He glanced down—at his back foot angled slightly out, front foot straight on—and his smile grew wry.“Olsa cannot take everything from me.”
“Is she here?”I glanced behind him, startled.My heart rose.“IsHarpy?My mother?”
“Harpy, your mum and Demery are still south.I am here with the Uknaras, waiting for a ship back to Hesten.They were due for a trip home, and I was growing bored of watching Demery paint bowls of fruit.”Charles’s attention flicked to the ghisten ash, and I saw a note of caution in his eyes.“Have you paid your tithe?”
“Yes.”
Charles offered me his elbow.“Then come, we’ve taken up at an inn, and I know two Usti smugglers who will be very pleased to see you.”
I hesitated.Much had transpired between he and I, but a summer of recovery together had dulled those edges, and months of separation—since he had sailed for the Mereish South Isles with James Demery and my mother, Anne Firth—had nearly wiped them away.Charles had more than paid the price for his betrayals, and he had the scar at his throat to prove it: a knot of white amid the red of his cold-pinched skin, just visible between the warren of his beard and the weave of his scarf.
Reaching back to the tree, I rested the tips of my fingers on the bark for a few, gentle breaths.I heard voices, but distantly, as though my ears were covered.I saw visions—fragments of the tree’s history, of Tithe’s.I saw a great flood sweep up over the shoreline, all the way to the roots of this tree.I saw the digging of graves and the forging of marriages, couples joining hands in the ash’s shade on a summer’s day.I saw longboats with single red sails anchored in a harbor before Tithe as it had been.And, just for a moment, I saw light slip from my fingertips—a second spectral layer, sheathing my skin.
When the voices and memories ceased to flow, I turned back to Charles and slipped my arm through his.He was a little stiffer than I expected, his eyes lingering on the tree.
“Tane was giving her greetings,” I explained.
A muscle in Charles’s jaw visibly contracted.“I sensed as much.”
I let my eyes fall to the scar on his throat again.He kept it mostly covered—recovering from a mortal wound was not a topic he wanted discussed.Our company’s return from north of the Stormwall had already garnered far too much attention.
“What of you?”I tested.“Has the ghisting manifested?”
Charles cleared his throat and patted my arm with his opposite hand.“Let’s speak of these things next to a warm hearth with hot wine.”
I gave a soft murmur of acceptance and together we returned to Tithe and spoke of simpler things.
“Captain Demery is well established on the South Isles now,” Charles explained as we circumvented manure and tried not to break our ankles in deep-wrought sleigh tracks.“He bought his title and has barely left land since autumn.But your mother is mostly at sea, withHarpyunder her command and Old Crow serving as ghisting.They run goods between the islands.Demery paints and plays at being lord.Very dull if you ask me.Oh, I brought several letters for you—Anne expected we would run into one another sooner or later.”
We paused to let a stream of schoolgirls run past, braids bouncing down the backs of their fur-trimmed capes.As weighty as the mention of my mother was, and as eager as I was for more news of Demery andHarpy’s crew, my mind strayed after the children.Their happiness and freedom reminded me of my own childhood in a small village between the Ghistwold and the slate hills of Aeadine.Tithe felt similar to that Wold, with its ghisten trees in the graveyard and ghisten wood built into ancient houses.
But more than that, the children made me think—just for the briefest, weakest moment—of the future and of possibilities best left unspoken.
“I did wonder if you would be Mary Rosser by now,” Charles murmured, following my gaze.
I looked at him, perhaps too sharply.“I’m the first commissioned Stormsinger in hundreds of years, Charles.”
“And?”He looked confused.
“If Samuel and I were to take up…” I eased my arm from his as we stopped in front of an inn, The Captain’s Cut, where I could already hear busy chatter through the murky bottle-bottom windowpanes.
“Assumptions would be made.We have to set an example.Show the Winter Sea that Stormsingers should be willing allies, not traded goods.”
Charles snorted.“When did you become an altruist?Ouch!”
I flicked him in the forehead and prayed the chill of the wind concealed the flush in my cheeks.I felt insulted, exposed, embarrassed and convicted in the same breath.“Is this your inn?”
Charles rubbed at his forehead, nodding.“Yes, yes.Come in.”
***
Charles slipped into an elaborately wallpapered common room and led me past a series of tables girded by comfortable chairs.At the back, just past a blonde woman immersed in a stack of letters, sat a curtained alcove.A man and a woman were tucked within, she with one foot drawn up onto the bench, and he with a broadsheet in his overlarge hands—one of which was missing the ring and pinky fingers from the first knuckle.
“Mary!”Illya Uknara smiled broadly and exchanged his broadsheet for an ornate brass coffee pot, which he held over an empty mug.His Aeadine was heavily accented, sticky like toffee.“I have seenHartoffshore.Coffee?”
“Thank you.”I sank down on the opposite side of the round table, smiling at the woman as I did so.“Olsa.”
Olsa kept her foot on the bench, leaning forward to pat my cheek fondly.“Ms.Firth.Or is it—”
