Dark Water Daughter E-Book

H.M. Long

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Winter Sea
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 650

Beschreibung

A fearsome young woman stormsinger and pirate hunter join forces against a deathless pirate lord in this swashbuckling Jacobean adventure on the high-seas. Launching the Winter Sea series, full of magic, betrayal and redemption, for readers of Adrienne Young, R. J. Barker and Naomi Novik Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: a woman whose voice can still hurricanes and shatter armadas. Faced with servitude to pirate lord Silvanus Lirr, Mary offers her skills to his arch-rival in exchange for protection - and, more importantly, his help sending Lirr to a watery grave. But her new ally has a vendetta of his own, and Mary's dreams are dark and full of ghistings, spectral creatures who inhabit the ancient forests of her homeland and the figureheads of ships. Samuel Rosser is a disgraced naval officer serving aboard The Hart, an infamous privateer commissioned to bring Lirr to justice. He will stop at nothing to capture Lirr, restore his good name and reclaim the only thing that stands between himself and madness: a talisman stolen by Mary. Finally, driven into the eternal ice at the limits of their world, Mary and Samuel must choose their loyalties and battle forces older and more powerful than the pirates who would make them slaves. Come sail the Winter Sea, for action-packed, high-stakes adventures, rich characterisation and epic plots full of intrigue and betrayal.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Part One

One A Song for the Noose

Two Her Mother’s Name

Three The Fourth Man

Four The Company of Smugglers

Five Antiphony Cove

Six The Elusive Art of Stormsinging

Seven The Mereish Coin

Eight Pirates

Nine Tithe

Ten The Edge of the Other

Eleven Gentlemen and Pirates

Twelve Dangerous Men

Thirteen The Man in the Shadows

Fourteen Dinner with Mr. Rosser

Fifteen Negotiations

Part Two

Sixteen Defiance

Seventeen On the Account

Eighteen Lanterns in the Snow

Nineteen Daughter of the Fleetbreaker

Twenty Brothers

Twenty-One Pirates in Name

Twenty-Two Guise and Guile

Twenty-Three Hesten Port

Twenty-Four The Enemy’s Magic

Twenty-Five Lady Phira’s Steward

Twenty-Six The Drowned Prince

Twenty-Seven Sam and Helena Make a Plan

Twenty-Eight Rendezvous

Twenty-Nine James Demery and the Harpy

Thirty The Other Brother

Thirty-One A Most Honored Guest

Thirty-Two Shelter

Part Three

Thirty-Three A Good Name

Thirty-Four The Fleetbreaker

Thirty-Five Tane

Thirty-Six The Stormwall

Thirty-Seven The Crossing

Thirty-Eight The Second Sun

Thirty-Nine Captain Fisher

Forty Plots and Pardons

Forty-One Honor, Dishonor and Benedict Rosser

Forty-Two Harmony

Forty-Three Black Tide Son

Forty-Four Lirr’s Rat

Forty-Five The Summoner Adjacent

Forty-Six The Woman in the Wold

Forty-Seven A Doorway in the Birches

Forty-Eight The Woman with Two Souls

Forty-Nine The Queen’s Favor

Epilogue

Songs Referenced

Acknowledgements

About the Author

“A wonderful adventure! Dark Water Daughter swept me to the high seas with its captivating story, rich original lore, fascinating characters, and slow-burn romance. Immersive from start till end, this is a hard one to put down.”

Sue Lynn Tan, Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of the Moon Goddess

“Intricately crafted, stunningly unique, and so vivid you can almost taste the frigid air of the Winter Sea, Dark Water Daughter is my favorite H.M. Long book yet.”

Genevieve Gornichec, author of The Witch's Heart

“Dark Water Daughter is a unique and breath-taking slice of high seas fantasy—H. M. Long gives us deliciously complex characters to root for and a world full of surprises. I didn’t know I needed these fantasy pirates and their freezing ocean until they sailed into my life. Enormous fun!”

Jen Williams, award-winning author of The Winnowing Flame trilogy

“Dark Water Daughter is a compelling, propulsive adventure that serves as a spectacular start to Long’s new series. The vast world and intriguing lore are complex in a way that feels effortless; it might just be Long’s best work yet. I was utterly engrossed.”

M.K. Lobb, author of Seven Faceless Saints

“Long opens up a gripping, wildly original universe packed to the brim with wonder: sentient figureheads, songs that harness the wind, and a cast of rogues, villains, and exiles in pursuit of freedom—sometimes with terrible cost. Every twist left me surprised and enthralled. Fantasy readers, come aboard and enjoy the ride.”

Allison Epstein, author of A Tip for the Hangman

“Outstanding naval fantasy; Robin Hobb meets Master and Commander.”

Peter McLean, author of Priest of Bones

“Dark Water Daughter is a ripsnorting, swashbuckling storm of a book. I adored the salty, wintery world (the Age of Sail with a magical twist!) and its folklore: shipboard weather witches, mysterious mages and sentient, ghostly figureheads. I plunged head first into this story and didn’t come up for air until the very end.”

Kell Woods, author of After the Forest

“Flintlock fantasy at its best! If you're a Pirates of the Caribbean fan looking for a fresh take that still scratches the itch, Dark Water Daughter is for you. This incredible tale blends elements of classic pirate fantasy with Long's unique, wintry touch and lively voice to create an entirely new world and a fascinating lore-based magic system. Fast-paced action and eye-popping twists and turns will have you glued to this book until the very last page.”

M.J. Kuhn, author of Among Thieves

“Dark Water Daughter is excellent. Fresh fantasy grounded in seafaring lore and the golden age of piracy - a fantastical 17th century-esque epic adventure. I can’t wait for more.”

