“No!” Lang had burst out. “No, it’s just not safe for you to be up there.”
“Not safe?” My words had been bitter as bile. “Not safe—like sailing a powder keg across the Atlantic? Like not knowing who my crew members are really working for?” Another step toward him had put us mere inches apart. “Like navigating the English court blind while you hunted for rebels, or passing Asgard’s gates not knowing my crew are smugglers?” I’d studied him, desperate for some hint of remorse in his face, but I’d found none. “I’ll do a better job looking after myself, if that’s the best you can do.”
With that, I’d turned away from him, grasping the ladder again in my hands, and begun to climb.
“Selah!” Cobie had called from the deck. “What are you doing?”
I hadn’t been able to answer her and climb and keep breathing. So I’d chosen climbing, and breathing. I’d concentrated on the rough feel of the rope between my fingers and not on the way the ladder twisted and swung in the wind blowing straight through my clothes, sharp as my own anger.
My ears had told me that all movement on deck below me had stopped. I hadn’t paused to look down.
The landing at the top of the mainmast was about six feet by six feet, a square with a small lip at its edge. I’d hoisted myself up onto it, out of sight of the crew, feeling it pitch beneath me like the mist swirling in the fjord.
But the roll of the sea and the fog had been nothing to the rage churning in my stomach. To the angry tears dripping sideways across the bridge of my nose and pooling beneath my cheek as I huddled on my side.
I lay that way now, curled up toward Cobie, studying the ring on my finger. Its cluster of stones was as blue as the Bilröst and the Asgard boys’ eyes, its rose-gold band the color of Torden’s lashes.
I’d left him behind. Torden. The only thing I’d been sure of in months.
How I loved him. How I longed to feel his hands in mine, to feel him at my side, close as breathing.
But Asgard was at our stern, not our prow. And Torden had promises to keep. To Asgard. To his father, whose only concern was defending their home against the Imperiya Yotne. To his stepmother, who had lost one child to death and another to exile.
I had promises to keep, as well—to my crew, as they searched for the resistance, but also to Potomac and my father, whose sadness and sickness weighed constantly on my mind. I’d marked the days as they passed in the back of the book my godmother had given me before I’d left; the marching army of tick marks never failed to make my chest grow tight with worry.
Time loomed vast and substantial behind and before me. So many days, so many miles, and my father’s fate still unknown.
I thought of the bones that pressed at Daddy’s skin, of the tremors that ran through his limbs. Of the heaviness that had seemed to weigh on his heart for so long.
I believed he would want me to help others defend themselves. I hoped I would get home in time for him to tell me so.
Always seems to be so much noise, he’d said to me the night of the Arbor Day ball.
Only the crow’s nest seemed to be above all the clamor.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I’m not all right.”
Cobie wet her lips. “It won’t kill you,” she said. She crossed her arms and leaned against the mast, black shirt flapping in the breeze.
My head knew she was right. The fear and the pain and the emptiness: they would not be the death of me.
But the depth and the breadth and the height of my loss felt as boundless as the ocean I’d crossed to reach this place. And my heart found it hard to believe her.
2
Fat drops of rain began to fall as I climbed down from the crow’s nest. My movements were clumsy as I crept toward deck, my palms still sweating a little over the rope.
I couldn’t stay up top forever. But I wasn’t ready to talk to the crew. I made for the galley instead and found Will soaking dried beans and kneading bread.
“Can you take this over?” he asked with no preamble as the galley door swung shut behind me. “I need to go to the storeroom below.” He laughed. “Need. Knead. Get it?”
Did Will know? I wondered.
My mind rejected the idea. Will was too comfortable, too kind. Too focused on working hard and feeding the crew, surely, to occupy himself with scheming.
But Yu was a doctor; he’d cared for me when I felt unwell. Andersen had made me paper ships and dragons, just to make me smile. They’d lied so easily. Could Will?
I huffed a laugh at him, but it sounded tense and unnatural. “You’re silly. Go.”
Will left me alone in the galley. Lanterns creaked from the low-beamed ceiling overhead, and dishes shifted gently in the copper sink. The smells of yeast and fat drifted on the air. I closed my eyes and tried to let them comfort me. But I couldn’t help thinking of the guns and gunpowder stashed right near the flour and the salt and everything else we needed to survive.
I tied an apron around my waist, shook out my hands, and began to work the bread. As rain pattered on the galley roof, I pushed the heels of my hands into the dough, trying to stretch out the anxious knots in my neck and shoulders. I let my muscles lead, let my mind wander, drifting across the sea and across time. From my godmother to Bear to Torden to Daddy; from Fritz, my waiting suitor at Katz Castle, to the Waldleute rebels we were on our way to aid.
The galley door swung open again, feet crossing the floor in time with the thump of the dough as I worked. But it wasn’t Will I saw standing over me when I looked up.
“Should I expect an end to the aerial performances anytime soon?” Lang asked.
I stiffened. Stilled.
Always more talking. He was so clever with words. I should’ve known he wasn’t going to give me space to think.
I shook my head and resumed my work. “I’m not playing games with you, Lang.”
“You’re still angry at me,” he said quietly. “And I don’t like it.”
He leaned against the counter, hands tucked in his pockets. Golden lamplight slanted across his cheeks and his upturned nose; his hair and his shoulders were spattered with rain.
I bent back toward my bread, pounding the last of the unincorporated flour and salt into the dough, wincing as the salt stung a shallow scrape on my wrist.
Lang passed me a damp cloth. I didn’t look at him as I took it.
“You have to accept the consequences of your choices, Lang,” I said, wiping my smarting skin. “I’m angry at you, and I don’t trust you, and it’s because of your own decisions.”
He made a noise of frustration. “Come on, Selah.”
“No, you come on,” I snapped. I thought of Daddy, all patience, all gentle listening. Of Torden, of the night he’d told me he couldn’t follow me back to Potomac. Of how he’d presented me the truth and then waited quietly while I decided what to do with it. “You think the answer to everything is words and words and more words. You can’t wait even a day while I figure out how to cope with this, you’re so obsessed with your own agenda.”
“Everyone has their own agenda,” Lang shot back. “Even you.”
“Me?” I demanded, tossing down the cloth.