There was a wound in her neck. The blood wasn’t spurting, so the knife had missed everything important, but there was a nasty, jagged cut at the base of her neck, down the left side of her collarbone and over her chest. A thin trail of blood colored the water.
“Ev, do you see that spear over there? We’re going to swim toward it, and you’re going to grab it.”
They swam until the spear came within reach. One lousy piece of wood wasn’t enough to keep them afloat, but Thiyo had grabbed it on impulse when he’d seen it fall from the ship, before he’d fully understood his circumstances. Maybe it would make Ev feel better to hold something buoyant. It would make Thiyo feel better, too, even though he already knew how this ended.
“Okay, good. Can I let go of you? Will you keep kicking?”
He felt her nod before he heard her say, “Yes.”
He let go and swam around so they were facing each other. Ev was breathing steadily, but she still looked shaken. She was holding the spear out to the side to keep it away from them. He put a hand on her other shoulder. Like him, she was still dressed for cold weather, and her waterlogged coat squelched under his fingers. “You okay?”
An absurd question. How could either of them be okay? Ev saw him examining her cut. Seawater was washing over it. That must sting. She grinned. “Yeah. They missed.”
“Oh yes, I’d say we won that fight unequivocally. A real triumph.” They’d tried to slit Thiyo’s throat, too. He’d thought it was his last moment alive, so he’d chosen to die by the ocean instead of by someone else’s knife. He’d flung himself over the railing. There’d barely been time to straighten his legs and enter the water feet-first. Now, looking around at the vast expanse of water and the swiftly departing ship, he didn’t know why he’d bothered. He should have conked his head on the way down to speed along the inevitable. He let go of Ev’s shoulder and she put her hand on his instead, unwilling to be parted from him.
“How do we get back on the ship?”
“The ship full of people trying to murder us?” Thiyo said. Honesty was sailing away from them, cutting through the water at a steady pace. The Dayward wind was with them. Not even the strongest swimmer could keep up. He tried to keep his voice soft and serious for what he had to say next. “Even if we could catch them, which we can’t, they wouldn’t help us get back on board. I’m sorry to say it, but this is it for us. We have a few hours at most. And that’s if nothing but the water gets us.”
Ev blinked seawater out of her lashes. She’d caught on quickly and was paddling her feet in the water to bob along with him, but her hands were still clenched—one around the spear, and one around his shoulder. “So why did you save me?”
The question didn’t make any sense. “What?”
“I would have drowned. You swam over here and stopped me. If we’re going to die anyway, then why?”
She was questioning his decision to save her. Incredible. “You’d rather I have let you drown? Did you want me to watch while it happened?”
Here they were, stranded in the middle of the ocean, likely in the last hours of their lives, and Ev was rolling her eyes at him. Maybe they’d kill each other before the ocean did. “It was a genuine question. I suppose a genuine answer was too much to hope for.”
Thiyo had never been out this far—how could he have?—and the water wasn’t clear and warm like it was at Hoi’s shores. It wasn’t icy, merely cool. But all islanders learned to fear and respect the ocean. It was no accident that they swore by the watery hell. Even warm water could kill. If you were stranded long enough, you’d get colder and colder until your arms and legs stopped working and then you’d drown. Thiyo was still kicking, and he could feel all his toes, but he knew it was coming. He thought about how much was below their feet, that unknowable darkness, and felt faint. Water was every horizon.
“I don’t know, Ev. I didn’t even think about it,” he said. He hadn’t thought about flinging himself into the water to get away from that knife, either. He’d had an instant to choose and he’d chosen. “But in all sincerity, I meant what I said earlier. I couldn’t watch that happen to you.”
Ev nodded as if he’d satisfied her. She would have done the same. She approved. Mah Yee, why did that mean so much to him? And why did he feel such a pressing need to ruin it with the truth? She thought he’d been brave when really he’d been spineless. She was the only thing to look at for miles around and suddenly he could hardly face her. Ridiculous. A coward to the end. “And I suppose… I didn’t want to die alone.”
