FOG POOLS BY THE open window, like the whirls of cigar smoke. With it comes the smell of dawn as the pink-lipped sky barely stays tucked behind the line of ocean. Time is lost here, in a way that can’t be said for anywhere else in the kingdom, or the world. The Serendipity exists in its own realm, with the people who could never truly belong anywhere else. It deals in deals, and caters only to traders who could never set up stalls for their goods.
Torik breaks into a low whistle as he deals another hand. His fingers glide over the cards, slick as butter, swiping them across the table in perfect piles by the stacks of red coins. When he’s done, Madrid fingers her deck blankly, like the cards themselves don’t matter, only what she does with them. Madrid is very good at adapting and never satisfied with playing the hand she’s dealt. I’d like to say I taught her that, but there are so many things Madrid was forced to learn before she chose the Saad. When you’re taken by a Kléftesis slave ship, you quickly learn that to survive, you can’t bend to the world; you have to make it bend to you.
Unfortunately for Madrid, her tell is the fact that she has no tell. She’s never willing to end how she begins, and though that means I can’t guess her hand like I can most people’s, knowing that she won’t settle makes it easy to guess what she’s going to do next.
Lira watches us predatorily, her eyes darting each time a hand moves or a coin falls from the top of a pile. I can tell that she sees the same things I do; whenever someone scratches their cheek or swallows a little too forcefully. Minute beads of sweat and twitching lips. The intonation when they ask for another jug of wine. She notices it all. Not only that, but she’s making notes of it. Filing their tells and ticks away, for whatever reason. Keeping them safe, maybe, to use again.
When Kye shifts a row of red coins into the center table, I watch Lira. She quirks her lips a little to the right, and even though she can’t see his cards – there’s no possible way she could – she knows his hand. And she knows he’s bluffing.
Lira catches my eye and when she sees me staring, her smile fades. I’m angry at myself for that. I never seem quick enough when it comes to watching these moments for long enough to pick them apart and see how she works. Why she works. What angle she’s working.
I push my coins into the center of the table.
“It’s too quiet in here,” Madrid says.
She grabs the wine decanter from the table and fills her glass a little higher, until red sloshes over the brim. If Madrid is a good shooter, she’s an even better drinker. In all our years together, I’ve never so much as seen her lose balance after a night of heavy liquor.
Madrid sips the wine carefully, savoring the vintage in a way none of us have ever thought to. It reminds me of the wine-tasting lessons my father forced me to attend as part of my royal training. Because nothing says King of Midas like knowing a fine wine from something distilled in a back-alley tavern.
“Sing ‘Shore of Tides,’ ” Torik suggests dryly. “Maybe it’ll drown out the sunlight.”
“If we’re voting,‘Little Rum Ditty’ will do. Really, anything with rum.”
“You don’t get a vote,” Madrid tells Kye, then quirks an eyebrow at me. “Cap?”
I shrug. “Sing whatever you want. Nothing will drown out the sound of me winning.”
Madrid pokes her tongue out. “Lira?” she asks. “What do they sing where you’re from?”
For some reason, Lira finds this amusing. “Nothing you would appreciate.”
Madrid nods, as though it’s more a fact than an insult. “ ‘Siren Down Below,’ ” she says, looking at Kye with a reluctant smile. “It’s got rum in it.”
“Suits me then.”
Madrid throws herself back onto her chair. Her voice comes out in a loud refrain, words twisting and falling in her native Kléftesis. There’s something whimsical to the way she sings, and whether it’s the tune or the endearing grin drawn on Kye’s face as she bellows the melody, I can’t help but tap my fingers against my knee in rhythm to her voice.
Around the table, the crew follows on. They hum and murmur the parts they can’t remember, roaring out each mention of rum. Their voices dance into one another, colliding clumsily through verses. Each of them sings in the language of their kingdom. It brings a piece of their home to this misshapen crew, reminding me of a time, so long ago, when we weren’t together. When we were more strangers than family, belonging nowhere we traveled and never having the means to go somewhere we might.
When they’ve sung through three choruses, I almost expect Lira to join in with a rendition from Polemistés, but she remains tight-lipped and curious. She eyes them with a tiny knot in her brow, as though she can’t quite understand the ritual.
I lean toward her and keep my voice to a whisper. “When are you going to sing something?”
She pushes me away. “Don’t get too close,” she says. “You absolutely stink.”
“Of what?”
“Anglers,” she says. “That oil they put on their hands and those stupid sweets they chew.”
“Licorice,” I tell her with a smirk. “And you didn’t answer my question. Are you ever going to grace us with your voice?”
“Believe me, I’d like nothing more.”
I settle back in my chair and open my arms. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m ready for you to tell me everything you know about the Crystal of Keto.”
It always comes back to that. We’ve been in Eidýllio for two days, and Lira has been relentless in her questions. Always wanting answers without ever revealing any herself. Someone, of course, has to go first. And I’ll admit that I’ve grown bored waiting for it to be her.
“All I know is that it’s in Págos,” I tell her, wary of the glares Kye is sending my way. If it were up to him, the only way Lira would come aboard the Saad is if she were back in the cage.
“It’s at the top of the Cloud Mountain,” I explain. “In a sacred ice palace.”
