That was one kind of honor, Cali supposed. “Lead on.”
She followed Bonnie down the gangway and onto the dock. She looked at the crews moving through the port and took inventory without meaning to. Gert stood, head bent in an intense conversation with a bandy-legged human she assumed was the harbormaster. A group of gnomes haggled with a halfling over what appeared to be a cage containing something both winged and spiked. A card game just outside a tavern appeared on the verge of tipping into a brawl until a bearded ranger cracked a joke and pocketed his trick card.
Once, her own crew would have walked through a place like this with enormous pleasure. Vaskel would have found someone to charm within the first five minutes. Lira would have been internally cataloguing dangers and clocking escape routes. Rog would have found a bar where he could spin a yarn over a few ales. Even Malek, sly as he was, would have found a dark wizard willing to trade in illegal charms. Pirrin would have flirted with someone’s husband or wife and nearly caused an incident, and they would have had to extract him with apologies and coin, andit would have been something they laughed over for years to come. Then she remembered her first crew and Adelaide and all the memories they didn’t get to make together.
She shook off thoughts that threatened to cloak her in sadness and focused on following Bonnie. The pirate’s strides were long and sure, and her cutlass bounced on her hip as crowds parted at her approach. She inquired about hellkins a few times, but frowns and head shakes were the only responses.
As they wound through narrowing streets and alleys, Cali’s nose twitched from the cacophony of spices that seemed to spill from every market stall and open window. Then she caught the yeasty scent of bread baking, which made her think of Pip with a sharpness she hadn’t expected.
Suddenly, longing engulfed her and pressed hard against her ribs. She was homesick, but not for the place she’d grown up or for a past she kept chasing. Homesick for Wayside. For Lira and Vaskel and Rog and Iris and even Sass, who would have had an opinion about every single person in this port and not kept a single one of those opinions to herself. How had the village weaselled its way into her heart and become home?
She almost laughed at the absurdity before remembering something her father had told her.
Sometimes we’re so busy looking ahead that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.
Had Cali been so busy thinking about the next quest and searching around the next corner for her lost love that she hadn’t realized what she had until she’d left it behind?
The pantheri looked up just in time to realize that she was about to be left behind in the middle of the port town. Bonnie turneda corner ahead of her, ducking into an alley strung with sun-bleached pennants, and the hairs on Cali’s neck prickled. This was the way to the island’s best place to eat?
Twenty-Seven
When Bonnie stoppedin a doorway that smelled of mildew and old fish, Cali squinted into the dark interior of a restaurant she would not have entered on a bet.
The smell would have been bad enough, but the floor was sticky and the dark paint was peeling from the walls in long, melancholy strips. Lanterns with cracked glass hung from hooks at irregular intervals, casting more shadow than light, and few lonely figures hunched over tables in the gloom, blades flashing at their waists and chests.
"Bonnie." Cali kept her voice low enough that none of the hunched figures could hear her. "When you said you knew a place to eat?—"
"Trust me," the pirate said without looking back.
Cali had heard those words before. They had, more often than not, preceded something involving running and dodging daggers. Still, she followed, because the alternative was standing alone in the doorway of a questionable establishment on an island that existed on no map, and that seemed worse.
Bonnie moved through the dim room toward a narrow door at the far end, past a bar where a man with no discernible eyebrows was polishing a glass with a dingy cloth. She pushed through the door without knocking, and Cali ducked in after her.
The staircase on the other side was steep and spiraling and made entirely of bamboo that sagged under her weight. It wound upward in a tight coil, and with every step the air grew warmer and fresher, losing the smell of the restaurant below and gaining something salt-bright. Her ears caught the distant cry of a bird, and when they emerged, Cali could only blink in surprise.
The top of the restaurant was a platform that clung to the treetops and emerged above the other roofs. It extended in an irregular oval around three of the thicker palm trunks, which grew straight up through cutouts in the floor and draped green fronds overhead to create a canopy. There were three tables, small and draped in white cloth that twitched in the breeze, and every one of them faced the view of the cove. The water below burned copper and gold in the setting sun, and beyond it, the horizon glowed.
Bonnie glanced back at her and grinned “You should see your face.”
"I didn't—" Cali started, then stopped. "I thought we were going to eat in the sticky room."
Bonnie laughed and pulled out a chair at the table closest to the railing. "The sticky room keeps people from looking for the stairs."
Cali sat down slowly, hooking her bow over the back of her chair as she took in the view. She could just make out the silhouette of The Cruel Mistress bobbing at the end of the longest dock,the swirls of color on her hull dimmed to something sultrier in the dusk. "I'll tell no one how pretty this is. It would ruin your reputation entirely."
Bonnie grinned. “Thank you.”
A girl appeared from between two of the trees, carrying goblets on a tray. She was young, with dark eyes and a pair of iridescent wings barely larger than her hands tucked against her shoulder blades. She set the goblets down, her large eyes flaring at the sight of the pirate captain.
Bonnie said something to the girl in a low voice, slipping coins across the table as she spoke. Cali caught the wordsprivate dinner, chef, whatever is good.The girl's wings fluttered as she scooped up the coins, and then she was gone, her footsteps a whisper on the bamboo.
Bonnie lifted her goblet, the pink liquid inside swishing. "To your first visit to Claw Island.”
"To my first visit,” Cali agreed, although she liked to think it would be heronlyvisit.
The drink was sweet, but she was certain that was a ruse. Cali took a second sip more carefully, noting the way the back of her throat had gone pleasantly numb, and set down the goblet.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the port town embrace the dusk. Below, a single lantern had been lit on the deck of The Cruel Mistress, and its reflection made a long gold scratch across the darkening water.
