“This is the beginning,” Olsa had told me as the creature faded. She patted my back and smiled with an amused, maternal glint to her eye. “You may be broken, boy, but you also have power you have not begun to understand.”
I had taken her promise to heart, tired and aching as I was. Beneath my weariness, there was deep, visceral satisfaction. Lirr was dead, and justice served. When we returned to Usti and the world learned who had brought Lirr down, my name would be beside Fisher’s, Benedict’s and Demery’s. It was the closest thing to redemption I could hope for, while Benedict’s lies remained intact.
I had done what I set out to do, and that knowledge was iron in my spine. But what came next?
When Fisher’s longboat drove onto the beach, I grabbed the bow with my good hand and hauled with the rowers. They had leapt out with a splash of water and crunch of rock and snow, and now their eyes strayed towards the mist-wrapped forest.
“Who survived?” Fisher dropped from the boat and took my forearm, her brusque comradery belied by the happiness around her eyes and the gentleness of her fingers. Half of her face was scraped raw, as if it had been scoured with sand. It oddly reminded me of Ellas’s scars.
She noted my bandaged arm with a wince.
“Everyone save Lirr, and many good sailors,” I replied. I held her forearm a moment longer, gave it a small squeeze and nodded up the beach as I let go. “The pirates have set up camp in the Wold.”
“The Wold…” Fisher eyed the summer forest, running her gaze from broad, wind-rustled leaves to the hedge of snowmelt surrounding it. “I have many questions.”
“So do I.” We started back up the rise, the crew from her boat falling in behind. “What happened to Ellas?”
“She’s dead,” Fisher admitted. She ran her tongue over the inside of her ruined cheek, then continued, “It was exactly as we feared. She and her crew waited until the ship was back in working order, then they tried to take it. She was shot.”
The fact that she did not identify who had done the killing worried me. I met my captain’s eyes, a question in them, but Fisher only gave a resigned smile.
“There will be questions, when we go home,” I murmured lowly. “Ellas was a decorated captain.”
“I know,” Fisher returned, without dropping her voice. The crew from her longboat, following us, watched her carefully. “I did what I did to protect my ship.”
“There’s not one among us who’d say different,” one of the crew commented. “Beggin’ your pardon, Cap’n.”
Fisher cast the woman a small, thankful nod.
The Other pulled at me, sending half a dozen images of battle and blood through my mind. Some I knew were from the battle aboard Hart, while others remained obscure. I glimpsed Fisher, wrapped in snow, her pistol sparking. Men and women screaming. A stag bellowing. Ellas, toppled into the sea.
I touched the coin in my pocket and the visions abated, though the feel of them remained—the tension, the shock and the pain.
But I felt no regret over Ellas. In truth, I wished I cared that she was dead. I ought to have borne some compassion; I had no idea how far Ben had pushed her, and how much of her betrayal was his influence.
But one look at Fisher’s battered face made that unease harden. However Ben had swayed Ellas, it did not change what she had done once he was out of sight.
“Did she do that to your face?” I asked my captain.
“The deck did this.” She looked at me with an amused crinkle in the corner of her eyes. It transformed into a grimace. “Though I suppose you could blame Ellas for dragging me across it. I’m quite all right, Mr. Rosser. Now, we’re all eager to know… Has Demery revealed Bretton’s Hoard yet?”
My boots crunched over the rim of ice and melt at the edge of the Wold. The temperature immediately rose and mist eddied about us, doubling the eeriness of the place. The crewfolk murmured among themselves, shoving back hats and tugging down scarves with wide eyes.
I pushed a branch out of the way and stood aside for Fisher to precede me into the trees. “No, but there’s a great deal of muttering about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pirates set out first thing tomorrow.”
Fisher looked at the canopy over our heads and turned in place, taking the forest in with one, long sweep. She raised her brows in something between admiration and pleasure.
“This is… uncanny,” she decided. “As to the pirates, good. We’ll go with them. Now, brief me on as much as you can, Mr. Rosser, and then I want to see James Demery.”
*
The following morning, when the sun slipped from behind the Stormwall and the gloom lightened a fraction, James Demery and Anne Firth led a small party through the Wold.
Our boots sank into ankle-deep moss and skirted freshwater springs. A few ghistings watched us pass, lingering about their trees and taking the forms of forests beasts, or imitating various members of the party—Olsa, Widderow, myself, Benedict. Some even followed us as far as the reach of their roots would allow—a phantom wolf, a running little boy. Then they faded, and others took their place.
To my ears they were silent, but I saw Mary acknowledge them. She strode with her mother, clad in a man’s shirt and women’s petticoats. Tane was nowhere to be seen, hidden beneath her skin, but if I touched the Other, I saw her telltale grey haze about her skin.
Only once throughout the journey, through happenstance—or cunningly contrived circumstances—did we end up striding next to one another.
“Does Tane know how much farther the hoard is?” I asked her.
Mary’s expression became more distant. I wondered if that was how I looked when I slipped into the Other.
“Another half hour or so,” Mary replied.
I looked at her askance. “Is it difficult for you?”
“Having Tane?” Startled by the question, she glanced around to make sure no one was listening. Anne and the pirates were ahead while Fisher and Benedict trailed behind.
I nodded.
“I’m growing used to her,” Mary admitted. “It’s not as though she suddenly came to me, not like it is for Charles and the rest. She has always been part of me, even if her consciousness slept. There is no me without her.”
Something in Mary’s tone made me consider her more directly. I met her eyes, prompting her to go on.
“I… I can see why you’d find it perturbing, though,” she admitted. She looked away again, but not before I saw a deeper truth behind her words. “Knowing what I am.”
“I do not find it perturbing,” I said honestly. “Does it bother you that I am a broken Sooth who summons monsters from the Other?”
A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Did you really intend to do that?”
I almost grinned in return, but this was the closest conversation Mary and I had had since our reunion, and my palms had begun to sweat. I cleared my throat. “Yes. We needed a distraction.”
“We did.” Mary frowned at the path ahead, then shrugged the memory away. “Well, it’s odd, but nothing to be ashamed of. Olsa says it’s a rare side effect for amplified Sooths. The Mereish are aware of it and the Usti suspect, but the Aeadine…”