Read Chapter 6: A Stowaway Discovered

The Discovery groaned beneath Harlow’s boots, a sound like a dying animal shifting its weight. He paused at the top of the companionway, chart tucked inside his oilskin, listening. The footsteps he’d heard belonged to Mercer, but the scrape he heard now was different—smaller, furtive, moving below.

He descended slowly, hand on the bulkhead for balance as the ship listed slightly to port. The corridor was dark, lit only by the sliver of gray dawn filtering through the deck hatch. He passed the galley, the carpenter’s stores, each door hanging open, stripped clean.

Then he heard it again—a low, insistent mewling. The ship’s cat, a wiry black tom the crew called Salt, appeared in the doorway of the hold, tail flicking. He fixed Harlow with a yellow stare, then turned and disappeared into the darkness.

Harlow followed. The hold was mostly empty now, the crew having hauled up what supplies they could manage onto the floe. Boxes and crates sat in shadow, their contents ransacked. But Salt had stopped at a section of paneling along the aft bulkhead, pawing at a seam that looked no different from any other.

Harlow knelt. The wood was loose. He worked his fingers into the crack and pulled. A panel swung open on crude hinges, revealing a space barely three feet deep. Inside, wedged between coils of rope and a folded sail, a boy stared up at him with wide, terrified eyes. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen—thin, freckled, his hair a shock of red against the grime on his face. He clutched a canvas bag to his chest like it held his life.

“Don’t,” the boy whispered. “Please don’t.”

Harlow didn’t move. The ship groaned again, and a trickle of ice dust fell from the beams overhead. “Who are you?”

“Liam. Liam O’Brien.” The boy’s voice shook. “I stowed aboard at the Thames. I only wanted—I only needed to get out of London. I didn’t know it would be like this. I swear it.”

“You’ve been aboard the whole time?” Harlow asked, his mind racing. The crew had numbered forty-one at departure. Every muster since the stranding had come up short—they’d assumed the cook’s assistant, a man named Whitfield, had gone overboard in the gale off Greenland. But Whitfield’s name was on the death ledger, not this boy’s.

Liam nodded. “I hid in the coal bunker for the first weeks. Then when the ice came, I found this place. The captain—he knew.”

Harlow went still. “Mercer knew you were aboard?”

“He found me. Two days after we got stuck.” Liam swallowed, his throat bobbing. “I thought he’d throw me out on the ice, but he didn’t. He brought me food. He said to stay hidden. He said if I made myself known, the crew would tear me apart—rations being short and all.”

Harlow’s hand tightened on the panel edge. Mercer, keeping a stowaway alive and secret. Mercer, who had planned this stranding for months. Mercer, who had left behind a chart leading west to God knew where.

“He put you here,” Harlow said slowly. “He hid you.”

“Yes, sir. He said—” Liam stopped, biting his lip.

“What did he say?”

“He said if anything happened to him, I should wait. That someone would come back to the ship. A good man. One I could trust.” Liam’s eyes searched Harlow’s face. “He said that man would know what to do with me.”

Salt wound between Harlow’s legs, purring. Harlow stared at the boy. A shard of ice dislodged from above and clattered somewhere in the dark, and the ship shuddered again—harder this time, the timbers complaining in a way Harlow didn’t like.

The Discovery was dying under his feet. He had minutes, not hours, to decide.

“How much food have you got?” Harlow asked.

Liam gestured at the canvas bag. “The captain left me hardtack. Enough for a few more days, maybe. I’ve been stretching it.”

Harlow looked at the boy’s face—the hollows of his cheeks, the cracked lips. He wondered how long Mercer had meant for this to go on. Whether the captain had intended for Liam to starve alone in the dark if no one came back. Or whether Mercer had always known Harlow would come—had counted on it.

That was the thing about Mercer. Everything was a test. Every kindness wore a blade.

“You can’t stay here,” Harlow said. He stood, holding out a hand. “The ship is breaking apart. It won’t survive the day.”

Liam stared at the offered hand. “Are you going to throw me out, sir?”

The question hung in the air, sharp as broken glass. On the floe, the crew was starving by inches, watching their rations shrink with each passing day. A new mouth—even a boy’s—would be another portion taken from men already grown angry and afraid. Cole would use it. Harlow knew that the moment Liam walked into their midst, Cole would have ammunition: Harlow, sheltering a thief of food, a ghost kept secret while the crew ate wormy biscuit.

And yet.

Harlow saw himself at sixteen, pressing his face to the window of a chandler’s shop in Portsmouth, watching the ships rigged for the sea, knowing there was nothing for him ashore. He saw the hunger that drove men to risk everything for a berth, even one bound for the coldest place on earth.

He saw the boy Mercer had hidden like a card up his sleeve.

“No,” Harlow said. “I’m not going to throw you out.” He lowered his hand. “But you can’t come back with me, either. Not yet.”

Liam’s face crumpled. “Please, sir. I’ll work. I’ll do anything. I’m strong.”

“It’s not about strength.” Harlow knelt again, bringing his face level with the boy’s. “There’s a man out there, Cole. He’s already turned the crew against me. If I bring you back carrying a full belly’s worth of secrets the captain kept, he’ll use it to hang me—and then you’ll be out on the ice with no one to vouch for you. Do you understand?”

Liam nodded slowly, the fear not leaving his eyes.

“Mercer left me a chart,” Harlow said. “It shows a way west, through leads I didn’t know existed. When the ice breaks—if it breaks—I’m going to try for it.” He paused, weighing the next words. “There’s a cache out there. Supplies, from what we found. If I can get the crew moving, if I can get them to safety, I’ll come back for you. I give you my word.”

“Your word,” Liam repeated, and something in his voice said he had heard promises before.

Harlow felt the ship list again, more sharply now. Through the hull, he heard a crack—loud, like a rifle shot—as the ice seized another piece of the Discovery.

“You need to move,” he said. “There’s a lifeboat cutter lashed to the stern rail. It’s half smashed, but you can hide under the tarpaulin. The ice is shifting out there; no one will think to search it. When the crew moves west, they’ll leave it behind.” He looked at the boy hard. “You’ll have to survive out there alone until I can get back to you. Can you do that?”

Liam swallowed and nodded again, more firmly this time. He grabbed his canvas bag and climbed out of the compartment, Salt pressing close to his ankles.

Harlow led him up the companionway, the ship groaning with every step. At the stern rail, he helped the boy into the cutter, wedging him beneath the frozen canvas and a coil of rope. Salt hopped in after him, curling against Liam’s side without invitation.

“Sir?” Liam’s small voice came from beneath the tarpaulin. “The captain told me something else. He said if you found me, I was to tell you something.”

Harlow paused. “Tell me.”

“He said the compass doesn’t lie. It just points where you’re already going.”

The ship lurched violently, and Harlow grabbed the rail to keep his feet. The ice had begun to roar—a sound he knew well, the sound of a pressure ridge grinding through a hull that couldn’t hold.

He had to go. He had to get back across the heaving floes before the Discovery went under for good.

He looked back at the cutter where the boy lay hidden, a red-haired ghost who carried Mercer’s words in his mouth, and understood at last why the captain was so willing to give him the chart.

Mercer hadn’t abandoned him.

Mercer had set him to the test before the crew even knew they were taking it.