Christopher Irvin, author of Ragged

ALSO BY H. M. LONGAND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Hall of Smoke

Temple of No God

Barrow of Winter

Pillar of Ash

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Dark Water Daughter

Print edition ISBN: 9781803362601

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803362618

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE10UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: July 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© H. M. Long 2023. All Rights Reserved.

H. M. Long asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Mum, who read every iteration ofDark WaterDaughter—from a child’s excitedscribbles to this final, long-awaited form.

PART ONE

GHISTING[gih-sting]—Anon-corporeal creature from that world which is Other. Grown within Ghistwolds, they inhabit wood of various forms, and are predominantly utilized in the figureheads of ships. Once merged with the vessel, their task becomes one of maintenance and guardianship, protecting their new host from the rigors and threats of the Winter Sea. See alsoSTRANGERS, WOOD-WIGHT.

—FROM THE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEWWORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES

ONE

A Song for the Noose

MARY

The first rain I called was misty and fine, billowing down the slate hills east of the Ghistwold. It crept over the roof of the inn, the steeple of the little stone church, and the jumbled roofs and chimneys along the river. It muffled the violet-gold morning as it came, diffusing beams of sunlight into an otherworldly haze.

I remember how that rain felt, heady and sweet, bold and bracing. I remember how it collected on my cheeks and the leaves of the yew above my head.

That rain was my quickening—the moment my sorcery awoke in a lilting, child’s song.

My mother found me beneath the yew, brushed dirt from my frock and took my face between her hands. Her wrists, mottled with scars, funneled my gaze into wide-set blue eyes, each iris rimmed with wisps of grey.

“Never do that again, child,” she told me, her voice cool and level. Over our heads, the yew rustled, and water fell from its narrow leaves in an innocuous drip. “They’ll take you away if you sing like that. Do you want to go away?”

I shook my head, unsure and unsettled. What I wanted to do was speak—I was dying to, with the wind curling in my lungs. I wanted to sing, to soothe the ache of it. But when my mother used this tone, I dared not disobey.

“Then hush.” She put a work-worn thumb over my lips. Every inch of her was rugged, from her fraying brown braid to the muscles of her upper arms, taut beneath the sleeves of my father’s jacket. “You don’t want to end up like your mama now, do you?”

That was the day she returned to sea. The summons had come, and there was no escape. She murmured in my father’s ear, kissed his cheek, and stroked my hair. Then she perched on her sea-chest, strapped to the back of a mud-splattered coach, and trundled out of sight down the long road between the Ghistwold and the slate hills. She watched me as she went, her gaze at once a farewell, a warning, and a reminder of what she had said.

She did not return. War had sparked again, a great war in a line of greater wars, and my mother’s place was with the Queen’s Fleet and the tens of thousands of men and women who protected Aeadine’s shores. But even in her absence, I heeded her warning. I did not sing again, not in the way that might command the wind and the clouds and, some said, water itself. I did not sing again for another sixteen years.

By that time, I had already begun to follow in my mother’s footsteps, footsteps that led me to the gallows and a rough hempen noose. There, my descent into depravity would soon come to a sudden, swinging stop.

“Abetha Bonning,” a justice in a trim white wig and black tricorn hat declared from beside the gallows, backed by the thick stone walls of Fort Almsworth and a single, pacing redcoat.

The redcoat glanced down but continued his route, the barrel of his musket resting against his shoulder, muzzle pointing towards the sky.

“That’s not my name,” I mumbled under my breath, though my heart hammered so loud I could barely hear myself. My skirts and bodice were soiled with dirt, and my shift and stays soaked with sweat despite the cool autumn day. I quaked against the noose, weak and disheveled and wishing for all the world that I’d never left the Wold.

The justice began to read a list of my crimes, his breath misting before him, but I stopped listening. The chill wind whispered to me, as it always did. It whisked over the heads of the thirty or so other prisoners in the courtyard, all clad in the same spoiled garments they’d been arrested in months or years ago. Men and women, sullen and scowling, desperate and sick. Shivering children, all bones and big eyes.

I closed my eyes and leaned into the wind, even now taunted by the urge to sing. Wouldn’t that be a fitting last act, to sing down the rain at my execution? Neither the infamous Navy nor murderous pirates could drag me to sea if I were dead.

Except I would not be dead. My heart clawed up into my throat. If I sang, this execution would stop. I would go back to a cell until the Navy—or someone worse—came for me, like they’d come for my mother.

There are fates worse than death, child. My mother’s voice drifted through my memory. But here, staring death in the face? I wasn’t so sure I believed her.

I wished I could have seen her again. I wished that, as soon as I’d been set adrift in the world five weeks ago, I’d gone to find her. I wished I’d tried, even if it was a hopeless task.

But I hadn’t had the courage, or the strength. Now I would die, never knowing what happened to the woman who bore me.

“If you’re not Abetha, who are you?”

It took me a moment to realize that the speaker was not the justice in the tricorn hat, but the criminal at my side. My companion in condemnation had a bag over his head but sounded young, with a refined accent to match his fine teal frock coat, buckskin breeches and high boots. To my further surprise, his clothes were clean. Except for his shoes, which were splattered with fresh mud from the trek across the courtyard.

“They let you dress for… this?” I asked, ignoring his question. My real name had fallen on deaf ears for weeks, so I saw no point in telling him. Even now the justice droned on, listing the many crimes of Abetha Bonning—who, as I stated previously, I am not. Nor were they my crimes.

At least, not all of them. Some of them were. Accidentally.

Saint, I truly was going to die today.

The other prisoner shifted his bound wrists against his coat, making silver buttons flash in the meager sunlight. “The clothes are a small grace.”

