by Anna Burke
Pain is as limitless as the sky, I reflected, soaring to new and unbearable heights. Orca’s grip on my shoulder was the only thing that kept me on my feet.
Chapter Nine
“Block. Strike. Block. Jesus, why am I even trying?”
Orca blocked my strike and turned away from me, clutching her hair in frustration. Air hissed out from between my teeth and I leaned toward the ground, bracing myself on my knees and wondering if I could manage to break my neck if I fell at the right angle. The mat was certainly hard enough.
I was tired, I was hungry, and I was sick of listening to Orca list my many faults in a voice that could have cut through steel.
The training yard was predictably full, mostly with sailors eager to watch Orca repeatedly annihilate my attempts to mea-sure up to whatever diabolical standards she expected me to meet. My popularity was on the rise since my ill-fated adventure, and occasionally a voice from the crowd would offer a word of encouragement.
Right now, they were silent. I watched a bead of sweat drip off my nose and splatter on the mat, counting the seconds before she hauled me back up by the collar of my shirt.
The bruises she’d given me that first day had long since been replaced by new ones. I woke up sore and went to bed aching, the hours in-between passing in a blur of maps and coordinates as I charted out possible points of entry into the Gulf.
The time for planning was almost at an end; we were close now, and the strain of waiting for Miranda’s signal grated. Every passing day took me farther and farther from the waters I knew, and each evening Orca lectured me about the dangers of lassitude and weakness, two qualities that I apparently possessed in abundance, while my mind reeled from hunger and confusion and the weal on my stomach healed.
The memory of Miranda’s cruelty wiped away the last of my reserves of strength.
It was too much, coming hard on the wake of today’s events. My head lolled as Orca jerked me upright, disgust written all over her face.
“You’re not done.”
I met her eyes, waiting for another insult. She couldn’t hurt me any more today.
Annie’s trial had been short, the evidence overwhelming. This morning, Miranda had sent her to see Davy Jones for her final judgment. I blocked the sound of that distant splash. Annie had chosen the plank, despite Miranda’s offer of a more civilized ending, and the defiance in her eyes had carried a message that I hadn’t understood.
Her death did not lessen the pain of betrayal; if anything, it had made it worse.
Orca brought her practice knife up with exaggerated slowness. I blocked it clumsily. There was a stir by the door that I ignored, keeping a wary eye on the plastic knife. Orca grew less predictable the more frustrated she became with my efforts, and I wasn’t so sunk in despair that I was willing to suffer a blade to the ribs if I could avoid it.
I felt the footstep on the mat behind me before I saw Orca’s eyes widen in surprise. I whipped around, my right arm deflecting the knife thrust and bringing me into my attacker’s guard. She blocked my punch and I barely had time to twist out of the way of the knife as it came back toward me. The mouth, twisted in amusement, was achingly familiar.
Miranda.
She didn’t waste time taking advantage of my hesitation. My twist had brought me up hard against her body, and her elbow whipped around my throat, pulling me closer still as I struggled to fend off her knife. Stars burst in the corners of my vision, accompanied by a swarming haze of gray.
“The legs,” she whispered encouragingly into my ear. “Go for the legs.”
I threw my weight to the right and kicked at the back of her knee with my own knee, a move Orca had illustrated for me with concussive force several days ago. Miranda stumbled, and I pulled free long enough to snatch a breath of air before I was thrown to the ground.
I froze, feeling the weight of her body on top of mine and the prick of a knife at my throat. Strong thighs gripped my hips, doing more to my heart rate than terror allowed, and I closed my eyes as the knife point pressed its advantage.
“You’re making progress,” Miranda said, leaning over me.
I opened my eyes to see her face a foot away, that damned crooked smile still on her lips.
“Nice work, Orca.”
She sat back, resting her full weight on me as she wiped a bead of blood off of the tip of her knife. The heat from her body burned against me with destructive urgency, drying my mouth, and the silence in the training hall was deafening. I lay as still as I could, not daring to look away from the captain.
