I caught my breath.My first breath.Olsa was a specter here, clothed in forest-green light edged with grey, but I was here in my entirety, my human skin—flesh and blood—glowing a soft teal, brushed with grey.
We looked down at the table, which was transparent save for the faint remnants of ghisting influence.The papers, as I expected, were invisible.
But the ink was not.Lined with the barest light, the text remained, transposed onto the spectral wood of the tabletop.
Another breath.
“See?”Tane inquired.Her voice was sonorous here in the Dark Water, audible in a way that she never was in the human world, unless she used my mouth.
Olsa tilted her head and paced, surveying the letters with furrowed brows.Then she grinned.In the human world, her physical body must have picked up Faucher’s cipher, because the lines of text rose into the air before us.The hands of her spectral body remained unmoving—one on the tabletop, one in mine.
The bizarreness of it all made my head spin.No wonder Samuel was terrified of losing his mind here.
“Look,” Olsa urged.
My third breath.I looked at the floating words, Usti and Mereish in scattered rows.Then I blinked.There were more words on the page now, hidden letters that transformed the key from illegible to… something Tane comprehended, but I did not.
Movement snatched my attention up just as a malevolent orange light plunged through the deck towards us.I had just enough time to glimpse wings and a beak—a huge, thick, clattering beak—before I let out my fourth breath in a shriek and toppled back into the human world.
I landed hard on my ass, tearing my fingers from Olsa’s.The older woman came back to herself half a heartbeat later, braced and calm.She cast me a high-browed look as the orange light extinguished, the Dark Water faded, the papers returned to their previous, inscrutable state on the table.
“It can’t follow us back,” I panted, needing her to confirm it.“Whatever that was, it can’t pass through.”
“No.But now we are aware that there is a dittama watching us in the Other,” she observed dryly.“Nothing should have foundus so quickly, and my Knowing affirms it.I think you should not Otherwalk until it moves on, at least aboard ship.”
“Happily.”I eased to my feet, aching and rubbing my back.“Why is it following us?I know the stories about ill omens and such, but… there must be a proper reason.”
“It is hunting.”
I cringed.“Hunting us?”
Olsa nodded and shuffled the papers.“So, I can read the key, though if that creature is fixated on us, this will take time.I will not be able to move in the Dark Water for long.The dittama cannot eat my spirit there, but it can harm Ris.”
I dusted off my hands, forcing my lingering anxiety aside and, all too happily, shedding any responsibility for the papers and their deciphering.Whatever they said, whatever secrets they held, I did not want them on my shoulders, anyways.
“Well, then,” I said, making for the door.“I’m going to bed.”
TWELVE
Hesten
Nine Months Ago
SAMUEL
Warmth seeped into every part of me from the fire and close-packed humanity, the rum in my belly and Mary, her arms wrapped around my bicep, her hair spilling onto my shoulder.
The fiddler lulling the tavern into somnolence drew the last note from her instrument.The clapping was heartfelt but slow, attesting to her success.
“Captain Rosser!”
Mary quickly disentangled as a man set his tankard down on our table then proceeded to shrug off his jacket.
“Damn hot in here,” the man blustered as he sank into a chair and fanned himself expansively with his hat.He was a thin, fit fellow, with flushed cheeks in a pale-skinned face—Southern Aeadine, a Whallish if I ever saw one, with the personality to match.
“Please, join us,” Mary muttered sardonically.
The man scowled at her, then squinted at me.“This your Stormsinger?”
