The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)

 

 

“Let’s hope the weather is the most singular thing you see,” I said. Then the ship surged forward with a current and the boom pulled at the rigging; I gave the wheel a quarter turn. The pale fog swirled around us, interminable and strange. As the wind rose, it carried notes of a song to my ears—distantly familiar—and snatched them away almost as quickly. I squinted up to see if it was Rotgut, but the crow’s nest was lost in the mist. Besides, it didn’t sound like his voice—it was too airy, too breathless. I bit my lip as it came again: above the roar and shush of the waves, a high voice, clear, singing a sad sea shanty.

 

“Go down and put on a coat, Blake.”

 

“I’m quite hardy—”

 

“I need you out of the way.”

 

His eyebrows went up at my tone, and for a moment, I wondered if he would disobey—and what I would do if he did. But the ship was under my command, and all souls aboard were too. I couldn’t let him argue, not now. He must have seen it on my face, because he stepped down the stairs toward the hatch. I was briefly grateful for the silence, but alone on the quarterdeck, the white expanse of fog made me feel very small.

 

The crew moved on the deck like dark wraiths. The wind intensified, thrumming in the rat lines and snapping at the sails, and the ship groaned as the mast creaked. My heart hammered in my chest as the memory of our last journey crept into my head—the thick mists, the lightning, and the black tentacle dragging Kash overboard.

 

My hands were slick on the wheel. What had I been thinking, taking the helm without Slate to guide me? My anger at him had gotten the better of me—or perhaps it was my hubris. Was I a fool to try to cheat fate? I sought Kashmir through the fog. What if he’d been right? What if this was how I lost him?

 

Beneath my feet, the Temptation seesawed. The ship climbed a mountainous wave, then dipped down so sharply I was sure that, but for the mist, I’d be looking at the bottom of the sea. Kash was fairly dancing on the deck below—beside him, Bee was hauling in the lines on the foresail. She glanced back at me, her wide eyes bright in the dark. I could almost hear her voice in the look she gave me: you cannot flinch.

 

They’d done this before—and so had I. I tore my eyes away from the crew and pinned them to the uncertain horizon.

 

Squinting into the fog off the prow, I redrew the map in the space behind my eyes: the crescent of the island and the slip of a protected bay, all encircled by the thick seawalls. Ker-Ys, the most beautiful city in France—a kingdom without a king. I filled my mind with the myth I knew and the map I’d studied, and I did not search for a glimpse of our destination. Rather, I waited. I knew, without doubt, that the city was there.

 

This was the trick of Navigation—the most difficult part: the belief, the unflinching faith. And it was so clear in my head that I could not pinpoint the moment when it appeared through the shifting mist off the prow, but in the same way as dawn turns to day, there it was.

 

“Land!” Rotgut sang out from the crow’s nest. The icy fog did not lift so much as thin in the golden light of morning. The sun was burning cold in the east, sparkling through the crystalline air and silhouetting the spires of Ker-Ys.

 

There, on the horizon: a sugarplum city, rising up from the silvery waves like a confection on a tray. The compact little town of slate roofs and Gothic steeples surrounded an elegant castle embroidered with stone carved like lace. The towers and turrets, cottages and cobbled streets—all were set inside the sun-gilded granite seawalls like a bezel of rough crystal, and around the wall, waves washed white as they broke on the stone.

 

Blake came back above, wearing a long coat of felted wool; when he glanced off the prow toward the city, I could hear his intake of breath.

 

“It looks like something out of a fairy tale,” he said softly.

 

“Well.” Pride bloomed in my chest; automatically, I glanced over my shoulder, looking for my father, before I realized he was not on deck. I took a deep breath and turned back toward the city on the horizon. “It is.”

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

 

We were out of the mist of the Margins, but the winter sun did little to warm us, and the wind purled in fitful gusts, pressing through my thin shirt as though it were made of gauze. Through chattering teeth, I called for the crew to spell off for warmer gear. Bee went below first, returning with an extra coat for Rotgut; Kash went next, bringing me my good red cloak.

 

“Here, Captain,” he said, settling the heavy velvet around my shoulders as I held the wheel.

 

I blinked at the honorific. “Thank you, Kash.”