by Anna Bright
Althea sighed. “If I knew who your suitors were, I could help, but that’s a secret half the Council doesn’t even know.” I raised an eyebrow at this, but my godmother just smiled archly.
I didn’t know who my allies were. But secret allies were better than enemies on every side.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
Althea stood. “Stay safe, sweet girl. Be good. Be wise.”
I nodded, and she kissed me on the forehead.
“Rest, if you can. Your bags will be at the harbor in the morning.”
Outside Saint Christopher’s, I knelt beneath the hazel tree I’d watered with my tears not an hour before. Unpinning the ivy circlet from my hair, I set it in front of my mother’s headstone.
I miss you.
I scooped a little dirt from her grave into the damp handkerchief Godmother Althea had given me, tied it off, and put it into my pocket beside my rosary. I left the graveyard with my limbs weary, my head throbbing.
There would be no rest for me tonight.
7
Dawn broke as I reached the harbor, bitingly cold and swathed in a haze that seeped into the fabric of my dress.
Somewhere far away, a rooster crowed. Though I’d left them sleeping a couple hours before, the cows would be stirring in their meadows and in the barns, the sun rising over the fields. Any other day, I would already be on my hands and knees, acquainting myself with my morning chicory coffee, letting damp earth cradle me as I began to work.
But today, a few people on the pier and a rookery of ships waited for me instead. The ships hovered on the foggy surface of the Potomac, their white sails folded like albatross wings.
And as I approached the river, another figure appeared in the mist.
Carved into the prow of one of the ships was a girl. Her long arms were flung wide, fingers splayed, and apples and olive branches rippled like hair around her shoulders. Sinuous carvings like ocean waves hinted at a flowing gown, with high-heeled shoes visible beneath, but she was ready for battle: a sword and a bow and arrow were crossed over her chest. Her face was blank but for enormous stars etched where eyes, ears, and a mouth would be.
Overhead, a tough-looking, tanned girl in black scaled the rigging to fit Potomac’s blue-and-gold flag above the crow’s nest. Sails unfolded like daylilies around her as two East Asian men, one young, one older, secured the ship’s lines. Striding over the deck with Homer Maionides and a stocky, boyish-looking sailor with black hair was Captain Lang.
This must be the Beholder.
Lang caught sight of me staring and waved. Homer and the boy turned to follow his gaze.
My cheeks burned. My dress was damp and dirty, my hair disheveled from the night I’d spent walking through the humid air, saying goodbye to all the places I would miss. My remaining shoe I carried in one hand; I raised the other arm, stiff and cold, in reply.
At a tap on my shoulder, I spun, and met Peter’s eyes.
My mouth opened and closed. I didn’t know what to say to him. I wondered now if I’d ever really known what to say to him.
Hadn’t I seen how sparse words always were between Peter and me? Hadn’t I known it was a sign of everything else that was lacking?
I dropped my gaze and crossed my arms over my chest. “So everyone knows I’m leaving,” I mumbled. “I’m surprised you came.”
“My dad told me this morning. I wanted to catch you before you went.” Peter lifted a hand to my shoulder, uncertain at first, and then solid pressure. I reluctantly met his light brown eyes. “Selah,” he whispered again, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me.” I tried to smile, to get the words out quickly, but my voice cracked at don’t.
“I know you want to know why, and I wish I could explain it.” Peter quietly cleared his throat. “I can only tell you that it wasn’t about you. That I had to make a choice for my family.”
The hollowness I’d felt the night before swelled inside me again, so bare and cold I thought the wind might echo through me like a reed.
“Can you ever forgive me?” Peter asked. He knitted his long brown fingers together, eyes sincere, lips pressed tight and unhappy.
He’d said this, over and over again, the night before. As if I wanted an apology instead of his affection.
As if he’d done me wrong, rather than return me to reality from the fantasy I’d been privately living.
I tried to see him standing there as Godmother Althea had insisted he was—cute and kind, a perfectly ordinary good heart. Just another boy.
