Across the Darkling Sea Read online

  He watched as she approached, and she felt her hands begin to shake. Was he a warlock or just a boatsmyn? As far as she knew, the only warlock she’d ever been close to was Grag, but she had no memory of ever seeing him. She wondered again if a warlock would recognize her as magic instead of mortal. The thought terrified her so thoroughly that she could barely step forward.

  Ling desperately pushed the fear away. She had to give the impression of strength, not weakness. She wrapped herself in a blanket of confidence she didn’t feel and smiled at the guard.

  “I’d like to book passage to Dreggs,” she said, getting straight to the point. The guard shifted the cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other and stared at her.

  “Dreskin sent me. Said I could book passage on the Courser. This is the Courser, isn’t it?”

  “Is.” The man’s voice was rough. “Dreskin, huh?”

  She nodded as the man lifted the cigarette out of his mouth, tapped the ashes into the water beside the ship, and lodged it back between his lips.

  “You’ll find the captain’s quarters at the rear of the ship. You’ll know it when you see it. Be quick about it, and don’t go a-wanderin’ or you’ll find trouble you can’t handle.”

  She believed his words wholeheartedly. She doubted she could handle anything she found on board this ship.

  She nodded as she stepped aboard, snatching a closer look at the contraption anchored to the side of the ship and the glyphs as she passed. She hurried toward the far end of the ship, keeping one hand on the deck railing as she moved. She’d grown up on and around riverboats, but she’d never set foot on the sea. Rivers flowed, but even in the harbor the sea bobbed, and the difference made her feel unbalanced and clumsy.

  The guard had spoken true. The Courser was a sleek ship made for speed, not comfort. There was only one cabin on the deck, and it glowed softly in the darkness. She rapped three times on the door.

  “Come.”

  The voice was soft and feminine, commanding. Ling opened the door and stepped into a small but richly furnished chamber well lit with warm lantern light. The captain sat in a deep chair in a corner of the space, a book held open in front of her and a steaming mug of something that smelled quite delicious beside her.

  As Ling stepped into the room, the captain closed the book gently, her hands caressing the pages almost reverently, and turned her gaze to Ling.

  “It’s quite late for the likes of you to be out and about, isn’t it?” Her expression was open, eyes clear and wide, a smile curving the corner of her lips. She had short red hair and a wild splash of freckles across her tanned face, neck, and chest. She wore loose trousers that only made it down to mid-calf, a shirt clearly made for someone much larger than she, and bared feet.

  “I...” Ling cleared her throat, taken aback at the friendly regard and warm smile on the woman’s face. “I seek passage to Dreggs. Dreskin sent me.”

  “Marique,” the woman said.

  “Marique? I’m sorry, I must be mistaken then—”

  “It’s called Marique, not Dreggs. And who might you be?”

  “I’m Ling.” She felt like she should say more, but she didn’t know what. She slapped her lips closed instead.

  “The Scarlet broke up earlier this morning.” The captain’s eyes narrowed, and Ling wanted to squirm under their intensity.

  “Yes. Yes, I know.” She debated how much to reveal. Dreskin knew who she was. Knew what she was. He’d sent her here, to this ship, but why? She wanted to trust this woman, with her wide, friendly smile. But she couldn’t. Not yet. “I found him—Dreskin. This morning. He’s beat up, but he’ll be fine. I got him to a healer.”

  “Who?” the captain demanded.

  “The White Owl.”

  “In Ruggers? You brought him to Ruggers?”

  Ling couldn’t tell if the woman was angry or impressed, but either way, she didn’t want to invite any more questions. She shrugged, but said nothing.

  “Why’d he send you to me?” the captain asked. Her eyes shifted from Ling to the door behind her, and she gave a curt nod. Ling turned and saw a shadowed form nod once in reply and vanish from view.

  Why indeed, Ling thought. “He, um…he woke up for a while. We talked, or I talked. To keep him distracted. I told him I sought passage to Dre—Marique. He told me to come see you.”

