This must be his niece’s ship. TheUmbracuts through the Mara like a knife, the wind-born at the sails giving it so much power that it seems unaffected by the current. It reaches the dock moments before we do, colliding into it with a woodythudas voices gather on the road behind us.
“What took you so long?” says a woman’s voice, warm and rich like poured honey. “I waited for you in Faros.”
“Couldn’t shake the tail,” says Larus. “Sylvie, meet Captain Octavia of theUmbra. Octavia, Sylvie.”
Octavia steps out from behind the wheelhouse onto the deck, leaning over the side to help me up. I clamber into the boat gracelessly, underestimating the drop from the railing to the deck below.
“The better for hiding,” says Octavia by way of explanation, stepping down from a stool. “I’ve heard you know much about such things.”
In her black Enezian clothes and captain’s hat, Octavia cuts an imposing figure on the deck. I quickly see the family resemblance with Larus—same broad nose and bright eyes, same brown skin, same effortless elegance in dress, same bald head, although obviously that’s a more recent development for Larus.
“Was this your inspiration?” I say, gesturing to Octavia’s lack of hair. “It looks better on her.”
“Most things do,” he replies.
With both of us on board, the shadows are lowered again, and the Umbra takes off into the Mara, crossing to the opposite bank before lowering her sails once more to glide silently through the dark.
I pull myself up to look over the railing at the dock and Nithyrian war camp as we leave it behind, trying to spot my sister among the fire-born gathered with torches on the roadthrough the marsh. Though I can’t see her, I mutter, “Goodbye, and good riddance.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, and if I do, it will be too soon.
A wind-born leans against the mast, his chest heaving with the exhaustion of their last maneuver. A pair of dark-haired women who look like twins sit across from him. They give me half a wave each—shadow-born then, since they can see me. I follow Octavia and Larus into the cramped wheelhouse, Larus stumbling through the darkness until Octavia lowers the window shades and lights a candle within. She must be shadow-born too. “He looks at least a decade younger without all that grey, doesn’t he?” Octavia asks me once we’re inside. “And he moves like it, too.”
“I didn’t know he had it in him,” I say, but this must not have been the right thing to say because Octavia’s lip stiffens.
“You would know better than we do.”
Larus gestures to Octavia to sit beside him on the bench. “You can’t hold that against Sylvie. I swore an oath to House Verran.”
“An oath,” she says, flipping her hand at him in a dismissive gesture. “Just words. This is family. Blood, Larus. We didn’t see you for years. Decades. My whole life.” She keeps her back turned towards me, and I’m not sure if I should even be in here.
“Sylvie is family to me. I won’t have you insult her.” He glances back at me in apology. “Your mouth speaks, but it’s Mama Adama’s words that come out.”
“Mama Adama raised me. And I stayed by her side like a daughter ought to. Like my mother did, God rest her soul.”
“God?” I regret the word the second it passes my lips, but I’ve never heard anyone reference a single “God” before. I hope they’ll forgive me the intrusion.
Octavia lifts those bright eyes and stares like she’s looking straight through me. “Yes, girl. God. There’s one God, and that’s the sea.”
“You mean Arnan.”
Octavia spits drily at the ground. “The sea God is no ‘Arnan.’ Pfft.” She laughs bitterly. “‘Arnan.’ That’s some Selaran bullshit from when they tried to claim us. The sea is a wild thing, deadly and beautiful. It could only be a woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“God does not have a name.” She looks at Larus incredulously, like she’s thinking,did you teach her anything?And she’s not wrong—he didn’t teach me any of this. He taught me Nithyrian culture, Selaran history and politics, but he never taught me much about Enez. He rarely spoke of it, to be honest, but I won’t mention that to Octavia now.
“Some folk on the Islands still practice the old ways,” Larus explains. “Some, not all.”
“Some folk on the Islands aren’t fools that lick the boot that once stomped them.”
Larus shakes his head. “It isn’t that simple, and you know it. Mama wants it to be, but it isn’t.” I try to recall what Larus taught me of our history with the Enez Islands. My understanding is that although Enez was never part of Selara, they largely adopted our language and some of our gods and culture during hundreds of years of cultural exchange. Larus’s own feelings against Selara seemed to be based more on their treatment of Nithyria than Enez.
But he hasn’t been home in decades. Maybe things are more complicated than he let on.
“And anyway, what’s done is done. I am sorry I missed Lina’s passing. I heard it was quite the send-off.”
“You could see the fire from Pella. God protect her.”