“Yet you’ve a bag over your head.”

“Yet I do. My identity is something of a liability. Come, tell me your name before we stand before the Saint and he spoils the surprise.”

“I doubt we’ll be standing before the Saint,” I murmured. I pressed my bound fists to my stays, trying to hold my watery stomach in place. Could he hear my heart pounding? I was sure he could. “I’d think this hatch would drop us straight to Hell.”

“Speak for yourself…” He left the sentence open-ended, waiting for my name. “Elizabeth?”

“Mary,” I admitted, though I was not sure why I bothered. I glanced at the justice, who was now reading an extensive prayer for mercy upon the damned.

I realized the justice had not named the man at my side, nor listed his crimes.

“Good day to you, Mary,” my companion said pleasantly, as if we were at a dinner party. “I am Charles.”

“Good day to you, Charles.” I laughed a little, a hysterical sound that was more of a choke. I blinked hard. The world felt less and less real with each passing moment. The wind was so cold—my skin pinched and muscles clenched. The other prisoners were so quiet, their despondent eyes fixed on my face.

Surely this was a dream. Surely there wasn’t a noose around my neck, or a black-coated figure waiting next to the gallows with his hand on a long, iron lever.

My eyes dragged down to the hatch beneath my battered boots and Charles’s buckled shoes.

“Mary,” Charles repeated, hesitantly this time. Looking up, I saw his knuckles were white and knotted together in the buttons of his coat. The only other part of his skin I could see was a thin strip between bag, noose and cravat, which was flushed red with cold and anxiety. “Could you… cause a distraction?”

Suddenly terrified the guards would notice us conversing, I stared over the courtyard.

“Pardon me?” I hissed.

“I’ve some… small details of an escape plan. But I’m short a distraction,” Charles informed me, his voice still pleasant, if tight. “You see, I’ve a great deal of debt, to a great many individuals in this city, including several soldiers at this fort, all of whom will lose money if I die today. Hence the bag to dispose of me anonymously. Still, word has gotten out and the soldiers have agreed to open the riverside gate if I can get myself there. I will bring you along, if you can cause a distraction.”

The wind tugged strands of brown hair into my eyelashes. I drank it in, letting it open my lungs with a spark of… was that hope? No, hope had no place here.

Regardless, the wind and the spark began to form something I hadn’t let myself feel since that day under the yew when I was a child. It was arresting and reckless, visceral and instinctual.

Sorcery.

“I can,” I said, a little hoarsely. “But why would you take me with you?”

“Because you are not Abetha Bonning, notorious highwaywoman, murderess, and mistress of Lady Adale Debeaux. And, criminal I may be, but I cannot abide you dying in her place.” Charles spoke faster now, racing the justice to the end of his prayer. “So, if you could please scream and confess to be quick with child, I would be greatly indebted.”

Declaring that I was pregnant might provide a distraction and even gain me a temporary stay of execution, but the wind was inside me now, and I could do much better than that. It meant breaking my promise to my mother, risking a fate supposedly worse than the noose. But the will to live burned hot in my chest.

“Then make yourself ready.” I filled my lungs, right down to the bowl of my belly, and began to sing. “With her pistols loaded she went aboard. And by her side hung a glittering sword.”

The wind whisked the justice’s papers into a suddenly stormy sky. Grey clouds billowed like an underground spring, layering and darkening with each passing second. The wind turned arctic and the prisoners scattered with startled cries, while the justice clutched his hat to his head and shouted at the stunned guards around the yard.

I barely heard Charles choke, “You’re a bloody damn Storm—”

I kept singing, “In her belt two daggers: well armed for war.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the redcoat on the wall point his musket at me—just as he was joined by half a dozen other soldiers, their double-breasted uniforms blotches of scarlet against the darkening sky.

A warning bell began to ring, but I barely heard it. The frigid wind rocked me, snapping my skirts and tearing my hair loose from its knot. “From her throat a soulless cry, ‘But by my voice you all shall die, but by my voice you all shall die.’”

Sleet hit with hurricane force, battering my face and turning to snow. Darkness came with it, thick and eerie, but I grinned a wild grin. This was power. This was what I’d been denied all these years, rushing across my skin and turning my thoughts clean and sharp.

All too soon the wind stole my breath and my song died, but it didn’t matter now. The storm was here, and it raged.

A voice shouted in my ear, “With me!”

Charles. Right, it was time to run.

My hands were still bound but I grabbed the noose, jerked it over my head, and seized Charles’s arm. We stumbled together towards the edge of the gallows, hunkering against the rain and potential musket balls. He leapt to the muddy ground, then his hands—miraculouslyfree—were at my waist. I jumped.

My feet crunched into freezing mud and we bolted. Other bodies shoved past us, faceless in the chaos, but I clasped Charles’s hand in mine. I would not be left behind.

A soldier snapped into sight, his red coat leached of color in the snow and the shadow of the courtyard wall. I cried out, staggering like a newborn colt in mud, but the soldier only fell into stride and waved at one of his comrades, who opened a hefty outer door.

Mud turned to cobblestones. We barely slipped through the door before it slammed shut again. A cacophony of echoes harried us through a stone passageway, our footsteps and ragged breaths filling the empty space.

Charles hit another door with a grunt. It held and I panicked, terrified that it was locked, that soldiers would come, muskets would fire and—

The door crashed open. Charles ducked through and the storm swallowed us again with whirls of wind and sleet.

A stone quay lined the fort here, with the river and the outskirts of the port city of Whallum beyond. Four squat, fully enclosed riverboats rocked at their moorings, one with a lantern lit, two dozen oars pointed skyward and an open door. Charles sprinted towards it and I followed.

