Triggered by the thought of Mary, the world slipped. I blinked as the edge of the Other enfolded me, igniting the Ghistwold into a sky of soft, glowing stars. I glimpsed the ghisting Harpy, drifting along the rail of the ship like an acrobat across a wire, her expression distant. Below me in the belly of the ship, Mary’s light moved.
Olsa Uknara stopped in front of me. Grey-green in the Other, she peered into my face with a distracted intensity I recognized.
“What do you see?” I asked, still half submerged in that second world.
“I see flickering light, and Dark Water licking your heels,” the woman replied. There was no disdain in her practical tone, but there were hints of concern and curiosity. “Someone tried to amplify you?”
I shoved my hand into my pocket and grasped the coin, recalling myself to my flesh. “Yes. Though I have heard there is a cure in Mere.”
“Oh?” The tanned skin about the Usti’s eyes wrinkled as she considered this, intrigued. “Well, that may be. Or it may not. Either way, when this is over, you and I must speak. I can train you. To see, to banish and to summon.”
“I was trained at Ismoathe…” I started to say, but trailed off at her last words. Summon?
“Wife!” the other big Usti, Illya, called across the deck.
“Stay alive, Samuel,” Olsa instructed me. Her familiarity was surprising, but somehow, it felt right. “And I will make a proper Sooth of you.”
FORTY-TWO
Harmony
MARY
Demery’s and Rosser’s crews spread out through the Wold, trudging through the snow to various defensive positions. Meanwhile, Harpy slipped along a thick ice shelf on the western shore and tucked herself behind the wreck of a huge, triple-decked Capesh warship with shredded, sun-bleached red sails.
The pirates’ deck was a flurry of action as it slipped from sight. Gun crews swarmed the cannons and marksmen lined up under Bailey’s command, the barrels of their long Usti rifles catching the Second Sun’s waxing light.
“Harpy will be there to deal with Lirr’s ship if he comes into play, and provide a retreat for us,” Demery explained as a small army gathered on the edge of the Wold. “If you hear two cannon shots, right after one another, that’s the signal all has gone to hell. Retreat to the ship and don’t look back. She’ll be right along the edge of the ice shelf to pick us up.”
Soon after, marksmen ascended the trees of the Wold, bundled to the eyes, with rifles slung across their backs. They ran across branches like yard arms, their boots secured by ice teeth, and hid themselves in the shadowed lattice of the canopy.
Among them, I sighted Grant. He held back as his comrades started off through the icy forest.
“See, I knew my experience as a highwayman would come in handy. Here I am, back in a forest, orchestrating an ambush.” Grant grinned at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Well, this is my first proper ambush,” I remarked, trying to pick up the lightness of his tone. “Abetha’s reputation did all the work last time.”
Grant’s eyes lingered on my face—my eyes, my lips—and my levity turned hollow. I’d caught this look in his eyes before, but it was clearer now, more brazen. Samuel had looked at me the same way and I’d no doubt as to what it meant, though I couldn’t contemplate addressing it right now.
“You’ve your own reputation now,” Grant said.
“As a middling Stormsinger who keeps managing not to die?” I quipped.
“You are that, yes.” He cocked a grin. “But you are also brave and persistent. Saint, you put up with me. That is a heroic act.”
I smiled, but he must have seen the hesitation in my eyes.
“Well,” Grant cleared his throat and saluted, “I’ll see you when the dust settles, Mary.”
I nodded and he vanished into the trees. I stared after him for a long moment, discontent, sympathy and confusion turning my already unhappy stomach. Then I fortified myself and set off.
My mother, Demery, Olsa and Illya waited beneath the larch. I listened as Anne reiterated the plan for the dozenth time and watched Olsa and Illya leave to scout. Finally, Rosser appeared with two sailors and Demery moved to confer with him.
Samuel Rosser glanced at me as if he had something he wished to say, but unlike Grant, he kept focused on his task.
For my part, I hesitated, recalling all I’d overheard in the hold just a few hours before. I wanted to tell him I knew the truth about him and Benedict now. I wanted to tell him that I thought him a good man. I sensed what those words would mean to him, but with Lirr, the coming battle and my own condition weighing upon me, I already felt vulnerable. I couldn’t summon the strength to expose myself any further.
So I smiled at him, if a little sadly. His expression gentled and he offered a nod in return, then he was gone into the snow and the shadows.
Finally, my mother and I lit a small fire, sheltered by the rock where the larch grew, and settled in. Trees moaned in the frigid wind, branches squeaking, bare limbs rattling. Loose snow raced across the crusted surface and I burrowed my chin in my scarf. I thought of the marksmen in the treetops, and Grant and Rosser at their posts. I wouldn’t be surprised if, come tomorrow, half the casualties were from cold.
Anne sat beside me and started to sing softly. The wind eased and the half-night quietened around us. Even the murmur of sleeping ghistings seemed to hush. If I hadn’t known this strange forest sheltered our small army, I would never have guessed it.
Their footprints in the snow, however, would betray them right away.
Anne kept singing, and as she did, words welled up in my throat too. I brushed my bottom lip across the frosty edge of my scarf for an indecisive moment, then pulled the scarf down and joined in.
The song was a common one, the kind Demery’s sailors sung to pass the time, but my mother made it into a gentler thing, with sweet minors and a subtle warning behind each word. I matched her tone and took on a natural harmony, hedging her words and echoing them.
As we did, the wind faded and it began to snow.
“Oh, now the storm is raging
and we are far from shore;
The poor old ship she’s sinking fast
and the riggings they are tore.”
Thick snowflakes drifted down from the sky above, thickening until I could barely see Tane’s larch, lording above us.
“The night is dark and dreary,
we can scarcely see the moon,
But still I live in hope to see
the Holy Ground once more.”
The snow thickened. Our song filled the Wold until every footprint, every trace of our forces was gone.
Snow continued to fall long after Anne and I stopped singing, piling up around us and clinging to our clothes. It hissed and evaporated in our fire, the only sound other than the rush of my blood and the whisper of my breath.
Finally, Tane spoke. She felt like memory or a fragmented dream, but truer and more familiar than either could ever be.
Sister, she hummed through my chest. They’re coming.
Gunshots erupted through the Wold.
FORTY-THREE
Black Tide Son
SAMUEL
I unfolded from the shelter of a boulder and fired. My target fell like a sack of grain and I ducked to reload. On either side of me, my companions cracked off shots, the mist of their breaths mingling with gun smoke and snow in the north’s infinite dusk.