Chapter 17
In the end, absent any proof, Mance has no choice but to accept my sister’s confession.
He can’t put the whip to a Fairfax, so instead he orders her to take deck-swabbing duties for a week.
Nor does he flog Silas but orders him to be locked in the brig, claiming it’s for his own protection now that the men know what he is.
I can’t object—Mance might be despicable, but I don’t think he’s wrong in this instance. Not with the venomous looks that follow Silas as he’s led belowdecks. Soon after, Ezra slips away too, and I suspect he will be serving as self-appointed guard outside the brig.
All the while, I have Silas’s bone pendant in my pocket. Its blankness still makes no sense. How is it that my paltry attempt at a favor was acceptable, but never anything he’s done?
Days pass, the Heralder men giving me and my sister a wide berth.
They think Lydia stole artifacts from the hold and used her status as a Fairfax to weasel out of a punishment.
It’s not ideal. My skin itches with the growth of new scales, pushed up by anger and fear; I can feel them snagging the inside of my gloves.
Ezra and Zimri take turns keeping watch in the hold, and Teuila and Josephine look after Kit, allowing Lydia and I to stay away.
The distance from our brother hurts, but I don’t want the suspicion now cast on me and Lydia to fall on him too.
One morning, we can see the shoreline of Solheim to the northeast through a spyglass—dark, low, jagged hills crowned in snow—and soon they disappear in a cloak of fog. Mance announces that if the wind holds, we should make landfall at Kielstraat in another day or two.
I hand August back his spyglass with a bitter taste in my mouth.
We’ve barely spoken since the other day’s commotion.
I can’t get the image out of my head, August bending to speak in Mance’s ear.
I think he knew about Silas’s cross scar.
I think he told Mance about it. It was only after he whispered something to Mance that the captain ordered Silas be whipped.
August wanted everyone to know Silas is finfolk.
At around three bells, a cry from the crow’s nest. “There she blows!”
My breath stops. I look up—everyone looks up. Up in the mast, the sailor points excitedly past the Heralder’s prow. “A spout!” His call sounds tinny from so far away. “A spout to the northwest!”
There’s a general stampede to the railing, all the sailors trying to catch a glimpse, but I hang back. Catch August’s arm as he passes by. “Tell Mance to let Silas out,” I say.
August looks down at me, eyes glittering. Excitement for the hunt? Questions about me? I can’t tell. I used to be able to read his face so well. Or I thought I could.
“Why?” he asks at length, plucking my hand from his arm and holding it between us. He’s donned gloves now too, against the cold. But even through two layers of wool his fingers cinch tight around mine, almost too tight.
“He’s a fine whaler, you said so yourself.” My heart beats fast as I stare at my fiancé, as the crew streams around us to get a look at the whale. “He’s done nothing wrong, and it’s been days. Let him prove his loyalty.”
“I thought you hated him.” August’s tone is conversational, but he shifts so that he’s between me and the crew, blocking everyone else from view. His eyes have gone cold. “What is he to you, Annie?”
As his other hand tilts my chin up, I try not to swallow, to blink, to give anything away. “A friend.” Part of me wants to downplay it even more than that, say A subordinate, say Nothing at all. But that’s not true, and I can be braver than that. I have to be.
The last few days have shaken my faith in August. Still, my stubborn, cracked-open heart clings to his tender words from the night we shared. Brave. Clever. Stronger than I ever knew. Maybe he spoke to Silas about getting rid of me, but never meant it at all.
If I’m right about August, if he does love me, I can tell him the truth. Because if my plan somehow works, I’ll have to tell him how and why I’m not heartbroken any longer. It’s past time I start being honest with him. If only with small truths at first, to practice.
August’s lips curl up, but no light touches his eyes. “A friend? You know what he is.”
“And we know he’s been in Kirkrell his whole life, just like us, and he’s never hurt anyone. He hasn’t betrayed us.” I take a deep breath. “You said when we set out he could be useful. What did you mean?”
“As the captain said.” August doesn’t look at me as he speaks; his eyes stay fixed on the horizon, on the promise of the spout. “It’s no waste of space to carry a good luck charm. Or two.”
It takes a moment to string together the implication in his words. Then my stomach drops. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Lucky thing the wind returned, so we didn’t have to, not today.” August pulls me against him, rotating me so my back is to his chest, and speaks in my ear. “But this business is full of hard choices, Annie. You know that.”