Right before we reached the boat, Charles shouted through the tempest, “You can keep running, or come with me!”

My skirts stuck to my legs, threatening to trip me with every step, and cold crept into my bones. I clenched chattering teeth and squinted at him. “What?”

He turned to me. “I cannot promise you will be safe in that boat!” I could barely see his unfamiliar face in the storm, even inches away from my own. But I heard the tension in his voice.

I turned my gaze to the boat, then past it. A path laced away around the fort walls, slick with mud, slush, and rivulets of water. I could take it, but I’d no idea where it went. I also had no idea what lay inside that boat, except the morally dubious people to whom Charles, a stranger, was indebted to.

Lightning flashed. I glimpsed Charles clearly for the first time, disheveled blond hair plastered across the large, almost feminine eyes of a man in his mid-twenties, with soft cheeks and a smooth jawline. Not an unappealing face, but one far too gentle for a criminal. Fine snowflakes whisked behind him and snagged in his hair.

The temperature dropped with each passing moment. By now, everyone in the city would know there was a weather witch on the loose.

“Mary! Answer me!” Charles shouted. “We haven’t much time!”

I could have run. I should have run. But before I knew it, my choice was gone.

Two men lurched out of the boat’s hatch and dragged us inside.

STORMSINGER—An individual, most commonly a woman, who can control the wind and weather with her voice. A Stormsingers’ Guild was founded in 1221 and abolished in 1693 by Queen Maud II after the loss of the Aeadine Anchorage in the War of Unhallowed Saints, a naval conflict in which the Stormsingers refused to participate. Sentenced to indentured servitude for treason to the Crown, all members of the guild were officially absorbed into Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, though many subsequently fell victim to villainy. See alsoWEATHER WITCH, WEATHER MAGE, WINDWIFE.

—FROM THE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEWWORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES

TWO

Her Mother’s Name

MARY

Charles’s protests grew suddenly loud as we toppled into the riverboat’s belly. I hit the deck hard and glimpsed rows of trousers, shoes and benches before Charles staggered after me.

He grabbed an overhead beam just before he tripped over my legs. I scrambled back with my hands still bound, wiping wet hair from my eyes and fumbling to fix my skirts. The men on the bench nearest to me, two of them with one long oar between them, watched without a word.

I found my feet and braced myself on a stack of crates. At the same time, a bull of a man flung Charles into the bulkhead with a casual palm to the chest. He followed this with a single-handed choke, lifting my companion until the toes of his wet, finely buckled shoes tapped frantically on the deck.

“Charles Grant,” the man growled. He had the complexion of most southern Aeadines, milky-pale skin prone to redness at the slightest variance in mood or temperature—particularly anger. And he was, at this moment, very, very red. “Now it’s triple due, and another two for the girl, whoever the hell she is.”

The riverboat began to move, propelled by the wordless oarsmen. Wood groaned, oars ground in their cradles, and someone near the front began to call time above the howl of the storm. Beneath us, the rocking of the deck steadied somewhat.

“It doesn’t matter who the girl is,” another voice drawled. “All that matters is that you pay me.”

A more reasonably proportioned man with black hair and a bladed nose stood nearby, pipe in one hand and his coat open to reveal a knife and two flintlock pistols. A pair of oil lanterns swung from the ceiling, casting him in oscillating, orange light. Combined with the rhythm of the oars, the misting of breaths and the backdrop of the storm, the scene took on a hypnotic quality.

I shifted farther into the crates, dripping as I went. I was afraid—quite properly afraid—but fear was a part of me now. It had been since the day I left the Wold, disgraced and alone. It knotted in my chest as I studied the men and cursed myself for not taking my chances on the path. As soon as the boat docked, I would run.

Charles’s heels dropped back to the deck as the brute loosened his grip, just enough for the younger man to wheeze, “I can. I can pay, Kaspin. I’ve a stash, in the Lesterwold—”

Kaspin, the smaller man, raised his brows and tapped the bit of his pipe to his chin. “The one in the pilgrim’s shrine to Pious Leonardus?”

Shock emptied Charles’s face.

That seemed like a bad sign. Surreptitiously, I tugged at my bindings. They were still as tight as they’d been when the soldiers dragged me to the gallows. Whatever Grant had used to free his own bindings, he hadn’t used it on me. Perhaps he’d lost it in the chaos. Perhaps…

An unwelcome premonition prickled across my skin.

“Well.” Kaspin puffed out a breath. “That is unfortunate. Your stash has been found and confiscated by the Crown to fund the war effort. Quite publicly. Don’t tell me that’s all you have?”

Charles’s eyes flicked from me to Kaspin, then to the man whose hand still rested around his throat like a meaty collar.

“Of course not,” Charles bluffed, badly. “There’s always more.”

“More already in your possession?” Kaspin inquired. He sauntered closer, free hand fiddling with the knife at his belt. A curved thing, it screamed gutting. It was well-made too, as was his silver-buttoned, knee-length coat. Whoever Kaspin was, he had money. “I haven’t time to wait for you to steal it. The Queen’s Guns are hunting your kind like dogs.”

The Queen’s Guns. Yes, I knew for a fact that the Queen’s Guns were currently hunting brigands in the Lesterwold, because they had arrested me there two weeks ago. Kaspin was implying that Charles was a highwayman, like I was supposed to be. Not just a gambler, then, down on his luck. A proper criminal.

I shifted my wrists again in my bindings, but they still didn’t budge.

Waiting for Charles’s reply, Kaspin slowly drew on his pipe and exhaled a stream of smoke.

Charles stared at him, unable or unwilling to answer.

“Because if you do not have the money,” Kaspin continued, “I will open your throat right now and take your head back to the fort tomorrow. There will be a reward, no doubt, and that will alleviate my losses. Speck, did you bring a saw?”

