by Anna Burke
Comita’s lips thinned into a pale scar.
“Admiral Comita,” I said, hoping to dissipate the tension between mother and daughter. I had no way of knowing if Harper was bluffing, but knowing Harper the odds were even either way.
“Compass Rose,” Comita said. There was no warmth in her voice.
“Harper’s expertise has been instrumental in keeping our craft afloat. Perhaps, as a gesture of faith, she could stay on until repairs are made.”
As Comita’s face changed, I realized that I had never truly seen her angry.
She was angry now.
“Polaris does not require gestures of faith. A pardon is a pardon, and now that it has been delivered, Harper Comita will return to her post.”
I swallowed.
The minute Harper left this ship, the only thing I had to go on was Comita’s word, which at the moment wasn’t something I was comfortable settling with.
“Rose,” Jeanine said, stepping into the bay and setting the Polarian sailors on edge. “Miranda isn’t coming.”
Her face was carefully neutral.
“We need her here,” I said, pitching my voice low.
“She said that, I quote, ‘Rose can damn well get us out of this herself, her Admiral and the entire Archipelago be damned.’”
“Oh.”
“This was after she put a knife to my throat and demanded to know if you were alive,” she added.
“Oh,” I said again. There was a strange buzzing in my head.
The hatch opened again, and we both jumped as an exceptionally bloodstained Miranda Stillwater pushed through it to stand between us. She gave Harper a quick glance, ignored me and Jeanine, who looked as confused as I felt, and addressed Comita.
“Admiral Comita. Is it you I have to thank for getting the scum off my back?”
Comita’s face froze, then changed, erasing its earlier rage as the mask of Admiral slipped back into place.
“You looked like you needed the help,” Comita said.
“That wasn’t just any ship.” Miranda tossed the bloody sword she carried on the ground. It swung on its hilt, gleaming in the light, until the blade came to rest pointing directly at Comita.
My compass twitched. The blade was aligned directly with due north.
“That is Ching Shih’s sword, as promised.”
“She is dead?”
“There is only one way to take a sword from a woman like Ching.”
The familiar way she said Ching’s name turned my insides to ice. What had it been like for Miranda to kill the woman who had saved her life?
Comita stepped down off the deck and past her sailors to stand over the blade. The tip barely grazed her boot, and a hot, metallic taste filled my mouth.
It took me a moment to realize I had bitten my lip hard enough to draw blood. The filaments roared in my ears, and I clenched my fists to clear my head.
“Well, captain, the Archipelago owes you a great deal,” Comita said.
There was a nasty silence, in which I suspected all of those assembled who knew Miranda’s history were thinking the same thing: the Archipelago owed Miranda far more than a pardon.
“I keep my promises,” Miranda said. “A bargain is a bargain.”
The two women stared at each other, and I had the unsettling feeling that more passed in that look than I would ever know.
“I have sent an emissary with your pardon,” Comita said, her eyes flicking toward her daughter. The sailors around her shifted uncomfortably, but none were as poorly disciplined as I was, because they recovered from this change in tactic much more quickly than my stuttering heartbeat.
Miranda squared her shoulders and nodded.
“I appreciate the loan of your navigator. As you can see, she is unharmed. Mostly,” Miranda added, her eyes taking in the blood on my clothes but avoiding my face.
“Loan?” Comita’s voice betrayed a hint of confusion.
“I fulfilled my end of the parley. She is still alive.”
“Keep her a little while longer,” Comita said, and the chill in her voice made me shiver. I remembered with a pang of loss how I had felt in her study when she poured me that first glass of rum, bubbles of joy rising through me. I did not think I would ever feel that way again about Admiral Comita.
Miranda’s hand twitched against her thigh, but that was the only thing that revealed the slightest hint of emotion.
“Thank you, Admiral. Do I have your leave to repair my ship?”
“I will send you supplies to assist you. Harper, let’s go.”
Harper stood her ground, her face thunderous.
“That was an order, sailor.”
“With all due respect, Admiral, I will serve you much better if I stay here for the duration of the repair.”
Comita’s eyes glinted like knives.
“It was never my intention to spare you discipline, as my daughter. Now I see I should have heeded the advice of others, and sent you to serve on another ship. Your insubordinate behavior will not go unpunished.”
“Mother,” Harper said, and even Comita flinched at the venom in Harper’s voice. “The greatest honor I could ever do you is to disobey you here today.”
“Very well then,” Comita said, deadly calm, “consider yourself stripped of your rank and position. Fair seas, daughter.”
And with that, she turned to board her sleek silver ship, trailed by her crew, one of whom had the sense to grab Ching’s sword, and they sank beneath the brackish water of the hold.
“Well,” Harper said, forcing a laugh, “I hope you could use an Archipelago engineer, Captain Stillwater, because I appear to be out of a job.”
Miranda’s back was to me, but I could hear the smile in her voice as she shook Harper’s hand.
“As it just so happens, I could use an engineer right about now.”
Jeanine slapped Harper on the back. I wrestled my lips into a smile and met my best friend’s eyes. They looked as dead as I felt.
