The World of the Narrows
by Adrienne Young

All the spoilers ahead. Proceed with extreme caution! Fable is a dredger on the island of Jeval. It’s a dangerous job in a dangerous place full of thieves… and worse, every one of whom is just trying to eke out a life. As a dredger, she must pay someone to take her out into the ocean to then dive down to the reef to attempt to find any pyre gems and chip them off the reef, so that she can trade the gems on the next chance she gets. That is, if someone else doesn’t find where she hides them and steal them before she can trade. Fable usually pays Koy for a ride on his boat, even though he hates her and he has for as long as she’s known him. She’s learned not to keep any gemstones or coppers on her or in her living space, for fear that others will toss where she’s been sleeping, or rob her while she’s asleep, or murder her to take them for themselves. They’ve already found the majority of Fable’s hiding spaces, but she only needs to trade for another few weeks before she will have enough coin to barter her way out of Jeval on a trading ship and find her father, Saint, who left her on this forsaken island at the age of fourteen, but only after carving a wound into her arm. A wound that has healed into a nasty scar - but provides Fable with a measure of safety since most on Jeval believe it is a curse from a sea demon. Right now, Fable needs to be particularly careful. Her stash of coppers is large since she’s saving up to pay for her passage, and she’s found a cache of gems on the coral reef that no one else is aware of. Other dredgers believed that all the gems in that area had already been collected but Fable could still hear them, now the others are getting suspicious. This cache could have enough for her to finish saving up what she needs. That night, she collects her gems from their hiding place in the water. She recounts her coppers, forty-two (she estimates she needs eighteen more), before putting the bag back in its hiding place inside a hollow tree. The next day Fable pays Speck to take her to where the trading boats dock and she meets the helmsman of the Marigold, West. He’s the only person she’s been trading with, and she shows him what she has today. They agree on ten coppers for the whole lot, but he warns her not to bring so many at one time for her own safety. She brushes him off and makes her back to the island, paying Koy to take her back on his boat even though he has no other passengers at the moment. Halfway back, she slips into the water intent on finding a few more pieces of pyre, trying to make the most of her time so she can leave Jeval as soon as possible. She can feel the threat in the air around her, they’re going to strike soon, and she needs to have her money and be gone by then. But she’s not fast enough, Koy follows her out of the boat to where she’s finding the stones and tries to drown her, but Fable fights back and makes her way to his boat. She hits him with an oar and knocks him unconscious but she’s too soft-hearted and instead of leaving Koy to drown, she pulls him into the boat with her and makes her way to shore. Once on shore, Fable leaves an unconscious Koy in his boat and, as fast as she can, collects her coppers from their hiding place. On the way, she sees that her camp has already been ransacked. She needs to get back to the shore with her coppers and onto a boat, back to the traders where she can barter for passage, all before Koy wakes up or his cronies find her. Afraid to take the busiest trail to the water, she takes the switchbacks even though it is very dark and the last time she was on them she broke her leg. Once she’s back on the shore she sees that Koy’s boat is where she left it, but he is gone. She also sees Speck, drunk and passed out on the sand. She takes his boat into the water but just as she gets in, she hears Koy roaring her name behind her. She unfurls the sails, trying to get away as quickly as possible, but Koy is right behind her, and he is big mad. When she makes it to the trading docks, she does not slow down. She just jumps from the boat and allows Speck’s boat to crash into the docks. She sprints to the Marigold as Koy runs behind her screaming her name. She yells West’s name as she runs down the docks believing that he is her best bet but when she gets to the Marigold, she doesn’t see him. Instead, a girl watches her from the Marigold’s deck for a moment before throwing the ladder down to Fable. She grabs it and climbs up to the Marigold’s deck just as Koy comes close enough to grab her. West comes to the deck to find out what all the commotion is about and at first, he tells Fable that the Marigold does not take on passengers. But after assessing the situation, he agrees to let Fable stay, although the rest of the crew do not agree with