She smiled up at him. “Just deciding on the ending. I think I’ll hold out to be last, if I can. What about you?”
He nodded. “I’ll tell one, though I’m still deciding which. A traveling chapman gathers tales, but we’ve had so many peddler tales already. Peddlers, tricksters, gamblers, and lovers.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small cigar and a folding knife. “I rather wish I could think of something completely different.” Masseter opened the knife and cut a notch in the end of his cigar. “Any requests?” He raised his voice and turned to include the twins in the question.
Reever said nothing. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” Negret replied, flashing a grin with too many teeth in it and somehow still managing to keep the expression friendly. Masseter acknowledged this with a careless nod of his head and looked down at Petra again.
“Oh, ask Maisie,” she said breezily. “I already had my story requests honored.”
“Yes, you did, didn’t you?” Masseter eyed her curiously. “Both of them. What made you ask for those, I wonder? The first one especially. And where did you hear it? Amalgam says it wasn’t one of his.”
Petra got to her feet. “He’s mistaken. That, or he isn’t actually responsible for every single piece of lore in Nagspeake. Excuse me.”
As she walked out of the parlor, she paused beside the chair where Reever Colophon sat staring moodily at Frost’s half-hour glass. A sympathetic glance passed between them.
“What is there to say?” Reever asked quietly.
“Nothing that would make a difference, perhaps,” Petra said.
Negret spoke up. “But you’re here, and so is she.”
“For now,” Reever said, his voice bleak.
“For now,” Petra agreed. “It’s not nothing.” She crouched to watch the last few grains of sand fall from the top bulb of the glass, reached out, and turned it.
Masseter had strolled to the French doors during this exchange, the better to light his cigar near a window and politely ignore the conversation. When Petra had gone, he also departed, heading for the public bar, to which the other smokers had decamped, and leaving only a faint wisp of sweet smoke in his wake. The parlor fell quiet around the tattooed brothers, who were accustomed to silence and did not feel obligated to break it.
NINE
THE TAVERN AT NIGHT
JESSAMY AND SORCHA went up to the attic, where Sorcha thought she’d most recently seen the collection of small blankets she’d made the year Mrs. Haypotten had taught her to knit. She could’ve gone to the linen cabinet for everyday quilts instead, but the attic had other useful things in it as well.
The maid pointed Jessamy toward the corner where she knew the chest of blankets full of uneven edges and slipped stitches to be, then took herself off to a different corner to rifle through a trunk that had been up there since before even the Haypottens had bought the tavern. She emerged a few minutes later and went to Jessamy on the far side of the attic with three pairs of antique but pristine gloves in her hand.
“Will these fit you, miss?” Sorcha asked. “See if they might, and I’ll see what I can do about the stains on yours, if you like.” She considered mentioning the bloodstained blond lock currently tucked behind Jessamy’s ear and decided to wait until they were downstairs again and closer to a washbasin.
Jessamy took the proffered gloves wordlessly. Her pink-clad fingers roved over the offering as she searched for words. “I think they’ll fit perfectly,” she said at last. “But I’ll wait to try them on until I’m certain the bleeding won’t start again.” She tucked the gloves very carefully into the pocket of her dress. “Thank you.”
Outside, where the road met the river, Captain Frost stood with the toes of his sea boots at the water’s edge. His eyes were closed under his tarpaulin hat, and he hummed an old shanty under his breath as the rain pounded down on him.
Sullivan, hands in his pockets and head unprotected from the weather, went to stand at his side. “Sometimes the rain is just the rain,” the younger man said.
“Tell yourself that, do you?” There was still bite in the captain’s tone, but it lacked the conviction it had carried before.
“Every day.”
“And do you believe it?”
Sullivan shook his head. “No.”
“At sea,” the captain said after a moment, “weather always means something. To believe anything less is to put an entire ship at risk.”
Sullivan said nothing. He sat on a rock beside the road, propped his elbows on his knees in the darkness and the downpour, and watched the captain with eyes that had no trouble finding enough light, even on a sodden and moonless night, to see the shifting expressions on the old mariner’s face. And he waited.
“What did you come here looking for, if your sacrifice was made so long ago?” Frost asked at last.
“The same things I always look for,” Sullivan said, blinking back the rain. “A way to live in the world after what I’ve done. A way to live among them. A way to pay. Atonement.”
“I thought you might say ‘forgiveness.’”
He shook his head. “The only person who could give that can’t do it, and if she could, I wouldn’t ask it. It isn’t for her to make me feel better about what I did.”
“They say all you need is to repent.” The captain spoke bitterly.
Sullivan shook his head slowly. “That’s for whatever lies beyond.” He watched the old man carefully. “I looked it up, you know, ‘repentance.’ Trying to find out what I ought to do with the pain and the regret. And I kept finding the words ‘turn’ and ‘return.’ Turn from evil, return to the good. But the only way
