He didn’t need to explain his meaning. We only had one more day before we were supposed to be on our way to meet Holland. At our best, we’d still be close to eight reefs shy. If we didn’t find the midnight, we’d be sailing back to Sagsay Holm empty-handed.

“It’ll be dark in a few hours.” Paj looked to West, waiting for orders.

“Then we start again at sunup,” West said.

Auster caught Paj by the waist, pulling him toward the door without a word. Hamish and Willa followed them, leaving West and me with Koy. I could see on Koy’s face that he was frustrated. He couldn’t have had many failed dives in his life and by now, he was nearly as hungry to find the midnight as I was. He stared at the floor silently for another moment before he stood up off the wall and walked out the door.

“The anchor?” I asked, so tired I could cry.

“Willa’s on it.” West blew out the flame on the lamp before he opened the drawer of the chest and pulled out a clean shirt. Then he ducked out, leaving me alone at his desk.

I stared at the puddle of water on the floor that he’d left, the light flitting over its smooth surface as the lantern swung on the bulkhead.

There were enough stones in these reefs to last the gem traders of the Unnamed Sea another ten years.

So, where the hell was the midnight?

I couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that I wasn’t going to find it in Yuri’s Constellation. That it was no accident that Holland’s crews hadn’t run across a single piece of midnight in the years since Isolde brought it up from the depths.

But the ship logs were clear, without so much as a day left unaccounted for. The crew had been diving in Yuri’s Constellation for nearly thirty-two days before they went back to Bastian for supplies. A day later they’d returned, with no deviations off course.

I sat up, staring into the shadows, my mind working. The thin threads of an answer glimmered to life, taking shape in the dark.

If I was right, and Isolde hadn’t found the midnight in Yuri’s Constellation, then someone had lied. But how?

If the navigator had forged the logs, there’d be at least thirty people on Holland’s ship, including the helmsman, who would have been able to report the discrepancy in the days and weeks after the dive.

But maybe it was my mother who’d lied. If Isolde had any suspicion about the value of her discovery, maybe she’d kept the stone’s origin to herself. Maybe she’d found it when she was alone.