Page 43 of Saint
“They’ll deny it until they’re two breaths from death, but they need a keeper,” she said.
I wanted to tell her I was no keeper. That I was just trying to figure out how to keep myself. But I’d likely never cross paths with the woman again and I couldn’t see what good it would do either of us.
“I’m just taking passage to Ceros.” I told her the truth.
The smirk did surface on her lips, then. “So, not a dredger after all.”
“I am.”
“Well,” She pointed a finger at theRiven.“There’s a ship, or at least, what’s left of one. And the beginnings of a crew.”
I watched the fog move over theRiven,Clove’s shape rippling across the deck. “I think my days of diving to fill the purses of traders and merchants are over.”
Emilia clicked her tongue. “That one’s a got a different kind of affliction, I’m afraid.” When she looked past me, her eyes found Saint. He stood on the docks, supervising as the crates of rye were rigged to pulleys.
She turned back to the cart and I watched her untie the leads, hands fidgeting with the crock of stew as I tried to decide whether to say the thing that had been stirring in me since the night before. “It—”
Emilia stopped, looking over her shoulder at me.
“It’ll be easier to hide in a year or two,” I breathed.
Emilia cocked her head to one side. “What will?”
“Hazel.”
As soon as I said her daughter’s name, Emilia stilled.
“She’ll get better at hiding it. Better at not reacting to the gems when she feels them.”
She let go of the leads, her boot finding the ground again. Her eyes searched mine, as if trying to unearth any threat that may lay there.
“It’s worse indoors. Louder, and harder to ignore. The merchant’s house in particular is difficult. I wouldn’t take her there.”
The humor she’d had seconds before was gone and for a moment, I wondered if she was considering drawing her knife. But she was silent, waiting for me to continue.
“It would help if someone taught her.”
“You offering?” she asked, her tone full of knowing.
I shook my head. “Like I said, I’m just going to Ceros.”
I remembered what it was like, to be surrounded by something in the air that only I could feel. The constant buzz and hum, the way it was almost never just quiet. But I’d had my father. Hazel had a mother who seemed more than capable of protecting her, but that wasn’t the same as having a teacher. Emilia reached a hand between us and I took it, shaking.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Perrie came back up the steps of the harbor, latching the back of the cart closed, and my fingers slipped from Emilia’s before she climbed back up to the driver’s bench.
“Don’t drown out there, dredger,” she called over her shoulder.
I smiled, pulling up my hood. I started down the stairs and up the dock until I reached theRiven.Then I climbed the ladder, dropping myself onto the deck. Clove was high up on the main mast, untying the lines on the sail, and on the upper deck, Saint latched the opening of the hold, his dark hair falling into his face as he heaved the iron lever into place.
“Where are the deckhands?” I looked up at Clove.
“Looks like life on theRivenwas a little much for Julian and Mateo.”
“They left?” I said, confused.
“Not the first time crew’s disappeared at port.” He climbed down, jumping from the pegs and landing beside me.
