My mother’s voice came last, candlelight on her face and her back to a moonless night. My boys, my sweet boys. How powerful you will be. How proud your father, when he comes home.
I clenched my eyes shut, trying to smother the memory. Back then, I had not seen the madness in her eyes. Back then, I did not know that my father was already dead, and she living in denial—her mind shattered by grief.
But when that spring night had come, moonless and dark, I had foreseen the danger. I had had a chance to save Ben and myself. Yet I had been too afraid, too trusting, too—
“Reconciled, her bended knee.” Mary’s voice wafted to me, sweet and low, and I saw her on a ship—Randalf’s yellow and red schooner. She wore a cloak with the hood pulled back, and a dark braid fell down the length of her spine, frayed by the constant wind.
I followed her hollow gaze to the horizon, shedding memories of my mother and Ben like ash. A tower of sails rose from the waves in three sun-bleached tiers. Behind it, snow clouds loosed a cascade of thick flakes, veiling the pink and gold of a setting sun.
Something moved in the water, creeping towards me in a sickly orange haze of light. It was a creature with a horse’s shrunken head and the body of an emaciated dog, prowling the waves on its back two feet. The long claws of its bony forepaws dragged across the surface of the water in frothing rivulets, but it did not sink—it moved as if the water were no more than a few inches deep.
This was not part of the vision. This was real, in the Dark Water.
A huden. As my eyes met the swirling, light-filled hollows of its eyes, its jaw unhinged with a moist clatter, and it howled.
The vision shattered. I cried out and flailed, toppling out of my hammock in a tumble of elbows, knees and blankets. Between curses and my bones cracking off the deck, I almost missed the ping of a coin rolling away.
I sat up, bruised and panting, and pushed hair back from my face. No huden here. Just sweat coating my forehead and the cool impression left by a coin, right between my eyes.
“Does Slader know?” Fisher’s voice curled out of the darkness.
I gave a strangled shout and staggered to my feet, clutching a bruised elbow. “Damn you, Fisher! Do not skulk!”
“Does Slader know?” Fisher repeated. I just made her out in the thin light from our woodstove and hooded lantern. She wore a shift to the knee and no stays, with loose trousers beneath and bare feet. “About that coin?”
Still half drugged by the Other, I struggled to catch up. “Pardon me?”
Fisher bent, picked up the small, glinting piece from the deck, and approached me. “Does Slader know about this coin?” She enunciated clearly, holding it out between two fingers.
“Why would he? It’s nothing,” I countered lamely. Memory of the huden still lingered with me, unsettling and sharp. It took conscious will not to snatch the coin back. I did not like to see it in her hand. It was my sanity, and Fisher… she knew?
“It’s a talisman. You’re using Mereish magic to suppress your gift—the very gift he keeps you aboard for.” Fisher dropped the coin in my palm. “No wonder you’re such a shoddy Sooth.”
I had no time to be offended. As soon as the coin touched my skin my disorientation fled and air rushed into my lungs in clean, full gasps. With that came the realization that the coin could not have found its own way onto my forehead. Fisher had put it there, like a priest put pennies on the eyes of the dead.
“Why?” she asked.
I startled at the question and squinted at her. “Pardon?”
“Why are you doing this to yourself?”
I was grateful Fisher had intervened in my visions, but could not tell her more. She had already discovered the coin and its purpose. If I told her anything else, all my secrets would begin to unravel.
“It’s hard to sleep,” I finally admitted. “Visions can feel a lot like nightmares.”
Fisher twisted her lips into a frown, and I sensed she was deciding whether to believe me. “You have ‘nightmares’ a lot more than you used to.”
I flinched. She was not wrong. The more I used the coin to anchor myself to the human world, the more I needed it. It was a crutch, and the longer I leaned on it, the more my muscles atrophied.
It had been twenty years since my uncle slipped the coin into my fingers and saved me from my wanderings in the Dark Water. Twenty more, and I was not sure how much of my sanity would remain.
But for now, I had the coin. For now, I had my mind. And I would use every bit of my strength and wit to ensure my legacy was something that I, and my uncle, could be proud of.
I needed to distract Fisher. “I dreamed of Mary Firth,” I admitted. I felt like if I voiced what I had seen, it would make sense. “The Stormsinger.”
Fisher winced, even the darkness unable to hide her disdain. “How pleasant for you. Please do not share.”
“I saw her ship, being trailed by a man-of-war,” I clarified, ignoring Fisher’s implication.
My counterpart paused. “Was it real? Your visions aren’t always… well…”
Now that I was awake and clearheaded, I had to admit that the vision had not felt quite right, though I had been suppressing my abilities for so long I hardly remembered what ‘right’ was.
When I thought back on tonight’s ramblings, only two things demanded my attention—the way the light fell on Mary’s face, and the sound of my uncle’s voice.
He is your responsibility.
Both of those seemed far more like my warped subconscious than true visions.
“I am not certain,” I admitted.
Fisher held out her hand. “Then would you like me to hold that while you chase her back to the Dark Water?”
“No,” I barely kept myself from snapping. “It was nothing.”
“As you please, Mr. Rosser.” Fisher slapped her thighs in a gesture of finality and stood to vanish behind the curtain between our hammocks. “If you wake me up again, I will smother you.”
*
Tithe adorned the shores of a long, natural harbor, backed by gentle hills and distant forest. Everything, from the houses to the town’s heavy walls and the pier, was built of grey weathered stone with heavy wooden lintels. Green-copper steeples glinted under a weight of icicle-girded snow, and a series of ancient runestones protruded from the water down the quay. The streets themselves were clean, the crowd of cloaks and skirts punctuated by maroon-coated soldiers. It was an orderly, calm place, steeped in years and assured of its position in the world. It suited and steadied me.
I watched from the deck of Hart as our longboats ferried men and goods to and from shore, the steward and his mates orchestrating the provisioning of the ship while fortunate sailors took shore leave.
Fisher returned on one of the boats. Catching my eye as she stepped off the ladder, she approached with one hand under her coat and a sly grin on her face.
“Fisher,” I greeted her dubiously. Memory of our conversation in the dark surged back to me, and with it a niggling fear. Would she tell Slader about the coin?
“Mr. Rosser.” She pulled out her hand with a flourish and presented me with a flaky pastry wrapped in soft brown paper.
My suspicion deepened. “Did you spit on it?”
“No! Never.”