Compass Rose

by Anna Burke

  Ching’s face looked skeptical.

  “You really haven’t sailed with Miranda for long if you believe that. How about this, Mere. I’ll hear the information. If it’s any good, I’ll give you access to the Gulf, but there’s a trade embargo on the Archipelago stations. You want something, you trade with my ships, and all trades with the mines get cleared with me. These are my waters now, and you’ll play by my rules.”

  Miranda slowly resheathed her sword. I was not so quick to relax, nor was I fooled by her sudden change in tactic.

  Our plans hung by a thread, and Ching Shih held the shears.

  • • •

  “Compass Rose. That’s an interesting name,” Ching said to me after everyone else had left the room.

  I didn’t know what to say. Things were happening too quickly. I had thought, for one brief, foolish second, that I would have time to talk to Miranda before Ching started her interrogation.

  I could not have been more wrong.

  Now, here I was, sitting at the deserted table with the most dangerous woman on the water.

  “Is that your given name?” she asked, when it became clear to us both that I was incapable of an intelligent response.

  “Yes. My mother chose it.”

  “I assumed, when I first heard it, that you had taken it for yourself. That’s how most of us do it out here. Kraken. Orca. Miranda didn’t, but she’s stubborn.”

  “What about you?” I managed to ask, my voice coming out in something that was more than a squeak, but would not have qualified as a bold retort by any jury.

  “My mother lacked your mother’s foresight. Your Archipelago gave me my name, a long time ago. You know the legend of Ching Shih?”

  “She was an ancient Chinese pirate queen.”

  “She was arguably the most powerful pirate in human history, Chinese or otherwise,” Ching said, dismissing my explanation. “She was born a prostitute, but by the time she retired she commanded tens of thousands of pirates. I was not born a prostitute, in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said.

  “Nor did I have to marry anyone to get my first ship. Here’s to progress.” She raised her mug in a tiny toast. “But I suspect that my heritage, combined with my reputation, made Ching Shih a logical nickname. My given name is significantly less intimidating. Only my mother still uses it.”

  “Oh.”

  Why is she telling me this? My unease deepened.

  “If you had chosen your name for yourself, I might have more faith in your abilities. That level of arrogance would have to be backed by competence for you to still be alive today. The fact that your mother gambled with your life, giving you a name like that, is less reassuring. Are you as good as they say?”

  As who says?

  “I’m good.”

  “Then why are you here? The Archipelago is not in the habit of letting valuable tools slip out of their hands.”

  “I deserted.”

  “You left Polaris for this?” she said, disbelief written across her face.

  “Not everyone on the Archipelago is happy with the status quo.”

  “And yet most of them still prefer grumbling from the comfort of their stations. What made you different?”

  “Do you want my coordinates or not?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Does it matter why I’m here?”

  “I hope your sense of direction is better than your ability to lie. Of course it matters why you’re here. Why would I trust coordinates given to me by an Archipelagean loyalist?”

  “I’m not a loyalist.”

  “But you are. If you weren’t, Miranda would not have tried to keep you out of my sight.”

  “My mother is an eel farmer on Cassiopeia. My father was a drifter. Polaris barely tolerated me, and the council has not done anything to defend my home station. I am not a loyalist.”

  “Miranda’s crew thinks you were sent for a reason. You don’t seem to be very well tolerated here, either.”

  “I was picked up by Miranda’s sailors after my captain tried to place me off ship. I should have been promoted. Instead, she sent me to work on a fucking trawler, like a drifter. I was the best navigator in my class. Maybe the best Polaris had ever seen, and she threw me away. So yes. I deserted. I found a drifter who could take me to Miranda, and now I’m here. I don’t care who Miranda sides with or what she does. This is my ship, and I follow her orders.”

  The best lies were always composed of half-truths.

  “And what are her orders?”

  “To keep off the radar,” I said.

  “Even from me?”

  “Even from you.”

  “I don’t suppose she told you why?” she asked.

  “No. And I didn’t ask.”

  A tight pause followed my words. The other woman looked at me, and it occurred to me that conversation was just one of many options for her. There were other, more persuasive ways she could get information out of me. The thought sent a shudder of nausea through me.

  “Do you know how Miranda got her scars?” Ching Shih held out her forearm.

  I leaned in, against my better judgment, to get a better look.

  Faint, long, tendrils of scars curled from her fingers up to her elbow. They were not as pronounced as Miranda’s, but the marks were disconcertingly familiar.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Four years ago, I was sailing on some business along the Northern Equatorial Current. We were surprised by a large swarm of man o’ war. I kept us topside, as we were having trouble with the bilge pumps. My lookout spotted something in the water. We didn’t know it was human at first, and once we discovered that it was we almost left it. It should have been a corpse. Have you ever been stung by a man o’ war, Rose?”

  Her question echoed something Miranda had said to me.

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s excruciating. I know. I pulled her out of the water myself. She was hardly recognizable beneath all of the stings, and I got stung in the process.”

  She glanced at her arm.

