“Even if we could somehow turn around in this reef, we’ll be blown farther south and becalmed when it’s done,” Harlowe barked. “Would you like to die that way, Master Plume?”
Melaugo traded a frustrated look with Plume before she relayed the command to the crew. Rope was hauled, the sails stowed. Seafarers clung to the yards above, boots planted on footropes, and heaved at the canvas with their bare hands. One of them was lashed off and slammed into the deck. Bone shattered. Blood mingled with seawater. With a calm that belied the chaos around him, Harlowe descended and took the wheel from his quartermaster.
Loth held on. All he could taste was salt. All he could feel was its burn in his eyes. When the first of the Rose’s anchors hooked into the seabed, the lurch seemed to unseat his organs.
The crew let fall the second anchor, then the third. Still they did not slow. The leadsman counted down the fathoms. Loth braced himself as three anchors towed in vain at the ship.
Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. The final anchor plunged beneath the waves, but the sand was too close now, far too close to avoid. Harlowe kept hold of the wheel, his knuckles taut.
It was the reef or the beach. And Loth knew from the look in his eyes that Harlowe would not risk the destruction of the Rose by steering her into the teeth of the reef.
Melaugo let out a blast from her whistle. The crew abandoned their work and cleaved to what they could.
The man-of-war shuddered beneath them. Loth clenched his teeth, expecting to feel the hull being shredded. The quake went on for what seemed like eternity—and then, quite suddenly, the Rose was almost statue-still. All he could hear was the patter of rain against the deck.
“Six fathoms,” the leadsman said, panting.
A riotous cheer went up from the crew. Loth rose, his knees trembling, and joined Melaugo. When he saw the waves around them, still buoying the ship, he pressed his head into his hands and laughed as if he would never stop. Melaugo grinned and crossed her arms.
“There you are, lordling. You’ve survived your first storm.”
“But how did it stop?” Loth watched the sea lap at the hull. “We were going so fast …”
“Don’t give a fuck, myself. Let’s just call it a miracle—from your Saint, if you fancy.”
Only Harlowe seemed loath to rejoice. He looked up at the island with a flicker in his jaw.
“Captain.” Melaugo had noticed. “What is it?”
His gaze stayed on the island. “I have been a seafarer for many years,” he said. “Never have I felt a ship move as the Rose just did. As if a god had pulled her out of the storm.”
Melaugo seemed not to know what to say. She slapped her sodden hat over her hair.
“Find us dry powder and muster some scouts,” Harlowe said. “As soon as we’ve cleaned up Master Lark’s body, we need sweet water and food. I’ll take a small party ashore. Everyone else, including those in the Inysh retinue, should stay and help patch up the ship.”
“I should like to come with you. If I may,” Loth cut in. “Forgive me, Captain Harlowe, but after that experience, I have rather lost my sea legs. I would feel more useful on land.”
“I see.” Harlowe looked him up and down. “Do you know how to hunt, Lord Arteloth?”
“Indeed. I often hunted in Inys.”
“At court, I assume. And I imagine that was with a bow.”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’ve no bows here, I’m afraid,” Harlowe said, “but we’ll teach you how to use a pistol.” He clapped Loth on the shoulder as he passed. “I’ll make a pirate of you yet.”
The Rose Eternal was left anchored and with all sails furled, but the wind still swayed her dangerously. Loth climbed into a rowing boat with two of the Knights of the Body, who had both refused to carry pistols. Their swords were all they needed in a fight.
Loth held his own pistol with a firm hand. Melaugo had shown him how to prime and fire it.
Rain churned the sea around the boats. They rowed beneath a natural arch, toward a beach that sloped into steep foothills. As they drew closer to the shore, Harlowe raised his nightglass.
“People,” he murmured. “On the beach.”
He spoke to one of the gunners in another language. The woman took the nightglass from him and peered through it.
“This may be Feather Island, a sacred place, home to the most treasured documents in the East,” Harlowe translated. “Only scholars can set foot on it, and they won’t be well armed.”
