30. Strange Waters #2
The boy nodded and huddled into her, his fingers going to the pendant around her throat.
She remained on her haunches, content to let him watch the emeralds glitter as he turned the turtle this way and that.
Oddly, hidden behind a forest of legs and bodies offered a brief respite from the gut feeling that had haunted her all morning.
Beyond those standing in front of them, Copson said, “Safe travels, my lady.”
Bootsteps retreated, thudding over the plank between the ships. Copson’s crew began to return to the Fortuna Royale, and Cecily patted the boy’s shoulder.
“All is well,” she said. “But I must go.”
He said nothing, still holding her pendant. A few more moments, she told herself, and then she would get up and leave. Only a few seconds to enjoy peace from the dread that had been hanging over her—
A scream split the air.
Her head snapped toward the sound. The shuffling passengers and pirates fell quiet, and the boy let go of her necklace. Another cry went up, and Cecily stiffened as she recognized Hester’s voice.
“Cecily!”
She shot to her feet and surged through the crowd toward her friend’s cry. Hester needed her—she was in pain, or hurt, or stabbed, or dying—
She reached an open space where Hester knelt in a puddle of blood. Cecily nearly cried out at the sight until she realized it wasn’t Hester who was hurt, but another.
A girl laid motionless, on the deck her long black hair splayed over the boards. And as Hester leaned away, a cry did escape Cecily’s lips, horror swallowing every thought and feeling as she saw the dead girl’s face.
It was her own.
The girl’s throat had been slit, and dark, unseeing eyes stared at the sky, set among pretty features shaped exactly like Cecily’s. Even her build was the same, her lips parted in surprise.
Cecily wore that same expression now.
For all the times she had imagined dying, seeing herself dead was a new kind of devastation. And for how far she’d come, for how much she had grown, her first thought was that it had finally happened—the world had finally put itself to rights and she had found her end.
But it didn’t make sense. It wasn’t right, because she couldn’t pinpoint the moment of her death.
With numb fingers, she reached for Hester’s shoulder, half expecting to find that she’d actually died and was looking upon her own body as a ghost. To her relief, her hand didn’t pass right through.
Hester glanced up, and her jaw dropped. Looking between Cecily and the dead girl, she squeaked a tearful, “H-how?”
Cecily shook her head slowly. “I don’t know,” she breathed.
It was hard to look at herself on the ground—the girl, rather, as it was surely not herself—but she couldn’t look away.
But the longer she looked, she began to note small differences: the shallow cleft in her chin, the set of her ears, a small freckle on her neck.
Her hair was longer too, exactly as Cecily’s had once been.
The furrow in Hester’s brow deepened as she seemed to realize this as well. It had to be some odd magic, some trick of the universe, one Cecily had never been meant to discover and dearly wished she hadn’t.
Stede had once told her strange things happened at sea—the very day he’d told her about Captain Jonah—and he’d warned her to keep her wits.
She never imagined she would find someone else wearing her face.
At that moment, Jack and Greyson broke through the crowd. Upon seeing the girl, Jack’s breath left him in a sharp exhale.
Cecily blindly grasped for his arm before he could say or do anything. “It’s not me,” she said, and managed to tear her eyes away from the dead girl to meet his horrified gaze. “Not me,” she said again.
He swallowed, staring hard at her as though assuring himself he wasn’t seeing things, that she was actually alive. He placed one hand over hers, his fingers tight.
Then his gaze shifted, catching on something over her shoulder, just as a soft, worried voice came said, “Vanetta?”
Cecily’s breath froze in her lungs. This was about to get so much worse, because she knew—she knew what was about to happen and was so utterly powerless to stop it.
Slowly, she turned to find Ann Lovibond looking at her. Fear and hope knitted the woman’s brow, and Cecily had never wanted to be someone else so badly, if only to spare her the realization that hadn’t yet come—that the girl she was looking for was dead only feet away.
Cecily gulped, and with a small shake of her head, she gave the only comfort she could—a whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Ann frowned. She looked at Cecily for a moment longer, then faced the scene before her.
Her mouth opened, like she might ask why the girl was lying on the ground. But as she took in the blood and sensed Death’s lingering presence, her lips shut. Her face crumpled.
And then she screamed.
“Vanetta!” Ann threw herself to her knees, wrenching the girl from Hester’s grasp.
She shook her, crying her name again and again while blood soaked into her sleeves and skirt.
“Vanetta! Who did this?!” She looked up at those gathered around her, her eyes and face red with grief. “Who killed my daughter?”
Cecily took an involuntary step back as Ann’s pain called to her own, peeling back the scar left by her father’s death. Undeserved, unnatural, a pain she didn’t want to feel, nor was she ready to face the agony that still lay dormant within her.
But as she moved, she bumped into a body hustling through the crowd, their head down. She turned, an apology on her tongue—when she realized it was Fiero.
He looked at her, his eyes wide, face pale.
Her eyes dropped from his face to the hand hidden awkwardly behind his back. It didn’t take her long to deduce why.
With lethal quiet, Cecily said, “What have you done?”
Fiero bolted. As he lifted his hands to push people out of the way, she saw the long knife, its blade glimmering red in the sunlight, and she knew that it had been meant for her. He had tried to put that blade through her neck and instead chosen a stranger with a too-similar face.
And the warning she’d felt all morning—Fiero had tried to kill her.
“Stop him!” she yelled, thrusting her arm out as though she might grab him.
He didn’t make it far. Passengers blocked his path before he could run to hide among the lower decks. Responding to Cecily’s command, the pirates reached for him. He was too big for a single person to take down, but three of Copson’s crewmembers managed to subdue him and forced him to his knees.
And though Cecily had no formal power or position, they looked at her in expectation for another command. But Copson’s cool voice spoke first.
“What is the meaning of this?”
The captain had returned, and the gathered pirates and civilians parted to reveal the dead girl and her mother. His eyes widened for only a breath before he turned to see Fiero as well, on his knees with a bloody knife discarded on the deck before him.
Copson’s face hardened into a scowl. “Everyone back to the ship,” he commanded. “Now.”
Cecily turned away, eager to leave behind what had occurred on this ship. But her mind would not make it so easy as it clutched the image of herself lying dead in a pool of blood, holding it at the forefront where she might continue seeing it.
She had only been spared because she’d bothered to comfort a terrified child. Vanetta hadn’t deserved it, and neither had Cecily, and it was a grave misfortune for both of them. She told herself it wasn’t her fault, that neither women bore any blame.
It was Fiero’s fault alone.
She didn’t look back until she reached the Fortuna Royale.
Fiero approached the gangplank with his hands bound, grimly shuffling between Greyson and Jack.
Beyond him, Copson knelt next to Ann, speaking too low to hear.
But as Ann’s cries carried through the air, there was a change in the wind.
It was colder, somehow. Wetter and heavier.
It smelled faintly of blood.
Foreboding crept over her skin like ghostly fingers.