by Anna Burke
I had nothing to say in response, and watched her leave with a dry mouth and a racing heart.
• • •
I chafed the rest of the afternoon. The chart room was a quiet, lonely place, made all the more so by the knowledge of Crow’s Eye sitting far above me, the ship’s permanent lookout. I longed to be on the navigation bridge, doing more than shuffling paper.
I also had to figure out how to escape Orca after dinner. I could always pretend to go to the head, or try to lose her on the way out of the dining hall, but there was a small part of me that was more than a little afraid of angering the first mate further. I still wanted to knock her into Davy Jones’s locker, but my body ached as the day lengthened and I was hesitant to give her any more reason to beat me than she already had.
Dinner was its usual sorry self, and I ate too quickly, wishing there was more. Miranda met my eye as she sliced into her fish. It was a very shark-like thing to do, I reflected.
“When do we hit Red Flag territory?” asked one of Miranda’s officers.
“Tonight. Have a watch ready. Orca, I need you to make sure all shifts are covered.”
I suppressed a shudder. If my calculations were correct, we were well out of the way of Archipelago fleet patrols, but that did not make the prospect of a run-in with a pirate any less horrifying, especially now that I knew they sailed under Ching Shih and her Red Flag fleet.
“Sorry, fleeter. Looks like we’ll have to put off our lesson for tonight,” Orca said.
I looked away from her, clutching my anger to prevent the small seed of relief from sprouting.
“I’d be happy to take her for you,” Annie said from behind me. “If that’s all right with you, Captain.”
Miranda’s smile brought a wicked shaft of sunlight into the room.
“Give her all you’ve got, skipper.”
Annie nodded and gestured at me to follow her. I wanted to stay at the table to try and glean some more information, but Miranda dismissed me with a wave. I remembered the feel of her hand on my cheek and met her eyes for a moment too long. Something must have shown in my face, because Miranda’s look changed from distraction to speculation. I hurried to clear my tray.
Annie’s face was wary as she led me down the mostly empty corridors to the training yard. I followed her wiry shoulders, sticking close to her heels and trying not to dwell on Orca’s threats about the rest of the crew.
The yard was deserted, save for a few stalwart souls, and the low ceiling seemed loftier in the emptiness.
“Now. I’m going to show you everything you did wrong with Orca, beginning with your temper,” she said, stretching her muscles.
“I don’t have a temper.”
“Oh yes you do.” Annie smiled grimly at me. “You just don’t know it yet. How many times have you bit back your tongue, girl? It must be bloody scarred by now.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it.
“Ship life isn’t easy, especially when half the crew hates you and the other half is scared of you. Tell me, have you ever had any gut feelings about anything else, or is it just direction?”
“Just direction.”
Annie assumed a sparring stance.
“We’ll go through simple blocks and strikes, real slow. You’ve got too many bruises for anything else today.”
I tried not to show my relief.
“I bet your friends on the fleet won’t admit they’re scared of you, Compass Rose, so I’ll let you in on the secret. When you know something other people don’t, they expect you to know other things, too. Your eyes don’t help much either.”
She demonstrated a few strike and block combos, and I relaxed into the motions.
“Fighting isn’t easy. Your mind will try and trip you up, so your body needs to know what your brain will forget. Repetition. Now. Let me know once you feel comfortable and I’ll show you what I mean.”
I nodded, getting the hang of it.
“You good, then? All right. Now I’m going to tell you a little bit about yourself, and you’re going to concentrate on your rhythm. Let’s start with this temper of yours. You keep it in check, and I’d bet you’re one to back down instead of fighting, usually. Maybe that’s how it works on the Archipelago. Here, though, you’re going to need that anger. You need to learn how to use it, and how to control it when you do.”
I struggled to focus on Annie’s words as well as the drill. She had increased the speed and I found myself sweating.
