by R. K. Hart
‘It will be fine, Lida,’ Alys whispered, catching the thought. ‘Big ships don’t rock the way the ferry did.’
A Myrae woman emerged from the ship, striding down the wide gangway with confidence. Her grey hair was braided tightly across her head, and she had a glitter of jewels along her ears and in the side of her nose.
‘Salu,’ she called to them. As she looked over the group, her face brightened, her mouth stretching into a wide smile. ‘Ah! Bienv, my little Blackbird! Are you here to join my crew at last?’
Lorcan pushed past Aaron to throw his arms around her. ‘Isla! I did not know The Belle was yours!’
‘For six months now,’ she said, holding him at arms’ length to look over him. Her straight grey brows drew together in a frown. ‘You are pale, child, and far too tall. Come. The sea air will do you good.’
At the click of his tongue, Midnight walked forward to join him, snorting politely at the Myrae woman, who eyed the mare cautiously and kept her distance. Lida waited for someone to follow him up the gangway; no one moved. She looked at Alys, confused.
Alys gave an odd half-smile and wrapped her arms around Lida. ‘I will miss you, soer.’
‘What?’
Alys squeezed her waist. ‘Katrin is staying, and I stay with her.’
When Alys had released her, Katrin stepped forward and gave Lida a swift, hard hug. ‘It is a short journey, Lida,’ she said. ‘Remember the points on your wrists.’ She kissed Lida on the forehead and stepped back.
Lida’s eyes burned.
‘No need to cry for me, little bird,’ Aaron said gruffly, pulling her into his arms. Lida scowled at him. For no reason other than to vex her - or perhaps because Lorcan was watching - he kissed her lingeringly on the lips, then rested his forehead on hers.
‘Ass,’ Lida said, though there was no venom in it. ‘I have something to show you.’
‘What is it?’
She held up her hand and he took it. She felt him outside her mindshield and she let it thin, thinking as she did of Maya as she’d last seen her, bathed in afternoon light and looking like Amivere come to life, emerald eyes glowing with laughter.
Because he could not hide it, she felt his shock and hunger. It was immediate and fierce and she pushed him away, reinforcing her mindshield as he stumbled, his face blank.
‘Who was that?’ he rasped.
She gave a smug smile. ‘My sister.’
He stared down at her, then carefully disentangled his hand from hers and stepped back. ‘You don’t have a sister.’
‘I think that I would know.’ She touched his cheek gently, where the burn had almost healed. ‘I know what Siva told you. It isn’t me, but perhaps it could be her. Her name is Maya.’
‘Maya,’ he repeated, tasting the name.
Lida nodded. ‘She went to find the Isle of the Gods.’
Aaron grimaced. ‘I hate sailing.’
She laughed. ‘Best learn to like it.’ She hugged him. ‘Thank you. Truly. For everything.’
He returned the embrace, crushing her uncomfortably to his chest. ‘You are welcome. I will see you soon.’
‘Not too soon,’ Lida muttered.
‘The sea is waiting, Lida,’ Katrin said gently. ‘Go now.’ Her hand strayed to her stomach and she smiled. ‘We will see you soon enough.’
Lida took Sacred’s reins and led her to the gangway, casting a backwards glance at the Brinnicans, who stood unmoving against the backdrop of freezing beach and snowy air. The ascent to the ship made her nervous, suspended as they were by flimsy wood with nothing but sea below them, but Sacred followed her like a goat up the planks, more surefooted than her mistress on a surface made slippery by spray. With a deep breath, Lida stepped through the ship’s mouth and into its depths.
Sacred snorted in the dimness, and Lida became conscious of the wood and tar all around her, and the unfamiliar smells, not all of them entirely pleasant. Crates of goods were stacked neatly, lining the walls; a lantern hung to one side of the low-beamed ceiling, swinging gently.
‘Come, Lida,’ Lorcan said. ‘We need to stable the horses before Isla weighs anchor.’
