Chapters (51)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Also by Adrienne Young
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Newsletter Sign-up
“Meet me at Wolfe & Engel tomorrow night with the contract.” Her eyes fell to my shaking hands and I curled them into fists, setting them in my lap. She leaned in, the cold gentleness returning to her face. “I don’t know what filthy hull of a ship you were born on, Fable. I don’t care. But when you sail back to the Narrows, it’s going to be under my crest.”
THIRTY-THREE
The crew stared at me across the cabin, silent. Even Koy looked speechless.
“You’re not signing it,” Paj snapped. “We’ve been bleeding coin since we left Dern so that we could bring you back to the Narrows and do what we said we were going to do.”
“You can do it without me. This doesn’t change that,” I said.
“It changes everything,” Willa muttered. Behind the others, she was turned toward the lantern, watching its flame behind the glass. This had a different implication for her. If I wasn’t on the Marigold, it wasn’t likely that she’d leave the crew.
“If I sign the contract, we get the deed to the Marigold back. If Saint and the Roths come through, it won’t even matter. It’ll be void.”
“And if they don’t come through?” Willa asked.
“Then you sail one crew member light for the next two years. It’s not that long.” I tried to sound as if I believed it. Two years away from the Marigold, away from West, sounded like an eternity. But it was a price I’d pay if it meant having a place to come home to after my contract was up.
“Contract or not, we need to decide what our next move is. There’s still more than enough coin to get a trade route up and running out of Ceros.” Hamish set the open book down on the desk between us. Since we’d left Fable’s Skerry, he’d been running the numbers. “We don’t need a post, not right away.”
Everyone looked to West, but he was silent beside me.
Paj sighed, stepping forward to look at the ledgers. “There’s no point in getting a license from the Gem Guild if Holland is moving into the Narrows, so I say we stick with rye for the most part.”
“Always sells,” Auster agreed. “Mullein, too.”
It made sense. There wasn’t a port in the Narrows that wouldn’t take shipments of both.
“That’s what I was thinking.” Hamish nodded. “Still puts us at odds with Saint, but that’s nothing new. Three ports to start—Sowan, Ceros and Dern, in that order.”
“I don’t know if we’re welcome in Sowan anymore. Not for a while, at least,” Auster said.