Meliz descended from her sailcloth-and-saltdeck throne, a smile tugging at her lips. She was never far from a smirk or a laugh. Today she looked wrought in bronze, her skin darkened by the sun while the flush of a successful voyage colored her cheeks. Her mahogany eyes sparkled, made more striking by a line of black along her lids.
“Answer well, Daughter.”
Corayne squared her shoulders. She’d grown this last year and could look her mother in the eye now. “The furs will go on to Qaliram.”
Meliz blinked, her full, dark brow curving into splendid swoops. There were three tiny scars over her left eye, the lucky cuts of an opponent with poor aim.
She took her daughter by the arm, urging her to walk. “I did not know the Ibalets had need for fox and sable in the Great Sands.”
Corayne didn’t blame her for the skepticism. Ibal was mostly desert. Fur from the north would certainly not fetch a favorable price. But she had her reasons.
“Their royal court has taken a liking to their mountains,” she said lightly, pleased with herself. “And with all that desert blood, well, they’re not likely to stay warm without our help. I’ve made my inquiries; it’s all arranged.”
“I suppose it won’t be terrible to have contacts within the royal family of Ibal.” Meliz’s voice dropped. “Especially after that misunderstanding in the Strait last winter.”
A misunderstanding that left three sailors dead and the Tempestborn near sinking. Corayne swallowed back the bitter taste of fear and failure. “My thoughts exactly.”
Meliz pulled her closer. After nearly two months left behind, Corayne basked in the attention. She brushed her head against her mother’s shoulder, wishing she could embrace her properly. But the crew were all around them, busy in their work, dedicated to the ship and her needs, with Galeri observing from the edges, more nosy than official.
“You know you have some of that desert blood,” Meliz said. “On my side, of course.”
Despite the warmth of her mother’s arm, Corayne felt a cold ripple of unease in her belly. “Among others,” she muttered. There were many conversations she wanted to have with her mother. My bloodline is far from one of them.
Meliz looked over her daughter again. It was a poor subject to return home to, and she navigated away from it. “Very well, what else have you lined up for me?”
Corayne heaved a breath, both relieved and eager to impress. She held her ledger open to show pages cramped with delicate, deliberate writing. “The Madrentines will be at war with Galland soon enough, and they’ll pay best for weaponry.” She allowed herself a small smile. “Especially Treckish steel without entanglements.”
The metal was valuable, both for its durability and the close control Trec kept over its export. Meliz shared in her delight.
“All this you learn in Lemarta?” she mused, raising an eyebrow.
“Where else would I learn it?” Corayne said sharply, her skin growing hot. “We’re a port city as much as any. Sailors talk.”
Sailors talk; travelers talk; merchants and guards and the tower watchmen talk. They talk loudly and often—lying, mostly. Boasting of lands they’ve never seen or great deeds they’ll never accomplish. But the truth is always there, beneath, waiting to be sifted free, specks of gold among sand.
Captain an-Amarat chuckled in her ear, her breath cool. Her mother smelled of the sea; she always smelled of the sea.
“Do any talk to you?” she needled, intention clear. She glanced at the old sailor who spent his days guarding her daughter. “Kastio, how fares my daughter with the boys?”
A jolt of embarrassment licked down Corayne’s spine. She slapped her ledger shut with both hands and drew away, flushing red. “Mother,” she hissed, scandalized.
Meliz only laughed, unbothered and accustomed to her daughter’s discomfort.
“Oh, come now. I was your age when I met your father,” she said, putting a hand on her generous hip, fingers splayed over her sword belt. “Well, a year older. I was your age when I met the girl before your father. . . .”
Corayne stuffed her ledger away, returning the precious pages to her satchel. “All right, that’s more than enough. I have a lot of information to keep straight, and this is certainly not worth committing to my memory.”
Laughing again, Meliz took her daughter’s face in her hands. She stepped with a swaying motion, her heart still aboard the deck of a ship.
Though she loved Meliz, Corayne felt small and young in her grasp. And she hated it.
“You’re radiant when you blush,” Meliz said, all the truth she could muster in her words.
Such is the way of mothers, to think the sun and the moon of their children. Like the Long Sea on a clear morning, Corayne held no illusions. Meliz an-Amarat was the radiant one, beautiful and magnificent. Lovely as any queen, but Meliz was common-born of the Ward, a smuggler’s daughter, a child of the Sea and the Strait and every country they touched. She was made for the waves, the only other thing in this world as fierce and bold as she was.
Not like me. Corayne knew herself, and while she was her mother’s daughter, she was not her mother’s equal. Their coloring was the same. Golden skin that went bronze in the summer, black hair that shone deep red beneath sunlight. But Corayne had thin lips, a short nose, a graver face than her mother, who smiled like a sunbeam. Her eyes were unremarkable, black all the way through, flat and empty as a starless night. Inscrutable, distant. As Corayne felt apart from the world, her eyes showed it.
It did not bother her, to think such things. It is good to know your own measure. Especially in a world where women were as much what they looked like as what they could do. Corayne would never persuade a fleet patrol with a bat of her eyelashes. But the right coin to the right hands, the right pull of the right string—that Corayne could do, and do well.
“You’re perfect when you lie,” the girl said, kindly pulling away.
“I have lots of practice,” Meliz replied. “Of course, I never lie to you.”
“You and I both know that is realms away from the truth,” Corayne said without accusation. It took all her resolve to keep her face still and measured, unaffected by her mother’s life—and the trust they could never truly share. “But I know you have your reasons.”
Meliz was good enough not to argue. There was truth in admitting her lies. “I do,” she murmured. “And they are always, always, to keep you safe, my dearest girl.”
Though the words stuck in her throat, Corayne forced them out anyway, her cheeks flushing with heat. “I need to ask you—” she began.
Only for Galeri’s thumping boots to cut her off.
Mother and daughter turned at his approach, false smiles donned with ease.
“Officer Galeri, you honor us with your attention,” the captain said, inclining her head politely. Theirs was a pleasant arrangement, and small-minded men were quick to take slights from women, even imagined.
Galeri basked in the glow of Captain an-Amarat. He drew close, closer than he had to Corayne. Meliz did not flinch, well accustomed to the leers of men. Even fresh from a voyage, dressed in salt-eaten clothes, she could turn many eyes.
Corayne swallowed her disgust.
“You came from Aegironos, your daughter told me,” Galeri said. He jabbed a thumb back at the crates piling on the dock. Runes marked the wood. “Strange, the Aegir usually don’t mark their crates in Jydi wolf scratch.”