‘I can’t go with you.’ Isobelle made herself keep going, her throat aching as she swallowed down a sob. ‘You can’t ask me to watch you die. I won’t do it.’
‘What are you saying?’ Gwen’s voice was icy cold, like Isobelle had never heard it.
‘I’m saying, if you walk out that door, then one way or another, survive or not, it’s over.’
Gwen’s silence stretched into eternity, as tears spilled down Isobelle’s cheeks. Finally, her voice a pained rasp, Gwen replied, ‘If Idon’twalk out this door, then call it what you want – my cowardice, his spell – it’s won. It’ll be over anyway.’
And without another word, she left.
28
I know you remember me!
The night was bitterly cold, with great purple swathes of cloud scarring the starry sky overhead. The intermittent moonlight shone through columns of diamond-dust snow, illuminating patches of deep indigo-ink sea. Wavelets caught the moon like sickly green froths of lace, and except for the frantic ringing of the harbour bell, silence gripped the once busy harbour.
Gwen kicked up angry clouds of powder with each step, her body shaking as if she were already in the thick of battle. She had not a single coherent thought until she reached the docks, where Henry was ringing the bell as if the brassy clanging was all that was keeping him safe from certain doom. Gwen had to cover the boy’s hands with hers and speak to him – rather more sharply than she’d meant to – before he stopped, staring at her with wide eyes.
‘We can do this,’ Gwen told him quietly. ‘Let’s go.’
‘But … but we can’t, Sir Gwen.’
Gwen looked up at the moon, which had slid behind one of those puffy scar-tissue clouds. ‘You told me once you could navigate this harbour with your eyes closed – are you telling me you can’t do it in the dark?’
Henry shook his head and raised a single trembling hand to point. Gwen followed the length of his arm until she saw it – part of a ship’s hull and a broken mast, jutting out at a sharp angle to the level dock, the rest of it submerged in the inky water.
TheElizabeth.
It was the only ship that had been destroyed.
Gwen stared at it, waiting for the swell of sympathy for the boy’s loss, for that ship was his livelihood as well as their only way of bringing the fight to the monster. But she felt only emptiness. She knew she ought to find that terrifying; what good was a knight without compassion? Instead, she felt only a deep but distant ache of confusion.
It’s over, rang Isobelle’s words in her ear.
Gwen had no feeling left. If she had any at all, she’d be in a heap on the ground, or running back to Isobelle to beg her to reconsider. But it was just … gone.
No fear, either – she noted that with a grim, bitter satisfaction. What a gift, to be able to fight, for once, without terror solidifying like lead in her veins.
‘Take someone else’s ship,’ Gwen said, scanning the harbour. ‘We’ll apologise later.’
Henry clenched his jaw, squaring it, his youthful face hardening into the lines and strong planes of the man he’d grow into in a few years. ‘No, lady.’
‘No?’ Gwen stared at him.
‘An unfamiliar ship, at night, with another ship out there – they’ve only one lantern lit. I might as well take an axe to someone’s ship right here, and doom the one out there to boot.’
‘But the monster, Henry – the ship is doomed anyway – where is the monster?’
The boy’s face tightened. ‘You won’t be able to miss it, lady.’
And with that, he fled. Gwen felt only the mildest surge of irritation. He was only a kid, after all – he’d shown the courage of a dozen kings sailing out with her every day, long past the point where most of the townsfolk had barricaded themselves inside their homes. She couldn’t blame him for giving in now, when everyone else around her had gone too.
The whole town. Tabitha. Hilde, Jane and Sylvie. Orson.
Isobelle.
A frothy, moonlit swell caught at Gwen’s attention – not a wavelet like the others, for it was movingperpendicularto them, against the winds and tide. And the moon was still behind its veil of cloud.
Then what is that light …?
