“I don’t care who she is,” Kor decided, drawing his dagger. “I think a trade is in order, don’t you? You hurt me, Eris. Now I’m going to hurt your sweetheart.”
“I’m not—”
“What should I take from her?” Kor cut Safire off, circling them both. Eris said nothing. “An ear? A hand? Your choice, Eris.”
With her first plan going up in flames, Safire glanced at the knife hilt protruding from his boot. If she could seize it . . .
Eris sighed, almost lazily. She shook her head. “This is your problem, Kor. You take everything so personally.”
Kor’s knuckles tightened around his weapon.
“Let’s play this out, shall we?” Eris pressed. “Let’s say you’re right, that I’m out of my damned mind and in love with a Firgaardian princess.” She rolled her eyes. “Let’s say that’s true. So, because you’re mad at me, you maim her.” Eris paused. “Then what?”
Kor narrowed his eyes, keeping his dagger raised.
“First”—Eris raised one graceful finger, which was when Safire realized her hands were manacled together—“you’ll enrage Jemsin. She’s his prisoner, and you can be sure he’ll give chase once he finds her gone. And second”—Eris raised another finger—“you’ll have the entire Firgaardian army—not to mention that cousin of hers, the one with the dragon?—on your tail.”
Safire stared at Eris. These were the exact same reasons Safire gave aboard Jemsin’s ship. The ones Eris easily refuted.
Is she trying to protect me?
Safire shook off the thought, reminding herself that Eris still needed to find Asha and deliver her to Jemsin. And only Safire knew where Asha was. Nothing had changed. Eris was just a desperate girl protecting her own interests.
“You might be able to outrun them for a day or two,” Eris was saying. “But then either the dragon will have reduced you and your ship to a pile of flotsam or you’ll be spending the rest of your miserable life in the king’s prison.” She smiled up at Kor, her green eyes sparkling. “It’s up to you. But at least think before you do something stupid.”
Kor’s eyes flashed. He grabbed a fistful of Eris’s shirt and pressed the edge of the blade to her throat. His hand was steady, but his eyes were feverish.
Eris didn’t cry out. Didn’t even break his gaze.
But Safire saw the tremble in her shoulders.
She also saw that beneath Kor’s steady anger simmered the red craze of desire. It reminded her of Jarek, wanting Asha. Needing to either have her or harm her.
Kor could never have Eris. Safire saw this clear on the girl’s face. And if Safire saw it, so did Kor.
In that moment, she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to open Eris’s throat.
Before he could, Safire burst out: “I knew a man like you once.”
The blaze in Kor’s eyes flickered. He turned his burned face to Safire, but still kept his blade pressed hard to Eris’s skin.
“His name was Jarek and he commanded the king’s army. Whatever he said, people did.” Safire felt the dark memories creep over her. Only this time, she let them. “He thought he could have whatever he wanted. And what he couldn’t have, he tried to destroy.”
Kor narrowed his eyes at her. “And why should I care about this man?”
Safire lifted her gaze to his face. “Because I’m the one who buried a knife in his heart.”
Into the silence of the room, the ship creaked.
The hunger drained out of Kor. Something far more dangerous rushed in to replace it. He shoved Eris, who fell back. From the corner of her eye, Safire saw the girl touch her throat, then study the blood on her fingertips.
Kor crouched down before Safire now, his face level and so close with hers she could see the open sores of his freshly burned skin. “Let me tell you something about Jemsin’s precious Death Dancer. That girl there?” He nodded toward Eris. “She’s an enemy of the empress. Seven years ago, she set fire to a temple full of people. Half of them children. Not a single one of them escaped.”
Safire drew away from Eris. What?
She’d known the Death Dancer was a thief. But a murderer?
Eris’s voice went taut as rope as she said, “Who told you that?”
Kor rose to his feet. “An eleven-year-old girl burns down a temple, killing dozens, and manages to escape the hordes of Lumina tracking her? Manages to elude them for seven years? There’s no ordinary girl who could do that.” Linking his hands behind his back, he began to walk in circles around Eris. “And then there’s the strange matter of Jemsin sending you away whenever he meets with the empress. As if he doesn’t want you seen by her.” Kor stopped circling and looked down at the top of her head. “I put the rest together myself. I’ve been putting it together for a while now, in fact. I intended to keep your secret . . . but then you burned down the Sea Mistress.”
Safire looked to find Eris staring hard at the floor.
“It was Leandra who came to our aid. She’s the one who lent me this ship.” He waved his hand at the room around them. “If I bring in her fugitive, she’ll give me a reward big enough to buy an entire fleet of ships. Do you know what that means for me? Freedom, Eris. No more living in Jemsin’s shadow. No more coming and going like a dog. Soon I won’t just be captain of my own ship, I’ll be captain of my own fleet. And then I will be the fiercest pirate on the Silver Sea.” Kor made a fist. “So you better pray to that god of yours tonight. Because tomorrow we reach the Star Isles.”
Safire’s head snapped up. The Star Isles. That was where Asha was. Which meant that once they reached the islands, all she had to do was escape and find her way to the scrin.
A tender spark of hope lit her up.
Eris went very still beside her.
