Chapter 40
Her name is Gwyneth.
Zanta ran her finger over the dry ink, faded in the afternoon sun. Even if it wouldn’t help them, the name beneath her fingers felt like a balm. A tenuous string tethering her to Nia. The name of Nia’s mother.
It had taken two days before Zanta finally started reading Stroud’s journal.
Even if it might contain information that could lead them to Nia, she hadn’t had the time or the energy.
She spent the first day preparing the Monsoon for abandonment, packing up everything of value and reassuring the crew as the Kraken towed them north, looking for a place to leave Zanta’s beloved ship.
They’d found a spot on the second day. A tall spire with a collar of sand and a deep reef in which to anchor. Her injured crew members were already safely aboard the Kraken. All that remained was to transfer the goods and the rest of her crew, and leave the Monsoon behind.
Easier said than done. Zanta managed to stay her tears till she was alone.
So it was on the third day, the Kraken with three diminished crews of pirates aboard and weaving between the spires, that Zanta finally cracked the journal open.
I am being called north,
the first line read in Stroud’s steady hand.
Father always told me stories of the Sleeping Isles, but no one knows if they are true.
I want to know. I believe there is something for me there.
The riches of ten thousand wrecked ships.
A secret island I can rule as my own. The glory of discovery.
So many have tried and failed to reach them.
So many great men have lost their lives to the ring of storms, or whatever lies beyond it. But I am not like those men.
So he’d gone looking for the Sleeping Isles.
He’d risked his crew, his ship, for what?
Words told in a child’s bedtime story. Everyone in the Islands knew that to sail to the Sleeping Isles was as good as sailing to your death.
The Nanadie said it was the mouth to the underworld.
The Talvans did not speak of it, lest evil come upon them.
Kefryeans purported monsters lived there.
Yarenens said it was where La’s serpentine head rested.
No matter which story might be true, one fact remained.
If you sailed into the storms, you didn’t come back.
But Silver Stroud had. He wrote of his first attempt to break through, and how the storm had spit them back out north of Nanad relatively unscathed.
Yasmina says I am a fool with a death wish. But the Silverfin is not badly damaged, and we only lost a few men. We lived. Why else would we come away with our lives if we were not meant to try again?
Zanta recognized the fanaticism that had eventually turned to madness. He’d always been as changeable as the weather. Prone to flights of fancy and wont to follow whatever idea flitted across his mind. Zanta read on.
I am alone. We tried again, and I think this time we succeeded. This place does not look like any shore I know. Mist clings everywhere, and the sea is broken by a forest of rock. Are these the Sleeping Isles?
I went overboard in the storm, and I do not know if the Silverfin or Yasmina and the rest of the crew survived.
Maybe it is only me who was meant to reach this fabled place.
I washed ashore at the base of one of the stone trees, and all I have with me is my journal, pen, and ink.
It was wrapped in oilcloth in my pocket.
It’s a wonder it all survived. Yet more proof I was meant to come here.
He stayed on that rock spire for several days, starving, and then:
Her name is Gwyneth. She swam up to my rock and saved my life.
I was delirious with hunger and thirst, and at first mistook her for a seal.
I do not know how she managed to get me to this new island.
But I am here now, in a little house carved into the side of a cliff overlooking a pebble beach and tide pools.
And then the next entry.
Gwyneth is beautiful. Her eyes are as green as sea foam and her hair is brown and lush.
She lives on this tiny island alone, I think.
She speaks a language shockingly similar to those I heard in old plays when father used to take me to festivals in the town square.
We have been able to communicate in simple words, but it is hard to parse. Perhaps I will teach her my language.
She does not speak about her people. Maybe there are none. Maybe she is a castaway like me.
I stepped outside while she was sleeping and looked at the stars. It is strange being this far north, but I think I know where I am.
Zanta jumped to her feet. Stroud had recorded the coordinates of Gwyneth’s island. Maybe Nia wouldn’t be going there. Maybe Gwyneth was not her mother. But it was something. It was a place to start.
Henri tried to distract himself by counting all the knots currently twisting up his stomach.
It felt like there was a complex enough tangle of guts in there to rerig the Monsoon twice over.
Nia was gone. Just as he’d found her again, she’d disappeared.
She’d wrapped herself in a cloak of the same gray leather he’d worn around his neck for years, jumped over the side of the ship, and transformed.
He stopped walking in the middle of the hallway, and touched his chest where the key and piece of leather had once rested.
He’d had a piece of her with him all this time and not realized it.
If he’d known…But knowing wouldn’t have changed anything, would it?
It would not have helped him find her faster.
“Henri?” Logan’s soft voice broke into his spiraling thoughts. “You alright?”
It had been days of carefully navigating the strange seascape of the Sleeping Isles.
Days of quick little meetings between the core group.
The three captains, Logan, and him, all cooped up in the Demon’s lavish stateroom going over insufficient charts and whatever new bits of information Splinter Zanta had gleaned from Stroud’s journal. His father’s journal.
