Caught between offense and a spike of panic, I looked at the captain. “What is she saying?”
“I’m aware,” Demery said to Widderow without feeling.
“Trouble?” I repeated, looking at the old woman, but she was on her way out of the cabin with a rustle of dark skirts. “You promised me protection, Mr. Demery. If your crew can’t be trusted, our arrangement—”
Across the table, Bailey rolled his eyes and stood. “Didn’t know we had a princess aboard.”
“I’m nothing of the sort,” I snapped, brazen in my indignation.
“No doubt of that,” Grant muttered. “You ought to have seen her the day we met.”
“I worked an inn for ten years—I can handle myself.” My mind tracked back to a dark forest, the open door of the coach, scraped palms, and heavy boots stalking through the autumn deadfall. I added, “And enough to know that sometimes a slap isn’t enough.”
“That’s why I’m assigning a crewmember as your guardian,” Demery stated.
Athe caught his eye over the table and relief sunk into my muscles. The woman wasn’t overly kind, but I felt safe in her shadow.
“Gods, no, not me,” she said, slapped a palm on the table in farewell, and strode out the door. “I have a proper job to do.”
Bailey followed her, turning on his way out the door to tug his forelock at the captain.
That left me with Grant, suddenly quiet, and Demery, who cocked his head at the highwayman.
Grant looked as though he’d swallowed a fly.
“Well,” the captain said, “there’s only one other person here who can’t sail and has nothing else to do with their time. You two can get better acquainted before your time in Hesten. Keep her out of trouble, Mr. Grant.”
Bonny, Bonny Grant was He, He was, or so they said,
Handsome as a Devil be,
With Gold upon his Head
Lace he wore about his Throat, His Breeches, Buckskin fine, His Eyes they danced a-merrily His Coat was darkest Wine A Road, a Coach, a fine Lady, He’d offer out his Hand
He’d rob her blind a-while she swooned And pluck her Wedding Band
The Girl from the Wold
The Girl from the Wold is in shock. She sits in a rattling carriage with half a dozen strangers, staring out the window and trying not to think, not to feel. There is a bag in her lap, stuffed to bursting with her most treasured possessions. Her father and stepmother are sending her away, to an aunt who can find her a suitable husband.
She is twenty-two years old. Her last fiancé went to war, and he had no house to leave her in. So the marriage was called off. The girl and her fiancé did not love one another, but their fondness had been growing, and the girl is devastated.
The girl sees something out the carriage window, among the trees—a shadow, too dense for a waning autumn wood. They are not in her Wold, but they are in a normal wold—the Lesterwold, which cloaks the road west in fallen leaves and reaches spindly, clacking fingers up into a grey sky. These trees have all obeyed the change of seasons, and their shadows stretch obediently away from the meager sunlight.
Instead of soothing the girl, the predictability of this common wold doubles the ache in her chest.
There is movement again, among the trunks and branches and bobbing conifer boughs. It does not scare the girl, though she leans forward and squints through the shutters. She is used to forests and their creatures. This is their place, not hers, and she understands her position as guest in a wild realm.
But soon after, the horses whinny and the carriage stops. The girl hears raised voices and the other travelers glance at one another.
The carriage door bangs open. Another passenger shrieks in surprise, then terror. Hands grab the travelers closest to the door and haul them out like screaming chickens from a coop.
When the hands come for her, she lashes out with a boot. She hears a curse. But another set of fingers digs into her skirts.
Then the girl is in the leaves beside the road, terrified and clawing to her feet. Running away.
And a highwayman with a pistol stalks behind her.
*
EIGHTEEN
Lanterns in the Snow
MARY
The key to learning how to fight is not maiming your instructor, even if you happen to resent them for wholly valid reasons.” Grant passed me a stick roughly the length of a dagger. He kept its twin in his own hand. “So use this, please. I will ask Demery to find you something more suitable later, but for now… Take it. Mary?”
I grudgingly took the stick. Demery had given us the cabin for an hour to begin my lessons, but even with only Grant’s eyes to see me, I still felt absurd in trousers and a hitched-up petticoat, with loosened stays and a man’s shirt belted over the top.
“Fingers like this to start.” Grant showed me how to grip the hilt of the knife. “Yes, good.”
I slowly complied. I knew I was being petty, but it didn’t change how I felt. Every time I looked at Grant, I remembered the feel of the Stormsinger’s gag in my mouth. The madness of isolation. The helplessness of locked doors. Not knowing what fresh threat the next day would bring.
But his scarred cheeks reminded me that he hadn’t come out of that unmarred, either. His movements were a touch stiff, too, as if he’d injuries beneath his loose shirt and waistcoat.
I reined myself in and imitated his grip. “What’s next?”
An hour later, I was bored, of all things. We’d spent the entire time shifting grips and stances, over and over until I wanted to lunge at Grant, just to make him move more quickly. But my hands grew accustomed to moving about my fake dagger, and my strained muscles affirmed my need for training.
“Good,” Grant said. “Very good. Tomorrow we’ll do the same and I’ll arrange for some pistols.”
I nodded, shoving my ‘knife’ into my pocket and raking frayed hair back into its simple knot at the back of my head. “Then I’ve winds to summon.”
“And I’ve…” Grant looked around the cabin, frowned when he saw nothing distracting. “Well, your back to watch.”
I sang Demery a rather feisty southerly and spent the rest of the day trying to keep it under control with a simple, repetitive song. We were nearly into the second turning of the Bountiful Moons now, and the rough waves and sudden squalls made it clear that, as far as weather went, I’d been spoiled aboard Randalf’s ship. The three Bitter Moons of deep winter were coming. The world would shed her sheltering leaves and cede us to a baleful wind and driving snow and ravenous sky.
Despite my bravado and promises to Demery, I wasn’t fit to face that turbulent season on the water. Yet.
The waves rose, choppy and capped with white. Snow clouds hemmed us in as the sun dipped towards an early slumber, and even the southerly wind brought a bitter, lung-cracking cold.
I turned my song to dismissing the clouds, but my throat ached. I accepted a flask of hot, honey-laced coffee from Grant, so tired that I felt only dull gratitude as I clutched it between my mittened hands and let steam tickle the fine, frozen hairs inside my nose.
“Not going well?” Grant inquired.
“No.” My eyes drifted to the rail, where Demery, Athe and Bailey conferred. The wind tore most of their words away, but the glares Bailey kept shooting me were clear enough. “From the look on his face I’m going to get dumped on the nearest cay.”