‘There’s no other choice for us,’ I tell her, holding her face in my hands. ‘We have to find what the queen wants.’
Biba puts her hand on my chest, her fingers cool on my skin. I feel a gentle warmth spread across my heart and lungs and see the talisman glow.
‘You rub it when you worry,’ she says.
I instinctively rub the charm and feel that soothing feeling spread across my skin, like the warmth of a hearth.
‘Words spoken freely like this are a gift,’ Narra says gently, and I feel the tension leaving my body. ‘We have all shared this space and let out our fears and our anger. Grudges are the heaviest of burdens to carry. She turns to look at me. ‘With the snuffing of this candle, let the past rest.’ She blows on the flame, and a plume of smoke dances around the room.
I find Morna waiting for me in the parlour a few mornings later, with an air of readiness and an eager expression on her face.
‘You’ve done it?’
She nods and leads me out of the inn.
We walk in silent trepidation through the narrow lanes and across the town square. Even in daylight, I’m not sure I would find my way through these passages without Morna. The streets are swarming, visitors sitting by the harbour, turning their faces to the sun like flowers. The aroma of spiced teas and roasting meat distracts me as we pass the traders, enjoying the influx of new visitors to these shores.
‘Not long now,’ Morna says, steering me past the seafront and towards her shop.
I step through the door, the tinkling of the bell an airy announcement as we make our way to the stacks of books. Morna has laid out several volumes on a table I hadn’t seen before, tucked into a nook behind the shelves. In the centre lies the map, surrounded by strange metal tools.
Morna invites me to sit and picks up the tools, examining them like a farmer her wares. ‘This is a quadrant.’ She handles something that looks to me like an instrument of torture. All curves and appendages, glinting in the sunlight that streams through the windows. ‘You can measure between the horizon and a celestial body.’ She pauses. ‘Like the sun or the moon.’
I have had this lesson before. Years ago, from my husband, the only other time I’d been to Umasa. His tools had been bartered for, worn from years of use. My memory of that lesson is as rusted as his old tools, so I watch carefully as she indicates each part of the quadrant.
She hovers her finger above the map, tracing the shape of Umasa and its isles, and then out to the blank nothingness of the sea. At the edge is the blot, the Lahon Maelstrom.
‘It’s not necessarily to scale,’ she says. ‘More an artist’s rendition, which is thoroughly unhelpful. But it’s the best we can do. One thing I did find fascinating—’
She breaks off, bringing a candle over to the table and holding the map over the flame.
‘Be careful!’ I surge forward, sure the paper will catch alight.
‘Trust me,’ she says, stilling my hands. ‘I found it accidentally. Quite miraculous, really.’
It takes a breathless moment for the light to glow through the paper and show the hidden symbol.
‘The royal sun,’ I whisper.
She quirks an eyebrow at me. ‘You’ve seen this symbol before?’
I avert my gaze. Only official quests and missives have such markings, and without the skill of reading, there’s not many reasons I would know this. It was the first thing Larkin would look for when negotiating our passage, the declaration that such quests were sanctioned by the crown. After all, that was the only way anyone would get paid.
She turns away and places the tools into a leather kit. She rolls it up and hands it to me, smiling.
‘You would give these to me?’ I ask, incredulous.
‘Of course. You’ll need them once you set sail. I’m afraid I don’t have everything you need, but hopefully someone else in your crew will have the other pieces.’
‘My crew?’
‘Well, you’ll need someone else to crew a ship, right?’
Holy Aistra, I haven’t thought about this at all. With Larkin it had been simpler. Commissions were going like morning rolls: small jobs for the crown, so many boats, so many eager crews. Most of them were eventually turned into Seaguardian vessels, commandeered for the crown. The queen wanted a strong navy, a defensive line across our seas. Then there were no more commissions. Except the big one, the evermore: the Lahon Maelstrom. First went the brave, then the reckless, and then the desperate. I suppose that’s what I am now.
I pause, chewing over my words before I speak them. ‘The sailor, Finlyr,’ I begin.
Her eyes sparkle. ‘You know about his past?’
