Cartographers Daughter / Season 1, Episode 9
Cove's Deadly Edge
The skiff rocked hard against the cove’s jagged edge, a sharp scrape of wood on stone cutting through the damp air as Inês gripped the side with knuckles pale as bone. Salt stung her lips, the taste raw and bitter, and her eyes darted to the narrow slit of sky above the cliff walls, half-expecting the silhouette of da Gama’s men to blot it out. The smell of tar lingered, faint but acrid, a ghost of whatever burned beyond the cove’s mouth. It wasn’t their fire—Sebastião had doused their pitiful pile of driftwood hours ago, muttering about smoke drawing eyes. No, this was something else, something closer than she wanted to think. “Wind’s shifting,” Khari said, his voice low, almost swallowed by the lap of waves against the hull. He crouched at the skiff’s bow, one hand on the frayed rope tethering them to a splintered outcrop, the other tracing an invisible line in the air, as if he could feel the currents through his skin. His turban, once a deep indigo, was crusted with sea spray, and his dark eyes flicked to the cove’s entrance, where the ocean churned gray under a bruising dawn. “If they’ve got torches out there, we’ll smell more than tar soon. Smoke carries on a wind like this.” Inês shifted, her boots scraping wet...