Page 103 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

My smile had slighted away halfway through his story, but at that I choked a small scoff of disbelief. “You sank his ship? How?”

“Told him I changed my mind, but I’d only make the trade here after dark. That I’d build a fire along the cliffs outside showing where it was safe to sail. Then led him directly into the rocks at high tide, when he couldn’t see them.”

The pole had stilled in my hands. “And they all drowned?”

“Two fought the undertow and made it to shore, but…” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “They didn’t make it very far.”

Mouth half-open, I gawked at him, unable to do anything else. My father had always been the happiest person I knew. The most patient; the most gentle. Easy to befriend, difficult to anger. Had there not been ships just outside the tunnel, wrecked and battered across the sea floor, I wouldn’t have believed him.

“Wait—there were more than one,” I remembered.

“More than one what?”

“Ship.”

“Oh.” He didn’t ask how I knew. “I think I sank six more over the years. Sailors that asked about you.”

“Six?”

“Maybe seven.” My father waved a hand in front of his face. “It’s fuzzy now.”

“And the bones? They’re all from dead sailors who survived?”

His gaze finally slanted toward the dark tunnel I’d emerged from. “The tide is high now,” he said, almost to himself. “How did you get in here?”

I swallowed. Tapped my fingers over my knee. “I swam in.”

“Swam—”

“Makua.” I sighed, steeling myself. Nerves crept in, a small swarm across my skin, stinging, pricking, biting. I sat straighter, letting the pole drop to the cavern floor, trying to disregard the question I wanted to ask. But it was as impossible to ignore as setting my hand into the flames of a fire and trying to distract myself from the burn. It pulsed within me, anxious one moment, almost angry the next. “Seven years ago, a pirate cabin boy disappeared from Akamai’s house.”

I didn’t need to ask.

My heart began to pang against my chest as my father’s body became very still. His eyes had danced around the walls and shadows since the moment I’d entered, but they softly locked into mine now. The longer he went without speaking, the louder everything else became. Dripping water, crackling fire, the rhythmic pull of my own breaths, each one more rapid than the last, until a hole might have opened up beneath me and swallowed me whole.

The shy pirate boy who had spent a week pointing at stars while his father hid from Calderian authorities in Leihani’s harbor. Had blushed and tripped over his words, had fumbled so much with his hands that he’d eventually shoved them into his pockets, and had coughed so much that last night, the night he’d vanished, that I’d had to help him to the village healer.

“You killed him?” I asked, little more than a whisper, but it tore through the quiet.

“You had wanted to check on him,” my father murmured back. “But I’d seen the way the other islanders watched you as you brought him into the village. The witch’s daughter and a young boy who was clearly sick—” He paused to scratch the inner corner of his mouth. “I told you I would check on him instead. Took my canoe and rowed to Akamai’s house on the edge of the market. She was just leaving when I arrived. I heard her tell the boy she’d be right back, then she marched away, on a mission to find something or someone. Herbs for a tonic, maybe, or the boy’s father. She was so focused she didn’t even see me, even when I tried to ask her how he was. So I slipped inside, and he perked up. Asked if he could talk to you. But one look at him, and I—I knew. I knew he wasn’t going to last the night, no matter what Akamai tried to do.”

I’d latched onto the sound of his voice, unable to look away. Pressure built in my chest, each pang of my heart a tight stitch between my ribs.

My father’s brows tightened. “I said you were already asleep, but that you’d see him in the morning, and he tried to say thank you, but he started coughing instead. And didn’t stop. He coughed until he couldn’t breathe. He just sat against Akamai’s wall, mouth open, face the color of nightfall, blue and cold. I’d expected Death to take him that night; I hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. Less than five minutes. I laid him down, tried to close his eyes. Offered him the Calderian prayer to Theia, the one sailors use. And then I left.”

I exhaled, the air a blade against my throat. “So, you don’t know what happened to him?”

“No. I do.” My father swallowed. His mouth opened and twitched, the sour scent of worry bitter in my nose. “I slipped out of her house and was on my way home to tell you when I heard voices. Akamai and the boy’s father, arguing. He said the islanders had informed him that you were a witch, that your mother used to attack sailors. Said that if his son died, he’d take you to Calder, make you stand trial. And Akamai challenged him. Why should Calder’s authorities believe him, when he’d spent the last week hiding his pirate ship in our port, she asked. And that’s when I realized they wouldn’t take you for trial. They’d take you, but at best they’d sell you up north, and at worst…”

The torch was suddenly too bright, the sun glaring through the ceiling. I’d spent years agonizing over Irah’s death. Revisiting that night in my mind, wondering what had happened to him. Imagining him leaving Akamai’s house to find his ship and falling off the dock or wandering in the wrong direction toward the mountains or caves. Dropping under thick ferns somewhere, struggling for breath until his air ran out under a canopy of leaves.

I’d conceived Irah’s fate a hundred different ways inside my head, always believing Akamai had been the last person to see him alive. Never had I imagined it had been my father instead.

“You took him.”

He blew out a heavy gust, as if it had been locked inside him, chipping away at his bones for years. “I didn’t know what else to do. It’s not as if the island would have rallied, fought pirates to protect you. They had weapons, swords, catapults. What did I have, a fishing knife? I turned around, stole back into Akamai’s house and gathered him up, and had enough time to hide just outside her wall as they stepped inside. I could hear him shouting at her as I ran back to my canoe.”

“And then brought him here,” I finished for him, the words heavy in my chest.