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

 

Was the map I’d gotten from Dahut misdated? This wouldn’t be the first time. But no—the harbormaster’s tidy outfit had included a high wig and heels on his boots; by the eighteenth century, those fashions had gone by the wayside. I peered at Gwen. Could she be a Navigator as well? Slate had said he’d never met another. But if not, how had she gotten from her own time to a mythical island in seventeenth-century France? I couldn’t ask her—at least not directly. And she had noticed my scrutiny, meeting it with her own.

 

“Things have changed since last I saw the black ship.” Gwen leaned over the rail to size me up. “Hullo, little chicken. Are you my replacement?”

 

“You were never captain of the Temptation,” I said.

 

She smiled without humor. “Neither are you. Bee, tell me she lies,” she cried then, pushing back from the rail, sweeping off her hat, and slapping it against her thigh. “Tell me he’s not dead!”

 

The anguish in her voice shocked me, but before I could form the words to reassure her, Slate’s rusty voice preceded him out of his cabin.

 

“Dead?” The door creaked open, and he stood, stooped, on the threshold, squinting at the light. He wore no shirt, though he didn’t seem to feel the cold, and his tattoos looked like bruises on the pale skin of his arms. “Not yet.”

 

“Slate!” Gwen’s eyes went wide with glee. Leaping onto her ship’s rail, she teetered on the edge for a moment, then hopped down, her hobnailed boots ringing on our deck as she pelted toward my father. But she faltered when she got close; one hand shot out, stopping inches from Slate’s haggard face. “What happened to you?”

 

“Time.” At his answer, her brow furrowed, but Slate turned his head, staring at our surroundings with incurious eyes. “Where the hell are we, Nixie?”

 

“I left the map on your desk,” I told him, but Gwen interrupted.

 

“They call the place Ville d’Ys, but I’m marking it a vigia. I recommend you do the same.”

 

Vigia—a term on maps that meant to keep close watch for danger. The sort of place marked HERE ARE DRAGONS BORN. I frowned. “Why’s that?”

 

Gwen’s eyes gleamed under the brim of her hat. “Strange fish in the water. You should turn back.”

 

Slate half shrugged. “I’m not a fisherman.”

 

“There’s something weird about this place,” she insisted. “Uncanny. We left the Port of London yesterday morning, and we were in harbor by first watch. My ship is fast, but not that fast. And this morning, my whole crew reported dreaming the same dream. I’ll tell you this,” she said, leaning closer, as though afraid to say the words too loud. “I’ve been on this route since I weren’t no older than your new girl, and I never saw this place until last night.”

 

I glanced at Slate, my eyes round. Was Gwen a Navigator after all? But my father didn’t even seem curious. “Did you come through a fog?” I asked her.

 

“A fog? No. It was a storm.” She laughed without joy and gave Slate a sidelong look. “Should have known better than to let a strange man handle my ship.”

 

“Someone else took the helm?” My heart quickened. “Was his name Crowhurst, by any chance?”

 

“Couldn’t tell you. His coin did most of his talking. Mark me, leave while the gate’s open and the weather’s clear. This place is cursed.”

 

“You can’t leave without him,” I said quickly.

 

She turned back, incredulous. “Beg pardon?”

 

I bit my lip—but what could I tell her? That the Margins would rise up around her and trap her ship in a sailor’s purgatory? “What if he needs passage back?”

 

“I’m not going back to London.” Gwen spat on the deck as she strode starboard, toward her ship, but she stopped at the edge of the deck, both hands on the rail. “You haven’t asked me where I’m bound,” she said then, and I knew she wasn’t talking to me.

 

She and I both turned to Slate, and I waited for him to tell her to stay—to tell her that she’d never make it past the mist without a Navigator at the helm. But would she listen, if he did? Slate only shook his head. “We risked our necks to free you from the Santé, Gwen. Why did you go back?”

 

“But she’s not the Santé anymore. When I took over, I named her after her old captain. See?” Gwen nodded to the rotting head.

 

Slate frowned. “The Jack?”

 

“The Fool. I’m bound for Salé,” she said, as though he had asked after all. “There’s money there. I’ll wait for you if you ask me to.”

 

“Salé?” Slate’s eyes narrowed, and my own shoulders tensed. The biggest slave markets in the Barbary trade could be found in Salé. Slate knew it too. “Are you carrying on Jack’s trade, Gwen?”