his choice. Slowly, Fable realizes that she’s done it. She’s made it off of Jeval. Now to find her father and remind him that while he does not forget the wrongs done to him, neither does his daughter. Fable meets the rest of the crew, which is small for a boat of the Marigold’s size. She meets Auster (the Marigold’s striker), Paj (navigator), Hamish (coin master), and Willa (the bosun and also the girl who threw the rope ladder down). The crew does not trust Fable and tells her she needs to work for the food they’ll give her; they aren’t carrying any extra since they did not expect to take on additional people. Fable works on whatever jobs they give her without complaint. The crew also tests her, throwing a copper into the sea and challenging her to descend the four hundred fifty feet to retrieve it. The depth is no problem, so Fable does it, knowing that the test is for respect as much as anything else, but what she doesn’t realize is that there is an underwater current. She is swept away a bit, but she does manage to find the coin – she listens to it as it sings under the water – and makes her way to back to the ship with minor injuries, although she did get scraped up by some coral and will need to deal with the fever the coral’s poisons will bring on. But the crew is begrudgingly impressed. The crew tells Fable that they were all Waterside orphans that have worked together in the past, but she’s still confused about why the crew is so small and with no older, more experienced members, and why a couple of them have accents if they’re from Waterside, and how the Marigold got a trading license when it is nearly impossible to do so. You cannot trade without a license from the Trader’s Guild, which Saint is a part of, and who Fable knows does not give out licenses often since they want to keep all the trade to themselves. It’s not uncommon. All of the guilds are selfish and corrupt. Fable pays all fifty-two of her coppers to the Marigold for passage to Ceros, but when the Marigold leaves the docks, it heads in the wrong direction and makes a short pitstop in the Coral Islands although no one will tell Fable why, even when she asks. They then make their way to the trading port of Dern. When they arrive, Fable is excited to get off the ship and possibly find a way to make a couple coppers so that she’s not destitute when she arrives in Ceros, but West has other plans. He tells Fable that she must stay on the ship while the crew goes into the city. If she leaves, she surrenders her spot on the Marigold. He hires two dock workers to keep an eye on the ship so it’s not tampered with by rival traders… and to keep Fable onboard. As soon as the crew is off the ship, Fable gets to work. Something isn’t adding up about the Marigold and she is going to figure out what is going on. She goes down to the hold where she doesn’t find anything strange at first, but after knocking on some planks she finds some hidden gems. She’s sure the Marigold has many more gemstones hidden elsewhere. She then breaks into West’s chambers. She sees an emblem on the ground hidden by a rug, Saint’s emblem. Fable believes that the Marigold is actually a shadow ship for Saint’s fleet. A ship that does not sail under Saint’s sigil but works for him all the same, driving prices up in the trader’s favor. It’s highly unethical and illegal on top of that, but it does not surprise Fable that her father has a shadow ship. She would guess he has many more. Then Fable hears the bell that indicates it is sundown. She slips off the ship and into the city. Fable is happy to see that she remembers Dern fairly well after not being there for at least four years, ever since Saint deposited her in Jeval and told her that he would not be returning for her. Ever since Saint’s ship the Lark sank in a terrible storm, taking Fable’s mother with her to the bottom of the sea. But the Lark’s navigator, Clove, used to take Fable into Dern and even taught her to pickpocket, which Fable is going to put to good use now. She stumbles into a well-dressed woman and slips the bracelet off the woman’s wrist unnoticed, but when she makes her way to a pawn shop (called a gambit), Fable runs into trouble. West is in the alleyway waiting to surprise Willa as she leaves the pawnshop. Not seeing Fable, Willa reveals that she pawned her jeweled dagger and got ten coppers for it before leaving West alone in the alleyway. Fable overhears their conversation and wonders if Willa and West are romantically involved, she pushes down the sudden anger she feels at the thought before West calls her out. She wasn’t as sneaky as she thought and the consequence of her leaving the Marigold is that she will no longer receive passage to Ceros. She can’t be too upset; West was pretty clear what would happen if she left the Marigold. But West makes