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The departure of my clothes left me naked and vulnerable, but they needed to be washed as badly as I did.
I scuttled back to the tub, where the sight of my reflection on the firelit surface brought me up short. Lanky, tangled hair fell beside a face filled with hollow eyes, dark shanks obscuring collarbones and ribs that were a good deal more visible than when I’d left home.
I looked unwell. Dirty, hungry and weak. Not my mother’s daughter. Not a Stormsinger. Just a desperate woman who should have both hanged and drowned.
No, no more thoughts, no more memories. I had a night to myself on dry land and a chance toescape—onceI had my clothes back, at least.
I stepped into the tub, sinking down until the water hovered just under my nose. After a few breaths, I submerged my head. Ensconced in a womblike hush, the drumming of my heart slowed to a steady, measurable beat. Somewhere distant, through the floor, I picked out the hum of patrons. But in the water, my solitude was complete.
My mind wandered, leaving behind cloying thoughts of my mother and Lirr’s fixed gaze. Instead of my fears and misfortunes, I thought of the sea. I thought of theJuliette’s ghisting in the water before me, with her mane of drifting hair and tentacle skirt.
She had been freed when her ship burned, but Demery implied she’d done something to help me before she disappeared. Where was she now? Free and swimming through the deep? On her way back to aWold—perhapseven myWold—asI so longed to be?
I was vaguely aware that I should come up for air but felt no urgency at the thought. My heart beat on and my lungs were at ease. My hair billowed around my face, brushing my cheeks.
When I came back to myself, I was still lying on the bottom of the tub. But the hum of activity from the common room below haddied—whichwas odd, considering it was still lunchtime. It was also odd that my feet, hanging in the air beyond the end of the tub, were completely dry. And the water around mewas…freezingcold.
My eyes snapped open. No firelight flickered across the surface of the water and the daylight in the room was dim.
The surface of the water. I was still underwater?
I came out of the tub in a bubbling, shrieking lunge. I landed in a clatter on the floor, flailing and dripping like a newborn calf. On my knees, I raked air into my lungs and stared at the coals of what should still be a roaring hearth fire.
I gaped at the window, only to see the sky darkening. I lifted my palms to find my fingers wrinkled like dried berries.
I’d been in the tub for no more than a few moments, surely. It wasn’t possible for so much time to have passed. Then I’d be drowned, dead in a bath in Tithe.
Shock. I pushed wet hair back from my face and pressed my palms into my cheeks, trying to settle my nerves. I’d lost hours. I wasn’t myself, and I perhaps shouldn’t have expected to be for a while.
I needed answers. Still dripping and cold and trying not to think about my lapse, I strode over to the service bell and tugged it hard.
***
The smell of food and the clink of glasses drew me down a creaking staircase to the warm, low-ceilinged common room. Clad in clean clothes that smelled of lavender and lemons, I braced myself and wove through a press of patrons to the bar.
“Excuse me,” I called to the inn wife as she set plates of steaming food onto the worn surface and a maid swept them into the crowd. I hesitated, unsure whether the woman would understand my Aeadine.“I’m—”
“I know who you are, girl,” the inn wife said brusquely. Like the maid earlier, she spoke my language with a light accent, and I began towonder—mildlyembarrassed at my own lack ofUsti—ifeveryone in Tithe spoke Aeadine. “Go have a seat and I will have something sent over. Your sir should be along any minute.”
I opened my mouth to ask who she meant by my ‘sir,’ but the woman vanished back into the kitchen. The answer was apparent, anyway, if uncomfortable. She meant Demery, and assumed I was his mistress.
A pirate’s mistress. Well, that was safer than being aStormsinger—thoughthe positions often overlapped.
I turned, scanning the company for an empty table. There was one near a window, drafty but unoccupied. I tugged my short coat tighter around my shoulders and made my way over.
I settled in. The chatter and hum of the room seeped into my bones, drawing me unexpectedly back across the sea, to the inn where I’d spent my childhood. There, the patrons had been villagers, shepherds and foresters and road-weary coachmen, rather than wealthy merchants and petty officers from various ships. The rumbling babble had been Aeadine, rather than the strange mix of tongues I heard now. But it still felt like home.
I eased back in my chair, hardly minding the curl of wind that seeped in around the shutters. Just for a moment, I could imagine that I was back in the village, between the Wold and the hills.
That, naturally, was when James Elijah Demery sat down before me with two cups and a bottle of very dark, fine wine. “Ms. Firth.”
“Captain Demery,” I returned. I was cautious but unafraid of him, surrounded as we were by the honest folk of Tithe and the whisper of the ghisting-riddled island.
“You seem much recovered,” he commented. I noted the pistols at his waist as he opened his coat. “That’s good to see. You’ve not been bothered by anyone, I take it?”
“No one,” I returned smoothly, but something in his posture made me glance around. I realized the occupants of the next table had their chairs and boots positioned to block my path to thedoor—oranyone’s path to us.
One of them, a stocky sailor stuffed into a fine frock coat and wig, waved daintily and grinned a gap-toothed grin.