I saw what she’d been trying to show me. But I also still saw him the same way I always had. He was perfect to me. A star of a boy. A king of a boy. The only boy I’d ever cared for.
Maybe a little distance wouldn’t be a bad thing.
“Peter, believe me when I tell you: there’s nothing to forgive.” I forced another smile and peeled my heart from the hands that had held it without knowing for so many years.
We both turned at the rattle of wheels and the clop-clop-clop of horse hooves. A carriage stopped at the edge of the pier, and Daddy and Alessandra climbed down.
My smother took in my appearance with a roll of her eyes before leading my father aboard.
“I have to go,” I finally said. “Take care.”
“Take care,” Peter said gently. And then he turned to go.
As Peter walked away, I dug my toes into the earth that had raised me, feeling Potomac’s soil beneath my feet for the last time for I didn’t know how long.
Then I crossed to the pier and trudged up the gangplank after my father and stepmother.
Up on the forecastle, Alessandra exchanged goodbyes with Sir Perrault. I couldn’t catch their words, but my stepmother spoke in low, icy tones, and Perrault looked pale—almost seasick, though we’d hardly left solid ground. I almost pitied him.
Almost.
Godmother Althea and my father waited a little space away. On my way to Daddy’s side, Alessandra intercepted me. “You couldn’t change?”
Heat splotched my chest and cheeks. “I like this dress.” I gripped one elbow with my free hand, my shoe dangling from the fingers of the other. “And I was short on time.”
“And a shoe.” She rolled her eyes again and nodded at Perrault. He carried a slim folder. “Those are your suitors. Prepare to meet them as you see fit. But fail the Council, and the Council may fail you.” She glanced at my father, looking thin and breakable in the early light. “I think you know what’s at stake.”
I clenched my fingers around my arm, staring first at the folder in Perrault’s hands, then at Alessandra’s abdomen. At the child she’d made my enemy before I could ever become its friend.
“I’ll do what has to be done,” I said.
Not that I knew what that was. Not that I knew what it would cost. Not that the words would mean the same thing to Alessandra that they meant to me.
But when I looked at my father, at my godmother, at the little brother or sister I already cared for, at the banks of the land whose absence I already felt in my bones—I knew I’d do what was necessary to come home and protect them.
Alessandra put her hands on her stomach and turned away, eyes victorious. “We’ll see,” she called over her shoulder.
That was all the goodbye I got.
After she was gone, I wobbled to Daddy’s side, and for a moment, there was no sound between us but the gentle lap of waves against the Beholder’s hull and the words trapped in his throat.
Abruptly, he pulled me into a tight hug. I stifled a whimper and hung on to him, gripping his reedy frame, wondering if they’d still send me away with this ship full of strangers if I never let go.
“Be careful,” he said quietly. “And get home, quick as you can.”
A tremor twitched his shoulder, and he released me. I fought tears, furiously memorizing his face—the green eyes and freckled skin like mine, the graying stubble he hadn’t shaved this morning.
When he kissed my forehead and foll
owed my stepmother off the Beholder, I watched him walk away, head bowed. I swallowed and blinked to keep my tears from falling.
I was on the verge of collapse when my godmother descended upon me, crushing me in an embrace. “Everything is ready,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve done everything I can.”
“Everything’s ready?” The edges of my voice were raw, my fingers tight around the shoe in my hand. Its beading scratched at my fingers. “My bags are ready. Perrault has that stupid folder. But what about me?” Godmother Althea’s gaze darted to the file in the protocol officer’s grip, but Captain Lang was already approaching, the set of his lips apologetic, as they had been the night before. We had no time.
It wasn’t Lang’s fault, but my hands fisted themselves, frustrated—at him. At Alessandra. At the slowly rising sun, for not ceasing to move so I could stay where I belonged.
Whatever my godmother said, I wasn’t ready.
