We were definitely out of the Narrows now. But the songs of the gemstones were something I knew. They bled together in the water around me and once I began to unravel them from one another, we could get to work.
I broke the surface, sucking in the air and rubbing the salt from my eyes. I could taste it in the back of my throat. “Start on the deeper end of each ridge. We’ll use our strength in the first half of the day and can work the shallower crests in the afternoon. The same tomorrow, so mark your tracks. And watch that south side. It looks like the current wraps around the tip of the reef there.”
Two of the Jevali dredgers answered with a nod and started their breathing, pulling in the air to fill their chests and squeezing it back out. Koy did the same, tying his hair back, and I kicked against the weight of my belt as I worked my lungs.
The familiar stretch behind my ribs, surrounded by the sound of the dredgers’ breath, made me shiver. It was too like my memories of diving the reefs on Jeval and the crippling fear that had followed me in those years.
It wasn’t until I stepped foot on the Marigold that I felt it lift from me.
I slipped my fingers into the neck of my shirt, pulling West’s ring from inside the collar. It sat in the center of my palm, glinting in the sunlight. We were well out of the Narrows, and I could feel the distance like a taut string between me and the Marigold.
I pushed the air from my chest, the amber light of West’s quarters illuminating in the back of my mind. He tasted like rye and sea wind, and the sound that woke in his chest when my fingertips dragged over his ribs made that night come back to life inside of me.
My breath hitched as I pulled it in and I tipped my head back, taking a last sip of air. And before the thought of him could curl like a fist in my chest, I dove.
SIX
The deck of the Luna shimmered with moonlight as we stood shoulder to shoulder in the wind, dripping seawater. Clove was perched on a stool with our hauls organized before him, weighing the stones one at a time and calling out the weights to Zola’s coin master, who recorded them in the ledger opened over his lap.
Clove set a raw, bulbous piece of garnet onto the brass scale, leaning forward and squinting to read the dial by lantern light. “Half.”
Beside me, Koy let out a satisfied grunt.
I wasn’t surprised at his haul. I had often wondered if he’d been taught by a gem sage because he knew how to read the shape of the rock beneath the coral and how to find the crests with the most concentrated stones. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t become a better dredger by watching him on the reefs. But when he started his ferrying business to the barrier islands nearly two years ago, he hadn’t needed to dive like the rest of us.
Ryland shook his head bitterly, his jaw clenched. His haul hadn’t even registered in the top five. Neither had Wick’s. No wonder Zola was looking for a new dredger the day I met him in Dern.
Koy had hit over seven carats and he’d probably do it again tomorrow. He was stronger than me and could hit the mallet in heavier strikes, which meant he needed fewer descents to loose the gems. And I wasn’t complaining. He could have the extra coin for all I cared. The sooner we got the haul up, the sooner I could get back to the Narrows and find the Marigold.
“Get your gear dry. Supper’s up.” Clove stood from the stool, handing the scale to the coin master. “Fable.” He said my name without looking at me, but his chin tipped up to the archway, signaling me to follow.
I slung my belt over my shoulder as I followed him into the wide breezeway. It was twice the size of the one on the Marigold. Work benches were bolted to the deck and walls, where three strykers were cleaning fish. The smell was washed clean by the smoky air pouring out of the helmsman’s quarters.
Inside, Zola sat at his desk over a stack of maps, not bothering to look up when Clove set the ledger down before him. The fragrant scent of the mullein in his pipe hovered in the rafters above us, swirling in the turn of air. The sight almost made me feel as if Saint was there in the cabin with us.
Zola finished what he was writing before he set down the quill and began to read the coin master’s ledgers. “So?” he asked, glancing up at me from the page.
I stared at him. “So?”
“I need a report on the dive.” His chair creaked as he leaned back, taking the pipe from where it was clenched in his teeth. He held it before him, and the leaves smoldered in the chamber, sending another weak stream of smoke into the air.
