When I was close enough, I reached up into the hollow at the joint of two swollen branches. My fingers found the purse and I swung my arm back, tossing it to the ground behind me before I climbed back down.
I started my fire and skewered the fish on the spit, settling into a comfortable groove in the rocks that overlooked the path. If anyone came snooping, I’d see them before they saw me. I just needed to make it to morning.
The coins clinked together as I shook the purse, spilling them onto the soft sand. Their faces shined in the moonlight as I counted, setting them in neat stacks before me.
Forty-two coppers. After what I would have to spend on skiffs, I needed another eighteen and I’d have enough to barter with West for passage. I had even set aside a little coin to keep me fed and sheltered until I tracked down Saint. I lay back on the ground and let my legs hang over the edge of the cliff, staring up at the moon as the fish crackled over the fire. It was a perfect, milk-white crescent hanging above me, and I breathed in the salty, cypress-tinged air that was unique to Jeval.
My first night on the island, I’d slept out on the beach, too afraid to go up into the trees where the tents were pitched around burning fires. I woke to a man tearing open my jacket, searching my pockets for coin. When he didn’t find anything, he dropped me on the cold sand and walked away. It took days for me to figure out that every time I fished in the shallows, someone would be waiting on the beach to take whatever I’d caught from me. I ate kelp for almost a month before I found safe places to forage. After almost a year, I finally had enough coin saved from cleaning other peoples’ catches and selling palm rope to buy the dredging tools off Fret, who was too old to dive anymore.
The waves crashed angrily below as the storm winds blew in, and for just a moment, I wondered if I’d miss it. If there was something on Jeval that had become a part of me. I sat up, looking out over the night-cloaked island, where the tops of the trees moved in the dark like churning water. If it hadn’t been my prison, I might even think it was beautiful. But I had never belonged here.
I could have. I could have made myself one of them, working to build my own small gem trade on the barrier islands like so many others. But if I was a Jevali dredger, then I wasn’t Saint’s daughter. And maybe even that wasn’t true anymore.
I still remembered the hum in the belly of the hull and the creak of the hammock. The smell of my father’s pipe and the sound of boots on the deck. I didn’t belong on the land or on the docks or the cities that lay across the Narrows. The place I belonged was gone.
Miles away, where the moonlight touched the black seam of the horizon, the Lark lay beneath the waters of Tempest Snare. And no matter where I went, I’d never get home. Because home was a ship that was at the bottom of the sea, where my mother’s bones lay sleeping.
THREE
I stood on the cliff as the sun came up, watching the Marigold down on the water. They’d arrived in the dark hours, despite the raging storm that had barreled in from the Unnamed Sea. I’d stayed awake all night, staring into the fire until the rain put out the flames, and my entire body ached with the need to sleep after three straight days of diving.
But West didn’t like to be kept waiting.
There were already hordes of dredgers waiting at the water’s edge when I made it to the beach. I’d been smart enough to pay Speck a month in advance for a spot on his skiff. He was lying on the sand with his hands folded behind his head, his hat set over his face. If you had a boat on Jeval, you didn’t need to dive or trade because every dredger on the island needed you. Having a skiff was like having a pot of copper that never ran empty, and no one was more undeserving of luck like that than Speck.
When he saw me coming, he jumped up, smiling with a wide, rotten-toothed grin. “Mornin’, Fay!”
I tipped my chin up at him, throwing my satchel into the skiff before lifting myself over the side. No one bothered to make room for me to sit, so I stood at the prow with one arm hooked around the mast and my hand closed over the purse of pyre inside my shirt. Koy’s boat was already disappearing around the barrier islands ahead, packed full of so many bodies that legs and feet were dragging in the water on both sides.
“Fable.” Speck gave me a pleading smile, and I glared at him when I realized what he was waiting for.