Althea turned back to me, habited frame tense and vigilant, eyes blazing. “Yes. Yes, you are,” she said quickly. “You have a keen mind and a kind heart. You have everything you need.”
She believed I would make it through this trip.
I will get through it, I swore silently. And I will get back to them.
The captain cleared his throat in our direction, raising his voice over the crowd that had gathered on the pier. Out on the dock, the Council formed a line behind Alessandra and my father, all but Gidcumb looking like they’d enjoyed too much Appalachia bourbon the night before. “Sister—Seneschal-elect—we have to get going.”
I put my free hand on Captain Lang’s arm. “Please.” The word was a breath and a plea. “Just—please. One minute.”
The captain watched me for a long beat. His expression was composed, but there was reluctance in his pause, in the push of his fist into the opposite palm. “Of course.”
“Godmother.” I turned back to her, desperate. “The prayer for travelers—before I go.” I’d heard nuns and priests speak it a hundred times over ships leaving port and the rare family that moved away. I never imagined she’d say it for me.
As she whispered the short plea to God into my shoulder and hair, her words hemmed my fraying edges, bracing me where I threatened to come apart. I stood quiet in her arms, thumbing the shoe in my hand.
And then it was time.
Trumpets rang out from the dock. A bottle of wine hung from my stepmother’s elegant fingers like a man on a gallows. One end of a rope was tied around its neck; the other, around the prow.
“Potomac,” Alessandra called over the crowd. “Our seneschal-elect goes in search of a husband across the sea. Brave Selah,” she said, dark eyes staring me down, “do your duty to Potomac, and don’t come back alone.”
Come back engaged, she might as well have said, or don’t come back at all. The Council behind her was a moat, a blockade, an iron gate locking me out of my home until I’d done her bidding.
Alessandra spoke the words like a death sentence or a curse, releasing the bottle of wine as the final piece of her incantation. It swung in a wide arc and smashed a gory stain over the Beholder, leaving the girl carved on its prow bleeding.
My father had never looked so defeated.
Einmal im Winter, als es steinhart gefroren hatte
und Berg und Tal vollgeschneit lag,
machte die Frau ein Kleid von Papier, rief das Mädchen und sprach:
“Da, zieh das Kleid an,
geh hinaus in den Wald
und hol mir ein Körbchen voll Erdbeeren. . . .”
Dann gab sie ihm noch ein Stückchen hartes Brot und sprach:
“Davon kannst du den Tag über essen,”
und dachte:
“Draußen wird’s erfrieren und verhungern
und mir nimmermehr wieder vor die Augen kommen.”
—Die drei Männlein im Walde
Once, in winter, when everything was frozen as hard as a stone,
and hill and vale lay covered with snow,
the woman made a frock of paper, called her step-daughter, and said,
“Here, put on this dress
and go out into the wood,
and fetch me a little basketful of strawberries. . . .”
Then she gave her a little piece of hard bread, and said,
“This will last thee the day,”
and thought,
“Thou wilt die of cold and hunger outside,
and wilt never be seen again by me.”
—The Three Little Men in the Wood
8
THE BEHOLDER
Godmother Althea blew a kiss as the Beholder sailed away through the fog. I watched Daddy—broken expression, bent head—until the mist on the water swept him from my view.
When my home was out of sight, I stood by myself, avoiding the gazes of the sailors hustling around the deck and imagining how ridiculous I must look, filthy and staggering around in a ruined dress, one glittering shoe in hand. A complete disaster, to the eye discerning or oblivious.
Not that it mattered what they thought. These were Alessandra’s people, not mine.
Captain Lang didn’t turn his head as I wobbled near, arms akimbo so the ship’s woozy sway wouldn’t send me sprawling. But he rapped his ink-stained knuckles on a barrel beside his place at the helm, and I sat, drawing up my legs beneath me to hide my dirty feet.
He glanced away from the horizon for a long moment, studying my face. “You had no idea before last night, did you?”
“None,” I said quietly. “I don’t like this—feeling blind. Not knowing the plan.”
