Chapter 15
We make landfall in Nulusk at midmorning three days after recovering the whale carcass.
The terrain is more vertical and rugged than Abbonheim.
Instead of the wide, sweeping shoreline of home, here land and sea tangle together in a maze of peninsulas, small islands, and inlets ringed by low brown cliffs that drop directly into the sea.
As if the gods have carved up the land with a crooked knife.
Yet the waters are deep, and Mance steers the Heralder between the flanks of land with ease until the city of Nunaqvik appears before us.
“Wow,” I hear Kit breathe next to me at the railing.
“It’s pretty.” Lydia, on my other side, snatches the spyglass from me to examine the shore. “Why don’t we paint houses like this in Kirkrell?”
Washed in the bright, pale sun, the landscape is gray and brown even in spring, with only a few scrubby trees to speak of, but the buildings are painted vivid reds and blues beneath mossy roofs—many of the houses being carved partly out of the sloping earth, with doors and windows facing the sea.
Thin streams of smoke issue from chimneys.
It’s much smaller than Kirkrell—if this place was in Abbonheim, I’d call it a town rather than a city.
Yet here, in a landscape so harsh, there’s something triumphant about the collection of buildings and people and society.
So that you can’t call it anything but a city.
Though it makes no difference at all, I find myself rising on my toes to get a little closer.
The last few days on the ship have felt like sitting in an open trap, waiting for it to snap shut.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the finfolk prisoner belowdecks, and the whole ship stank of burning whale blubber as the crew performed the cutting-in—processing what was left of the Livyatan carcass.
Now I feel a bubble of joy expanding in my chest. It’s childish, maybe, to feel joy when the danger hasn’t dissipated in the slightest. But still, to see another shore makes me feel lighter.
I have never seen another country before.
Something glitters on the cliffsides beneath the city, casting sparkling reflections over the Heralder’s sails.
I shade my eyes and squint over the railing, trying to see what it is that shines so.
Minerals in the stone? No; whatever it is moves with the wind.
I ask for a turn with the spyglass and adjust the aperture until the cliffsides come into focus.
Silver. The cliffs are fairly covered with bits of silver, hammered into medallion shapes, hanging from scraps of leather cord so they shift and catch the wind and the sun. “What are they for?” I ask Kit, handing the glass over to him to have a look.
Kit peers out through the spyglass, screwing his other eye shut, then answers readily, eager to share a tidbit of knowledge from his books. “It’s for the finfolk, so if they come up on shore, they’ll find the silver and leave before they get to the houses.”
His voice is chipper. Even here at sea, the finfolk are only a theoretical to him, creatures of ink and paper.
He scarcely remembers Mama’s and Papa’s deaths.
I think again of the being in the secret hold and suppress a shudder, good mood momentarily punctured by the reminder of what we must do later.
The Heralder is the biggest ship in the harbor by far, but the other vessels bear flags from all over the world, snapping proudly in the chill breeze.
Smaller rowboats and fishing boats dart between them and the docks.
We drop anchor in the harbor where the water is deep, and I take the first rowboat to shore with August, Mance, and a few other Heralder men.
As we approach, I can hear the silver pieces decorating the cliffs clinking softly in the breeze.
The sound and the smell of the wharf—absent the scent of sooty, burned whale oil, but with the stink of old fish and waterlogged wooden docks—remind me powerfully of home.
A woman waits for us at the end of the dock, in her fifties, stout and strong with graying dark braids.
She wears a long-sleeved wool dress and pearlescent bracelets and earrings, as well as a richly patterned red shawl draped around her shoulders.
I rise to my feet, suddenly more nervous, because I recognize her from the shawl as Lady Kata. The head of this city.
No ship docks at Nunaqvik without her approval, and it’s crucial that the Fairfax Whaling Company maintain friendly relations in order to keep resupplying here.
Months ago, as August and I planned the voyage to Kielstraat, I commissioned the shawl from one of Kirkrell’s finest weavers and had it sent to Kata as a gift, to show our appreciation.
I also wrote a letter before I knew I’d be joining the voyage, introducing myself and asking if she might meet with August on my behalf during the Heralder’s stop here, but this went unanswered.
