I shot him a rude look. As if I’d been talking to him. “I meant Cormorant’s name.”
Surely it was too dark. I swallowed through a dry throat, remembering how I’d crouched in the cockpit and read Victorianos’s stern in the moonlight. It was impossible to know.
I turned to Fee. “A disguise might not go amiss.”
“Tomorrow,” she agreed.
“Very well,” Tarquin said. “For now it’s best we all get what little sleep we can. In the morning you can convey me to Casteria.”
“Valonikos.”
“Casteria.”
I slid Pa’s pistol a few inches out of its holster.
He was unimpressed. “Will you cease pointing that contraption at me? You won’t shoot me. You don’t want to damage your precious cargo, after all.”
“Why do you keep calling it a contraption?” I asked. “Surely they have guns in Akhaia.”
“Of course we do. But a blade is the weapon of a gentleman. It’s the only honorable way to fight.”
“Oh?” I looked pointedly at his waist. “I don’t see yours.”
“I left in a great hurry. I didn’t have time to—” He closed his mouth and fell silent.
Grabbing the lantern off the table, I gave him a sharp look. I still suspected he wasn’t telling me everything. But he was right about one thing—I didn’t dare shoot him, not when Pa’s freedom depended on his safe arrival in Valonikos.
I decided further investigation could wait till morning.
“You can take Pa’s bunk.” I nodded at the forward cabin.
That bunk was the biggest we had, although he would still probably have to bend his knees to get into it. I showed him the head, in case he needed to use it during the night, and got an extra wool blanket out of the locker. This I shoved at him, almost daring him to make a remark about its scratchiness. But he said nothing.
I stumbled through the motions of getting ready for bed, then blew out the lantern and dropped into my bunk.
Cormorant rocked reassuringly, water slip-slapping at the hull, as the occasional burst of rain sprinkled the cabin roof. I lay awake, uncomfortable with the knowledge that a strange boy was sleeping on the other side of the curtain. I couldn’t see or hear him, but his presence seemed to fill the cabin. The wound on my arm throbbed. And worse, I felt the lack of Pa, a raw self-pitying loneliness that clawed at my chest.
It was a long time until my heart slowed enough for me to fall into sleep.
That night I dreamed of Mrs. Singer, the wherryman’s wife who died on Jenny. I dreamed she lay still on a bed of coral, and that coral was brighter than anything at the bottom of the river. The reef sat on a patch of golden sand. Motes of light trickled down through the dark water.
Mrs. Singer lay with one arm dangling off the edge of the spongy coral. Slick green weeds wound around her face, weaving through the locks of her long hair. Fish swam above her, but they weren’t like any fish I had ever seen. Their colors were brilliant—yellow, orange, and vivid blue.
Then Mrs. Singer opened her eyes and said my name.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
I awoke the next morning greatly relieved not to have been murdered in my sleep by the Black Dogs. Casting a glance at the closed curtain to Pa’s cabin, I bound my hair with a red paisley scarf and slipped barefoot onto the deck.
Mist hovered over the riverlands. A dragonfly flitted in the air, its wings a flash of green among the shivering cattails. Fee perched on Cormorant’s bow, a faraway look on her face. Was she talking to the god in the river? As his descendants, all the frogmen had a connection to the god. Whether it was the same language of small things the wherrymen spoke of, or something far older and stranger, I didn’t know. A pang of jealousy stung me.
Squinting at the peak of the mast, I surveyed the mess from last night. Cormorant’s halyards were still tangled in the branches, her deck scattered with twigs and leaves. Pa wouldn’t approve of the way we’d left the sail in a heap. Together Fee and I unwound the ropes and lowered the mast to shake it free of the tree. I winced as sticks rained to the deck around me. We steered the wherry out of the dike and into Heron Water, where we anchored near the bank.
Fee scrambled up from the cargo hold, setting a bucket on the deck. “Paint.” She pressed a brush into my hand.
Reluctantly I eyed Cormorant’s name, spelled out above the cabin door in light blue letters with red flourishes. “I hate to ruin it.”
She shrugged. “Or die.”
“I know, I know.” I swiped the wet brush across the C, blotting it out.
As I put the finishing touches on the paint, Tarquin emerged, blinking in the morning sunlight. He gazed out at the lake in surprise. It had been too dark to see anything last night.
“I didn’t know there were other boats here.” He drew his brocade robe around him.
One vessel was anchored down at the far end of Heron Water, a finger of smoke curling up from her roof. I couldn’t identify her—a houseboat, maybe? The other was a wherry, the Fair Morning. The wherryman’s wife sat on deck in a rocking chair, smoking a long pipe. She and her daughter stared at us. I didn’t know them, but I could tell they were wondering why we hadn’t said hello yet. And what kind of idiots we were to get our mast stuck in the trees.
I set down the paint bucket. “Is that what all the Emparch’s couriers wear?”
“It’s a dressing gown.” He saw my mystified look. “Sleeping clothes.”
“Oh.” My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Well, really. Why would anyone waste such an elegant garment on sleeping?
He rubbed the fabric between his fingers. “I didn’t have time to change before I was forced to flee—”
“Flee?” Again his words caused an alarm bell to go off in the back of my mind. Something wasn’t right about his story.
“I was rushing to get on the road,” he explained hastily. He put his hands in his pockets and looked out at the flat land, the breeze stirring his curls.
The only white sails belonged to a two-masted schooner far away across the yellow-brown marsh. That didn’t mean anything, though, since the River Thrush had many bends and places where lines of trees blotted the horizon. Victorianos was lurking out there somewhere.
The packing crate still sat on deck, its lid askew. I heaved it overboard with a muddy splash.
Tarquin followed me. “What are you doing?”
“The Black Dogs are looking for a wherry carrying this box,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m going to sink it. And you’re going to help me.”
I slung the rope ladder over the edge of the deck and climbed down. At the bottom rung, I jumped off, landing thigh deep in the water. Mud squished between my toes.
He sighed. “You expect me to jump into that muck? There could be leeches. Or snakes.”
I put my hands on my hips, squinting up at him. The crate bobbed in the water beside me. “Of course there are leeches. Most likely snakes too.”