“You do this often?” I shout over the crash of waves below.
“When necessary.” He moves with infuriating confidence, his bulk somehow an advantage on terrain that should favor the small and nimble. “Watch your footing. The stone gets slick past this point.”
Gets
My twisted ankle protests every step. The gash on my hip has reopened, warm blood mixing with cold spray beneath my borrowed clothes. But I keep moving, because the alternative is admitting weakness to an orc who’s already seen too much of it.
The fog thickens as we descend, swallowing the fortress above until it’s nothing but a shadow against gray sky. Below, the Wrecktide spreads in all its terrible glory—reefs and wreckage,bones of ships and bones of men, all of it waiting to claim anyone foolish enough to enter its waters.
Somewhere out there, Oreth is waiting too. Counting the hours until sundown.
Six hours.
“Here.” Zoric stops at what appears to be solid cliff face. “The entrance is behind the fall of rock. You’ll need to climb.”
I study the stone. See nothing but weathered surface and the occasional stubborn plant clinging to cracks. “Climb what, exactly?”
“Feel for the handholds. They’re there.” He demonstrates, his massive fingers finding purchase I can’t see, hauling himself up and over an outcropping that hides a gap in the cliff. “The witch values her privacy.”
Of course, she does. Everyone in this cursed stretch of coast values something that makes my life harder.
I follow him up, my hands finding the handholds he mentioned—carved into the rock, worn smooth by centuries of use, invisible unless you know exactly where to look. The gap opens into a narrow passage that angles upward, lit by something I can’t identify. Not torchlight. Not daylight. Something older, dimmer, the color of things that grow in deep water.
Wards. I feel them the instant I cross the threshold—a pressure against my skin, a vibration in my teeth. The coins at my belt pulse in response, their hunger suddenly sharper, more focused.
“She knows we’re coming.” Zoric’s voice echoes strangely in the passage. “The wards tell her everything that crosses them.”
“Comforting.”
“She won’t hurt you. Probably.” He glances back, and in the dim light, his expression is unreadable. “Just don’t touch anything without asking. And don’t accept gifts.”
“Gifts?”
“The witch trades in favors. Sometimes she offers things that seem free. They never are.”
I store that. Another rule for another strange place, another person whose help comes with strings I can’t see until they’re already wrapped around my throat.
The passage opens into a cavern.
I stop. Stare. For a moment, I forget about curses and dead captains and the countdown to violence.
The space is larger than I expected—high-ceilinged, roughly circular, its walls lined with shelves that climb toward shadows I can’t penetrate. Every surface holds something. Dried kelp and preserved fish. Bones carved into shapes I don’t recognize. Bottles containing liquids that shift and swirl despite the stillness of the air. Charts and maps and books bound in materials I’d rather not identify.
The light comes from everywhere and nowhere—phosphorescence growing on the walls, in the cracks between stones, casting the entire chamber in shades of blue-green that make me feel underwater even though I’m standing on dry rock.
And structures only fall if their center fractures.
And in the center, seated on a chair carved from what looks like a single massive piece of coral, the witch waits.
She’s orc. That much is obvious from her weathered skin, her tusks, the breadth of her shoulders beneath robes that might once have been fine but are now weathered beyond recognition. But where Zoric carries his age in scars and hard muscle, this woman wears hers in wrinkles—deep grooves mapping her face, turning her features into something almost geological. Her hair is white as sea foam, braided with shells and bones and things that glint in the phosphorescent light.
Her eyes find mine. Hold. And I feel stripped bare in a way that has nothing to do with clothing.
“The cursed girl.” Her voice is wind over rocks, sand scraping stone. “And the captain who can’t outrun his sins. You two are quite the pair.”
Zoric stays near the entrance, too large for the cramped space despite its apparent size. “We need information, Thalira. About Oreth’s curse. About how to break it.”
“Break it?” The witch laughs—a sound that shouldn’t come from anything living, ice cracking, ships groaning as they founder. “Boy, that curse is woven into the bones of the sea. You don’t break it. You survive it, or you don’t.”
