The Coldest Sea Read online

  Abruptly she realized she was not staring at just any man, but a man who had a family waiting for him landside. What was the matter with her? Wrenching her attention away from him, she shifted to the safe topic of music.

  “Well, at least one of your crew likes the sound,” she said. “This morning, Dray told me he spent five minutes listening outside the door before he decided to knock and compliment me, and I was only practicing scales.”

  “Dray?” Vinsen repeated the word as if she’d said snake.

  “Dr. Ciura.” Had she said something wrong? “He told me I could call him Dray.”

  His face closed off. “Be careful around him.”

  “Why, what’s he done?” This was perhaps a little more excitement than she’d bargained for; a Bleakhavener wreck survivor was one thing, but now she couldn’t trust the ship’s doctor? Maybe he took drugs.

  “Nothing, but I get the impression the man’s a consummate flirt.”

  Maggie laughed, because that was quite the anticlimax after what her imagination had come up with. “You think I can’t handle that?”

  There was no answering humor in his reply. “I think you’re a passenger on my ship, and I’m responsible for your safety in every sense of the word.”

  She felt back on solid ground, because while her brothers weren’t the overprotective types, her father certainly could be. “I can deal with a man trying to flirt, believe me. I don’t have half the experience you do, but I haven’t been living in a dollhouse all my life either.”

  “No. I suppose not.” Vinsen got up. “Let me know when you’re ready to meet her.”

  “Now is fine,” Maggie said, and after he had left, she looked around the cabin to make sure everything was tidy and clean. He was back soon, with a woman whom he introduced as Ruay Balquinax.

  Maggie answered with her name, noting the blaze Vinsen had mentioned—she wished she had one of those, it was so unusual—but also the woman’s swollen lids and reddened eyes. Along with the utter pallor of her face, it was clear she was at the end of her resources, and Maggie was half-afraid she would collapse from sheer weariness.

  “Maybe you’d like to sleep for a while,” she said.

  Ruay nodded, looking longingly at the hammock, so Maggie told her to go ahead. She was in it at once, pulling the blanket over herself, and her eyes closed.

  “I should have guessed that would happen after a meal,” Vinsen said softly. “I’ll have her sent back to—”

  Maggie shook her head. “Let her stay.” If the woman was only allowed into the cabin while awake, she’d figure out she was only there to be more subtly questioned.

  Except that meant no music practice, and the cabin seemed very quiet once Vinsen had gone. Well, there had been just enough space for one book in her valise. Maggie looked forward to reading it, since Alyster had said nothing about the race other than there had been some small mishaps along the way. Their father had probably warned him not to worry their mother by going into detail.

  So she sat in the sunlight and opened Across the Ocean: An Eyewitness Account of the Greatest Race in the World. Which sounded a little exaggerated, but perhaps it made people buy the book.

  And by the time she was well into it, it didn’t seem overblown at all. Though she wished she’d read it before she’d invited Vinsen for supper, because now she realized why he hadn’t wanted to talk about the race. Bad enough being shipwrecked and thrown on a foreign vessel’s mercy, without being the master of that lost ship, the person responsible for its safety.

  A knock startled her out of the story, and she opened the door to a cabin boy with a tray. Vinsen was behind him. “Thought you might be hungry,” he said. “I’ll take her back to her cabin.”

  “Are you sure?” It was kind of him to think about her, but she felt sorry for Ruay. “She’s sleeping—”

  “At some point she’s going to wake up.” He shook the woman’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to be strangled in your sleep.”

  Ruay groaned and lifted her head, but she looked too punch-drunk to object when Vinsen ordered her out of the cabin. Maggie ate her solitary supper by the light of two candles, tuned her violin and played it until she was ready to sleep. The book stayed resolutely closed, because while she longed to find out what had happened next, especially to Vinsen, what else was there to read during the journey?

  Still, Ruay looked more alive when she was let in by a deckhand after breakfast the next morning, so there was someone to talk to. The deckhand shut the door, leaving the two of them alone, but Ruay was closemouthed about her ship and its crew.

  “I don’t want to remember any of it.” She cast her gaze down to her hands clasped in her lap.

  “I’m sorry.” Even if Maggie had been hard enough to demand Ruay speak, she didn’t think that would get answers out of the woman. “This must be very difficult for you. Have you been sailing a long time?”

  “Years.” Ruay swallowed.

  “Well, this is my first voyage, unless you count a few hours’ cruise on a topgallant when I was younger.” There was no reply, so Maggie picked up her book. “Would you like to listen while I read this?”

  Ruay nodded, and actually did seem to be listening. By the end of the day, she’d confided that Bleakhaven didn’t have the kinds of swift ships which could compete in a race, just wide-bellied icebreakers and exploration vessels. Maggie grew curious about that land, but asking questions about Bleakhaven probably wouldn’t work either.

  The deckhand took Ruay back to wherever they kept her in the night, and Vinsen arrived. He nudged the door shut with the heel of one boot, keeping his left hand behind his back.

  “We’re making good speed,” he said. “Got anything out of her?”

