The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)
By: Heidi Heilig
Eventually I ran out of tears, but we lay together on the bunk a long time. I was warmer now, though I had never been so tired. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I couldn’t, not with the clocks ticking, ticking, ticking. “I wish you’d stolen one of the fishing boats instead,” I murmured.
The joke felt flat in my mouth; still, I heard his smile. “Hard to handle those shorthanded.” He sighed then, his chest rising and falling against my back. “What will Bee and Rotgut do after Cook is safe in London?”
“I’m not sure.”
“And Blake?” At the name, I stiffened.
“Why do you ask?”
For a while, Kashmir stroked my hair. When he spoke again, I could hear the sorrow in his voice. “Do you think he had to do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think he was meant to—to betray us? That it’s all a part of the way things have to be?” Kashmir propped himself up on an elbow to gaze down at me. “I was supposed to be lost—or . . . or maybe the captain was. One of us, anyway. Joss told you so.”
I bit my lip. “She did.”
“And if it’s all fate, is anyone really at fault?”
“He still made his choices, Kash. He could have tried.”
“And what about us?” he murmured into my hair. “Can we choose to forgive?”
“You can do what you like,” I said, though my voice was bitter. But his gunshot had healed, leaving not even a scar. My own wounds were fresh and raw. I’d lost everything because of Blake—or nearly everything. My ship, my family, my crew.
Kashmir pulled me close again. But under the blankets, my hand crept to my arm—the raised flesh of the tattoo of the ship—and I pushed myself up on one elbow. There, on the desk: Crowhurst’s maps. I swung my legs out of bed.
“Amira, you need to rest.”
I only shook my head. Keeping the blankets wrapped around me, I sank down into the chair at Crowhurst’s desk. “He found Cook,” I said, searching for our next map. “So can I.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Three days later, Kash and I stood on the dock at the Port of London and watched the Fool glide into the harbor. Dawn was still struggling through the shroud of gray, gleaming on the oily banks of the River Thames. But the wharf was already bustling, and the gritty air echoed with the shouts and raucous laughter of the dockhands.
The night we abandoned the Dark Horse in the Margins, Crowhurst had also arrived in the smoggy Port of London. Kash and I had stripped the yacht of valuables—including a stash of gold he’d grabbed from the treasury—and used some of the odd coins to take a room in a run-down sailor’s inn overlooking the dock. From the grimy window, I’d seen Crowhurst approach Cook at the wharf, deploying the full force of his charm. It had been difficult to stand by as my past unfolded, but I didn’t want to risk making the other choice; I wasn’t sure what sacrifice it might entail.
And now Cook stepped off the Fool and onto the muddy wharf. His face was troubled as he took his bearings. I knew why. Passage between France and England was fairly quick through the channel, but not half as quick as passage through the Margins. As he approached, I pulled my shawl up over my face to make sure he didn’t recognize me. How would I explain my appearance in London when my last known location was floundering in the Iroise?
But as he passed by, I couldn’t help it—I darted after him, reaching out to take his arm. “Your first two voyages,” I whispered to him, my voice urgent, my heart racing. “They’ll bring you fame and fortune. But if you sent out on your third, you’ll die.”
Cook wrenched his arm away, reeling, and he met my eyes. For a long time we stood there, and I wondered—had I changed his fate and my own? Had I saved Hawaii and sacrificed myself? Had I fought Crowhurst only to become my own unmaking? But who was I if I didn’t try? Finally Cook turned and vanished into the crowd—but I was still whole, and the world unchanged.
Kash caught up with me then, a question on his face, but I only shook my head and let him lead me back toward the Fool. And when he hailed her, I had never before seen nor shed as many tears. Bee howled her joy, as did Billie, and Rotgut started dancing on the deck. Even Gwen clapped me on the back. But Blake stood apart from us, pale as a ghost. “Thank god,” he whispered. “Thank god.”
It took everything in me not to make his black eye a matched set.