“Just a hatchet,” his bruiser replied. “Bit blunt. Sorry, boss.”

Kaspin frowned, but nodded. “All right, go fetch it.”

“Saint’s blood—I can pay!” Charles shouted, cutting through the rhythm of the oars, the shush of sleet on the roof and the slamming of my heart. His frantic eyes fixed on Kaspin and my dread redoubled.

Charles would not look at me. That tilt of the chin, the tension in his shoulders—it was the same way my father had held himself when his new wife bundled me onto a coach with nothing but a satchel and the clothes on my back.

I was right. Unfortunately.

“The woman is your payment,” Charles Grant said. “Enough for all my debts.”

Speck and Kaspin both looked my way, and even some of the nearby oarsmen cast a sideways glance.

I, for my part, could only stare at Charles. Betrayal gouged through me, irrational though it was. I’d known this man for mere moments, but we’d faced death together. I’d saved his life. He’d saved mine. And now…

“Her?” Kaspin repeated. “She’s not even pretty, man.”

From the way the big man Speck considered me, he disagreed with Kaspin on that point; I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

“She is a Stormsinger.” Charles delivered me into servitude without falter. “A powerful one too. She called up this storm herself, Kaspin.”

Kaspin considered me fully. He advanced, head tilting in consideration, pipe smoldering. “A Stormsinger. Is that right, woman?”

I raked in a breath, willing time to slow so I could order my thoughts. But all I could think of were my mother’s scarred wrists and her warning blue eyes.

Six years in chains, that’s what these are, love, my mother’s voice said. Chained to a bulkhead. Chained to a mast. I sung fleets into battle. Sung good men and women to the bottom of the sea. That, Mary, is a fate worse than death.

Now I faced the same fate, wrists scraped raw by rough rope, surrounded by strangers in the swinging lantern light. What if she was right? I would be passed from crew to crew, each more disreputable than the next. Furthermore, with the war still raging across the Winter Sea, I might end up in the hands of the Mereish or the Cape. I might be used against my own countryfolk, perhaps even my mother, if she still lived and sailed somewhere out there.

But was that a fate worse than death? I’d looked death in the eyes today, felt her noose around my neck, and I couldn’t bear to face her again. Not tonight. My will to live still burned, hot and ready to blaze.

As a Stormsinger, I had value. I’d be kept alive. I’d suffer, but I’d live. And while I lived, I could escape—I couldn’t say what I’d escape to, not yet, but that would come.

I met Kaspin’s eyes and thought of my mother, of her strength and the hard line of her jaw. And so, I gave them her name instead of my father’s, together with all its promises and destiny.

“Yes,” I said. “My name is Mary Firth, and I am a Stormsinger.”

SOOTH—Being a mage with an unnatural ability to conjure visions and trespass into the Other, whether by striding the border between worlds, where future, past, and present can be glimpsed, or by sinking fully into that other realm, where they may sight and track the souls of other, unwary mages. See alsoSEER, EDGE-WALKER, MEREISH SUMMONER.

—FROM THE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEWWORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES

THREE

The Fourth Man

SAMUEL

This is despicable and I will have no part of it.” I glared out of the windows at the back of the great cabin. Through their frost-latticed glass, Whallum’s assemblage of narrow houses, shops and warehouses leaned on one another like drunkards, capped with snow and skirted by sailors, dockworkers, hawkers and townsfolk. More snow dusted from the sky, early even for this corner of the Winter Sea, summoned by the meddling of the very woman I now found myself defending. “We cannot bring a Stormsinger aboard. Not like this. Not against her will. We should wait for a proper indenture from the Crown.”

“An indenture will never come, Mr. Rosser.” Captain Slader laid down the pistol he had been polishing and took up its pair. A retired naval captain and as shrewd as they came, he was small-eyed and bore the disposition of an aged cat.

He picked up a turnscrew, removed the pistol’s lock and handed the rest of the weapon to Ms. Helena Fisher: ship’s master, first officer, and my rival. “We’re privateers—hardly priority.”

“I will have no part,” I repeated.

Fisher gave a soft snort. She cocked one eyebrow, fine and black against light brown skin, and fit a swath of flax wool to the end of a ramrod. Vulpine to Slader’s feline, she had keen brown eyes and an artist’s fine fingers.

Twisting the wool into place, she commented, “There is no chance of capturing Lirr without a Stormsinger. Surely you understand how these things work.”

I kept my gaze flat. Fisher was not wrong. Silvanus Lirr, pirate, warlord, and our sole commission, had a weather mage aboard. Without one ourselves, we risked the Winter Sea battering our ship to pieces in the pursuit, or Lirr’s mage sinking us with an ensorcelled wind. We would be handing him every advantage, and our chances of catching him would be slim.

But it was not impossible.

Captain Slader began to clean the pistol’s lock with a cloth. “Ms. Fisher is correct. This auction is an unsavory business, I agree. But this Charles Grant fellow seemed respectable enough. I assume the woman will be well treated.”

I stared at him in indignation. “Well treated? You know how they find singers, sir, and what they do to them if they are not powerful enough.”

“We need the witch.” Fisher dampened the flax. She emphasized her next words by plunging the rod down the barrel of the pistol. “If our methods are so distasteful, perhaps you should return to the Navy, Lieutenant.”

Slader measured my response as he smeared tallow and beeswax about the mechanism. A beat of silence stretched as both he and Fisher waited for me to erupt, but I took my anger in an iron fist, focusing on the sounds of snow shushing off the window and the cleaning of dismembered pistols. The scent of old gunpower, fat and wax soured my nose.

