Page 97 of The Isles of the Gods
“I’ve gone my whole life without ever looking beyond the deck of my own ship,” she says quietly. “Rensa used to talk about it all the time. Used to say that I should. I guess I’m going to take her advice. I told you on theLittle Lizabettathat I was getting you to the Isles, if I had to sail you there myself. So be it.”
“You’re…”
“I lost my crew for this, my ship. What’s happening is bigger than them, bigger than us. If this is the start of a war, we have to keep the gods out of it, whatever it costs.”
Keegan reaches inside his shirt to touch the gold necklace there, then curls his fingers around it, pulling it over his head.
“I’m going to be too late to start this semester anyway,” hesays.
“Keegan, I—”
“I was always more interested in our schoolwork than you were,” he says, his tone thoughtful, continuing as if I hadn’t spoken. “I knew it was important to study history. To learn from it.”
Guilt lances through me. If I’d thought the same, we wouldn’t be here.
He glances across, reads that on my face, and waves the thought away. “What I mean to say,” he continues, “is that, like Selly, I am forced to reconsider my previous beliefs. Sometimes one must study history, Your Highness. But sometimes one must make it. Whatever it costs.”
PART THREE
THE SHIP ON THE HORIZON
JUDE
The Tenements
Port Naranda, Mellacea
I’ve been thinking about money all day.
Nothing in our apartment is worth very much on its own, but together, if I sellallof it and combine it with the bonus I’ve got coming from Ruby…perhaps that’s enough to get Mum and me out of the city before this thing blows up. I’ve been running the numbers over and over in my head, trying to make them add up.
It’s not about what I want, not anymore. It’s not about what I could or what I should do.
It’s just about finding a place to hide. There’s no redemption waiting for me, I know that, and no way back to who I used to be.
I haven’t wanted to look like I’m planning anything, so I’ve kept up my routine—I’m on my way back from training, muscles aching, sweat still drying, heart still beating faster. I’mcovered in bruises from my last bout, but if I fight this weekend and pull in a decent purse, that’ll make what’s coming easier.
I have to get out of the city—that’s what matters.
Before, I was just a boxer and an errand boy, and if one of those things was a relief and the other a necessary humiliation, they were both paths I could live with. But I stood by and watched Laskia kill and kill again, and I might as well have fired the bullets myself.
And then I ran from my friend—right after I thought about turning him in.
I looked at him, and I thought about betraying him.
I don’t deserve Leander’s help. That’s the truth of it.
I reach the crossroads of New Street and Porter Lane and find myself stopping without thinking about it. I’m on the edge of the tenements, and I pause to look up Porter, toward the club where it happened. The place where everything that wasn’t already unraveled began to come undone.
I was only there to see Tom, and even now I nearly let myself take a step in his direction. I can already see his easy smile lighting up as I make my way in through the door, feel how my heart will slow in his gentle presence.
He’s a bartender at Ruby Red, and he’s usually in before they open for the evening, polishing the glasses, cutting up garnishes. Sometimes I head there before the doors open, and we talk. Sometimes I pick him up after work, and we don’t.
There’s no arrangement between the two of us. Nothing agreed. We’re really not anything. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, but I could never drag him into my disaster of a life—even though I know he wishes I would. Despite his offers, I keep a distance between us.
I barely ever go in the evenings—I can’t afford the drinks there—but everything’s falling apart, and I wanted to see him, and I thought…
If only it hadn’t beenhisclub Leander walked into last night. It could have been worse—it could have been the Gem Cutter, the club Ruby uses as her personal headquarters—but if only he hadn’t ended up at Ruby Red, where Tom was working, where I decided to head at a time when I so rarely do, because I wanted to see him….
