I broke through to the roar of wind, gasping, and West came up beside me as lightning tangled in the black clouds overhead.
I sucked in a breath as a wave barreled in toward us, and I sank back down before it hit. West disappeared as the water crashed and rolled above, sucking me deeper in its retreat. I kicked in the opposite direction, but another one was already coming in, slamming into the rocks ahead.
I came back up, choking on the burn of saltwater in my raw throat. Down the reef, West was swimming toward me over another wave.
“We have to get back to the ship!” I shouted, turning in a circle to search the rough water.
In the distance, Koy was pulling himself up into the tender boat. We swam toward it, diving under each time another wave crested and when we finally reached him, Koy had both oars in hand.
“Come on!” he shouted into the wind.
I held onto the edge and lifted myself inside, slipping on the wood and falling into the hull. West came up behind me, going for the rudder.
Beyond the shallows, the Marigold rocked on the swells, masts tipping back and forth as each wave slammed into the hull.
Koy dropped the paddles into the water and rowed, growling as he fought the current. The wind was too strong. The water too swift.
“We’re not going to make it!” I yelled, shivering. The rain was like glass, biting my skin as it blew in sideways.
West’s eyes were fixed on the ship. When he opened his mouth to answer, the boat suddenly stilled, the water calming. All around us, the gray sea was beginning to settle, but the clouds continued to roll overhead, like a plume of angry smoke. The hiss of my breath was the only sound. Until I saw it.
Down shore, the water was kicking up, an invisible gale racing toward us. It was dragging a wall of water behind it.
“Row!” West howled.
Koy turned the boat and headed for the beach, screaming as he jerked at the oars. But it was too late.
The wave raced toward us, its crest spilling down as it loomed over us. I watched, a gasp trapped in my throat, as it came crashing down.
“Fable!” West’s voice vanished as the water collapsed on top of us.
The boat disappeared and I was plummeted beneath the surface, dragged through the water like hands pulling me into the deep. I thrashed, fighting its strength, twisting and turning, looking for the surface.
A flashing glow appeared below me as the water let me go, and I launched myself toward it, kicking hard. It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized it wasn’t below me. It was above. The world was tossed and spinning beneath the water.
I broke the surface, screaming West’s name and a cry escaped my throat when I spotted the boat pushed up onto the shore ahead. Beside it, West was calling out to me. I frantically swam for the beach and when I felt the sand under my feet, I stood, trudging up out of the water. West caught me in his arms, dragging me from the surf.
“Where’s Koy?” I panted, looking up and down the beach.
“Here.” He waved a hand into the air. The rope to the tender was pulled over his shoulder as he hauled it higher up the beach.
I dropped to the sand when we reached the cover of the trees. “West,” I croaked, “the stone.”
“I’ve got it.” He had one hand clenched around the small purse tied to his dredging belt.
I let out a tight breath, looking past him to the Marigold. She was just a shadow in the mist. West stood at the water’s edge, watching helplessly as she tipped and swayed, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths.
The storm had come in fast. Too fast. And the winds were stronger than we’d predicted.
Another gale swept over the island, bowing the trees until their branches touched the sand. The thunderous resonance of another wind swelled, skipping over the surface of the sea, and it slammed into the ship.
The Marigold heeled, the masts reaching out over the water on the starboard side, and then suddenly she righted, snapping back up.
West took a step into the water, his eyes widening.
“What is it?” But I realized as soon as I blinked the rain from my eyes what had happened.
The Marigold was moving. Drifting.
“The anchor line,” West said, his voice almost inaudible.
It snapped.
Another strike of lightning cracked overhead, and another, until the wind slowly calmed. The water steadied with each softening wave until they were pushing up around our feet in a final gasp.
West was already towing the tender back into the water.
I jumped in with the oars and handed them to Koy as soon as we were afloat. We glided over the shallows as the Marigold drifted farther. I could already see Willa up on the mast, a bronze scope shining in her hands.
By the time we made it past the break, she’d spotted us.
The crew was already waiting when we finally reached the ship, and I caught the lowest rung of the ladder and pulled myself up, my hands so numb that I couldn’t feel the rope against my skin.
West was right behind me, his hair stuck to his face. “Anchor?”
“Yeah,” Willa answered gravely. “Lost it in that last gust.”
He cursed as he went to the rail, peering into the water.
“Hamish?” I said, pulling the small purse from West’s belt. “I need the gem lamp.”
His eyes went wide as I opened it and dumped the gem into my palm. I turned it over before picking it up between two fingers.
“Is it…?” Auster stared at it.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like onyx, but there was a translucence to it that didn’t look right. And the vibration it gave off wasn’t familiar. It was a stone I didn’t know. But without ever having seen a piece of midnight for myself, there was only one way to be sure.
“I need the gem lamp,” I said again, pushing through them to the helmsman’s quarters.
I came through the door, setting the stone into the small bronze dish on the low table and West set the lantern on the desk, filling the cabin with light.
“What do you think?” Koy leaned into the wall next to me, drops of seawater glistening as they slid down his face.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Hamish came through the door with Paj on his heels, the gem lamp in his hands. He set it down onto the desk carefully, looking up at us through the fogged lenses of his spectacles.
I sat in West’s chair and lit a match, hovering its tip over the oil chamber beneath the glass. But my fingers shook furiously, quenching the flame before it took to the wick. West caught my hand with his, turning my fingers toward the light. They were the faintest shade of blue.