her another deal instead of leaving her in the port city. He will still give her passage to Ceros and even pay her thirty coppers if she goes into the pawnshop and retrieves Willa’s dagger for him. He gives her a gold ring from his hand to trade for it. She agrees and enters the shop but she’s not very good at bartering and ends up trading the ring, the gold bracelet she stole, and most of the coppers in exchange for the dagger. But at least she will still get to Ceros and now she’s a couple coppers richer. After the pawnshop, West buys Fable a room at the inn where the rest of the crew is staying and she joins them all in the morning as they go to the trading house. As a crew, they make their way up to the trade master and Fable finds out that they’re a day late reporting back. Whatever that detour was for it made them late to Dern and West lies about why they’re delayed, explaining that they were caught in the storm – which they were not. The trade master references some trouble that the Marigold’s crew had in Sowan. He warns West that whatever the trouble was in Sowan, it better not happen in Dern. The people in Dern take care of their own. West and the trade master are still able to agree that the Marigold will take two crates to trade and that they’ll return in two more weeks with their profit. After this, the crew splits up. Fable notices that each of the crew members has a small bag of gemstones that they are selling. If the Marigold is a shadow ship for Saint, they would have a license to trade gems. By going about it this way, with each crew member selling a small quantity alone, they’re flying under the radar. They likely do this in every port and pocket what they’re making instead of recording it in the Ledger’s and passing it on to Saint. They’re trading under the table. Fable goes with West as he sells the pyre stones that she sold to him (getting thirty-two coppers for them when she only got ten). West asks if the trader has any good stones to trade instead of accepting coppers for the pyre and the trader tries to give him some emeralds. But Fable recognizes that something is wrong. Some of the emeralds are not emeralds, but good dupes. The gem merchant hasn’t noticed, despite having to apprentice for a decade before getting the title. But Fable can tell by the way they sing, and by the small inclusion in the stone that several of them are actually forsterite. The merchant agrees that she’s probably right and West takes the amber the merchant has instead. But instead of being grateful, West and the crew are not happy with the scene that Fable inadvertently caused. As they leave the trading house, West instructs them to be ready to leave by nightfall. They weren’t supposed to leave until the next day, and they’ll have to scramble to prepare. On their way back to the boat, the crew runs into Zola, helmsman of the Luna. He asks if they’ve seen his striker Crane and the whole conversation has a tense undercurrent. Zola makes a comment to Willa which has Fable wondering if he isn’t how she got the large burn on her face, which must have happened recently. There’s a storm rolling in, but West wants to leave Dern before the gem merchant starts talking about the girl who caught the fakes that he didn’t. Before someone else realizes what West suspects Fable of being: a Gem Sage. Her mother was one, it runs in lineages, and she was teaching Fable before she drowned. There was once a time when being a Gem Sage was a highly sought after skill, but now it’s likely to get you killed instead. In addition, Willa doesn’t know want to stay where Zola and his crew are. So, the Marigold casts off, believing that the storm will be fierce but short lived and the only real danger would be if they were run aground. If they can get far enough from shore that the storm can’t blow them too close, they should be fine. Before they’ve gone far from port, West brings a large crate out from belowdecks. When it’s opened, they find Crane – Zola’s missing striker. Willa nails the top of the crate back down and the others throw the crate overboard. This is the person that burned Willa and while Fable doesn’t like it, this is how things are done in the Narrows. The storm hits and it’s more violent than they expected. Auster is thrown overboard and Paj chances everything to get him back, Fable helping to hold the rope on the heaving boat. They save Auster from the water and the relief that Paj feels cements the idea that the two of them are a couple. West commands Fable to get below deck for the storm and she doesn’t want to listen, but she is eventually tossed in and secured. When the storm is done and Fable is allowed out, she hears that the anchor is stuck, they’ve been blown back toward the coast. Luckily not far enough to run aground but close enough that the anchor is