  She forced her body to stay still rather than squirm with discomfort. If Hanner and Laera showed up, what would she do then? Ling shoved the worry aside; she’d think about that if it happened. For now, she just needed to secure passage. She’d volunteer nothing about herself or her journey that she didn’t have to. This ship ran the route to Dreggs, but she didn’t know if they’d be any more comfortable with a changeling on board than any other boat would be.

  The captain lifted the steaming cup to her lips and took several sips, eyes remote and considering, before turning back to Ling.

  “Well, he sent you to the right place. The Courser runs that route, and any friend of Dreskin is a friend of everyone on this ship. He’s a good man, he is. If your story checks out you’re welcome on board. We leave as soon as our last passenger boards in the morning. I’m Captain Drake. You’ll room with all the others. Come along, I’ll show you your berth.”

  The woman cradled the mug in both hands as she left the cabin, chatting amiably as she led Ling through a narrow door, down an even narrower set of stairs, and into a wide room strung haphazardly with hammocks. Ling’s stomach sank as she realized she’d have no privacy on this journey.

  “Take your pick, and tie a ribbon on whichever one you please. It’s all first-come-first-served on the Courser. It’s not an elegant ship, but it’ll get you there. It’s one of the few that will.” She placed one hand on the hull and smiled. “You have the run of the ship for the journey, save the engine room and my quarters. The cook keeps the stove hot ’round the clock, so help yourself when you’re hungry.”

  “Engine room?” Ling asked, her tongue rolling over the unfamiliar term.

  “You’ll know it when you see it. Loud, belches smoke. Stay away from that and anything else loud and smoky on this ship, and you’ll be fine. Now, if you’ll pardon me.”

  “Wait,” Ling said. The captain turned back toward her expectantly, eyebrows raised in question.

  “What about...what about the others?” Ling hated the way her voice quivered at the question.

  “The others? You mean the other passengers?”

  Ling nodded.

  “Your first trip over, is it?”

  Ling nodded again.

  “They are an odd sort, but they’re harmless enough long as you give them the respect they’re due.” The captain smiled warmly. “You’ll not run afoul of them, polite as a new lamb as you are.”

  She spun back to the door and left, leaving Ling alone. She could hear the water slapping gently on the hull as the ship rocked. She found the hammock nearest the door, tied a ribbon on one end of it where she thought it’d be most visible, and climbed in. It was dim, but otherwise not bad down here. It smelled like the sea, salty and clean, and the gentle rocking was soothing. She slid the grimoire from its bag, opened it to a blank page, and began to write.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ling crept up toward the deck, dread weighing her down with every step. She’d awoken expecting to be in her own bed, but had instead found herself in a hammock on a strange boat with an even stranger book resting on her chest. She was on the Courser, according the book, or the grimoire as she referred to it in her writing. A ship, not a riverboat. Headed for Marique, not Dreggs as the folks in Brielle called it, and there would be warlocks aboard. Or so she’d gathered from Captain Drake’s comment about them being nice enough.

  She stopped at the door and peered out onto the deck. It was early still, but the sun was warm for a late fall day, the sky wide and blue and stretching so far she half thought she could see it curve at the horizon. It was the perfect sort of day for sailing. Except she was a changelin
g, hunted, and very alone.

  Still, there was a strange sort of comfort to the rhythm of the ship. The Courser bobbed as the waves lifted and dropped her, but otherwise she seemed the same as any riverboat. Feet thudded on her deck, boatsmyn shouted, ropes creaked, and metal clanged as a crisp sea breeze blew by them. If Ling tried hard enough, she could almost forget the strange tale the book related and pretend she was back home, aboard one of her father’s boats, safe and loved and cherished.

  She slowly made her way to the dock side of the Courser. The boatsmyn were polite, tipping a hat or nodding a greeting before hurrying on their way. Cargo was being loaded onto the boat’s decks to be stowed and lashed tight. She found a perch where she could see the action but be well out of their way, and she settled in to watch.

  She could not deny a certain amount of curiosity about who her shipmates would be. She’d always been fascinated by magic, curious about it, and today she’d be as close to magic as she’d ever been. Real magic—not just the toys she’d found at the Shadow Market. Without a doubt, everyone back home would chide her for her curiosity. They saw Dreggs as a place of monsters, pirates, and eldritch magic, a place decent people feared naming except in the harsh light of day.

