“Do you think so?” Kyla’s lips trembled, her eyes filled with an ocean of tears.
“Yes,” Grey breathed. He didn’t think about what he did next, wrapping her in his arms, ignorant to the blood soaking his trousers, the tears drenching his shirt. Ignorant to everything but the broken girl and her lifeless daughter they held together.
As one, their shoulders shook.
The other seamen and their captain stayed above decks long into the night. For once, they made no bawdy jokes nor sang rowdy drinking songs. For once, their cruel laughter ceased.
Grey wondered whether the captain had finally put an end to it, or whether it was only a temporary reprieve.
For an hour, Grey helped Kyla clean herself, running up and down the steps, tossing buckets of bloody water into the ocean and then refilling them using the hand crank. He knew the blood might attract large predators, but so long as no one got thrown overboard it wouldn’t be a problem. He was aware of the men’s eyes following him each time he emerged and raced to the railing, but he ignored them. They didn’t matter, not now. Perhaps they never did.
The captain, on the other hand, didn’t look once, his back to Grey, his gaze trained firmly out to sea.
Back below decks, Grey used a damp cloth to clean Kyla’s feet, her knees, her legs. He turned away so she could clean the rest of herself. He cleaned her baby while Kyla changed clothes, and then he handed her back the child and took her bloodied frock above and tossed it into the ocean.
Once she’d been settled into bed with extra pillows he’d stolen from the seamen’s bunks, Grey found a thick, clean towel, and handed it to her. She looked at it, confused. “To catch any more blood,” he explained. He tried not to blush but failed miserably.
She shook her head, biting her lip. “Thank you,” she said.
He got to work on the floor, scrubbing tirelessly, determined to return the wood to its natural color. His right arm felt strong, his muscles tight from all the hard work over the last few weeks. While Kyla held her baby and watched, Grey scrubbed the bloodstains away, until they might’ve never existed.
Finished, he rose and went to her side. He held her hand. He stroked her brow. Her face wore a frown. “You don’t care that I’m a whore?” she asked.
Grey grimaced, hating the way she used that word so casually to refer to herself, because she’d heard it so much. “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not what the world thinks you are.”
“You are a good man,” Kyla said, and kissed the back of his hand.
Grey had the urge to tell her the truth, how wrong she was, but instead he said, “You should sleep. Let me take her.”
“No,” she said. “She stays with me.”
Grey nodded, closing the door on his way out.
Above, the stars pierced the black sky like sparkling yellow coins interlaced with rubies and emeralds. He looked for the golden key amongst them, but it was gone, vanished, like the tiny soul that should’ve been Kyla’s daughter.
Grey stripped down to his underclothes, and got to work scrubbing out the blood from his clothes.
All the men had slept without their pillows and hadn’t once complained. Without speaking, they went about their daily tasks. Grey immediately noticed the mainsail was hung at half-mast, not even catching the wind.
The captain apparently hadn’t slept at all, and when Grey made his way to the bow, Smithers was still standing there, staring out at something perhaps only he could see.
He didn’t flinch when Grey spoke, as if he was expecting him. “If it’s what you want, I won’t speak to Kyla again,” Grey said.
The man didn’t respond with words, but his shoulders shook and his hand went to his face as he cried.
Grey left him to his grief and regret and guilt and went to see Kyla.
To Grey’s surprise, when he knocked, the door flew open. Kyla threw herself into his arms, clutching him so tightly he thought it might crack one of his ribs. “I didn’t think you’d ever speak to me again,” she said in his ear.
“Because of your father?” Grey asked, holding her at arm’s length, scanning the room over her shoulder. The bed was made, the extra pillows gone. In the center of the bed was a small bump, wrapped in a clean white sheet.
“No. Because I’m not your problem.”
A pang of sadness thumped in Grey’s chest. The truth was, he’d almost walked away from her last night, when she’d needed him the most.
I didn’t, Grey reminded himself. For once, perhaps, he’d made the right choice.
