his blond hair as he squinted through the snow. But there was satisfaction around his eyes, the grim contentment of a man who has both won and lost.
“I heard the rumors and warned Randalf,” Charles Grant informed me, clearing his throat and shoving his hands into his pockets. “Sorry to spoil your heroics. You look quite dashing, if that’s any consolation.”
I opened my mouth to say something curt, but caught myself. The Stormsinger was safe from Lirr, if not from Randalf. They had been warned. That was all that mattered, and now I needed to get back to my ship.
There was no way Hart could navigate that storm, not without its own Stormsinger, but neither could Lirr. As soon as the weather cleared, we would be ready to meet him. We would ensure that he never threatened anyone again, and my name would be associated with something good, something honorable.
“Why?” I asked Grant as I turned away. “Why warn her?”
Grant shrugged. “Mary Firth saved my life. I figured I should begin repaying my debts.”
The Girl from the Wold
The Girl from the Wold decides that the trees love music as much as she. There is no magic in her voice yet, only a child’s innocent exuberance, and she sings every song she knows in the mossy shade and tall ferns. She is sure the boughs of a hemlock dip a little lower at her voice, and that a ghisting in the form of a doe watches her from beyond a willow veil. The doe trails her for a time but eventually fades, at the end of her roots’ reach.
One day, in the very heart of the Wold, the girl discovers a new tree. Its branches rise above the rest and its roots stretch so far over the ground the girl cannot find where they end. She sits herself down in a cradle of those roots and sorts through a pocket full of forest treasures—acorns and feathers, a fine bone and carefully plucked wildflowers.
As she sorts, she sings softly to herself. A voice responds in perfect harmony. But though the girl looks around, she is alone in the forest.
Her eyes rise to the great tree above her. She sings again, and the voice responds again.
She is still staring at the tree when her mother emerges from the forest. She scolds the girl for staying out so long, but when the girl tells her that the tree can sing, her mother goes quiet.
“Can’t the tree sing, Mama?” the girl asks. “Is it special?”
“It is special,” her mother replies. Her pale grey eyes are guarded as she looks up at the grand tree. “This tree is the heart of the forest. The Mother Tree. But she cannot sing, Mary. Ghistings and humans do not talk to one another. You’re being foolish, and you shouldn’t stray so deep into the Wold. Come home and leave her be.”
Mary does. And as she ages, her waist narrows and her skirts lengthen, she decides she must have been mistaken. The Mother Tree could not have joined her song—it was just the creak of branches, or the wind in the trees.
But sometimes when she wanders the Wold, singing to herself, she still swears a voice replies.
*
SIX
The Elusive Art of Stormsinging
MARY
The shadows of the sails crept across the deck as our second day out of Whallum closed. The sun neared the horizon in a cloudless sky, bleached and crisp and sparkling with cold. The wind was frigid on my cheeks, but not as bad as it could have been.
The Winter Sea was poised on the edge of true winter, the long season—eight months of the year—where only ships with ghistings and Stormsingers dared to challenge the waves. It was a season for covert warfare and risk-taking, a time of terrific storms where an enterprising smuggler like Randalf could make a fortune in one fortuitous venture.
I sat by the mainmast on a stool, dull-eyed and wrapped in my musty cloak. Whatever courage and stupidity had fueled my escape back in Whallum was long gone, stolen by a day tied to the foremast in the wind and salt and cold. Now, simply sitting on a stool felt like luxury.
Freeing me hadn’t been a kindness or a reward, however. It was purely practicality—if Randalf left me there any longer, I’d have died.
So he had given me a blanket and allowed me to spend a night near the stove in the galley. My gag had vanished and my hands were freed, but I was no less a prisoner. The waves were my shackles now, stretching to the horizon. Even the tips of Aeadine’s ragged peninsulas were gone from sight, swallowed by sea fog and distance.
The only way off this ship was into the waves.
My last Stormsinger drowned herself.
I remembered what Randalf had said back at Kaspin’s and shivered. But part of me took the idea and tucked it away, grim and abyssal though it was.
Around me, Randalf’s crew went about their work. They watched me, constantly. I slept in fragments at night, terrified that I’d wake up to a shadow creeping into my closet, or the ghisting’s unearthly face. To make matters worse, I was barely fed—I’d earn better food, Randalf said, when I proved my value.
The storm I’d conjured to cover our departure from Whallum hadn’t been enough to do that. Apparently calling a storm was a lot easier than dispersing one or maintaining a good wind and, as Randalf had speculated to Kaspin, I was untrained. The Navy’s Stormsingers were apprenticed and instructed from a young age, but I’d been hidden in the Wold, voiceless, for my entire life.