  “This was right around the same time as that nasty business with Gemini station. I’d had some dealings with the drifters near there, and even I was horrified by what I heard about the Council’s retaliation. It made me look positively friendly. When they told me the woman in the swarm was alive, I was curious. I went out in the skiff myself. She’d wrapped sargassum around her body, although how she managed to stay conscious long enough for that has puzzled me for years. It did give her some protection, but she’d been stung so many times by then that her skin was more laceration than flesh. She’d been out there for days. It was the man o’ war themselves that kept her afloat toward the end. I think they shocked her back to life each time her body died.”

  Bile rose in my throat.

  “What struck me most, though, were her eyes. She has incredible eyes, doesn’t she? Enough to spark a rebellion, and enough to convince me to haul what was left of her into my boat.”

  My mind trembled, looking for a way out. Ching went on, ruthless.

  “She couldn’t speak coherently for the first few weeks. The shock of everything was quite literal— I believe the pain drove her insane for some time— but I was curious about what kind of person survives days at sea in a swarm. When I found out who she was, I offered her a place on my ship. Even I had to admire that kind of resilience.”

  You knew she sailed with her, I reminded myself. And you were an idiot not to find out more.

  “It took her a week to remember she was human. I nursed her myself, captain to captain. My contact, the drifter, showed up a few days later, asking to sign on to my ship. He couldn’t stomach the Archipelago after he saw how they treated the rebels. You know him, too, I believe. He was the only one who could get through to her, when she finally stopped screaming. Told her the only monster in the room was him. He’s been Kraken ever since.”

  Kraken had left that particular detail out of his story.

  “I made he
r my first mate after six months. She was a gift from Neptune himself, with her broken ideals and her thirst for revenge. I learned more about your Archipelago in that year than I had from a decade of raiding.”

  Ching’s eyes never left my face.

  “She was your first mate?” I repeated.

  “She helped me raise the Red Flag Fleet.”

  The room spun.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  “I made Miranda. Whatever little plot you think you can hatch, remember that. Your people broke her and threw away the pieces, and I put them back together. She owes who she is now to me.”

  “I’m just a navigator,” I said, in a voice that barely made it above a whisper.

  “Which is funny,” Ching said, “because I have never met anyone less sure of where she was headed.”

  • • •

  “Well, that went better than I anticipated,” Orca said as she towed me away from the room.

  “How so?” I drooped with exhaustion.

  Numbed by Ching’s revelation, I had sat, stunned, while she grilled me for several hours about fleet coordinates, pulling far more out of me than I had intended to give. If she launched a full-scale attack against the Archipelago, I would bear a significant brunt of responsibility for her success.

  Me, and Miranda.

  “She helped me raise the Red Flag fleet.”

  I clenched my fists to get her voice out of my head, bringing me back to the present. I could not afford to think about Miranda. Not now. Possibly not ever again.

  “We’re all alive, for starters,” Orca said.

  “Ching still has control of the ship, and now she’ll be watching us.” I leaned on Orca, too tired to care what the first mate thought.

  “Don’t be an idiot. She was always going to be watching us. That’s why it would have been convenient if she had just parleyed with me, instead of the captain. Having the two of them together in the same room is a recipe for disaster. Good news, though. You’ve got your own quarters, now.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Thanks to you, there was a little unrest while you were gone. I had to relieve a few sailors of their berths.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Davy Jones’s.”

  Orca’s face had a grim cast about it, and for a moment I almost felt a touch of pity for the first mate. She had not had an easy few days. Then the rest of her words registered.

  “Thanks to me? What the hell did I do?”

  “You’re here. That’s bad enough.” She stopped at a door and opened it, revealing a small room with a hammock and a wash basin.

  “I didn’t ask to be here,” I said, more tired than I could ever remember being.

  Orca spoke low and fiercely into my face, forcing me to stare into her eyes. They looked like twin hurricanes.

  “Before you came, Miranda took my advice. The crew respected me. Now she takes your advice, and they want to know why. They don’t see any gain in helping you and your kind. They liked it better, most of them, when she sailed with Ching. And me? I have to deal with all of you. Less than a week, and I had to put down a mutiny. I know why Miranda’s doing this, but that sort of logic doesn’t mean shit to sailors who have never known the luxury of security.”

  She grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me closer, until I could see the shadows of her eyelashes on her cheeks.

  “Keep your distance from the captain, jelly, if you know what’s good for you. And her.”

  With a shove, she pushed me away from her into the room and slammed the door in my face, leaving me out of breath and dizzy. I heard the sound of her boots as she stormed away.

  A mutiny. The fact that I had suspected as much was no comfort. I sank to the floor with my back to the door and stared at the hammock.

  People had died while Miranda had kissed me. People had died because Miranda had kissed me. Kraken’s warning came back to me. “The main crew won’t like it. She’s dangerous, Mere.”

  You should have listened to him, I thought.

  I should have listened to him. I was a threat to everything and everyone I loved. Not only had I just revealed much of the Archipelago’s patrols and positions to the greatest enemy the Archipelago had ever faced, but I had foolishly allowed myself to put my happiness before all else, placing my mission, my people, and even Miranda at risk.