  Maggie shook her head. “She didn’t want to talk about the wreck. But she said she’d been on a ship for years, and I don’t believe it. I told her I’d once gone for a cruise on a topgallant, and she didn’t seem to notice anything odd about that.”

  Vinsen’s brows went up. “You know what a topgallant is?”

  “The square-rigged sail located above the topsail. I’m not a complete landbounder, you know.”

  “No.” The surprise left his face, but there was something else in his tone, an undercurrent she couldn’t decipher. “Sometimes I forget you have brothers in the navy.”

  She rather wished he wouldn’t allude to that. Especially after leaving home, she wanted to be judged by her own merits, who she was rather than who her father or brothers were. “Anyway, I don’t think you can spend years on a ship and never hear what a topgallant is.”

  A furrow appeared between his brows, and he leaned one shoulder against the wall, still keeping a hand behind him. “Except if I press her with that, she could claim Bleakhaveners have different names for their sails, or she’s out of her mind with worry for her husband and was distracted.”

  Maggie nodded. “Besides, if we confront her with any suspicions, we can never go back to trying to subtly elicit information, much less winning her trust.”

  Vinsen looked at her as if taking her in from a slightly different angle. “You can be a lot less…nice than you appear.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  There was a warmth in his deep voice that matched the amusement in his eyes, but it took her aback. She would never have imagined cool, reserved Captain Solarcis as the kind of person who would tease a friend. If he’d been one of her brothers or her sister-in-law Miri, she would have joked along, but she wasn’t sure what to say now.

  “Anyway, I wanted to thank you for doing what you can,” Vinsen went on, as if he hadn’t noticed the awkward pause.

  “It’s nothing. I’ll keep at it.”

  “So this is for you.” He brought his hand out from behind his back.

  In his palm was a carving of a bird, wings spread wide, claws flared as
they gripped a plinth. The polished dark wood was left unpainted, so the only flecks of color about the bird were the chips of nacre that were its eyes and a little white fish gripped in its beak.

  “Vinsen, that’s beautiful.” Maggie was hesitant to touch it, but he held it out until she took it carefully. “Where did you get it?”

  “I made it.”

  He’d made it for her? She couldn’t quite believe it, and she said nothing as she ran a fingertip over the curve of the bird’s head. The fish fell out and went skittering across the floor.

  “Oh, Unity, I broke it.” She was horrified; he’d given her a lovely gift and she hadn’t had it more than a minute before it was in pieces. But he chuckled.

  “No, you didn’t.” He stooped to retrieve the fish and showed her that it could go either in the osprey’s beak or under its talon or not be part of it at all, just as she liked. The fish itself was carved out of a piece of shell.

  “You’re so talented.” She put the osprey on the shelf and arranged a wool scarf around the plinth, so that if the carving fell over, it wouldn’t be damaged. “Thank you. I wish I had something to give you.”

  “That’s not how gifts work,” Vinsen said. “If you always had to give someone else a gift when they gave you one, that would be a trade. Besides, you treated me to that wine. Have a good night.”

  He was gone before she could ask him to have supper with her again, though perhaps that was for the best. Much as she liked him, there were certain proprieties to be observed. Unity knew if she was his wife, waiting for him landside, she wouldn’t like him spending too much time with another woman.

  So she rosined the bow and let it wander over the strings, trying to compose something new. That took up all of her concentration, and it kept her occupied until her candle burned itself out.

  Ruay seemed more relaxed the next day, and talked a little about Bleakhaven. Maggie had never taken much interest in politics, but Ruay did, and explained the difference between the Concordium, the secular government of her land, and the Church which governed other aspects of people’s lives. In return, though, she wanted to hear about the Unity.

  “That book you read yesterday mentioned him,” she said. “Or is it her?”

  Maggie didn’t know how to answer. There were no prohibitions about speaking to foreigners about the Unity, but there was nothing to say.

  “Everyone has a different conception of what the Unity is,” she finally replied.

  “Well, which is the right one?”

  Maggie shrugged. “My mother told me they could all be right. You know, like those paintings that look like one thing from one angle and something quite different another way.”

  From Ruay’s expression, she might as well have talked about those paintings to a blind person. “I don’t understand, but maybe I’m asking the wrong question. What do you think the Unity is?”

  “A diamond.”

  “A what?”

  “A precious gem, the hardest and most valuable of—”

  “I know what a wretched diamond is.” Ruay folded her arms. “I mean, are you telling me the whole of your homeland is ruled by a rock?”

  “It’s not just any diamond.” Maggie stifled a grin. “It’s large and beautiful, and when you look into it you see what the Unity wants you to do. Except if you’re not trained in how to receive those visions, you go insane, which is why only the Council of Eyes and Voices can be in the Unity’s presence.”

  Ruay didn’t look particularly convinced, but the way Maggie saw it, that flight of fancy could hardly be disproved, so why couldn’t it be as valid as every other wild theory regarding the Unity? Finally Ruay pursed her mouth as if to say, why not, and Maggie had a feeling that when the woman returned to Bleakhaven, that would be a tale told around the fireside: what happened when you engaged foreigners in crazy talk.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “After all, the Faith can’t be seen either, but it most certainly exists.”