Lang’s dark eyes shifted under his lashes. “What can I tell you?” he asked quietly. “What would help you not feel so lost?”
I was missing so many details. There were so many questions I wished I had the courage to ask.
Where am I going?
What am I going to do?
When can I go home?
But all these questions felt unwieldy. Their answers would be large enough to crush me. I wasn’t ready for them.
“Is the Beholder your ship?” I asked instead.
Captain Lang’s mouth quirked. “No. It’s yours.”
The curve of his thin lips made something in my chest flutter. I gave my head a slight shake. “Beg pardon?”
“Well, it’s Potomac’s, anyway.”
“Oh.”
Alessandra had been so determined to get rid of me she’d bought a ship.
“Have you been a sailor long?” I cocked my head to one side. “You look so young.”
“I’m twenty.” The captain’s jaw tightened, and his eyes grew sharp—not on me, or at me, but clearly I had touched a nerve. “There would’ve been more competition for this job if it hadn’t—” But Lang broke off.
My stomach sank a little. “If it hadn’t what?”
Lang shook his head. “I should let Perrault do the explaining. You’d do better to hear the plan from him.”
I swallowed hard, at once scanning the deck for the protocol officer and his folder and afraid to spot him.
I needed to find out what was coming. I wanted to hide from it.
“Have you been where we’re going?” I asked carefully.
“Europe?” Lang shook his head. “Never been on that side of the Atlantic. But I’ve done a lot of jobs up and down the Misi-ziibi.” He scrubbed a tanned hand through his hair. “A few years back I sailed the Pacific from the Koniag Archipelago, way up north, clear to the west coast of México. That’s where I met Skop—in Koniag. Before this, I was in Zhōng Guó for over a year, running cargo for their national government.”
Europe.
I was going to Europe.
“That’s so much traveling.” My voice sounded young in my own ears. I suddenly felt a little embarrassed by the awe Lang must have heard in my voice. I cleared my throat. “How’d you hear about this . . . job from so far away?”
Job. The word felt odd on my tongue. This was my life that had been turned inside out in the sp
an of one night.
“Ports, pubs, passing ships. News about work travels.” Lang flicked another glance at me. “Especially work like this.”
“I’ve never gone anywhere.”
“Well, you’re going somewhere now.”
I watched his face, where a spare grin hovered beneath his upturned nose, and something flickered in my chest, like kindling catching a spark. “Ready or not,” I said, not taking my eyes off him.
Lang didn’t look away for a long moment. “Skop!” he called.
I must have leapt six inches off my seat. A boy jogging by changed course and headed toward us, face flushed with exertion. I guessed if he was from Koniag, as Lang had said, he was Yupik, one of the people indigenous to the coast of Alyaska and the islands beyond. Skop wasn’t much taller than I; but he had a durable look to him, with strong arms and hands, and fawn-colored skin that grew ruddy over his cheeks and knuckles. Angular, heavy-lidded dark eyes were set in his round face over high cheekbones and a broad nose that looked as though it had been broken at least once, but probably a few times.
Lang nodded between the boy and me. “Seneschal-elect, this is Skop Koniag, our first mate. Skop, this is Selah.”
Skop dipped his head, chewing the inside of his cheek and considering me.
“Skop, take the helm. I’m going to show the seneschal-elect to her room,” said Lang. He glanced at my ragged dress, my ruined makeup. “I imagine she’d like to rest.”
“Sure thing.” Skop nodded efficiently, and took the wheel from Lang’s hands.
The captain strode off, hands in the pockets of his navy-blue canvas jacket, and I followed him off the forecastle.
It was kind of him to pretend I wasn’t drowning.
9
My head spun as I followed the captain across the deck, through one of two doors in the stern, and down a flight of steps. “Captain’s quarters,” he said, jerking his head at a blue-painted door off the landing. “Or—rather, my quarters.” He said the words like they came as a surprise to him, too.