“You have a great ability to disguise knowing a lot as knowing a little.”
“And you have a great ability to disguise knowing nothing as knowing everything,” I tell her. “You still haven’t told me about the ritual.”
“If I tell you, then there’s no use in you keeping me around. And I’m not going to spill the best leverage I have so you can leave me stranded here.”
She has a point. The best habit I have is keeping only what I can use. And Lira is definitely something I can use. Even thinking it makes me sound too pirate-like for my own good, and I imagine my father’s crude disappointment at how I’ve come to regard people as a means to an end. Bargaining chips I trade like coin. But Lira is in the unique position of knowing what she is and of being more than happy to play along if it gets her what she wants.
“Tell me something else then.” I swap a card from the deck. “What do you know about the crystal?”
“For starters,” she says, chastising, “it isn’t a crystal, it’s an eye. The ruby eye of the great sea goddess, taken from the sirens so their new queen and her predecessors would never be able to hold the power that Keto did.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay,” she says, like it’s a challenge I’ve thrown down. “The Sea Queen’s trident is made from Keto’s bones and Keto’s second eye is what powers it. When the goddess was killed, her most loyal child was nearby. She couldn’t prevent Keto’s death, but she did manage to steal one of her eyes before the humans could take both. With that and the few pieces of Keto that remained, she fashioned the trident and became the first Sea Queen. That trident has been passed down from generation to generation, to the eldest daughter of every Sea Queen. They use it to control the ocean and all of its creatures. As long as the queen has it, every monster in the sea is hers. And if she finds the other eye, she’ll use it to enslave humans in the same way.”
“What a thrilling story.” Kye stares at his deck. “Did you make that one up on the spot?”
“I’m no storyteller,” Lira says.
“Just an outright liar, then?”
I press my fingers to my temples. “That’s enough, Kye.”
“It’ll be enough when we leave her stranded here like we planned.”
“Plans change,” Lira says.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Kye tells her. “If you think that just because you’ve manipulated your way into this mission that it means you’re part of our crew, then you’re wrong. And as long as you’re on the Saad, there’s not a step you’re going to take that I won’t be watching. Especially if it’s near Elian. So put just one foot wrong and it’ll land you back in that cage.”
“Kye,” I warn.
Lira clenches the corner of the table, looking about ready to come undone. “Are you threatening me right now?” she asks.
“Nobody is threatening anyone,” I say.
Kye throws his deck down. “Actually, that’s exactly what I was doing.”
“Well, great,” I tell him. “Now that you’ve let her in on the fact that you’re my hired protection, maybe you can be quiet for five seconds so I can ask her a question.” I turn back to my glaring new crew member, ignoring the irritation on Kye’s face.
“What did you mean, enslave humans in the same way?” I ask.
Lira releases her grip on the table and turns her stony eyes from Kye. “Sirens are not a free species,” she says.
“Are you trying to tell me that they’re just misunderstood? No, wait, let me guess:They actually love humans and want to be one of us but the Sea Queen has them under mind control?”
Lira doesn’t blink at my sarcasm. “Better to be a loyal warrior than a treacherous prisoner,” she says.
“So once I kill the Sea Queen, they can hunt me of their own free will,” I say. “That’s great.”
“How are you even going to navigate up the Cloud Mountain of Págos to get to the eye?” Lira asks.
“We,” I correct her. “You wanted in on this, remember?”
She sighs. “The stories say that only the Págese royal family can climb it.” She eyes me skeptically. “You may be royal, but you’re not Págese.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
I slide more red coins into the center of the table, and Torik throws his hands up.
“Damn you all,” he relents, folding his cards over in a dramatic declaration. “Sweep my deck.”
I grin and slip two of his cards into my own deck – one that I want, and another that I want them to think I do. I split the rest between Kye and Madrid, and they don’t hesitate to shoot me disparaging looks at having ruined their hands.
“I have a map,” I tell Lira.
“A map,” she repeats.
“There’s a secret route up the mountains that will shave weeks off our journey. There are even rest sites with technology to build quickfires to stop the cold. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
Lira nods, slow and calculating, as though she’s trying to piece together a puzzle I haven’t given her. “How did you get the map?” she asks.
“My charm.”
“No, really.”
“I’m really very charming,” I say. “I even roped this lot into sacrificing their lives for me.”
“Didn’t do it for you.” Madrid doesn’t look up from her deck. “Did it for the target practice.”
“I did it for the hijinks of near-death experiences,” Kye says.
“I did it for more fish suppers.” Torik stretches his arms out in a yawn. “God knows we don’t have enough fish every other day of the year.”
I turn to Lira. “See?”
“Okay, Prince Charming,” she says. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll come around to bite you later on. I’d rather enjoy that then than hear it now.”
“Ever the cynic.”
“Ever the pirate,” she retorts.
“You say that like it’s an insult.”
“You should assume,” she says,“that everything I say to you is an insult. One day the world is going to run out of luck to give to you.”
She folds her arms over her chest and I paint on my most arrogant smile, like I’m daring the world, and fate along with it, to catch up with me. Even though I know it will someday, I can’t let anyone else see that. Either things fall into place, or they fall apart, but either way, I have to keep up pretenses.