their courses.
“How do we explain this?” Pitt eventually asked.
“We can’t tell the truth,” Tom said to Molly. “Your own brother, the leader of the Maimers, sent away without a trial—people will think the worst.”
“We have to tell them something,” Pitt said. “At the very least, we need to explain Lem’s murder.”
Molly dropped her hood and scruffed her matted hair.
“We blame Grigory for everything,” she said. “He was the one with murderers and thieves at his disposal. My well-respected brother, Jacob Smith, sent me away for safety while he worked against Grigory’s network in Grayport. Last spring, Grigory kidnapped me for advantage. I escaped by jumping into the flooded creek, and then I stayed in Root—and kept my past a secret—so Grigory wouldn’t find me. But he did. He came to Root when you and Tom stopped the Maimers. He murdered Lem and framed Tom to keep the two of you occupied while he tried to steal me off again. I fled to Grayport and hoped to find my brother for protection, but Grigory caught me on the road. You and Tom,” she said, “worked enough of it out in Root and followed me to Grayport, where you rescued me and had Grigory arrested. He killed himself in jail. My brother disappeared, probably murdered by Grigory’s supporters.”
It was a lie that might suffice, being very close to the truth, with no one to oppose it now that Grigory was dead.
“But people here thought you and Nicholas—you and Jacob,” Tom said, “were married.”
“We had enemies abroad and changed our identities to hide.”
“What did you really fake a marriage for?” Pitt asked.
“That’s my secret to keep. So is my daughter,” Molly said.
The eastern clouds began to fracture and the Lady’s Way passed through a clear band of sun. It lit the sails with splendor, giving the distant ship a gold-spangled light before it sank back to shadow, gone toward the sea, with Nicholas and everything he knew inside its hold.
“People will think your brother died fighting the Maimers,” Tom said. “If he ever makes it back, he’ll be a hero.”
“Makes it back!” Pitt said, scorching at the thought. His reputation—and the lie they meant to foist upon the town—depended on the fact that Nicholas was gone. “You said the two of you would handle— It’s the only reason I didn’t arrest the son of a bitch myself!”
“Not the only reason,” Tom said. “But no one comes back from Exanica anyway.”
The blood-drop potion might have killed him already. Benjamin had failed to tell Tom the proper dosage; they had decided they were better off emptying the bottle, guaranteeing that he slept as long as they required. Molly had seen him almost die of seasickness alone. She thought of how debilitated he had grown doing Mrs. Wickware’s chores; even if he reached the prison colony alive, it seemed impossible that he would survive a year, a month, a solitary week of hard physical labor.
The Lady’s Way dipped and vanished out of sight.
“He isn’t coming back,” she said, knowing he would come.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Orange remained closed. Molly, Tom, and Pitt had returned the previous day to flabbergast Root with the tale of Grigory’s crimes and the final events in Grayport, then retreated to the quiet isolation of their homes, leaving the town to talk and wonder and embroider on its own. The trio had reemerged this morning for Lem’s burial, and afterward Molly walked Bess home to the tavern, guided her into their room, and closed the door behind them. They settled on a bed and Molly held her hand. It was a hand with bitten fingernails, a child’s smooth knuckles, and lifelong calluses below them on the palm.
Bess had heard the story same as everyone in Root. That her father had been murdered seemed to matter less than that he’d died while he and Bess remained bitterly at odds. Lem had gained the pitiable glow of many dead brutes and now his silence, so different from the bluster of his life, allowed the finer whispers of her memory to rise. Molly understood. She felt the same about her brother now that he was gone, and she remembered all the ways he once protected her from harm.
But the time had come for Bess to know the truth in all its ugliness, and Molly told her everything as clearly as she could—her childhood, her father, John Summer, and her baby. Nicholas and the Maimers. Nicholas and Lem. She rushed it out efficiently and tried to get it