“You’re not anyone’s problem,” Grey said. “You’re a person. You’re my friend.”
He didn’t intend to make her cry again, but she did, pressing her cheek against his chest. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t, and they stood that way for a long time.
Finally, she pulled away and spoke. “Do you think if I said something to my daughter, that she would hear me?”
Grey’s eyes instinctively flitted to the wrapped form on the bed.
“No,” Kyla said. “Not her. Not her body. Her soul.”
Grey didn’t know what he believed, not anymore. A month ago he would’ve said this life was all they had, and Kyla’s daughter was dead for good. Just like his parents. Just like Kyla’s mother. But now, even if he didn’t believe, he wanted to believe.
“Yes,” he said, and though it wasn’t the truth exactly, it wasn’t a lie either.
Kyla smiled, nodding. “I think so too,” she said. “Will you listen?”
“Of course.”
They sat on the bed, side by side, almost touching but not quite, except for their hands, which were clasped together like two parts of the same being.
“You will always be known to me as Myree,” Kyla said. “My Myree.” Her voice broke, but she blinked rapidly and swallowed, fighting off the emotion. “I want you to know that life wasn’t always like this, so sad, so broken. I want you to know that once I used to awaken to the smell of yeasty bread rising, the sound of your grandmother singing, the glow of sun on the windowsill. I want you to know that once I was happy, and that I always believed you could make me happy again. Life was once better and I never gave up hope that it could be once more. You gave me that hope.”
“Can it be better?” The question fell off of Grey’s lips like a pebble bouncing off a cliff, breaking and clattering until it disappeared.
Kyla’s eyes snapped to his. They were deep pools of brown, and he felt there was something mysterious in them, hidden so deep it could never be reached.
“I know who my daughter’s father is,” Kyla said.
After she told Grey her story, she insisted on tending to his arm. The pain was immense, but when she was done cleaning, administering a healing ointment, and bandaging the wound, it felt much better.
He cupped her cheek and said, “Thank you,” and then went up to the deck.
Grey wanted to tell Captain Smithers what a fool he had been, but seeing the way the man continued to stare aimlessly out at sea, he didn’t think he needed to tell him something he already knew.
Kyla’s story was a collection of images in Grey’s head, flashing past one by one, repeating over and over.
After her mother died, Kyla was forced to go off to sea with her father, who was the lifelong captain of a merchant vessel called The Jewel. Every fortnight they anchored at a new city, loading and unloading the ship, spending a night or two on dry land before sailing once more.
At first, it was a new adventure and the best possible way to get past her mother’s death, but soon Kyla grew tired of all of the traveling, and longed to stay in one place. At a particular stop in Talis, she met a dashing young lad, Callum. They fell for each other quickly and completely, as many young lovers do, and she’d given herself to him in every way. Kyla desperately wanted to stay with him in the city, desperately wanted to marry him.
Her father refused, dragging her to the ship kicking and screaming.
A few months later,
she was unable to hide her secret any longer: She was with child. Her father demanded to know who the father was, whether it was Callum from Talis. He demanded to have his revenge, threatening to beat the boy within an inch of his life for unflowering his only daughter.
Fearing for her true love, Kyla lied. In an outburst of anger, she said she didn’t know who the father was, because she’d taken a lover in every city they’d stopped at over the last few months. It could be any of them, she claimed, so he’d have to beat them all to get his vengeance. She even managed to laugh to sell the lie.
In a fit of rage, he banished her to the lower decks, refusing her the sky and the sun and the fresh air, even when they were at port. He encouraged his men to call her the whore-child, and other names, which Kyla had worn like a badge of honor while protecting her Callum. When they stopped at Talis several times over the next few months, she pretended they were somewhere else, anywhere else. She slept for as many hours as she could, until she felt the ship’s anchor being raised and the sails flapping in the wind once more.
One day, she hoped to return to Callum with their daughter in her arms.
