She wanted her father to be alive and well again; she wanted to inherit Irsa, like she’d always planned. To visit Od with Ayah one day, and see all the things her friend described in such wistful detail. Maybe marry, maybe not, so long as the choice was hers.
But that future had vanished the moment she sat down for breakfast with the Emperor. That future had never truly existed.
Talia clenched her jaw. “We’ll carve out a new life together on Ryn. You’ll see.”
Her mother stared out through the porthole, a crease in her forehead that Talia never remembered seeing before. “We shouldn’t be here. We should never have set foot on this ship. The sea listens. The sea knows.”
“The sea is just the sea, Mama.” Talia took her arm, tugging her gently away from the porthole. “Come on. Let’s find some breakfast.”
They ate belowdecks in the crew’s mess, nothing more than another small cabin crammed with a rough oak table and a pair of sagging benches. There wasn’t even a porthole here, which made Talia unaccountably anxious—she didn’t like being shut away from the sunlight and the sea. The cook, a grumbling Odan with fierce black brows who looked as though he’d never smiled in his life, served them more tea and fish and biscuits. To Talia’s relief, her mother finished her whole plate and seemed to perk up a little.
Talia tugged her mother up from the bench when they were done, fighting off the feeling that the ship was squeezing all the breath from her body. The two of them climbed the narrow steps leading from the hold up to the main deck, Talia shoving open the hatch at the top. Sunlight hit her full in the face, and the sea air assailed her senses: salt and fish and a wild tangy freedom that made her skin prick. She could breathe again. She tilted her head back, staring up at the main mast, canvas sails billowing full. Sailors scaled the rigging, hauling lines and shouting to each other. They looked like gangly spiders, climbing silk ropes up into the wind god’s domain.
Her mother laughed and rushed over to the port side rail. She had eyes only for the sea.
Talia followed at a slower pace, adapting her stride to the continual rolling of the ship. She stood beside her mother, curling her hands around the wooden railing as she stared out into the fathomless waves. They stretched forever into the horizon, all blue and green and gray, glinting gold where the sunlight touched them. A longing she didn’t have a name for rushed up to swallow her. She felt full for the first time in her life, when she’d never known she was empty.
“Have you ever seen the sea before, Mama?”
Her mother was leaning her elbows on the railing, the wind teasing strands of hair loose from her braids. “When I was a little girl, my father took me to the port in Evalla. I wanted to stay forever, but we had to go home again and I thought it would break my heart.”
The ship crested a wave and water splashed up over the rail, sending a thrill down Talia’s spine as it drenched her to the bone.
Seawater dripped from her mother’s chin. “I felt something then, calling out to me. It’s even stronger now.” She peered at Talia, an odd light in her eyes. “Are you sure you can’t hear the waves singing?”
Talia looked back out over the water, and for an instant she imagined she could hear something, the haunted thread of an otherworldly music. But then she shook her head and it was gone again. “It’s just the wind, Mama.”
Her mother didn’t seem to be listening, a secret smile on her lips. She shut her eyes and started humming.
Talia glanced uneasily between the sea and her mother. “Why don’t we explore the rest of the ship?”
“Go ahead, dearest. I’ll stay here. I need to understand what the sea is telling me.”
“It’s not telling you anything.”
Her mother shrugged, the funny little smile back again. “You could hear it too, if you listen.”
“Mama, there’s nothing to hear!” She was beginning to fear that five days shut in a carriage with no food had addled her mother’s wits.
“Just listen. Just listen.” She started humming again.
Talia turned from the rail and strode away. She refused to think that her mother’s strange melody was the very echo of the music she imagined hearing in her head.
She paced the main deck, watching the sailors hauling lines to adjust the sails, counting the bells that marked out watches every half hour. She scrambled up onto the smaller deck at the rear of the ship that formed the roof of the great cabin—she heard one of the sailors refer to it as the ‘poop deck.’
The ship rolled beneath her, wood creaked, and lines snapped. A few of the sailors started singing, and their rough-sweet voices mingled perfectly with the wind and waves.
She looked back to where her mother still leaned against the port rail, purple dress bright against the sky. She told herself there was nothing wrong with her—a few solid days of food and sleep would set her right again.
“I’ve never seen anyone, man or woman, as enamored with the sea as she is. Except maybe you.”
Talia jumped and turned to see Hanid climbing up beside her, his silver hair mussed from the wind. He gave her a wry smile. “It’s like the sea is in your blood.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped.
He shrugged. “Most people get horribly seasick their first time aboard ship. You and your mother seem entirely unaffected.” She didn’t know why this line of questioning was making her so irritated. “I guess the sea air agrees with us.”
“I guess it does.” Hanid studied her a moment more, then shook his head and chuckled to himself. “Glad to have you sailing with us, in any case. Women are good luck aboard ship, you know. The Waves seem to prey mostly on the men.”
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t heard the stories?” He spread his hands out toward the sea. “The Billow Maidens, singing in the storms to wreck the ships and drown the sailors. Their songs are so beautiful men can’t resist, running their ships onto reefs or rocks, throwing themselves into the sea just to follow the music.”
The wind flung a snatch of her mother’s song into Talia’s ears, and she cursed, which made Hanid laugh. “It’s all superstition and nonsense.”
“Maybe. But maybe not. I’ve been to the ends of the earth, Miss Dahl-Saida—not everyone is as apathetic about religion as you Enduenans. I can’t dismiss such stories entirely.”
“Aren’t you Enduenan?”
“My parents were. But I was born in Od and lived on Ryn. I served in the Emperor’s army and was part of the failed campaign against Denlahn. I climbed the tallest mountain peak on Halda and saw millennia-old offerings to the god Tuer: wine and fruit and grains, as fresh as the day they were laid on his altar. I met a woman in Ita who kept a temple to the wind goddess—she swore the goddess spoke with her, and was teaching her how to weave the winds.”
Talia shook her head in disgust. “That’s absurd.”
“She didn’t seem to think so.”
“Doesn’t mean she was sane.”