Page 40 of Soulgazer

My tongue falters, then lies prone behind my teeth. What could I possibly say? I’m cursed? Marked by a soulstone? Believe in the gods, and the Isle of Lost Souls, because my only other choice is to hate them and accept I will be nothing in this life?

Brona flips the chart over with a scoff. “Look at her, Nessa. She’s useless.”

“Ease up a bit, would you?” Nessa rubs at the back of her neck, smile all but gone. “I’m sure there’s a good reason she’s here. Besides, Faolan only collects useless things if they’re works of…Anyway.” She turns to me. “You’ll have knowledge. Secrets about the politics and trade—or something to do with your da’s island?”

My throat’s too tight to speak, so I shake my head.

Brona scoffs. “Doubt she even knows where those pretty clothes came from. Certainly not her father’s dirty hands. In fact, I doubt she knows how to do anything useful. Scrub, weave nets, take bloody orders—feckin’ hell, I’m talking to Faolan. There’s got to be a mistake.”

“Brona!” Nessa reaches for her, but she’s already off in a storm.

We stand in the quiet, the small loaf of bread heavy in my hand. I haven’t earned it, but when I try to set it near the hide, Nessa waves me off. “Nah, we’re not going to starve you even if you’re usele—” She coughs. “We’ll find something for you, lass.”

“Perhaps something to do with sewing?” Lorcan appears at her side once more, a far softer expression on his face than any of the others I’ve seen so far. “Faolan says you made your own costume that first night. Magpie, wasn’t it?”

“Aye.” I smooth the damp fabric of my current gown, a faintstreak of salt limning the wrinkled edges. “I’ve a fair hand with a needle. If you showed me what stitch to use, I could mend the sails?”

Nessa’s smile goes sheepish. “As much as I’d love to hand that task off, sails are a bit of a stretch for a new recruit to take on, seeing as they’re just about the only thing standing between our survival and sinking if the structure goes wrong.”

“Oh.”

“But you could mend our clothes for a start? Earn a bit of trust.”

I note the tightness around her eyes. The way Lorcan chews on one cheek. Both are trying to be friendly, neither quite succeeding, yet I can’t blame them for their wariness. Who am I but a mythical stranger—some odd creature with even odder eyes their captain went to a world of trouble to capture on board? And that’s to say nothing of Rí Dermot’s and Maccus’s wrath.

Brona’s suspicion is not unwarranted. They should all be terrified of me.

I smile in the same stiff way reflected on both their faces, and fold my hands into a tidy knot behind me.

“I’d be happy to.”

Fifteen

The light of the dying sun streams through my linen skirts and wool dresses, casting shades of mustard, sage, and heather onto the walls of Faolan’s room. They drape over the backs of chairs and hang from a slender rope I tied to the door handle, the other side attached to a wooden bedpost. A pale line of shifts marks the hooks on one wall, fluttering with each brush of air from the open window.

If I closed my eyes, I could be in my cottage once more. Banished by the sea.

Harmless.

Footsteps shatter my delusion, and I turn just in time to see Faolan burst through the door with a chest in hand, sending all four of my gowns to the floor. Beside them lie three separate baskets of rumpled clothing covered in tears, threadbare patches, or stains. His brows shoot up, highlighting a little white scar at the corner of one, but he doesn’t apologize. “Making yourself at home, are you?”

I don’t bother to respond. Instead, I gather the gowns up one by one in my arms, my mind racing over the snippets of information I learned from Nessa and Lorcan as they guided me along theship to collect everyone’s torn clothing. There are a dozen names for every wheel, beam, and mast, and hundreds more words to explain what to do with them. Ropes for pulling, hoisting, tying down, catching an eastern breeze or pushing the westward wind away. Nets require a complicated weave, fish their own particular stroke of the blade to separate bone from workable flesh.

And I am inept at all but the mending.

Every task they tried to set me, I failed in some way. My nervous fingers slipped on the knife, in spite of years working with blades at the cottage to cook my own supper. I didn’t dare touch the ropes for fear of collapsing a sail when it needed to rise, or venture near Brona and her maps again. Only the surgeon’s cupboard held any promise when we stopped to collect needle and thread—a jumbled disaster of old bandages and glass jars turned so dark, it took hours to determine every herb or mixture they contained.

But it wasn’t wasted time. I asked questions of Nessa as she helped me work—questions about Faolan and Kiara, the crew’s adventures around the Crescent, and whether they’d ever journeyed through the Teeth. Lorcan was the one to answer that, stopping by with lunch in hand. He told me they are a jagged patch of uninhabitable land that spends half the year submerged in the sea and the other half rotting more with every low tide. Settled just off the coast of his homeland, the Isle of Painted Claw, they’re a devil of a time to get through, with very little reward.

As it turns out, neither of them could answer what’s possessed Faolan to go.

I run a finger over the delicate row of forget-me-nots embroidered along the bodice of my sage-green dress, then shake it free of wrinkles and add it to the others.

Uselessandfanciful.

Faolan clears his throat. “Nessa tells me you’re going to take onthe crew’s mending. And that you spent half the day sorting through the surgeon’s stores?”

“Aye.” I reach for a shift next, but Faolan gets to it first, knitting his fingers in the near-translucent fabric. My heart jumps as I fail to take it back.

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