He looked up at me over the top of his spectacles. “Got you set up over here.”
He nodded to the gem lamp on the table. Beside it, a small chest of gems was waiting.
With the fallout of Holland’s supposed treachery, every merchant from the Narrows to the Unnamed Sea would tighten their operations, double- and triple-checking the stones they sold to keep their necks from the blade of the Trade Council.
I sat down onto the stool, striking a match and lighting the candle beneath the lens. When it was aglow, I took the first gem between my fingers, an aquamarine. I held it up so the light showed through, checking the color the way my mother taught me. Then I set it onto the gem lamp’s glass and peered through the lens, noting the structure of the gem. When I was finished, I set it aside and picked up another.
Everything has a language. A message.
It was the first thing my mother taught me when I became her apprentice. But the first time I’d understood what she meant was when I realized that even she had song. It was the feeling I had anytime she was near.
It was there in the dark as she leaned over me in the hammock to press her lips to my forehead. I could feel her, even when I could only make out the flicker of lantern light on her necklace as it dangled over me.
It was something I knew in my bones.
Isolde.
I looked over my shoulder to where the sea dragon pendant hung from a nail beside the bed, swaying with the rock of the ship. I got back to my feet and crossed the cabin, taking it from the hook and holding it before me.
The same feeling had found me as I stood in Saint’s post in The Pinch, my mother’s spirit calling to me through the necklace from where it sat on the shelf. I’d felt it again diving the skerry, where bits of her seemed to emanate through the blue waters.
I wiped at the face of the abalone with my thumb, watching the violet hues ripple beneath the green waves. The thrumming was so clear, radiating into my palm. As if somehow, Isolde still existed within it. As if—
My breath stopped suddenly, the slightest tremor finding my hand until the silver chain slipped through my fingers.
Hamish set down his quill. “What is it?”
“What if it wasn’t her?” I whispered, words frayed.
“What?”
“What if it wasn’t her I felt at the skerry?” I looked up at him, but he was confused.
I held the pendant in the light coming through the window, studying the silversmithing carefully. Not a single waver caught along the bevel, the details of the sea dragon perfect. I turned it over.
My mouth dropped open when I saw it. The Roth emblem. It was pressed into the smooth surface. It was tiny, but it was there—something I wouldn’t have ever recognized if I hadn’t seen it in Bastian.
It was no accident that Saint had it made in Bastian. It was no coincidence that it had been made by the Roths. And it wasn’t sentiment that made him go back to the Lark to find it.
I opened the drawer of West’s desk and rifled through its contents until I found a knife. I sank down to the floor, setting the pendant before me. When I lifted the blade into the air, Hamish reached for me. “Fable—”
I brought it down with a snap, driving the handle of the blade into the face of the pendant. The abalone cracked, and with another hit, it shattered into pieces.
The knife slipped from my fingertips as I pressed my hand to my mouth, my eyes going wide.
The glistening, smooth face of black peeked out at us from beneath the broken shell. Even in the dim light, I could see the sparkle of violet swirling beneath it.
“What the…” Hamish gasped, taking a step back.
That feeling that wrapped around me every time I was near my mother wasn’t Isolde. It was the necklace. The one she never took off.
Saint didn’t know where to find the midnight, but he knew how to find it. That’s why he’d given it to me. It was a clue that only a gem sage would understand.
It wasn’t my mother I’d felt at the skerry. It was midnight.
FORTY-TWO
Fable’s Skerry was like a giant sleeping in the dark.
The outline of the rock islet was barely visible against the night sky as we dropped anchor.