Chapter 19
When I was very young, after I first learned what the Fairfax Whaling Company was and how we made our money, I hated it. Later, Mama would tell me it is a phase every child goes through. But I didn’t understand why we had to kill innocent creatures in such a violent way.
For the next two days, Mama took me on two outings.
First, we took a carriage out into the country, to a farm, like the one Mama herself grew up on before her father found success as a shipwright.
There, Mama paid the farmer a handsome price for a cow and asked that it be slaughtered there and then, while we watched.
The next day, she took me to the city hospital. A few coins changing hands and we were allowed to walk through the sick ward, watching doctors use vials of whaleblood stoppered with the Fairfax Company wax seal to bring sick and injured patients back to health.
“Do you understand?” she asked me after, when we were in the carriage home. My head was full of all manner of confusing thoughts, blood and cries of pain, the sounds of the cow being slaughtered eerily similar to those of the injured patients at the hospital.
“It’s how life works, my darling,” she said to me. “Just as a fox in the woods might kill a rabbit to feed its babies, and a farmer kills a cow to support his family, so we Fairfaxes have to kill whales to give the world the magic it so desperately needs.”
And I did understand. It took a few days for everything to sink in, but I never questioned the company’s mission again.
It’s almost dark when we get back to the Heralder, towing the whale carcass behind our three boats.
The sun has slipped beneath the horizon and the wide-open sky is gold in the west, indigo in the east, and a dull purple in the middle like a bruise.
I’ve been excused from rowing on account of my spill into the sea; instead I huddle against August’s legs as he mans the steering oar.
Zimri charitably gave me his jacket, and I have the blanket on top of that, but the cold has settled into my bones. I think it might stay there forever.
The men sing shanties as they row, pleased after a successful hunt.
Josephine has a twisted ankle from when we had to jump overboard, and one of Mance’s men has a deep slash in his arm from a lance gone astray.
But aside from those minor injuries and our one broken boat, everyone made it out unscathed.
A minor miracle. Still, despite the cheery melodies echoing across the water, the sense of kinship I felt earlier has dissipated.
These men feel more alien to me than the whales did.
I clutch the blanket tight around me and try not to look at Silas where he stands in the stern of the next boat over.
Still covered in blood from head to foot, he cuts a grim figure against the twilight.
Exhaustion covers me like a heavy fog, keeping my thoughts more or less at bay, which is a mercy.
Even so, they lurk under the surface, clawing at my veneer of calm.
Silas breathing life into me, pulling me to the surface.
The frantic clicking of the mother and calf as they communicated with each other.
The feeling that I knew exactly what they were saying—the same thing I told Kit on the Heralder this afternoon. Stay away. Stay safe.
Lanterns shine on the ship’s deck above; I can see as we pull up alongside it the small figures of Kit and Lydia at the railing, letting the ladders down for us.
“Fasten the catch alongside,” Mance calls.
“We’re only a few hours from Kielstraat.
We’ll sail there tonight and start the cutting-in tomorrow after we make landfall. ”
At August’s direction, I go up first, and even that is a challenge, my muscles screaming from overuse and my eyelids heavy.
I have to leave the blanket behind, but the dark gives me enough cover, I hope, that no one will see my scales as I climb.
After heaving my body over the railing, I tuck my hands into my armpits as my brother and sister race up to me.
“Annie!” Kit cries while Lydia demands, “Are you all right?” They fall into step beside me as I rush toward my cabin, but their words float over my head.
“I’m fine,” I mutter. I’m sure I look as bad as I feel, half-dry and shivering in someone else’s coat, with no shoes.
But for some reason I feel ashamed to look in their faces.
If Kit and Lydia had seen what I’d seen, the violence, the grief, what would they think?
“Everyone is fine. Go get blankets and water for the sailors.”
When the door to my cabin finally closes behind me, I drop to a crouch and put my head between my knees, trying to quell the rush of dizziness that swarms up.
I’m shivering and my hair is crispy with dried salt; I smell like sweat and salt water and whaleblood.
Part of me, a large part, wants to collapse into bed and not come out until we reach Kielstraat, but I can’t.
