Page 8 of Saint
“What was that, dredger?” Burke eyed me over the helm.
“Just a bit of fun,” I lied, hooking my thumbs into my belt. My hips felt bare without the weight of my dredging tools. I couldn’t get used to it.
He jerked his chin to one of the deckhands, signaling for him to take over the wheel, and waved me toward the passage that led to the helmsman’s quarters. I let out a long breath, staring at the carved wood trim that adorned the door.
I’d had exactly one crew to choose from when I went to Simon and asked him to put me on a ship out of Bastian. The helmsman of theLunahad taken me on without question when he read Simon’s letter, and he had only one requirement: that I sign a one-year contract to dredge for him. It was a small price to pay when it wasn’t my own name at the bottom of that parchment. I wasn’t Isolde anymore. I was Eryss. And I was finished diving for anyone but me.
As soon as we got to Ceros, I’d leave theLunaand never look back. There was no recourse against a dredger who’d broken her contract if she didn’t actually exist. Not even in the eyes of the new Trade Council.
The work of the crew beat on the upper deck as I ducked into the passage, and I flattened myself against the wall when the stryker came barreling through with a plucked pheasantclutched in each hand. Burke was already relaying the ordeal with the rat to the helmsman when I came through the door, and he didn’t look pleased.
Zola’s black eyes lifted to me as I stepped inside, but he didn’t stand from his chair. He was a peacock with dull feathers, obviously from the Narrows, and I wasn’t sure what he’d been doing in the Unnamed Sea in the first place, much less how he’d been allowed to drop anchor there. The only explanation was that he had a scheme of some kind, one that must benefit someone who mattered. But it took guts to waltz into Bastian with no permit. I’d give him that.
“Eryss?” Zola looked to me, waiting for an explanation.
I kept my tone light, careful not to meet his eyes for too long. I didn’t like how he was always trying to hold my gaze.
“You know how crews are.”
“Yes, I do,” he said.
He set down the quill in his hand, abandoning the letter he was writing, and my eyes lingered on the humble quail feather it was crafted from. My mother gifted the loyal merchants and traders who did her bidding a quill made with the glossy, black-tipped feather of a whistling swan—a symbol of repute. A kind of imperious crown for those she deemed worthy of her attention and evidence that you had Holland’s power behind you. But this man was just a would-be trader who would not only be unlikely to recognize me, he’d never be important enough to catch my mother’s notice.
“I can’t afford to lose my new dredger,” he continued.
Mynew dredger.
The words made my teeth grate. The very fact that I was standing here was proof that for the first time in my life, I didn’t belong to anyone. But someone like Zola would never understand that. He’d probably only ever belonged to himself.
“Move her up here until we get to Ceros.” Zola directed the order to Burke.
My brow pinched. “What?”
“You’ll stay here in my quarters until they’ve had some time to get used to having a Saltblood on board.”
Saltblood.The slur was a demeaning one, used to identify people from the Unnamed Sea, where the water was like a bitter brine. Here in the Narrows, the sea was diluted with the fresh water of the rivers that dumped from their shores.
“That’snotnecessary,” I said, a little too forcefully. “And I don’t care if they get used to me. I can take care of myself.”
“You signed a contract. And if someone decides to gut you in the middle of the night, I’ll have lost a dredger before we even get to our first dive.”
The helmsman had lofty ideas about running dives once the new Narrows Trade Council granted him a trade license. But he was fooling himself. TheLunawasn’t equipped for gem dives and not a single preparation had been made. I hadn’t even seen a tide map among the charts in his quarters. The man had no idea what he was doing.
“I’ll sleep in the crew’s cabin. Like everyone else.” The words came out flat. I wasn’t politely declining. I’d rather get stuffed into a trunk in the cargo hold and left for a few days than sleep in Zola’s quarters.
His hands splayed on the desk as he pushed himself tostanding and the length of his black coat slid from the stool, dropping to his ankles. His gaze was locked on mine as he came around the desk and stopped so close to me that when he looked down into my face, the buttons of his jacket brushed my sleeve.
His silvery eyes were cold as they held mine, and after a moment, they moved, traveling down over my mouth, to my chin.
“I can replace any deckhand or stryker or bosun with a hundred others in Ceros,” he said. “But Simon said you’re a dredger with uncommon skill. Those aren’t easy to come by.”
My eyes narrowed on him, my heartbeat ticking up just a little as I searched his eyes for any deeper meaning behind the words. But there was no way Zola could know I was a gem sage. My father had made sure of that.
“I can take care of myself,” I said again.
“Fine.” His tone soured as he drifted forward another inch, letting his height loom over me, but I didn’t budge, keeping my feet planted. He wanted me to be afraid of him, and I was. But I wasn’t going to let him see it.
His head finally swiveled to Burke. “Anyone touches her, and they’ll lose a limb of their choosing.” The words grew spines.
