Chapter 16 #2
“Unnatural,” Mance spits, dropping his hand and shaking it like he touched something revolting. My pulse roars in my ears as the shock wave travels through the men, as they jostle one another to see better. I catch scattered bits of the shouts that float up.
“—never seen the like…”
“—all this time alongside us—”
“—ill fortune—”
Desperation rises. I turn to August, asking him with my eyes to please help me. He meets my gaze and steps forward, to my relief. He has power over these men; they listen to him. If anyone can dissipate the ugly tension that’s heavy in the air, he can.
But he brushes past me without meeting my gaze and whispers something in Mance’s ear. Something that makes Mance’s eyes glitter with malice.
“Fetch the tails from the galley,” the captain instructs a nearby sailor, then calls over my shoulder to the men holding Silas. “Take his shirt off.”
Nausea climbs up my throat as jeers rise from the crowd. Lydia is saying something, clutching my arm, but I can’t make sense of her words. August steps back, face grave. What did he tell Mance?
Cloth tears. Something skitters to my feet. Silas’s bone pendant with a broken cord, the one I saw the day we found the whale carcass, the one he carries even with no hopes of his curse being lifted—of ridding himself of the visions of war.
Like before, the pendant is still blank white, none of his favors to the finfolk complete.
When I look up again, Mance’s order has been accomplished. Silas, eyes still blotted out by those strange slick colors, stands stripped to the waist, bloody teeth bared. Muscles rigid with suppressed fury shift beneath pale skin. And there’s the cross scar, visible to everyone.
The reaction ripples through the crowd, a violent wave, angry shouts rising in every direction.
Everyone in Kirkrell grew up hearing the same stories, passed down from our parents and their parents before them.
We all go to church at Seaman’s Bethel and gaze up at the same stained glass windows.
Everyone remembers Ivar Kirkrell, the son of a fisherman and a finwife, branded with a cross so that his mother couldn’t take him back to the sea. To them, this is confirmation.
“Finfolk,” someone shouts, the word echoing through the crew. Their faces seem to merge together in my vision, becoming one many-headed beast, seething and hungry. A gesture from Mance, and the men holding Silas haul him toward the mainmast.
He helped me free the prisoner, complete a favor of my own, and he’s going to be whipped for it.
I can’t let this happen.
The words rise up in my throat. “I did it.” But it comes out a whisper. No one hears but Lydia, who shoots me a frantic glare. I draw breath, readying myself to shout.
“I did it!” Lydia yells, loud enough for every nearby face to turn our way. “I broke into the hold.”
I seize her arm. “Don’t,” I hiss. “Let me.”
But her face is pure defiance. “No,” she retorts under her breath, so only I hear.
“They’ll see your curse and that can’t happen.
Besides, August was with you last night, he knows it wasn’t—” She bites off her words as August himself approaches, frowning, Mance a few steps behind him, gesturing for the crew to stay back.
“Is this true?” August asks my sister and me, quietly.
“Yes,” Lydia says calmly at the same time as I exclaim, “No. It was me.”
Mance brays out a laugh. “So one of you children got past my watchmen and took it upon yourself to unleash—” He seems to catch himself and bites off his words. “My stateroom, now.”
August wordlessly accompanies us to Mance’s cabin. He was with me all night; he knows it can’t have been me who freed the prisoner. But he did find me at the entrance to the hold, carrying the tools to break a chain.
I realize what I have to do and drop my hand to Lydia’s, squeezing it, silently apologizing and begging her to follow my lead. Straighten my spine and lift my chin, faking confidence.
“My sister is fifteen and can be hotheaded,” I say to Mance and August, holding their gazes.
“She and I came across the finman in the hold, and when we docked in Nunaqvik she decided to free him. When I realized, I went to the Heralder to stop her, but she had already released the prisoner. Mr. Price had nothing to do with it.”
Across the room, August tilts his head, blue eyes glinting in the way that means calculations are happening behind them. I’m changing my story; last night I told him I came to the Heralder alone. But let him think I was covering for Lydia then.
Lydia squeezes my hand back, even though her eyes are scared. I take a deep breath, trying to channel the strength and authority of Mama and Papa and all the Fairfaxes before me.
“She was wrong to do it,” I go on, “but I would remind you, Mr. Mance, Mr. Hargreave”—I cut my eyes to August—“that all of you are in my family’s employ.
Let this pass and I may choose to overlook that you were running a dangerous experiment on a company ship without my knowledge.
Lay a hand on my sister, and I’ll see to it that not a man on this ship ever works in Kirkrell again. ”