“Controlled anger is energy you can draw on. Uncontrolled anger is a drain, and it leads you to make poor choices, like letting a little fleet navigator get under your skin. Orca didn’t do herself any favors by beating the shit out of you. She’s earned this crew’s respect, but we don’t favor uneven odds unless we’re the underdogs. Keep your core tight.”
I tightened my core and grunted with pain as my bruised ribs protested.
“You’re not a fighter.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. My feelings at the moment were anything but peaceful.
“You don’t need to have it in you, though, to hold your own. If you can accept that, you’ll do fine. Bend your knees a little more. There. Very good. Now switch. Left hand strike, right hand block. You’ll never beat Orca in a fight on skill alone. She’s got natural talent and experience, so I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like very much. Don’t try to beat her. If you can hold your own against her, you’ll earn her respect and the respect of the rest of the crew. That temper of yours will try to get in the way, but don’t let it. Show them you’re not some soft rice-fed Archipelagean and they’ll leave you alone. That’s the only victory you can hope for.”
“Okay,” I said, renewing my vow to break Orca’s face wide open. Annie might mean well, but I couldn’t let Orca walk around with that smug smile, not if I wanted to stay on this ship. If I wanted to stay on this ship. A burst of homesickness made me falter, and Annie’s strike connected with my shoulder.
“Don’t let your mind wander.”
“Were you born on this ship?” I asked, trying to regain my rhythm.
“I followed Miranda. I was born on a raiding ship in the South Atlantic.”
I faltered again.
“You’re a pirate?”
“Born and bred.”
“Then why are you helping me?”
“I’m not helping you, girl. I’m helping my captain. If she wants to keep you alive, then you got a whole lot of work to do.”
“Oh.” I allowed myself a small measure of self-pity. I should have known better than to assume someone liked me for my own sake.
“And I like you well enough, for a fleet brat.” She smiled and dropped her arms. “That’s enough for now. You’ll get the hang of it, although I’ve lost a little respect for fleet discipline.”
I thought of Harper and the other sailors who had proved their worth in and out of the ring.
“There’s nothing wrong with fleet discipline. I just never took it seriously, I guess. I never thought I’d actually need hand-to-hand combat skills. Plus, I wasn’t very good at it.”
“Didn’t like that, did you?” Annie guessed a little too shrewdly.
My cheeks burned as I realized Annie might be right.
I was sweating and sore, but the movement seemed to have loosened my stiff muscles. I glanced around the training yard, wondering what I was supposed to do next. I didn’t have Orca looming over my shoulder, and the thought of going back to the horrible little room we shared was enough to set my teeth on edge.
“Annie,” I asked with a little hesitation. “What does the rest of the crew do after dinner?”
“Depends. Some are on watch. Some stay in their quarters. Most drink, and those that have partners fuck, I suppose.”
“What do you do?”
“Fish,” Annie said with the first real smile I’d seen. “Care to join me?” I nodded, more curious than anything else.
I followed Annie down to the shipyard and
through a side door into a small room with a hatch in the floor. Diving equipment hung on the walls. It was late summer, and I judged that the sun would just be setting outside.
“Grab an O2 pack,” Annie said. “And put a suit on while you’re at it.”
We stripped out of our clothes and into the wet suits. I grimaced as I wrestled my way into the neoprene, impressed that Miranda’s ship had such high-quality gear. Then I saw the scuff marks where the logo had been scraped away, and paused.
“Where did these suits come from?”
“Hmm? Oh. I’m sure they were bought fairly. And if not, well, if you can’t hold on to it, maybe you don’t deserve to keep it.”
Her low voice sounded so reasonable that the thieves’ logic almost made sense.
“What are we fishing for? I didn’t think there was anything left.”
“Grab a spear and find out.”
I finished suiting up, grabbed flippers, goggles, and an O2 tank and waited by the hatch. It sprung open with a slight pop as Annie crouched to turn it.
Dark water splashed against the sides of the opening.
“Follow me, Compass Rose.”
