“I bring words for him.”
Miss Fortune turned to see a giant of a woman clad in colorful robes and acres of fabric striding down the docks towards them. A posse of tattooed menfolk accompanied her; a dozen youths armed with tooth-bladed spears, wide-mouthed pistols and hooked clubs. They swaggered like the cocksure gangers they were, standing with their priestess like they owned the docks.
“Seven hells, what's she doing here?”
“Did Illaoi know Byrne?”
“No. She knows me,” said Miss Fortune. “I heard that her and Gangplank used to...you know?”
“Really?”
“So the scuttlebutt goes.”
“By the Bearded Lady, no wonder Okao's men have been giving us such a hard time these last few weeks.”
Illaoi carried a heavy stone sphere that looked as if it weighed about as much as the Syren's anchor. The towering priestess carried it everywhere she went, and Miss Fortune assumed it was some kind of totem. What everyone else called the Bearded Lady, they called something virtually unpronounceable.
Illaoi produced a peeled mango from somewhere and took a bite. She noisily chewed the fruit with her mouth open and looked down the barrel of the cannon.
“A Bilgewater man deserves a blessing of Nagakabouros, yes?”
“Why not?” said Miss Fortune. “He's going down to meet the goddess, after all.”
“Nagakabouros doesn't live in the depths,” said Illaoi. “Only foolish paylangi think that. Nagakabouros is in everything we do that moves us along our path.”
“Yeah, how stupid of me,” said Miss Fortune.
Illaoi spat the fibrous mango pit into the water and swung the stone idol around like a giant cannonball, holding it up in front of Miss Fortune.
“You're not stupid, Sarah,” said Illaoi with a laugh. “But you don't even know what you are, what you've done.”
“Why are you really here, Illaoi? Is this about him?”
“Ha! Not even a little bit,” snorted Illaoi. “My life is for Nagakabouros. A god or a man? What choice is that?”
“None at all,” said Miss Fortune. “Bad luck for Gangplank.”
Illaoi grinned, exposing a mouthful of pulped mango.
“You're not wrong,” she said with a slow nod, “but you still don't hear. You let a razor-eel off the hook and you ought to stamp on its neck and walk away before it sinks its fangs into you. Then your motion will be gone forever.”
“What does that mean?”
“Come and see me when you figure it out,” said Illaoi, holding out her hand. Nestled in her palm was a pendant of pink coral arranged in a series of curves radiating from a central hub like a single, unblinking eye.
“Take it,” said Illaoi.
“What is it?”
“A token of Nagakabouros to guide you when you’re lost.”
“What is it really?”
“Nothing more than I say.”
Miss Fortune hesitated, but too many people were gathered for her to openly offend a priestess of the Bearded Lady by refusing her gift. She took the pendant and removed her tricorn to loop the leather thong around her neck.
Illaoi leaned in to whisper.
“I don’t think you're stupid,” she said. “Prove me right.”
“Why do I care what you think?” said Miss Fortune.
“Because a storm is coming,” said Illaoi, nodding at something over Miss Fortune's shoulder. “You know the one, so you best be ready to turn your prow into the waves.”
She turned and kicked Byrne's cannon from the dock. It splashed down hard and sank in a froth of bubbles before the fatty surface residue reformed, leaving only its bobbing marker cross to indicate who was below.
The priestess of the Bearded Lady marched back the way she had come, towards her temple in the cliff-crater, and Miss Fortune turned her gaze out to sea.
A storm was brewing way out in the deep ocean, but that wasn't where Illaoi had been looking.
She'd been looking towards the Shadow Isles.