Miranda strode out of the room without a word to me, forcing Harper and Jeanine to follow.
I stood in their wake, tears blurring my eyes.
Would it have been too much for her to even look at me?
The emptiness of the hold pressed in around me. I knew there were a million things I should be doing, from helping to subdue Ching’s sailors and checking the wounded to keeping us on course.
Instead, I knelt on the piece of ground where Ching’s sword had lain and pressed my fingers against a drop of blood.
Ching Shih, the greatest living threat of our time, dead. It seemed surreal, and while I couldn’t ever forgive the woman for the things she’d done to my people, I had known her, and now she was gone. Things like that were not supposed to happen.
I touched my forefinger to my thumb. The blood was growing tacky, and I rubbed it between my fingers as exhaustion swept over me. I had been awake for more hours than I could count. I had battled a giant squid, fought with pirates, and been ignored by the woman I wanted more than anything else in the world.
I needed a shower. I needed a meal. I needed a good night’s sleep, and more than that, I needed to let go of Miranda Stillwater.
“Crow’s Eye,” I said, surprising myself with my croaking voice.
The thought of climbing to the crow’s nest filled my limbs with lead, but I forced my legs to stand and make the journey back through the ship, turning a deaf ear to the cries of the wounded and the hiss of water.
He was still alive. I figured this out as his blade pricked the tender skin beneath my chin, and then he dropped it, letting out a long sigh.
“So you’re still with us then, wolf pup,” he said, leaning back in his swivel chair. The water around us was empty, the growing morning light sending shafts of splintered sunlight down even to our depth.
“I’m not a sea wolf,” I said, dropping to the floor. “Miranda told me what they were, and I am anything but legendary.”
Crow’s Eye raised his grizzled eyebrows.
“Says the girl who found the channel.”
I shrugged, then paused, my sluggish brain adding two and two together. In the midst of the fighting, none of the late Sea Cat’s crew had had time to tell Man o’ War about the channel.
“How did you know about the channel?” I asked, a dark suspicion rearing its head.
“I see things,” he said.
“You knew.” The accusation hung between us.
“Aye,” he said, sighing again. “I knew.”
“Did Miranda know?”
“No, the captain doesn’t know. Nor does the rest of the crew, unless I’m mistaken, and Ching never could be bothered to send out scouts.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“The channel is a legend, girl. I thought I found it, once, when I was a little younger than you. Sailed in deep enough to never want to go back before we ran aground. Lost one of my best mates to fever, digging ourselves out. When your Archipelago’s ships came at us from behind, though, I knew you’d done it.”
“You could have given me a hint.”
“And told you to chase after a legend?” he said, mocking me. “It takes someone legendary to find a legend, kid.”
“I’m not—” I broke off, a different question on my lips. “Are there other people like me out there?”
Crow’s Eye smiled and patted his stump in an absentminded way.
“Hard to say.” He winked. “Sea wolves are a legend, too, remember?”
“You’re a real barnacle, you know that?” I said, feeling a little better despite myself.
“Oh, aye. And you’re the saddest excuse for a sea wolf I ever saw. You made up with the captain yet?”
“She hates me.”
“Don’t be such a squid shit, kid. You disobeyed her orders. Ching’s sailors have been on us like remora since you vanished, and the only reason the captain isn’t dead is because Ching can’t bear to kill her.”
I did not correct his present tense. He clearly didn’t know Ching had been killed, yet.
“She’s madder than a spitting tom and, worse, she thought you all were dead. Cut her some slack. And eat this.”
He tossed a rice cake at me, and I devoured it in two bites.
“Will she have me flogged?” I asked when I had licked the crumbs from my lips.
“Only if you want her to.” Crow’s Eye gave me a leer that made my skin crawl, even though I knew it was in jest.
“You’re awful.”
“Look, kid, you shouldn’t take romantic advice from a single man who pisses in a jug, and I’m not saying the captain’s even a good woman, but it seems to me like the only way this ship is going to run smoothly is if you take matters into your own hands, so to speak.”
This time he spared me the leer.
“You can sleep when you’re dead. Go wash the blood off your face and make things right with Miranda. The way things move around here, you might not get a second chance.”
• • •
I found her in the bilges, up to her knees in black water, working one of the pumps and laughing at something Kraken was singing in his deep, gravelly, and wonderfully terrifying voice.
Her back was to me, and so Kraken saw me first. He paused. The stillness sent out ripples through the flooded space.
Miranda kept working the pump. I could see the new tightness in her shoulders, but she didn’t break her pace.
Fine, I thought, double-checking that the pardon was still in my pocket as I descended the ladder. My boots filled with water, and my trousers wicked moisture up past the waterline at my knee, creeping like cold fingers up my thighs. I waded towards the captain with enough sense still left to me to be grateful for the shock of cold water. It made it easier not to run to her, damning pride and the consequences.
“Captain Stillwater,” I said when I was a few wet feet from her.
She turned and leaned against the pump with an arrogant grace that made my mouth go dry, and looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time since my return.
