“Damn.”
Without warning, he shifts his grip from the butt to the barrel, then hurls the heavy pistol at the bandit. It strikes the man in the face, and he staggers, momentarily stunned. I grab his ankle as he takes another wobbly step, and he falls backward, crashing through the window and toppling out onto the street. Tiny pebbles of glass blow back into the room, and I cover my face.
“Good thinking.” Monty throws his hand out to me and I let him pull me to my feet. “I’m not sure knocking him in the skull would have done the trick on its own, as I suspect it’s rather thick.”
“What happened to your gun?” I ask.
“Apparently, when I reloaded, I forgot the main bit.” He toes the empty firearm on the floor. “You all right?”
“Yes. I think . . .” I do a quick inventory to be certain I haven’t sustained any major injuries. I also check that the spyglass is still in my pocket. “Yes.”
“Let’s go, then, before he comes around. I’ve got the other one locked upstairs, but there’s a good chance he’s going to jump out the window.”
“Where is everyone?” I ask as I follow Monty out the service door behind the bar. “Why didn’t anyone come help us?”
“I suspect they all got instructions from the Crown and Cleaver not to interfere. Though I can’t say whether that was done via a few coins slipped under the door or delivered at knifepoint. Well. Cutlasspoint.”
“They wanted the spyglass.”
“Absolutely yes.”
“Basira Khan sent them.”
“Also absolutely yes. I told you she wasn’t finished with it.”
So she did want it. She simply must have realized there would be an easier way to get it than slitting my throat on the floor of her bathhouse. Or perhaps she hoped we wouldn’t know it was her men who had taken it? The man had had his ink covered. “What does the Crown and Cleaver want with it?”
“Not a clue,” Monty says. “But we need to get out of here sooner than planned. Let’s hope George’s new gentleman friend isn’t so handsome he can’t be lured from his bed.”
13
We spend the rest of the night and most of the next day hidden in the cargo hold of the Eleftheria, until George is able to pull off whatever charm, trick, or bribe is required to get permission to leave the harbor. Monty and I don’t come up to the deck until Rabat is barely a shadow on the horizon.
The crew is only six men, none of whom speak English, though several know enough French to converse with Monty and me. George translates when he can, though most of the time, when trying to convert their cobbled lingo into coherent sentences, he gives up halfway through with a laugh.
The ship’s main mast is carved with the same symbol that was etched into the vessel that took us to Rabat, that snowflake-like rune. Once we’re sure we’re not being followed and we’re on course for Portugal, George finds a bucket of red paint and dips his finger in, then retraces the shape of it.
I watch him for a while, each careful stroke of his fingers through the carved branches of the rune, before I pluck up my courage enough to ask, “What is it?”
George looks up from his work. “It’s a stave from Icelandic sailors. The captain before me—Scipio, the man Monty mentioned—he carved it here after we met some Viking lads from up north. I think they were drunk, but he never got more than a few days from port without repainting it.” He almost scratches his chin, then remembers at the last second his hands are covered in paint.
“The sailors called it vegvísir.”
“And it’s meant as protection?” I ask.
George shrugs. “Scipio said it was more of a compass.”
“A magic compass?”
“So the story goes.”
“If it’s a compass, where does it lead?”
“I think that depends on where you’re going.” He grins at me, impish, and I can’t help but grin back. I had tried to maintain some of my dislike for him on account of Monty’s adoration, but that grows more and more impossible as I get to know him. With his quick smile and jovial demeanor, it’s easy to see why Monty is fond of him. He’s the sort of good-natured head boy at school that everyone likes, equally known for organizing holiday programs and looking the other way when he sees classmates out of bed smoking after hours. “Come here.”
I hop down from my perch on a barrel of grog and let him take my hand, our palms pressed together. He licks his finger to wet the paint, then draws the same symbol on the back of my hand. The paint is cold, and I can feel the calluses on his palm against the tips of my fingers as he holds me steady. “There.” He smacks a wet kiss on the inside of my wrist when he’s finished, and I laugh. “Now you’ve got a charm of your own.” A dollop of paint lands on his bare foot, and he scrubs it away against the cuff of his breeches. “With vegvísir, you’ll never lose your way, no matter the storms that batter you. Even if the way is not known.”
I stare down at my hand, tipping it so the paint doesn’t run and disrupt the network of lines opening their fist across my skin. When the sun catches it, it sparkles. “Thank you,” I say.
George smiles again. “We can all use a guide sometimes.”
“Oy! George!” I hear Monty call across the deck. “Are you tattooing occult symbols on my little brother?”
The first few days of our journey pass without incident, and the crew seems in good spirits. George has plotted a course that veers farther west than one would usually go to sail from Rabat to Portugal, but he says the additional days it tacks on to our journey will guarantee we won’t cross any of the Crown and Cleaver’s most trafficked routes. Monty and I both help when we can, but George and his men run so smoothly that we’re mostly in the way. Monty spends his time napping in the sun and I stare over the rails into the sapphire water that goes on as far as I can see and then farther. I keep thinking of the ships beneath us, wrecks sitting at the bottom of the sea. It starts to feel like stepping on grave after grave, my anxiety mounting with every league that something is following us. Something is coming for us. I can’t shake the dread—it’s clung to me since we left Rabat. I haven’t washed the stave off my hand, but the paint is starting to crack and peel, like my body is rejecting the offer of guidance. Even magic can’t help.
Our third day at sea, we wake to a bloodred sky and a sun crowded by storm clouds. By midday, their bellies blush white with lightning. The air begins to feel steamy and oppressive. The fresh coat of paint on vegvísir bubbles.
The storm falls upon us sometime in the night, though it’s not the pitching or the bells that wake me. When I sit up in my hammock, it’s from a feeling akin to sensing eyes on you in a crowd. For a moment, still groggy from the sharp pivot from sleep into consciousness, I think it must be the remnants of a dream that make the deck around me feel particularly dark and haunted. Then the ship cants so violently I’m thrown out of my hammock. My hip makes sharp contact with the edge of the stove, and the plate tips with a clang, scattering cold coals. For the first time I hear the bell up on deck tolling relentlessly—a call for all hands. Thunder grumbles like a shaken sheet of tin. There’s a lashing sound against the boards above my head, along with the shouts of sailors and heavy footfalls.