I suddenly wished I was not alone with Monna, that Samuel were here and we could untangle this web together.
“So the Usti want you for your information, and the Ess Noti want to silence you before that happens?”I clarified.“And they will… do what, to us?”
Monna spoke with dread and an undercurrent of righteous anger.“They will take you if they can, kill you if they cannot.You areghiseau—your very existence is a danger to Mere’s sorcerous supremacy.”
“But if the Usti already know aboutghiseau… what is the pointof the Mereish still trying to keep their secrets?As you said, word spreads.”
Something shifted in Monna’s face, a frown that told me there was more to the tale.And she had no intention of sharing.
“The Ess Noti may already be close,” she said instead.“You and I are entwined now, and that, I suspect, will be a tipping point.You and your captain are in as much danger as I am, Mary Firth.”
My mind roiled.I wanted to discard everything Monna was saying, to explain it away and laugh at her, but I couldn’t.She believed this.She was afraid.And even if she was the greatest actress to ever take to the waves, could Samuel and I afford to doubt her?
“Where is Ben?”I asked.
“They were taking him to prison, but he will not be there long, either.They will realize who he is,whathe is, and the Ess Noti will come for him too.”
“What is he?”I asked, testing her.
“A Black Tide Son,” she replied, holding my gaze fast.“The Mereish are well aware of your people’s cult and their attempts at Mereish rituals.”
My skin crawled.Tane, too, was restless.She slipped from my flesh and reformed beside me—at first, a spectral mirror image of me in a woolen winter gown with modest hip pads, a shawl tucked into my bodice and my hair in a windblown braid.Then her form shifted, her face aging, her body becoming a little taller, a little harsher.A little less human.
Monna’s eyes rounded but her lips remained a hard, thin line.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys to Monna’s manacles.I set them on the floor between us, outside her reach.
“Tell me where Ben is.Lead the Ess Noti away from us, distract them if they come,” I said as my ghisting loomed and the cabin filled with indigo, Otherworldly light.“And I will set you free.”
SEVEN
Hart
SAMUEL
Iawoke to a soft light.Slowly my sleep-heavy mind registered the source, and I stilled.
A spectral stag stood over my hammock.His tines were huge, vanishing into the deck above, and his mane thick above powerful forelegs.His eyes of indigo sea-glass peered down into mine, and, despite their lack of soul, his stare brimmed with meaning.
He stomped and the ship shuddered.
“Awake!I’m awake,” I gasped.I rolled out of the other side of the hammock and tugged my breeches from the lines, abandoning all dignity to hop my way into them.“What is it?”
The ghisting could not verbally respond—I was noghiseau— but Hart abruptly shed his substance, sinking back into the wood of the ship and streaming through it towards the door then out into the passage.
I emerged into the companionway just as a small form barreled into me.
“Captain!”Ms.Poverly, the steward’s girl, squeaked as I set her back on her feet.Fourteen, red-haired and narrow-faced, she instinctively touched her forehead and panted out, “We’ve been boarded.They’re in the hold!Theywerein the hold—”
“Rouse the rest of the crew, call quarters.”I pushed her aside, gently but firmly, and hastened on.“And send me Ms.Skarrow!”
Poverly bolted and I resumed my pursuit of Hart’s snaking, guiding light.
The gun deck was a cacophony of shouts, jostling forms and swinging hammocks.Mr.Penn, quartermaster, shouldered his way to me.
“Two strangers, jumped out the gunport,” Penn grunted.“There’s a third still below, sir.He has Mary.”
Ghisten light flooded the hold as I descended the ladder.Half a dozen crew already surrounded two figures at the far end: Mary and a stranger in an unremarkable grey coat, long and concealing.He had lost his cocked hat, crushed nearby, and his hair was wet in the ghisten light.
