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

 

The city seemed to float on the white waves, stately: a castle in the clouds. Crowhurst was there, and so were the answers I needed. As we approached the island, my heart was beating like an oarsman’s drum. But I kept a weather eye as Kash and Bee adjusted the sails to catch the capricious wind. It puffed in the sheets and scuffed the whitecaps, pushing us unsteadily east as the ship rocked on the rolling gray. The restless seas of the Margins had given way to the tumultuous Mer d’Iroise.

 

Here, locals claimed the tides rose at the speed of a galloping horse, the high water climbing fifty feet above the lurking rocks of low tide. Currents raced through the English Channel, harsh storms raked the coast, and patches of pale gray water hinted at rocky reefs under the shifting surface.

 

Tall menhir jutted out of the swirling water; we passed a pile of rock where the bones of old shipwrecks glittered under a crust of salt. The north side of the island was thick with twisted trees; nesting in them were creatures I mistook for cormorants until we came closer and I saw they were guivres. Souvestre had mentioned them too—a local sort of dragonlet that made a home near bodies of water.

 

The guivres circled out over the sea to fish, coasting on wings flung wide, until they folded like knives and tipped down into the sea. I smiled to see them emerging victorious, silver fish twisting in their jaws; they reminded me of Swag, the little sea dragon that had once belonged to both me and my mother.

 

The tide continued falling as we neared the island. The waves licked up the stones; pulling back, they revealed seaweed like glossy mounds of jade at the base of the wall. We came about to the south, where the bronze doors protected the little harbor. They were enormous, easily three feet thick and fifty feet tall, though the dark algal stain of the high-water mark was only a few feet from the top.

 

As we waited, the bells began to toll the changing tides—the fabled bells of Ker-Ys. A deep rumble vibrated through the deck of the ship, and little whirlpools formed in the foam at the base of the wall as the gates began to roll open.

 

Would Crowhurst meet us at the dock? It was only midmorning, and the island was small—even if I had to seek him out, I could certainly find him before evening. I leaned forward, eager to enter the harbor, but as the gates slid back, a little flotilla of fishing boats splashed out into the open water. They swarmed around us like goslings around a swan, slow and clumsy; in their bellies, red water sloshed from buckets of chum.

 

Rotgut called down from the crow’s nest. “What do you catch in these waters?”

 

An oarsman squinted back with hard eyes in a weathered face. “Everything we can.”

 

The fishing boats swept toward deeper water as we continued into the harbor. I searched the wharf for a glimpse of Crowhurst, but he was not there. Still, there was activity aboard a sleek corvette docked at the pier—the other tall ship in harbor.

 

Was this his vessel? I scanned her deck, but I did not see him at the helm or among the busy crew. They hopped and hefted, making ready to sail. The corvette was much bigger than the Temptation, maybe a hundred twenty feet at the waterline, but built with grace. Though it had been worn by the water and scraped by some sort of blade, the name Santé was barely visible in peeling paint along her prow, and her striped sails gave her a devil-may-care appearance, countered by the rotting head hanging in a net from the tip of her bowsprit.

 

I narrowed my eyes. This was the golden age of piracy, and corsairs schooled like sharks between San Malo and the Barbary Coasts. But the prim harbormaster directed us to a berth beside the corvette, and as we pulled up to the pier, her captain hailed us.

 

“Ho, Temptation!” She was a tall woman in her twenties, with freckled cheeks and wild curls barely contained by a French cocked hat. Her crew swarmed around her, but she stood still, one hand up, the breeze toying with the ostrich feathers in her cap.

 

My own crew set to making fast—Kash showing Blake how to take in the sails, and Rotgut setting out the gangplank and tying us to the dock. I raised my hand in response, thinking it was only courtesy, but the woman sauntered to the rail.

 

“I know this ship!” Her hazel eyes glittered. “But not her captain.”

 

My brows went up. I did not recognize her or her vessel—so when had she seen the Temptation? Bee came to the rail before I could ask. “Gwen.” Bee’s smile was guarded. “How long has it been?”

 

“Two years? Three?”

 

“Right.” Bee gave me a significant look. “Ribat, in 1745.”