stuck and they’ve suffered substantial damage. West wants to wait until the tide comes in to free the anchor, but Fable doesn’t wait. Meeting his eyes as she goes against his direction, she dives into the water and successfully frees the anchor. Now she’s won more respect and repaid any debts she’s accrued to West or the crew. When they are back on their route, Fable finds Willa in her hammock. Willa explains that it was Crane that had burned her, but it had been on Zola’s orders. Zola can only trade in the Narrows (he’ll be killed if he goes further into the Unnamed Sea) and he is becoming desperate. He’d warned West and his crew a couple of times; this was the next step. Zola knows, but he won’t be able to prove, that Crane is missing because of them. They get to Ceros and Fable finds it hard to say goodbye, especially to West, who passes her jacket and belt to her. They all wish her good luck and West gives her some advice. Keep your jacket buttoned up and do not attract attention. He specifically indicates her scarred arm and says it again – do not attract attention. He shakes her hand for a moment too long before watching her walk away. Fable goes into the city and looks behind her again, strangely sad about leaving the ship, and she sees West watching her still. As she walks toward the Pinch where Saint keeps his offices, she passes Saint on the street. He sees her and makes eye contact with her, she knows that he recognizes her, but they both keep walking. Rule number one that Saint always gave her as a child: tell no one that she is his daughter. Instead of causing a scene on the street, she goes to his office and breaks in. She remembers the last time she saw her father, the night of the storm that killed her mother and destroyed the Lark. Her father came and got her while she was sleeping, tossing her to Clove as the ship split apart, ordering them to swim. The three of them are the only people on the ship who lived. They never discussed Fable’s mother, she knew that if her mom had a chance of still being alive that Saint would never have left her behind. Their love was electric, legendary. Fable, Saint, and Clove landed on Jeval’s shores and as Clove bartered for some food, Saint asked Fable to trust him and carved something a winding shape her arm - giving her the large scar she still carries. The next morning, he broke the news to her that she would not be leaving Jeval with them, telling her that she was not made for this world. He made Fable a deal: if she survives and can get herself off Jeval, he will give her what is hers the next time they see each other. Fable looks around Saint’s office as she waits, spotting different items that had belonged to her mother. Including a sea dragon necklace that Fable knows she was wearing when she drowned. Fable takes the necklace and holds it, putting it in her pocket as Saint comes into the room. He knows exactly who Fable is, and they make small talk. He reveals that he has twenty-eight ships now, Fable is impressed. Saint refuses to say, or to even listen to, Fable’s mother’s name (Isolde) said aloud but he does agree to give Fable what he calls her inheritance. He shows her a map of Tempest Snare, which has two hundred years of sunken ships lying on its seabed. It’s where the Lark rests as well. He explains that he left the Lark, and the fortune of treasures it carried, for Fable. That is her inheritance. He never went back to the ship except once, when he retrieved the sea dragon necklace. Only three people survived that night: Fable, Clove, and Saint. And Clove is dead, so there is no one to challenge her for the Lark. She presses him – she doesn’t want the Lark! She wants to be on his crew, to sail at his side. But he explains that just as it was a mistake for him to allow her mother on his crew, it would be a mistake to allow her on his ship. With the Lark, she can make her own way. Now Fable is mad and points out that he left her on Jeval to die. But he explains that no, he didn’t. West was always working for him. He knew who Fable was and he traded with her under Saint’s orders. Fable is disgusted. She tells him that she owes him nothing and he agrees but when he says that she’s his daughter, Fable says no. She’s Isolde’s daughter. Then she storms out. She goes directly to the bar and promptly orders some shots. When she pays, she realizes that her purse is too heavy. West put more coppers in it before he passed her belt to her. That sneaky snake! Still looking out for her. She realizes that she appreciates what he did for her when she was on Jeval, even if it was under orders. West didn’t have to follow them, and he didn’t have to bring her to Ceros. She also realizes that she doesn’t completely hate Saint. She wants to, but she doesn’t know anything about his own childhood or