“Compass Rose,” she said. Her eyes traveled down and up my body, taking in my soaked knees and the fleet uniform with the North Star emblazoned on the jacket breast.
“I have the pardon,” I said, wishing I had thought of a more compelling opening line.
“And I have a hole in my ship. A navigator, however, would have been useful a few days ago.”
I glared at her. In the dank lighting, her eyes looked nearly black. I stripped out of my jacket and down to my undershirt and trousers, hanging the bloodstained uniform on a piece of broken pipe.
Miranda’s knuckles whitened on the pump. Navigators might wear a looser style of uniform than engineers and mechanics, but there was nothing loose about the fleet-issued undershirts. They left little to the imagination.
“Looks like you could use a hand, Captain.” I gave her a mocking salute.
“You ever worked a bilge pump?” she asked.
I could feel her eyes on my body.
“Nope.” I braced myself for the full force of her gaze. “But I can find true north from the belly of a whale. Captain.”
“Let’s start with the bilge pump for now,” she said, but her eyes lost a little of their cold disdain.
I shrugged, for all the world as if my heart was not battering its way out of my chest, and stepped past her to take over the pump. Her scent, faint beneath the smells of blood and salt, nearly knocked me to my knees.
Kraken dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder as I worked the handle, then resumed a bawdy drifter ballad about the many ways the ocean tried to fuck a plucky and impossibly proportioned crew of sailors. I listened in amused horror while my inner compass followed Miranda. The tune, for all its bawdiness, had an underlying, mournful note that fitted the loss of life and limb around us.
When the water level had receded to below my ankles and my undershirt was drenched in sweat and bilge water, Miranda called it quits.
“A word, navigator,” she said, her hand brushing the small of my back.
I shivered and grabbed my jacket.
O captain, my captain, went the old poem.
My boots squelched up the ladder and through the ship, coming at last to a soggy halt outside the door to her private quarters. I stood in my little puddle, frozen to the spot.
There was a reason captains rarely summoned crew to their quarters. Comita had done it, and, like the summons, her request had breached many layers of protocol. No matter what happened behind these doors, I knew with a firm certainty that I would not emerge unscathed.
North, east, south, west.
I walked through the door and let it shut behind me.
Miranda sat in one of the low chairs in her receiving room, her boots crossed at the ankle. She didn’t seem to mind that her clothes were soaked. At least the water had rinsed out some of the bloodstains.
“You have the pardon?”
I handed her the envelope.
Miranda brushed her thumb with its Gemini ring across the paper once, then set it on the side table next to her chair, unopened. I straightened beneath her scrutiny.
“Nice uniform,” she said.
“The rest of my clothes are on your ship.”
“I’ll have them packed for you.”
Any lingering, desperate hope that she might have forgiven me in my absence crumbled.
“Is that a dismissal?” I asked. My voice trembled, and I hardened my tone to hide it.
“You directly contradict my orders, vanish without a trace, and then walk onto my ship wearing a fleet uniform after taking my oath, and you have the balls to ask about dismissal? I have walked crew for less.” She let out a cruel laugh and shook her head.
I dropped the jacket to the floor. Her face didn’t change. We both knew there were things between us far worse than a uniform.
“I chose the only course available to me, Miranda, and I came back. You know who I am and who I serve, which is more than I can say for you.”
&
nbsp; “I serve the same thing I’ve always served.”
“Yourself?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I had forgotten, in my anguish, how infuriating she could be.
“This fucked-up, poisonous, beautiful ocean.”
Of all the things she could have said, that was the last thing I expected. I bit my lower lip and spoke the words I wished I had spoken sooner, sparing myself the pain of everything that had happened since.
“Then you’re going to need a second mate.”
Miranda stood, slowly. There was a distant ringing, like a bell, only deeper. It echoed through me, filling up the empty, sore places with a sound that nearly broke me.
“Second mate?”
She was so close to me. Her shirt, like mine, was soaked, and it clung to her body.
“If you’ll have me,” I said.
“I can take you any way I want,” she had told me on the day she’d flogged Annie. Had she known then, just how true her words would prove to be?
Several different strong emotions crossed her face, leaving minute wakes behind.
The absurdity of my guilt washed over me while Miranda weighed her options. So what if something had happened between me and Orca? This woman had rejected me, had flat out told me I meant nothing to her. If she had really wanted me, she should have fought a little harder. And at the end of the day, I was a navigator. A damn good navigator. She should be asking me to stay, not the other way around.
I regretted my words. I regretted my soaking wet pants, and all that I had given up to be standing in front of this callous, two-faced, selfish mercenary. More than that, I wanted to fall to my knees and take her hands, begging her to let me stay. As the silence between us stretched thin, my heart plunged into the next trough, battered by waves ninety feet tall and growing.
I could have sailed on any ship on the ocean, I thought. And I hate that I only want whatever one you’re on.
“Rose.”
It was half question, half plea, and then her hands were on my face and her lips were pressed to mine, more real than anything I’d felt over the past week. Her fingers cupped my jaw, tilting my head up toward her, and I wrapped my hands in her shirt collar and pulled her to me.
The urgency in her kiss struck me like due north.