I’m a Fairfax and we have just concluded a successful whale hunt.
I can’t let the crew see how much it’s shaken me.
As I quickly file down my nails—they’ve grown half an inch past my fingertips over the course of the day—it occurs to me that I completed another favor for the finfolk when I frightened off the young Livyatan.
Mechanically, I prick a finger and sprinkle the blood onto the pendant, watch it sink in and remain, two red spots now.
Two favors done. But I don’t feel proud. I don’t feel anything.
What kind of existence will the calf have now?
Will a pod take it in, or is it old enough to survive on its own?
For all we know about whales’ insides—centuries of accrued knowledge regarding how to take them apart and render their flesh into usable, profitable materials—we know precious little about their behavior or how they interact with one another.
As I’m opening my clothes chest, the door to my cabin opens. I look up, surprised, as Lydia barges in—never having knocked, naturally—and crosses her arms. “Are you really all right?” she asks again.
My heart squeezes, my movements slow as I rifle around for the thickest wool gloves I can find. Try to think of something to say that will appease her, but find I’m too tired to lie. It’s an effort just to stay upright.
“This can’t go on,” I say, my voice coming out small. “Whaling. We have to stop it.”
Lydia’s face softens as I speak. She crosses the room to crouch beside me, lays a hand on my shoulder, even though I’m still damp and probably smell like blood. “I know.”
I blink. “You know?” She seemed so angry before, when I told her what I’d agreed to so Silas would take me to Drekja.
“It took me a while to accept it, but numbers are numbers.” She elbows me out of the way, rummaging in my trunk. “Josephine told me that normally by this point of a voyage, a crew might have killed a half dozen Livyati. But we’ve only even seen two, and one already dead.”
“That’s why we’re setting up the outpost at Kielstraat.
” I don’t quite know why I’m saying this when I’ve already decided, or at least I thought I had.
Maybe there’s a part of me that needs to test Lydia, or myself, like I could inoculate us against every counterargument.
“Because the whales come here to calf. There will be plenty to hunt.”
“For now.” She finds a wool shirt and trousers, throws them my way. “But what happens when there are no more whales in the arctic either?”
“That won’t happen for a long time, not within our lifetimes.
” There’s still a part of me that wants to cling to the old ways.
To take the easy out. I tug my wet, salt-crusted shirt over my head, glad to be rid of it, and throw it over the back of my chair.
If Lydia agrees, if she says there’s a way to keep on whaling, can I forget what I saw underwater?
“But it will happen,” Lydia says doggedly. I think of Kit in the crow’s nest. I don’t want to kill whales.
“Someone will have to deal with it,” Lydia goes on, helping me with my shirt. “Our children or our children’s children. Something has to change.”
It’s a terrible sort of relief to hear it from her. Before now, whenever I thought about ending whaling, I thought that would mean betraying my family. But that’s not true, has never been true. The betrayal would be letting things stay the same.
I hid the heartbreak curse from Lydia for so long; I hid my worries about the company, my doubts about August. But I shouldn’t have.
She might be the one person I can trust entirely.
Silas and August have agendas of their own; Kit is still too young for some truths.
But Lydia—I should have realized earlier—is stronger than I gave her credit for. Braver.
She has a pair of thick wool gloves and holds them open so I can slide my hands in, left then right. “Why not get ahead of it?” she says more gently, brown eyes holding mine. “Why wait until our hand is forced?”
“People will hate us,” I say shakily, giving voice to the problem I’ve barely let myself consider. “They’ll say we’re betraying Papa’s legacy.”
“So what?” She doesn’t blink; her jaw is set, fierce. “He was our father, not anyone else’s. If he were here, I think he would understand.”
My eyes burn, a few scant tears forming at their edges, even though I haven’t drunk anything but salt water in hours. “I should have talked to you about this sooner.”
“Obviously,” she says. Her voice is harsh and annoyed, but her movements are gentle as she helps me pull on a fresh jacket, my movements still clumsy. “Just don’t wait so long next time.”
“I won’t,” I promise, wiping my eyes on my clean sleeve.