  She listened to the high-pitched cries of the sea birds as a soft gust of wind lifted her hair back from her face. She stared out at Middelhaern, watching shopkeepers opening their shops and children scarfing their breakfasts down as they headed off to their studies.

  Rudy would be at it already, she was sure, his shop thick with the scent of flowers as he bundled beautiful bouquets together to sell for the day. She wondered what Shera was up to. She’d long finished her own studies. Did she work now? With a pang, Ling realized just how far she’d drifted from everyone she’d held most dear. According to the book, Rudy’s face had been tight with grief as Hanner had strapped her into that chair, but Shera had stood stoic, her face pale but reserved. Had there been even a trace of love there? Of grief?

  The Ling of that day hadn’t known what was happening, hadn’t studied her friends with an eye for that level of detail. The lack of knowledge burned inside of her. As she’d read through the grimoire this morning, she’d felt a gulf open inside of her that matched the distance she’d traveled.

  But she thought now that the distance between her and her friends had opened long before that day with Hanner and Laera. That gulf had opened as the last word of magic had tumbled from Grag’s lips. She just hadn’t known it.

  The wind freshened, sweeping in from the open ocean and carrying the scent of wildness with it. She studied the docks as if she were only now seeing them for the first time. Before, she’d always been so distracted, begging her father to let her go ashore while he worked, wondering if she’d be able to make her way to the Shadow Market in Ruggers without getting caught. She had taken it all for granted. Had assumed there would be another day, another trip, another toy. She realized now just how precious that time had been and how she’d let it slip by in a storm of distractions. Now, she really looked, seeing every tiny detail around her.

  The docklands of Middelhaern were an amazing feat of engineering. In Meuse, the docks floated, and the warehouses were built high enough to keep them out of the worst of the floodwaters. In Middelhaern, the entirety of the docklands had been built to rise and fall with the seasonal rhythms of the Lisse River—the docks, the warehouses, and all the myriad shops that called the docklands home. The docklands were like a floating city within a city.

  During the dry season, the river shrank down to a narrow ribbon, still mighty by the standards of neighboring nations, but quite small for those who called its banks home. The warehouses, shops, and walkways dropped until they rested entirely on the river’s bottom. Ling marveled that the whole thing didn’t just sink into the mud and vanish, but it never did. As the docks dropped with the river level, ships were forced to dock further and further away from the warehouses and shops until the deep berths they required were only available in the very center of the river. In the driest of years, the docks themselves had to be extended to reach the ships, forcing oxen to pull wagons filled with merchandise back in toward the warehouses and shops.

  Ling loved the wet season best. The swollen water took on a slate-gray gleam that she could stare at all day, wondering and fantasizing about the mysteries the opaque water hid below the surface. She loved the clean scent of the river-scented air, the splash of fresh water as they sailed between Meuse and Middelhaern.

  There was no trace of that fresh scent now, though. The filth and waste normally swept away by the moving water was piled up in the muddy pockets between wooden pathways. The manure of oxen and humans alike, fish guts, heads, and skins, and even the bodies of dead dogs and other city pests littered the exposed bottom of the river. They rotted in the warm sun as they sank slowly into the mud.

  She could still make out the scents of freshly baking bread and simmering stews over the stench of rot and waste and human sweat. It was a heady combination, and like nothing else she’d ever experienced.

  Her eyes settled on the small form of a filthy, barefooted child a short distance up the walkway from where the Courser rested. As Ling watched, she set her basket down, took a couple of steps away from it, and fell still. Her head tilted forward, one hand lifted above her head and the other out to the side, both trailing long strands of brightly colored ribbon. One knee was lifted, foot tucked neatly into her crotch. The girl was tied with so many ribbons Ling couldn’t make out what sort of clothes she wore underneath. Everyone around the girl paused in their business to focus on the small, colorful figure.