She followed him unsteadily through a wooden corridor, so narrow its sides almost brushed Sacred’s flanks, before a ramp led them upwards and onto the deck. The wind cut against her cheeks as she took in the flurry of activity, a dance of tightening and loosening ropes, a song of called commands, a fluster of hurried steps and routine checkings. It did not escape her notice that every single busy sailor she saw on the deck was a woman, and that not all of them were Myrae: a tiny Setiian girl hung from her knees on one of the masts, shooting Lida a wicked smile. Lida caught a glimpse of straight dark hair as an Erbidan sailor hauled her weight against a rope, the muscles in her forearms cording with the effort.
‘Lida,’ Lorcan called again.
She tore her eyes away and followed him towards the bow of the ship, stumbling as she adjusted to the rolling under her feet. It was significantly better than being on the raft, but she still wasn’t sure she particularly enjoyed the feeling. There was another short ramp, and Lorcan led Midnight down, crooning to her as the ship closed over their heads once more. At the end of the ramp was a room, the best part of it taken up by four small stalls. The wooden floor was strewn with fresh hay, and there were buckets waiting, full of oats and water.
She led Sacred into one of the stalls. There was barely room for the mare to turn around, but once her saddle and bridle were removed and her nose was buried in a bucket of oats she was happy enough. Lida brushed her quickly and checked her hooves, then left her to eat in peace.
Lorcan was hanging Midnight’s saddle blanket over her stall door. ‘Isla has given us a guest cabin, but there is only one,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought that you could take it, and I would sleep with the crew.’
Something like disappointment twisted in Lida’s chest; she pushed it down as she studied him, frowning. His skin was colourless and there were blue shadows under his eyes. She shook her head. ‘I’ll sleep here, or with the crew. You take the cabin. The captain is right - you do look pale. You should get some rest.’
He gave her a weary half-smile, not able to muster the arrogance that usually went with it. ‘I am quite tired. Will you be all right?’
‘It’s not like I can wander off and get lost.’
‘Try not to fall overboard, if you can. Ice is easy. The ocean is another matter entirely. I do not think I could save you from the sea.’
Lida shivered. ‘I won’t fall overboard,’ she promised, and she was left alone with the creaking and cracking and the relentless soft sounds of lapping against the sides of the ship. She walked back up onto the deck and into the open air to grasp the ship’s rail, the metal cold under her bare fingers, and to look out across the Bay of the Lost. Katrin, Aaron and Alys had retreated to the beach to watch the ship set off; Lida waved to them. Alys blew her kisses in return.
‘Weigh anchor!’ someone cried, and the ship lurched beneath her feet as the anchor was drawn up from the seabed. The Belle began to rock in earnest; Lida clamped her hands on the rail, her stomach clenching. There were loud creaking sounds as the ship swung away from the jetty and began to sail out of the bay.
On land, it began to snow heavily, and a curtain of white fell between Lida and the Brinnicans, veiling them from her sight. She stared through the snow, trying to catch one last glimpse of them, but all she could see was the water and a smudge of rocky beach. A pang of loss stabbed at her chest, swiftly followed by a wave of nausea.
‘Best stay inside until we’re on open water if you get seasick.’ Isla joined her at the rail, leaning backwards and watching her crew hurry around the deck. She held up a bucket. ‘Blackbird thought you might need this.’
Lida took it. ‘Why do you call him that?’
Isla glanced at her. ‘Myrae blackbirds sing before a storm.’
Lida gave a half-smile, and retreated into the stalls with the horses. She spent a good hour o
r so sitting beside the bucket before she realised that the bile would stay in her stomach. She rummaged through her pack, finding some willowbark in anticipation of the headache to come, and quickly threw back a mouthful of the bitter powder with some water.
The horses were dozing, with the occasional shifting of hooves and soft snort. Lida untied her sleeping bag for some padding on the hard wooden floor, then pulled The Eilin Histories from her pack: despite being snowed in at l’Cour du Kali, she still had not finished it.
Some time later, the Erbidan woman Lida had seen on the deck poked her head around the wide door. Lida set Sacred’s saddle blanket down; she had long cast her book aside in favour of some much-needed sewing. She didn’t enjoy that task much, either, but it was better than the monotonous, long-winded description of the Siege of Wex the Histories offered.
‘Are you hungry?’ the woman said.
Lida answered enthusiastically in the affirmative, and followed her outside.
