by Anna Burke
“You know who she is?” I asked, stunned.
“I do now.” He gave me his kraken’s smile and moved to let me pass.
“Kraken,” I said, turning back. The floor was slick with diluted blood. “Why did you warn Miranda about me?”
“You mean besides the obvious reasons?”
“Yeah.”
“Only one thing that woman hadn’t had broken, before she met you.” He went back to mopping.
I tried to absorb that piece of information. I felt like a saturated sponge, and more than a little like a piece of garbage for thinking about myself while the body of another person cooled somewhere on the ship. First Annie, then Andre, now John.
“Is there any way . . .” I trailed off, then tried again, blurting out my words all at once. “Do you think she could forgive me? Do you think—”
“I’m not the one you need to ask. Out here, you want something, you make it work. Anyone who accepts anything less deserves it.”
• • •
I settled in at the helm. Less than an hour had passed since the SHARK first pressed his knife to my throat. So much was different now. It was too much to think about, so I didn’t.
North, east, south, west. I named the cardinal directions, checking each quadrant for signs of movement. North was clear, as was the eastern coastal quadrant. South lay wide open ahead of us, and to the west, moving steadily toward us, was a ship.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said to the universe at large. I pulled down the intercom. “Raider, incoming.”
Our brief foray into the open had cost us. I steadied myself and analyzed the sonar. There was nothing else in our vicinity, and there was no good reason for a raider to show interest in a drifter vessel— unless, of course, that vessel harbored a valuable hostage. I bit my lip. So far we had not been hailed. If we could get back to the coast before they recognized our vessel, we might be able to evade them without directly disobeying Ching Shih’s orders.
I turned the trawler around and gunned it.
Orca thrust herself through the doorway as the first of the drowned buildings came back into sight.
“Take the wheel,” I said, moving to let her in.
Her gray eyes scanned the water.
“How far in do we need to go?” she asked.
“Farther than we want,” I said, feeling grim. The sea churned around us, a disturbance on the surface rippling down to where we sputtered and churned.
“Hard to port,” I said, closing my eyes. The currents ripped through the water here with a force that took my breath away. We were only a few miles further south, but the difference in oceanic conditions defied explanation.
“She’s pulling hard,” Orca said, mirroring my thoughts.
“I know.” My eyes felt grainy behind my eyelids. “We need to get out of the riptide.”
“That’s all on you, navigator.”
“Ride it.” The certainty rose in me and I opened my eyes to stare at the ruins around us.
“What? Are you fucking crazy?”
“We need all the speed we can get. The current gives us an edge.”
“And could run us right into one of these— whatever they are.” The jagged remains of something large passed beneath us, illustrating her point.
“That’s all on you, skipper.”
She glared at me.
I was right. The current added wings to our clumsy trawler, and we wove through the ancient debris at a speed that was frankly quite terrifying. Jellyfish passed by us, not enough to qualify as a swarm, but enough to occasionally clog up the sonar and block the raider from view. I didn’t dare hope that it would also block us from theirs.
Orca swore in a steady stream, obeying my commands with gratifying alacrity. I concentrated, trying to make sense of what my inner compass was telling me.
“Break us out,” I said, forcing Orca to pull the trawler around more suddenly than was good for it.
“It’s shallow,” she said, staring out at the blue water.
It was shallow. Too shallow for a raider, which was a good thing, because one glance at the sonar showed me we now had not just one, but two on our tail.
“Take us in.”
“In to where? The coast is right there. We’ll run aground.”
“No we won’t.” I laid out a rapid series of coordinates, trying not to think about the lives in my hands.
“This is suicide.”
“Then give me the wheel.”
Our eyes locked.
“Can’t do that, navigator.”
“Orca. What exactly is going to happen when they catch us?”
She looked at the sonar, then back at me.
“Depends on why they are after us. You said your friend wasn’t valuable.” I heard the accusation in her voice.
“I lied.”
“Of course you did.” Orca shook her head in disgust.
“She’s the Polarian Admiral’s daughter.”
“Wait.” Orca’s jaw dropped. “Harper is Comita’s daughter? That cold bitch reproduced?”
“Yes. Not that it will matter if we don’t get the hell out of here now.” I tapped the sonar. The raiders were closing fast.
“Miranda will have your hide for this,” Orca said, moving out of the way of the wheel.
“Yours too, first mate.”
“Admiral’s daughter. Send me to Davy fucking Jones, Rose. You might have said something sooner.”
I tuned out her protests. She was right about the coast. The water would only grow shallower, and if I could not find a way through it, we were trapped.
“And they’re firing at us. Great. This is really great, Rose.” Orca slammed the dash.
“Actually,” I said, noting the bubbles rising to starboard, “it is.”
I pulled the trawler into a lower dive, coming dangerously close to the bottom, and pointed at the bubbles to the starboard side.