Annie slid into the hole, pausing long enough to place the O2 mask before vanishing with her spear. I stared at the water and clutched my spear carefully, not wanting to stab myself or Annie, whom I could no longer see in the black water. I snapped the headlamp into place and dove.
Annie waited for me at the bottom of the dive shoot with a harness and line. Hers was already snapped into place, and I immediately understood the necessity. The ship was topside and making good time. It would be very easy to get left behind.
The shadow of the ship hung heavily above us, and the water pressure pressed against my eardrums. Sunlight beckoned past the murk. Annie gave me a questioning thumbs up, then swam towards the stern with an expert flip of her flippers. I followed, more glad than I would have thought possible to be out of the dank holds of the Man o’ War.
The last of the daylight streaked through the surface in striated columns, and I waved my hand through the light experimentally. I hadn’t spent that much time in the underwater observatories on the North Star. They reminded me too much of home. Station sleeping quarters on Cassiopeia always bordered the ocean, with thick, clear walls separating the chambers from the sea. The proximity of the water maintained a cooler sleeping temperature. I used to love waking in the morning and watching the light break through the waves like a thousand reaching fingers.
Something disturbed the water at the stern, and Annie paused to beckon me closer. It took me a moment to recognize the effluence that constantly trickled out as sewage.
That, I registered, was why their hydroponics were unsuccessful. The nitrogen and other nutrients in the waste bled out into the ocean instead of recycling back into the system. Either their hydrofarmer was an idiot, or there was a serious problem with their waste management system.
Something bumped my leg, and I instinctively thrust my spear at the shape as it darted past.
I missed.
I narrowed my eyes. There were a lot more fish here than I had expected. Something had survived the collapse of the fisheries after all. Then again, we were closer to the coast than I was used to, and I didn’t spend much time swimming beneath boats.
Annie was poised between the border of sunlight and shadow, which also coincided with the end of our lines. I felt the slack take up and the pull of the ship nudge the harness. It was a comforting weight.
There were jellyfish, too, but these were free floating instead of swarming, and I avoided their tentacles with ease. Most of the fish were small. Annie watched them as she treaded water but didn’t appear overeager to strike. I wondered if she ever ate the fish she caught. My mother had drilled the risks of wildcaught fish into me from a young age. The neurotoxins in the algae blooms infected most of the fish that floated in the top zone of the ocean. Only drifters fished, which helped explain the high mortality rate among their tiny vessels.
Annie’s anxious hand signal caught my attention. I looked over my shoulder in time to see a large, dark shape moving in the shadows, and swam toward her as quickly as I could. Annie raised her spear in front of her.
It was a small shark, scarred and swimming with a slightly erratic pattern that reminded me of a staggering drunk. It looked more sick than deadly, and it swam past us without interest into a small school of silver fish. They scattered, and the shark swam on. The daylight faded as the O2 in my tank slowly dwindled, and I was glad of the headlamp.
In the growing dark, I could see shapes rising from the deeps. Annie hefted her spear and launched it.
There was a slight yank on my line, and then a feeling of weightlessness. I looked up in time to see Annie retrieve her spear as I drifted past her, and then panic set in as the reality of my situation burst around the corners of my vision in a spray of stars.
The line that connected me like an umbilical cord to the ship had been severed. I kicked out, making for the belly of the ship in the hopes that I might find something to grab on to. The wake fought me as I swam, spitting my progress back in my face. I was pulling up too much O2 with my exertions, but I didn’t care. If I slipped away, I would never be found.
My legs were burning, and my chest was on fire with pain from my lungs and my bruised ribs by the time I made it to the shadow of the boat, which by this point was barely distinguishable from the greater darkness. I couldn’t see Annie and, at any rate, her harness didn’t reach this far out. My fingers scraped along the smooth hull for purchase, finding none.
