October 1901
Cape Hooper, Greenland
A gasp from the doorway made Nicky look up.
Daverley was there, his face like a broken window. Lovejoy lying facedown in a pool of glossy claret, the side of his head bashed in. She dropped the skull with a clatter and keeled forward, gasping for air. Daverley lunged forward, catching her as she fell off the bed.
“Are you hurt?” he said, kneeling beside her, and she realized her hands and face were spattered with blood, the hem of her dress soaked red.
She broke into tears. She had killed Lovejoy. It had been a momentary reaction. She was glad and not glad. Relieved, terrified.
Daverley leaned his ear to Lovejoy’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. He rolled back on his haunches, crossed himself. “He’s gone.”
“Lovejoy said my father arranged for me to be on the ship,” she said. “As a selkie wife. Did you hear anything about this? Did you know?”
He hesitated. “When you insisted you were no prostitute, I spoke to the men. To Reid.”
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“Your father didn’t pay us last time,” he said quickly. “He owed us all wages. He couldn’t guarantee they’d be paid. Lovejoy told us he’d made a deal.”
“What deal?” she said.
“He said he’d ask for a woman for the men. Your sister.”
Her mouth fell open. “Cat?”
“Your father offered you instead.”
The news knocked the wind out of her. She sank back against the bed, breathless.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” Daverley said.
“Did you agree to it?” she said. “The deal.”
Daverley lifted his eyes to hers. “I didn’t know you had been taken by force,” he said carefully.
He reached out to hold her hand. She let him.
“God’s wounds!” a voice said. Wolfarth and Stroud stood in the doorway, looking in horror at the scene—Daverley with his hand in hers, both of them sitting by Lovejoy’s battered body.
“Murder!” Wolfarth screamed. “Murder aboard! Fetch the captain!”
The sentencing was swift, and without trial or record.
“In,” Captain Willingham said, pointing inside the brig.
They were standing on the upper deck, hard rain needling down. The whole crew watching on. The sight of Lovejoy’s body had stunned them all. She’d gone mad, Wolfarth said. The selkie wife was a murderer.
It could have been any one of them.
Wolfarth gave her a shove. She stepped toward the brig, her hands still stained with Lovejoy’s blood.
The clang of the cage door. Her knees to her chin, her spine pressed up against the metal. A spike brushing her scalp.
Stroud and McKenzie hefted the cage starboard, a heavy chain hooked to the top of the cage. She saw Daverley hauled in chains toward a barrel, his right arm held out as Royle brought down an ax. One clean, brutal blow taking off his hand. He let out a cry that sounded like no human she had ever heard. A roar like a bear.
The chain knocked against the side of the hull as the men lowered her down in the brig. She saw the blue sky and the sunlight reflecting off the metal rivets, the distant shape of Anderson in the crow’s nest above. Then, her own reflection in the waters below.
The water received her like it had been waiting, patient. Fetching her home.
She held her breath for as long as she could, fighting against the heavy bars of the brig. The spikes cut into her arms, releasing long red feathers of blood. Her fingers reached through the cage, clawing at the hull.
Shadows in the depths. A face with whiskers, curious at the cage.
Her body fought. She jerked and convulsed, her lungs burning and her hands wringing the bars of the brig until her palms bled. The spikes pierced her scalp, her cheeks.
And then, a honeyed glow.
An awakening.