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Fisher waited for me on the snowy dock as I descended the gangplank, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her coat and her tricorn hat already christened with snow. She gave me a prompting look and started walking before I had stepped onto the dock.
I, in turn, made no effort to catch up. Instead, I popped the collar of my coat and fastened the top button as I glanced back atHart. He was a solid vessel, his forty-two guns quiet behind their white-painted hatches, three masts standing tall with each sail neatly furled. Formerly a fifth-rate Aeadine warship, he had been decommissioned and sold to Slader some twenty years ago after single-handedly sinking three Mereish sloops.Harthad barely survived the encounter, worth little more than the ghisting who inhabited his figurehead.
During the ship’s restoration, Slader had removed many of the hallmarks of Aeadine warships, including the decorative paint that once adorned the circumference of hisquarterdeck—blueor red or white, depending on the fleet, with quotes from the Saint in illegible gilt letters. All that remained now wereHart’s black hull, white hatches, and the figurehead.
The great hart for which the ship was named reared up beneath the bowsprit, head thrown back in a soundless bay. His coat was painted a muted red-brown, while his white antlers enclosed the entire beakhead, ghistenwood twining together with lesser, standard material.
“Are you well, Mr. Rosser?” Fisher called back to me.
I looked away from the ship and lengthened my strides to catch up. “Do not pretend you care, Fisher.”
“And you wonder why we’re not friends.” Shetsked, dropping down onto the quayside, both heels landing at once. “Really, Sam.”
“I have never wondered that.”
“Not once?”
“Not at all.”
I joined her and we leftHartbehind, weaving through stacks of goods to the main street. Scents of cooking food and hot mulled wine wafted from taverns, where locals mingled with sailors and travelers under smoke-heavy beams. Music wafted from windows too, strings and drums and fifes, as I followed Fisher through the premature winter.
Cold nipped at my skin. I shoved my hands into my pockets, where my fingers brushed across the smooth, long face of an oval coin. I fingered it, letting its worn surface steady me. A soft hum, ever present at the back of my mind, quietened.
Our destination was a tall inn, some distance down the docks. The Bell and Barrow was one of the better establishments in Whallum, its plaster intact and painted a pleasant, sea-foam green. Cream moldings surrounded each window and separated its four levels, depicting various aspects of portlife—eccentrichawkers, ships, fish, farewelling lovers.
The inn wife opened the front door, her wispy grey hair tucked under a neat cap, and she gestured us up to the second floor.
At the top of the stairs, Fisher and I found ourselves facing an open door. Beyond was a private room, graced by a roaring hearth, a table for six, and two windows looking out over the harbor.
“Lieutenants Fisher and Rosser.” A slim man with black hair and small teeth gestured us into the room. “I am Kaspin. Come in, please.”
I slowed my steps, letting Fisher, the senior officer, lead. She shook Kaspin’s hand, delivering pleasantries as I eyed our host.
Kaspin was one of Whallum’s most powerful criminal lords. Any pirate docking in port, any highwayman worth their powder or madam who wanted to keep her whores knew Kaspin, paid homage to him, and respected him well.
I despised him. But pirate hunters were not much higher than pirates in the eyes of the world, and so CaptainSlader—andmyself—cameto the sharp-eyed bastard like everyone else.
There were four others gathered in the room, aside from Kaspin. One was a wiry fellow with an exaggerated grey wig, sitting with his back to the roaring hearth. He peered at me in open hostility over pinched, flushedcheeks—anative of Whallum if I ever saw one. The second was Whallish, too, and obviously Kaspin’s muscle, a man built for pulling plows and wrestling bears. He stood next to a young woman in a chair, and I knew without asking that she was the Stormsinger we had come for.
The young woman’s clothes were worn, with skirts that might once have been yellow and white calico half covered by a long, men’s coat. Her dark brown hair was bound up under a white cap and what I could see of her face was pretty. The rest was locked into a device commonly used upon Stormsingers, a mask that contained the jaw and covered half her face.
My gut twisted, and I looked away. No, not a mask. A gag. A Stormsinger’s power was her voice, and without it? She was just a battered young woman with hollowed, wrathful eyes.
I felt those eyes on me as I examined the last man. He was familiar, though it took me a moment to place him. He stood next to the door in a knee-length coat of rich plum, open to show a pistol and a cutlass. His hands were latticed with scars and he wore his sun-bleached brown hair in a short tail. He had no beard and his eyes were somewhere between grey and green, his skin the same mild brown as Fisher’s, meaning he doubtless hailed from the islets off the northerncoast—descendedfrom the conquerors who’d once swept Aeadine with worship of the Saint, and sent the local ghisting-worshiping pagans, like my own ancestors, skittering into the forests and to the southern shores.
His smile, when he spotted me, was calm. We did not know one another personally, but I supposed he had been a pirate long enough to recognize a Navy man when he saw one. Disgraced or not.
I had seen his likeness on enough bulletins to know him too.
“What are you doing in port?” I asked notorious pirate James Elijah Demery. I moved to stand next to him while Fisher took a seat at the table and greeted the other guests on our behalf. Fisher might taunt me when we were aboard ship, but in situations like this she was all professionalism and reserve.
James Demery mimicked my posture, clasping one wrist at the small of his back. His voice was low and pleasant as he intoned, “The same reason as you, I’d imagine.”
He did not look at the Stormsinger as he spoke. Instead, he glanced at the open door.
The hum at the back of my mind, the one that had haunted me on the street, coalesced into a presentient whisper. There was more to this moment, to this man, than met the eye. He was no mage, not that anyone knew, but he had been in business for decades. No pirate lived so long without gathering rumors and lore, usually from terrifiedvictims—daringbattles and escapes under mysterious circumstances, powerful connections and a cool, calculating demeanor.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, but I kept my shoulders level. As companionable as he seemed, Demery could be a very dangerous man.