Orca, for once, had nothing to say. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, standing with her arms crossed over her chest and an expression on her face I couldn’t identify. Miranda glanced around at the assembled crew.
“If she’d had a knife on her, I might be dead, wouldn’t I, Orca?”
Orca, who was clearly torn between the thrill of insulting me and the thrill of Miranda’s praise at her teaching, nodded in agreement.
“She’s making some progress,” Orca said.
“Have you showed her how to use a knife?”
I didn’t give Orca time to answer. I hadn’t entirely bombed my combat courses in Fleet Prep, and Miranda had left my hands free when she pinned me.
I slammed the side of my palm into the wrist that held the knife. It sprang from her fingers and I caught it, resting the blade against her inner thigh. I could almost feel the pulse of her femoral artery through the knife handle. The silence in the room deepened further.
“You tell me, Captain,” I said.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the rise of the whip, and my hand trembled.
Miranda flinched.
I stared at where the knife had nicked through the cloth to the skin beneath. Blood welled from the tiny cut.
And now I’ve marked you, Captain.
“Kraken.” Miranda held out her hand, her eyes locked on mine, and caught a heavy object inches from my face.
I blinked up at the sharp tip of a second knife. Miranda tossed it in the air and caught it by the blade. The hilt faced me, and there, embossed in the butt of the handle, I saw the compass rose.
“It’s yours,” Miranda said in a voice so low only Orca could have heard it.
I let the other knife fall to the mat, and propped myself up on one elbow to accept the offered blade. The motion sent her hips sliding over mine. My body reacted before I could reign in its wayward impulses, pressing against her.
Orca cleared her throat pointedly, and I felt a flush creep up my neck. I avoided looking at Miranda as she stood, rising off my body in a fluid motion that displayed the strength of her thighs and the weakness of my resolve. Again, I saw the flash of the whip, and willed my body to cooperate with my mind.
I had spent the better part of the last week convincing myself that Miranda was dangerous, unpredictable, and a terrible human being. I needed to rid myself of the attraction I felt for her before it got me killed.
I rose, determined to keep a level head. Her back was toward me, and all I could see of her face was what was reflected in Orca’s angry eyes. That was enough to send another shiver down my spine.
“Orca, Rose, with me,” Miranda ordered.
I tucked the knife into the waist of my pants. The hilt was carved out of a smooth ivory-colored material that did not feel like plastic. I ran a thumb along it as I trailed after Miranda. Ivory. It wasn’t just ivory-colored, it was ivory. I stumbled at the realization, which Orca took as an invitation to shove me roughly in the kidney.
“Watch where you’re going,” she hissed at me.
I glanced back at her and almost stumbled again at the depth of hatred in her eyes.
Hatred, I wondered as I turned back around, or jealousy?
Miranda led the way out of the dark training yard, ignoring the buzz of conversation that followed our departure. Her public display had been planned, I gathered, judging by the thoughtful expressions on the faces of the sailors we passed, but I didn’t unde
rstand the purpose of it.
I kept my thumb on the hilt, tracing the cardinal points. North. Back to Polaris and North Star. Back to order and routine and three square meals a day, provided by a captain whose cruelest act didn’t even begin to measure up to what Miranda had done to Annie. Annie, who I had foolishly trusted without question. I would have killed even to hear Maddox mock me from across the hall.
“All right, mates, it’s business time.”
Miranda’s words interrupted my thoughts. We were back in the round room with the red rugs, and the table at the center was covered with familiar charts. Orca’s frown melted and Kraken made a grumbling sound deep in his chest that I interpreted as a laugh. The muscles in my stomach tightened. I did not share their enthusiasm. I reached across the table and pulled the charts toward me, looking over the maps I’d committed to memory and biting my lip hard enough to break the skin.
