Chapter 5
In the morning, I pluck the new scales out with tweezers—more than I’ve seen in days—and then drink more whaleblood to heal the pinpricks of blood that remain. There is much to do if I’m to join the journey to Kielstraat.
I dress and knock on Kit’s door to help him get ready for his lessons.
It takes a suspiciously long time for my eleven-year-old brother to open it, and while I wait, the painting in the hall next to his door snags my attention.
In it, two Livyati—one, harpooned, thrashes in a maelstrom of frothing waves, while another circles as a ship sinks, snapped in two.
I never understood why Papa—the preeminent whaler in Kirkrell, indeed along the whole north coast—only ever commissioned scenes of whales killing men.
Our fortune is built on men killing whales.
We render the beasts’ flesh and sell it to the world: dried meat for strength, blood to heal.
Yet in the artwork decorating the manor, it’s always humans meeting their ends in the deep.
The small terrified faces in the white froth of waves, dark bits of shattered boat all around. I wonder if Papa would have chosen a different scene knowing that that very fate awaited him and Mama. Will it be mine too?
Finally, Kit opens the door and stares up at me with his most wide-eyed, cherubic look, trying to distract me from his crooked shirt—the buttons done up wrong—his light brown hair sticking up wildly on one side, and the book back on his bed, shoved hastily under the quilt but not quite hidden.
It’s all so utterly normal that I want to laugh. “How late did you stay up reading, Kristopher?” I ask him, putting my hands on my hips exaggeratedly. He knows I’m not really angry. “And how late did you sleep in this morning?”
When I was that age, I liked roaming around the grounds, conscripting Lydia into games of make-believe where we’d crouch in a tree, pretending it was a ship, and throw imaginary harpoons at imaginary whales.
Kit, though, can usually be found curled in an armchair with his latest book, or at the kitchen table, reading the Kirkrell Maritime Gazette.
“Not that late!” Kit says indignantly, puffing himself up. “Besides, you and Lydia stayed up later than me at the party.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t much of a party.” I shove him gently in the direction of his wardrobe. “I would have much rather been up here reading sea stories. Now go brush your hair and fix your shirt. Be downstairs in five minutes if you want breakfast before Ms. Nilsson gets here.”
In the kitchen, Lydia is picking at a bannock, dressed for her lessons, with a look of consternation on her face—one that intensifies as I enter the room. When she levels her glare at me, I freeze in the act of reaching for the plate that Mrs. Milhouse has left for us.
“What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t tell me you were going to Kielstraat.”
My heart drops. Talking to Kit made me momentarily forget my worries, but instantaneously Lydia’s words bring them back, arms prickling, Silas’s and August’s voices echoing in my mind and making my stomach churn.
“I didn’t know,” I tell her, pasting on a smile that feels false, a jester’s mask.
“It was a surprise. But it’s a good idea, don’t you think?
” My voice rings false to my ears, and Lydia’s eyes remain narrow, unconvinced, but I plow onward.
“Kielstraat is critical to the company’s future.
I should be there when it goes into operation. ”
Lydia hunches over her food, not looking at me as I put a scoop of ground coffee into a strainer.
She’s only three years younger than me, and sometimes she feels almost like a woman, like last night when she floated effortlessly among the shareholders, seeming lighter and happier than I could ever be.
But other times, like now—frowning fiercely, methodically stabbing her bannock like it’s the cause of all our problems—she seems as much a child as Kit still is.
“He should have talked to you first,” she says. “And you should have talked to us.”
Of course she’s right, but what can I say to that?
I pretend to be distracted by pouring hot water through the strainer.
The smell of coffee should be comforting, but it just makes my stomach twist further, appetite suddenly gone.
I grab a bannock anyway and take that and the coffee to sit down across from her at the kitchen table, the ceramic mug warming through my gloves and soothing my sore palms where I picked the scales out.
“I’ll be careful on the ship,” I tell her. “August will take care of me.”
“You could refuse to go.” She looks down at her plate while she speaks, fingers working nimbly to disassemble her breakfast.
“The shareholders would think me a coward.”
“So let them.” Her bannock is just a pile of crumbs now. “What does it matter what they think? You’re the head of the company, not them.”