“I don’t want to die at all.”
Thiyo couldn’t say how he’d wanted her to react, but now that she’d said that, he couldn’t help the little laugh that slipped out. He’d tried to drag them into murky emotional and moral territory and she’d refused. She didn’t forgive him because she didn’t think there was anything to forgive. It was so simple and straightforward and Ev. He smiled at her. Ev was the one thing out here he didn’t have to fear. And they were both going to die. Might as well gaze at someone beautiful in the time he had left. “Ah. Well. Now that you mention it, there is that.”
“I’m so sorry, Thiyo. You knew this would happen. You shouldn’t even be here.”
“Don’t bring that up now,” he said. He couldn’t bear to think about that, and he didn’t want to spend the end of his life blaming the only company he had. It wasn’t Ev’s fault, anyway, except in the oblique sense that he wouldn’t be here if he’d never met her and Alizhan. He’d be dead in a Nalitzvan prison instead.
“At least you’ve probably come up with some devastatingly witty last words.” Her teeth were chattering just a little. It had already started.
“Oh, dozens. But none of them seem to apply here,” he said. “But I will, of course, dutifully accept any final confessions you wish to make.”
She laughed. “You make me wish I had something good to confess.”
“Did you sleep with Alizhan, at least?”
He expected a protest that he was prying, but she just sighed. “We were interrupted.”
“Damn. I was rooting for both of you. But you told her you loved her, right?”
“I—yes. Sort of. I could have said it more. I hope she knows.” Ev closed her eyes and her throat worked. “God. I can’t believe we’re talking about this. It doesn’t feel real.” Ev glanced around, searching the horizon for some sign that this wasn’t the end. “Thiyo.”
She was staring behind him, so he turned. And turned again. There was nothing in the wide swath of his view. Honesty was far enough away now that the water had stopped churning in its wake. The sea was calm. “I don’t see anything.” They were still closer to the Nightward side of the world, and the cool light made it futile to peer into the water. The darkness here differed from the plains in Estva, which gave a sense of the infinite. The impenetrable ocean, as huge as it was, shrank the world. It surrounded them. There was nowhere to go. They were as trapped as if they were in a prison cell.
“No, I saw—”
A glow gliding under the surface. A massive, ghostly shape drifted toward them.
“We’re going to die a lot sooner than predicted,” Thiyo said. The same kind of monster that had killed his father would end him, too. At least his mother wasn’t waiting on the beach for his return. It was almost funny—he’d spent his whole life digging his heels in and refusing to become a hunter, crushing his parents’ dreams. Yet here he was, about to get eaten by a medusa.
“Thiyo. It floats.”
“I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. It’s also a gigantic carnivorous monster surrounded by deadly tentacles.”
“We have a spear.”
“You just said those words in absolutely the wrong tone. We have a spear. A stick with a pointy end. That thing is a giant medusa. It’s coming toward us to murder us, dissolve our bodies, and absorb them. It will be extremely painful. Come to think of it, perhaps we should go ahead and drown ourselves.”
“Arav killed one with
a spear,” Ev said. “You know that. It was in the journal.”
“And he was almost the sole survivor!” Medusas could kill a team of trained hunters protected with sharkskin and armed with specially crafted harpoons, the barbed tips designed to pierce the bell and impale the transparent nerve cluster at the center. Thiyo should know. It was a miracle that Arav had survived his encounter, ignorant and ill-equipped as he’d been.
“We’re definitely going to die if we don’t,” Ev said. “In Arav’s account, he said they could sense movement.”
“Yes, of course they can sense movement. Everyone knows that.” It was one of the first things Thiyo had ever learned. All the island cultures held them in such importance because medusas predicted waves. People who were born with the ability to sense and track medusas in the water were the heroes of the islands. At every test, that was what they’d told him before they’d dunked him in the water.
“What—never mind. It can’t sense anything else, right? No sight or sound?”
