Excerpt from Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Were you there when—when it happened?"

"No, I wasn't." He dips his brush into water, then paint, and gently draws the brush across the paper in short, even strokes. "But I did have to paint it. The Admiralty needed it for publication—The Death of Cook." He swirls his brush again in the water and leaves it there. "I had to read all the eyewitness accounts and talk with officers who were there, and—" He exhales. "It was like enduring it again and again."

Monneron knows what it is to lose shipmates. During the American War, when he served on the Sceptre with Lapérouse, their campaign in Hudson Bay and the subsequent crossing back to Europe had cost almost one hundred lives. But he's never lost a commanding officer; it would be akin to losing a parent. He's fortunate in not knowing that loss either. "I'm sorry," he says.

Webber looks up with a smile. "Well," he says, standing up. "It's not quite finished, but I think I can release you. What do you think?"

Monneron's never seen his own likeness before other than in a mirror, and he still remembers the moment—he must have been eleven or twelve—when he realized that since reflections are reversed, he would never see himself truly, not as others saw him. Now he bends over Webber's picture and regards the lines of his body in pencil, then chalk, watercolor washes indicating hair color and fabric. He's standing, not sitting, in the picture, and the background is still blank, which makes him look like he's floating. He does wonder about the proportions—he's always imagined himself a longer-legged man. Is that what Banks meant about Europeans who look like savages? And then there's the face itself, recognizable yet unexpected. It's an anxious face, the face of a lost child. "Is that what I look like?" he says.

Webber laughs. "No matter where I am in the world, everyone says the same thing: 'Is this really me?'"

Fishhooks

Webber insists that Monneron stay for dinner. By the time they've finished the codling, roast beef, potatoes in brown sauce, boiled cabbage, pudding, and a bottle of Graves, they've exchanged personal histories and dropped the "Mr." from each other's surnames. Monneron learns of Webber's early years in Switzerland and tells him in turn about his childhood in Annonay. He's about to regret that it's time he returned to Mrs. Towe's for the night when Webber offers to take him shopping.

"What? Now?"

"I promised to show you where to buy knives."

"Now?"

"It's London. Shops are open late."

Monneron accedes, and Webber takes him to an emporium of bladed and pointed things astonishing for the number and variety of its wares. Webber takes charge, collaring a shop boy on whom he loads samples for Monneron to purchase: small, cheap knives ("for your typical islander," he says, handing them to the boy); longer, sharper knives ("for your minor chieftains"); sturdy axes ("for your village elders"); and lances of different lengths ("be careful who you give these to"). Upstairs they sample ten different sizes of needles, then enter an aisle filled with fishhooks. Monneron and his brothers are avid fishers, so he knows the price of a fishhook; these English hooks are quite inexpensive. Even with shipping costs, it will be cheaper to import these. The shop boy gives way to the owner's son, who follows Monneron around as he orders "five hundred of these, a thousand of these, no, two thousand…"—almost eighteen thousand fishhooks in all, seventeen different kinds, to catch everything from smelt to shark.

It's nearly ten by the time they return to Oxford Street. Over a late supper of white soup with warm bread, Webber prepares a list of shops to visit the next day. Monneron watches him write, admiring the artist's pretty, precise script but also aware of a creeping impulse to snatch the paper away and make him stop. Instead, he tears at a ragged fingernail until it hurts, then asks, he hopes not too abruptly, "Webber, why are you doing all of this?"

Excerpted from Landfalls by Naomi J Williams. Copyright © 2015 by Naomi J Williams. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.