These weren’t the kinds of workers that filled Ceros. They wore clean white shirts, their hair combed or braided, and were freshly bathed. Holland liked her post the way she liked her home. Tidy. And the way they didn’t meet her eyes as she passed gave away their fear of her.

My gaze flitted over the people in the stalls as we passed. Some of them looked to be gem merchants cleaning stones, chipping away at the outer rock on crude rubies or tumbling the smaller, broken pieces of sapphires. I slowed when I spotted a man cutting a yellow diamond. He worked with quick movements, making the splice in the stone by muscle memory more than sight. Once he was finished, he set it aside and started on another.

“This is everything I’ve built over the last forty years.” Holland’s voice sounded behind me. “Everything Isolde left behind.”

The question was why. It was the same one I’d been asking myself since the moment the Luna drifted into port.

Bastian was beautiful. If there were slums, I had yet to see any. It was well known that there were more than enough jobs, and many people left the Narrows for apprenticeships and opportunities here. What had taken Isolde from the Unnamed Sea?

I looked back at West. He stood in the center of the aisle, his eyes moving over the huge pier.

“We shouldn’t be here,” he said suddenly. He ran a hand through his hair, raking it back from his face in a familiar movement that told me he was on edge. It wasn’t just Holland. Something else was bothering him.

The aisle opened to a long corridor, and Holland didn’t wait for us, walking with paced steps toward three men who stood before a doorway draped with thick velvet. Holland pulled the gloves from her hands and unbuttoned her cloak as she went inside. When Clove sank down into the leather chair beside the door, she glared at him.

The dark room illuminated as one of the men struck a long match and lit the candles along the walls. The space looked like a polished, more luxurious version of Saint’s post in The Pinch. Maps hung over the walls, red ink marking the edges of the land, and I resisted the urge to reach up and follow the trail of them with my fingers. They were diving maps.

“You’re a dredger,” Holland said, watching me study them. “Like your mother was.”

“I am.”

She half-laughed, shaking her head. “That’s not the only thing I didn’t understand about that girl.” Her voice quieted. “She was always restless. I don’t think there was anything in this world that could calm the sea inside of her.”