“They are still bound by Eastern law.” Melaugo cocked her pistol. “We’re not privateers to them, Harlowe. We’re plague-ridden pirates. Like everyone else on these waters.”
“They may not adhere to the sea ban.” Harlowe glanced at his boatswain. “Do you have any better ideas, Estina?”
The gunner signaled for her to lower the weapon. Melaugo pursed her lips, but obeyed.
Three people waited for them on the shore. Two men and a woman in robes of darkest red, who watched them with guarded expressions.
Behind them lay what Loth thought, at first, was the wreckage of a ship. Then he saw that it was the skeleton of an enormous beast.
It was close to the length of the beach. Whatever it was that had died here had been larger than a baleen. Now it was picked clean, the bones iridescent under the moonlight.
Loth got out of the rowing boat and helped the other seafarers shove it on to the sand, shaking water from his eyes. Harlowe approached the strangers and bowed. They returned the gesture. He spoke to them for some time before returning to the scouting party.
“The scholars of Feather Island have offered us shelter for as long as the storm continues, and they permit us to collect water. They only have room for forty of us in their house, but they’ll let the rest of the crew sleep in their empty storehouses,” Harlowe shouted over the wind. “All of this is on the condition that we bring no weapons on to the island, and that we touch none of its residents. They fear we might carry the plague.”
“Bit late on the weapons front,” Melaugo said.
“I mislike this, Harlowe,” one of the Knights of the Body called. “I say we stay on the Rose.”
“And I say otherwise.”
“Why?”
Harlowe turned those cold eyes on him with the lightest touch of contempt. With the storm raging around him, he looked like some chaotic god of the sea.
“I intended to renew our supplies in Kawontay,” he said, “but now the storm has blown us off-course, we will be out of food before we can get to it. Most of the water is befouled.” He took two hunting knives from their sheaths. “The crew won’t sleep on that sea, and I need them on their mettle. There will be a skeleton crew left on watch, of course—and if anyone else wishes to remain on the Rose, I won’t stop ’em. Let’s see how long it takes them to decide that it isn’t worth drinking their own piss.”
Harlowe approached the strangers again and set the knives, and his pistol, on the sand at their feet. Melaugo clicked her tongue before emptying her clothes of an array of blades. The Knights of the Body laid down their broadswords in the same way a parent might lay down a newborn. Loth ceded his blades and the pistol. The scholars watched them in silence. When all were disarmed, one of the men walked away, and the scouting party followed him.
Feather Island loomed above them. Lightning bared the rough-hewn precipices, lushly green, of breathtaking height. The scholar led them from the beach, beneath another arch, to where a stair had been whittled into a cliff face. Loth craned his neck to see it climbing out of sight.
They were on that stair for a long time. Wind roared at their sides. Rain soaked their boots, making every step perilous. By the time they reached the top, Loth’s knees were ready to buckle.
The scholar led them over grass and under dripping trees, to a path lined with lanterns. A house was waiting for them, raised from the ground on a platform, with white walls and a tiled roof, supported by pillars of timber. It was like no dwelling Loth had ever seen. The scholar opened the doors and removed his shoes before entering. The newcomers did the same. Loth followed Harlowe into the cool interior of the building.
The walls were unadorned. Instead of carpets, there were sweet-smelling mats. A sunken hearth was surrounded by square cushions. The scholar spoke again to Harlowe.
“This is where we’ll stay. The storehouses are nearby.” Harlowe eyed the room. “As soon as the storm abates, I’ll see if I can’t persuade the scholars to sell us some millet. Enough to get us to Kawontay.”
“We can give them nothing in exchange,” Loth pointed out. “They might need the millet for themselves.”
“You’ll never be a seafarer if you think that way, my lord.”
“I don’t want to be a seafarer.”
“Of course you don’t.”
The dark was at its deepest. Tané watched the Inysh ship through the open windows of the healing room.
“They will be gone within a few days,” Elder Vara was murmuring to the other elders. “This storm will soon end.”