“You brought winter down on Whallum a month early,” Grant said, mystified. His disbelief consoled me, somehow. “You are very powerful.”
“My mother forbade me to sing,” I admitted, though I immediately regretted it. Was my situation so dire that I was confiding in the highwayman? But there was no taking the admission back. “She forbade me to sing so I wouldn’t get carried off and sold by brigands.”
Grant smiled humorlessly. “Ah, you are subtle. Are you sure you were not kept quiet because of Lirr? Sooths can track Unnaturals in the Other, can they not? Perhaps never singing made you harder to find. Lirr only reappeared after you sang in Whallum.”
I frowned, perturbed by the thought. “I doubt that. Besides, I thought Sooths needed to touch a person to track them?”
Grant shrugged. “I haven’t a clue.”
Despite his dismissiveness, we were both quiet for an instant. The wind blew, hot coffee cooled on my tongue, and Demery and the others still conversed.
“Out of curiosity, where was Lirr before Whallum?” I asked.
“South Mereish Isles, they say.”
“That’s what, a month’s journey?” I eyed the horizon without really seeing it.
Grant calculated for a moment. “Give or take, depending on which island you’re coming from. Let us say an average of five weeks.”
Five weeks. Five weeks before Lirr appeared in Whallum was not when I sang at the gallows, but when I left the Wold. When my stepmother banished me from the shelter of my home and forest, and I’d stepped out into the world for the first time.
Could it be coincidence that that was precisely when Lirr would have departed the Mereish Isles? Presuming he hadn’t been somewhere else, first.
My stomach fluttered with unease, and I took another sip of coffee. Lirr’s words drifted back to me, somehow both more meaningful and more opaque now.
Do you not remember who you are?
Remember what? I was Mary Firth, born Mary Grey and occasionally mistaken as Abetha Bonning. I was a Stormsinger, if an unreliable one. I should have been nothing to Lirr save the key to manipulating my mother. But the way he’d looked at me said otherwise.
My mother. My belly sank, filling with hope and unease. I still barely believed that she was aboard Lirr’s ship, much less that, if Demery’s plan succeeded, I’d see her again within a couple months.
I batted the thought aside and downed half the coffee in one gulp, burning my throat.
Grant abruptly asked, “Lirr isn’t your father, is he?”
I choked on the coffee and descended into a fit of hacking and spitting. “What?”
Grant tried to thump me on the back, which I warded off with a flailing hand. “Well—Ouch! Considering their past…”
“Lirr is not my father,” I spluttered. “I look just like my father and the way Lirr… He didn’t treat me like that.”
The former highwayman’s eyebrows went up again, something colder inching into his gaze. “How did he treat you?”
“Sail!” The cry went up from somewhere in the rigging. “Three sails!”
Demery, Athe and Bailey splintered, all three of them snapping to attention.
“Colors?” Demery shouted.
“Dark purple, flying war pennants! And they’re making for us, Cap’n.”
“Running us down with a storm blowing in,” Bailey snarled. “Craven Mereish bastards.”
Mereish. Of course, our world was at war. It wasn’t just pirates and pirate hunters who plowed these seas.
“Pray, Mereish?” Grant repeated, loud enough for the pirates to hear. “We’re in neutral waters, barely out of Tithe! The Usti are supposed to—”
“That storm’s pushing them south out of the passage,” Demery decided. He pushed up the brim of his hat, scratching at his forehead. “They may not attack.”
“To the crows with that. We should beat to quarters.” Athe sucked her teeth, unfocused eyes cast towards the danger. “Show our spines and keep them at a distance.”
“Nay,” Bailey countered. “Three Mereish? We keep our heads down and pray for mercy.”
Demery followed the direction of Athe’s gaze for an indecisive moment, then nodded. “Beat to quarters.”
Bailey scowled, but Athe leapt into motion. She strode off, issuing a string of orders that left both Grant and I baffled. Bailey followed her, separating midships and heading below to bellow more orders to the pirates off watch.
Demery approached Grant and I, lowering his chin. “Both of you, below.”
“I can help,” I protested, half out of a need to do something, and half out of the desire to prove myself. “I can turn the wind against them.”
“Or you’ll sink us,” Demery said, flat and mild and without ire. “Besides, the last thing we want is the Mereish realizing we’ve a Stormsinger, even if you’re unseasoned. Go below, get some rest. Grant, stay a moment.”
I flushed, chastened, and left without looking back at him or Grant. In the main cabin, I pulled my mittens off beside the woodstove. I drained the flask of coffee, knowing I’d hardly be able to sleep, anyway, and returned to my cabin.
Grant strode in. “Hoi,” he protested, wedging his boot in the door of my cabin before I could close it. “You’re truly going to lock yourself away? In circumstances like this?”
“What else am I to do?” I inquired.
He nodded to the table. “Play a hand of cards with me.”
“You want to play cards while we’re chased by Mereish warships?”
Grant’s smile was wan. “It calms my nerves. Besides, you’re going to have to learn how to gamble if you intend to be part of this crew.”
I had no intention of fitting in with Demery’s crew, but that was beside the point. “I already know how to gamble,” I returned archly. “I grew up in a tavern, Mr. Grant.”
“Ah, yes, you have alluded to that before.” He leaned into the doorframe, boot still lodged in place. “Where? Maybe I passed through.”
I tried to close the door again.
“Well, then, I don’t believe you. You’ve probably never even held cards before.”
My pride rankled, ridiculous and wholly inappropriate.
Grant saw my expression change and pounced. “Prove it,” he teased, leaning into my room.
I opened the door wide, shouldered past him, and sat down at Demery’s big table.
We played late into the night, slapping down cards and gambling away odds and ends from our pockets. I lost the solem Demery had gifted me, but consoled myself there would be more on the way.
Around us, the ship groaned, feet passed across the deck and the sky beyond the gallery windows was swallowed by snow. We had no chance to see the Mereish ships with our naked eyes; the storm was fully upon us.
The wait was strained. Tension ate at my stomach, but I channeled it into the game, feet braced wide beneath the table so I wouldn’t slide off my chair with each beleaguered roll of the ship. Grant did the same, his focus narrowing as time passed. We raided the galley for bread and cheese and uncut carrots, and wrapped ourselves in piles of blankets against the cold when Bailey ordered the stoves put out. We discreetly lit a candle lantern—Demery had no dragonflies—and hung it in the center of the cabin, both knowing it was probably unwise, but neither taking the step to care. We discussed the games we played, taunted and teased, but neither of our hearts were in it.