I push out of his arms and whirl around as August blinks in mild surprise. “He’s as much human as he is finfolk,” I hiss.
“How very enlightened of you.” August steps back from me, that mirthless smile still pasted on, and retrieves a key ring from his coat pocket. He detaches a key—old, iron—and flips it to me. “Go fetch him then. But hurry. You won’t want to miss this.”
I’d never had occasion to visit the brig before—a cell meant to hold drunk or mutinous sailors. It’s down in the hold, squeezed into the rear corner of the hull, a tiny room with a tinier barred window set into the door around knee level, maybe to pass food through.
Ezra lurks outside the door. He and Zimri have been trading off shifts down here ever since they locked Silas up; I’ve seen them sneaking away down the stairs.
Ezra has his hands shoved in his coat pockets against the chill of the hold—and I wonder if he doesn’t have a weapon in there too.
He tenses when I approach, but his shoulders slump again when he sees it’s me.
I explain quickly, flashing the key. “The lookout saw a spout. They want us all in the boats.”
“Our lucky day,” he says flatly.
“Can I talk to him?”
Ezra gives me a tense nod and retreats above deck. I pad the rest of the way to the hold, dread dragging at my limbs. “Silas?” I whisper at the door, setting my lantern down.
It’s freezing down here; we’re below the water level, after all. The chill from the wall leaches through my coat and shirt and I try not to think about how nothing but a relatively thin wall of wood and metal separates us from the crush of the sea. About how cold Silas must be, inside.
A moment passes before the reply comes, terse and unhappy. “Annie. I told you to let me take the fall.”
I try to mask my emotions with humor, the relief and regret swelling my throat. “Then you’d have landed on Willa’s table, getting sewn up with a dirty needle. No one wants blood in their hardtack.” Mance might not mind, actually, but that’s beside the point.
“Instead I get to sit here in the dark thinking about how you spent the night with August to keep me safe.” The coldness in Silas’s voice takes me aback, deeper and darker than the chill in the air. “Lucky me.”
The anger in his voice casts everything in a different light. One that makes my stomach twist with confusion. “That was days ago. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” His voice sounds rough, shredded. “You shouldn’t have had to do it.”
Does he think less of me for spending the night with August?
I wouldn’t have thought him that kind of person, judgmental, but maybe August isn’t the only person I’ve read wrong.
“It was to keep Lydia safe, not just you.” I make my voice cold, a warning.
“Besides, it’s fine. It’s nothing I haven’t done before. ”
Not quite true, what I’m letting him think, but also none of his business. I’m rewarded with a long, tense silence.
“He wants you dead.” Silas finally speaks, enunciates each word. I can picture his storm-cloud eyes fixed on the back of the brig door. I imagine that if I put a hand to the door it would be hot to the touch.
“I don’t believe that,” I say softly, trying to decide if I believe the words as I say them. “Maybe he did once, but things are different now. He sees me now in—in a way he didn’t before. He called me strong. Called me clever.”
It sounds hollow down here in the dark. I clench my fists, and only then, when the key cuts into my palm through my gloves, remember why I came down here. I curse myself, fumble with the key, telling him as I do, “They spotted a whale up above. They want you in the boats.”
When I get the door open he’s standing directly on the other side.
His crew has brought him some clothes, at least, but his hair is dull and lank, a bruise fading on his jaw.
Yet his posture is alert, ready; his eyes on mine are fierce, pupils blown wide, before he brings a hand up to shield his eyes from the lamplight.
I open my mouth to say something about the whale, the hunt, but Silas cuts me off.
“Is that how you want to live?” he asks from behind his hand, a current of some emotion I can’t name raging just below the frozen surface of his voice.
“Falling asleep every night knowing that only if you’ve sufficiently proven your strength and cleverness will you see another sunrise? ”
He must think me such a fool for staying with August. And maybe I am. I know it’s a possibility—just not one I’m ready to accept. Silas doesn’t understand what August is to me. How he kept me from heartbreak all these years.
And I am not the same girl I was in Kirkrell, weak and avoidant and fragile. August sees that; I’ve shown him that I’m worthy. To let myself believe otherwise might shatter me. It would mean so many years wasted, so many lies swallowed.