I worked the sail free, letting it unroll as he pushed us off. The dredgers asked things of me they’d never ask of one another. I was expected to just be grateful they hadn’t drowned me as a scrawny child in the shallows, but the truth was, they’d never done me any favors. Never fed me when I begged for scraps or offered me a place to take cover during a storm. Every bite of food or piece of pyre, I’d worked for or nearly died getting. Still, I was supposed to be beholden to them that I was still breathing.
The wind picked up and we cut through the smooth morning water like a hot knife through tallow. I didn’t like how calm it looked, the way the surface gleamed like newly fired glass. It was unnerving to see the sea asleep when I’d seen how bloodthirsty she could be.
“Word has it you’ve found a new pyre cache, Fay,” Speck croaked, handing off the tiller and coming to stand beside me at the mast.
His breath stunk of home-brewed rye, and I turned my face into the wind, ignoring him. When I felt the others looking at me, my fist tightened around my purse.
Speck’s hand went up into the air between us, his palm splayed flat before me. “I dinna mean nothin’ by it.”
“Sure,” I muttered.
He leaned in a little closer, his voice lowering. “But there been talk, ya know.”
My eyes cut over to meet his, and I studied him, trying to see what lay beneath the words. “What talk?”
He glanced back over his shoulder, and his silver braid of hair pulled from where it was tucked into his shirt. “There been talk about where you been keepin’ all that copper.”
The dredger sitting to my right shifted, his ear turning up to listen.
“If I were you, I’d stay out of that talk, Speck.” I let my shoulders fall back, leaning into the mast. The key to dealing with the dredgers was to act as if you weren’t scared, even when you were so terrified you had to swallow to keep the vomit down. Speck was harmless, but he was one of only a few on the island I didn’t worry about.
He quickly nodded. “A ’course I do. Jus’ thought you should know.”
“Just thought you’d get another copper from me, you mean,” I snapped.
Another smile broke on his face before he ducked his head and shrugged.
“You already overcharge me. I’m not paying you for gossip, too.”
I gave him my back, letting him know I was done talking about it. I had at least three weeks before I’d have enough copper to barter for passage, but if the dredgers really were talking, I wouldn’t make it that long.
Speck fell silent, leaving only the sound of the hull carving through the water and the whistle of the wind. The ribbed white sails of the Marigold came into view as we rounded the corner of the barrier islands, anchored beyond the outcropping of the farthest rise, and Speck gently slowed the skiff. I could see the square set of West’s shoulders at the other end of the docks as he looked out over the water, a black silhouette before the rising sun.
I put one hand up into the air, spreading my fingers against the wind, and as soon as he saw it, he disappeared into the crowd.
Speck loosed the sail as we approached the dock, and before he could ask, I gathered the coiled rope in my arms and threw the lines out. The loop caught the post at the corner of the dock, and I hopped up from the deck onto the side, leaning back with my heels on the edge and pulling us in, one hand over the other. The wet ropes creaked as they stretched, and the hollow knock of the scull against the boat made Fret look up from where he was perched on his stool.
A reed-woven crate sat between his feet, filled with rare shells he’d foraged in the shallows. He’d lost his ability to dredge long ago, but he still traded every week at the barrier islands
, selling things that no one else could ever seem to find. He was the first to say I’d been marked by sea demons, and he’d sold me his dredger’s belt, forcing me to break my father’s rules. Because as long as I lived, I’d owe him my life for both.
“Fable.” He gave me a tilted smile as I climbed onto the dock.
“Hey, Fret.” I touched his bony shoulder as I passed, looking over him to where West waited before the Marigold in the distance.
Dredgers were gathered along the narrow wooden walkway in the pale morning light, bartering with traders and fighting over coppers. Jeval was known for the pyre in its reefs, and even though it wasn’t among the most valuable gemstones, Jeval was one of the only places you could find it.
And it wasn’t just pyre the traders came for. Jeval was the only bit of land between the Narrows and the Unnamed Sea, and many ships stopped in for simple supplies in the middle of their voyages. Jevalis carried baskets of chicken eggs, lines of fish, and reams of rope up and down the dock, calling out to the crews that watched over the railings of their ships.