She’d offered it to him of course. As Silver Stroud’s son, Henri had more of a right to read those words than Stroud’s onetime subordinate and murderer.
But Henri couldn’t bring himself to read it.
What if there was something about him in there?
What if the already tenuous feelings he had for Wells Stroud as his father were shattered by his father’s innermost thoughts inked out in black and white?
Besides, Henri was such a tangle that he didn’t think he could parse the words and do what must be done. Teasing out useful information and discarding the rest. So he’d let Zanta have it, and she seemed grateful for it.
“Henri?”
Right, Logan. Logan, who had barely talked to him in days, and kept darting nervous glances at him. Now, Logan just looked worried. Henri couldn’t help the self-deprecating chuckle that escaped him. Nianthe, the only family he had left in the world, was gone, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
“No, I don’t think I’m alright.”
Logan set a hand on his arm, right over where his serpent tattoo was covered by his sleeve.
“We’ll find her. She’s still…” Logan trailed off, no doubt realizing that his platitudes were empty.
They could chase her all they wanted. But they didn’t even know if she was still in her right mind in that…
form. They didn’t know anything. They wouldn’t even be able to tell her apart from any other seal they might encounter.
Henri swallowed around the tightness in his throat. Logan’s hand squeezed.
“We’ll find her,” Logan repeated. He looked just as stricken as Henri felt, and Henri suddenly remembered how Logan and Nia had greeted each other like old friends.
“You knew her, didn’t you? How? I mean—” He cut himself off as Logan’s face went red enough to rival the Demon’s rubies. “What is it?”
“I, ah…I do know her.” Logan rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact.
“How? You barely leave the Siren.”
Logan said nothing. He seemed to be attempting to disappear through sheer force of will.
“Logan?”
Logan hauled in a deep breath. “Don’t be mad.”
If Logan, of all people, was asking him not to be mad, he didn’t know what could possibly come out of his mouth next. Henri just crossed his arms.
“Um, remember when I went to Roseforte a while ago?”
Henri frowned. “When you were looking for Cyrus, or when you and John got information on the Trinity?” Why was Logan acting so strangely?
“Both? Um…Me and John…She was our informant both times.” He blinked very hard, then his eyes rose to meet Henri’s. “And we slept with her.”
“You—” All the knots tightened into a ball of anger, heavy in his stomach. He grabbed Logan’s arm in a tight grip. “What the fuck do you mean ‘we’ slept with her? Both of you?”
“Yeah.” Logan’s gaze held steady, even as shame laced his voice.
“What the fuck, Logan!” This seemed to be the only thing he could say. His mind reeled. Logan, one of his closest friends, and John, the Demon’s stern second in command, had both…He didn’t know which was worse, to be honest. And he did not want to think of it.
“In our defense, we didn’t know she was your sister. I didn’t even know you had a sister,” Logan offered up weakly.
That hit Henri like a slap, and he released Logan’s arm.
Of course Logan didn’t know he had a sister.
He hadn’t told anyone, because he’d thought her dead, and it was better to leave the dead to memory where they belonged.
On top of that, he hadn’t seen Nia since they were children.
He had no right to her besides their shared blood.
He knew the child she was, not the woman she had become, and he had no right to brotherly righteousness or anger at Logan for sleeping with a stranger.
The knot of anger loosened, just enough to get his fingers in. Henri slumped against the wall of the corridor. Leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
“Sorry,” Logan said.
Henri dragged a hand over his mouth. Let out a long exhale. “It’s fine, Logan, really. As long as you treated her well, I have no right to be mad at you.” From the way Nia ran into Logan’s arms earlier, and what he knew of Logan personally, he was sure that was the case.
John, on the other hand…
“Wait.” Henri reached out to clutch Logan’s forearms again. “When you said you…I mean…both? At the same…” He really didn’t want to know, but the stuttering words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.
Logan turned even redder. “Do you really want to know?”
“No!” Henri released him in horror. “But I mean, are you and John…?”
Redder still, as if all the blood in Logan’s whole body had pushed to the surface of his cheeks.
“We’re, ah, hooking up?”
Well, fuck. Henri had not seen that coming. Logan was such an innocent figure in his mind. Someone dependable and solid and soft. Not really the type of guy Henri thought would have a casual affair with the man who had caused his hand to be amputated. To be honest, Henri had thought Logan a virgin.
“And you’re okay with that?” Henri asked carefully. If John was taking advantage of him, Henri didn’t know what he’d do. Probably get the crew together and hunt John down.
The blush on Logan’s cheeks was slowly receding. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, okay then. As long as you’re happy.” As soon as the others found out, they’d interrogate it out of him. No juicy detail could elude Fox once he got a whiff of gossip. Logan reached up to pat Henri’s shoulder with his wooden hand, a faint smile touching his lips.
“Don’t worry too much, big guy.”
The door at the end of the hall banged open, and Splinter Zanta dashed past them, skidded to a halt, and doubled back to grab Henri’s arm.
“What’s going on?” Logan asked.
Zanta held up Stroud’s journal, her finger marking a page. “I think I’ve found us a heading.”