Page 73 of Saint
The words were like a blunt blade pressed to the skin. I wasn’t sure I even believed them. It was more that I didn’t want them to be true. I wanted her to prove me wrong. To tell me whatever she’d left out of the story last night in the tavern. But as we stood there staring at each other in theempty flat, no explanation left her lips. And I wasn’t going to ask her for it. Not again.
Isolde’s hands fell to her sides heavily. She went quiet, the fire going out of her eyes. “I know you didn’t ask for this when you agreed to help me leave Dern or when you offered me a place on this crew. I lied to protect myself and now you’re paying the price for that.”
I didn’t argue with her. “I’m not the only one who could pay,” I said, thinking of Emilia and Hazel. Of the promise I’d made that my trouble wouldn’t find her door. “If anything happens to them…” The darkness of the thought strangled my voice, swallowing my ability to say it out loud.
“What do you want me to do? I’ll do it.”
My jaw clenched painfully. “I want you to go back in time and not walk into the tavern that night.” That, I did mean. With every drop of blood in my veins.
The thrum of the rain was louder now, a distant flash of lightning illuminating her face as the set of her mouth slanted just slightly. Her gray eyes were like glass.
I’d been a ship with a steady course since I left Cragsmouth. I’d known exactly what lay ahead because I’d been willing to do anything to make it happen. But Isolde and whatever she was running from in Bastian was the first thing that had ever made me feel like it was slipping from my fingers. It didn’t matter if I had a trade license or a route or a map of the Narrows. What was the point of any of it if there was something that could take it all away from me?
I stood there, waiting for her to say something and alsohoping she wouldn’t. I didn’t want the sound of her voice to conjure that thing in me that had been there in the dark the night before. I didn’t want any more reasons to talk myself out of leaving her there in the Pinch and setting sail for Dern, where theAsterwaited.
I walked past her, to the stairs, and climbed them to the empty second floor, where the windows faced the only small bit of sea visible from this part of the city. I could barely see it now, cloaked in sheets of rain.
That horizon had once felt endless to me. Like a never-ending expanse of possibilities. But our world was shrinking: The Narrows. Our ship. Our crew. Our trade. It was never supposed to be anyone but me and Clove. There was no future outside of the one our fathers had dreamed for us.
Now, Isolde was like a pebble dropped in the shallows, changing the shape of everything on the surface. And the moment I’d kissed her had been a nail in that coffin.
27ISOLDE
Nash wasn’t happy about trading his cage on theRivenfor one in the Pinch. He and Clove had arrived by afternoon and Saint’s orders were to stay put. If Zola hadn’t shown up that morning, we’d be on our way to Dern and Nash would be headed back to the shipwright, his sins absolved. But if Zola had gone to the Trade Council, Saint’s enemies were multiplying by the minute.
Hiding out in the Pinch wasn’t a solution. It just delayed the inevitable. A summons was coming, but it could only be answered once it was received. And no one was going to come looking in a place like this for a newly licensed helmsman.
The rain kept falling, filling the streets with little rivers that forked and came together in the cracks. Darkness fell before the sun had, the sky hidden away by the storm that descended onthe city. A wedge of cheese and loaf of bread Daya had sent with Clove were torn into pieces on the small table, but not even Nash had touched it. No one had a stomach for food when we were waiting for an axe to fall.
Clove sat at the top of the staircase, his knife raking down the length of a piece of wood. The shavings were piled at his feet, his head tilted to one side as he focused. Saint hadn’t come down since he’d told me that he wished he had never met me.
I climbed the stairs and sat down a few steps below Clove, pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging them to me. The map case was lying on the floor behind him, along with my dredging belt he’d brought from the tavern.
“Sure made a mess of things, dredger,” Clove said, eyes still on his knife. But the words weren’t cutting or accusatory. They even had a slight edge of amusement to them.
“I know,” I said.
There wasn’t much Clove seemed to take seriously, and I wondered if it was his nature or if he’d seen enough of the world to understand just how little control he had over any of it. It was a painful lesson I was beginning to learn.
I leaned forward until I could see through the open doorway behind him, where Saint stood at the window, arms crossed over his chest as he watched the rain. I wasn’t sure if he’d even moved from that spot since he came up here.
“What’s he doing?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“He’s thinking.”
Clove’s eyes met mine only for a moment, but they held his meaning. Saint wasn’t just thinking. He was deciding. Deciding what to do with me.
“There’s not much to figure out. The Trade Council will require me to return to theLunaor they’ll take that license they gave you.”
“Yes, they will.”
I was glad Clove wasn’t pretending like there was an answer to this problem. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“So, what’s there to think about?”
“He doesn’t like other people making decisions for him. If I had to guess, he’s trying to work out how he can still set his own course instead of having it set for him.”
“Isn’t that what the Trade Council does?”
