Vesper’s scream coincided with another strike of lightning, so loud it seemed to shatter the world.
The spectral opened his hand, and the oyster flew into it, before he and the Calavera captain vanished.
Ship in the Clouds
Time moves differently out in the sea. Days can stretch decades, years can bleed together.
It is said that out in the middle of the ocean, one can glimpse the future, or even the past. Pirate songs sing of ghosts in the night. One too many sailors claim to hear battles years after they’ve taken place, precisely at midnight, cannons sounding through the darkness, screams echoing across the water.
A little girl, the daughter of a rich merchant, once pointed up to the sky and smiled. “There’s a ship there,” she said, waving at invisible passengers.
Her parents thought her silly, perhaps too much time in the sun.
But perhaps the ocean gave the girl a glimpse of what is to come.
20
The Pearl
Tor blinked—and Melda made a sound between a scream and a sob. She rushed toward him with wide eyes and shaking hands, as if not allowing herself to believe it.
Tor blinked again, and Melda sank to her knees, Engle beside her.
“Tor,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “Are you…”
Tor nodded, slowly sitting up. His chest burned and he winced. It felt like the skin there had been charred and cut away.
He pulled down the top of his shirt and saw something glimmering, fresh and still hot to the touch.
A new emblem.
A shield.
“That’s how you survived,” Melda whispered.
Engle’s all-seeing vision locked in on his arm. “Look.”
Right where his leadership bands used to be, wrapped around his left wrist, was a ring of purple flames.
“Another emblem?” Melda said.
He didn’t know.
Blood pooled out of Captain Forecastle. Two arrows stuck out of his stomach.
“Don’t take them out,” Melda said, standing on shaky legs. She looked around for anything to stop the bleeding. But the room was empty. “We have to get him help, now.”
Engle groaned as he lifted the pirate to his feet.
Tor walked toward Vesper, who stared out the lone window. Mouth parted in a silent scream, she watched the waves and rocks below. A single tear slid down her cheek. Her entire face twisted in pain.
But her eyes were angry.
She turned from the window and fled from the tower without a word.
Engle helped Captain Forecastle down the steps, the storm almost over. A light rain still fell, but the waves had settled. The pirate could still move his legs, though his eyes closed, then opened, only to close again.
“Stay awake,” Engle told him, an edge to his voice. “Stairs are no place for a pirate to die.”
They stumbled their way down, easier without the rain blocking their view. Soon, they were on the sand. Vesper was already there, drawing a symbol into the base of the mountain, a marking Tor didn’t recognize.
He kneeled beside her, head lowered, offering his respects. He knew words would never be enough—he didn’t even know what to say.
So he said nothing and sat beside Vesper as her shoulders shook.
She had no family left. Only a grandmother, who was frozen on a Calavera ship.
Without a way out.
Without the pearl.
Vesper stood and Tor followed suit. They made their way after Engle and Melda, who were already a quarter of the way down the land bridge, sharing Captain Forecastle’s weight between them.
It had all been a disaster. They had failed. The spectral and Calavera captain had gotten control of the seas, after everything.
And Vesper’s brother was dead. She had watched him plummet from the tower.
His mother, his sister, his father—their entire village was moments away from being leveled by a tidal wave or attacked by hundreds of bloodthirsty pirates.
They were counting on them…
And he had failed.
They had just caught up to the rest when somewhere, far away, a roar made him go still. Tor turned, and so did Vesper.
He swallowed. A wave half as tall as the mountain raced toward it. It hit, splitting in two. Each part curved and barreled forward, right to where they stood.
High tide was rushing in.
Tor looked one way, then the other. Too much distance between the island and them. Between the docks and them. Vesper and Tor might survive—but his friends. They would drown.
The prophecy.
“Go!” Tor yelled, and they started to run, but the water was at their backs, curling along the sides of the mountain, charging at them at full force. Just seconds away from engulfing them.
Vesper stood very still, as if in a trance. She muttered words beneath her breath, her lips barely moving.
“Hidden in plain sight,” she said quietly. Tor recognized Violet’s words, from when the assassin had described surprising ways to use a magnificate’s emblem. “I feel it now… There it is…hidden in plain sight.”
“What are you doing?” he screamed at her back. She still hadn’t moved an inch, even as the sea rushed in. Tor watched as she unclipped the sundrop salmon’s scale from her bracelet and held it in her palm.
“The pearl wasn’t in the oyster, Tor, the one the spectral took. The oyster was on the pearl.”
“What?” Tor said.
Her arm shot out—
And the mountain began to shake.
The salmon scale multiplied her ability, energy emanating from her in waves. Rock crumbled away, the isle breaking into a million pieces that plunged into the sea. The stairs broke apart and toppled, one by one, off the mountain, which still stood tall and rounded. The tower at the top that had housed the oyster snapped in half, then plummeted into the waiting waters, smashing against the rocks below. Vesper cried out in effort, the scale shining bright silver in her hand.
Below the rock of the mountain was sand, and then, in half a second, it all blew away, until Tor could see that it wasn’t a mountain at all.
It was smooth, glimmering white, halfway dug into the sea. Giant, like the moon.
The pearl.
Hidden in plain sight. Made large, instead of small.
Vesper put her other arm up and groaned from the pit of
