Randalf came to fetch me that night with an escort of a dozen toughs. He set a chest down at Kaspin’s feet with a thud and opened it to reveal more solems than I’d seen in my life.
Meanwhile, Speck wrapped a cloak around my shoulders and patted me on the cheek—or rather, on the Stormsinger’s mask, which was still locked over my jaw.
“Mayhap we’ll see one another again, dove,” Speck murmured as he pulled the hood over my head, casting my face into shadow. “Don’t miss me too much.”
I kicked his shin.
“Bitch!” He hopped backwards, but before he could retaliate, Randalf tugged me out into the winter night. I flashed Speck a smug, slit-eyed look as I went, but there was no heart to it.
Cool wind rushed into my nostrils. I raked in a desperate, fragile breath, careless of the cold. For an instant, I imagined this was freedom—snowflakes melting on my forehead and clear, salty wind in my face. But it wasn’t. My mouth was dry and sour beneath the mask, Randalf’s hand was iron on my arm, and our escort of burly sailors loomed all around.
“Right,” Randalf said to his men. “To the ship.”
*
Randalf’s ship was a sleek, two-masted affair, painted with broad stripes of red and yellow. That was all I saw before he hustled me down a steep set of stairs, across a small gun deck, and down a short passage at the stern of the ship. Then, he locked me in a cupboard.
“Sleep well,” the smuggler commanded through the hatch and slammed it shut.
Blackness surrounded me. I held still as my other senses pressed to the surface—the slight bob of the ship in the harbor waters, the creak of wood, and the scent of damp and salt and hemp. The last came from the coils of rope and bundles of canvas which dug into my backside. They, apparently, were my bed.
Holding despair at bay, I found a position that passed as comfortable and wrapped my arms across my chest. My cloak was thick—and musty—but cold seeped through the wood all around. I was going to have to make myself a proper nest in the canvas, or else I’d freeze overnight.
A nest, like a rat. Desolation came at me in a sudden gust and I clenched my eyes shut—though, dark as it was, the act made little difference.
I should have run back at the fort. This was what one moment’s hesitation had won me—a cupboard on a smuggler’s ship, a Stormsinger’s mask locked about my head, and a future of suffering, pain, and constant anxiety.
The urge to wallow battered me, but I fought back with anger and determination. Next time I had the chance to flee, I would not hesitate. I’d run, I’d hide, and then I’d find my mother. Somehow.
Eventually I drifted into an exhausted fugue. Dreams came. I saw the Wold and the ghisten yew behind my family’s inn, its branches full of sunlight on an autumn morning. In the dream, I spun a basket of black wool into yarn. The spindle whirled, the thread tightened, and from within the yew, a spirit spoke. Not every tree in the Ghistwold had a soul, but I’d always known that this one did.
Sister.
I awoke to the creak of timber. Rope dug into me from every side, and I groaned into my mask as a thousand aches and pains leapt to my attention.
Sister?
I blinked, disoriented. The light from my dream, filtering through the leaves of the yew, was still here. But it had changed from golden and warm to pale and cool blue, and it radiated from… a person.
A woman crouched before me, tucked between the bulkhead and the hatch. She wore full skirts, flowing past her feet and pooling on the ropes around me. She stared from a heart-shaped face, with pale green eyes the consistency of sea-glass. They had no pupils, no depth of soul, but there was emotion in them—fleeting curiosity, appraisal, and compassion.
She shifted and her skirts disintegrated into a swirl of uncoordinated, octopuslike limbs. Not a person. Not a woman. A ghisting.
I stifled the urge to cry out. I knew ghistings. I’d grown up in a Ghistwold. But this creature was not peacefully at rest in her tree, curious but detached from the world. She was captive on the ship, like me, and I’d never been so close to one of her kind while manifested. Why was she here? What did she want?
The ghisting surged forward and I cringed, expecting to feel a chill gust as her specter passed through me. That, after all, was what happened in stories.
Instead, I felt a gentle, solid hand on my face. It wasn’t cold, but unremarkably tepid.
Sister?
I screamed into my mask. The woman’s—the creature’s—eyes flared wide with shock and her visage thinned. Her touch dropped away, she merged with the wood of the ship and her blue aura extinguished.
I was plunged back into darkness, then slapped with a wash of new light as the cupboard door opened. A shadow filled the hatchway—one of Randalf’s crew, presumably set to guard me—along with a swinging lantern.
The crewman hauled me into the passageway. He was gruff and far too handsy, but for one blank-minded second, I was too shocked to react. Was I being rescued from the ghisting with tentacles for legs—tentacles!—or was I bound for something worse?
I found my feet, but the handsy hands didn’t let go. Instead, they gripped my arms and shook me.
“What’s wrong with you, witch?”
Obviously, he wasn’t very bright—with the mask locked around my jaw, I could hardly answer him.
I squinted in the light of his lantern, its glass belly filled with half a dozen pulsing dragonflies. Their light was purple or amber, depending on the gender of the flies, and they were currently in a blinding frenzy.
The crewman pushed me aside and bent down to peer into my nest of canvas and rope. “Nothin’ in here, woman. What—”
It was at this point that I realized there was nothing between me and the short passage to the gun deck. Slowly, I turned my head. I could feel a draft from that direction and see a shaft of gentle, natural light, coming from one side.
Had they left a hatch open?
I grabbed the crewman’s lantern as he stood up, smashed it across his face, and bolted down a short passageway. Glass hit the deck, the man screamed, and dragonflies burst into freedom.
I stumbled down a short set of stairs. Sure enough, moonlight and cold air poured through an open gunport. Randalf’s ship, Juliette, had eight guns in total, all docile and lashed in their cradles. Normally, the deck would also be populated by swinging hammocks and sleeping crew, but apparently they were all on watch or ashore.
Except, of course, for the crewman who was currently bellowing like a wounded bear and barreling after me. Footsteps thundered across the deck above us too. Other sailors had noticed the disturbance.
Three glowing dragonflies zipped past me and out the open gunport. I darted after them and craned to look out. The line of a jetty wasn’t far below.
A hand seized my forearm. The smuggler I’d attacked jerked me around and slammed me into the bulkhead between the hatches.
“You little bitch,” he snarled, his face covered with scrapes and blood.
The Stormsinger’s mask smothered any reply, which was likely for the best. My vocabulary was degrading by the second.
Sister. A rootless voice wafted past me. My skin started to crawl, even as I fought to escape the sailor’s hold.
The creature from my cupboard peeled out of the wood beside me. The smuggler reared back, letting out a choking shout. Back by the stairs, the hatch to the upper deck crashed open and boots flooded down towards us.