Shouting erupted ahead as I shouldered through a tightly packed group of men, and I ducked to the side when someone threw a punch. A fight broke out, shoving me to the edge of the dock, and an open barrel of mullein leaves rolled into the water, almost taking me with it. Two men jumped in after it, and I waited for the fighting dredgers to be pulled apart before I made my way past them.
As if he could feel me coming, West turned just as I pushed through the edge of the crowd. His waving, sun-bleached hair was pulled behind one ear, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at me with pale green eyes.
“You’re late.” He watched me pull my shirt free from where it was tucked into my belt and untie the purse. I glanced behind him to the horizon, where the bottom tip of the sun was already hovering above the water.
“By minutes,” I muttered.
He stepped forward as I emptied the purse and six bulbous, white-crusted lumps of pyre rolled into my open hand.
He plucked the eyeglass from my belt and fit it to his eye before he leaned in, picking the pieces up carefully and holding them toward the sunrise so the light showed through the red gemstones. They weren’t cleaned of the outer rock, but they were good pieces. Better than anything else the dredgers behind me were hocking.
“Looks like you hit that storm.” I eyed the fresh tar drying on the hull of the Marigold, where a small crack marked the wood beneath the railing on the starboard side.
He didn’t answer, turning the pieces over to check them again.
But that wasn’t the only part of the ship that had taken a beating. High up on the mainmast, a girl sat back into a sling, repairing the leather straps that tied up the sails.
As a child, I’d lay flat on the main deck, watching my mother up in the masts of the Lark, a dark red braid swinging down her back like a snake and her sun-browned skin dark against the crisp white canvas. I blinked to clear the memory from my vision before the pain awoke in my chest.
“You’ve had a lot more to trade lately.” West let the eyeglass drop into his hand.
“Lucky streak.” I hooked my thumbs into my belt, waiting.
He reached up, scratching the blond scruff at his jaw like he always did when he was thinking. “Luck usually brings trouble.” When he finally looked up, his eyes narrowed on me. “Six coppers.” He reached for the purse at his belt.
“Six?” I raised an eyebrow at him, pointing at the largest piece of pyre in his hand. “That one’s worth three coppers, easy.”
His gaze travelled over my head, back to the dock of dredgers and traders behind me. “I wouldn’t take more than six coppers back to the island with you.” He fished the coins from his purse. “I’ll give you the rest next time.”
My teeth clenched, my fists tightening at my sides. Acting like he was doing me a favor by only partially paying me in trade made my blood boil under my skin. That wasn’t how this world worked.
“I can take care of myself. Ten coppers or you can find someone else to trade with.” I snatched my eyeglass from his fingers and held my other hand open in front of me. He’d give me the coppers because he didn’t buy pyre from anyone else on Jeval. Only me. For two years, he hadn’t bought a single piece from another dredger.
His jaw worked as his hand closed over the stones and his knuckles turned white. He muttered something I couldn’t hear as he reached into the pocket of his vest. “You should trade less at once.” His voice dropped low as he counted the coppers out.
He was right. I knew that. But it was more dangerous to have a stash of both pyre and copper on the island. Coins were smaller, easier to hide, and I’d rather have only one thing that others wanted. “I know what I’m doing,” I said, trying to sound as if it were true.
“If you’re not here next time, I’ll know why.” He waited for me to look up at him. The long days on the deck of the ship had painted his skin the deepest olive, making his eyes look like the jadeite my mother used to have me polish after her dives.
He dropped the coins into my hand, and I turned on my heel, shoving them into my purse before I tucked it back into my shirt. I pressed into the mob of Jevalis, swallowed up by the stinking bodies, and a lump tightened in my throat. The weight of the coppers in my purse made me uneasy, West’s words sinking like a heavy stone in the back of my mind. Maybe he was right. Maybe …
I turned back, rising up onto my toes to see over the shoulders of the dredgers between me and the Marigold. But West was already gone.
FOUR
Koy was waiting in the boat when I stepped onto the beach.
