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?”