Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,6

swell of that horrid tune, legs kicking, face purpling, her father had begun dancing.

Daddy …

“Never flinch.” A cold whisper in her ear. “Never fear. And never, ever forget.”

The girl nodded slow.

Exhaled the hope inside.

And she’d watched her father die.

She stood on the deck of Trelene’s Beau, watching the city of Godsgrave growing smaller and smaller still. The capital’s bridges and cathedrals faded until only the Ribs remained; sixteen bone arches jutting hundreds of feet into the air. But as she watched, minutes melting into hours, even those titanic spires sank below the horizon’s lip and vanished in the haze.3

Her hands were pressed to salt-bleached railing, dry blood crusted under her nails. A gravebone stiletto at her belt, a hangman’s teeth in her purse. Dark eyes reflecting the moody red sun overhead, the echo of its smaller, bluer sibling still rippling in western skies.

The cat who was shadows was there with her. Puddled in the dark at her feet while it wasn’t needed. Cooler there, you see. A clever fellow might’ve noticed the girl’s shadow was a touch darker than others. A clever fellow might’ve noticed it was dark enough for two.

Fortunately, clever fellows were in short supply aboard the Beau.

She wasn’t a pretty thing. O, the tales you’ve heard about the assassin who destroyed the Itreyan Republic no doubt described her beauty as otherworldly; all milk-white skin and slender curves and bow-shaped lips. And she was possessed of these qualities, true, but the composition seemed … a little off. “Milk-white” is just pretty talk for “pasty,” after all. “Slender” is a poet’s way of saying “starved.”

Her skin was pale and her cheeks hollow, lending her a hungry, wasted look. Crow-black hair reached to her ribs, save for a self-inflicted and crooked fringe. Her lips and the flesh beneath her eyes seemed perpetually bruised, and her nose had been broken at least once.

If her face were a puzzle, most would put it back in the box, unfinished.

Moreover, she was short. Stick-thin. Barely enough arse for her britches to cling to. Not a beauty that lovers would die for, armies would march for, heroes might slay a god or daemon for. All in contrast to what you’ve been told by your poets, I’m sure. But she wasn’t without her charm, gentlefriends. And all your poets are full of shit.

Trelene’s Beau was a two-mast brigantine crewed by mariners from the isles of Dweym, their throats adorned with draketooth necklaces in homage to their goddess, Trelene.4 Conquered by the Itreyan Republic a century previous, the Dweymeri were dark of skin, most standing head and shoulders above the average Itreyan. Legend had it they were descended from daughters of giants who lay with silver-tongued men, but the logistics of the legend fail under any real scrutiny.5 Simply said, as a people, they were big as bulls and hard as coffin nails, and tendencies to adorn their faces with leviathan-ink tattoos didn’t help with first impressions.

Fearsome appearances aside, Dweymeri treat their passengers less as guests and more as sacred charges. And so, despite the presence of a sixteen-year-old girl aboard—traveling alone and armed with only a sliver of sharpened gravebone—making trouble for her couldn’t have been further from most of the sailors’ minds. Sadly, there were several recruits aboard the Beau not born of Dweym. And to one among them, this lonely girl seemed worthy of sport.

It’s truth to say in all save solitude—and in some sad cases, even then—you can always count on the company of fools.

He was a rakish sort. A smooth-chested Itreyan buck with a smile handsome enough to earn a few bedpost notches, his felt cap adorned with a peacock’s quill. It’d be seven weeks before the Beau set ashore in Ashkah, and for some, seven weeks is a long wait with only a hand for company. And so he leaned against the railing beside her and offered a feather-down smile.

“You’re a pretty thing,” he said.6

She glanced long enough to measure, then turned those coal-black eyes back to the sea.

“I’ve no business with you, sir.”

“O, come now, don’t be like that, pretty. I’m only being friendly.”

“I’ve friends enough, thank you, sir. Please leave me be.”

“You look friendless enough to me, lass.”

He reached out one too-gentle hand, brushed a hair from her cheek. She turned, stepped closer with the smile that, in truth, was her prettiest part. And as she spoke, she drew her stiletto and pressed it against the source of most men’s woes, her smile widening along with his eyes.

“Lay hand