“That’s right,” Kor smirked. “I’m handing you over to the Lumina.”
Safire found a ghost of a girl staring out through Eris’s eyes. At Kor’s mention of the islands, the color had drained from her face.
The boat rocked. The nausea swept through Safire again and she planted her hands on the deck, trying to shake it.
The girl named Rain hauled her to her feet, then marched her up the steps, out into the storm and across the slick deck, then down a narrow hall. Rain threw her into a room the size of a closet, then tossed Eris in after her.
The moment they locked the door, the ship rocked again. Safire’s stomach roiled. She reached for the wall.
“I . . .”
I’m going to be sick.
Eris looked at her sharply. Right before Safire threw up.
Thirteen
Safire spent the night wanting to curl up and die. Eris spent it banging on the door, demanding a bucket. Finally, they gave her one. And now Safire clung to it, vomiting up her dinner—the apple, then the herring, then the wine-soaked bread. She vomited until there was nothing but bile coming up, and all the while, Eris held back her hair in her fist.
Finally the sea settled, and with it, Safire’s stomach. It smelled acrid now in this tiny room, lit only by a single lantern high up on the wall. Safire was pretty sure they were both sitting in her vomit. She shook with exhaustion, and her throat felt raw.
Somewhere above her, she heard Eris banging on the door again. This time, demanding water. She heard the creak of the door swinging open, followed by the exchange of barbed words. Then the warmth of Eris returned to Safire’s side, pressed up against the wall.
Eris uncorked the jug they gave her and passed it over. “Drink.”
Safire took the jug, tipping it back and gulping the cool water down.
“Why did you do that?” Eris asked.
Safire wiped her mouth on her wrist. “Do what?”
Eris stared at the wall straight ahead. “Back there. With Kor. He was going to punish me, and you drew him off. Why would you do that?”
Safire heard the things she didn’t say: Why protect me after I kidnapped you and delivered you to the deadliest pirate on the Silver Sea? After I had you tortured?
“I don’t know,” said Safire.
But she did know.
Safire knew what it was like to be at the mercy of cruel men. She and her cousins still bore the marks of their terror. It was why Jarek was dead.
Safire had stopped tolerating abuse a long time ago.
Eris fell quiet beside her. She flicked her wrists, as if agitated, and for the second time Safire noticed the manacles there.
In the growing silence, Safire thought of the things Kor said.
“Is it true that you torched his ship?”
Eris tipped her head back, resting against the boards of the wall. Gone was that luminous otherworldly creature who’d found her on Jemsin’s deck. In her place was a bone-weary girl. If she cared that she was covered in Safire’s vomit, it didn’t show.
“Damn right I torched it.” Eris smiled a little as she said it. “I’ve never been happier to see a thing burn.”
But it was one thing to burn down a cruel man’s ship. It was another to burn down a temple full of innocents.
“And the burned temple full of children?” asked Safire. “Are you responsible for that too?”
Eris’s smile vanished. Her green eyes went dark as she looked away, the shame etched in the hard lines of her face.
“I am,” she said quietly.
The horror of it seeped through Safire. Suddenly chilled, she moved to put space between her and the murderer at her side.
If Eris was the empress’s fugitive, if she was capable of such an awful thing, then she needed to be delivered to the empress, where she could serve the sentence for her crimes and—more important—never find Asha.
Eris flicked her wrists again, this time gritting her teeth in pain.
Safire glanced down. These were nothing like the manacles Eris had locked Safire’s wrists in back on Jemsin’s ship. These looked . . . almost elegant. Two thin circles of pale, silvery steel.
Seeing where she looked, Eris plunged her hands into the shadows of her crossed legs—but not before Safire saw the skin around one wrist. Wherever the band touched, the skin was frost white.
“What are those? What’s wrong with your wrists?”
“Nothing,” said Eris, staring straight ahead.
They clearly weren’t nothing; they were hurting her. “Let me see.”
“Trust me, princess. There’s nothing to be done.”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
Reaching across the space now between them, Safire pulled one of Eris’s hands roughly out of the shadows and into the light of the lantern hanging on the wall above them. Surprisingly, Eris let her. With her fingers gripping the girl’s forearm—which was eerily cold—Safire held Eris’s palm still while inspecting her wrist.
Safire had seen unnaturally white flesh only once before, in the desert back home. At night in the sand sea, the temperature dropped well below freezing, and if you weren’t prepared, you froze.
“Frostbite,” she murmured.
“Something like that.” Eris withdrew her hand and held up both wrists for Safire to see. “It’s called stardust steel.”
Safire had never heard of such a thing.
“It’s a weapon,” Eris explained. “Used by the Lumina. Or in this case, Kor. Who’s made some kind of deal with them.”
Lumina. The name given to the military class of the Star Isles. Safire had heard stories of the empress’s fearsome soldiers, who she used to keep order on the islands and to patrol her waters.
But she’d never heard of stardust steel.
“They use stardust steel in all their weapons.” Eris’s mouth twisted, and there was a haunted look in her eyes again. With her wrists still raised, she stared at the bands. “It’s a corrosive metal that . . .” She paused, and Safire saw her skip over whatever she was about to say. “It eats away at whatever it touches. It can take years or . . . days. Depending.”
