Young Tides & Drift

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80336-948-8
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

A moving return to the world of Fable, these two stories dive into the bittersweet first meeting of fan favourite characters Paj and Auster, and the intrepid voyages of Willa and Koy as they forge their own path across the Narrows. Tides When Auster, a young member of the Roth crime family, meets a deckhand named Paj that he's been sent to rob on behalf of his infamous uncle, his world is turned upside down. Tides is a tale of first love, heartache and breaking free, following Paj and Auster's beginnings before the events of Fable and Namesake. Drift After leaving the only family she's ever had on the Marigold, Willa has made a new start on a remote island carving out her own stake in the future of the Narrows. She's found an unexpected business partner in Koy and whether she likes it or not, they are suited in more ways than one. Together they plan to turn Jeval into the farthest-reaching port before the waters of the Unnamed Sea. But when the Saltblood ships docking in their newly minted harbor start bringing unsettling news, the more Willa is forced to rely on Koy, and she discovers that he's more than an opportunity to create her own destiny. He also just might be the safest harbor she's ever known.

Adrienne Young is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she's not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, sipping wine over long dinners or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her documentary filmmaker husband and their four little wildlings in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Sky in the Deep duology and the Fable duology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Young, Adrienne

Leseproben

ONE

The harbor was dead, and that was never a good sign.

I leaned against the wall of the merchant’s house beside Murrow, my eyes trained on the ship anchored in the fourth bay down the docks. The Scourge was a midsized schooner with three masts and a crew that was short at least a few hands. It arrived in Bastian every two weeks like clockwork and dropped anchor for a single night on its way to Nimsmire. We’d been watching it for months, checking the quantities unloaded against the harbor master’s logs.

I pulled my pocket watch from my vest. It clicked, opening in my palm. The yellow light of the streetlamp gleamed on the glass as I tilted it. “Two minutes,” I murmured, looking over my shoulder to Murrow.

My cousin’s curling brown hair was barely contained beneath his cap. It was his attempt at being inconspicuous, but there was nothing ordinary about him. He was uncommonly tall and lanky like his father, with huge feet, and his pants were almost always too short—a detail that aggravated our uncle Henrik to no end. He liked the family to be clean-shaven, buttoned-up, and shined like a brass buckle, even if we were doing the work of sea urchins.

Behind him, Ezra nodded in answer, a look of utter boredom on his angled face. His features were distinctly not Roth, though in the years since Henrik plucked him out of a rival’s workshop and brought him home, he’d managed to end up looking like us in other ways. His nearly black hair was combed back, the collar of his jacket flipped up against the wind. It wasn’t often he ventured out of the workshop, but I needed three bodies for this job if I was going to pull it off. My uncle didn’t like mistakes.

The Scourge’s route stretched all the way to the Narrows and carried everything from silk to salted pork, but it was one of the few Bastian-based trading operations that had license to carry the thing we were after—Sowan rye. The potent spirit was made in sea brine barrels by crofters in the north, and there wasn’t a bastard in Bastian who wouldn’t pay top coin for the stuff. That was exactly what my uncle Henrik was counting on.

The harbor bell rang, signaling the official close of business in the merchant’s house, but most of the ship crews were already drinking in the city’s taverns. That should have been my first clue. Things were never that easy.

I snapped the watch closed and tucked it back into the pocket against my ribs. “Let’s go.”

Murrow pushed off the wall and stepped out first, shoving his hands into his pockets and starting up the main dock. He kept his face down, turning it just enough to keep it from catching the light of the streetlamps. It was more instinct than anything. We’d learned to be invisible at a young age, when his father and our uncles started using us as decoys. Might as well make use of them, Henrik had said. It had been the same for him. No one looked twice at a well-dressed boy in a tailored jacket. Not unless they could see the Roth tattoo on your arm. I’d been given that when I was twelve, like everyone else in the family.

Ezra ran a hand through his hair, slicking it back from his face as we waited. Murrow passed the second bay, then the third. There wasn’t so much as a hitch in his gait as he reached the fourth. He waited until he passed a stack of barrels, and when he was illuminated in the pool of light from the next streetlamp, he took one hand from his pocket and let it fall to his side. That was the signal.

It was clear.

I didn’t hesitate, moving up the dock with Ezra on my heels. The harbor was patrolled by the watch, and there would be at least one member from the Scourge’s crew guarding the unloaded inventory waiting for delivery to the merchant’s house. But the pickup wasn’t coming. I’d made sure of that. And more often than not, the crew member left to guard the cargo was half drunk by this hour.