‘I am Jessa,’ the woman said. Her accent was different to Lorcan and Jakob’s, more drawling and less formal.
‘Alida.’
‘I know,’ Jessa said.
Evening had fallen, and the deck was almost deserted. The strong wind had not died down with the night; when Lida glanced over the side, she could see nothing but black sea in every direction. She had expected the sight to disquiet her, but instead she felt oddly relieved: there was nothing she could do but stay on the ship. She didn’t have training, and she wasn’t waiting for the Kali to appear, and there wasn’t any work for her to do. If she wanted, she could probably hide in the stables with the horses for a week. It was a relaxing thought.
Jessa led her to the stern of the ship, where the captain’s cabin and the small ship’s kitchen sat alongside the navigation room. She ushered Lida into the tiny kitchen, complete with a compact wooden table and benches. Four sailors sat at it, including the captain, eating the stew that simmered in a large pot on the stove. Lida’s stomach rumbled.
Jessa served her a bowl and gestured at her to sit. Lida took her place at the end of a bench, next to Isla, while Jessa sat across the table and attacked her stew with single-minded determination. There was not much chatter while they ate, and Lida tried her best not to stare at the Myrae sailors. Her resolve didn’t last very long; she fell back on her old habit of searching for features she and Maya shared, though she no longer needed to assemble an imagining of her mother.
None of the women at the table had Siva and Maya’s heart-shaped face. They all had eyes in various shades of brown: one close to Lida’s deep warmth, though Isla’s were amber and the others shades of hazel. The curls were not consistent, either. One shared Lida’s tight ringlets, though they were fully blonde; another had loose curls so dark they were almost black. All of the women were taller than Lida, and all of them wiry and strong; Lida felt almost soft next to them, her hips still rounded in an echo of Maya’s curves, though she currently boasted far more muscle than she was used to, thanks to Aaron.
‘Where is Lorcan?’ she asked through a mouthful of stew, partially to distract herself.
Isla frowned. ‘He was fast asleep when I checked on him,’ she said. ‘He looked so comfortable that I did not have the heart to wake him. Perhaps you might take him some food later?’
Lida nodded, swallowing some bread. When her mouth was empty, she asked where the ship had been before the Bay of the Lost.
Jessa answered. ‘Before this, the Northern Sands. Before that, Wex. Before that, Autae.’
Jessa was expansive once she’d finished her stew. She was not much older than Lida, and it had been her first time in Autae; despite not having had any interest in travelling there in the past, Lida listened, wide-eyed, as Jessa described sailing through Clearbay and into Pirate’s Point.
‘We did not disembark, but you could see the desert from the sea,’ she said in awe. ‘It stretched all the way to the horizon, red as blood and shimmering with heat. I have never seen so much sand.’
It turned out Jessa was from Wex, the northern island of Erbide, and was the fourth daughter of a farming family. She pulled her hair into a top knot as she spoke; it was dark brown rather than Jakob and Lorcan’s raven black, her eyes a shade that was almost grey.
‘How did you end up on the Belle?’ Lida asked her, scraping her bowl.
‘There is not much a fourth child is good for,’ Jessa answered with a laugh. ‘I wanted to do something for myself, and I never much liked farming, so I went to Storrah and found a job as a ship’s hand with the Carpenter family. There was not enough work, so I went to Kell instead, and begged Kayla Merchant for a position. I sailed on her ship, The Arlyn, before Isla took me on.’
‘The Arlyn?’ Lida said, startled.
‘Mmm. The Priom-la named it after her brother.’
‘It’s Lorcan’s middle name.’
‘After his uncle, yes. He was Kayla’s older brother, her only sibling. She loved him very much. He was a stom-ruith like her, but he was lost in a storm.’
‘Lost in a storm?’
Jessa opened her mouth, but Lida saw Isla give a slight shake of her head and she closed it again. ‘The Dar-Oidre would tell it better,’ she said. ‘How long were you at l’Court du Kali for? Did you see the Kalisson? Is he as handsome as people say?’
