But the crest painted on the canvas was missing the curve of the crescent moon that encircled Zola’s insignia. I squinted, trying to see it. The crisp outline of three seabirds with wings extended made a tilted triangle. It was a crest I’d never seen before.
If they were raising a new crest, it meant that Zola didn’t want to be recognized when we crossed into the waters of the Unnamed Sea.
I looked over my shoulder, but Clove was already disappearing into the helmsman’s quarters, the door slamming shut behind him. I could see the ripple of his white shirt behind the wavering glass of the window that looked out over the deck.
I bit down onto my lip again, every quiet thing within me screaming. I’d known the night the Lark sank that I’d lost my mother. But I hadn’t known I’d lost Clove, too.
FIVE
“Three reefs!” Zola’s voice rang out over the ship before he’d even made it through the archway.
He unclasped his jacket, letting it drop from his shoulders, and tossed it to one of the Waterside strays standing at the foot of the mast. His hands caught the anchored ropes stretching from the bow, and he pulled himself up into the lines, looking out over the sea.
But my eyes were on Ryland and Wick. Both stood in the row of Jevalis, every ounce of fury over the disgrace making their muscles tense. They weren’t happy Zola had taken on extra dredgers. In fact, they were seething.
“Here, here, and here.” Zola followed the line of the reef crests below with his finger, drawing them on the surface of the water.
In the distance, a crescent-shaped islet was visible, floating like a half-submerged circle.
“Fable will head the dive.”
I blinked, turning back to the deck where the dredgers’ hard gazes were set on me.
“What?” Ryland snapped, his hands dropping from where they were tucked into the crooks of his arms.
Zola ignored him, looking at the islet. The wind pulled his silver-and-black hair across his rough face as I tried to read it. He said he’d given the crew instructions to leave me alone, but he was giving them plenty of reasons to come after me.
“The fourth reef is picked clean, but there’s plenty of tourmaline, palladin, and bloodstone in the others. Probably an emerald or two.” Zola jumped back down to the deck, walking down the line of dredgers. “Your hauls will be checked when you surface. First dredger to hit twenty carats of gemstones gets a bonus of double their coin.”
Koy stood a little taller as Zola said the words. The other Jevali dredgers looked up at the helmsman with brows raised, and Wick tightened his grip on his belt, his mouth twisting up on one side.
“I need at least three hundred carats of stone. You have until sundown tomorrow.”
“What?” Koy stepped forward, his voice finding an edge.
“Ships run on schedules.” Zola looked down at him. “You have a problem with that?”
“He’s right,” I said. Koy looked surprised that I’d agreed with him, but it was true. “We would have to dive back-to-back while we had the daylight if we were going to dredge enough gems to meet that quota.”
Zola seemed to consider it before he pulled the watch from his vest. He flicked it open. “Then I think you’d better be quick about it.” He dropped the timepiece back into his pocket and looked up at me. “Now, what do you see?”
He moved over to give me a place at the rail beside him, but I didn’t move. Zola was playing a game, but I wasn’t sure if anyone on this ship knew what it was. I didn’t like that feeling. He was clearly entertained by it all, and that made me want to shove him over the side.
“What do you see?” he asked again.
I curled my hands into fists and hooked my thumbs into my belt as I looked out over the water. It was moving smoothly inside the crest of the islet, almost still enough in places to reflect the shapes of the clouds. “It looks good. No riptide that I can see, but we obviously won’t know that until we’re down there.” I eyed the water on the other side of the ridge. The shape of the crater was angled perfectly to protect the interior from the current.
He met my eyes before he stepped around me. “Then get them down there.”
The boy holding his jacket held it up for him to slide his arms back in, and then Zola was walking back across the deck without even a glance at us. The door slammed behind him, and in the next breath, the dredgers turned to me. Ryland’s face was painted red, his gaze tight.
On the other side of the main mast, Clove stood silent.
There were fourteen of us in all, so the only thing that made sense was to put four or five dredgers on each of the reefs. I took a step forward, studying the Jevalis. They were a range of sizes and length of limb, but I could tell by looking at them who were the fastest swimmers. I also would have to split up the Luna’s dredgers if I wanted to keep them from pulling anything underwater.
The smart thing to do would be to have Koy head one of the groups. Whether I liked him or not, he was one of the most skilled dredgers I’d ever seen. He knew gems, and he knew reefs. But I’d made the mistake of letting him out of my sight before and I wasn’t going to do it again.
I stopped before Ryland, lifting a chin to him and the Jevali at his side. “You two with me and Koy.”
Koy arched one eyebrow up at me, suspicious. I didn’t want to dive with him either, but as long as he was on this ship, I needed to know exactly where he was and what he was doing at all times.
I assigned the rest of them, putting together swimmers of varying body sizes in hopes that what one of them lacked, the others might make up for. When they were grouped together on the deck I turned back to the islet, unbuttoning the top of my shirt to pull it over my head. Koy’s arm brushed against mine as he came to stand beside me and I stilled, putting more space between us.
“This bastard has no idea what he’s doing,” he muttered, running his thumb over the picks at his hip and counting them silently. The ones he’d plucked from the crate were shining bright between the rusted ones he’d used on Jeval.
I didn’t answer, doing the same on my own belt. Koy and I weren’t friends. We weren’t even allies. If he was being nice, there was a reason, and one I wouldn’t like.
“What? You’re not going to talk to me?”
When I looked up into his face, I flinched at the sinister smile that stretched across his lips. “What are you doing here, Koy?”
He leaned into the rail with both hands and the muscles in his arms took shape under his skin. “I’m here to dive.”
“What else?”
“That’s it.” He shrugged.
My eyes narrowed as I studied him. Koy had a skiff and a ferrying trade on Jeval that put coin in his pocket every single day. He was likely the wealthiest dredger on the island, and in the time I’d known him, he’d never once left Jeval. He was after something.
“Come on, Fay. We Jevalis have to stick together.” He grinned.
I squared my shoulders to him, stepping so close I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “I’m not Jevali. Now, get in the water.”
“Urchins,” Wick muttered, moving around us.
Ryland followed on his heels, leaning over me as he hung his shirt on the mast. I had to step back to keep him from touching me. I knew exactly what he was doing. Even if I had the charge from Zola, he wanted me to know who held the power between us. I was no match for him. For any of them, really. And no one on this ship was going to have my back if it came to that.