“To loyalty,” she repeated, though she had no idea who any of them were loyal to. “Jacques—you know I spent some time in Dogtown. Do you still have family there?”
He nodded, a wistful smile on his lips. “My father. Cornelius.”
“I knew him!” she said, suddenly thrilled at the connection. “My friends are staying with him.”
“My brother died in the trials,” Jacques added quietly. “Most from Dogtown have died. Wolves don’t do so well in the water.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” she said.
Marlowe scowled. “Don’t worry about who died. Focus on what you must do to live.”
Okay. So what exactly do I need to do to live? If she was going to get any information out of them, now was as good a time as any. “What needs to get done before we meet Dagon? What other trials do we have to pass?”
Marlowe glanced at Fiona, one eye scrunched shut. “You’ll be doing more sword fighting. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get better. Then you’ll race each other in little sailboats. Tomorrow you race up to the crow’s-nest. Oh—and in the end, you’ll swim into Dagon’s lair and meet the old god face to face.”
Fiona’s heart skipped a beat. Swim?
“What happens when we meet him?” asked Rohan.
“He decides if you live or die,” said Jacques. “And if you live, you get his power.”
Marlowe said Dagon had killed the bullies. What if he kills the worst sorts of people—and what if that includes me? She steadied her breath. “What does Dagon get out of it?”
“Souls,” said Marlowe. “In his fathomless wisdom, he has chosen to claim more and more people every year. And that,” he jabbed his finger at Rohan’s nose, “is why we need you recruits.”
Fiona lay flat on her rock, trying not to think about the swimming. “But why would he claim more?” She felt a little like a toddler—why, why why?—but she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
Marlowe scratched his forehead. “I don’t question the god of the depths.”
Rohan tossed a pebble into the water, speaking in a low voice. “You know the earthly gods are trapped in matter, yes? At Beaucroft, one of my professors said that the earthly gods are in competition with each other. They believe that if they can claim the most souls to take their place, they might be freed again. Released into the heavens. So if one god begins to claim more souls than usual, the rest will work to keep up.”
Marlowe pushed his lank hair out of his eyes. “Well, whatever the reason, Dagon chose to spare me.”
“And what about your family?” asked Rohan. “Did they survive the god of the depths?”
Marlowe shrugged. “I have no siblings. I hardly remember my mother. And my dad was a drunk. He couldn’t handle the visions Dagon had showed him. Nod’s father was the same. They were pathetic enough to get murdered by a human. Nod is a much greater man than his father ever was.”
“Murdered by a human?” asked Fiona. Christ, that wasn’t Danny too, was it? He’d been searching for pirate treasure. Then again, pirates probably had plenty of enemies.
“Some thug,” said Marlowe. He didn’t seem particularly interested in the topic.
“What do the visions mean?” asked Rohan.
Marlowe’s face twitched. “Dagon shows us the truth. Some people can’t accept it.”
Fiona frowned.
“Is that what you think?” Jacques asked Marlowe, slurring his words. “I think he just shows us our worst nightmares. But he couldn’t get to me. Because my worst nightmare was already real.”
“What was that?” asked Rohan.
“Being taken by the Picaroons. Watching my brother die.”
“It makes me sick when people focus on the negative,” Marlowe snapped. “The Captain made you powerful. But you’ve just drunk an entire barrelful of rum, and now you’re spouting nonsense. Without the Captain, you’d just be an ordinary man living in a shithole town full of old hags. You’d live in obscurity, die in obscurity, and your body would rot in the dirt, your whole life unremembered. Nod changed your life. He made you into a god. He gave you power to control the sea. Have a little gratitude.”
“I never wanted to be a god,” Jacques said quietly. All the fight had drained out of him tonight.
A silence fell over them, and waves rushed over the rocks. Apparently, there was discord on the Proserpine.
And there was about to be a bit more when Lir found out she didn’t know how to swim.
27
Fiona
Fiona sat on her bed, and the lantern light danced over the walls. Rohan rested by her side, still rubbing the back of his head where Ostap had kicked him. On the deck above, the others continued singing and dancing, their footsteps clomping on the boards. Tonight it had been Rohan’s turn to knock back the drinks, and he hummed tunelessly, reclining against the wooden walls.
Fiona was sticking to water tonight. For one thing, she’d learned her lesson about overindulging the first night. For another, she had enough to worry about with the news of her father and the trial in Dagon’s lair. How the hell was she supposed to get through that one?