“Depending on what?”
“On the substance. Another metal, for example, will take longer to corrode.”
A cold feeling spread through Safire as she studied the frost-white skin beneath the bands. “And human flesh?”
“Three days. At most.”
Safire tried to imagine it. What Eris’s wrists would look like in three days. First, the flesh would corrode. Then the muscle beneath. Then the bone.
“They’ll sever your hands from your wrists,” she whispered.
Eris’s silence confirmed this.
Safire felt ill—only this time, it wasn’t from the tumultuous sea. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter if Eris lost her hands. This girl was beneath her pity. She was the worst kind of criminal. Surely, she deserved this fate.
Still, Safire searched the silvery bands for a clasp or a lock. One that could be picked. But there was nothing. The metal was one smooth circle ensnaring Eris’s wrist.
“Where does it open and close?” she asked.
“It doesn’t,” said Eris.
And then she saw it: a cold-forged pin.
The only person who could get these off was a blacksmith.
A Good-bye
One dark day, the sea changed. Crow felt the powerful, terrible thing moving beneath its waters. Felt something ancient and familiar calling to him.
Hunting for him.
Crow kept his distance from the fisherman’s daughter, drawing the thing’s attention far away from Skye and her islands. But he was no longer the powerful creature he’d once been. Years walking alongside Skye had changed him.
So, when his pursuer closed in, Crow hid. Deep in the darkness, he forced himself to forget the strength in Skye’s rough and callused hands. To forget the gaze of her one good eye and the yearning she awoke in him. In his hiding, Crow forced himself to remember what he truly was: an ancient creature made of darkness.
A god of shadows.
He came out to face his pursuer—a thing as old and wicked as he was. A god of the sea.
“Too long you’ve wandered,” she called to him in dulcet tones. “Come back to me.”
When the god of shadows refused, she attacked.
They battled for seven days and nights. They fought with tempests and maelstroms and monsters. And with every strike, the shadow god remembered a little bit more of himself.
Finally, he reared up and dealt her a devastating blow. In shock and defeat, the sea god fell to her knees before him. The shadow god stood over her, lifting a fist to finish her off.
But before he struck, a memory flickered through him: one of Skye in her father’s dory, unhooking a spawning fish and throwing it back to the sea.
As he stared down at his enemy, a new and tender feeling unfurled within him.
Pity.
The god of shadows stayed his hand.
Seeing it, his enemy fled.
A long time later, when Crow came back to himself, his first thought was of Skye. Was she safe? But as he went to seek her out, he slowly came to realize that it wasn’t seven days which passed while he waged war on the god of the sea, but rather seven years.
Surely, his mortal girl had forgotten him.
“It’s better this way,” he said.
But he needed to know.
What harm could it do to walk through her cove, past her father’s wharf, and up the cliffs, just one last time? To make sure she was safe?
Gathering the darkness around him, Crow set out. He would only look from a distance. He would not seek her out.
But as he neared Skye’s home, he heard the sound of music. Felt the joy of dancing. And so, filled with a curiosity he’d tried so hard to extinguish—a curiosity Skye gave to him—he came closer than he should have.
It was the longest day of the year, and her village was celebrating. He found her immediately in the crowd of dancers. She wore a sleeveless white dress that fell just past her knees and a crown of blue forget-me-nots on her head. Her hands were gripped by a man. He smiled as he danced with her, as if she were everything he loved most in the world.
Sk
ye’s face was older and her hair longer. It fell around her like autumn leaves as she and the man spun around and around, laughing as they did.
They weren’t celebrating the longest day of the year. They were celebrating a wedding.
Skye’s wedding.
If Crow had a human heart, it might have broken in his chest.
Suddenly, her eyes met Crow’s.
She stopped dancing.
Time seemed to slow as they stared at each other. Her face drained of color as her lips formed his name.
It took all of Crow’s strength to turn away from her. From all of them. This had been a mistake. He should never have come here. He did not belong in her world, just as she did not belong in his.
He was already in the trees when he heard familiar footsteps. He closed his eyes, trying not to hear. He gathered the darkness around him, trying to hide himself in it.
But Skye found him. Like always.
“Where are you going?”
The words stopped him, rooting him to the earth the way only hers could. There was a pain in his chest. Like some weighty thing now rested there, beating in time with the waves on the shore.
He didn’t turn around. Couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
“It’s been seven years,” she whispered, and he heard the wobble in her voice. “You chose to come back today . . . of all days?”
Suddenly, she was beside him. In front of him.
“And now you’re leaving again? Without even saying hello?”
He covered his face with his hands.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he whispered.
“Then why did you!” Her two small palms collided with his shoulders. Crow stumbled back, hands falling to his sides, shocked by the strength of her. They stared at each other. Her eyes were like hurricanes. He’d never seen her so angry.
No, not angry. Hurt.
He had done that.
“You were never my friend,” she said, chin trembling. “I realize that now. You let me believe you were because you pitied me.” Her mouth twisted. “Poor, ugly, mortal girl.”
The Sky Weaver Page 9