“Do we have anything combustible in the arsenal?” I asked Orca. Her face lit with a disturbingly enthusiastic smile.
“I mean, I tried to pack light, but there might be something. You do realize that if we blow a methane deposit, not only could we all die, but we’ll have even more ships after us?”
“Not if these ones don’t make it back.”
She looked as surprised by my words as I felt.
“I’ve been a better influence on you than I thought,” she said. “I might have a few low-grade explosives.”
“Why are there low-grade explosives on a trawler?”
“Ask Kraken.”
I checked the progress of our tail.
“There’s just one small problem,” Orca said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We need to lure them in.”
I shivered in the helm, alone, as Orca went to prep the explosives for drop and set up the detonators. A man had already died today, and here we were, planning to kill who knows how many more. Harper’s hand on my shoulder made me jump when she sat down in Orca’s empty seat.
She didn’t say anything. We waited, and when the time was right, I sent out the sonar blast.
“Don’t shoot. Parley.”
Short and sweet. The ships, cautious in the shallows, slowed their advance.
“Now,” Orca shouted over the intercom.
I revved up our engine and turned us east, heading straight for the coastal inlet I hoped was ahead.
With the helm facing away from the blast, all we could see was the ocean floor ripple and writhe like some monstrous sea creature rising from an unnatural slumber as the shock wave rocked the trawler. I was prepared this time, and kept us on an even keel as the detonation sent us hurtling through the water toward an even more uncertain future.
Chapter Seventeen
“I can’t believe I’m seeing this.” I leaned forward, the depth readings blinking out of the corner of my eye. Ahead, obscured by the clouded water, lay the inlet, but this was not the inlet detailed on the coastal maps I’d memorized. This had the depth reading
s of a channel.
Orca frowned. “I can’t see anything,” she said.
“Exactly. We’re twenty meters deep. We should be seeing bottom, and I’ve got open water as far as the sonar can see ahead.”
“That’s impossible.” She leaned over to scan the sonar, then sat back, looking nonplussed.
I couldn’t agree more. We were well over the border of the drowned continent, and maximum depth should have been less than twenty meters, not twenty and counting.
A small swarm of jellyfish emerged from the gloom, passing us with their usual aimless purpose. I watched them. Something about their movements tickled the back of my mind.
“How far does this go?” Orca asked.
“Hell if I know, but we might as well find out.”
The detonation had taken its toll on our trawler, too. Harper, Jeanine, and Kraken were ensconced in the engine room, trying to repair what they could. From the sounds filtering up through the floor in frustrated bursts, things were not going well, and until they got us back in working order, we were in no shape to face more raiders.
“Fucking jellyfish,” Orca said, watching another swarm pass us by.
I thought instantly of Miranda, and my chest constricted.
The trawler edged along the channel. Orca kept it slow at my insistence. The water was clogged with algae at the surface and sunlight filtered through in stray beams, shining through the tattered swarms.
Swarms.
Moving with us.
I tapped the dash, my inner compass whirring as the filaments aligned. Swarms followed the current. These were on a definite trajectory.
“Move us a few degrees starboard,” I said to Orca.
She obliged. I felt the current pluck at us, a hesitant touch that tightened as we neared its embrace. An incredulous laugh bubbled up in my throat.
“You all right, jelly?” Orca gave me a wary look.
“We’re in the Gulf stream.”
“What?” It took Orca a moment to register my words. “That’s impossible. The Gulf stream is farther south.”
“Some of it is,” I allowed, but the current was weak. Weak enough, maybe, that a small offshoot might have found a way through the submerged marshlands, carving out a new route for itself in the loose bedrock.
“What are you saying?”
“I could be wrong,” I said, staring at the sonar, “but I think we just found a way out of the Gulf.”
• • •
I had never wanted to be topside more in my life. The crew of the Sea Cat sat around the table in the common room, and all of them were looking at me.
“We’re in the Atlantic,” I said, forcing myself to look each of them in the eye in turn.
Over the past six hours, the trawler had drifted along a twisting channel, outpacing the current as we followed the impossible: an unmapped channel, a literal back door into the Gulf of Mexico and the answer to the Archipelago’s prayers.
“Neptune’s big old hairy balls,” Finn swore.
I met Kraken’s and Harper’s eyes last. Harper’s expression was full of hope; Kraken’s was somber.
He knew.
“In case you haven’t put two and two together, we have a problem,” Orca said. “Rose.”
“The channel is deep enough for raiders to follow us. It’s also deep enough for the Archipelagean fleets. Right now, we are the only six people who know about it, but we can’t count on that lasting, and we can’t afford for Ching to find out.”
If she did, she could come at the stations from a whole new direction, taking them by surprise. The same applied to the Archipelago. If Admiral Comita could rouse the other fleets, she could turn the tables on Ching.
The discovery could not have come at a better time, nor at a higher price.
“I don’t understand the problem,” Harper said. “Rose, we have to alert Polaris.”