upbringing, only knowing that he had to make his own way and fight to the top. She also knows that Isolde loved him with a passion. She can’t hate someone that her mother loved so fiercely. As she systematically gets drunk, Zola recognizes her and approaches her. He has heard about an unknown dredger in Dern spotting some emerald dupes and offers her a job, but she’s not interested in working for him. Before he leaves, Zola gives her a warning. Don’t work on the Marigold because neither the ship nor her helmsman will be sailing for much longer. Fable continues to pound shots after he leaves, Willa finds her. She’s been following Fable all afternoon (on West’s orders, it wasn’t Willa’s idea) and has decided to stop Fable before it gets any worse. When Fable asks why West cares, Willa explains that he has a bad habit of making other people his problem. Like when he got Willa’s knife back for her. She takes Fable up to her room in the inn and they have a chat. She tells Fable to take what she wants. She needs to work on a ship and the Marigold needs a dredger. Make West hire her! Fable decides that if she is going to work on this crew, she needs to know exactly what they’re up to. She asks what happened in Sowan and Willa tells her that West did a bad thing to a good man because he had no other choice. And now he will have to live with that. When Fable wakes up (incredibly hung over but no longer vomiting), she finds the rest of the crew downstairs at breakfast. Everyone except for West. Hamish reveals that the next voyage is going to be bare bones, they had to spend a lot of money repairing the boat from the storm damage and they can’t afford to carry any luxuries, so it’ll be porridge until they get some more coin. They all decide to go down to the docks and check on how the repairs are coming along, assuming that West is already down there with the ship. But when they arrive, they see that someone (i.e. Zola) has killed the two dockworkers paid to watch the Marigold and has sliced their sails to pieces. Fable remembers what Zola said the night before about the Marigold not sailing for much longer, and the barely veiled threat he made toward West. They all realize they haven’t seen West since the night before. They run back to the inn and find that his bed was not slept in. They split up to find him, Willa and Fable go to see Willa’s mom to ask if West had been by the day before. Fable realizes that Willa and West are siblings – a secret that could put them both in danger and that Fable must never reveal, not even to the other crew members. Their mother says he did come by, but she can’t pinpoint a time. As they leave the room, a Waterside stray leads them to West. He’s been beaten badly and left for dead, but he’s still alive. They manage to get him to the inn and call a physician to attend to him. Once the physician is done and West is able to talk, Hamish gives the bad news. They can’t afford to fix the sails. They’re dead in the water. West decides to ask Saint for more money, just tack it on to what he already owes. And Saint happens to be outside, on his way to see West, so it won’t take long for West to discuss it with him. Willa hides Fable in the next room where they overhear West ask for money and Saint tell him no. Saint also points out that if West tells anyone about taking Fable off of Jeval, his life will be forfeit. The two men argue a bit, but Saint does not change his answer and eventually leaves which is when Willa turns to Fable, demanding to know what that was about. Fable agrees, they need to talk. But before that, they need to figure out what happens to the Marigold next. When the crew comes back into his room, West suggests they take what they need for the sails from the stake. All the money they’ve earned by doing their under the table gem trades has been saved up and called the stake - for when they finally pay Saint back and can work on their own. They all agreed not to touch it until they were free of Saint, but West doesn’t think there’s any other choice. Fable offers an alternative. Gripping her mother’s necklace in her pocket, she tells them she can get the money for the sails AND get the money to buy themselves out from under Saint. And she can do it in a few days. West is vehemently opposed, refusing to allow her to work on the Marigold regardless of the argument. Finally, Fable tells them why he’s so opposed, breaking the one promise she had made to her father. She’s Saint’s daughter, and Isolde’s daughter, which explains what she can do with gemstones (Isolde was a well-known gem sage). Having her on board puts them all at risk in a number of ways. West speaks to Fable alone and tells her it’s too dangerous for her to work on the Marigold, if anyone found out who she was they would target her to get at Saint and if anything