“This is an ice port,” he explained. “You crossed the wharf line some ways back. If you wish to leave, you will have to wait for the dock master.”
“And you are not the dock master?” asked Kell, sounding vaguely amused.
The man shook his head and chuckled. “No, no, I am just looking after the ships, while she is at the fair. But don’t worry, she should be back by the end of the day.”
At the mention of day, Lila found her gaze returning to the line of dull light still hugging the horizon. “When does the sun come up?”
The man laughed. “Ah, that depends! Certain months, it never sets. Other times, it never rises. We are at the end of the lightless season now, so it should break through sometime in the next few days. I’ve never been good at keeping track, but I don’t mind. It makes the day of light a nice surprise. Come, you can wait in the port house, if you like.”
He turned, and began to walk away, boots biting into the ice. Kell and Lila exchanged a glance, and then followed, Vasry at their heels. She turned and signaled to Stross and Tav to stay and wait with the ship. She would have felt bad about that, but Stross could rarely be parted from the vessel, and Tav had a nasty habit of getting drunk in foreign ports and picking fights he couldn’t always win.
As they walked, the mist clinging to the cold air began to ripple and thin, revealing dozens of other ships scattered across the frozen port, dipping in and out of sight like ghosts in the weak light. The farther they traveled into port, the more of them she saw. Lila glimpsed figures here and there, but for the most part, the vessels all looked empty.
The language spell, luckily, had followed their guide, which was helpful since he kept up a steady stream of conversation.
“You are very far from home,” he said. “What is the purpose of your trip?”
Lila met Kell’s eye. “We’re mapmakers,” she said after a moment. That was the story they’d agreed on when they set out months ago. It was a gamble. Most places saw mapmakers as artists, creating an independent survey. A few thought they were spies, charting foreign coasts for conquer.
But the port man seemed pleased by the answer.
“Excellent. It’s about time the northern empires grasped that the world goes on beyond their borders. Plenty to appreciate down here. Take the lightless fair. Started as a way to pass the darkest days, but good things have a way of growing. Now people come from all around. These days, we look forward to the dark! Here we are.…”
They’d reached the edge of the port. Lila expected the ice to give way to land, but it didn’t. Instead, it simply sloped up, first into a set of steps, and then, into a shelter. She had expected to find something rough-hewn, but this was large, the ice as smooth and thick as polished stone. The man clapped his mittens together, shedding frost as he led them into a magnificent room. Tapestries hung from the frozen walls, and a fire roared in an icy hearth without melting it, and a long table ran through the center of the room, its benches draped with wool and fur.
Vasry let out a contented sigh and crossed to the hearth as their guide vanished into another room. He returned moments later, carrying three mugs of something sweet and steaming.
“So you run the port house, then,” said Vasry, taking a cup.
“No, no,” said the man. “I’m just looking after it, while the clerk is at the fair.”
He gestured to the long table. Like everything in the room, she realized, it was made of ice, several skeins of thick cloth draped over the top. As they took their seats, Lila looked around the hall. The whole place reminded her of a fairy tale: quaint, and welcoming, and too good to be true.
The man drifted off to tend the fire. Lila watched him go, and felt Kell watching her.
“What?” she said, without meeting his eye.
“Not everything is a trap.” The words made something tug behind her ribs. At being watched, but more so, at being seen.
“Am I that easy to read?”
“No,” he said simply. “But I like to think I’m learning.”
Lila forced herself to relax and take up the drink. The cup was warm against her bare hands, the wine—if that’s what it was—hot and sweet. She downed it in a few short gulps, and rapped her fingers on the table, rising to her feet.
The light outside had not changed. She didn’t know what time it was, or how long it would be until the dock master returned.
But she did know one thing: she had not sailed to the edge of the world just to stop there.
She made her way to the fire, and the man now tending it.
“Well then,” she said. “Which way to the lightless fair?”
IV
NOW
“Land!”
Stross bellowed again as Lila vaulted out of the hold, still holding the broken bottle of summer wine. Kell followed, frowning, in her wake.
Dusk was falling over the coastline. Back in the capital, he mused, the setting sun would have cast everything in red and gold, infusing the city with a warm and constant glow. But here, the light landed with a tinny glare, glinting off the serrated sprawl of buildings that spilled down from the rocks and into the bay below.
So this was Verose.
He tried not to think too often about London, or what his brother and family might be doing at this moment (he’d followed Lila to the end of the world and back, and it had been worth it). Seven years with the Grey Barron, and most days, he felt at ease on the ship, if not among the crew.
But places like Verose were a reminder of how far he was from home. Even at a distance, the city looked sharp enough to cut their sails.
The crew assembled now, all hands on deck.
There was Stross, the first mate of the Barron, stocky and sober, scratching at a black beard that had started to show grey, his temporary cheer settling back into sterner stuff as they approached their destination.
And Vasry, standing beneath the sails and looking, as he always did, like he was posing for a portrait, his chin up and his blond hair pulled back as he put his meager wind skills to good use and guided them to port.
Then there was Tav, small and scrappy, and currently heaving his guts up over the side of the ship after having a little too much fun this afternoon, even for a ship pretending to be a pleasure vessel staffed with rowdy pirates.
And last of all, Raya, dropping like a sparrow to the deck, black braids fluttering behind her.
Raya, who’d come aboard the ship after the lightless fair, and never disembarked, despite Lila’s vocal aversion to new blood.
“I think I’m in love,” Vasry had said the next morning, and at the time, none of them had paid it much attention, because, frankly, Vasry fell in love the way other people fell down after too much wine, so Lila probably assumed it would sort itself, and they’d put the girl ashore at the next port. But then Raya turned out to be a decent water worker and an even better cook, and Vasry surprised everyone by staying smitten, and Lila grudgingly let the girl stay.
Nearly seven years on, she still didn’t speak a word of Arnesian, seemed to take pride in the fact, but she had as many expressions as Kell had frowns, and was good at saying everything that needed saying with a look.
And on top of it all, she could fight, a fact they’d discovered when the Barron ran into trouble with a raiding ship, and the girl had swiftly conjured a pair of swords out of ice and driven one through the nearest pirate as he tried to come aboard.
Lila liked her more after that.
And Kell liked not being the newest person on the crew.
Now, as the Grey Barron pulled into Verose, he scanned the line of ships already there, and found the one they wanted mooring three vessels out from the leftmost side of the dock. A Veskan craft with bloodred flags and wings scorched into the pale hull. Eh Craen, it was called.
The Crow.
If Alucard Emery’s intelligence was good, then this ship was on its way south, ready to pass cargo off to an Arnesian smuggler bound for London. Alucard wanted to know what it was carrying.