“Just currents. Movements. Maybe the blood from your cut. I don’t know, I never wanted to learn anything about these things because I never wanted to meet one!” Thiyo’s voice rose in pitch. He’d failed the test so many times, and every time, secret relief had bloomed. He didn’t want to hunt monsters. He wanted to stay on land and read. Could he die from how fast his heart was beating?
“Calm down. A minute ago, we had both just about accepted death. We’re definitely going to die if we do nothing. So why not try doing something, instead?” And then Ev described a very simple, very stupid plan to him, and Thiyo gaped at her.
“The worst, most insane part of this plan is how much of its success rests on me.”
“You’re a stronger swimmer than me.”
“You know I had almost accepted my useless, accidental, anonymous death? And now I have to die in a foolish burst of glory like one of your book heroes, except no one will ever know about it. What a waste.”
“So live,” she said and handed him the spear. She met his eyes. “And his name is Vesper, and you love The Sunrise Chronicles, and the only reason you’re not confessing right now is that you know we’re not about to die—because this is going to work.”
Her voice was brimming with such confidence that he almost believed her.
As Thiyo swam away from Ev, she began to kick and flail her arms, moving as much as possible. His limbs felt heavy and stiff with cold, but he forced himself to swim. He had to slip through the water as stealthily and carefully as possible. When the seas were calm, medusas sensed prey that moved. Ev had offered herself up as bait.
The medusa’s tentacles flowed behind it. It pulsed through the water, the shape of its bell inflating with each thrust. Thiyo had to come in from the side to avoid the venomous tentacles. He remembered his first sight of one of these, his father holding his hand while the rest of the crew pulled the carcass they’d netted ashore. It can sting even after it’s dead, see? That’s why they wear those suits with the gloves. And you see where the harpoon went in? They only die if you lance the nerve cluster.
Thiyo had been small enough then that his parents had still assumed he’d work with his father when he got older. Instead, Thiyo had grown up to read Iriyat’s journal, and now he couldn’t stop thinking of the descriptions of Arav’s fellow sailors being dismembered by the venom. One good strike, his father had said. All he had to do was hit those nerves. If only the damn thing had shown up sooner, he’d be able to control his arms a little better. He aimed his spear.
Ev had given him some advice, too: Don’t strike until you have the perfect shot. But do try to kill it before it kills me. She was still splashing around. Thiyo had no idea where she’d found the energy. Swimming this short distance had almost made him give up on everything.
Mah Yee, the medusa was so close. It loomed in front of him, huge and silent. Was he one spear-length away?
Ev screamed.
Shit. Not all of the thing’s tentacles were flowing straight behind it. Some of them fanned out around it. Ev had been stung through her clothes. Thiyo gripped the spear, lifting it out of the water. It felt like it was made of stone. One good strike. Maybe the last thing he’d ever do.
He brought his arm down and rammed the point of the spear into the medusa’s gelatinous body. Its flesh split, spurting transparent green fluid into the water. The bell quivered from the force of the strike. But the point of his spear was still a handspan from the nerve cluster, and now he’d lost his stealth advantage. The wounded monster would move toward him next. He had to act.
Watery fucking hell. Thiyo ripped the spear back out, kicked forward, and slammed it back into the wound. He thrust so deep that the monster’s wobbly body enveloped his hand. Its slimy fluid coursed over his skin and flowed into the ocean. The point of his spear had impaled the nerve cluster. It was dead.
“Ev! Ev, I killed it!” Thiyo had never felt anything like this in his life. Triumph. Relief. Disgust. And still a healthy amount of fear. Those tentacles were venomous, even attached to a corpse. He let go of the spear and pulled his hand out of the tunnel he’d left in the thing’s corpse, trying not to think too hard, but still shuddering with revulsion.
Ev said something so faint he couldn’t hear her.
“Can you swim to it?” Her eyes were half-closed. Her head was bobbing just above the surface of the water. Was one sting enough to kill a person? Fuck. Thiyo left the spear embedded in the monster and kicked his way over to Ev. “Ev. Ev. Say something, depths fucking dr—” Thiyo stopped himself. He’d never felt the true terror of his people’s traditional curse until now. Depths fucking drown you was a singularly inauspicious thing to say to someone stranded in the middle of an incomprehensible amount of water.
