Chapter 15: Renhart’s Trap

The captain's fears were confirmed faster than anyone in the crew had time to prepare for.

On their second day in Windmouth, while Hasso and Orrin continued digging through the archive for more precise information on the Anchor's whereabouts, and the captain negotiated with harbor officials over lawfully restocking supplies, Tobb volunteered to run to the market for fresh bread for the crew — a short, familiar errand he'd carried out dozens of times over the voyage without a hitch.

He didn't come back after an hour. He didn't come back after two.

By evening, when a worried Mira and Dolf set out to look for him along his usual route to the market square, they found, on the cobblestones at the mouth of an alley, Tobb's dropped bread basket — empty, overturned, with a single scrap of coarse paper weighted down by a stone so the wind wouldn't carry it off.

The note was short, written in a neat, almost calligraphic hand Mira would have recognized anywhere after just one meeting, back in the port off Keraven.

"Captain Darnveil. I have the boy, safe and unharmed — for now. I propose an exchange: the girl for the cabin boy, at the lighthouse on the northern point, at sundown tomorrow. Come alone, unarmed, no tricks. And please, let's dispense with dramatic gestures — we're both far too reasonable for that. Sincerely yours, Renhart."

Mira read the note twice before the full weight of its meaning reached her, and when it did, the ground seemed to fall away beneath her feet.

"This is my fault," she whispered. "If I hadn't been on this ship—"

"Stop that," Gretta cut her off sharply, taking the note from her trembling hands. "This isn't the time for self-blame. We need to decide what to do."

Captain Darnveil, learning the news upon his return from his negotiations, stood motionless a long while, gripping the note until his knuckles whitened, then spoke words Mira never expected from him:

"We're going to the meeting. All of us together. And we're not giving him either Mira or Tobb."

"Captain, he wrote it plainly — alone, unarmed," Gretta reminded him.

"Renhart is a smart man, but not smart enough to think I'd actually come alone after everything that's already happened between us." Something flickered in the captain's eyes Mira had never seen there before — not despair, but the cold, calculated resolve of a man ready to stake everything he had. "He's expecting a trap from our side, because he's the one who keeps setting one trap after another. So we'll give him what he doesn't expect: not cunning, but open force. The whole crew, everyone willing to fight, will get to the lighthouse ahead of time and take up positions before sunset. The moment Tobb is safe — we attack."

"That's war with the Royal Inquisition, captain," Dolf said quietly. "Open, irreversible war."

"It started back in Keraven, when I cut their rope with Gretta's cutlass on that rooftop," Darnveil answered flatly. "I'm just finally admitting it out loud. Anyone who doesn't want a part in this — I'll understand, and I won't hold it against you. But I'm done pretending to myself that I can stay on the sidelines and protect the people I care about at the same time."

No one refused. Even Fern, still more afraid of Mira than he was willing to admit, volunteered to go along with the rest — whether out of a sense of duty to the cabin boy he'd shared quarters with for nearly a year, or simply because cowardice in the face of a captured shipmate proved far less bearable to him than his fear of sea magic.

Gretta spent the whole evening distributing the ship's meager weapons — a handful of cutlasses, a pair of old muskets, powder damp enough to cast doubt on its own reliability. Barro sharpened his ever-present kitchen knife with a fury that seemed determined, through sheer effort alone, to transform kitchen tools into a worthy weapon of war.

"Ready?" Gretta asked, handing Mira a short dagger, which she took uncertainly, not entirely sure what to do with it.

"Not particularly. But it seems readiness is a luxury we won't have today."

"Good answer," the boatswain grunted with grim approval. "Stay behind me tomorrow, whatever happens. Your job isn't to play hero with that dagger — it's to stay alive. We'll take care of the rest."

Mira spent the night before the meeting without sleep, but this time not because of the Storm's voice — because of her own, far simpler and more human fears. She sat at the bow, gazing at the dark water, when Captain Darnveil came and sat beside her, unusually silent for once.

"What if he's willing to do anything to get me?" she asked finally. "What if Tobb gets hurt no matter what we do?"

"Then I'll hold Renhart responsible for that, not you," the captain answered firmly. "Remember that, Mira, whatever happens tomorrow. The blame for someone else's cruelty never lies with the one that cruelty targets. It lies with the one who commits it."

He rose, but stopped at the gangway and added a few more words, quietly, almost to himself:

"For twenty years I ran from everything connected to the sea and its secrets, because I was afraid of losing the people I care about again. Tomorrow, it seems, I'll finally find out what all that fear was worth."

Mira remained alone at the bow, staring at water that no longer felt like mere sea to her, but like a living, listening presence, waiting to see what she'd do next. Somewhere beyond the horizon, the town slept, and on its northern outskirts a lighthouse already cast its first warning beam into the gathering dusk — a beam that tomorrow would witness either Tobb's freedom, or the start of a war there'd be no retreating from.

She tried once more to reach with her mind for that voice from the deep that had spoken to her these past nights — not through song, just a quiet, desperate reaching into the dark.

"Are you there? I need help. Not for myself — for a friend."

No answer came — not that night, and, it seemed, not at all. Perhaps, Mira thought, the Storm didn't interfere in human affairs until its own hour arrived. Or perhaps she'd simply needed to feel a little less alone before what tomorrow held, and she knew that better than she wanted to admit.