There were two ways into the Gulf of Mexico: the Straits of Florida and the Caribbean Sea, past the Yucatan peninsula. Both passages were narrow by ocean standards, and easy to control. The straits were our best bet, as the low-lying islands offered protection from sonar in a pinch, compared to the relative openness of the Caribbean Sea. It was also more direct, and up until a few months ago, more heavily patrolled by Archipelago fleet ships.
My plan was simple. We would weave through the islands, avoiding fleet patrols by sticking to the more dangerous shallows, weather dependent. Avoiding the pirates was going to be more difficult, which was where things got tricky.
“Explain our strategy,” Miranda ordered.
I avoided her eyes and laid out the first part of my plan to Kraken and Orca.
“The shallows?” Orca asked, and I could have sworn there was a note of fear in her voice.
“Fleet ships are designed for deep water. Their sonar will weaken the closer we get to the coasts, which decreases our odds of detection. If the pirates have control over these waters, they’ll be looking for fleet ships, not pirate or mercenary vessels, and if a patrol does pick us up it will just look like we’re avoiding the fleet, not them,” I said.
“And once we’re through the straits? How are we going to hide in the Gulf?” Orca tapped the open water on the map.
“The same way the pirates are hiding from the Archipelago,” I said. Miranda’s breath caught in her throat, and I could feel the sharpness of her gaze.
I had worked it out a few days ago, when my mind had wandered back to Walker’s anomaly, and the pirate ship sending out sonar pings without appearing on our sonar. It was the name of Miranda’s ship that had triggered the epiphany, and I laid out the second part of my plan with her eyes glued to my face. I hadn’t had time to run it by her, and now it was too late. She would find out at the same time as Kraken and Orca, for better or for worse.
“We find a low-level swarm of siphonophores,” I said, “and stay beneath it.”
“Siphonophores?” Orca asked.
“They are like jellyfish,” I explained. “Some float on the surface, like—”
“Portuguese man o’ war.”
Miranda bit off the words, venom tipping her tongue. The look she gave me burned, and then vanished, replaced by her usual, cool blue gaze.
Kraken and Orca exchanged glances.
“Yes,” I said, wondering what I was missing. “Man o’ war stay on the surface, but there are others that live deeper, perfect for hiding submarines. They’re not actually jellyfish, more like a colony of—”
“You didn’t mention this.” Miranda cut me off again.
“I’m your navigator,” I said. “You asked for a course. This is the only way in.”
“Man o’ War can’t stay subbed that deeply for long periods of time.”
“She won’t have to.” I took a deep breath. “Man o’ War only needs to hide long enough to get past both patrols. Once she’s in, she’ll look for someone to trade with. Information for materials.”
Miranda nodded slowly, and I swallowed my guilt. I would trade information for safe passage, if it would help the Archipelago in the end. Comita would understand.
“This is why you wanted a trawler,” she said.
“Yes. While Man o’ War is picking up contracts, a trawler, hidden by swarms, will take the measure of their forces. If we’re careful, we should be able to pass undetected and, if not, drifters trawl the Gulf all the time. Nobody will think twice about it, as long as we don’t make too many appearances. Between two ships, we should be able to find out what we need to know.”
Miranda examined the charts.
“Well done, Compass Rose. Orca, brief the crew. Kraken, have the trawler prepped and ready. Rose, with me. We’ll hit the outer islands in a few hours.”
“You want to navigate the islands at night?” Fear rose in me like a tide. Miranda’s smile was far from reassuring.
“With the Polarian Fleet’s best navigator at the helm, I’m sure we’ll manage.”
• • •
In a way, it didn’t matter if it was daylight or pitch black; the majority of the islands that made up what was once known as the Bahamas were under water. You couldn’t see them any more than you could see the dangers they posed, just the occasional swirl or eddy hinting at sharp shallows and submerged rocks, low hills that had sunk to join the rest of the mountains they had once been, broken finger joints dug into the ocean floor in a tectonic grasping and resettling.
I stared at the dark waters outside the helm and wiped my forehead with my sleeve, feeling the first prick of nervous sweat break my skin. North, south, east, west. Peril lay in every direction.