She was awake enough to look at him.
“You’re alive. You’re alive. Mah Yee’s scaly ass, I will fucking drag you onto that thing and you will not die. I killed a monster for you and we’re going to live, you understand?” Something shocked the bottom of his foot and he shrieked. The fucking venom had eaten through the sole of his shoe. The pain was searing. But it didn’t knock him unconscious—not yet. Ev must have been stung more than the one time she’d screamed. “Fuck, you’re tough. Now come on. Let’s swim together. You can do this.”
He held her from behind, hooking his arms under hers, just as he’d done when she’d been drowning. Kicking through the water closer to the medusa was like swimming through glass shards. Every stroke blazed with agony. But it was a short distance, and he’d killed a monster, and Ev wasn’t going to die for that. He grabbed hold of the spear, yanked himself up onto the bell, and then dragged Ev up behind him. He was pulling her through its tentacles. She’d stopped reacting.
Thiyo flopped onto his belly, not letting go of Ev. They were both partly out of the water. Their clothes were shredded. His body was somehow both freezing and on fire with pain. He was panting. Every beat of his heart felt like lifting a huge weight. “I told you,” he said to Ev, breathless. Was she listening? Was she conscious? “I said I didn’t want to die alone, but I don’t want to die at all. So don’t you fucking die.”
There, floating on a medusa’s corpse with its tentacles radiating out into an ocean as huge and cold as the sky, Thiyo closed his eyes and kept breathing.
Read on for an excerpt…
Shadebloom, book three of The Gardener’s Hand and the sequel to Nightvine, will come out in May 2018.
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Shadebloom
Iriyat plucked a thornfruit from the bowl and pinched the brown rind between two manicured nails until it popped and split. She lifted the fruit, its newly revealed pulp as red as her lips, and ate it in one bite. She dropped the rind into an empty bowl on the table between them, then gestured at the overflowing bowl next to it. “Don’t you want some? You used to love these.”
Alizhan stared at her white hand hovering over the little mo
und of fruit. When Sardas had commandeered Honesty and sailed back to Laalvur under Iriyat’s orders, she’d envisioned herself in a cell in the basement of Varenx House. Instead, she’d been directed back to her childhood bedroom to sleep and then invited to a meal on the terrace. Iriyat had even lit a fire in the terrace’s fire pit—a decorative touch, since Laalvur was never cold. The comforts were a small difference. Cell or no cell, Alizhan was a prisoner.
And what did it matter? She’d had some foolish, grand plan to return home, to accuse Iriyat of her crimes and force her to stand trial. To bring the journal to light. To see justice for the people she’d already hurt and to protect the ones she might hurt in the future. To save the city. To change the world.
But what was the point of the world? Ev and Thiyo were dead.
“I’m not hungry,” Alizhan said. They’d force-fed her on the ship. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed between that terrible shift when she’d killed Merat and their arrival in Laalvur. Seven or eight triads, probably, since she’d woken up with a smear of blood between her thighs this shift. Enough time to die of starvation, if only someone would let her.
“Are you sure?” Iriyat said, the picture of concern. “You look thin. Sardas told me you weren’t eating. You’ve always been skinny, but I don’t want you to waste away. And you love thornfruit!”
“I’m not hungry,” Alizhan repeated.
“I want to apologize,” Iriyat said. “I know you’ve had a difficult time. And I’m to blame for some of it.” Iriyat pulled two books out of her lap. One was a Nalitzvan copy of The Sunrise Chronicles into which Thiyo had sewn his own translation of Iriyat’s journal. The other was volume eleven of A Natural History of the World—Iriyat’s original, encoded journal. Sardas had taken both from Alizhan when he’d put her under guard. Those two texts represented Alizhan’s best chance at persuading the rest of the world that Iriyat was a criminal, so she ought to feel panic, seeing them in Iriyat’s hands. Instead, she felt hollow.
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