Chapter 14 #3
My stomach drops as memories creep up at the edges of my mind and I realize something. It escapes out loud before I can think better of it. “Your eyes. The white…”
Fogged over with white when I stumbled upon him praying in church. Blotted out as the finfolk spoke to him amid the wreck of the Volyar. His breath catches and he inclines his head in the barest nod. I wasn’t imagining it.
“It’s happening more and more lately.” He lets out a strained breath. “When the visions come on, they take over. I can’t see anything else.”
“What do you see?” I don’t really want to know, but I can’t stop myself from asking.
“What you would expect to see in a war. Blood in the streets. Storms wiping out the shoreline. Dead men, dead women, dead finfolk, dead children.”
I swallow. “Are you also hoping to lift the curse in Drekja, then?”
“I wanted that, once,” he says softly. “I went to the chamber beneath the Spout like you. But … I don’t think it’s going to happen. I’ve tried doing favors. Nothing’s ever worked.”
I remember how worried I was when I first got the pendant about how I’d know when I was being called upon to do one of my favors. How casually Silas assured me—The finfolk are writing a story with us, he’d said. The story requires favors, so the chances will come.
“I’m not as bad off as you, curse-wise,” he says after a spell. “It won’t kill me. Unless the visions come on when I’m climbing the rigging or crossing the street, I suppose.”
Or in a whale hunt, I think. He sounds so resigned to his fate. Again I wonder—he’s one of the finfolk; why would they curse him with no chance to free himself? “There must be something you can do. Won’t you appeal to the finfolk when we go to Drekja?”
An even longer pause. “It would feel wrong,” he says, voice heavy.
“I’m the only human who knows what’s going to happen.
I can see what’s coming, I can try to warn people.
It feels wrong to cast that off just so I can sleep better at night.
” He shakes his head slightly, as if shaking off the melancholy.
He turns to go into his cabin, but I blurt out, “Something else too.”
“What?” His hand rests on the door frame. He doesn’t sound angry so much as exhausted.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure we’re alone, then push the words out before I can think better of them. “I’ve been thinking about … the hold.”
I don’t say the finfolk prisoner, but I know Silas knows what I mean. He’s just been standing and listening, but now somehow goes even more still.
“We’ll reach Nunaqvik soon,” I rush, keeping my voice low. “August says we’ll stay ashore two nights. We should break the finman out while the Heralder is harbored.”
Silas’s breath catches. Then he opens the door to his cabin. Hurt balloons in my chest, thinking he’s going to fully ignore what I just said—but instead he stands back, holding the door for me. “You’d better come in.”
It’s not until the door has closed behind us both that it registers that his cabin is tiny, small enough that I could reach out my arms and touch both walls with my fingertips.
A narrow bunk runs along the opposite wall; there’s a writing desk that’s more of a writing surface, a stool, and a washbasin.
A blanket is crumpled and hangs half off the bed.
Silas gestures for me to take the stool, but realizing that that would put me roughly eye level with his chest, I lean against the desk instead.
“Ezra told me you hadn’t known what was down there.” He sits down on the bunk and quickly pushes the blanket to the back corner, out of sight. Almost like he’s self-conscious. “But I wasn’t sure. I thought a Fairfax would do anything for her trade.”
I tense and correct the tack of my thoughts. He’s not self-conscious; he hates everything I stand for and is helping me only out of absolute necessity. Probably counting down the seconds until I leave. “I swear to you I didn’t know about this. I…”
I was going to say I would have never allowed it, but something makes the words stick in my throat. I don’t know if that’s true. If August or even Mance had approached me about the prisoner—spun some good reason for it, something that would help the company—what would I have done?
This conversation is already offtrack. I clear my throat and try not to think about how close Silas is, close enough for me to smell salt water, sweat, petrichor.
“Right. The harbor in Nunaqvik. The ship will be empty, or near enough. And Mance won’t know it was us who freed the finman; we’ll have plausible deniability at least. And,” I add, “we can get your whole crew in on it. Then everyone will get a chance to do a favor for the finfolk.” Including me. Including you, apparently.
Silas considers this, one hand tightening on the pendant he still holds as if his thoughts echo mine. “It’s practical,” he says finally, with a faint smile. “I like it. But we could still be caught.”
“Then I’ll tell Mance it was my idea and I ordered you all to help me,” I say, heated. “What could Mance do? He has no right to be running dangerous experiments on a company ship.”
Silas holds my gaze. “Do you really think it’s Mance behind this?”
My breath catches, and I’m trying to form a response when Silas shakes his head suddenly.
“Never mind,” he says, his eyes cutting away to the porthole window. “Have you considered that if we succeed, it will take us longer to reach Drekja?”
I’m relieved to move the topic away from August. “I’ve made it six years,” I say. “I can handle a few more weeks.”
Probably.