Page 32 of Saint
I considered just how honest I could be. “How do I know you’re not planning to sell me when we get to Ceros like Zola was going to?”
“I don’t trade people.”
“Then what was that out on the deck?” I asked flatly.
“A shipwright’s apprentice who couldn’t keep his mouth shut,” he answered. “Trust me, it’s a problem I didn’t ask for.”
So I’d been right. Nash wasn’t a sailor. He was a guild hopeful.
The helmsman leaned into the desk with both hands, meeting my eyes directly again, and a flick of heat raced over my skin, the buzz of something alive waking in the air.
“If you’re thinking about cutting loose in Sowan, that’s a death sentence. It’s a small village and you draw too much attention. He’ll find you.”
“What do you care?”
That question seemed to catch him off guard, but he recovered quickly. “If he gets what he wants, I don’t get what I want.”
It was that simple. Those were the clearly defined rules that hadn’t changed once I crossed into the Narrows. It was every man for himself. And I was no different. I’d been thinking the same thing when I left Bastian.
Zola didn’t have the power that someone like my mother did, but he was a proud man. He wouldn’t forget what I’d done, and the Narrows was a small world. Our paths would cross again, and when they did, I needed to hold the upper hand.
“And if he starts telling people what I am?”
“He won’t risk it. Not when he’s this close to getting a trade license. It’s too likely you’ll be traced back to theLunaand if that happens, things won’t go well with him and the Council.”
It sounded like he was saying that as long I was on theRiven,I was safe. But nothing felt safe anymore.
“How did you end up on that ship?”
“A man named Simon.” I gave the answer more easily than I’d meant to. I wasn’t even sure if it was information Ishould keep to myself. “I asked for a way out of the city and he gave me one. I didn’t know about the gem sages.”
He stared at the corner of his desk in an absent way, like he was thinking. Sifting through line after line of numbers and possible outcomes. But he spoke none of it aloud.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly. “The real one. The one you were born with.”
He didn’t blink, watching the war on my face as I contemplated lying again.
“You trusted me with your life when you got on this ship. But you don’t trust me with your name?”
It wasn’t that. The thing that made me want to bite my tongue was that Ididtrust him. I had absolutely no reason to, but I did. And I didn’t like that feeling.
“Isolde.”
This time, the truth of it was in the tone of my voice. The familiar way the word sounded on my lips. Even I could hear it.
“What’s yours?” I asked.
“I already told you.” He met my eyes again in that open way that made me feel like the ship was threatening to give way around me.
Elias.
The name he’d given me in the tavern. But I hadn’t heard a single person call him that, which meant that somewhere along the way, he’d picked up another. The one I’d heard Zola call him by—Saint. That name held an emptiness to it, like a gem with no song. But it also felt safer. Elias was somethinghallowed, and that made a string of silent questions dance on my tongue.
I wanted to ask, but instead I held his gaze in an excruciating silence until, finally, his eyes fell back to the ledger.
With that, I was dismissed.
I picked up my dredging belt from the chair, setting it on my shoulder, and opened the door. But before it closed, I peered through the crack, finding Saint again. He leaned over the desk, running one hand through his hair as he wrote. His bandaged hand was bleeding through the wrapping, but he didn’t seem to notice.
