Cali stared up at the captain, her mouth agape. The candlelight was warm, and the brandy had made everything slightly softer at the edges, and she wanted, desperately, to say yes.
“Wayside is my home.” The words came out surer than she’d expected, which was perhaps because she finally knew them to be true. “I spent a long time looking for something good that I’d lost, but that search taught me to recognize something good when I’ve got it. My friends in Wayside are that something good,and I can’t give them up.” She held Bonnie’s gaze. “Even for this.”
The pirate was quiet, but she gave a curt nod. “I know.” Her gaze moved to the map, to the bookshelves, and to the walls of the surrounding ship. “My grandmother built this, and her daughter after her. And now me. I can’t walk away from it. Not yet.”
Cali understood. “This ship is your family.”
Bonnie nodded. “Family doesn’t always share blood.”
“Sometimes it shares a painted ship with a taste for adventure,” Cali added with a grin.
The pirate laughed at this. “That’s one way to put it.”
“But when you’re done being Bonnie One-Eye, you would be welcome in Wayside. Lira would adore you. Sass would pretend not to and then adore you, anyway. Pip would relish tempting you with pastries.”
Bonnie’s smile was sad. “It sounds lovely.”
Cali didn’t trust herself to say anything else, so she reached for her glass of brandy instead and took a slow sip. The space between what was and what might have been filled up quietly with the murmur of the sea and the sighing of the ship, mournful once again.
Thirty-Six
Cali liftedher head and blinked as the captain’s quarters came into focus. The candles had burned to nothing, their wax shrouding the candelabra and pooling hard and cold on the table. The brandy glasses were empty, and the basket held nothing but crumbs and the ghost scent of coconut and sea lime.
Cali straightened, working the stiffness from her neck with one paw, and it was only then that she noticed that there was no trace of Bonnie. Slats of pale light on the floor told her it was morning, but the captain’s bed hadn’t been slept in.
Then her ears pricked. Not at a sound, but at the absence of one. The ship was no longer cutting through the sea. It was bobbing, as if at dock, but there were no telltale sounds of a port city.
She moved to the window and pressed her nose to the glass. She’d been right. They’d stopped, but they were at anchor. The water between was flat and dark green, and beyond it, rising from a line of pale shore, was an island.
It was small enough that she could see jungle growth climbing to a central ridge. And just visible above the canopy, the tops ofseveral buildings, the gray stone worn and weathered. Cali shook out her tail, smoothed her vest, and left the captain’s quarters for the deck, bounding up the stairs and almost walking into the back of Gert.
The quartermaster was propelling Marina across the deck, and the hellkin was not going quietly. She’d recovered whatever fight the previous night had taken from her, and she was thrashing in Gert’s grasp. Seraphina was at her usual post on the rail, a cold glint in her narrowed eyes.
“Where are you taking me?” Marina demanded. “What is this place?”
Cali took the stairs to the quarterdeck to stand with the captain for a better view. The sun was up but straining through a thin layer of cloud that softened everything to silver, and a cool breeze teased the sails.
From the higher vantage point, she could see the island more clearly. The beach was narrow and pebbled, and above it the stone buildings were visible in fragments between the trees. A path led from the shore upward, and even from this distance Cali could make out cloaked figures on the beach. It was clear that they were waiting.
Bonnie dropped her gaze to the hellkin. “This is the Island of the Penitent Yodelers.”
The pantheri cocked her head, certain there must be some wool left in her ears. Yodelers?
Marina went still. “The penitent what?”
Gert did not try to hide her smile. “They find oneness through yodeling.”
Which is probably why they had to decamp to a remote island, thought Cali, as she fought every urge to laugh.
“You should consider yourself fortunate.” Bonnie’s tone was calm. “The alternative was a deserted island. Nothing but sand and one pistol.”
“I’d rather have the pistol,” Marina said.
Gert smothered a laugh with a gruff cough. “A few decades of yodeling will do you good, hellkin.”
Marina’s red skin lost a few shades. “Decades?“
“The sisters are good women,” Bonnie said, “and even better yodelers. The island is self-sufficient. They grow their own food and keep their own livestock. Visiting ships are rare because it’s well off the principal routes.” She rocked back on the heels of her black boots. “And since you didn’t do any lasting damage to my jolly boat, I’ll stop by to check on your progress in five years or so.”
