Page 3 of Dark Water Daughter

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 fireand—

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.

—FROMTHE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEW

WORDBOOK 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 ortemperature—particularlyanger. 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 wasafraid—quiteproperlyafraid—butfear 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 theLesterwold—”

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?”

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