Page 102 of The Isles of the Gods
If I’m tight with our cash, and I bargain hard, perhaps it’ll be enough to get us a boat down the coast. I don’t know what they’re worth here.
After that, I sell my dress. It takes an extra few minutes, but I take it back to Hallie, and she greets me with a quick, sympathetic smile.
“Didn’t work out?” she asks.
A bitter laugh escapes me. “Turns out it didn’t.”
“I heard what happened at the docks,” she says tentatively, slipping it onto a hanger and lifting it onto a rack. I feel a little pang as the green beads are hidden from sight. But I have no use for it where we’re going. I have no use for it anyway—clothes like that belong in Leander’s world, not mine. “You all right to get out of town?”
“I will be,” I say, torn between gratitude she thought to ask and wariness at revealing too much of my thinking, even toher.
She grimaces, then digs in her till, pulling out a ten-dollar note. Leaning over, she presses it into my hands.
“You only owe me five,” I say. That was what she promised—and I only paid her eight. I won’t be the guy in the pawnshop. I won’t be anything like him. “And that was if it was in good condition. I climbed a tree in it, to tell the truth.”
Now it’s her turn to laugh, and it’s a musical sound, over too soon. “Take it,” she says. “And good luck. Maybe one day you’ll be back in town, you can come and buy another.”
I gaze at her, then nod my thanks, a lump in my throat.
It just doesn’t make sense that she’s so kind, when a few days from now we’ll all be trying to kill each other.
I use the money to buy warm hats and coats for us all—though the Isles will be hot, we won’t make it there if we freezein the big seas waiting in our way—then duck into an outfitters bustling with panicked sailors, working my way quickly along the shelves.
The only place I’d feel more at home than this little shop would be the deck of a ship itself, and still my nerves are singing.
I can smell tar and wax and wood polish, and the shelves are built from timbers I think might have been part of a ship once. They’re stacked with all the everyday items that have always been a part of my life, from knives to splicing kits, to spirit flags to the little jars of spices so many sailors keep in their pockets to season boring meals on long trips.
I pick up a string of spirit flags, and leaf through the charts until I find one with the level of detail I’m after. Next I scoop up a neat little navigator’s kit, the tools nestled inside blue-dyed leather, and lay down money I can ill afford to spend.
I have only one more stop—the harbormaster’s office—and it’s carnage inside. Not the usual friendly chaos of sailors logging arrivals and departures, bargaining with merchants, and catching up with friends.
Instead, there’s a frenzied note of panic as voices rise; clerks hurriedly scribble out departure papers, some working quickly, others glancing at the door, fearful the guard will arrive at any moment. I can see captains abandoning the attempt, breaking into a jog as they turn for their ships without the proper paperwork, while others argue helplessly, pushing money across the counter to speed the process along.
I squeeze past an angry man with a sharp Alinorish accent, and between two Nusrayan women, their hair shaved to a softfuzz. The crowd pushes me up against the wall when I finally reach it, and I brace with my forearms to stop myself from being crushed.
The train timetables I was hoping for are here, though—sometimes cargo that comes in on ships ends up on trains heading away from the port, and the tattered list of schedules is pinned up between information on grain prices and an ad for a ship’s cook.
The timetable is in cramped print, with row after row of names and times. I squint to make out the tiny words, trying to remember what the boys told me about how to read one of these, running my gaze down one column, then another.
There’s a line along the coast, down to the southern tip of Mellacea, where it meets up with ships heading out to Brend’s Gate, the island below the continent. Ships pass between Mellacea and Brend’s Gate before they turn up toward the North Passage and Holbard. It’s the route my father took a year ago.
There’s a handful of villages along the way, and the map I bought tells me at least a few of them should have fishing fleets. So that’s where we’ll stop and bargain for a boat.
The timetable says we can be on a train in forty-five minutes if we hurry, with only one more departing after it—less chance for anyone to follow us.
Head down, I push my way out of the harbormaster’s office, and though I don’t have much time to waste, I throw in a few loops and extra turns on my way back to the boys.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I return to the filthy little courtyard and catch sight of Leander’s dark eyes peering out from behind the crates. I slip in beside him where the boys arecrouched, my arms full of supplies, and he reaches over anyway to weave his fingers through mine.
“If we get moving now, we can be on a train south to Port Cathar in just over half an hour,” I say by way of greeting, squeezing his fingers hard. It feels like anchoring myself against a current that wants to sweep me away.
“That’s where we want to be?”
“Well, it’s on the train line,” I say. “The way it’s positioned on the coast, I’d say their main income is fishing. That means we should be able to buy some kind of boat with the money we’ve got.”
“If anyone comes asking after us, we’ll be more memorable in a smaller port,” Keegan says, “but the odds of anyone tracking us must surely be lower than they would behere.”
Leander nods as he releases my hand, and I begin to pass out the clothes I bought for the boys.