“It’s right there.” The words thinned as my eyes landed on the open book.
He smirked. “You led the dive.” He slid the ledger toward me. “I want to hear it from you.”
I looked to Clove, unsure what Zola wanted. But he only stared at me as if he was waiting for the same answer. I pulled in a long breath through gritted teeth, taking the few steps between me and the desk before I let my belt slide from my shoulder. It landed on the floor hard, the tools clattering together.
“Fine.” I picked up the ledger, holding it before me. “Twenty-four carats emerald, thirty-two carats tourmaline, twenty-one carats garnet. Twenty-five and one-half green abalone, thirty-six carats quartz, and twenty-eight carats bloodstone. There are also three pieces of opal, but they’re not viable. Might be worth something in trade, but not for coin.” I shut the book with a snap, dropping it back onto the desk.
Zola watched me through the haze trailing up from the whalebone pipe. “How’d they do?”
“The dredgers?” My brow pulled.
He gave me a nod.
“I just told you.”
His elbows hit the desk and he propped himself up on them. “I mean how’d they do. Any problems?”
I glowered at him, irritated. “You’re paying me to lead the dives, not report on the dredgers.”
Zola pursed his lips, thinking. After a moment, he opened the drawer of his desk and set a small purse on the pile of maps. He fished out five coppers and stacked them before me. “Now I’m paying you for both.” I watched the lift of his mouth. The sharpening of his eyes. He was still playing his game. But I still didn’t know the rules to it.
Reporting on the other dredgers was the best way to get yanked from my hammock and thrown overboard in the middle of the night. “No thanks,” I said flatly.
From the corner of my eye, I thought I could see Clove shift on his feet, but both of his boots were planted side by side, unmoving.
“All right,” Zola conceded, scooting his chair up. “We need to hit double those numbers tomorrow.”
“Double?” The word leapt from my mouth, too loud.
That got his attention. Both of his eyebrows lifted as he studied me. “Double,” he said again.
“That’s not what you said. There’s no way we can hit that.”
“That was before I knew I had such a competent dredger to lead the dive. I didn’t expect you to hit these numbers in a day.” He shrugged, pleased with himself.
“It’s not possible,” I said again.
“Then none of you are getting back to the Narrows.”
I set my jaw, willing my face to stay composed. The worst mistake I could make with Zola was letting him shake me. I had to get back to my ship. It was all that mattered.
I blinked. When had I begun thinking of the Marigold as mine? My home.
But if I didn’t find a way to get the upper hand, that was never going to happen. “I know what you’re doing.”
“You do?”
“You let me loose in the crew’s cabin when they all know what happened to Crane. You put me in charge of the dive instead of your own dredgers. You want someone else to get rid of me before we ever make port.”
“So, you were there when West killed Crane.” Zola lifted his brows in revelation. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a murderer. And it wasn’t my idea to put you in charge.” His attention instantly went to Clove.
I turned to look at him, but Clove was unreadable. His eyes were as empty as a night sky as they stared back into mine. And that was a different ki
nd of threat.
He and Zola were on a tight schedule. One they couldn’t afford to break. I was Saint’s daughter, sure. But if they wanted to use me against my father, why take me out of the Narrows? There was something more valuable about me than that.
Clove knew what I could do with the gems, and for the first time I considered that was why I was here. Not only to dredge, but to find the gems they needed for whatever they were planning.
“What are you going to do with them?” I asked Zola the question, but my gaze was still pinned on Clove.
Zola half-smiled. “With what?”
“Why is a ship that’s licensed to trade in the Narrows sailing under a fake crest and dredging reefs in the Unnamed Sea without a permit?”
His head tilted to one side, surveying me.
“You’ve dumped your inventory, abandoned your route, and everyone knows that big gem trader in Bastian wants your head.”
“And?”
“And it begs the question. What are you going to do with over three hundred carats of gemstones?”
