The air whooshed out of Safire as her eyes went wide. She doubled over in shock, her knife falling away from Eris’s throat, gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come.
Eris wasted no time. She took several steps away from the bed, then ran, diving beneath it and alongside Safire’s makeshift rope, grabbing the dropped knife as she did. Her slight frame slid swiftly and easily to the other side, putting half the room between her and Safire within heartbeats.
Only half recovered from Eris’s punch, the commandant yanked on the rope, but there was too much slack now. Nothing happened.
Eris bent down and slashed the silk with Safire’s knife.
It severed easily.
Fingers trembling, Eris withdrew her spindle from its pouch and immediately drew it across the floor tiles. The night seemed to deepen. A bright line—pale as starlight—flared to life. It quickly formed a threshold over which silver mist poured and rolled. The air turned damp, cold, and with it came the gentle pull of Across.
It was then, with the door to another place yawning open before her, that Eris hesitated a second time.
Rising to her feet, she looked across the room to where Safire stood in her nightdress: her nostrils flaring, her mouth pinched with fury. Fully recovered.
I’m going to miss playing this game with you, Eris thought. The commandant had proven to be a formidable opponent.
“It’s been fun, princess. But I have to go.”
Safire moved, coming around the bed now. Coming straight for Eris. “The only place you’re going is into a prison cell, thief. . . .”
The mist swirled, concealing her now.
“Good-bye,” Eris said softly, stepping into the gray. Leaving the commandant behind. Trading the palace of Firgaard for a path of mist and starlight.
She heard Safire begin to say something else, but the words were lost. Which was how Eris knew she was already a world away.
When the mist receded and Eris opened her eyes, she was alone.
But that was all right. Eris was used to being alone.
Loneliness was a small price to pay for staying alive.
The Shadow and the Fisherman’s Daughter
Once there lived a boy with eyes as black as the sea, hands as swift as the wind, and footsteps as silent as death. He was a creature of the shadows who walked through the world alone and unheard and unseen.
But the fisherman’s daughter saw him.
Whenever he passed by her father’s wharf, Skye shivered. Each time she looked up, she saw the shadow moving through the meadow. Curious, she stepped away from the women of the cove and the codfish drying on the salt flakes, and followed him.
The first time, she followed the lonely shape of him for three days. By the time he turned around and saw her, Skye was weak with hunger.
The shadow recoiled at the sight of her.
Skye knew what she looked like. Her body was too small, too slight, too bony. Her eyes were set too wide apart and one of them always looked in the wrong direction.
She’d been born too early. No one had expected her to live. Skye looked down at her knobby hands, studying them as if for the first time. Seeing what he saw.
The shadow scowled. Before he could tell her to go away, though, she looked up at him with her one good eye.
For such a frail thing, she had a fierce gaze.
“What’s your name?” her small voice asked.
He shook his head, annoyed by her presence. He didn’t have time to indulge the whims of mortal creatures. They were nothing more than soon to be ghosts; their finite little lives beginning and ending in the span of a sunrise.
“I don’t have a name,” he told her.
“Then I’ll call you Crow.”
“Call me whatever you like,” he said, turning away. It wouldn’t matter. He would never see her again. He would make a point of walking more silently past her father’s wharf next time.
“Crow,” she said, and her voice pinned the word to him like a spell. “Where are you going?”
“Somewhere you can never come.” And with that, he slipped into the shadows, into nothing, leaving the fisherman’s daughter alone.
A month later, as he was walking at dusk, Crow heard familiar footsteps behind him. Turning to look, he found the crooked-eyed Skye trailing after him through the cliff-top meadow.
“What are you doing?” he growled at her, his pace quickening.
“Coming along.”
He spun. “No!” This time, he spoke with the voice of the sea—thunderous and terrifying. After all, Crow had only to breathe on her and she’d crumple like a pile of sticks.
Skye took a step back, quivering.
But she did not stop.
Again and again, when he walked past her father’s wharf, or through her cove, or up the cliffs looming above her house, Skye saw and followed him.
He bellowed at her. Threatened her. Chased her back.
Just when he thought he was rid of her, there she was. Again and again and again. Always a little older than she was the time before.
Finally, he gave up. Gave in. Stopped trying to lose her in the shadows. Instead, when he heard those familiar fragile footsteps, he slowed and let her catch up.
In the beginning, he ignored her endless nattering as she spoke about everything under the sky. But days turned to weeks, and though he wasn’t sure how or when it happened, he found himself lulled back from dark thoughts by the sound of her voice. Again and again, he found himself drawn to her knowledge of the winds and the tides and the skill of her small hands—rowing her dory through an angry sea; pulling nets full of shimmering fish into her father’s boat; and, most especially, weaving rough spools of wool into beautiful webs of color. Tapestries, she called them.
More than anything else in the world, he learned, Skye loved to weave.
But things from the shadows did not make friends with mortal girls. And fishermen’s daughters grew into women. Women who fell in love with mortals just like them. Mortals who bore children and grew old and eventually stepped through Death’s cold, dark gate.
And yet, Crow waited for her.
Worse still, he began to seek her out.
Four
The Sea Mistress was moored just north of the Rif Mountains, about a day’s sail from the port city of Darmoor. The moment she stepped aboard, Eris went to report to the pirate Kor, as per Jemsin’s orders. Kor’s cabin door was closed and she could hear the faint sound of muffled voices within. Not wanting to risk his temper by walking in on something, Eris handed over her spindle to Rain, the first mate—something Kor insisted on. She told Rain to inform Kor that he could find her belowdecks when he finished.
Kor was Jemsin’s precious protégé. A year after the scrin burned, Jemsin found Kor beaten half to death by a dockhand in Axis’s port. Kor was thirteen at the time, and the dockhand was his father. Jemsin killed the man and took Kor, raising him like his own son and turning him into a formidable pirate. Jemsin’s crew grumbled about the favor he bestowed on Kor. Thirteen-year-old boys were half-grown men and less moldable than children, they said. He should have been more careful.
They were right. When Kor turned eighteen, he started showing signs of dissatisfaction. It wasn’t enough to be part of Jemsin’s crew, obeying Jemsin’s orders. He wanted his own crew. He wanted to give orders.
Kor was an investment Jemsin couldn’t afford to let spoil. So he gave Kor his own ship—with the understanding that Kor would continue to do his bidding. He would patrol the waters Jemsin wanted him to patrol. He would attack the ships Jemsin wanted him to attack. He would come to Jemsin’s aid when requested. In order to ensure Kor’s obedience, Jemsin gave him a crew full of spies. That way he could keep an eye on Kor from a distance, enabling him to get word if Kor ever planned to stab him in the back.