Disappointed by her failure to provoke me, Fisher removed the blackened flax and spun on a new portion to dry the barrel.

“If the auction is our only option, I will go,” I grudgingly conceded.

“Good.” Slader glanced over the newly oiled lock and set it aside. “But for now, you are dismissed, Ms. Fisher. Mr. Rosser, stay here.”

Fisher looked as though she wanted to protest but relinquished the pistol and rod to Slader. Then, burgundy hem of her frock coat brushing the doorframe in an elegant swirl, she left the cabin.

The door closed and the captain looked me over, from the buckles of my worn black shoes to my neatly tied hair, now disheveled by an agitated hand. “I’ve said it before, but I shall say it again, Mr. Rosser. Your past will never leave you, nor will those like Fisher. You must reconcile yourself to your circumstances, or you’ll lose your place on this vessel. As you did on your last.”

I forced my gaze out the stern windows again, and nodded.

“As to this Stormsinger,” Slader said as he began to reassemble the flintlock, “I understand your principles. I know you want to redeem yourself in the eyes of the world, and bringing down Lirr is certainly a good opportunity to do that. But we need the Stormsinger to succeed. She will be much happier in our company than others, in any case. Or would you rather she’s taken on by pirates? Saint, there are captains of the Fleet with less scruples than you or I. You know that as well as I do. Now, you’ve three thousand solems to bid—use them well.”

The last of my anger wavered, then released into weary resignation. This was the way of the world, the nature of life on the Winter Sea.

One day I would rise above it. One day I would scrape the mud from my name and face my family without shame. But for now, I would do Slader’s bidding.

“I will, sir.”

*   *   *

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 at Hart. 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. Hart had 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 his quarterdeck—blue or red or white, depending on the fleet, with quotes from the Saint in illegible gilt letters. All that remained now were Hart’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.” She tsked, 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 left Hart behind, 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 port life—eccentric hawkers, 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 Captain Slader—andmyself—came to 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, flushed cheeks—a native 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 northern coast—descended from 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 terrified victims—daring battles 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.

“We’re waiting on one more guest,” Kaspin said, filling a glass with whiskey and passing it to his brutish companion, who drank half in a shallow, savory sip, then downed the rest.

There were more glasses set out for Demery and me at empty chairs, but neither of us took them. I eyed the pirate askance, trying to suss out what it was about him and this meeting that had so unsettled me, beyond his reputation.

Demery caught my eye again. “Not long now,” the pirate murmured. “I do hope your armsmen are nearby.”

My tongue felt suddenly dry. Armsmen? Why would I have brought armsmen? Unless Demery was expecting conflict—but conflict connected to him, the results of this meeting, or the last guest?

The whisper at the back of my mind turned to a hiss, and with it came a dreamer’s rootless certainty. The feeling was a familiar one, as common to me as anger or sadness, and it took all my strength to resist reaching into my pocket for the worn old coin.

Stuffing my wits into a façade of self-possessed impatience, I gave Demery a thin smile and asked Kaspin, “I trust we will not be waiting long?”

Kaspin shook his head and glanced at a ticking clock on the mantle. “I doubt so.”

Accepting this with a nod, I stepped forward and tapped Fisher’s shoulder. She shot me a censorious glance, but paused when she saw my expression.

She rose and we moved to the door.

“Something is not right. We need to warn Slader,” I murmured. There was no use pretending that our conversation was not conspiratorial—everyone in the room watched us, even the Stormsinger over her gag. “That man is James Elijah Demery.”

“Is he a mage?” Fisher pointedly did not look at the man. “Is he conspiring?”

I shook my head. “Not a mage—not that I have sensed. But he did imply we ought to be better armed and there is something disquieting about this last guest.”

“Then go.” Fisher nodded to the door. “Right away.”

“You ought to,” I returned. “Let me stay here.”

“I am the senior officer,” Fisher reminded me coolly.

“Of course,” I acknowledged with a nod. “But I am the Sooth.”

Fisher’s expression stilled, and for a heartbeat I thought she would overrule me. Then she nodded and said, loud enough for our eavesdroppers to ‘accidentally’ hear, “Fine, how much more?”

Relief trickled down my spine. She had been convinced, and had the wit to cover our tracks. Fisher did have her moments.

“As much as the captain will give us,” I answered with equal faux subtlety.

Fisher looked at Kaspin and produced a polite smile. “Pardon me for a few moments,” she said, bowed and left the room.

Kaspin looked pleased. He exchanged a highbrowed look with his muscled companion and raised his glass to us. “To a lively auction,” he said.

Five minutes crawled past. Demery sat in a chair and lit a pipe, tilting his head back to watch the smoke rise as he made conversation with Kaspin and the wiry man, called Randalf, about mundane port business.

I sat next to Demery and half listened, alert for any hints of who the last guest might be. The rest of my focus oscillated between the stairs and the Stormsinger, who stared out the window with a dull gaze.

That was, until Kaspin’s bodyguard patted her cheek on his way to the window, and her leg lashed out in a sharp, straight kick to his knee.

The big man went down like a sack of grain, if a sack of grain could be bearded and issue obscenities—first in a croak, then a shout, then a roar. The captive snarled something defiantly after him, her words completely distorted by the gagging device.

A laugh lodged in my throat, chased by dread. The man unfurled back to his full height, glaring at the Stormsinger in a way that made me reach for my cutlass.

Demery looked blithely at Kaspin and raised his brows.

“Mr. Speck,” Kaspin warned.

Mr. Speck’s jaw worked, his head twisted to one side and his fists clenched in fury. He grabbed the nearest chair with a scrape and clatter and situated it next to the window, making himself the closest to the Stormsinger.

“The moment she makes a move,” he growled, rubbing his knee with a huge hand.