Zola turned the pipe over and tapped it against the bronze bowl at the corner of the desk, emptying its ashes. “Join my crew and maybe I’ll tell you.” He stood, rolling up the maps.
I glared at him.
“What’s it to you? You’d be trading one bastard helmsman for another.”
“West is nothing like you,” I said.
Zola nearly laughed. “Looks like you don’t know your helmsman very well after all.” He clicked his tongue.
A chill ran up my spine. That’s what Saint said when I saw him in Dern.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Fable, but West has spilled enough blood to paint the Marigold red.”
“You’re a liar.”
He threw up his hands in mock surrender as he came around the desk and found his seat at the table. “You sure you don’t want to join me for supper?” The tip of the fork hit the rim of the plate as he picked it up, and that ghoulish, morbid grin returned to his face.
I picked up my belt and started toward the door. Clove didn’t move out of my way until I was stopped in front of him, standing so close I could touch him. My mouth didn’t open, but I cast every ounce of hatred within me upon him. I let it roll off me in waves until I could see the set of his mouth falter. He stepped to the side and I reached for the latch, flinging the door open and letting it slam against the wall as I left.
I fit the belt back around my waist and tightened it, taking the steps up to the quarterdeck, where Koy was sitting with his legs hanging over the stern. A bowl of steaming stew was clutched in his hands, his hair drying in waves down his back. When he saw me, his brow creased.
I didn’t know what had brought Koy onto the Luna, and I didn’t care. But there was one thing about him I knew I could count on. I stepped on the heel of my boots to slide them off.
He dropped his spoon into the bowl. “What the hell are you doing?”
I checked my tools again, my finger catching on the tip of the chisel. “We have to double today’s haul before sundown tomorrow if we’re going to get paid.”
He stiffened, looking from me to the water. “You’re going back in?”
The moon was almost full and its pale light rippled on the calm water around us. As long as the clouds didn’t blow in, I could stay in the shallows and work the rock closest to the surface. It would be slow going, but there weren’t enough hours of daylight to hit the quota Zola had set.
When he didn’t move, I tried again. “I think I can hit those twenty carats before dawn.”
He measured me for a moment, his black eyes shining before he groaned, taking his belt from where he’d dropped it on the deck. A moment later we were both back up on the railing. Down on the main deck, Ryland was watching us.
Koy looked over my head, eyeing him. “You watching that one?” he muttered under his breath.
“Oh yeah,” I breathed. In the hours since we dropped anchor, I’d felt Ryland’s attention on me nearly every time I stood on deck, and I was becoming less convinced Zola’s orders to the crew would hold long enough for me to get off his ship alive.
I jumped, and the cold air whipped around me before I plunged into the water, every muscle in my legs burning with fatigue. Koy came up behind me when I broke the surface and we didn’t speak as we filled up with breath. The milk-white moon hovered above the horizon, where it was rising at a slow, steady pace.
“I thought you said you weren’t Jevali,” he said, breaking the silence between us.
“I’m not,” I spat.
He arched an eyebrow knowingly, a smirk changing the composition of his face. I’d never admit it, but the most honest part of me knew what he meant. Getting back into the dark water after an entire day of diving was insane. It was something a Jevali would do. That’s why I’d known that Koy would come with me.
Whether I liked it or not, there were pieces of me that had been carved by those years on Jeval. It had changed me. In a way, it had made me.
He grinned, reading my thoughts, and gave me a wink before he sank under the surface. In another breath, I followed.
SEVEN
I pulled the mallet through the water and brought it down, hitting the top of the chisel squarely as Koy’s shadow moved over me. I could barely feel the burn in my chest anymore, my mind giving way to a wandering train of thought. Memories strung together in unraveling stitches as my hands worked the sunlit rock in a practiced pattern.
I was diving the salty waters of the Unnamed Sea, but in my mind I was standing barefoot on the hot deck of the Marigold. Auster at the top of the main mast with a cloud of seabirds around him. The threads of gold lighting in Willa’s hair.
