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“Why did you call me Tane?” I pressed. “Who are they?”
The door closed. My mother, Lirr and I were left in the cabin with puddles of cooling blood and bile, and the echo of footsteps heading away through the ship.
“That is your name,” Lirr told me. He moved back over to the table and set his bloodied knife on it. “Or rather, the name of the ghisting your mother left inside of you.”
Anne turned from the window, letting out a long, surrendering breath as she did so. “It’s true, Mary.”
My thoughts fluttered through images of scars and ghistings, of Juliette in the water as Randalf’s ship burned, of the reaching hand of the ghisten tree in Tithe, and Harpy watching me.
Sister.
Tane.
“The timing must be right for such a union,” Lirr explained, pulling up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a long, twisted white scar on his forearm. It glistened in the lanternlight. “Many ghistings are not like these, whose shells you see on my wall. Many do not understand, and they must be burned out. A shard of their wood is then slipped beneath the skin just before the entirety of the figurehead or ghisten tree isdestroyed—thus,the spirit is forced into that single remnant. But to dwell in a shard so small? It’s enough to drive a ghisting mad. Eventually they must spread. They alldo—tothe blood and the bones.”
He held up his scarred forearm. “That is what happened to me, you see. By chance. By providence.”
The fine hairs on the back of my neck rose again. I felt myself move, not towards the door, but closer to my mother. One, instinctual step. To seek her protection? To protect her? There was no divide between the two impulses.
Scarred arm still extended, Lirr held his hand forward, palm up. A ghisting materialized from his flesh, parting from him like a shadow under the waning sun and condensing into a spectral twin. For a moment, two Lirrs stood beforeus—onea man, one a ghisting.
The ghisting shifted, expanding into the shape of a bigger, broaderindividual—onewith burning, heavy eyes and a face so handsome my breath caught in my throat. But like Harpy, the lines of him were subtle, more like echoes of human features than replicas.
The ghisting stood at Lirr’s shoulder like a guardsman. He inclined his head towards me in respect, and there was recognition in his vague expression, even deference.
Instead of greeting me as sister, he said in a deep, oaken voice,Hello, Tane.
“This is Hoten,” Lirr said. “Do you remember him?”
If the suspicions I’d had before were a thief tapping at the shutters, now they were a battering ram. My consciousness slipped as if I were falling asleep.
A hand closed on my wrist. I looked over at mymother—startledto realize we were of a heightnow—andwavered back to wakefulness.
“Stay with me, Mary,” my mother ordered, her voice low and gentle.
She sleeps, Hoten observed. The ghisting hadn’t moved, but I felt pinned by his attention.She’s there, but she will not stir. Perhaps if the girl herselfslept…
Around us the ship rocked and moaned, and the light cutting through the back windows dimmed.
“This is not the time.” My mother’s voice cut through the cabin. “We’re nearly at the Line, Silvanus.”
The cold air snapped me out of my shock. “Itisthe time,” I stated, pulling away from her and looking to Lirr. “Tell me everything.”
Lirr raised his voice over the approaching storm and my mother’s glare. “Twenty-three years ago, I gifted your mother with a powerful ghisting. Tane. I took a shard from a great ghisten tree, a willing spirit, and I stabbed her in the heart. Mortal and immortal merged into one powerfulcreature—butI received no gratitude. Instead, your mother left me. For two decades I searched for her, ever watchful for her light on the horizon. But she hid well and when I eventually found her, Tane was gone. Where? To her daughter, to the child born of her flesh. A child hidden from my sight.”
I couldn’t believe him, not yet, but more questions came. “Why?” I breathed.
“To give our people freedom. To give them the world.” Lirr pointed to the windows and the realm beyond. “I’ve been doing so since your mother left me, but the ships I take, the figureheads Iburn—they’rea drop in the sea. Beyond the Stormwall, a thousand of our siblings are trapped, locked in the ice, forgotten and asleep. So I have brought them new hosts. New bodies to take them south in power and liberty. My crew. My prisoners.”
Cold wind was in my marrow now, freezing and cracking me from the inside out. Lirr was bringing hosts for the trapped ghistings, human beings who he intended to stab and bind to an indescribable fate. Did his crew understand what he was doing? Or was Lirr’s Magni power compelling them? The prisoners in the hold certainly were not willing participants.
“More hosts will come, with the pirate hunters,” Lirr continued as if he followed my thoughts, his voice all satisfaction and reverie. “Then our people will be free.”
I felt truly gaunt now, weak and dizzy. He meant Demery and his crew. Samuel, and his. Athe. Widderow.
“You’re going to kill them?” I hissed.
“I will free them,” Lirr corrected. He smiled at me, a smile so sincere and affectionate that I recoiled. “But I cannot do it without you and Tane.”
