Chapter 3 #2
One dark brow rises. Even Silas knows he’s the farthest thing from a good sign. “Can it be a portent of dinner instead?” he says. “Never having been invited to one of these functions before, I didn’t realize how tedious it would be. The shareholders are waiting.”
August grins and pulls me into his side. “Annie and I had important business to discuss.”
“I’m sure you did,” Silas says dryly, standing to the right side of the doorway to let us pass. Not close enough to touch, but close enough for the smell of petrichor and brine to make me shudder.
In the hallway, I try to paste on a smile while seething inside, ever conscious of Silas keeping pace behind us. He and August were close as boys, greenhands on whaling ships, but no longer. I know they speak, but only on business. So why did August invite him here?
Maybe that’s what friendship is, mocking someone behind their back but inviting them to your dinner parties anyway.
I wouldn’t know—I grew up surrounded by adults, with private tutors and governesses brought in to attend to my care and keeping; there were no other young people around besides Kit and Lydia and, later, August, when he became Papa’s apprentice.
So I have little experience of my own to compare.
Still, I can’t imagine the shareholders will be happy about Silas’s presence here.
August and I enter the parlor arm in arm.
Despite the cozy name, it’s a large room built for this express purpose—for Fairfax Whaling Company shareholders to gather and speak.
At one end a huge fireplace roars merrily, and on the opposite is a raised platform with a table where August and I sit along with a handful of the most senior shareholders: Thomas Carrol, Mayor Bildad, Wilhelmina Peleg, Elias Swain.
To August’s right is Captain Mance—the overseer of our company’s entire whaling fleet, owing to his decades of experience and familiarity with all the nooks and crannies of the five seas.
He glows with the honor that’s about to be bestowed on him.
He also opposed Papa’s mandate to allow women as sailors and ship officers, and I suspect that much of the whispered aspersions on my capabilities as leader start with him.
The rest of the space is taken up with smaller tables where the shareholders and officers and merchants sit, staff circulating among them with plates and bottles of wine.
Lydia is at the harpsichord, playing a jaunty tune, and I smile in spite of myself to see that she has indeed found someone’s pretty daughter to talk to, a brown-skinned girl in a pink dress who looks vaguely familiar, though I can’t think from where.
She leans on the body of the instrument, looking suitably impressed.
My sister has gotten herself a glass of wine somehow, despite my instructing the servants not to let her have any.
She holds it with one hand, picking out a melody with the other while batting her eyelashes at the girl.
I hope as August and I take our seat at the head table, in front of the red silk banner with the Fairfax family crest, that she has also made efforts to charm the shareholders, but I can’t resent her for finding a scrap of levity or happiness in tonight.
Maker knows that has been hard enough to come by since our parents died.
A wave of quiet sweeps through the room as we reach the table, the shareholders looking to August and me. I clear my throat and tap a spoon against a glass to get the attention of everyone not already staring. “Good evening.”
I get through the pleasantries quickly, how it’s an honor to be addressing them from the same table as have my father and my grandfather and generations of Fairfaxes before that.
I can hear that my words are breathy, too fast, and some of the shareholders wander to find their seats as I speak.
But perhaps it’s better they’re not paying attention, not looking too closely at my movements, my glove-covered hands.
In the days following that visit to Cousin Mary, Papa impressed upon us the necessity of keeping secret the nature of our particular curse.
The people of Kirkrell know about the heartbroken—about once-human monsters who have been cursed to roam the night, hungering for flesh.
But aside from Cousin Mary, who was captured immediately once she started to turn, there hasn’t been a case in generations.
Over the decades, my father’s family paid the right people to keep quiet any rumors.
So most people know of the heartbroken only as a frightening tale for children.
And no one—except for those we choose to marry—ever knows that it’s unique to the Fairfax bloodline.
That grief and betrayal and sorrow can turn Fairfaxes into monsters.
My family’s fragile legacy rests in my hands, threatening at every second to slip through my fingers.
If the shareholders saw my scales and claws, I’d be locked up or shot.
But worse, everyone would surely make the connection between the Fairfaxes and the heartbroken, staining our family name forever.
“I know—I know that there have been some concerning developments lately,” I continue, and smiles slip off the shareholders’ faces like too much wet paint slopped onto a canvas.
It’s impossible to forget that I am the first woman to be here, and that even calling me a woman is generous; I’m sure most of them think me just a girl.
A child, playing pretend in her mother’s clothes and her father’s chair.
“We are aware of the Livyati’s diminishing numbers, and the resulting encounters with finfolk as our ships are obliged to range farther north.
But please be assured that we have not been ignoring your reports and your questions.
We’ve been working on answers, and my adviser August Hargreave has developed a plan to share with you tonight. ”
There’s a smattering of lackluster applause as I sink gratefully into my seat.
August looks over to give me a proud smile, his hand finding my thigh and squeezing gently.
It’s a quick gesture, more reassuring than seductive, but still the heat of his touch takes me back to the library, his body pressed against mine, his fingers drifting over the scales.
Heat rises to my face, and as he stands up in turn, I quickly duck my head and take a sip of wine, mastering myself.
Even here in front of everyone, I want to lean into him, my body drawn toward his like a magnet. But the warning hangs in my mind from so many years ago. You must guard your heart.
I wish Papa were here. I wish I could ask him, is my heart still worth protecting even when it’s already crumbling?
But since he’s not here—will never be here again—I look over at Lydia, who has taken her seat at one of the tables.
Even if I sometimes feel like there’s a wall between my sister and me, I love her and I know she loves me.
That, at least, is something I can hold on to. She catches my eye and smiles.
