Chapter 23
When the sun finally sets after nine bells, dark brings a strange scene on the beach. By now the whale carcass has been lowered to the ground, stripped of its blubber and muscle; only the skeleton remains.
It looks horribly diminished, scarce believable as something once living even though scraps of blood and flesh still linger in the hollows of the bones.
A heavy-jawed skull bigger than the one that hangs in Papa’s library back home.
An impossibly long, thick spine tapering off to that once-powerful tail.
A rib cage big enough for three people to sleep side by side within, except for the great bonfire that has been built there.
As I walk down from the dining hall in a stream of sailors, it casts flickering, striped shadows across the beach to be swallowed by the black tide.
Between the full moon, the bonfire, the still-glowing fires beneath the try-pots, and the light reflecting off the snow on the distant hills, the beach stays frozen in a sickly kind of twilight even as the minutes tick into night.
Tomorrow the crew will break the skeleton apart, disassemble the bones.
Soon the Livyatan will be gone, taken apart and preserved and stowed away, all its precious parts packed into barrels in Kielstraat’s warehouses.
I don’t intend to be here for any of that.
By the time August and I got back from the foothills, it was almost time for the evening celebration planned for tonight.
August waited outside while I washed up, alone in the shanty.
The only thing I could think to do was leave a note for Lydia, tucked under her pillow.
You and Kit and the crew, stick together tonight. Be ready to move.
If I can just find Silas, just talk to him, we can leave tonight. Where is he?
On the beach, the combined crews are already drinking, loud and loose, and the atmosphere is festive.
Food has been brought out from somewhere and set up on the tables—roasted goat and chicken, fresh bread, raisin pudding, and far more beer and wine and whiskey than seems advisable splashing out of everyone’s tin mugs.
I dodge the clinking mugs, running over in my head what to tell Silas when I find him, what we have to do.
Steal a boat. Go to Drekja. Throw ourselves on the finfolks’ mercy.
Every instinct in me quails at the idea.
I think of the Volyar and the fog and the names of the lost inscribed in metal and stone all along the walls of the sanctuary at church.
I think of my parents’ empty graves and the fear that racks Silas when he has the war visions.
I’ve done only two paltry favors and I’ve no idea if it will be enough, but I try not to think about that.
It’s not important anymore. My fate, whether or not the fae queen heals my heartbreak, is secondary to getting out of Kielstraat—at least, getting Kit and Lydia and the Whistler crew out.
I didn’t realize we had musicians among the crew, but four Heralder men—two fiddlers, a drummer, a piper—are playing a rendition of “Round Cape Silver.” As a crowd of sailors masses around the skeleton, clinking tin mugs and singing shanties and shouting congratulations, I weave through the crowd, an untouched mug of ale clutched in my hand, a smile hoisted on as people call my name and clap my shoulder, drink making them forget their suspicion toward me.
Then the crowd parts and I see Silas dancing with Teuila. When she sees me her lips quirk and she mysteriously vanishes. Silas sees me and his eyes darken, the air in between us growing charged with electric, unspoken possibility. He holds a hand out to me.
My breath catches. I briefly worry that someone will see, then I look around and realize everyone is dancing with everyone.
Mance with Willa the cook. August with a pretty Sollish woman.
The crews mingling together. No one is watching me except to greet me as they pass by.
No one will care. I walk up and accept Silas’s hand, hot through my thin wool gloves.
All evening, I’ve been chewing on plans in my mind, running through every obstacle and outcome I could think of.
But I didn’t think of the one infuriatingly simple problem that makes itself apparent now as Silas draws me close: he’s been drinking.
I can smell the wine on his breath, feel it in the languidness of his movements, the boldness with which he grabs my waist and draws me close for a moment before stepping back to a respectful arm’s length.
Irritation and fear and wistful desire zip through me all mixed together as he laces his fingers through mine, swaying to the beat of the song. “Where have you been?” I demand in a whisper.
He blinks, slow. “Finishing up the cutting-in. I wanted this over with.” Without looking, he waves a hand in the general direction of the Livyatan skeleton, nearly taking out an unsuspecting Nunak man in the process.
I grab his hand and pull it down before he can make any more enemies. “Let’s get you some food.”
Silas resists my tugging him in that direction, bends his head close to mine. “They’re waiting for something,” he murmurs, eyes roving around the combined crews. “I heard them talking about it.”
“Probably for another cask to be opened.” I let out a long breath as I grab his elbow and pull him toward the food table. The same table on which I chopped up slabs of whale blubber this morning, though I try not to think about that as I make up a plate for him, not trusting him to do it himself.
We retreat down the beach, away from the crowd and the light, and lean on the table, where I glare at Silas until he eats.
But the harshness is for show, the prickly feelings fading.
He doesn’t know about the events of the past few hours, doesn’t know I needed him sober tonight.
These past few days have been even more of a relentless nightmare for him than for me.
I understand wanting to forget for a few hours.
It might even be charming, seeing him like this, guard down and tapping his foot to the music, if the stakes weren’t so high.
I let out a breath and tell myself not to catastrophize.
So it’s not the right moment to tell him about August’s plans to hunt finfolk.
So we won’t escape to Drekja tonight. I can tell August I’ve come around, buy us more time.
I can talk to Kit and Lydia and the Whistler crew, tell them not to go anywhere alone for the time being.
It’ll be all right. It has to be.
“You said you heard the crews talking about something,” I say, echoing his earlier words.
“About what?” It does feel like there’s something in the air, a crackling vein of anticipation, but maybe it’s just that Silas put the idea in my head.
I scan the beach, keeping tabs as best I can.
