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I saw the muscles of her throat flex. “Yes,” she admitted, meeting my eyes with a gentle kind of sadness.
I thought of my father, who she’d met aboard Bretton’s ship. “Father? Ishe…”
“The blending didn’t work for him,” Anne told me. “It happened to a few of the crew. If there’s a ghisting in him, it sleeps. He’s just aman…moreor less.”
Just a man who she’d loved, but who’d given up on her and remarried. I looked at her empty ring finger again. Did she suspect my father had moved on? Had Lirr forced her to take off the ring? Now didn’t feel like the right time to discuss it.
“Lirr’s plot claimed us all. But there were already two souls in my body, Mary. I didn’t know it yet, but I was pregnant with you. The ghisting couldn’t fully wake inside of me, but when you were born, long after I escaped Lirr, I felt it go with you. It lived, in you. It was part of you, even at your quickening.”
Firelight warmed my cheeks, but I hardly noticed it.
“After Lirr ran out of hosts for his ghistings, we sailed our salvaged ship south again, with Lirr as captain. I’d realized I had you in my belly by then. Your father and I escaped, first chance we got. But not two weeks into freedom, we were both picked up by a Navy press gang. They had no idea I was a Stormsinger, and I kept it quiet. The war was bad then, and the Mereish Fleet had taken the Aeadine Anchorage. After three weeks on our new ship, Mereish warships ran us down. Our Stormsinger took a cannonball right through the chest, and I stepped up.”
“I thought there were fates worse than death,” I murmured.
“Not when I’d you to care for,” she answered in a voice like iron. The fire crackled and in her hard eyes, I glimpsed the woman I used to know. Sharp. Steady. Unbending.
Emotion clotted in my throat. I looked away.
“Our captain was a goodwoman—twochildren of her own, back on shore. When the Battle of Sunjai came, I broke the Mereish Fleet and won the Seven Year Peace. You should understand, Mary; Tane is a creature of the Other, pure and deeply connected to that world. A channel, of a sort. Even once she left me, the effect remained. With her in my bones, my Stormsinging power wasenormous—asyours must be too.”
I frowned, uncertain. “In time, perhaps. I’ve much to learn.”
“In time,” my mother affirmed, then resumed her tale. “I was obviously pregnant when I broke the Fleet, and I’d no desire to have you between the guns. My captain arranged for me to live ashore until the war started up again.”
“Father too?”
Anne nodded. “They released many sailors after thepeace—couldn’tafford to pay them, anyway. But your father and I had money from our time with Bretton, so we bought the inn and settled down.”
“In the Wold.” I recalled what she’d said earlier, about hiding me in the ghistings’ forest. I remembered Rosser, too, telling me the figureheads would make it harder for Lirr to track me in Hesten. Demery’s insistence on keeping me on shore in Tithe, a city full of ghistings, suddenly made sense too.
“The ghistings hid us,” I said.
Anne nodded. “Yes. And like I said, when I gave birth the ghisting, Tane, went with you.”
I swallowed tightly. “What does that mean for me?”
“I don’t know, not entirely.” Her voice was raw with honesty. “But you were born healthy and strong and happy, so I didn’t care. You are her. She’s you. I never tried to figure out where you ended and shebegan—you’remy daughter.”
Everything I was tangled inside me. My mind scrambled, reliving my life in fragments as I tried to find evidence of what she said. There were strange moments, to be sure, especially in recent days, but I was still myself.
Yet I was not. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, to panic and shutter myself away. It all left me impossibly tired.
Anne read the expression on my face and pointed to a pile of sailcloth and hammocks we’d gathered earlier. “Sleep. Try to, at least. I’ll keep watch.”
“Not yet.” I pushed stray hair back from my face. “Lirr said he needed me. And Tane. Why? Why is she so important?”
“She was a Mother Tree,” my mother said, with some reluctance. “The heart of her Wold. Her tree still remainsthere—asI said, she was powerful enough to leave it willingly, so Lirr had no need to burn it. But when Lirr placed her shard in me, every ghisten tree within her influence fell asleep. They cannot be harvested and bonded with Lirr’s crew or captives until Tane wakes them up. Then Lirr will take shards from each, and burn the Wold to ashes.”
My mouth felt dry. “WillTane wake them? I can’t pretend to understand all this fullybut…Ithink Hoten was right. Tane is still asleep, herself. At least, for the most part.”
My mother looked into my eyes, as if she searched for someone else inside them. “Lirr intends to force the matter.”
Dread turned into gooseflesh on my arms. “How will he do that?”
She looked away. “Fire. Lirr will force Tane out of you, and she will be drawn back into her tree. Then the Wold will reawaken. But we will not let that happen.”
The dance of the flames in our stove was suddenly threatening, ominous, and full of portent.