“You’ll carefully ensure she sits back down?” Demery offered.

“What do you care? You’re a pirate,” the wigged man, Randalf, suddenly accused.

Demery’s eyes tracked to him, still amiable. If being outed so publicly perturbed him, he did not show it. One did not go to Whallum without expecting to brush elbows with criminals of all distinctions.

“I’ve been called as much, yes,” he affirmed.

“He’s seventh on Her Majesty’s contract list,” I heard myself commenting. My hand was still on my cutlass, but I loosened my grip, palming it absently.

The Stormsinger noticed my movement and considered me for a narrow second, then looked at Demery.

“Pray, seventh?” The pirate frowned. “Last I heard I was fifth.”

“You’ve lost your touch, old man.” Randalf chuckled. “There’s a pirate hunter in this room, but has he interest in you? No.”

I shot him a look. How did he know what I was?

Reading my expression, Randalf flapped a dismissive hand at me. “I’ve eyes in my skull, boy. I can see Hart in the harbor, same as everyone else.”

“I’ve not lost my touch. Rather, I’ve been preoccupied,” Demery said in a way that made my dreamer’s sense prickle. “It’s hard to steal enough tobacco and molasses to stay on the Queen’s List, even in peacetime. Besides, any position higher than four and there’s already a noose strung for you at Fort Almsworth. Hardly something I aspire to.”

The Stormsinger flinched at that, and my curiosity strayed back towards her. Her eyes met mine, still edged with the anger that she had unleashed on Mr. Speck. They were the deep grey of summer storms, infiltrated with shocks of equally dark blue. The combination was odd, but even odder on a Stormsinger. Her kind usually had pale blue eyes, many to the point that they were blind.

Or, in the worst cases, intentionally blinded in an ill-informed attempt to increase a singer’s power. It rarely worked and occasionally had the opposite effect, but that did not dissuade avaricious slavers from the attempt.

Gooseflesh prickled up my arms.

Demery’s voice pulled me back to the rest of the room. “At least Mr. Rosser knew me on sight, did he not?”

I tore my eyes from the young woman’s and gave him a nod. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Demery looked back at Randalf. “You, you’re a smuggler?”

He pursed his lips. “A merchant. Juliette is my ship.”

Demery leaned back in his chair and stacked his heels under the table. “Oh?”

Randalf rolled his eyes. “Merchant and occasional purveyor of tax-free goods.”

The Stormsinger looked between the two of them, her eyes losing even more of their light. Had she just realized how bleak her options were?

The sight made my guilt triple. I could not drag this woman aboard Hart. I had been a fool to agree to this errand, a fool to think there was any world where I could stomach exchanging money for another’s freedom, let alone dragging a village girl—which, from her clothes and manner, she certainly was—onto a warship with a contract as dangerous as ours.

Everyone looked up as footsteps sounded on the stairs. Demery’s hand drifted beneath his coat and every muscle in my body went taut. Silently, I prayed Fisher and the armsmen were not far off.

I leaned back slightly in my chair, angling myself so I could see the top of the stairs.

A young gentleman came into sight, his blond hair swept back into a fine red ribbon and his cheeks flushed with cold. There was more than a little snow on his clothes, and he brushed it off as he topped the stairs and came through the door.

“He is not coming,” Charles Grant, the man who had brought us our invitation to Kaspin’s auction, announced. He took an unclaimed glass of whiskey from the table and retreated to a corner, close to the fire but far from the light of the window.

Irritation flickered across Kaspin’s face. “Not coming at all? Or is there another day he’d prefer?”

“He is not coming.” Grant nursed the whiskey, the cup brushing his bottom lip and distorting his voice as he added, “He was also very rude.”

“Well, then.” Kaspin was clearly put out, but rallied. “Let’s introduce our witch.”

I stole a quick look at Demery as Kaspin removed the Stormsinger’s gag. The pirate’s expression was inscrutable except for a few lines around his eyes—not irritation or disappointment. Perhaps… preoccupation.

The gag came off and the Stormsinger coughed. Kaspin stepped back, proceeding to load a pistol as he said, “This is Mary. Mary, sing for us, something… subtle.” He cocked the pistol and pointed it at her head. “A simple demonstration will suffice.”

Half the woman’s face was rubbed red from the gag. She noted the muzzle of the pistol then surveyed the room, taking in each one of us in a way that made me overly aware of how I must appear, here among criminals. As if I were one of them.

There was fear beneath her resentment, and I reminded myself what Slader had said. She would be safest with us. Demery was a pirate. Randalf was just a smuggler, but from the way he leered, his company would be little better.

“One for sorrow, two for mirth,” Mary began to sing. Her voice was low and soft, not forceful, but cajoling. Outside the windows, the wind snuffed like a candle, and the falling snow became impossibly still. Beyond it the sun flashed through the clouds and bold, iridescent beams struck the water between snow-dusted ships.

Awe washed through me. Her voice did not just still the wind. It stilled my dreamer’s sense and left me feeling unexpectedly… whole. Awake and grounded in a way I had not felt for many years.

Logic told me this was simply my imagination, but for now, I ignored that cynical voice. I watched white flakes drift, caught outside of time, and let myself be captured too.

The Stormsinger sang, “Three for a death, and four for birth.”

Kaspin looked around with obvious satisfaction as Mary’s voice faded and Mr. Speck refitted her gag. The wind picked back up and the sun disappeared, but there was no doubt as to her power.

And I? An irrational yearning wove through my ribs, smothering my breath as surely as Mary had smothered the wind outside. I wanted, more than anything, to hear her voice again. To see the sun break through the clouds and the snowflakes drift to her unnatural song. That power. That peace—imagined, or real.