Checking that Kit, Lydia, and the Whistler crew are warming themselves by the bonfire.
That August is still making the rounds among the revelers.
Silas shrugs. The food seems to have sobered him up some; the watchfulness is back in his eyes as he scans the crowd, and I privately mourn the short-lived carefree version of him. “It was one of the Sollish crew,” he says. “Something about a full moon.”
“You speak Sollish?” I say in surprise.
He shrugs, all humility. “You pick up bits and pieces at sea. But it might be a mistranslation.”
The musicians start up a new song and a cheer goes up. A favorite, “The Ladies of Embra.” One of the men sings—
Goodbye, goodbye, fair ladies of Embra;
To the verdant green land and the sun on the main.
Silas sets his plate aside, pushes off the table, and holds his hand out to me. “You promised me a dance, Lady Fairfax.”
“Did I?” I don’t seem to recall that. But against my better judgment I reach out and take his hand.
It’s unwise to be so close to Silas for any length of time.
August is still somewhere in the crowd and I’m sure he has eyes on me.
Since there will be no flight to Drekja, I should go dance with him instead.
I should try to walk back what I said this afternoon.
I should make him think I’m on his side.
All the I shoulds leave me cold. I’m so tired of acting out of fear.
The crews are well into their cups now, dancing close to one another or weaving drunkenly. I don’t want my toes stepped on. I tell myself that’s why I steer Silas not toward the crowds but into the relative dark and privacy of the empty buildings.
We end up behind the far wall of the dining hall, the music now a little quieter. The way we’re standing, he can see the beach, see if anyone’s coming. But all I see is him.
Our king he has set us a course for to westward
And nevermore shall I see you again.
Neither of us makes a move to dance, though his hands drop to my waist. I look back at Silas, drawing breath to say something, but the look on his face steals my words.
Somehow we have gotten very close. His eyes are dark in the moonlight, filled with such transparent longing it sends a jolt down my spine.
Yet there’s something desolate in his eyes too.
For a moment, the world seems to stop spinning around us, an unsteady feeling like stepping from land to sea. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
Silas blinks slowly, draws an uncertain breath. He’s sobered up some, but not entirely.
“This,” he whispers, gestures to the space between our chests. “Cards on the table, Annie. Tell me it’s not just my imagination.”
He sounds so earnest, almost pained, as if he’s bracing himself for a blow, and it makes my breath catch. I thought he would have known this from the way I touched him after the whale hunt—not exactly innocuous. Thought he might have guessed that I want him.
But looking into his face, it’s clear he’s talking about more than that, more than lust, and it makes me feel like a gust of wind is welling up in my chest. I feel electric, alive and acutely vulnerable, like all my nerve endings are exposed, left open to either great pleasure or terrible pain.
“It’s not your imagination,” I say, my throat tight. “But what happens next?”
I’ve deliberately stopped myself from thinking too much about after my curse is lifted; since that’s always been such a big if to begin with, it would be an exercise in masochism to consider the future.
His eyes skate away from mine for a moment. “August?”
“That will end as soon as it’s safe.” The words surprise me—I’ve never said as much out loud before, not even articulated it to myself.
But I know as I say it that it’s true. I feel a kind of distant, muted grief for the girl I was and how wrong she was about everything.
“Still, I have to go back to Kirkrell and end whaling. Remember? And you…”
I blink, trying to force out the words that have suddenly become heavy and cumbersome. “You could go anywhere.” Why would he stay in Kirkrell any longer? If I end whaling and avert the war with the finfolk, he’ll have done what he set out to do.
His throat moves as he swallows. “I told you I stayed because of you.” His body shifts minutely closer to mine; I can feel the heat of him against my skin and I want, I want. “I’ll stay still, if you tell me to.”
My heart is thundering, an answer forming on my lips, just as soon as I can catch my breath.
But I never have the chance to give it. Because shouts surge suddenly from down by the water, a wave of words.
“There she blows!”
“Spouts! Spouts!”
Silas is already facing the ocean, me with my back to it, looking up at him. So I see the dread creep over his face first, a mirror reflecting the sea. His eyes go to the horizon and the color leaves his cheeks, the smile dropping away, eyes going wide and glassy.
I turn to see what looks like a field of white wheat erupting throughout the bay. Spouts appear all across the horizon, flag, reappear, and multiply, and the hiss of the vapor and the creak of enormous lungs are carried on the wind.
“Every full moon they come,” Mance cries rapturously down the beach. “What did I tell you, men? Easy pickings.”
Without thinking, I start running toward the water to look closer, Silas at my heels.
The sailors’ exclamations die down quickly as they turn to one another to quiet the shouts.
For a long, impossibly peaceful moment, every soul on the beach is still, watching the horizon sparkle, each person thinking their own private thoughts.
But there’s movement on the far side of the beach.
I turn my head and gasp in shock when I see a knot of Heralder men have corralled the Whistler crew along with my siblings and are leading them all back up to the settlement with their arms pinioned behind them.
As if she feels my gaze, Lydia turns her head and meets my eyes across the beach.
Her mouth opens soundlessly; her eyes blink out a warning. I reach for Silas, to tell him.
Then I become aware of two things at once: the scent of sandalwood, a footfall behind me. August’s arms wrap around me from behind and a blade comes to rest gently against my throat. My mouth goes dry, every beat of my heart pulsing my skin against the sharp edge.
Silas turns a second too late, the color draining from his face even further as he grasps the situation. He takes an aborted step toward us, then falters as August adjusts his grip on the knife. No one else sees, turned as they are toward the water and the whales.
“To the docks now,” August says quietly. “Time to see how far this little dalliance goes.”