“What about the captain?” asked Jeanine. Her eyes held me accountable.
“There is a good chance Ching thinks we’ve sunk,” Orca said, answering for me. “But she’s too careful to make assumptions. If we leave the Gulf, we’ve as good as abandoned Miranda.”
“If we go back, then Ching wins.” Harper looked to me for support. “Right, Rose?”
“Yes.” The word felt like one of Ching’s raiders, lined with jagged knives. I’d left Miranda behind once, and it had felt like the hardest thing I’d ever have to do.
I was wrong.
Stars would be out by now. On the deck, I would be able to hear the soft sounds of dusk settling over the water. On the deck, I would be able to scream, the memory of Miranda all around me.
It was Orca’s decision. To return to our captain, and lose what might be the only chance of ousting Ching, or to abandon her to an almost certainly bloody fate in the name of the greater good.
I knew what I wanted to do, and avoided Harper’s eye.
They were all looking at me. Even Orca.
“It’s your call, first mate,” I said. My voice sounded far away.
“Is it?” She had an odd little half smile on her face. “This is your course, navigator.”
You bitch, I thought. Don’t make me do this.
I had been right to place distance between myself and Miranda. I could see that now, all too plainly. Orca would never had discovered the channel, had she been lucky enough to get that far in the first place. Miranda had clouded my judgment, and I had clouded hers.
I had been right, and now I was paying the price.
There was only one possible course.
“We make for Polaris,” I said, turning away from the crew and making for the door. If I couldn’t be on deck, I could at least be at the helm.
Orca grabbed my arm as I passed her, swinging me around to face the watching eyes. I don’t know what she saw on my face, but the furrow on her brow softened.
“Get us there fast,” she said as I pulled away.
I heard Harper’s footsteps behind me.
“Leave me alone, Harp,” I said once we were in the privacy of the hallway.
“When have I ever done that?”
I walked to the helm, trying to steady my breathing. Harper dogged my heels.
“Wanna tell me what that was all about?” she asked.
“I just need a minute.” I sat, my head falling into my hands. My knuckles tightened on my shorn hair, and I remembered Miranda’s words.
“It is just a preference.”
“This is a good thing, Rose.” Harper placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure your captain would have agreed.” There was a question in her words.
“I don’t know what she would have wanted,” I said, my breath catching on barely suppressed sobs. “And now I never will.”
“My mother—”
“Your mother sent me out here, Harper,” I said, unable to contain the building torrent. “You have no idea what has happened to me since I left North Star. These people, this crew, even goddamn fucking Orca, mean more to me than anyone on your mother’s ship.”
Her face whitened, and she withdrew her hand.
“Except you,” I added.
“You’re a Polarian navigator.”
“Am I? Then what am I doing here, on a drifter trawler, under the orders of Miranda fucking Stillwater?”
Harper’s face froze. She, at least, knew enough history to immediately place the name.
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding? Do you know how many times I’ve almost died since I last saw you? How many people have died because of me? And Miranda—” My voice broke again, and I could feel the muscles in my face spasming with the effort of retaining control.
“It hasn’t been exactly easy for me either, Rose,” she said, her own temper flaring. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m trapped on this piece of shit, too.”
“You don’t get it. If we leave, Miranda and Crow’s Eye and the rest of the crew could die.”
“Like John?”
A black silence fell between us.
“I can’t believe you,” Harper said eventually.
I didn’t answer.
“When you figure out where you’re going, navigator, let me know.”
I let her walk away, and when Kraken showed up with a flask of rum an hour later, I didn’t protest.
“You’re not much for company,” he said, plopping down in the vacated chair, “but it beats listening to Orca and your friend screwing like a couple of cats in the engine room.”
I held my hand out for the flask.
• • •
Progress was slow. Harper and Jeanine were still making repairs on the engine, and I chafed at the helm as we chuffed along the submerged coast, doing my best to keep us off the sonar of any passing ships.
“What happens when we get to your admiral?” Orca lounged next to me, looking pleased with herself.
I was less pleased, but hardly in a position to say anything. Besides— out of Orca, Miranda, and Harper, Orca was the only one still speaking to me.
“I don’t know,” I said. I hadn’t gotten that far in the planning process.
“It’s a perfect trap.” I tuned Orca out as she laid out the best strategy for catching Ching unawares. I’d heard it already.
“. . . will you stay with your fleet?”
“What?”
“Will you stay with your fleet, or will you come back with us to Man o’ War?”
“Try not to sound so hopeful.”
Orca shrugged.
I hadn’t thought about that, either.
“It’s not really my decision,” I said.
Gray eyes rolled skyward.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
“Hey, skipper,” Harper said, saving me from a reply. “Engine’s up and running.” She leaned in the doorway, ignoring me.
“Let’s get out of here, then. And you,” Orca said, pointing at me, “owe me a real Archipelago meal, bath, and bunk.”
• • •