“Get her up from there.” The Captain’s voice is rough with exhaustion and barely leashed temper.
The battle is already dying down as thin yet strong arms hoist me up from the deck. But I can’t take my eyes off the crumpled body of the boy at my feet. It doesn’t even matter that he was hurting me, or that he would have tried taking me. . . . I’ve never seen someone die. And his death was so violent, I can’t seem to stop myself from shaking.
“How many did we lose?” The Captain’s voice is brutally cold.
“Just four, including Wren,” Will says, nodding toward the small boy who died trying to save me. “Little Davey’s injured, but he might pull through.”
A tall dark-skinned boy with hair braided like snakes approaches. He’s bleeding from a gash above his eye and seems almost shell-shocked as he takes in the carnage on the deck around him. “Where did they all come from?” he asks, his hand shaking as he wipes at the blood dripping into his eye.
“Where d’you think?” The Captain looks out over the deck, his expression grim. His hair has tumbled free and hangs listlessly over his brow. I’d been wrong—his hair like that doesn’t soften his appearance at all. If anything, it makes him look even more dangerous. “Burn their boats. Then we’ll deal with those who remain.”
“But why, Cap’n?” another of the boys ask. “Himself’s never attacked like that before, not in broad daylight and not in the middle of the sea.”
He glances at Will and then he looks at me, those dark eyes of his as cold and dark as the waiting sea. “That is the question, lads,” he says as he scratches at his chin absently with the edge of his knife, but from the way he’s focused on me, I’m afraid he already has his answer.
After the attack, when only a pale gray light filtered over the empty land, nothing moved there. Nothing seemed even to breathe. The boy wished that someone had warned him fear tasted of mustard gas—of lilacs and horseradish. . . .
Chapter 14
HEAVY CLOUDS HAVE ROLLED IN, and the air snaps with a new chill now that we are under sail. The island, once no more than a speck on the horizon, has disappeared in the distance. I’ve been given new clothes to replace the ones that were splattered with the boy’s blood, but they aren’t as warm as the heavy sweater I’d been wearing before, and I can’t quite keep myself from shivering.
Or maybe it’s more than cold that has me shaking. When I changed my clothes, I found the crumpled picture of Olivia and was reminded again about how easily I’d forgotten her. How easy it still is to let the idea of her, and the memory of who I was, slip away.
The Captain is standing close to me, watching the progress his crew is making in scrubbing the blood from the deck and setting his ship to rights. He’s exchanged his bloodstained clothing for a clean military-style jacket with a double row of large pockets across the front. It must have faded to that grayish, drab green long ago from the looks of it. Its elbows are worn and patched, and the right epaulet—which has long since lost the button that once held it in place—flops listlessly over his shoulder in the gusty wind.
I pull the folded sheet of paper from my pocket. “Is this the girl you were talking about with Fiona?” I ask, watching for his reaction.
He stiffens when he glances down at the drawing, but then he turns to me after a moment. “You were looking through my effects?”
“You left me alone in your quarters. What did you think I was going to do?”
His mouth goes tight, but he doesn’t say anything. He just keeps glaring at me with that indecipherable expression of his.
“Her name’s Olivia,” I tell him, concentrating on the way the word feels on my tongue, the way it sounds before it’s carried off by the breeze. “She was in London with me, when I was taken. What are you doing with her picture?”
He scratches absently at the dark scruff on his jawline. “This Olivia,” he asks, ignoring my question. “You say she’s from your world?”
I nod.
“You’re sure about this—you remember it?”
I clench my fists. “I didn’t at first. The picture helped.”
His brows draw together, and his dark eyes study me for a long moment before he responds. “I’m surprised you remembered at all, lass. Most of the boys don’t remember anything at all of your world—no matter how many tales I tell them of it.” He narrows his eyes at me, but I’m getting so used to his half-threatening looks that it’s fairly easy to ignore this one.
“They’re all from my world?”
The Captain’s mouth goes tight as he gives a terse nod and confirms my fears. “Not that it’s anything more than a story to them now. All they are is who they’ve become.”