“Of course I know that,” he murmured. “You come to bed now, sweet girl.”
I rowed hastily away from the window, because, really, who wants to hear that?
After settling Daria in her bunk, I found Kenté sitting cross-legged on the forward hatch cover. I might have missed her in the dark, had she not been muttering out loud at a necklace. I recognized it from the chest in the cargo hold, which she’d been poking around earlier today while I sailed. Around her feet were strewn several other pendants and lockets. At least one was broken.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to put a little piece of night into this locket.” She flung aside the bauble, wiping her sweaty forehead. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
I deliberately didn’t answer that question, because it looked like she was talking to an inanimate object.
“Kenté, why don’t you just tell your parents you want to go to the Academy in Trikkaia?”
“They say I’m their last and only hope.” She sighed. “You know how upset they were about Toby.” Kenté’s brother was a professor of mathematics, which wasn’t a very Bollard thing to be.
“I wonder if you’re afraid—” I halted. “I didn’t mean afraid.”
“Of course I am. Caro—” She bit her lip, turning the locket over in her hands. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? This magic … it’s all about darkness and trickery.” Somehow I knew she was thinking of Cleandros, who had betrayed his Emparch. “Perhaps it’s something we’re not meant to play with.”
I remembered what Markos had said the night we met. “I think it’s what’s in a person’s heart that makes them evil. Magic is just a skill. A tool.”
She nodded, though she didn’t look quite convinced. “This is going to sound stupid, but … I’m scared to leave home. Because if I’m not this”—she fingered the brooch that pinned her woolen wrap, which was stamped with the cask and stars—“then who am I? If I’m not this, who might I become?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Leaving her to her experimentation, I wandered up the deck. The sky seemed bigger out here, like a blanket draped over us. The night sounds of Vix—creaking planks, sloshing waves, the taut twang of rope—were achingly similar to Cormorant’s, yet there was an emptiness I could not place at first. Then I realized. There were no frogs or crickets. No sounds of small things.
I leaned my elbows on the rail. Beneath me the still black water stirred.
An eyelid popped open.
I stumbled back. The eye was the size of my head. It shone in the lantern light, inches below the water. Something was down there, under the cutter.
Something big. Something alive.
“Ayah, you noticed, did you?” Nereus sat on a barrel, the lit end of his pipe glowing orange. “She’s been following you for days.”
He couldn’t mean this was the very same drakon that had kept pace with Vix in the dark of night, during the storm—could he? Then I remembered that day on the Hanu River, when Fee had hissed at something in the water. “Her,” Fee had said over and over.
“Why would a drakon follow me?” My mouth was dry.
“Ah,” he said. “You are used to the river. The sea be deeper. Darker. Full of secrets. The sea, she keeps the things she takes. The deeps be littered with the bones of ships and cities. Ayah, and men. Know you the tale of Arisbe Andela?”
“Amassia That Was Lost.” The story Markos and I had spoken of. It seemed hard to believe that was only three days ago. Then something else struck me. “Arisbe Andela?”
“Ayah, that were her name.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “It’s Markos and Daria’s name too.” So Markos had been telling the truth when he said the legend was based on the history of his ancestors. How odd to think of Markos, of all people, being descended from a pirate princess.
Nereus tapped his pipe. “Arisbe had a brother called Nemros.”
“The Marauder. Pa used to tell me that one too. The most fearsome pirate ever to sail the Inner Sea.”
“Ayah, that’s the fellow. Old Nemros, now, there were three things he loved. Sailing, and the fire of battle.”
“That’s two things,” I said.
“Don’t interrupt. The third was …” Something in his voice called to mind lazy summer afternoons, long past. “Fun,” he said finally. “The dance of the fiddle. The taste of wine and rum and women.” He puffed his pipe. “On that fateful last day, the sea god told Nemros she meant to take her revenge. He heeded her warning and took to his ship, where he rode out the storm. When the sun broke through the clouds on the third morning, no sign of his family’s island was to be seen. No white towers. No pear trees. The sea had swallowed Amassia. Now what was he to do? For he were a man without a country. So Nemros, he went to her.”
“Who?”
“Why, she who lies beneath. Who else?” Resting his pipe on his knee, he continued. “But the ocean were a fast one, she were, for she offered him a bargain. ‘Take your sister’s place,’ she said. ‘Serve me as she should have, and I shall make you the scourge of these seas. I shall give you a ship faster than the wind itself, and greater wealth in gold than you can possibly imagine. Serve me unto death, ayah, and beyond. Then and only then shall you have your family’s city back.’ ”
“But Amassia is lost,” I said. “It sank under the ocean. No one ever saw it again.”
“Ah, I told you she were a fast one.” He waggled his finger at me. “She didn’t say when, now did she? The pirate Nemros became her servant. He sank ships and sacked cities on her command. And, oh yes, he became rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams.” He paused. “But he never again was free. He never again had a home.”
“I don’t get it. What does any of that have to do with the drakon?”
“Nothing.” He laughed, while I struggled to resist the temptation to knock him off the gods-bedamned barrel. “But there are some sailormen who say the drakon is nothing more or less than your fate coming for you.”
There was one more thing I had to say. “Nereus.” I hesitated. “You said he served her beyond death. Do you mean—”
He raised his hand to cut me off. “Speak no more, love. For I won’t answer.”
I wondered if that wasn’t answer enough.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
I stood on Antelope’s deck, squinting into the rising sun. Above me a square sail unrolled, and the second mate bellowed out orders, as sailors scurried to make fast the ropes. A man lugging a cart full of cannonballs pushed past me, jogging my elbow.
“What do you mean, we’re not to fight?” I demanded.
“Caro, be reasonable,” Ma said. “Remember, you said yourself it may be a trap. They want Daria and they want their cutter back.” With her implacable face, she had never resembled a classical bronze statue more. “And I daresay they are not so enamored of you after all this.”
“Pa—”