happened to her, the Marigold’s crew would be punished for it. He explains that Saint is terrible, but he’s not as bad as some. The first person who took West on as a crew member was worse and Saint got West off of that ship – for which he’s grateful. Saint is ruthless, but West also admires what he’s managed to achieve. In addition, Saint is the only trader in the Narrows that does business in the Unnamed Sea and by doing so, he’s showing the Sea traders that the Narrows can handle their own business. He’s the only legitimate competition for the traders in Bastian and it would take West sixteen years to buy his freedom. But more than the danger, West doesn’t trust her. Even just now, she tried to manipulate the crew against him. And West thinks Fable would choose Saint over the Marigold crew if she had to. She argues against that notion. Saint doesn’t want her and has never done anything to save her. She wants to have someone she can trust with her life. She wants to learn how to be part of a crew. She wants to work on the Marigold. And she wants to help them pay their debts back. In the end, he agrees to vote to allow her to become the Marigold’s dredger but only if she understands that he CAN NOT care about her. Not more than the other crew members. Fable understands what he means, there’s tension between them. But there cannot be another Saint/Isolde situation here. She agrees. They put it to a vote and the crew votes unanimously to bring Fable on after having her answer a few questions. She asks how much it will cost to repair the ship’s sails and Hamish gives her a number. It’s a bit steeper than she expected but she’s pretty sure she can still get it. In fact, she plans on making Saint pay for the sails after all, by selling something that he considers priceless back to him. The next morning, she ambushes Saint where he goes for breakfast, the same place he went when she was a kid. She shows him the abalone sea dragon necklace that had belonged to her mother, and he is shocked - he hadn’t realized she’d taken it. He immediately agrees to give her the eight hundred coppers she wants to trade it back and arranges to have the money brought to her. As Fable leaves the establishment, he warns her never to shake him down again. After, Fable discusses with the crew where exactly they’ll be going to find the Lark and she shows them her arm scar and the map. The scar matches the map. Saint drew the Tempest Snare on her arm so she would always have the map on her, that’s where they’re going. They’ll need to be as light as possible in the water, so while they wait for the sails to be made, they’ll sell everything they have. Absolutely everything. After the money is delivered from Saint, they set out to find a sailmaker, but Zola has already spoken (threatened) them all and no one will take the Marigold’s commission. Luckily, Auster has an idea. They make their way to the Fig – a more affluent area of Ceros than Waterside – and find a tailor named Leo. Leo is also from Bastian like Paj and Auster (and Fable’s mom). In fact, he was the premier sailmaker in Bastian. But he got on the wrong side of Holland (the same Sea Trader that has now has a problem with Zola and will not allow him to trade in the Unknown Sea) and Leo’s options were either to disappear on his own or disappear because of Holland. He bribed Paj to hide him in the ship that Paj worked on at the time and Paj and Auster smuggled him to Ceros, where Leo was set up as a tailor. Because he’s not supposed to exist anymore, he couldn’t be certified by the Sailmaker’s Guild so if Leo makes a set of sails now, he could pay with his life. But he owes Paj, and he agrees to make the sails. It actually doesn’t even take that much convincing. Two nights later in the dead of night, Leo is on the Marigold hanging the sails when the crew sees a mob coming toward them. Zola has realized what’s happening and is intent on crippling the Marigold for good. Luckily, Leo is nearly finished with the sails. He completes the sails and jumps down to collect the rest of his payment before disappearing off the boat as the crew readies to push off and the mob marches steadily closer. Fable is on the dock loosening the ropes that tie the Marigold in place when the mob gets to the docks. She finally loosens the last rope, but the Marigold has already started floating away from the dock and she can’t reach the ladder. She jumps for the ladder and just makes it, climbing up as the boat leaves the docks. One of the men in the mob jumps after her and grabs her boot, she can’t grab her knife or kick him loose. West sees this and jumps overboard into the water, coming up the other side of the ladder and stabbing the man in the side, forcing him to release Fable and fall into the water, then West and Fable climb to the dock and the