The wind pushed his dark hair back from his face as he looked out at the chop on the water. The first time I ever saw Koy, he was swimming toward me from the shore so he could kick me off the sandbar I was fishing on. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me since.
“Where are the others?” I asked, flicking a copper into the air and throwing my belt into the skiff.
He caught it, dropping it into the purse hanging from the mast. “Still working the traders.”
We climbed into the skiff, and it drifted out of the shallows as Koy loosed the lines.
The wind caught the sail hard as soon as it opened, making the boat heel before it shot forward, away from the shore. I fastened my belt as Koy glanced back at me over his shoulder and his eyes dropped to my tools. He’d stolen from me before, though I’d never caught him. I’d had to change my hiding places several times, but someone always seemed to find them. The dredgers were rough and hard-edged but they weren’t stupid, least of all Koy. And he had more mouths to feed than most everyone else.
His grandmother and two siblings were dependent upon him, and that made him more dangerous than almost anyone on the island. Being responsible for someone else was the greatest curse on Jeval, out on the sea, even in the Narrows. The only safety that existed was in being completely alone. That was one of the very first things Saint taught me.
Out at the barrier islands, the Marigold still sat before the dark backdrop of another storm brewing in the distance. This one looked worse than the first, but judging from the wind and the clouds, it would mostly play out before it hit us. Still, the Marigold and the other ships would probably stay docked until morning to be safe.
“What are you going to do with all of that copper, Fable?” Koy asked, tying off the line.
I watched the rope pull around the callused skin that covered his hand. “What copper?”
He looked amused, a sliver of teeth showing between his lips. “I know you’re trading all that pyre you’re finding. But I can’t figure out what you’re planning to do with the coin. Buy a boat? Start an operation with the traders?”
“I haven’t been finding much pyre.” I shrugged, twirling a piece of my hair around my finger. The strands were the color of tarnished copper in the sunlight. “No more than usual.”
He grinned, leaning back into the bow so his elbow hung over the side of the boat. “You know why
I’ve never liked you?”
I smiled back at him. “Why?”
“It’s not that you’re a liar. Everyone on this island is a liar. The problem with you, Fable, is that you’re a good one.”
“Well, I’ve always liked you, Koy.”
He laughed as he pulled the sail and the boat slowed. “See? I almost believed you.”
I stepped onto the side of the boat and dove in, crashing into the cold water and letting myself float back up to the top. When I broke the surface again, Koy was already leaving a wake behind him, headed toward the south reef. When he didn’t look back, I swam in the opposite direction at a slow pace, trying to save my strength. My muscles and bones were still stiff and weak, but rest wasn’t going to come anytime soon. Not with the dredgers paying me so much attention. The only thing I could do now was get the last of the copper I needed as fast as I could to leave this place behind.
I spotted the yellow sea fan and tightened my belt before I started working my lungs, inhaling and exhaling in a rhythm I had memorized. When the sharp tinge ignited between my ribs, I dove down, kicking toward the seafloor and sending the fish into a twist of glittering scales above me. I didn’t waste any time lowering myself to the breach. The quiet hum of the pyre danced on my skin as I pulled the tools from my belt and got to work, hitting the mallet as hard as I could and working down a new line of rock. Most of it was just coral and basalt, but the smooth surface of a piece of pyre broke through about two feet down. It wasn’t a big piece, so it would free more easily, but finding more could take me the entire afternoon. I pulled my arm back and braced myself on the reef as I brought the mallet back up. I hit the chisel squarely and the ping sounded underwater as a small chip broke off.
My hand slipped, slamming into the sharp edge as a shadow moved overhead, draping me in the dark. I jolted, dropping the mallet, and my heart kicked up, the air in my lungs waning. I whirled, pressing myself under the overhang of rock and gripping the chisel in my cold hand. A group of whale sharks were swimming over the ridge, weaving through the beams of sunlight casting down from the surface. I let out a stream of bubbles in a relieved laugh, the painful clench in my chest easing just a little. But I needed air.
Fable Page 2
