Bring Me #2
One long. A childhood signal. Seraphine had used it from the Caldris docks when she wanted him to come home before Gideon noticed he was missing.
Three short, one long. Home now. No official pilot code, no published meaning, nothing useful to Hollowfang unless someone had learned the Hawkins household as closely as the possible man in the water was beginning to learn Marin.
Jasper's face went white. "That's hers."
Marin did not correct him immediately. Oliver noticed the hesitation and loved her for eventually saying, "It is stronger evidence. Not certainty."
"I know," Jasper said, and this time the words sounded like knowledge rather than prayer.
The blue lantern repeated the childhood call. Oliver looked west. The cutter had nearly reached the outer turn. Another minute and Needle Rock would take it from sight. Then he looked south.
He did not ask Marin what to do. He had already heard her judgment. He did not ask Jasper whether Seraphine deserved the answer. Jasper's grief belonged in the room, but it could not make the choice for him.
"Signal lamp," Oliver said.
A deckhand brought one from the emergency rack. Marin's attention sharpened.
"Answering confirms you're aboard," she said.
"Yes."
"If this is an interception, you give them identity and intent."
"Yes."
"If it is Seraphine, you also tell her you're accepting contact on your terms rather than merely following a breadcrumb."
Oliver looked at the lamp in his hand. "You make recklessness sound wonderfully procedural."
"I am not recommending it."
"I know."
Her fear did not become permission or prohibition.
It remained information he was responsible for carrying.
Oliver lifted the shutter. He did not send Seraphine's childhood call back.
He used another private code, one Gideon had hated because mother and son used it whenever Oliver was late returning to the Kraken. One long. Two short.
I heard you. Then he added a third flash that had never belonged to the code. A question. The blue point on the cliff vanished. For one terrible moment, nothing answered.
Then it returned. One long. Acknowledged. No promise of safety. No apology. No demand. Enough. Oliver lowered the lamp. When he looked west again, Needle Rock had taken the cutter from view.
Regret arrived immediately. Not because the choice was wrong. Because choosing one wanted thing had cost access to another. Hunger stirred at the edge of his shadow as though offended by the arithmetic. Good, Oliver thought. Let it learn arithmetic.
"South of Needle," he said.
Jasper passed the order without asking him to justify it into something safer. The Kraken altered course only after clearing the shoal, sails shifting as the current caught her differently. The black lantern remained behind them, flashing for a ship that had chosen not to answer.
Marin had disappeared below during the turn. When she returned, she carried her field coat, evidence satchel, pistol case, medical kit, and two coils of climbing line. Oliver looked at the rope. "Optimistic."
"Prepared."
"There may not be a shore meeting."
"Then I carried rope for exercise."
He almost asked whether she intended to come. The question died before it reached his mouth because the answer had never been his to grant.
Instead he said, "You still think the source may be manipulating us."
"Yes."
"And you're going ashore."
Marin checked the buckle on her field bag.
"I want to know why she stayed dead. I want to know whether the warning was protective, self-serving, compromised, or all three.
I also want to see how she behaves when she realizes her son is no longer a child she can protect by removing information from his reach. " Oliver stared at her.
"That may be the most Marin Vale declaration of devotion anyone has ever received."
"It was an investigative objective."
"Those have become alarmingly difficult to distinguish."
Her expression softened by one degree. "I choose the same risk. That is the relevant part." Not supervision. Not permission. She did not need to rehearse the principle because she had already packed before he thought to ask.
Oliver touched the side of her neck. He left the space between them open. Marin closed it herself and kissed him once, brief and certain, salt still on both their mouths from the wind. No shadow moved strangely enough to interrupt them.
When she stepped back, Oliver kept his forehead against hers for one breath. "Growth remains humiliating."
"Frequently."
The southern coast opened into a series of narrow coves under heather-covered cliffs. No black hulls followed them. No official beacon marked the route. A final blue flash appeared low between two rocks ahead.
One long. Two short. I heard you. Oliver's hand tightened on the rail. For six years, he had wanted his mother returned to the world. Wanting had been easy because absence did not argue back.
Now something wearing her private language had answered him from the coast. Approach was the part that required choice.