West.
Again and again, my mind found its way to him.
It wasn’t until the mallet slipped from my numb fingers that I blinked and the reef came rushing back to me. The blue swallowed up the vision, a twist behind my ribs threatening to pull me to the black. I found one of the iron anchors driven into the reef and held on, pinching my eyes closed. The ping of Koy’s pick down the ridge sharpened my thoughts enough for me to realize I needed air. He stilled, looking up at me over the waving fronds of red coral for only a moment before he got back to work. There was probably nothing Koy would love more than to see me dead on this reef.
I slipped the mallet back into my belt and pushed off the ledge, kicking toward the light. The reef, and the dredgers on it, grew small beneath me until I broke the surface with a ragged gasp, my vision washed white in the glare of the sun. It hung in the middle of the sky above me, but I couldn’t feel its warmth as I drank in the humid air. My skin was ice cold, the blood moving slowly in my veins.
Clove’s face appeared over the railing of the Luna, and as soon as he laid eyes on me, he vanished again. I squinted, thinking that maybe I had imagined him there. The light was too bright, pulling in glaring beams that splintered and glowed, making my head hurt.
It had been a long night, dredging in the moonlight until it was too dark to see the reef. I’d gotten only an hour or two of sleep before the bell on the deck was ringing again, and I was back in the water by the time the sun appeared on the horizon.
I hooked one arm into the lowest rung of the rope ladder and untied the purse from my belt with a shaking hand. As soon as it landed in the basket hanging against the hull, the Waterside stray above was hoisting it up for Clove’s count.
I stayed there and breathed, willing the feeling to come back into my weak arms. I needed to get my body warm if I was going to keep diving, but the piece of bloodstone I was working on in the reef was almost loose. Three more strikes and I’d have it free.
A splash sounded behind me, and I looked back to see Ryland surface, the sound of his broad chest taking in the air like the howl of wind. He panted, pulling it in and out until it was steady, his face turned up to the sun.
I watched him swim to the ship and set his purse into the next basket. It instantly lifted, dripping as
it rose. When the deckhand at the railing fished the haul from inside, he tossed it into the air and caught it again, feeling its weight. “Little light there, Ryland,” he said, laughing.
Ryland gave the boy a tight smile, the red beneath his skin blooming. It was one thing to know other dredgers were better than you. It was another for your crew to know it. I wondered if Ryland’s place on the Luna was becoming just as precarious as mine was.
His burning gaze found me, and I turned away, calling up to the ship. “I need a line!” My voice was hoarse from the burn of salt.
The Waterside stray appeared over the side of the Luna again, giving me a nod, and I pressed my forehead into the wet ropes, closing my eyes. My stomach was sour from swallowing the seawater, and the blisters on my hands had all reopened. But if I wanted to get back to the Narrows, I couldn’t afford for this haul to be even one carat short.
The rope landed in the water beside me and I hooked it over my shoulder as I let go of the ladder. My chest was sore when I drew the breath back in, my bruised bones screaming. One more. Then I’d rest. Then I’d climb back up onto the sun-warmed deck and let the trembling in my limbs slow.
I gulped in a last full breath and plunged back under, going still so that I could let myself sink slowly and save as much energy as possible. Koy was coming up again, kicking toward the surface for air, and a stream of bubbles trailed up as he passed me. By the time my feet came down on the reef, he was a fleeting silhouette against the sunlight above.
Floating arms of pink coral pulled into their burrows and fish scattered frantically into the blue as I scaled downward to find the iron anchor. I could tell by the pinch in the center of my throat that the air wasn’t going to last long. My body was too tired to regulate it properly, but I could save some of my strength by letting the rope tether me to the reef. This was exactly the point my mother would have told me to get out of the water. And I would. Once I had the bloodstone in my hand.
I threaded the end of the rope through the hold and secured it with a knot before I took the other end and tied it around my waist. The rope was stiff with salt, making it less likely to slip.
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