“Safe? That’s what he said,” I chattered, devoting the last spark of my energy to vehemence. My breath curled in the air before me. “You’re the same as him—a pirate, a Saint-damned pirate.”
Something flicked across Demery’s features at the accusation, but he didn’t respond. He just stood up and nodded to the woman, Athe, who hauled me to my feet. When I staggered, her iron arm kept me upright.
“Right, Ms. Firth,” Athe said, leading me towards the quarterdeck and its waiting doors. She thumped and rubbed my upper arms like a mother with a fussing toddler. “Let’s thaw you out.”
*
I lay in my cocoon of blankets, head resting on the creaking hammock’s edge. I watched firelight dance through the murky glass of the cabin’s woodstove, trying to imagine I was anywhere but here. The bulkhead and decking around the stove were covered in standard iron plating and the stove’s belly was small enough to go out if it wasn’t tended every few hours.
It was burning low, again, and cold seeped in through the walls. Someone had come to feed it at least once since my arrival aboard Demery’s ship, but time was a slippery thing, and I had no window in my cabin to judge the light.
I was alone. Alone and so far unharmed, ensconced in blankets that smelled of salt and lavender and lye.
My thoughts drifted back to Kaspin’s auction, to the promise Demery had made that aboard his ship, I’d be treated fairly. Was that proving true? Did it matter if it was? I was still a prisoner.
I buried myself deeper in my blankets, hair poofing up around my head. My thoughts swerved away from my current troubles and back to Lirr.
Do you remember who I am?
No, I couldn’t bear to think of him, either, or of the ghisting who’d called me sister. She was the last thing I remembered before Demery’s appearance… But how had he found me? And where had the wreckage of Juliette gone? Had the ghisting carried me away?
The thought was absurd, but less absurd than other possibilities. I certainly hadn’t swum away from Lirr, and he must have searched for me. He wouldn’t have simply sailed away, even in the storm I’d conjured with my last breaths. His singer could have dispersed that if she wanted to, whoever that poor soul was.
I didn’t want to think of her, either. Instead, I chose to remember my childhood room at the inn, high on the third floor under the eaves. I imagined opening the shutters to a sunny view of the Wold. I recalled the smells of earth and green, manure and woodsmoke and baking bread that always permeated our side of the village.
In that memory, I played the harpsichord and practiced the flute. While I did, the washerwoman and her daughter hung the laundry out back, sheets billowing in the breeze. The women would sing a call-and-response song as they splashed and scrubbed and wrung out the weekly washing. My father, Joseph Grey, would wander through the nearby garden within its short fence, a pipe between his teeth, eyes scanning the rows for weeds and pests. Chickens and ducks would scatter from his ambling, bare feet.
I didn’t think beyond that image, fixed in that restful time before my father’s eyes had strayed beyond the garden, the washerwoman’s daughter had fallen with child and she’d become his new wife. Before he’d given up on my mother, and our world of predictable days and quiet hope had become… something else.
A knock sounded on the door. I cracked an eye.
The knock came again and when I didn’t reply, the door opened. Daylight cut across the deck and revealed a woman, not Athe but an older person with leathery, wrinkled porcelain skin and a black dress with a ruffed collar, fifty years out of fashion. She was one of the Ismani peoples, her hooded eyes lined with white lashes and her equally white hair swept up with a long, carnelian hairpin. Only a few strands of her former, youthful hair color remained—dashes of glossy, chocolate brown.
“Little mage,” the woman said, squinting at me with her arms full of cloth. Despite her obvious heritage, her accent was an ambiguous one, reminding me of some of the travelers we’d see at the inn when I was a child. Her pronunciation was clear, patient—one used to speaking to those who didn’t share a native tongue. “I have clothes for you, and a bucket of hot water on the way. Are you fit to ready yourself?”
I found my voice. “Who are you?”
“My name is my own, but you may call me Widderow,” the woman replied. “Ship’s steward. The captain needs to speak with you.”
“I don’t have a choice,” I observed.
Widderow smiled flatly. “No, child, you do not. Get up.”
Twenty minutes later, I stepped out into the grand cabin to find the old woman gone. I’d barely seen my surroundings when I came aboard last night, but my small cabin attached to this larger one. Together, they took up most of the quarterdeck. The galley was here too, judging by the magnificent scents drifting through an open door to a passageway. There was a bigger woodstove in its iron nest at the stern, along with windows on either side of a door to a sheltered balcony. It was snowing outside, flakes drifting down and disappearing into mild waves.
“Ms. Firth.” Demery entered, followed by Widderow and a girl of about fifteen.
Widderow carried a pot and several mugs, while the girl had a tray stacked haphazardly with toasted bread, buttery eggs, thick bacon and cheeses. The scent of it all hit me like a mallet and my stomach growled. My appetite, it seemed, was unaffected by my volatile circumstances, and seasickness had yet to bother me.
The meal was left on a large table in the center of the room. The girl vanished and Widderow sat, pouring herself a stream of dark coffee. Seeing the look on my face, she pointedly set out a second cup and filled it halfway, leaving room for it to slosh with the tilt of the deck.
“Stop gawking like a fool,” she scolded. “Come and drink it. And eat. You are making me uncomfortable.”
“It takes a lot to make the Old Crow uncomfortable.” Demery cast me a distracted half-smile as he sat at the table across from the steward. He pulled out a plate and began to fill it.
“She has a touch of the blood fugue,” Widderow informed him without looking at me. She patted her carefully pinned hair with one hand and smoothed a stray piece. “Less than I expected, but more than is practical. She may not be much use for a time.”
I didn’t like being discussed like this, but her words gave me pause. I gathered my scattered wits and sat slowly. Blood fugue. Shock. Was that why I couldn’t remember what had happened to me after I hit the water?
Demery pushed a plate in front of me and Widderow nodded to the coffee. “Do not let that get cold or slide onto the floor.”
I obligingly took the mug in hand. I wanted to drink it. I wanted to seize everything on the table and consume it like a feral dog. But the attitude of my captors unnerved me.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, holding the warm mug between my hands. “Why are you treating me… like this?”
“I told you you’d be treated well aboard my ship,” Demery said, pouring his own coffee and adding lumps of brown sugar.
“But I’m a prisoner,” I reminded him. “Prisoners aren’t served coffee and bacon.”
Demery stirred his coffee, eyes quiet. “Randalf was a bastard.”