“I’m all right,” I said, answering his unspoken question. Somehow, his touch was still a bit warm.
He took the quilt from his cot and set it over my shoulders as Hamish took another match and lit the lamp with nimble fingers. The glow ignited beneath the glass and I opened my hand to let West pick up the stone. He crouched down onto his heels beside me before setting the small gem onto the mirror.
I sat up, holding my breath as I peered through the eyepiece, and adjusted the lens slowly. Everyone in the cabin fell silent and I squinted as it came into focus. The faintest glow lit in its center, surrounded by opaque edges. I turned the mirror, trying to manipulate the light, and the lump in my throat expanded.
No inclusions. Not one.
“It’s not midnight,” I muttered, biting down hard onto my lip.
Willa set her hands onto the desk, leaning into them to hover over me. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I answered, defeated. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not midnight. Some kind of spinel, maybe.”
Koy was hidden in the shadowed corner of the room. “We got through two reefs today.”
He didn’t need to explain his meaning. We only had one more day before we were supposed to be on our way to meet Holland. At our best, we’d still be close to eight reefs shy. If we didn’t find the midnight, we’d be sailing back to Sagsay Holm empty-handed.
“It’ll be dark in a few hours.” Paj looked to West, waiting for orders.
“Then we start again at sunup,” West said.
Auster caught Paj by the waist, pulling him toward the door without a word. Hamish and Willa followed them, leaving West and me with Koy. I could see on Koy’s face that he was frustrated. He couldn’t have had many failed dives in his life and by now, he was nearly as hungry to find the midnight as I was. He stared at the floor silently for another moment before he stood up off the wall and walked out the door.
“The anchor?” I asked, so tired I could cry.
“Willa’s on it.” West blew out the flame on the lamp before he opened the drawer of the chest and pulled out a clean shirt. Then he ducked out, leaving me alone at his desk.
I stared at the puddle of water on the floor that he’d left, the light flitting over its smooth surface as the lantern swung on the bulkhead.
There were enough stones in these reefs to last the gem traders of the Unnamed Sea another ten years.
So, where the hell was the midnight?
I couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that I wasn’t going to find it in Yuri’s Constellation. That it was no accident that Holland’s crews hadn’t run across a single piece of midnight in the years since Isolde brought it up from the depths.
But the ship logs were clear, without so much as a day left unaccounted for. The crew had been diving in Yuri’s Constellation for nearly thirty-two days before they went back to Bastian for supplies. A day later they’d returned, with no deviations off course.
I sat up, staring into the shadows, my mind working. The thin threads of an answer glimmered to life, taking shape in the dark.
If I was right, and Isolde hadn’t found the midnight in Yuri’s Constellation, then someone had lied. But how?
If the navigator had forged the logs, there’d be at least thirty people on Holland’s ship, including the helmsman, who would have been able to report the discrepancy in the days and weeks after the dive.
But maybe it was my mother who’d lied. If Isolde had any suspicion about the value of her discovery, maybe she’d kept the stone’s origin to herself. Maybe she’d found it when she was alone.
I stood abruptly, sending the chair tipping back. It clattered on the floor behind me as my hands slid over the maps, looking for the one I’d seen days ago. The one I hadn’t even looked twice at.
When I found it, I pulled it from under the others. The Bastian Coast. I took the lantern from the wall and set it at the corner, moving my fingers over the thick, soft parchment until I found it.
Fable’s Skerry.
“West!” I studied the depths and charts noted along the shore, the map of currents that slid around the little islet. “West!”
He appeared in the dark breezeway with a dry shirt pulled over one arm. “What is it?”
“What if she didn’t find it here?” I panted. “What if she lied?”
“What?”
“Why would Isolde steal the midnight? Why would she leave Bastian?” My voice sounded far away. “She didn’t trust Holland. Maybe she didn’t want her to know where she found it.”
He was listening now, sliding the other arm into the shirt as he walked toward me. “But where? She would have had to have a ship and a crew. The log says they were here.”
“They were,” I breathed, flipping through the parchments in the drawer until I found the log. I dropped it between us. “Except for one day.” I set my finger on Bastian.
“There’s no way she found it in Bastian. There are no reefs in those waters. There isn’t even so much as a sandbar for miles.”
I pointed to the islet.
“Fable’s Skerry?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just a rock with a lighthouse on it,” he said.
“What if it’s not just a rock?”
He picked up the chair, setting it upright before he looked at the map again, thinking. “It’s just offshore of Bastian. Don’t you think if there was something there, someone would have found it?”
I let out an exhausted breath. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re looking in the wrong place. I don’t think it’s here, West.”
I didn’t know if I was making any sense. The lack of sleep and hours in the cold water had cast my mind in a fog. But still, that feeling was there. That doubt.
“Are you sure?” West said, studying me.
I clutched the quilt tighter around me. “No.”
It was a feeling, not a fact. I paced the floor in front of him, the warmth finally beginning to return beneath my skin as my cheeks flushed hot.
“I don’t think it’s here,” I said again, my voice a whisper.
His eyes jumped back and forth on mine and I watched as he weighed out my words. After a moment, he was walking toward the open door. And as soon as he disappeared into the breezeway, his voice rang out on the deck.
“Make ready!”