Page 8 of Stealing Tink

I snarl at him, and he chuckles.

“Would you rather I demote him? I can do that for you, if you wish.”

He beckons me into the passageway, and I hesitate.

“It’s either come with me, or”—he nods toward the gaping hole in the floor and the ocean beneath—“but I think we’ve already established you don’t want to go that way.”

The Nomad must not plan to murder me inside his bedroom, because he takes me to his office, a room whose walls are warm cedar that match the brimming bookcases, their overflow on display in glass cases lined against the far wall.

He closes the door behind him but doesn’t bother to lock it. If the intention is to send a chill down my spine, it’s successful. No need to lock the door for a prisoner who has no chance of escape.

He walks to his desk, leaving plenty of empty space between me and the door. Another sign I read well enough—there’s no use in running. So I wander over to the desk, placing my fingers on the back of the chair instead of sitting in it. He gestures to the seat, but I stare at him stone-faced.

“Have it your way, then,” he says, then places his elbows on the desk, knitting his fingers together as he taps the pads of them against each other. “It was impressive what you managed back there. My captain of the guard and I had made bets on whether you would find the escape route.”

He doesn’t mention whether he bet for me or against me.

“There’s only one way off the ship,” he says. “That you figured it out means you’ll need minimal training.”

He glances at me, waiting for me to ask what sort of training. Perhaps he’s unaware of my condition after all. It won’t be long before he figures it out, surely, but I might swing a few days of him believing my silence is by choice.

Once he discovers I have no voice, he’ll find a way to exploit it. Those with power always do.

He watches me, a contemplative look wrinkling his brow. Once the silence becomes overbearing, he shakes his head, expression bewildered, but his response is not what I expect. “Looking at you, I almost forget…”

His desk drawer rattles as he opens it. He flicks out a sheet of parchment, then unstoppers the quill at his desk before pushing both toward me. I cross my arms.

“We could also sign, if you prefer,” he says.

I’d rather make no reaction, but I find myself swallowing. Had I been born without a voice, no doubt my adoring parents would have learned to sign and taught me early, but I was well past maturity when Peter deceived me and the Sister stole my voice. That was part of what made it so difficult to communicate with John in the beginning, back in Neverland. Besides, I’m Kruschian, and though I learned to speak Estellian, the common trading language, from childhood, I didn’t learn to write it until Lady Whittaker took Michael and me in. She’d taught me to write the Estellian script, the characters blocky where the Kruschian characters are fluid.

If I wanted to, I could use that quill to communicate with the Nomad, but I have so little power in this situation. Can hold back my words, though.

“Is there a manner in which you prefer to communicate?” the Nomad asks, barely able to hide the tension in his jaw, the polite facade beginning to slip.

In the pouch I’ve kept tied around my waist, I feel the comforting weight of John’s tiles—the ones he’d had Benjamin, one of the Lost Boys, carve for me, so I could communicate with him back in Neverland. Together, we’d spent hours crafting the perfect set of words. It’s not an easy way to communicate, not efficient by any means, but it had been the first semblance of a voice I’d had in years of being trapped on that cage of an island, in the cage of my own traitorous throat.

My fingers linger over the pocket, but my tiles are too precious to sully by using them to communicate with a man like the Nomad.

He sighs, which I find satisfying. Good to know that my lack of cooperation is an inconvenience.

“Fine,” says the Nomad as he pushes himself from his desk chair. He circles me like a shark would its prey, though differently than he does in my dreams. If I were asleep, his fingers would be trailing my shoulders, sliding up my throat to rest on my chin. As it is, he keeps his distance.

“Act coy all you want,” he says, “but we both know I’ve sparked your curiosity. ‘What could the Nomad want with a simple faerie like me? It can’t be faerie dust, not when a faerie could be more easily purchased than tracked, especially with coffers like his.’” Ah, dropping his riches seamlessly into conversation. Because I definitely wouldn’t have picked up on that from the size of his ship. “Well, I’ll be open with you,” he says.

I fight back a smile. One of the few advantages of silence is that it keeps people talking, trying to fill the gap—a subtle means to harvest information from those who would not normally hand it over.

“I’m in need of your assistance. There’s an artifact of considerable value that has captured my attention. For years, I have searched for this artifact, and then, once I identified its location, plotted ways to remove it from said location. Unfortunately, I’ve always come up against one barrier seemingly impossible to circumvent. That is, until I learned of you.”

He pauses, and then, circling back in front of me with a flourish toward the parchment and quill, says, “Here’s the part where you ask, ‘And why do you need me?’”

When I don’t respond, he scans me from top to bottom with those piercing eyes of his, then steps behind me—not touching, but close enough that if he breathes any deeper, his chest would likely skim my back.

His warm breath grazes my temple. “I must admit, I doubted I could get to you with a show of force. Something told me you’re too strong-willed for that. But I thought for certain you’d be curious, that I could set off a spark.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge as he whispers, “You’re not at all curious why I need you specifically?”

I don’t move.