She looked at Lore with wide, fearful eyes, rubbing at her healed bones. Then she turned and fled farther into the lighthouse.
“You’re welcome,” Lore murmured.
Sighing, she took a mop and bucket from the closet under the stairs and made her way back out into the ash, following another group of convicts who were apparently headed to clean the few barges at the dock. Lore peeled off in the opposite direction, the squat building of the shipping office standing sentry on the shore.
The sun was bright enough to have reddened her skin even through the ash-veil by the time Lore reached the office.Officewas a stretch, really. The place was one room, a rickety desk in the center covered in schedules for which ships needed repairs, which ones would be going to the mainland to ferry back another load of prisoners. One of the desk’s drawers yawned open, emitting a flutter of old maps.
Martin was the only person Lore knew of who ever worked in here, and only when he had to. He preferred to stay in his lighthouse. Lore supposed if another guard showed up, she could say Martin told her to meet him.
It only took five minutes to clean the floor of the small room. Lore discarded her mop and flopped into the chair at the desk,tipping back her head. Resting in the middle of the day was nigh unheard of. After a moment, she went over to the bucket, dipped in her hand, and took a drink. The water in there was just as good as what they were given at the trough, and she’d missed her chance at it this morning. The twisting in her gut reminded her that she’d missed her chance at breakfast, too. She sat in the chair and put her head on the desk.
Lore didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until the sound of the door slamming jarred her awake. She jumped up, searching desperately for her mop.
“Calm down.” Dani dropped a heel of bread in front of her, in the middle of all those shipping schedules. “It’s just me.” She grinned, a flat one that stopped short of her eyes. “Myriad hells, this place has done a number on you. You were never this jumpy before, even when you should have been.”
She wanted to retort, but there was no point. Dani was right. The Lore who would indolently lounge when she was supposed to be working, who would relish being caught flouting the rules, had been slowly dredged out on the Isles. She was left like this, a half-starved shell perpetually on the edge of panic.
“Eat,” Dani said, jerking her chin at the bread. “Then we’ll start looking.” She sat down in Lore’s recently vacated chair, wincing slightly. When she shuffled through the schedules, Lore caught the purple blooms of bruises on her forearms.
“Are those from him?” she asked quietly.
Dani flexed her wrist back and forth. “Don’t worry about me,” she said in answer. “I give as good as I get. That’s why Martin likes me. He wants them to have some fight.”
The bread tasted ashy. Lore wasn’t sure if it was due to Dani’s words or actual ash. “I’m sorry.”
“We take power where we can get it.” But the other woman’s flippant tone was brittle. “Not all of us have the option of fucking the King.”
That was fair.
Dani thumbed through schedules until she found the one she was looking for, laid it out flat. “A week from now,” she murmured, “the Blue is headed to port, the Green stays, and Red and Gold are due for repairs and moving to the southern dock.” She nodded curtly. “Two ships out of commission, so most guards will be at the arrival port to help with overflow. He’ll come then.”
All the prison ships were named after colors. No great creative thinkers, were the guards of the Burnt Isles. “Who ishe?”
“The Ferryman,” Dani said, pulling a handful of maps from the drawer. “The man who’s going to get us off the island.”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Did you really think every person who disappears from the Second Isle either killed themselves or was murdered?” Dani scoffed, digging another schedule from the drawer to cross-reference. “Some of them, sure, but lots go to the Ferryman. He can’t get you to Auverraine—you’d get lost forever in the ash if you tried—but he can get you to the Harbor. Assuming you can pay.”
Lore’s head was spinning, and not just from hunger and dehydration. “What’s the Harbor? And it doesn’t matter anyway, because we have nothing to pay with—”
Without looking up from her papers, Dani dug in her pocket, pulling out a small silver instrument that looked like a needle balanced on top of a pyramid. It wobbled back and forth, loose on its hinges. “Stole it from Martin,” she said, tucking the instrument back in her pocket once Lore’s silence made it clear her point was taken. “The Ferryman likes those kinds of things. Balances, compass pieces, anything that can be salvaged for science. Most people just steal something from the mine, though, or anything that looks like it could be pre-Godsfall. You have to bringsomethingto make it worth his while, but he isn’t picky.”
The fact that a solution to at least one of Lore’s problems had been right under her nose this entire time was galling. “So there’sbeen a way to escape the Isles all along. One that, apparently, most inmates know about.” And hadn’t shared with her. That shouldn’t sting. By design, this place didn’t foster camaraderie.
“Not most,” Dani countered. “Only a few, and they’re cagey. I’ve been here awhile, remember?”
The slantwise reminder of how they’d first met, what Dani was here for, made Lore’s eyes narrow.
That only made Dani’s smile go brighter. “You have every right to hate me,” she said, cutting straight to the heart, not bothering with lesser wounds along the way. “Do you?”
The question was unexpected enough that Lore actually took a moment to think on it. “No,” she said finally. “I feel sorry for you.”
The feral gleam in Dani’s eyes flickered. Her hands arched on either side of the map.
But she didn’t do anything but laugh. “Good,” she said. “That makes two of us.” She shook her head, continued. “Believe it or not, even among the prisoners who know, most of them would rather stay here than risk a trip to the Harbor. Half of the inmates have lived on the Second Isle since they were children. This is hell, but it’s home. It’s hard to let go of the familiar.”
Lore shifted uncomfortably, leaning on her mop. “What exactly is the Harbor?”