  The Faith seemed like part of the religion of Bleakhaven, which sounded intriguing, but before she could ask about that, Ruay’s gaze went to the little osprey on the shelf. “That wasn’t here yesterday.”

  Maggie toyed with a claim that she’d unpacked it from her valise, then decided the truth was nothing she needed to hide. “Captain Solarcis gave it to me last night.”

  “Oh?” Ruay’s grin flashed straight white teeth. “He must like you.”

  “Not that way. He’s married.”

  “I see. I suppose you’re not?”

  Maggie shook her head, the weight of her hair bobbing and pulling at her scalp as it always did. The truth which she would never have confessed was that she still loved Anthny. Despite everything. She wished she could have hated him, but they had been friends for too long, and he couldn’t have helped falling for Feona. The irony was Feona had no interest in him.

  “Stay in Lyrance,” Feona had told her, the night before she’d left for Triton Harbor. “He might come to his senses and meet you there.”

  Maggie knew if he did that, she would forgive him. From Anthny’s choice of profession to the woman his father had selected for him, he’d moved in a controlled correct line, but that kind of dammed-up river always burst its banks sooner or later. Still, he would eventually realize he’d made a mistake.

  Unless he was encouraged to do otherwise? She wondered if he would actively court Feona, and if that might make a difference. And her father might decide that the most important thing was a daughter being married well, rather than who that daughter was.

  “Is everything all right?” Ruay said.

  Maggie managed a smile. “I was thinking about my younger sister.”

  “Oh.” Ruay smiled back. “I have three, each more annoying than the last. What’s yours like?”

  Maggie laughed. Nothing like her, that was for certain. Her sister had turned out the beauty of the family, to the point where a famous painter had once done a portrait of her. True, the man had been a bit on the mad side and had painted her with wild lilies for eyes, but that only made her look more intriguing. Maggie had learned to play the flute and the violin, but Feona had never needed to learn any instrument.

  “Extremely talented.” She was too fond of her sister to envy her, but there was more to it. She knew exactly what she had that Feona didn’t. Her sister might have wanted to live in another city and to travel there on a ship—but she would never have dared to do so. “Eye-catching too. She has lovely long hair.”

  The smile faded as Ruay studied her more closely. “Don’t you like your own?”

  Maggie reached up and undid the knot holding the net closed. Naturally, the humidity at sea affected her hair, and it sprang loose as if each curl were trying to get away from the others. There was no mirror, but Ruay’s face told her exactly what her hair looked like—a great mass of wild corkscrews.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  Ruay walked around her as if to observe her head from every angle. “It’s a pretty color, but there’s far too much of it. Why don’t you have it cut?”

  Maggie frowned. She’d never thought of getting it cut because the fashion, as far back as she could remember, had been for long hair. If a woman’s hair was closely cropped, people assumed she’d recently recovered from an illness. But maybe fashions were different in Lyrance, and it would hardly be the first drastic change she’d made to her life. Shorter hair would be easier to wash and take care of, and as long as it didn’t look too outlandish, her future employers couldn’t object.

  “That’s an idea,” she said. “Once I have my first pay, I’ll look for someone to cut it.”

  “Why wait? I used to do my sisters’ hair. I’d be happy to trim yours.”

  Maggie hesitated, but she didn’t want to seem rude by refusing a well-meant offer. If the worst came to the worst and Ruay chopped off too muc
h, well, she’d just have to wear a snood until her hair grew back. So she nodded, and Ruay pulled a clean sheet off the hammock.

  “We’ll drape this around you,” she said. “But we need shears too. Could you borrow a pair?”

  Maggie went in search of the sailmaker, and when she came back to her cabin, Ruay dragged the chair to the unshuttered window, the chair’s legs raking little furrows in the rug as she did so. She sat Maggie down and draped her in the sheet, tucking it closely around her throat, before she picked the shears up. The blades flashed in the sunlight as she studied them.

  “Yes, these are sharp enough,” she said. “Ready?”

  The wind was against them, so Fallstar tacked into it to keep heading south by southeast. Vinsen knew their direction because he was on deck for once, watching as the sailing master shouted orders and the crew moved like cogs in a well-oiled machine to haul on sheets.

  Ordinarily he would have been in his cabin, but the iceberg—if it existed—was due to make an appearance any day now, and the threat of that brought him out on the deck. He hadn’t stopped being an outsider, because while the crew was respectful, there was none of the genuine camaraderie they shared with the other officers. But it didn’t matter. All eyes were needed to watch the unchanging blue of the horizon where it met the shifting clouds.

  Vinsen paced a circuit to inspect the deck. The wheel turned in the helmsman’s hands, and ropes reeled through blocks of pulleys as the sails moved. Beating to windward was costly in terms of time and effort, because it meant steering a zigzag course, constantly anticipating not just an iceberg but also what the wind would do. Too much of that, especially if they found nothing, and the crew wasn’t likely to take it well.

  Such a reaction would never have happened on Mistral, where his crew would have followed him anywhere. All the way down, he thought bitterly, then forced himself to stop.