Marigold sails away. Before they get to Tempest Snare, the crew prepares the crab boxes they use to fish for crab so they can use them to pull up loot from the Lark. The hope is to traverse Tempest Snare, get to the Lark, get everything they can from its hold (hopefully they can clean it out), and get out again all in one day so they can stay on time to their next stop in Dern and avoid casting any suspicion. West cleans the hull of the Marigold to make sure they don’t catch anything while going through Tempest Snare (they can’t afford to get snagged at all on either a sunken ship or the coral. Mistakes like that are why there’s so many sunken ships) and Fable decides to help him. It’s a disgusting job and she hopes that she conveys to him that she’s in this for real, not just for the good parts. The next morning at dawn, they reach Tempest Snare. West carefully steers as Fable calls out instructions to him. The other crew members help with the sails when needed and they make it to the location of the Lark with no problems. Fable readies herself to go down to dredge up the Lark’s treasures and West joins her. She didn’t know he could dredge! It turns out that there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him. When they get under the water but before they can start bringing up the haul, West kisses her. Which is weird, but she was very happy about it. They get everything off the Lark and store in on the Marigold, writing everything in Hamish’s ledger. He believes there’s enough there to pay their debts, including to their vendors and to Saint, and have some left over. They all agree that two thirds of the payout will go toward the Lark, the last third will be split amongst the rest of the crew. They make their way to Dern to sell some of the merchandise. Each crew member takes a small bag of gems and metals to sell, and they get enough to pay everything that they owe. They celebrate that night and later, West speaks to Fable privately. What he said before about not caring about her, he can’t live like that. He’s been in love with her since he first saw her on Jeval. He would push his crew through dangerous storms just to make sure he wasn’t late when she expected him to be there. He never wanted her to wait for him. He tells her all his secrets. He doesn’t know who his dad is, but his name may have been Henrik. The Marigold is named for his and Willa’s sister who died from an illness that kills many in Waterside. It’s a big reason why he stowed Willa away on a boat, believing she’d have a better chance on a trading ship than on the docks and the entire reason that Willa is on a ship now. The first trader he worked for beat him and refused to feed him; he had to kill rats to survive. Saint saved him from that, and West will always be grateful for that, and he’s not sure that he will ever feel free of Saint even after the debt is paid. The ring that Fable sold to retrieve Willa’s dagger was given to him by his mother before he left Waterside for the first time. He has killed sixteen people, to protect his crew, his family, and himself. And in Sowan, he set fire to a man’s warehouse on Saint’s orders. The man was a good man but was working with Saint’s competitor and making him rich, so West followed Saint’s orders and the man lost everything. Fable promises that if he doesn’t lie to her, she won’t lie to him, and they sleep together that night. In the morning, Fable makes her way to the deck where Auster sees her and correctly guesses what happened between her and West. She goes into Dern, intent on getting West’s ring back from the pawnshop. But she sees Saint on her way and has tea with him. He came to check on her and she feels happy to see him. But things devolve quickly when he tells her he thinks she’s being foolish. She doesn’t agree. She’s just proving that he was wrong when he said she wasn’t made for this world and implied that she was too weak. He doesn’t back down. She WASN’T made for this world. Just like her mother she was made for a better world. Fable asks why he left her in Jeval, and he explains that he promised Isolde that he would protect her, and the most dangerous place for Fable to be is next to him. She leaves, knowing she won’t see him again. She makes her way to the pawnshop and buys back West’s ring. She’s feeling good, and excited, as she walks back to the Marigold, but she is stopped by someone in the street. It’s Zola, who calls her by her name and knows who her mother was. Saint had mentioned that Isolde had a problem with Zola after sailing for him for a time, but hadn’t given any more information. Fable makes a run for it, but she doesn’t get far before Zola’s men catch her and knock her unconscious. She wakes up on Zola’s ship - already at sea. She goes up to the deck and sees someone she never expected …Clove.