Marcie snaps the spyglass down from her eye, a curse dropping from her lips.
"Lads!" she calls across the deck. "I don't care whose colours she's flying, that's no boat, that's a boat-shaped hat on a giant centipede. You all saw that — it ran over the top of those rocks! It's a faerie glamer-destrier!"
The apparent schooner is running merrily, sails billowed. If Marcie raises the spyglass again, she might even be able to make out the slender, beskirted figure of Miss Penelope on the poop deck.
She curses again, quieter, venomous.
"The lady—" says Bone-Hand Jack, a step away from her shoulder.
"We won't catch a faerie ship," Marcie says grimly. "Not unless they want us to; and do you want to put your knowing head into a faerie trap?"
She watches the glamer-destrier's wake, where you can see, if you know to look, the swells of the scuttling legs beneath; and Jack is silent.
"Helm, fifteen degrees starboard," she says, loud again, and then for Jack's ears only, "she'll be at Isla Sombra at Halloween. We'll meet her then."
"Will she?" Jack says.
Marcie flexes her shoulders inside her coat. "She promised," she says firmly, as much to herself as to him; free hand dipped into her pocket, gripped tight around the chainless locket. She promised, her lips shape again, soundless, almost a prayer.