Page 35 of The Isles of the Gods
By afternoon, I’ve decided Prince Leander is the most annoying boy it’s ever been my bad luck to meet. I didn’t think he could beat the rumors about him, but here we are. Looking back to how I snickered when I imagined the scholar trying to dodge him on the voyage, now I’m wondering if I can harness our scholar’s big brain to figure out a way to do it myself.
The only thing on my side is that I made the mistake of telling Abri I saw the prince without a shirt this morning, and she’s volunteered to bring him all his meals from now on.
“You,” she said firmly, “have lost your mind, Selly Walker. That is literally ahandsome princestanding on the deck of our boat. If you don’t want to talk to him, you can bet I will.”
Every time I look at him, he’s ready with a teasing smile. He knows what he looks like, and he thinks he can use it to make me fall all over myself for his attention. By far the most irritating part is that this morning he charmed me almost aswell as he charms his spirits. By the time we were done talking, I’d half forgotten what he’s stolen from me.
Then Rensa sent me below to clear away his breakfast plates and make his bunk—mybunk—up for him, and I remembered. There he was, up on deck, smiling and showing me secret maps and flirting with every spirit in sight, and now here I was, makingmy own bedfor him to snuggle into tonight, while I’ll be stuffing my ears full of cotton, trying to ignore Jonlon’s snoring in a hammock in the crew quarters.
Prince Leander and his gold-threaded blanket are the reason I’m stuck with my captain for at least another six months. I won’t be forgetting it again.
“I don’t want you giving him any cheek,” Rensa said sternly from the doorway, while I muttered under my breath, yanking his blanket straight. “I thought for a moment this morning you might have managed to see his good side, but clearly I was mistaken.”
“What good side?” I shot back. “What are we doing here, Captain? This isn’t who we are—we’re a merchant ship.”
“That’s exactly why nobody will look our way twice, girl. As for what we’re doing, we’re playing our part. We’re trying to make sure this ship and every other in the Walker fleet don’t end up loaded past the waterline with Alinorish soldiers on their way to die on foreign ground.”
“By giving a lift to a boy who should have been there lastyear?”
“By giving a lift,” she replied. “Even small parts can be honorably played, Selly. Nobody will ever know what we’re doing here, if all goes well. That won’t mean it matters any less.”
I bit my tongue, because there was no reply to that, and goton with making the prince’s bed, trying not to think of what lay ahead.
Half a year of the worst watches, the messiest jobs, and being left out of every worthwhile conversation on the ship.
Right now he’s standing in the stern with Kyri and Rensa, pretending to be interested in navigation but really being interested in Kyri, who’s laughing and tossing her head and showing him exactly where to put his hands on the wheel. I’m sure he headed in that direction because he saw it was where I was heading, and he’s figured out I’m not interested in another conversation. So he’s trying to bait me.
I turn away. Retrieving the line I was working on splicing before my lunch, I glance around to check nobody’s near, then peel off my gloves and unpick the end so I can braid it together with the new section.
Taking up a spot in the lee of the mast, I’m warm and sheltered. When I close my eyes, the sun shines red through my lids, and with theLizabettaromping along, surging down the waves, I set to work forgetting the prince is there at all. Forgetting we’re on this mad quest. Forgetting theFreya,already on her way up north to Holbard and taking with her my last chance at joining my father.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been working when there’s a yell from the lookout. I can’t make out the words, but there’s something in Jonlon’s voice that has me on my feet in an instant. I shove my knife into my belt as I crane my head back. The sun dazzles my eyes, tears streaming, as I blink him into focus.
His arm is stretched out northward, toward the horizon that hides the coast of Fontesque, or maybe Beinhof, and whenI duck around the mast, there’s smoke astern. A dark, ugly smear a long way back, just starting to rise from the sea.
It can’t be land, and it isn’t a signal. It isn’t a natural cloud, not in this clear blue sky.
It’s a fire aboard a vessel.
My hand flies to my belt to check for my eyeglass, and then I’m throwing myself into the rigging before the thought’s complete, the rope burning my palms. Grabbing at spars and lines, I heave myself up without a care for my hands. It’s only when I reach the crosstrees that I stop, glancing down at Rensa at thehelm.
With a wave of her arm, she urges me higher. Prince Leander isn’t watching but standing at the railing, staring at the still-growing cloud.
A rope beside my head twitches, smacking me on the cheekbone, and I gasp against the sharp pain. Kyri’s below me, her auburn braid swinging as she climbs with quick efficiency.
I don’t wait but keep on ahead of her, scrambling over the rim of the crow’s nest to join Jonlon, already pulling my eyeglass from my belt.
I’ve sailed with Jonlon my whole life—he’s always been the big, quiet, comforting presence on my father’s ships, the antidote to his twin brother Conor’s sharp tongue and sharp wit.
Now his gaze is stricken, and without a word he slips behind me, taking hold of my shoulders and steadying me in place against the pitch of the ship. The roll of the waves is exaggerated up here, and I lean back against his broad chest as I search for the source of the smoke.
Kyri slithers over the rim and squeezes in beside us, takingJonlon’s eyeglass with a grunt of thanks. She and I share more than a room—like Jonlon and Conor, she’s the sweet to my sour, the one who hears my secrets in the dark. Even when things stretch and strain between us—when I remember that she’s our ship’s magician and my marks are useless, that she wears the first mate’s knot and Rensa’s made me into nothing—Kyri and I stick together.
Now she leans her shoulder in against mine to help her stay steady too. Braced against them, I scan the horizon until I find the telltale blur, twisting the halves of my eyeglass to bring it into focus.
It’s a funeral pyre.
Flames leap for the sky from burning ships, and I flinch as something explodes on one of them, sending bodies and debris flying past the remnants of tattered sails. I sweep on to the next ship, searching desperately for some sign of what happened—some sign of life, or survivors.
