‘Sara and I realised that if the island were the home of Old Tom, it made sense to assume that the Eighth Lantern would be prowling the waters,’ said Arent, whose gaze hadn’t left Sammy. ‘Everybody believed sending a rescue boat was a suicide mission, so we reasoned that if we asked for volunteers they’d likely be those who already knew there was a friendly boat waiting.’ He scratched beneath his eye. ‘I hid Larme in a cask and put him on the rescue boat with the other supplies. I told him to sneak out once he was aboard and find Pipps in the captain’s cabin.’
‘How did you know he’d be there?’ asked Lia.
‘Because I know Sammy.’
Sammy became abashed. ‘I’ve spent three weeks in the stinking darkness, I thought I deserved a little comfort. You can’t imagine my surprise when Larme turned up at my door, bold as brass, and told me Arent knew everything, and I should blow up the Eighth Lantern if our friendship held.’
The problematary beamed at Arent, like a proud parent. ‘I knew you’d work it out.’
‘You did most of it,’ grunted Arent, ashamed of the praise.
‘A few hints, here and there,’ scoffed Sammy, waving them away. ‘It’s only your second case, I wanted you to enjoy it.’
‘People are dead,’ said Sara sharply, annoyed by how flippant he was.
‘That’s how most of our cases start and end,’ said Sammy, baffled by the objection. ‘If it’s any consolation, everybody who died deserved it. Apart from the people who died in the wreck, but that was Crauwels’s fault for ignoring the plan.’ He ran the back of his fingers down his scarred face. ‘And I think you’ll agree, I’ve been punished for my misjudgement.’
A soft wind blew across the deck, the rigging creaking.
‘There’s no point doing this out here,’ said Creesjie, casting a glance at the crew, who were trying hard to make it appear they weren’t listening. ‘Why don’t we go into the great cabin?’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Sammy. ‘Everything is arranged.’
Instinctively, he tried to walk alongside Arent, but the mercenary glared at him and he fell back another step, beside Lia and Sara.
‘Were you the whisper?’ asked Lia, still in awe of her hero, despite everything.
‘At various times all four of us were. Myself, Creesjie, Eggert and Thyman. It was actually one of the simpler things to achieve,’ he said modestly, as they passed into the compartment under the half deck. Without passengers, it was a neat and tidy space used for storing tools. ‘We paid Bosey to drill little holes high up in your walls that we could whisper through. We plugged them with caulking when they weren’t used to keep the sound from travelling between cabins.’
A stronger gust clambered over the railing, plucking at their clothes. In the distance, the bonfires on the shoal seemed momentarily to blink out. It was as if the entire island had disappeared.
‘What about the crew?’ said Lia. ‘How did you whisper to them?’
‘The crates in the cargo hold almost touch the grates in the floor of the orlop deck, and the sailors slept on the other side of those grates. At night, without any light to see by, a whisper’s the easiest thing in the world to make horrifying.’
‘But why go to such trouble, Creesjie?’ asked Sara, giving voice to the question that had tormented her since the beach. ‘If you hated my husband so much, surely you could have found a simpler way of killing him?’
‘Where would be the fun in that?’ wondered Sammy, confounded.
Creesjie offered him an exasperated glance. ‘It wasn’t enough to kill him, Sara,’ she said. ‘We wanted him to know what it felt like to be hounded and haunted, the way we had been as children when the Mark of Old Tom started appearing across our lands and strangers were beating on our gates, accusing us of witchcraft. Samuel and I had always been gifted, and suddenly those gifts became accusations. Servants we’d known our entire lives crept past our rooms, terrified we were going to bewitch them. If we went into the village, rocks would be thrown at us, all because Pieter Fletcher and his witchfinders carved a few symbols in the woods and spread some rumours. We wanted Jan to know he was going to die, and be powerless to prevent it, the way we were when the mob finally stormed our home, butchered our parents and burnt our world to the ground. We wanted him to know our terror.’
‘And you wanted him to know it was you,’ said Sara, with sudden understanding. ‘That’s why you put the mark on the sail that very first day. That’s why you bought a cabin using an anagram of your own name. You wanted him to find you.’
‘I wanted to face him before the end,’ affirmed Sammy. ‘I wanted him to know who’d done this to him. I was waiting for him in Dalvhain’s cabin the night I killed Vos.’
‘Reckless, as always,’ said Creesjie, rolling her eyes. ‘I thought that part of the plan was too dangerous, but he wouldn’t listen. He rarely does.’ Arent grunted sympathetically, in spite of himself. ‘What would you have done if Drecht had seized you?’ demanded Creesjie, becoming annoyed at her brother afresh.