Now, that day would never come.
Grey was the only one who helped Kyla prepare to send her daughter into the depths, though the other sailors watched from a distance, as if afraid that whatever killed the babe might be contagious.
First, they secured Myree’s cloth wrappings with a tarlike substance used to mend damage to the ship. Then they constructed a miniature boat out of scrap wood. Although Grey’s right arm was strong now, it was still uncoordinated, and after a few failed attempts, Kyla took over the hammering. Once the boat was deemed seaworthy, they lashed the cocooned babe to it with thick ropes, letting the excess dangle at each end. Grey helped as much as he could, but it was Kyla who knew the right kind of knots to tie.
When they finished, they both stared at their work for a few moments, unspeaking. The moment their eyes met, they knew it was time. Grey took one side, determined not to drop the little boat, despite only having one arm to lift with. Kyla raised the other end, gritting her teeth.
For an instant, the boat wobbled between them, and Grey almost fell, but then another set of hands appeared on the unbalanced side. Captain Smithers nodded to Grey, who nodded back.
Tears streamed down Kyla’s face as the three of them manhandled the boat to the edge. The captain’s strong hands gripped the excess rope, his knuckles whitening as he lowered the boat to the churning waves below. While Grey watched, Kyla hugged her father from behind, all the animosity from the past few months vanishing in that single stolen moment.
And then the tiny boat floated, pulled away by a strong current, and Smithers released the ropes, which slapped the water with a splash before sinking out of sight.
Side by side by side, the three of them followed the boat’s progress with their eyes, until it was naught but a bobbing smudge in the distance, a speck next to the vastness of the great, blue sea.
“Goodbye, Myree,” Kyla said, kissing the tips of her fingers and pointing them toward her lost child. Tears sparkled in her eyes.
The men got back to work, silent as they toiled under the hot sun.
The Dead Isles appeared a day later in the form of black, jagged cliffs against the horizon. The isles, which were the subject of many a dark and scary campfire story, were barely visible through the fine, white mist that surrounded the land, clinging to the rocks like a wet blanket.
“Ye don’ hafta leave,” the captain said, sidling up to Grey, who had risen from his daily scrubbing when the lookout had sighted land. “The Dead Isles are an evil place. Ye can stay on as a deckhand. Yer the best one-armed worker I’s ever had on me ship.”
Grey smiled grimly. He was fairly certain he was the only one-armed worker the captain had ever hired. “Thank you. But no. My path is elsewhere.”
Smithers nodded. “Be careful.” He extended a hand. “And thank ye. Fer takin’ care of me little girl when I’s too foolish to do so meself.”
Grey took his hand, squeezing firmly. “Your daughter was only with one man,” he said. “And I believe he is a good one. Your daughter chose a good one.”
“I know,” the captain said. He wiped at his eyes. “I knew the whole time, but dinnit wanta admit it.”
“The next time you stop in Talis, permit Kyla to go ashore. Callum is waiting. She’ll need his comfort.”
The captain nodded again, and then released Grey’s hand. “I’m sorry, but we won’ sail closer to the islands. Else we might ne’er escape the fog.”
“I understand.” Grey climbed into the small boat the captain had generously given him. Two men stepped forward and lifted the sides over the railing while two others braced their feet and held the ropes. None of them had called him “cripple” since yesterday.
Grey looked back at the captain. “Say goodbye to Kyla on my behalf.” Last he’d seen her, she was sleeping. She’d been sleeping since they sent her daughter off, and Grey didn’t want to wake her.
“I wi—” the captain started to say, but his words were lost amidst the sound of pounding footsteps on the deck.
“Grey!” Kyla shouted, her chest heaving as she reached over the edge of the boat to hug him. Her breath was hot on his neck, her body warm against his. Her curls tickled his cheeks. “Must you leave?”
“I’m sorry,” Grey said. “My sister needs me.”
“Shae?” she said.
Grey nodded. “She’s all alone. We only have each other now.”
