A far-off growl of thunder answered me.
We plodded along, our pace hampered by my case. But the mare seemed happier to travel this way; with no bulky cart to pull and the tide disappearing, she seemed calmer and even nudged my hand companionably.
It wasn’t long, however, before a new sound reached my ears.
I turned, squinting back through the drizzle to the mainland. Two dark shapes, speeding toward me down the causeway. The noise I heard was the beating of hooves.
Riders. I would have to make way.
I moved to the edge of the causeway and stepped off it, yelping as icy water curled around my boot. I teetered for a second, then sat down hard on the stone.
The gray mare whickered as I scrambled to my feet. By now, the riders were almost upon us, and I turned to face them, my cheeks growing warm. They’d already had to pick their way carefully around the cart. Now the mare and I would slow them down further.
The first of the riders pulled up abruptly, reins snapping, his stallion’s mane tossed wildly by the breeze. For it was a man—a young man—standing in his stirrups to peer at me. I caught an impression of fine clothes, fashionably cut. A lean, rangy frame. A practiced ease in the saddle. I quickly brushed the grime from my travel-worn garments.
Cantering up behind him came a much shorter and older man, suntanned, his long dark hair streaked with gray. He was dressed in servants’ livery, a deep, rich violet.
“Who are you? Why do you trespass on our land?” The young man’s voice was frosty, his accent well-heeled. He pulled his steed around, and I could see him more clearly. Brown-gold hair, slicked back but tousling in the rain. Smooth featured, striking, but in a fine-boned, birdlike sort of way. He was dressed in deep navy, a froth of lace at his collar; laconite glinted down his chest and on his cuffs.
“Corith Fraine,” I said, raising my voice above the din. “House Shearwater’s Floodmouth.” I swallowed painfully. “TheirnewFloodmouth.”
His lips tightened. “Brigant Shearwater is my father.”
I’d suspected as much. I wondered if I ought to bow.
“That broken-down cart back there,” he continued. “That was yours?”
I nodded, knowing my cheeks were still pink.
He tipped his chin, indicating the gray mare. “You and your horse will drown if you continue as you are. You do realize it is the middleof archwater? That the returning high tide will catch you in”—he consulted a pocket watch grimly—“a little over a quarter of an hour?”
I blinked, then turned to look out at the dark island. Certainly more than a quarter of an hour away at the glacial pace the mare and I had been maintaining.
“Why are you alone?” called the long-haired man behind him. He had a low voice, neat features, weathered and furrowed skin. “You should have at least one guardian with you if you came all the way from Arbenhaw.”
Hearing the name of my former home felt strange.
“They…preferred to remain on the mainland,” I said diplomatically.
He shifted in his saddle, a shade of suspicion entering his gaze.
The Shearwater studied me, looking over my grubby garments, and I flicked my eyes away, uncomfortable under that close stare. But he only shook his head, as though something far more pressing occupied his thoughts. As though my presence—my predicament—was an irritating interruption. “You didn’t think to at least look at the tide tables in Port Rhorstin? Everyone in this region knows the tide times by heart. Those who don’t dice with death, sooner or later.”
My face heating, I thought of the engraved plaques in the square, the dense rows and columns of symbols and figures. And I thought, too, of Zennia. She’d surely have learned them, at least by the time the accident happened.
I caught the young man try to throw off a small shudder.
“We left on time, but…well,” I answered stiffly, gesturing to the broken-down cart. It wasn’tmyfault it had fallen to bits.
“If you’d known the tides, you’d have known to ride your mare, or turn around and return to the mainland if you couldn’t.”
The man behind him cleared his throat. “Speaking of the tide, my lord…”
“Hells,” the Shearwater whispered. He darted another glance at his pocket watch, then beckoned me. “Come on, quickly. Hand that case up to Tigo. We don’t have time to idle here any longer.” He eyed me, suddenly wary. “You’ll have to sit up with one of us.”
“I’ll take her,” said the man called Tigo. “Pepper here is bigger.” And indeed, his black stallion was the largest I’d seen. Circling Pepper, who harrumphed at me dubiously, I passed my case up, then clambered into the saddle.
In the distance, I realized, I could no longer see the sea.