This was not the first time I’d been on Miranda’s bridge, but it was the first time I’d been there as acting navigator. It was much smaller than the North Star’s command center, housing the ship’s wheel, the control panel, and the window that looked out over water or sky, depending on how deeply we were subbed. Right now, we were fully topside, keeping our draft as shallow as possible for a ship this size. Miranda dismissed the other shift, barking out a few terse orders.
“Bring Finnegan,” was one of them.
I tore my gaze away from the water, glancing at the stars before focusing on the faint sonar readings on the screen. Miranda leaned over my shoulder, her eyes intent on the landscape painted for us by the sound waves while her hand kept a firm grip on the wheel.
I closed my eyes and reached out to the waters, feeling for treacherous currents, rip tides, and the myriad other dangers that awaited vessels in the islands, all the while keeping fleet patrol pattern coordinates firmly in my mind’s eye.
“Why are her eyes closed, Captain?” Finn asked as he entered the bridge.
“Hard to port,” I said, ignoring him. Miranda cranked the wheel, avoiding a rough patch of water that would have sent us hard up against a shoal.
“I need you on surveillance, Finn,” Miranda said. “You pick up anything— sonar, radio waves— you let me know.”
“Aye aye, Capitan,” he said, affecting an accent as he settled himself into a pair of headphones.
“Straight ahead.” I reached out and grabbed Miranda’s arm. “Port again.” The boat moved, painfully slowly.
“How the hell is she doing that?”
Finn was not the first person to ask that question, nor would he be the last, unless he distracted me and killed us all. I ignored him. I didn’t have an answer for him, any more than I had for anyone else. I could feel the ocean in my veins, shifting around me even through the walls of the ship. Through it all spun the earth’s magnetic field, pulling at the filaments in my blood and pointing me always toward true north. As the currents and my compass aligned and misaligned, the shape of the ocean unfolded, an uncomprehendingly complex system of action and reaction, displacement creating a wave there and a trough here, and all of it humming through me.
I was born facing due north, and I would die that way, too, strung between the poles like a vibrating harp string.
• • •
It
took us three days of night sailing to get through the islands. We subbed in shallow coves by day, our hull scraping dangerously close to the ocean floor, but protected by sonar from the rocky arms of the islands. Miranda didn’t dare sail during the day, when a lookout might see us stark against the horizon, and her faith in my ability to keep us out of trouble left no room for other options. We scuttled over the water like a ghost ship, crabbing between the islands in a drunken pattern that I hoped would discredit us in the eyes of any potential watchers.
Sleeping during the day was harder than sailing at night. Orca, who was on the day shift, was not around, and the silence was oddly disquieting. I would never let her know that I had grown so used to her presence that I could not sleep without her, and I comforted myself with pleasant fantasies involving sharp objects and her face. If I missed the sound of her breathing, I still hated the sound of her voice, and I had not forgotten the beating she had given me. The truce we’d come to the night Annie tried to kill me was fragile, at best.
I woke up in the early afternoon after my second night navigating, unable to fall back asleep. A tug to the southeast had pulled me awake, faint, but enough of a disturbance that it warranted watching. Even a small storm would be enough to throw my plan off kilter and smash us against the very rocks we were depending on for shelter.
Wandering the ship alone was still inadvisable; remaining in Orca’s room was intolerable. I ran a hand through my tousled hair, checked that my new knife was at my hip, and slipped out the door. I doubted Crow’s Eye would take it upon himself to kill me, and I wanted to look over the charts one more time.
A sailor, lounging at the end of the hallway, stood with a yawn and took off at a brisk pace in the opposite direction. I frowned after him. Annie was dead, but I was not naive enough to believe that she was alone in her sentiments.
Footsteps behind me brought me up short, and I turned, knife concealed by my sleeve, ready to fight.
“Easy there, killer jelly.”
I glared at Orca.
“I’m heading to the chart room,” I said, annoyed that I felt like I had to explain myself to her.