“No,” Kyla said, shaking her head. “You have us, too. You have me.”
Grey touched her face briefly with his one hand, and then said, “Find Callum. Be happy.”
“I will.” Kyla blinked rapidly. “And thank you. For everything.”
Grey said, “It was nothing.” He really meant it. He’d done nothing but clean up a mess, hold her, and listen to her. He had not been brave, not fought a great warrior, not slayed a dragon… He’d done what a mere child would’ve been capable of doing.
Kyla grabbed his hand and squeezed it fiercely. “No. You’re wrong. It was something. It was a great thing. Our greatest moments are often unseen and unheard, but they are never unfelt. My mother told me that, once. I felt everything you did.”
Grey’s first instinct was to continue to let her praise slide off of him. But he knew that wasn’t fair to her or himself. He nodded, his eyes as comfortable on her as they’d ever been on anyone, even Rhea.
When Kyla felt her father’s hand on her shoulder, she finally pulled away. She stretched her arm around him, and he reciprocated.
A bond broken, a bond repaired, Grey thought. He wondered whether other kinds of bonds could be fixed too. He wondered if he could be fixed.
As his small boat descended to the sea, his eyes never left Kyla’s. He would never forget her, and, he knew, she would never forget him.
He only looked away when the waves lapped at the sides of his craft, churning around him. Though he’d been given two oars, he could only use one at a time. He used one to push off from the boat. He began to paddle toward the mist-shrouded rocks, switching sides every dozen or so strokes so he wouldn’t row in circles.
Soon, however, he realized he didn’t need to paddle. The current pulled him swiftly.
Straight for the Dead Isles.
Something carried him toward the last place in the Four Kingdoms anyone would want to go, and yet it was exactly where he needed to be.
Twenty-Two
The Southern Empire, Calyp
Raven Sandes
Raven stared into the flames of the Unburning Tree, seeking answers where there were none.
Why did her mother have to die?
Why was Raven born without a tattooya while Fire was?
Why did she fail in the arena?
The Unburning Tree made no sound, not so much as a crackle, its stoic branches wreathed in fire.
Whisper walked gracefully across the courtyard and kneeled down nex
t to Raven, not caring that her white dress sank into the dust. She said nothing, watching the flames writhe and dance. Raven’s youngest sister wouldn’t be riding with them to war; she was the Last Daughter, the one who would be responsible for ruling all of Calyp if both Fire and Raven perished during the battle.
After Whisper, there were only two other Sandes still alive: her aunts, Viper and Windy. Windy was currently in Citadel, along the edge of Dragon Bay, studying history. Raven had always known her to be a gentle sort, like Whisper, more likely to sketch a dragon than ride one. A stream had been sent to inform Windy of her sister’s death, but no response had been received thus far. Viper was in Zune, managing the fighting pits. Ever since she challenged Raven’s mother in combat for the empire and lost, she and Sun had been feuding. A message had also been streamed to Viper, but Raven didn’t expect her to mourn her sister’s death.
Finally, Fire emerged from her quarters wearing her red, leather armor. Her sword dangled from a hip scabbard. The distance melted away, and she kneeled between her two sisters, following their gazes to the Unburning Tree.
She spoke: “Maata would’ve wanted us to be united in whatever comes next, sisters. And we are. We are stronger together. Do you remember when she gave us our names?”
Of course Raven remembered. Sandes women were given their names when they were eight, old enough to understand the words of wisdom passed down by their maata. Before that, they were called “royal child” in order of birth: Raven was aati; Fire was baati; and Whisper was caati.
“Yes,” Whisper said. She recited her mother’s words from memory. “You are the voice in the dark, the hushed silence bearing secrets, the voice of reason in the night, the Underestimated Daughter, the vision of beauty that glistens like a mirage in the desert, unreachable. You are the tears in the rain, the voice in the wind, the sound in the silence, the Child of Nature. You are the Third Daughter. You are Whisper.”