Kaspin’s voice broke the silence. “Mr. Rosser, need we wait for your companion to begin?”

“Begin?” I repeated, still disoriented. “No, no.”

Kaspin eyed me, then ducked his chin. “Then let’s open with one thousand five hundred solems.”

“Five hundred,” Randalf said, turning up his nose. “She strikes me as untrained. Stilling a breeze and calling a storm are one thing. Dispersing a storm and maintaining a fair wind for a voyage? Those are another.”

Kaspin looked to Demery.

The pirate laced his arms loosely over his chest. “One thousand five hundred,” he affirmed.

Now, Kaspin turned his eyes to me.

My throat felt thick, the number poisonous on my tongue. I forced myself to look at Randalf again, at Speck and Kaspin and Demery, and reminded myself again that the singer would be better off with us.

That was not my only motivation, though. That voice. That song, and the way it had affected me. I wanted to help her. I needed to—even if my only means was contemptible.

“My captain is prepared to offer two thousand,” I said.

“I’ll raise to two thousand five hundred,” Demery countered calmly.

Silence overtook the table. Randalf sucked at his teeth, obviously unhappy with the price. Kaspin refilled his cup with a soft clink and sat back, expectant.

As to Mary herself, she paled even more. She blinked hard and her face locked into an expressionless façade.

Demery noticed. “You’ll be well treated on my vessel, Mary. I run a clean ship, no drinking, no fighting, no gambling. A cabin of your own.”

“Puritan pirates,” Grant muttered from his gloomy corner, though I could not say if anyone else heard him. “Laud them.”

“The witch isn’t here to be wooed,” Kaspin said. “Three thousand, anyone?”

“Four thousand,” Randalf burst out, spitting the words as if they were broken teeth. “Four thousand bedamned solems.”

My heart hit the floor beneath my boots. Kaspin’s hand froze on his cup and Demery slowly twisted to regard the smuggler.

“What exactly, Mr. Randalf, do you smuggle?” the pirate asked. His tone was benign, but I saw the frustration behind his eyes. My guess? He could not afford to outbid that.

I could not, either. I fingered the worn coin in my pocket to calm myself, running the numbers in my head. Slader could not pay more than three thousand. One could buy an entire ship for four thousand solem weight.

“I deal in pineapples, for the most part,” Randalf said, still looking disgusted, but our shock had soothed him. A touch of arrogance tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You wouldn’t believe what the rich sots on Jurry will pay to carry around a pineapple at their parties, or just how fond Her Majesty is of pineapple syrup in the mornings. But they do not keep, which is why I need a weather witch, and my last one drowned herself. Fair winds, fresh cargo, good business.”

The Stormsinger stared at him in abject horror. I felt much the same.

Kaspin chuckled. His cheeks warmed now, greed and glee glinting in his eyes. “Well, well. Demery? Rosser? Any final offers?”

Demery emptied his cup and set it down with a hollow thunk. His expression was contained, but there was a glimmer of murder in the way he looked at Randalf. “No, sir.”

My dreamer’s sense roared, and this time there was no stopping it. It buffeted and pulled at me, threatening to drag me out of the room entirely and into that Other place—the one where dreams walked, ghisten spirits ruled, and my soul was irreparably tethered.

I saw the Stormsinger’s face in a winter wold of ice and snow, windburned and desperate. Then she was not one, but two—her living, breathing human image mirrored in spectral shadow.

I grasped the worn coin in my pocket so tightly that my palm nearly split and the embossing on its face, three serpents biting one another’s tails, stamped into my skin. The roar dampened to a hushed moan, then faded altogether.

Relief coursed through me, though it was a sour thing. I had just glimpsed the Stormsinger’s future, and whatever it meant, I could not change it.

“Any more offers?” Kaspin prompted again, looking to me. When no one spoke, he leaned over to top up Randalf’s cup with a soft clink and a stream of amber liquor. The deal was done.

I stood up with a scrape of my chair and started for the door, ripping my eyes off the Stormsinger. I had lost her, and that bothered me more than anticipated. Empathy, guilt, and a touch of longing coiled through my chest. But none of it mattered. I could not change what happened in this room, any more than I could change my own past.

“Mr. Rosser,” Kaspin called, “I do have other assets which might interest your captain. Perhaps you would stay and take a drink with me?”

“I will be going,” I replied with a tight smile. My eyes alighted one last time on James Demery, who watched me with an inscrutable expression, and my dreamer’s sense coiled again. I ignored it. “Good day to you all.”

With that, I left. And I did not look back.

The Girl from the Wold

The girl from the village between the Wold and the slate hills knows that the ghisten trees have souls. She has grown up in their shade, and sees them for more than their twisted, gnarled trunks and spreading canopies, which refuse to bow to the seasons as normal wolds do. She has marked the way their shadows sometimes stretch from unseen suns, and how, every so often, their leaves stir without wind.

The girl’s summers, short though they are on the edge of the Winter Sea, are full of birdsong and bare feet in moss. Long winters bring the hush and creak of snow-laden boughs, the burble of buried streams, and here and there the rustle of leaves from a rebellious ghisten birch, green in defiance of the cold. She breaks the ice and drinks from those hidden streams, nourished by the same water that nourishes the forest, and eats the berries that grow between twisted roots. She belongs in the Wold.

And when she puts her small palm to the trunk of the yew, behind the inn where her family lives, she thinks she can hear a whisper. The tree has a soul, she knows, a soul drawn up through the dirt and clay and stone. It is a soul from another world, with other suns and seasons. A soul now housed within oak and elm and yew.

That soul is called a ghisting.

*   *   *

FOUR

The Company of Smugglers

MARY

A