Fable

Auster tends to the various injuries Fable has collected on her adventures as the Marigold enters Ceros’s harbor. Willa tells Fable that Zola knows they abducted Crane but that the helmsman has bigger concerns because he’s run afoul of Holland, a highly influential gem trader who operates in the Unnamed Sea. Her commercial empire dwarfs even Saint’s.

Fable doesn’t want to say goodbye to West because she doesn’t think she’ll ever see him again, but he seems all too ready to have her off his ship. The crew members wish her luck, and West urges her to be careful in the city. Fable thanks him and shakes his hand. As she walks down the dock, she turns to take one last look at the Marigold and at West, hoping that he understands that she “owed him everything” (173). A man in a sapphire coat shoves past Fable, and she realizes that it’s her father.

Saint recognizes Fable, but he ignores her because he doesn’t want anyone to know she’s his daughter. Ceros is the largest port city in the Narrows, but the Unnamed Sea’s cities are far more affluent. Fable makes her way to an impoverished neighborhood called the Pinch and climbs through a window into her father’s office. Looking around at the familiar maps and equipment arrayed on his desk, she’s shocked and hurt that he’s been going about his life “[l]ike [she] never existed” (181).

The narrative moves backward in time to the night the Lark sank. A storm breaks the ship’s mainmast, forcing everyone aboard to abandon ship. Fable shouts for her mother, but her father pushes her into the arms of his navigator, Clove. They leap overboard and swim away from the sinking vessel. With Saint and Clove’s help, Fable reaches a lifeboat. The next morning, they wash ashore on Jeval. Saint asks his daughter if she trusts him and then uses a knife to cut “smooth, curving lines that reached from [her] elbow to [her] wrist” (185). He tells her that he’s leaving her on Jeval and promises, “Survive. Get yourself off this island. And the next time I see you, I’ll give you what’s yours” (186). Knowing that her father despises weakness, she weeps silently as she watches him sail away.

The narrative returns to Fable’s present in Ceros. Saint’s office is filled with objects that used to belong to Isolde, and Fable realizes that her reflection closely resembles her mother. She finds the sea dragon pendant her mother always wore and pockets the necklace. Saint enters his office and immediately recognizes Fable. He now commands 28 ships, making him the most powerful trader in the Narrows. The Lark’s hold contains a fortune in gems and coins, and Saint tells Fable that it’s her inheritance. However, he refuses to join Fable on this mission or to give her a place in his crew: “I never should have let your mother step foot on my ship. I’m not making the same mistake twice” (195). Saint credits himself with Fable’s survival on Jeval because he sent the Marigold to buy her pyre. He reveals that the scar on her arm is a map that will guide her to the Lark’s wreckage in Tempest Snare. Fable is filled with rage toward her father for dismissing her from his life. He tells her not to say her mother’s name, but she tells him, “I’m Isolde’s daughter” (198). Then she storms out into the city streets.

Fable wanders the city and goes into a tavern. When she pays the bartender for some drinks, she realizes that West filled her purse with coins before she left his ship and that he looked out for her all along, knowing she was Saint’s daughter. As much as she wants to hate her father, part of her still loves him for her mother’s sake. Zola spots her at the tavern and tells her that West and the Marigold will likely be in trouble soon. He offers Fable a place on his crew, which she vehemently declines because of what he did to Willa. Zola observes that Fable reminds him of someone, tells her to be careful, and leaves.

West sends Willa to follow Fable, and the bosun takes Fable to an inn when she becomes too intoxicated to walk on her own. Willa reminds her that the Marigold still needs a dredger and advises, “You want something in this life, you take it” (209). Fable considers this counsel because she needs a ship to reach the Lark, but she wants to know what happened in Sowan before she makes her decision. Willa tells her, “West did a bad thing to a good man because he had to. And now, he gets to live with it” (210).

The next morning, Fable joins Willa, Paj, Auster, and Hamish for breakfast in the tavern. Due to the damage and lost cargo caused by the storm, the Marigold needs to cut expenses for the foreseeable future. Willa encourages Fable to convince the crew to let her join, and she accompanies them on their errands in Ceros. When they go to meet West at the ship, they discover that Zola has slashed all of the sails and that the helmsman is missing. The cost of replacing the sails is “a death sentence” to the small trading outfit (217). Fable recalls the words Zola spoke to her the night before: “Don’t think the Marigold will be on its feet much longer. Neither will its helmsman” (218).

No one at the docks will admit to seeing anything amiss, so the crew regroups at the inn. Willa instructs Hamish to talk to Saint and sends Paj and Auster to check the taverns. Fable follows Willa when the bosun interrogates the inn’s barkeeper. She threatens to burn down the building with all of them inside unless he reveals what he knows about West, and he says that a coin master from a trading ship asked about the helmsman.

After making Fable promise that she’s trustworthy, Willa takes Fable to the Waterside hovel of her emaciated mother. West brought the woman food the night before, but she doesn’t know where he is now. Fable realizes that West and Willa are siblings, and Willa says that she’ll kill Fable if she tells anyone. A young boy guides the young women to a pile of crates, where they find the injured helmsman.

The crew members carry West to the inn and gather around anxiously while a physician treats his injuries. The helmsman says that Zola is behind the attack. Willa tells Fable that West snuck her onto a ship when he was 10 and that they’ve been working side by side ever since. Although she regrets living a life she never chose, she doesn’t want to leave her brother. West resolves to ask Saint for a loan so that they don’t have to lose the Marigold, and Willa is the only one to argue against this. Saint barges into the inn, berates West for the damage to the ship, and refuses to loan him the money to replace the sails. West realizes that the trader is punishing him for bringing Fable to Ceros, but he argues that she would have died if he left her on Jeval. Saint warns West, “I don’t want to see your face again until you’ve cleaned this up. If you don’t, it won’t be Zola coming for you. It will be me. And I won’t leave you breathing” (236).