The last of the crew is still climbing up from the whaleboats when we emerge from my cabin.
Ezra, Teuila, Zimri, and Josephine have just disembarked and are stripping out of their wet things on the far side of the deck.
Kit flits between the sailors, carrying a stack of blankets half as tall as he is.
Willa distributes vials of whaleblood to the wounded while the third mate bandages the injured man’s arm as he swigs from a bottle of whiskey.
August is among the last to come aboard.
He’s scanning the deck even as he swings over the gunwale, and when he sees me, he strides straight for me.
I stiffen. I haven’t forgotten his words earlier.
Lucky thing the wind returned. But then I register with astonishment that his eyes gleam with tears, flooded with real relief, in the instant before he sweeps me off my feet.
He’s already kissing me as he carries me toward the nearest object—the capstan—and seats me on top of it, stepping between my legs and tilting my face up to his.
He still smells like the sea: salt water and sweat.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmurs in the space between kisses, eyes molten. “Annie.”
He kisses me like we’re in a locked bedroom, not out on deck with everyone busy around us.
His kisses take me under like a riptide, making me forget my exhaustion, forget where we are, forget the seeping suspicion between us.
His lips know mine, his hands know me, and he knows exactly how to chase every thought from my mind and leave it melting soft.
My hands find his sides as his lips part mine, tongue seeking mine out.
His body presses against mine, heavy and solid, while his tongue traces a question onto mine.
Are you still mine?
We break apart to a chorus of wolf whistles.
The deck is packed and busy around us, sailors putting up the whaleboats and wiping down their weapons, but I hardly care, captured in his eyes.
He kisses me once more, softer, slow, as he lifts me off the capstan and sets me on my feet. Whispers in my ear.
“You should get some rest,” he says, low and regretful, like he can hardly bear to part with me but knows it’s for the best. “By the time you wake up in the morning we’ll be at Kielstraat. I can’t wait to show you everything.”
Then he’s gone, leaving my mind wiped blank for a long moment until thoughts start to trickle in.
I need to tell him about my decision to end whaling.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, under the melting, languid desire, a voice reminds me that just like the night we freed the prisoner, he has me in a corner.
The Heralder is a large corner indeed, but I have no way off it, not for me or my siblings, not until we make landfall.
I’ll tell him everything in Kielstraat. I’ll tell him and he’ll understand. He has to.
Someone clears her throat. I blink to realize my siblings have materialized in front of me. Lydia’s scowl tells me just how much they saw.
“Do you need directions back to our cabin?” she says grumpily.
“Oh, it’s our cabin now, is it?” I mutter, avoiding her eyes. I blink more until the fog clears and then push off the capstan in the direction of the cabin. But a tug on my sleeve stops me.
Kit. His little face looks haunted. I had hoped that we chased the whale far enough away that he wouldn’t see or hear too much of what followed, but I think of the way the creature’s clicks and screams settled into my bones and know that was too much to ask.
“Is Captain Silas hurt?” he asks.
My heart stills as I follow Kit’s pointed hand with my gaze. To where Silas stands by the mainmast, a pillar of stillness amid the bustling activity.
There’s not an inch of him that’s not covered in blood, the lamplight stretching his shadow and making him into a creature out of a nightmare.
But his eyes are all too human; he looks stricken.
Our eyes meet and it’s like the rope from a whaleboat going taut, ready to snap or catch fire or take off a limb.
How long has he been staring? Why does he look like he’s watching his home crumble into the sea?
Then the spell breaks. He turns away, every line of his body tense and rigid.
“Annie?” Kit pokes my stomach, voice high with worry.
“That’s not his blood,” I manage hoarsely, tearing my eyes away too. Except for the scratches I left on his back as he carried me to safety. Or maybe it happened underwater. I scarcely remember what my hands were doing—only how gently his cradled my face, the relief as he breathed air into me.
I detach Kit’s hand from my sleeve. “I’ll go check on him. But I’m sure he’s fine.”
Yet as Silas stalks off in the opposite direction, as my feet carry me in his wake, I’m not at all sure that’s true.