Yet she steps up to the edge of the dock as our boat draws close, catching the rope Mance throws and winding it around a post to anchor us in place, with an ease suggesting she’s used to handling boats.
August goes to stand up, but I beat him to it and step to the front of the boat. She looks us over, dark eyes impassive.
“You must have had fair winds,” she says in Abbonish, words inflected with a faint accent. “We did not expect you for another week.”
That makes my stomach drop. “We have been fortunate,” I say, looking up at her from the boat. “Thank you for allowing us to make port here, Lady Kata. I’m Susannah Fairfax, head of the Fairfax Whaling Company.”
She nods—she knows who I am—and stands back to let us all clamber onto the dock. August goes first, then turns and offers his hand to me.
“Careful,” he says softly, with a hint of the secret smile. “You’re a sailor now; watch those sea legs.”
I scoff quietly for his ears only as I put my gloved hand in his—a few weeks at sea does not a sailor make—but sure enough, when my feet are on the aged wood of the dock, I sway as the world seems to undulate beneath me.
August pulls me close before setting me on my feet, and I can’t help but stiffen.
Thinking, even as his breath stirs my hair, of what secrets might be hiding behind those blue eyes.
Lady Kata’s eyes stay on me as August introduces himself and Mance. She greets them politely, but then turns back to me. “Walk with me, Susannah?”
My heart rises into my throat as I nod. Lady Kata is doing what so few people back home do—actually treating me as the leader of the Fairfax Whaling Company. But that also means there’s more pressure not to make any mistakes.
“I’ll catch up with you at the inn,” I murmur, detaching myself from August, and step forward. I can feel his eyes on my shoulders, but I don’t look back.
I walk with Lady Kata down the dock and up wooden stairs onto a cobblestone path that stands a little above the rest of the wharf.
With the lack of trees along Nulusk’s coast, the Nunak tend to build with stone instead where possible, and the path under our feet is worn smooth with the passage of centuries.
The silver decorating the cliffs casts bits of shimmer over the stone.
Below us, people go haggle for fish or furs or baskets of vegetables; lean over overturned boats, sanding and painting the hulls; cook food and weave nets and mend sails.
It’s so much like home, only there’s no smell of soot or burning oil on the air, no smokestacks from warehouses or factories; only small fires where people smoke fish or warm their hands.
“How shall I address you?” I ask Kata, keeping pace at her side, trying to make my walk stately.
“Just Kata is fine,” she says, her tone cordial but reserved. “You look very like your father, you know.”
A flush of pride suffuses me. “Really?” That’s not something I’ve heard often.
I’ve always thought I resembled Mama more, sharing her wheat-colored hair and brown eyes.
She was beautiful, but I was always my father’s creature, yearning for his acknowledgment and approval, which was harder won than my mother’s.
“It’s the way you stand and how you meet one’s eye.” She fingers the fringed end of the shawl. “Thank you for this gift. It is finely made.”
“A token of our gratitude,” I say, smiling. “Thank you for meeting me here. I appreciate your taking the time to speak to me.” Even if I didn’t expect it.
People in Abbonheim speak with scorn about how the Nunak treat with the finfolk, taking a strategy of appeasement rather than aggression—like these offerings on the cliffs, how they eschew iron, and of course the fact they don’t hunt whales in the same way we do.
They kill Livyati only, Papa taught me, when there is a great need.
But I never understood that. The need for whale magic at home is endless. People are always cold, always sick, always hungry. Is the same not true here? When is there not great need?
Kata’s eyes drift out over the harbor toward the ship, where I can see the small figures of the rest of the crew taking turns rowing to the shore. I think it’s Silas rowing, his dark curls and lean shoulders bowed over the oar, movements rhythmic and strong.
“The Heralder,” Kata says contemplatively. “Why have you named it so? What does it herald?”
I force my attention back to her. I didn’t in fact name the Heralder—August did—but it matters little. “I hope an era of prosperity for the people we serve. And continued peace between our nations.”
“You wrote to me about your ship’s mission,” she says, her face and voice carefully neutral. “A new whaling town in the far north.”
“Yes.”
Of course, Kata likely doesn’t approve of the Kielstraat plan. Most Nunak look with judgment upon our kind of whaling, just as we’re suspicious of them for their dealings with the finfolk, though diplomacy prevents either country from outright opposition.