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Widderow spoke up instead, leaning back in her chair. “Hewasa pirate, yes, up until a decade ago. That’s when he bought himself a Mereish title and set himself up in their southern islands, took a few wives and slipped out of Her Majesty’s sight. But he’s back now.”

“Why?” I asked.

Widderow exchanged a look with Demery, the kind of silent communication that passed between siblings and old soldiers.

“You,” Demery said. “Or rather, your mother.”

My mug connected to the tabletop with a clatter. Hot coffee spilled over my fingers, but I barely felt it. “What?”

“Your mother is his Stormsinger,” the captain said without feeling. His eyes dropped to the spilled coffee on the table, then up to my eyes. “I assume she convinced him to acquire you, or he intends to use you against her. He would have done so in Whallum, if I hadn’t showedup—we’renot on speaking terms, he andI—orif Randalf hadn’t left prematurely.”

My world became a muffled, distant roar. My mother. I’d heard a Stormsinger before the attack, I recalledthat—adistant, bold song that I instinctively recognized as sorcerous. But that could not have been my mother, could it?

“She wasthere—”My own words were almost lost to my ears.“—onhis ship?”

It was too much. I sat perfectly still, blood roaring in my ears, heart slamming in great, unwieldy beats. I wasn’t breathing. Wasn’t thinking.

“It’s too soon.” Widderow’s voice drifted to me from a vast distance, flattened and dull in my haze. “She needs more time, Eli.”

Demery’s response was equally flat. “Then tell Athe to set course directly for Tithe.”

TITHE—Whimsically called The Tithe to the Sea, this small cluster of Usti-controlled islands is situated near the center of the Winter Sea. It has been a place of rest for seafarers for millennia, with the current settlement established by Usti, who allied with the Ghistings of their ships and utilized them in the building of their homes. The Ghisten Trees of Tithe thereafter appeared, though this growth is not yet considered a full Wold. See alsoUSTI TERRITORIES.

—FROMTHE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEW

WORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES

NINE

Tithe

MARY

Ipassed the remaining four days to Tithe in the privacy of my cabin. Demery didn’t require me to sing, even when the weather worsened, and the moaning of the wind kept me awake. I was lost inside myself, in my shock and my unrest, and neither he nor Widderow tried to pry me out of it.

I slept as much as I could and saw no one other than the captain, the steward and the cook’s girl. Then on the fourth day, the sound of the ship changed. I felt the vessel slow, heard shouts and chanting and the clatter of the anchor chain, then Athe’s voice sounded through my cabin door.

“—ashorein an hour.”

Shore. We’d reached Tithe. I slipped from my hammock, aching from inactivity, and pressed an ear to the crack between door and frame. The deck was frigid beneath my stocking-clad feet, but relatively still.

“I’ll visit the port mistress and pay the tithe.” Demery sounded distracted.

“What about the Stormsinger?” Athe lowered her voice, and I sensed a change in itsdirection—shewas looking at my door.

I stilled. The woman couldn’t see me, but I felt her eyes on the other side of the barrier.

“She’ll come ashore with me,” Demery replied.

There was a strained silence, into which Athe finally asked, “You’re willing to risk that?”

“Course I am,” the captain returned tartly. “She’s hardly in any condition to run off.”

I felt a flush of indignation. Running away would be a challenge, but that wouldn’t stop me from doing it. Tithe was a busy port. There would be ships back to Aeadine. There might even be word of mymother—properword, not the lies Demery had spouted to me.

My mother was not aboard Lirr’s ship. Surely, I would have known. Surely, she would have screamed the ship apart to get to me, to protect me.

Athe’s voice came again. “That was not what I meant.”