  Miranda, who had survived days at sea in excruciating pain. Miranda, who had more reason to hate the Archipelago than I had thought possible.

  Ching was right. I didn’t know my captain, not like she did. I did not know what Miranda was capable of, and I did not know what drove her. My heart ached for her suffering even as it clenched in fear.

  What made Comita so sure Miranda was on our side?

  For that matter, what made me so sure I could trust Miranda?

  As long as my body overrode my mind, I could not keep a clear heading. Miranda was a distraction. A dangerous distraction. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to get everyone killed.

  Including her.

  No more. Ching Shih was here, and I would do what I had to do to bring her down, even if that meant turning my back on the one person besides Harper who had ever made me feel wanted, valuable, and human. As the Archipelago had four years ago, I would throw Miranda away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Change of plans.”

  Miranda had called another council, this time without Ching Shih. The pirate captain had retreated to her own ship, for the moment, but we followed in her wake. Orca, Kraken, Miranda, and I stared at her empty chair.

  “I need to call a full council soon, once I replace a few sailors,” she continued, her eyes hard, “and what I say to you I cannot say to them.”

  She had taken the news of the mutiny better than I’d expected, not that she had shared her thoughts with me. I had steered clear of her, too many conflicting emotions jockeying for my attention.

  “This was always a possible outcome. We sprang a leak, and Orca patched it, but not before Ching got wind of things.”

  Orca wove thunderheads between her braids.

  “It is unfortunate that Ching knows about our trawler, and even more unfortunate that she has facial recognition on Rose, but that doesn’t change things. Leaving the mines in Ching’s hands will lead to disaster. The crew can’t see that, clearly, but they don’t know her like I do. She’s just as bad as the worst parts of the Archipelago, if not worse, and the only equality they’ll get from her is an equally bad deal. Ching is in it for herself.”

  There was a bitterness in her voice I had never heard before.

  “So,” she continued, “it is time to fall back on plan B. I stay here, and keep Ching occupied. Orca, it’s your turn to trawl.”

  Orca’s eyebrows raised. “What about your navigator?” she asked.

  Not even Miranda could miss the poison in Orca’s words.

  “She stays with me. I need her to track Ching’s movements, and the best way to do that is by keeping her close to Ching.”

  “Close to you, you mean.” Orca crossed her arms over her chest.

  “First mate,” Miranda began, but I cut her off.

  “She’s right. Not about that part, maybe,” I backtracked, trying not to blush at the implications in Orca’s accusation, “but I shouldn’t be on this ship. I should be on the trawler. I am your best shot at navigating undetected.”

  And I need to stay far, far away from you, Captain. I met her eyes and felt my resolve waver. I pasted a mental image of Harper’s face, bludgeoned and bloody from a pirate raid, and Miranda, lying unconscious in the helm of the trawler after putting her life before mine.

  “And when Ching discovers you’re not on this ship? She’ll kill you, when she finds you,” said my captain.

  “She won’t find me.”

  “No, she won’t, because you’ll stay here, where I can guarantee your safety. Too much is riding on you.” Miranda dismissed me with a look, and turned back toward Orca
.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Captain, I promised to serve you and obey you, but I am your navigator. You cannot guarantee my safety, no matter where I am. Let me do what I came here for. Let me navigate the coast.”

  Miranda’s shoulders straightened, and she turned toward me slowly, blue eyes snapping.

  “I’ll go with her, Mere,” Kraken said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “She’s right.”

  “I’m the only monster here,” he’d told Miranda. How many of Ching’s words were true, and how many were chosen to unsettle me?

  The three of us watched her. Captains and officers, in my experience, did not enjoy being overruled, especially in front of others. Miranda’s scars stood out against her rage-white face as she surveyed us, and I suspected our words came too close on the heels of a near mutiny to merit forgiveness.

  “If that is the best course, then there is no discussion,” she said, and my heart broke at the coldness in her eyes.

  • • •

  Ching’s escort took us close to the coast, so close that I could see flocks of birds if I climbed to the crow’s nest. It was the only part of our ship that breached the surface; the air above the water was foul with hydrogen sulfide and the surface thick with algae. What sunlight managed to filter through had a dank, dappled, green quality that did not bode well for the ship’s hydrofarm or solar cells.

  As thick as the surface was with algae, the depths were thicker still with pirates. The scope of Ching’s force was breathtaking. She’d pulled an armada out of floating scrap, transforming half-rigged tubs and salvaged, decommissioned fleet ships into flotillas of raiders— but the real threat lay in the sleek, dark ships that sailed just out of sight, similar in size to the ones that had escorted us into the heart of her territory. This was the Red Flag Fleet, and while the Archipelago still far outnumbered them, I had a sneaking suspicion that the materials in the mines were being put to good use by Ching in the coastal shipyards.

  This was why I had to go. I had to know if she was building more ships, and how long it would take before starving the Archipelago of resources became mere entertainment, and she could take the stations by force.