Tempest Snare rose above the calm water like the ridged backs of submerged dragons.
Paj stood at the prow, a wide grin on his face, the early sunlight reflecting in his eyes. His calculations had been perfect, to the hour, and we’d spotted the reefs just as dawn broke on the horizon. The labyrinth sprawled out before us for miles, the water so clear that the sand on the bottom seemed to shimmer.
Willa, Auster, and Hamish stood portside, shoulder to shoulder, and silence fell over the ship, leaving the Marigold quiet. I looked up to West, standing on the quarterdeck alone. His arms were crossed, his cap pulled low over his eyes.
The same unreadable expression was cast over his face that had been there since we’d left Ceros. And it was only now that I was beginning to see beneath it.
West stood at the edge of something. In a matter of hours, everything was going to change. For him. For the crew. The day he’d come to Jeval through that storm, he hadn’t known where it would lead. He didn’t know that when he agreed to give me passage, the winds were shifting.
There was so much about this world that couldn’t be predicted. And yet, we all knew exactly how it worked. Now, West would have choices before him that maybe he thought he’d never have. And that was enough to shake even the most stone-faced in the Narrows.
Paj took the helm, turning into the wind, and the path of the Marigold angled until the sails began to flap above us. When she began to lose speed, he let the handles spin over his fingers one way and then the other so that
the rudder hinged from side to side. In a matter of moments, the ship slowed to a crawl.
“What’s our way in?” Paj called out to West.
West studied the reef ahead before he looked over his shoulder at me. I climbed the steps to the quarterdeck and went to the railing, pulling the map from inside my jacket. I unrolled it before me and West took one side, holding it in place.
His eyes ran over the parchment before he pointed to the opening in the reef to our left. The ridges lifted above the surface unevenly before they disappeared, making an opening.
“Once we go in, there’s no going back. Not till we get to the atoll,” he said, almost to himself.
I followed our path on the map, understanding what he meant. There would be nowhere wide enough to turn about until we made it to the Lark. If we ran aground, we were stuck, with no way out of the Snare.
“Get up there, dredger!” Auster looked up at me from the main deck, Willa at his side.
“You ready?” West’s deep voice sounded beside me, and I looked up, meeting his eyes.
Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with the need to know he believed I could do it. That I could keep my promise. To all of them. I’d thought he didn’t trust me, but what he was doing now had required every bit of his faith. He was putting the fate of the crew and the Marigold into my hands.
“Ready,” I whispered.
He rolled up the map and followed me down the steps from the quarterdeck, and I went to the mainmast, taking hold of the pegs and pulling in a deep breath before I began the climb. My heart ticked unevenly in my chest as I rose higher into the wind.
West took the helm from Paj, looking up at me as I settled against the ropes and cast my gaze out over Tempest Snare. The last time I’d seen the Snare, it was seething with the storm that sank the Lark. Now, it was sparkling beneath a clear blue sky, as if it didn’t hold the corpses of countless ship crews beneath its surface. The blue-green waters were filled
with walls of craggy reef, narrow passageways winding under its façade in infinite veins. It was a maze—one that only I knew the way through.
I rolled the sleeve of my shirt up above my elbow and held my arm out before me. The scar was an almost perfect rendering of the reef’s arteries, and I marveled at Saint’s ability to compose it by memory. He had sailed these waters so many times that he didn’t need a map to cut its path into my skin.
My fingers trembled as I lifted one hand into the air. The warm wind slipped through my fingers as I measured the opening to the Snare below. “Bear starboard!”
Without hesitating, West turned the helm, and Hamish, Auster, and Willa reefed the sails, making the pockets tight so that the Marigold began drifting slowly. We moved toward the mouth of the reef, and Paj leaned over the bow, watching the prow cut through the shallow water.
I leaned over, calculating the side of the ship against the reef. “Come right!”
West guided the ship straight into the Snare, and silence fell, a chill running over my skin like the buzz in the air before lightning struck. Tempest Snare had taken more ships than anyone knew. In the distance, more than one mast breeched the water. But the sky was still clear, the movement of the water calm.
I looked down at my scar, following its shape to where the first fork was coming up. “Bear port, West. Five degrees.”
He tilted the helm gently until we were cutting east, just enough to slip into the next vein, and the reef narrowed.
“Careful,” Paj called out from the bow, his eyes on the depth as it grew shallower.
We inched along, passing the outcroppings of rock on either side, where birds were leg-deep in the water, plucking their breakfasts from the coral. Schools of fish swirled like clouds of smoke beneath the surface, breaking off as the ship drifted forward and the reef widened again before the next split.
“Bear starboard. Fifteen degrees,” I said, trying to sound sure.
West let the spokes rotate just slightly, and the mast vibrated under my hands as the keel slid along the sandy bottom. Willa met my eyes from where she was perched on the foremast, and I tried to slow the race of my heart, curling my fingers to calm the shake. One buried rock and we’d have a breach. But below, West looked calm, his hands light and careful on the helm.
I looked over my shoulder to the open sea. We were well into the Snare now. If a storm blew in, we were finished. Fear sang silently in my blood, its invisible tentacles wrapping around me and squeezing as we met fork after fork in the reef.
“It’s coming up,” I said, eyeing the hard turn ahead. Our speed was good, but it would all come down to the timing and the direction of the wind. If we turned too soon, we’d scrape the starboard side. Too late, and we’d crash the prow straight into the sharp corner of the reef.
“Steady…” I held a hand out to West, looking up to the sail above my head just as the wind suddenly changed direction, a gust rolling up off the water from nowhere. It pushed us forward, filling the sails, and the Marigold turned.
Too fast.
“Reef the sheets!” I called out.
Hamish, Auster, and Willa let the lines out and the ship slowed. But it was too late. We were too close.
“Now, West!”
I wrapped my arms around the mast and held on as he let the helm spin. “Drop anchor!” he shouted to Paj, who was already unlocking the crank.
If we were going to keep from smashing into the reef, we needed it to drag us. The others dropped the sails in unison and Paj kicked the lever of the anchor, sending it plummeting into the water.
The Marigold heeled, the stern swinging as we wheeled starboard. A sound like thunder erupted beneath us as the hull grazed the embankment, and Paj ran to the side, crashing into the railing as he peered over.
I pinched my eyes closed, every muscle constricting around my bones, my heart in my throat.
“It’s all right!” Paj shouted through a panicked laugh.
I looked up to the sky, gasping, as hot tears sprung to my eyes.
Hamish jumped down to help him raise the anchor back into place, and West set his forehead on the helm, letting out a deep breath.
But we were still moving. I studied the scar, my eyes running over the reefs below as the sails unfurled again. My heart swelled in my chest, a lump rising in my throat as we made it to the end of the next pass.
The opening between ridges came to a stop in the middle of a semicircle of reef—the atoll. And there, beneath the jewel-blue waters rippling like glass, a faint shadow glimmered.
The Lark.