I bite my lip, trying to figure out how to explain that it’s not that simple, that I have only as much power as the shareholders have faith in me, and that was in short supply in the first place. But before I marshal my words, Lydia says:
“Didn’t the Volyar go down in the arctic?”
I flinch, caught off guard by her words.
Much as we might argue sometimes, Lydia never brings up what happened on the Volyar.
Like she knows it runs the risk of shattering me.
I take a deep breath, trying not to let her fear infect me—or, rather, not to let her see how deep my own fear goes, how my skin crawls and stomach churns at the words.
“In the far north, yes,” I say. “But that was the Askarda. The way to Kielstraat is through the Sidhae Sea.”
Not that it matters much. Like the shareholders say, the far north is the finfolks’ territory. They don’t abide by our borders and delineations.
Lydia looks deeply unconvinced, so I talk on, filling the silence with false-confident patter. “And the Heralder is a better ship. We’ll have weapons and numbers we didn’t have back then—”
Kit announces his arrival with a clatter, nearly tripping and falling as he races to grab a bannock from the counter, then points triumphantly at Lydia and me. “See? I’m ready in time. That means I can stay up reading again tonight.”
“Not yet.” I stand up, shooting Lydia a quelling glance. We’ll talk about this later. “Only if you manage to eat that without getting crumbs all down your front. And your shoes are untied.”
Half an hour later, Lydia and I are in the heart of Kirkrell’s old town, the roads an illogical labyrinth of narrow byways, all etched with the deep grooves left by countless carts and carriages.
The air is thick with the smells of sweat, smoke, rotting fish, horse manure, and sea brine.
Declan could have taken us in the carriage, but when Papa was alive, he walked everywhere, never mind the weather, and it’s a habit I’ve maintained. I like to keep my feet on solid earth.
Beside me, Lydia is almost too chipper, our argument over the breakfast table apparently forgotten.
Tucking her notebook into her satchel, she looks every inch the heiress I ought to be, her blue flannel dress ironed crisp and her face bright.
Vendors weave through the crowd, peddling their wares—fish glistening on beds of ice, blank eyes staring; pouches of powdered whaleblood and whalebone; strips of dried whale meat; candles and soaps fashioned from Livyati’s rendered blubber.
As we walk, I notice the glances, the nods, the curious stares of those around us.
Some offer respectful acknowledgments, a murmured Good morning, ladies.
If any of them knew the truth of me, the itching in my nail beds, the faint metallic smells that I can detect everywhere I go, they would run screaming. And they would be right to.
Out of nowhere, Lydia says, “I’ve decided I’m coming on the Heralder too.”
“What?” Surprise makes me almost stumble on the uneven ground, causing Lydia to grab my elbow to steady me and drawing curious stares from a gaggle of schoolchildren passing by. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.” Lydia keeps hold of my arm, and it’s hard not to flinch away from her touch, warm and gentle though it might be. I know she can’t feel the scales through the wool of my sleeve, but it’s still alarming to have her hands so close to my skin. “I’m old enough. I want to be part of it.”
“You’re not old enough,” I say reflexively. The curse responds to the sudden jolt of adrenaline coursing through me, the skin on my arms prickling, my nail beds burning.
“The greenhands can start at thirteen,” she shoots back. Her face remains bright, a smile steady on her lips for the benefit of passersby, but her voice is steely. “And that’s only the official rule; lots probably lie to the dockmasters to start sooner.”
“Why do you want to go?” I counter, attempting to keep my voice steady.
“It’s going to be dull at best and terrible at worst.” We’ve made our way to the less respectable warehouse district, which is a mercy, as we’re less likely to be recognized here—surrounded by factory girls in soot-stained dresses, washerwomen toiling under baskets heaped high with cloth, stable boys leading horses by the reins.
Sailors in canvas and oilcloth, their faces weathered and bronzed by salt and sun, harpoons and bags slung over their shoulders.
Lydia’s grip on my arm tightens subtly. “Because I want to be with you. Even if you’re not good company lately.”
Unspoken things dart in the spaces between her words—love and worry, the memory of our parents leaving on a voyage from which they would never return. But the trip to Kielstraat will be even more perilous than a typical whaling expedition—we’ll be headed to the far north, the home of the finfolk.