August looks more at home in front of the Fairfax family crest—gold thread on red silk, the shape of a hawk diving toward stylized waves—than I felt. “We aim to establish a whaling outpost in the peninsula of Kielstraat,” he says, “off the northwestern tip of Solheim.”
There’s a tangible shift of energy in the room: shareholders lean forward in their seats; merchants look up bright-eyed with interest. “As most of you know,” August goes on, “the whale species that is our special prey, the only whale with magic in its flesh and blood, the Livyati—the females return to the arctic each year to raise their young, sometimes accompanied by bulls as well.”
This plan is the result of weeks of discussions, late nights sitting with him and other key officers in August’s office above the warehouse.
It was Captain Mance’s proposal, but I couldn’t deny the logic of it.
Unpleasant as the man might be, I’m not in a position to shoot down any ideas that might solve my company’s twin intractable problems: the declining Livyatan populations in the five seas and the finfolk’s increasing attacks.
Decades ago, the finfolk had nearly destroyed the Fairfax Whaling Company.
Until my great-grandfather decided instead of fleeing to fight.
He gave his whalers rifles loaded with iron bullets.
When the finfolk realized they too could be hunted, their appearances grew fewer and fewer.
By the time my father took over the company, they were all but gone. Until the attack on the Volyar.
Shadowy figures in black rowboats that you see out of the corner of your eye, unnaturally still and silent.
Fog that rolls in and stays for days, too dense to see through, undisturbed by the wind.
Storms brewing from nothing, lightning forking down from clear skies, waves high enough to clear a ship deck, ready to drag you down to the dark and cold below the surface.
I grip the sides of my chair. Don’t think about that.
I can’t afford to wallow in grief, not just tonight—because I need to be charming for the shareholders—but ever, because every surge of anger or grief causes more scales to crop up, pushes me closer to the edge of somewhere I can’t come back from.
Sinking the Volyar seems to have emboldened the finfolk—since then, we’ve seen more and more attacks on our whaling ships every year. The sailors are afraid. Out for blood. They want a new weapon, like the iron bullets that saved the company in my grandfather’s time.
Silas Price is a few seats down from Lydia, I realize, flanked by two young people I don’t know. To his right is the girl in pink Lydia was talking to—leaning in to speak with Silas now—and to Silas’s right is a lanky boy with raven-colored hair shorn close.
Ever since Silas received his ship charter two years ago, he’s been collecting a crew of young sailors bearing finfolk curses.
Nothing fatal, like the man with coral in his lungs, nothing to stop them from being able to sail—I heard rumors of a man who could speak only in rhymes and a girl who found herself chased by dogs wherever she went.
If these two beside him now are Cursed Crew, their afflictions aren’t visible on the surface, but still the officers to either side of them give them a wide berth, scooting their chairs as far away as possible.
As for Silas, he’s not looking at August, like everyone else. He’s looking at me with a kind of expectant amusement. Eyes bright and challenging, mouth slightly curved into a sharp smile. Like he’s waiting to see what I’ll do next. I meet his gaze and pour all my animosity into my eyes.
He has the power to destroy me. But if he tries, I’ll drag him down with me.
When I glance over to Lydia again, she’s staring at me pointedly. Fix your face, she mouths, and taps a finger against her cheek before flashing an exaggerated smile.
I blink and force myself to look back up at August before anyone else notices me glowering. Uninvited or not, I will not let Silas Price swamp my composure tonight.
“To follow the whales to the far north is a taxing journey from our wharf here in Kirkrell,” August is saying. “But having an outpost on the arctic’s perimeter—one where ships could be repaired, blubber processed, crews refreshed, and so on—that will be worth the initial investment.”
More murmurs of interest from the shareholders, and I allow myself to feel optimistic for a second. If they’ll listen to August more readily than me, so be it. He has our best interests at heart, I tell myself, ignoring the itching at the ends of my fingers. He hasn’t let me down so far, has he?
One of the ship captains calls out from a few tables away. “It’s not the journey to the arctic that’s difficult,” he says, mopping his bald forehead with a handkerchief. “It’s what you find when you get there. How will our ships break through the ice?”
“Solheim is rich in metals,” August points out. “Once we have our facility in Kielstraat, we will be able to install iron breakers on our prows, strong enough to sail straight into the ice.”
He is breathtaking like this, washed in both the firelight from across the room and the lamps behind us, making him look gilded.
It seems like an inevitable act of fate that we should marry and he should help me run the company.
He is persuasive and charismatic in a way I only wish I could be. He is born to whaling, to lead.
“And the iron has another purpose.” He pauses and looks around expectantly, encouragingly, and I know he’s trying to bring the shareholders in, get them invested in this plan.
“To repel the finfolk,” someone calls.
August nods encouragingly. But the mention of the finfolk seems to have darkened the mood in the room. There is shifting in seats, fretful whispers to match the images uncoiling at the edges of my mind.
“We’ve earmarked money to equip every sailor with a pistol and a stock of iron bullets,” August tells the crowd, his voice pushing back the shadows in my mind.
He’s still smiling, unshaken by the specter of the finfolk.
“Furthermore, I’ve secured the governor’s blessing to outfit our fleet with the same cannons as the Continental Army uses, loaded with iron filings.
The seas are ours. We have nothing to fear. ”
His hand finds my shoulder, heavy and warm, his fingers pressing in. I look up at him in surprise and confusion as he tugs me to my feet, until I’m standing next to him.
“The voyage will be led by Captain Mance,” he goes on, “along with myself and a crew of our ablest sailors. And as a gesture of our confidence in this mission, joining us too—”
My stomach drops. I turn my head, stare at him. Don’t do this. The weight of countless eyes drills into us, hungry and afraid and greedy and expectant.
“—Lady Fairfax herself,” he finishes, looking directly at me. “In two weeks, we will sail north.”