Page 23 of Dark Water Daughter

“No! Yes!” I shrieked. Some rational part of my mind informed me that I was hysterical, but if there’d ever been a situation that warranted hysteria, this was it. “That’s why I jumped off the bloody damn ship!”

More heads appeared down the rail. Dozens of sailors looked on, conferring and pointing.

“She wants to drown,” the woman informed one of the figures, who drew up beside her in a tricorn hat. “Jumped off Lirr’s ship, she says.”

Lirr’s ship? So, this shipwas…someoneelse’s? How many ships were out here?

“Ms. Firth,” the newcomer called. It wasn’t the pirate, Lirr. This was James Demery, from Kaspin’s auction. “There’s no need to die tonight.”

Confusion overwhelmed me.

“Where are the pirates?” I shouted, voice cracking. How long had I been in the water? Where was the light of the burningJuliette? And her newly freed ghisting with her sea-glass eyes and the floatinghair…Shewas gone too.

Gone. They were all gone. The sea around me was devoid of light save the glow of this vessel’s lanterns. There was no wreckage, either, no tangles of rope or charred wood.

New panic spiked through me, along with a healthy dose of bewilderment. My eyesstung—emotionand cold, stinging seawater. What had happened to me?

“Where are the pirates?!” One of the bystanders mimicked my question, and a laugh rippled down the deck. “We’re all pirates, lass.”

I’d gone from one ship full of criminals to another. I clutched the rope and murmured a weepy, “Damn.”

“Come aboard and I’ll answer all your questions.” Demery gestured and a rope ladder toppled over the side of the ship, quickly occupied by two men. They started to descend with the surety of acrobats.

I hadn’t the strength to swim away. The rope was the only thing between me and drowning, though the cold was so deep in my flesh now, I could hardly feel myself holding it.

“Ms. Firth,” Demery’s voice became cooler, “Silvanus Lirr is gone, likely believing you dead. And if that is the end you desire, so be it. But you can make that decision tomorrow, once this night and its terrors have passed.”

Something inside of me, knotted and frantic with tension, loosened. He meant those words, or at least, I thought he did. And if he didn’t? I couldn’t afford to care.

The last of my will faded and when the pirates reached the end of their ladder, I held my hands towards them. One dropped into the water and pulled me in, locking a strong arm around my waist and helping me onto the first rung. I didn’t even care when he shook my sodden skirts out of the way. The second pirate watched, hanging above us with a mop of dark, curly hair in his eyes. Then the three of us, painstakingly, began to climb.

I collapsed onto the deck in a shivering, dripping mess. The crew gathered in, curious as hounds. Demery crouched down beside me and the woman I’d seen earlier hovered at his shoulder in men’s trousers and a thick winter coat.

“My name is James Elijah Demery, and this ship is theHarpy,” the captain said. “This is my first, Athe Kohlan. You’re safe here.”

The woman nodded, her eyes flinty. She was in her thirties, easily six feet tall with broad hips, broad shoulders, and a mismatched collection of men’s clothes. But there was no mistaking her femininity; her features were striking, with high cheekbones, a smooth jawline and honey-dark eyes, twined with grey and lined with thick black lashes. Her hair was black too, and showed a hint of stubborn curl despite the severity of the braid she’d bound it in. Those features, combined with her darker skin, made me suspect she had Sunjani in her blood, at least by one parent.

“Safe? That’s whathesaid,” I chattered, devoting the last spark of my energy to vehemence. My breath curled in the air before me. “You’re the same ashim—apirate, a Saint-damned pirate.”

Something flicked across Demery’s features at the accusation, but he didn’t respond. He just stood up and nodded to the woman, Athe, who hauled me to my feet. When I staggered, her iron arm kept me upright.

“Right, Ms. Firth,” Athe said, leading me towards the quarterdeck and its waiting doors. She thumped and rubbed my upper arms like a mother with a fussing toddler. “Let’s thaw you out.”

***

I lay in my cocoon of blankets, head resting on the creaking hammock’s edge. I watched firelight dance through the murky glass of the cabin’s woodstove, trying to imagine I was anywhere but here. The bulkhead and decking around the stove were covered in standard iron plating and the stove’s belly was small enough to go out if it wasn’t tended every few hours.

It was burning low, again, and cold seeped in through the walls. Someone had come to feed it at least once since my arrival aboard Demery’s ship, but time was a slippery thing, and I had no window in my cabin to judge the light.

I was alone. Alone and so far unharmed, ensconced in blankets that smelled of salt and lavender and lye.

My thoughts drifted back to Kaspin’s auction, to the promise Demery had made that aboard his ship, I’d be treated fairly. Was that proving true? Did it matter if it was? I was still a prisoner.

I buried myself deeper in my blankets, hair poofing up around my head. My thoughts swerved away from my current troubles and back to Lirr.

Do you remember who I am?

No, I couldn’t bear to think of him, either, or of the ghisting who’d called me sister. She was the last thing I remembered before Demery’sappearance…Buthow had he found me? And where had the wreckage ofJuliettegone? Had the ghisting carried me away?

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