In a fine waistcoat and a shirt with billowing sleeves, I walked the deck. I wore a three-cornered hat and a matched set of gold pistols with engraved bone handles.
The ship was the cutter Victorianos. I hadn’t recognized her at first with her square topsail unfurled, and three foresails bulging out above the bowsprit. She was running before a following sea, her bow slicing the water with a slip-splash, slip-splash. My heart sang with the waves.
Gulls circled and dove around the cutter. One landed, gray wings flapping, on the rail.
It swiveled its head and looked right at me.
And whispered my name.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
As we lowered Cormorant’s mast to go under Gallos Bridge, the old man on the toll boat watched us through his foggy cabin window. Wet clouds hovered low over the marsh, spitting out cold raindrops.
“Who’s that?” Markos stared, his eyes hollowed from lack of sleep.
“That’s the man who works the toll boat.”
“What does he do there?”
I shrugged. “Collects the toll. If it’s dark he makes sure the lamps are lit. If it’s a big ship, he gets them to move the bridge.”
“Is that what Victorianos had to do?”
“Yes. They attach a team of horses to the turnstile, and it spins the bridge so the ship can get through.”
He looked up at the bridge with a new appreciation. “It’s too bad our mast comes down. I should’ve liked to see how they do it.”
The toll man came out of his cabin to stand at the rail. Smoke curling from the end of his pipe, he gave me a nod. “There was a cutter come through at morning tide as was looking for a wherry.” He spoke in the rolling tones of an old man who has seen all manner of things come up and down the river and won’t be bothered or hurried by any of them. “A wherry called Cormorant.”
I tried to sound casual, despite my buzzing ears and racing heart. “They said Cormorant? The last I seen of Cormorant was up at Hespera’s Watch.” I stretched over the side, dropping a coin in the toll man’s net. “Must be four days ago.”
“Them brigands been a-roaming the river. They was searching the wherries at the docks. His eyes settled on Markos. “Asking questions about a boy. But I guess you missed all the ruckus.”
Abruptly turning his face away, Markos picked up a rope end and began to coil it around a cleat. I winced. He was doing it all wrong.
The toll man blew out pipe smoke. “I told ’em, I says, ‘I ain’t seen any such boat.’ But I don’t think folk here will look kindly on them Black Dogs if they come back.” He pulled his oilskin coat aside to reveal the pistol tucked in his belt. “We looks after our own in Gallos.”
“Current carry you, sir,” I called.
As we slipped under the bridge, Markos and I exchanged grave glances. The smell of wet moss and muck surrounded us, water droplets falling with little plinks from the stone overhead. Then light poured over us, and I blinked. Cormorant had cleared the bridge.
“Up mast!” I called out. “Up sail!”
When the wind filled the sail again, I snatched the halyard from Markos’s hands. “Don’t touch the ropes.”
“I was only—”
“Making a mess.” He’d wrapped it in big, sloppy circles around the cleat. I sighed. “Look, just don’t—don’t touch anything.”
“Do you think he knew who we were?” Wiping his hands on Pa’s trousers, he nodded at the bridge as it retreated astern.
I looked grimly at Fee. “I know he did.”
“What?” His voice jumped up an octave. “Is that why he showed you the gun? As a threat?”
“That pistol wasn’t for us. He was showing me he knew who we are, and he isn’t going to tell.”
“You’re sure he knew?”
“I’ve been sailing up and down this river since I were the size of a minnow,” I said. “He knows my face and he knows Cormorant, even without her name. And he also knows if Pa isn’t with us, there must be trouble. You heard him.” A lump swelled up in my throat. I looked back, but the toll boat was out of sight. “He said we look after our own.”
It rained the rest of that day and into the night. I didn’t mind—the gray weather echoed my mood. Markos made himself scarce, only coming out of the cabin to pick listlessly at his meals.
I spent most of my time brooding alone on deck. Drops pattered on the water, ringing its surface, and thick fog hung over the riverlands. With the hood of my oilskin jacket pulled down low, I watched Fee squat by the tiller, rain streaming down her slippery face. Occasionally she tilted her head, chirping at the river. Once again I wondered what she heard that I could not.
I curled my hands around my warm coffee mug and stared into the muddy water as if by doing so, it might reveal its secrets to me.
It didn’t.
The day your fate comes for you, you’ll know … But the more I watched and listened, the more my doubts solidified into certainty. Coldness settled in my heart.
The god at the bottom of the river speaks to wherrymen in the language of small things. And to the Oresteia family, always. Every one of them, going back to our blockade-running days.
Except me.
It hurt, like a gaping black hole had opened up in my stomach. There have always been some wherrymen who sail without the favor of the river god, but everything is harder for them. And I knew for a fact that other captains talked about them behind their backs. The river had always been my home. If I didn’t belong here, where else would I ever fit in?
The next day dawned chilly and wet. Inside the cabin, Markos stared blankly out the porthole, eyes bruised and reddened. I didn’t think he’d slept. Through the curtain I’d heard him rolling and sighing all night. Finally he had lit a lamp. I’d turned over to face the wall and tried to ignore it as he flipped the pages of a book until morning.
“It’s cold.” I tossed one of Pa’s pullovers at him. “Here.”
He obviously hadn’t looked at himself in the glass, or he would have seen the white dusting of salt where tears had dried on his face. He had hardly spoken a word all day yesterday. I didn’t mind, because I hadn’t been much inclined to talk either. Something bigger hung over us than the storm clouds.
Markos fingered the sweater in his lap. A minute went by before he spoke. “It wasn’t only because I wanted you to take me to Casteria.”
I gulped a mouthful of coffee, burning my tongue. My eyes watered.
“You know. That night. I didn’t just try to kiss you because I wanted you to change your mind about Casteria. I … misinterpreted the situation.” He halted. “What I mean is, you were standing there in my cabin—” He cleared his throat. “That is, I really did want to—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped.
He spoke loudly over me. “I’m trying to apologize.”
“Oh.” We fell into an awkward silence. He pulled the sweater over his head, mussing up his black hair. If it had been Pa and I sitting in the cabin on a rainy day with the stove going, I might have called it cozy, but with the two of us it was just tense and sad.
I broke the quiet. “How could you think that? I only just met you.”
“Probably because I wasn’t thinking.” He mumbled something.