The protuberant eye beside me saved my life. The shock of seeing the living, breathing relative of Kraken’s namesake swimming alongside me sent me scrabbling sideways, and my hand latched onto the rung of a service ladder with an instinctive spasm that almost jerked my arm from its socket as the momentum of the ship caught up with me.
Now that I was still, I could see Annie far away, waving at me frantically. I didn’t dare remove a hand to wave back. Annie would go for help. In the meantime, the O2 in my tank was almost gone, and I needed to get to fresh air. Assuming, of course, that the air was actually fresh, and not laced with hydrogen sulfide.
The service ladder curved around the stern, and I stared up through my partially fogged mask at the frothing wake. Last I had checked, the air was clean, and I was lucky the ship was close enough to the surface for me to reach. Tightening my grip on the ladder, I took what I hoped wasn’t the last breath of air in my tank and forced my way through the surface of the water.
The force of the ship’s passage almost ripped me from the rung. I clung on, the strain threatening to break my fingers, and hauled myself back in. I had survived Fleet Preparatory. I could survive this.
Far above me, up a ladder slick with spray and half-rotted in places, was a service door. Ripping the O2 mask off my face, I wrapped one arm around the ladder and used the other to haul in the remains of my line. I tied it off on the rung, hoping it would be enough to get me to the door. I didn’t like the look of the ladder.
Real stars pricked against the sky, crisp and clear between the scudding clouds. The roar of the wake rushed beneath me as I grabbed for another rung, then another, occasionally skipping to the one above it if it looked particularly weak. My arms, already tired from their swim, trembled uncontrollably, and my feet fumbled for purchase. I stopped to free them from their flippers and climbed on.
There was no landing outside the service door. I hung on the last rung, limply, using my chin as a third arm in case the other two gave out. A hot tear slipped down my cheek. The door had no handle. I reached up with one hand and knocked. The sound echoed dully in the airlock beyond, and I knew with a grim certainty that it would go unanswered.
North, east, south, west. The stars burned my eyes.
I hung for a long time. The sound of the surf faded, blending with the roar of my heartbeat, and the stars blazed with unbearable brightness. I was alone beneath them. As far as the eye could
see, I was the only pair of eyes looking upward.
Me and Crow’s Eye.
My heart gave a little lurch, offering a trickle of adrenaline. Crow’s Eye, who never left the crow’s nest, beautiful, grumpy, cryptic Crow’s Eye, who just might see me out here if I could get his attention.
My headlamp was gone, but the diving suit came with an emergency flashlight. I pried it out of the belt and prayed with all my heart to whatever might be listening that it was charged.
Blue light bathed my face like a kiss. My breath caught in a sob of relief, and I shone the light down the ladder toward the black water. Crow’s Eye would not be able to see my signal from the back of the ship. I would have to trust that my line would hold a second time, and swim out far enough into the ship’s wake to enter his line of vision, regardless of how weak my arms already felt and the ache in my bruised ribs. Securing the flashlight in my teeth, I started my descent.
I was halfway down when the rung snapped beneath my foot. I had the sense to snatch the flashlight from my teeth as I fell, and my heart pounded for three terrified beats before I hit the surface.
The wake washed over me in a dark tumult and I struggled to resurface, gasping. The line took up slack quickly, but not before the ship had dwindled significantly against the stars. I kicked out, working my way over the wake and into a direct line of sight to the crow’s nest. I could just make out the thin spire against the sky.
Treading water forcefully against the pull of the current and mourning the loss of my flippers, I waved one hand over the light in the SOS sequence, pausing now and then to give my legs a break. I wasn’t sure what to expect in response, or even if I would get a response. Water rushed past my ears, and I slowed my kicks, taking deep breaths and holding them to stay afloat while my legs rested.
Someone or something had cut my line. I remembered Annie, launching her spear at a squid seconds before I was cut loose. It could have been a coincidence. In the aftermath of adrenaline, my body told me otherwise. There was an ache deep in my stomach that I had felt before.
“You don’t belong here,” whispered the stars.