“By God and all the saints.” She didn’t have to remember to lower her voice. The breath to raise it had gone out of her, leaving her winded and dizzy as she stared upward. The sword hung from her hand, a motionless, alien weight.
Toinette had sailed for a long time, and wandered before that. She’d seen red tides on the beach and blue fire wreathing ships, men who walked barefoot over hot coals and beasts out of a drunkard’s legends. The light above the trees was nothing that she’d ever even heard of.
“There’s more,” said John, and gestured. “Watch the trees.”
When the next flash of light came, Toinette saw what he meant. The night was calm. A faint breeze stirred from time to time, but it wasn’t enough to lift a strand of her hair. Despite that, the trees on the cliff thrashed as if in a gale. Their tops stood out against the light, malformed fingers clawing up toward a goal Toinette could not know and did not want to imagine.
“Earthquake?” she asked, but doubtfully. The sand beneath her feet was as stable as any ground she’d ever trod, nor did it seem likely that the island could shake so violently not a mile from her while remaining solid where she stood.
“I looked to the cliffs before I woke you, Captain,” John said. “No stones are falling. Not even a pebble. I thought perhaps to climb the path and see what happened above, but—”
“No,” said Toinette.
The answer came more hastily to her lips than she could have explained. In all the scene before her, she could find no direct threat. Light and the motion of trees were nothing to harm a man. Yet, watching, she felt her hackles rise and her gut twist in an unease she’d never felt from storms or pirates.
From the relief on John’s face, he shared her sentiments. “It’s a foul night, Captain.”
“It is,” she said, and again could not have said why. Typically she used the term for storms, or at least the sort of rain that made everything stink of wet wool at best. The air was peaceful, dry, even warm. Toinette would almost have preferred sleet falling sideways. “Plenty of time to go up in the day. No sense breaking our necks on fallen logs, to start with.”
“Aye,” said John, and grimaced, but there was a hint of relief in it. Toinette had named a good solid reason for staying below. Now they could pretend that the other possibilities didn’t exist, or not speak of them, which would do almost as well. He sat back down on the wide rock outside the cave. “I’ll, ah, just wait out my watch, then. Sorry to wake you.”
“Don’t be,” said Toinette. “You did right. In fact”—she glanced up at the sky again—“I’ll wait with you, if you don’t mind.”
“I’d be glad of it. Best two of us are awake—in case the earth does shake or there is a storm coming up.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Toinette. “And, you know, it may be just that. The cliffs may simply keep the wind and the lightning off us, and the landscape can play funny tricks on a man.”
She didn’t know if either of them truly believed her, but she was glad to have said it. Nor did she particularly want to reveal her other reason for staying awake: that she didn’t much like the prospect of sleep just then.
Toinette settled herself down onto the rock by John. As with all of the men save Raoul and Sence, they’d spent nights enough just so in the past, when the horizon looked threatening or there was unrest in port. Trouble was nothing new. You stayed quiet, you stayed awake, and you kept a hand on the hilt of your sword.
If that hilt was less comfort than it ever had been, John didn’t speak of it. Therefore, Toinette thought, there was no reason for her to broach the subject.
Thirteen
Come the morning, Toinette gathered the others and told them. Better that they hear it from her, and all together, than that the story spread from man to man and grow distorted in the telling.
She laid the matter out with all the calm she’d learned in her life. She spoke of northern lights, desert mirages, and rings around the moon, and of how she’d seen it rain on one side of a street and leave the other dry. “There could have been a storm up there we didn’t get down here,” she said.
In daylight, with the trees calm against clear blue sky, Toinette could believe herself more easily. No matter that she’d seen no clouds; the light might have obscured them. And if the light hadn’t looked like any lightning she’d ever seen, well, neither had she ever been in this part of the world before. Doubtless a sandstorm had seemed demonic to the first man caught on its edges.
The men listened uneasily. All looked almost as tired as Toinette felt, including Erik, who’d not taken a watch the night before. “If you think it nothing, Captain,” Samuel asked, “why tell us?”
It was a good question, and a fair one. She could cheerfully have kicked him for asking. “So that you’ll not wake the rest of us if it happens while you’re watching tonight,” Toinette shot back, and regretted it when she saw John wince. She added, “And because caution’s not wrong. It might be nothing, it’slikelynothing, but we’ve no way of knowing. The world is often stranger than we think.”
“Even we,” said Erik.
Toinette added him to her list of people she could have struck. It wasnotthe moment, if one ever existed, to remind the men of their nature. She cleared her throat and lifted her chin. “And we’ll need to go back up there as long as we stay on this island. It’s wise to know the place as well as we can.”
“We’ll leave soon, though, yes?” Raoul asked.
“As soon as we repair the ship and replace the stores. We’ll get the wood for the first today. Perhaps I should go back up the cliffs with you, in that case. Erik won’t know how to choose for a mast.”
“But Marcus will,” said Erik, “and I vow I’ll abide by his decision.”
Toinette’s instinct was to contradict, and none too kindly:Will he know from the air, fool?She bit it back. No human shipwright could choose from the air, and yet they picked masts well enough. Marcus knew more of such arts than she did, in truth. It wasn’t Erik’s fault that she’d slept poorly the night before.
Settle yourself. Let your mind guide your tongue, not your temper.
