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“There’s a Mereish warship in port.” Demery noted the direction of my gaze and leaned across the table on his elbows. “I thought it best to increase your security.”
“Or to make sure I didn’t run?”
“Are you going to run?”
The question, and the reality that I was surrounded, left me unexpectedly exhausted. “I want to be left alone,” I mumbled.And I want to find my mother, though I still can’t believe she’s with Lirr.
“I could never forgive myself if I left you alone, Ms. Firth.” Demery’s voice was soft, carrying just between the two of us. “It’d be as good as killing you. Abandoning you in a foreign port, hunted by Silvanus Lirr?”
“Hunted because he supposedly has my mother?” I shook my head. “If I’m going to believe you, I need to know more than that.”
Demery examined the bottle of wine and popped out the cork. “Well, I’m unsure how to convince you, but she is with him. You saw the man with your own eyes?”
“He said nothing of my mother,” I replied, my voice much steadier than I felt with memories of Lirr’s attack and butchery so close. Did I dare tell Demery what Lirr had said about knowing me? Would he be able to explain it?
“Well, whatever transpired between the two of you doesn’t change these facts: he has your mother and he’ll come for you again.” The pirate poured two cups of wine and slid one towards me. There was no amusement in his eyes, no taunting or toying. “His interest inher—andsubsequentlyyou—isold, stretching back to our youths. We used to sail together, you see. Back when we all crewed for a man called Bretton.”
My mouth fell open. I no longer heard the inn, the chatter and the footsteps and the clink of glasses. I barely noticed the curl of the wind through the shutters beside me, wafting over my throat and cheek in consolation. All I saw was Demery, and all I heard were his words.
“Bretton?” I repeated. I’d heard the name before, though the memories attached to it werevague—overheardconversations between my parents, perhaps. “Who was he?”
Demery tapped the side of my cup. “Have a drink and settle in, Ms. Firth. I’ll make this as short as I can, but you’re pale as bone.”
I took the proffered wine and pulled it close. “Tell me.”
“Bretton was a pirate from the Cape,” Demery began, the low rumble of his voice making up the edges of my world. “He docked in Kalsank some twenty-five years ago, fitting out a crew. Kalsank was the port to do that, in those days, and to find place on a free ship, being far enough from the eyes of all thenavies—Capesh,Cape being the closest to Kalsank, Mere and Aead. That brought sailors like me to the island too.”
“What about my mother?” I asked.
“Bretton already had her aboard, along with Lirr.” Demery’s lips tightened into a thin, crack of a smile. “She, naturally, was his singer. Lirr was hisSooth—towarn of the storms that Anne was to dispel and so on, working in concert, as was the way. Anne was young, barely sixteen. Bretton wasn’t a kind man, but your mother was fierce, and it was her that began to stir the crew to mutiny. Bretton had an endeavor in mind, one with a grand prize at the end. He, your mother and Lirr had seen it before. The wreck of a Mereish treasure fleet. It was agreed that we’d see the venture through before slitting Bretton’s throat.”
I watched the rings on Demery’s fingers glint as he continued. “Bretton never found his great riches again. He went too far with your mother one night. She killed him, on the edge of the Stormwall.”
Gooseflesh rippled down my arms. My mother had killed a man, at sixteen? That was a grim thought.
“Why was Bretton near the Stormwall?” I pressed. The Stormwall was a region of the Winter Sea shrouded in legends andmyth—agreat storm that stretched across the far north without beginning or end. The stories said summer never came beyond the Stormwall, and the world was forever locked in ice.
Not that there were many stories, since most who ventured into the tempest never came out again.
“Because his hoard was on the other side, and it’s still there.” The pirate held my gaze. “We took Bretton’s ship. Lirr saved your mother’s life during the confrontation, and she was finally free of her chains. He took command and declared we would continue Bretton’s mission and claim his prize, but the ship was too damaged. The war was heating up again as well, what with Aeadine trying to take the Mereish North Isles and fleets in every direction. So we sailed for quieter waters to lie low and recoup.”
At the table next to us, Demery’s crew dealt out a game of cards.
“No one knew where Bretton’s prize was except your mother. Lirr had seen it, of course, but couldn’t find the way alone. The Winter Sea is, as you know, a volatile place, but as the Stormsinger, your mother was privy to all the navigational details.” Demery held my gaze, both gentle and forceful, and I knew whatever he would say next would be personal. “But your mother fell in with one of the crew, a tar, a nobody called Joseph Grey, and decided she wanted a quiet place to birth and raise their child. Lirr was jealous. Furious. Refused to let her go and put her back in chains.”
My mouth tasted dry. Slowly, I raised the cup to my lips and drank. I’d known my parents met aboard ship, but I’d always assumed it was in the Navy. My father, who always smelled of cigars and coffee, had been a pirate? A common pirate in love with his ship’s Stormsinger?
“Of course, your mother refused to help Lirr, and swore to take the secret of Bretton’s prize to the grave. She and Greyescaped—tothis day, I’ve no ideahow—andvanished. Completely.”
They went to the Navy, and then the Wold. I’d long known my mother sang for the Navy for protection, and scant freedom in peacetime. But until now, I’d never understood just what she’d run from.Whoshe’d run from.
“Her departure broke Lirr, somehow,” Demery continued. “He became wild and reckless. Half the crew left, including myself. I heard that he tried to sail the Stormwall without a singer and failed. So he set his mind to conquest, pillaging his way into something like lordship in the South MereishIslands—mostof their rulers down there are pirates of one form or another. But all the while he looked for your mother, and with her the location of Bretton’s Hoard. Finally, he found her.”
Quiet fell between us while I struggled to process it all. It was a mad tale, but it wasn’t impossible. Still. Demery’s claims didn’t explain the way Lirr had spoken as if he knew me personally, and I should recall him. And unless Demery was lying, all this had taken place before my birth. Lirr would have only been a boy.
“Lirr is too young,” I countered, suspicion creeping up my spine.“Or…I’mnot sure. It was hard to tell. He looked younger than you, in any case.”
Demery tapped his rings against the side of his cup in absent rhythm. “How kind of you to say. I assure you, he’s older than he looks. I can’t tell youwhy—akindness from his parents? An effect of his magecraft? He is a mage, Mary, and an unusual one.”