Lida answered - mostly truthfully - and chatted with Jessa long after Isla and the other women finished and went back to their duties. Jessa was funny and fierce and Lida listened with an envy she hadn’t expected as Jessa spoke of the continent, describing the Setiian plains and the odd, tiny warehouse port of Clearbay. She’d even been to Galea Port and glimpsed the library and the Great Temple, though none of the sailors had been allowed off the ship. Eventually, she yawned and stretched.
‘I have the midnight shift,’ she said, pushing herself to her feet. ‘I will see you tomorrow.’
Lida said goodnight, and after washing up her own bowl, spooned what was left of the stew into another for Lorcan, adding two slices of bread. To the left of the kitchen was a small flight of stairs; she took them down to the two small guest cabins, not much bigger than the horses’ stalls. Jessa had said a Brinnican messenger occupied one; Lorcan was presumably asleep in the other. Lida could hear the snoring of a much older man coming from the cabin to the left. Grinning, she knocked softly on the door to the right.
There was no answer. She pushed it open slowly, awkwardly balancing the food. ‘Lor?’
He was still asleep. Lida walked in as quietly as she could, and placed the food on the bedside table, which was fixed to the floor. The bed – or something approximating one – and the shallow wardrobe were bolted to opposite walls, leaving a tiny aisle between them, with barely enough room to turn around. She dug Lorcan’s water flask from the side of his pack, putting it beside his bed for when he woke.
He sighed and turned on his side, and Lida froze, watching him. The starlight from the tiny porthole window turned his skin silver. He was much less fierce in sleep, his lips slightly parted and his long lashes shadowing his cheeks; his hair was falling down over his eyes and Lida longed to brush it back.
‘Goodnight, Lor,’ she whispered instead, closing the door behind her softly as she left him to his rest.
She was disappointed he was still asleep, though that seemed unfair, even to herself. The trip to the bay had not been exactly easy. She had barely spoken to him since stumbling upon him outside Mirren’s tenat, both of them too preoccupied with packing and farewells and, on Lida’s part, a sudden and unexpected shyness that seemed to catch her tongue and hold it still every time he was close. Aaron had made it worse, commanding almost all of her time and taking every opportunity to call her cheri loudly and possessively, usually while staring straight at Lorcan. Lida ignored it, though she did feel slightly hurt that it elicited no response at all from Lorcan, who had not even raised an eyebrow.
‘He might have pretended to care,’ she muttered crossly, walking back to the horses’ stall. She
had decided to sleep there, rather than with the crew. After so long sleeping in such close proximity to other people, having an entire room to herself seemed a forgotten luxury, and she could stop worrying - for a little while, at least - about ending up in other people’s dreams by virtue of closeness.
The world was silver and black, the ship lit by the moons and stars; Galis was almost full, sitting low on the horizon. Lida looked up, searching for Kaia, shining brightly in the heart of the Leaping Horse constellation.
She hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on the Kali’s pointed question about the star’s name. The only answer Lida could see was that Siva’s grandmother had come from outside Eilan, which could also explain the origin of her gift. Kaia was Kaia in Eilan, Brinnica, and Erbide. Across the sea were Dena, Seti, and Autere; somewhere to the south was the Isle of the Gods. Autere and the Isle used the Eilin language, though Lida knew that the Auteran accent made it seem a different tongue entirely; it didn’t necessarily follow that the countries had kept the same star names. Seti and Dena had different languages altogether, so it was entirely possible that Siva’s grandmother might have come from one of those lands.
When? Her traitorous mind whispered. How old was Siva? How long ago did her grandmother live?
She laughed aloud, a little wildly. No wonder Tiernan hadn’t found Siva in the Illarum’s register: he had only looked fifty years back.
‘It would be useful,’ she said under her breath to Kaia, ‘if you could give me some answers.’ Kaia glittered silently and offered no response, so Lida sighed and went back to the stalls, undressing to burrow into her sleeping bag, wincing at the hard floor beneath her. Her mattress in Brinnica had been stuffed with feathers.
She lay awake for some time, the ship shifting on the waves. After a while, the rolling rhythm became soothing and she relaxed, allowing the Belle to rock her into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Promises
Lida could hear voices, the sound of two women arguing. She turned on her side and snuggled further down, pulling her blankets over her ears.