Moonlight rippled on the surface of the calm, black sea to our left, and the elevated street stretched out along the water to our right. I watched Ezra’s shadow from the corner of my eye, counting the steps. They were like a heartbeat, steady and even until we reached the Scourge, and as soon as the dock broke off I turned sharply, disappearing between the barrels. Ezra took the next opening, and I listened to his footsteps on the other side of the cargo as we both made our way toward the crates we were looking for.

I searched the lids until I spotted a stack burned with the port seal of Sowan. A relieved breath escaped my lips and I knocked on one of them with a fist, letting Ezra know I’d found it. A soft splash sounded below the slats of the dock under my feet, and I looked down to see a near-invisible Murrow pulling a pair of oars from the water. He stood, catching hold of the dock with both hands to hold a small rowboat in place.

I hoisted the first box into my arms, careful not to jostle the corked bottles inside. Ezra was already climbing into the boat below and as soon as his boots hit the hull, he reached up, ready to take the crate from me. I squatted onto my haunches, leaning out over the water. But I froze when the prick of sharp metal stung against the side of my neck, just below my jaw. A chill ran down my spine and the crate almost slipped through my fingers. I’d had a knife to my throat enough times to know what a blade felt like.

“Stand up.” A deep voice sounded in the dark behind me, and I set the crate down between my feet. I lifted my hands slowly out to the side as I rose.

Below, Murrow stared up at me with wide eyes. Ezra was pulling the knife from his belt. But by the time they made it back onto the dock, I’d be bleeding. One shout into the night air for the harbor watch and all three of us would go down.

The moment Murrow began to hoist himself from the boat, I kicked my boot to the side in a quick sweep, knocking his grip from the dock. He tumbled back into the hull with a crash, and one of the oars slipped into the water, disappearing. He cursed, trying to leap back up for the dock, but it was too late. The current was already tugging the boat out into the bay, the dark swallowing it whole.

“Turn around.” The voice spoke again with the same patient cadence.

I obeyed, turning my back to the ship, and when I saw the face before me, my eyes narrowed. The trader was young, probably my age. A deckhand working his way up the ranks of the crew.

He looked down at me with a flat expression, his black eyes like polished pieces of onyx. They were as dark as his skin, but as he took a step closer to me, the light from the streetlamp shimmered over it like the smooth face of a black pearl.

“Willing to die for your helmsman’s coffers?” I muttered, glaring at him.

“I don’t give a shit about his ledgers, but you touch that rye and it’s coming out of my coin.” He lifted the knife, forcing me to raise my chin. “So if you want it, you’ll have to find a way to cut me first.”

There was no way for me to reach my own knife quick enough, and he knew it. Any minute, the watch would come across those crates on their rounds, and then they’d be hauling me up to the merchant’s house. That was if I were lucky. It was more likely that this deckhand would let his helmsman deal with me, and that would be worse. Much worse.

His gaze drifted to my left hand. “Pull up your sleeve.”

I stood up straighter, trying to read the look in his eye. He wasn’t stupid, and that wouldn’t bode well for me either. I reached for the cuff of my right sleeve instead and unbuttoned it, taking my time.

“Not that one,” his voice grated.

I grinned, and he looked surprised by it, leaning back away from me slightly. His eyes didn’t leave mine until I had the sleeve rolled up to the elbow, and he took hold of my wrist roughly, pulling my arm into the light between us. He glanced at the tattoo on the inside of my forearm: two entwined snakes eating one another’s tails. The ouroboros was the mark that every member of my family had. The mark of the Roths.

His eyes lifted again, running over my face slowly, as if he were trying to solve some puzzle he saw there. His fingers tightened around my wrist, and when boots sounded on the other side of the slip, he suddenly let me go. I glanced at the darkness behind him as two shadows appeared on the dock. The harbor watch.

Any other trader would have called out to them or used their knife by now, especially after seeing my tattoo, but he stayed quiet. The boots moved closer, reaching the next slip, and I tried not to think about what my uncle would do when he had to come haul me out of the merchant’s house.

As soon as I thought it, the prick of his blade at my throat vanished. The moonlight flashed on the steel between us before the trader slipped it back into his belt.

My brow furrowed as I looked up into his face, and for a moment, I could have sworn I saw a smirk playing on his lips. But before I could open my mouth to speak, he shoved me hard in the chest with both hands and I flew back, the heels of my boots scraping on the wood slats as I fell from the dock.

I hit the cold seawater and plunged beneath it, thrashing as my jacket tangled and the bubbles spilled from my lips. My shoulder hit one of the pillars holding up the dock as the current swept around me, and when I saw the moonlight above I swam toward it, the weight of my boots heavy beneath me. By the time I broke the surface with a gasp, I was already out from under the docks, being pulled into the bay.

I flung my wet hair back, blinking furiously as I turned, trying to...