  The girl held the pose for five slow breathes and then exploded into motion, spinning and whirling as she danced and leaped around the basket. She moved so smoothly, so quickly, her form was lost in the chaotic swirl of ribbon and color. Her long hair spun around her in a flurry of tight braids, and she sang as she danced, her voice surprisingly loud considering her exertion and small size.

  It was an amazingly intricate pattern of steps, and the girl moved with impressive precision. To Ling it appeared that every movement, down to the placement of her pinky finger, was part of the dance, and she marveled at the girl’s skill. She doubted she could ever do something as complex and beautiful.

  The girl stopped, nodding and smiling as a number of people approached, handing over coins for a handful of shelled grippers the girl pulled from her basket. Ling loved the taste of fresh grippers, the soft, briny flavor mixing perfectly with the sharp heat of the spicy herbs commonly spooned over the top. They reminded her of her father and of all the times they’d shared on these very docks. She could almost feel his boat-roughened hand grasping her own during her first visit to Middelhaern. She’d turned up her nose at the slimy looking thing he’d held up to her that day, but he had laughed and eaten one with a flourish so dramatic she simply had to do the same. She’d never forget the first salty taste as the gripper hit her tongue, and the knowing grin her father had responded with when she’d asked for another.

  After that day, she would eat as many as her father would buy while in port. Her hand strayed up to the coin pocket dangling from her neck, and she considered leaving her perch to buy some from the girl.

  She climbed to her feet and froze. An enormous figure knelt beside the girl, his form towering over her despite the fact that he was on his knees. She couldn’t tell if the girl was that small or the man was really that big.

  The girl smiled broadly and handed over a sack of grippers with a proud smile on her face. The giant man dropped several coins into the child’s hand, ruffling her hair before climbing back to his feet.

  He had short, thickly curled black hair that stood up in tightly woven stubs all around his head. Jewels glinted brilliant yellow at his ears and in his chin. He moved with absolute confidence, teeth flashing white as he smiled at the throng of people around him. Ling had always thought her own skin was dark, but his was the color of coal.

  The people thro
nging the docks shifted slightly out of his way as he walked. She could see them throwing sidelong glances his way, not daring to look fully at him as he walked by, but they didn’t stop their bartering and chatter as he passed. At his feet swarmed a seething mass of something Ling couldn’t quite make out at first, but as he approached the ship, she could see they were small reptilian creatures. The giant man stopped, bowed deeply to the guard at the rail, and Ling stared as the creatures at his feet stopped as well, staring up at the man expectantly. There were at least twenty of them. They had dainty frilled collars around their necks and a short fin running the length of their backs, all in various shades of gray.

  The giant man straightened and, at the guard’s curt nod, climbed aboard the Courser. As he moved, the lizards moved too, bubbling along at his feet like a tiny storm.

  “Hail the Courser!” he hollered as he strode up the plank, those strange lizard creatures still following at his feet. “Captain Drake, so nice to see you again.”

  Ling looked up and over her shoulder to see the captain standing atop the wheelhouse, just above Ling’s perch. She still wore linen pants that didn’t make it past her mid-shin, but she had covered the loose shirt with an indigo vest with gold lacing and had plopped a wide-brimmed hat on her head. Her feet were still bare.

  “Treantos! So good to see you again!” she bellowed back, a grin on her face. “I thought you’d planned to stay another month!”

  “Alas, I gathered as many as I dared.” The man laughed, gesturing at the lizards at his feet. “I felt certain that many more than this and you’d force me to swim back to Marique.”

  “And right you are about that. Takes me a week to get the smell of them off my boat!” she chided, a mischievous glint lighting her eyes. “Take ’em down if you would. We’ve got a few more coming.”

  The man walked just beneath Ling on his way to the hold, the skittering lizard creatures moving alongside him in a fashion that seemed almost timed. Their steps and his created an odd sort of rhythm as they drummed and scraped along the wooden decking. Up close, she could see that his eyes were as dark as his skin, and in addition to the three yellow jewels, the man’s lips were stained a warm shade of yellow that continued down along the entire length of his chin. The Brisians had an affinity with animals of all sorts, she knew. And they were as dark skinned as Treantos, and as tall, too. But she’d never heard of them bearing a yellow mark down their chins.