I wouldn’t blame it if it attacked me. She shivered involuntarily. No, there was nothing to be afraid of, because the shark wasn’t going to die surrounded by nets. The dreams were empty as eggshells, and she was too tired for them to disturb her.
Instead, what woke her was Darok shaking her shoulder gently and saying her name as she struggled up on one elbow. She felt groggy but no longer exhausted, which gave her an idea of how long she had been asleep.
“Get dressed.” He left the cabin.
She got out of the bunk. Blue light filtered in from the open window, but the lamp was lit as well and she had hung her watersuit up to dry before she’d slept. She didn’t have any grease, but it didn’t matter, because she guessed the reason for Darok’s terse words.
Rest and food had helped. Although her right arm was bruised dark where the oar had struck her, she no longer felt punch-drunk as she put her suit on and collected the gear she would need. All the crew seemed to have gathered on deck, and she had to slip through their ranks to reach the prow where Darok stood with the spyglass to his eye.
Not that she needed one to see the Turean galleys. Two of them, side by side, filled the other end of the inlet, and she guessed others were just beyond, hidden by the curve of the cliffs and the morning shade.
Their voyage was over. Darok lowered the spyglass and pushed it into his belt. His face was stern and composed, mouth set to a line that would not have been out of place on a Seawatch operative’s lips, though the dark eyes lingered on her.
“You’d better go,” he said. “It’ll be too dangerous later.”
Yerena nodded. “Do you have a knife?” It was the one part of her gear she lacked, but a deckhand offered her a blade and she turned to leave, though she paused as she saw Lady Lisabe. For some reason the woman was decked in all her red-and-gold finery, making her more of a target. Yerena wondered what she was thinking, since the Turean archers probably knew what colors the Voices of the Unity wore.
None of my concern. The Tureans were likely to have their own spyglasses, so she crossed the deck to the stern. It was so early that shadows of the cliffs lay on the quiet water of the bay, and she couldn’t make out the familiar fin anywhere. She could have used the link, but that was likely to end in one of two ways—either she would be crushed by guilt as she felt what the shark did, or she would sense nothing at all.
No, she couldn’t think of the shark. She had to make sure Daystrider was safe, where it lay anchored at least, before the battle began. She lowered herself down to the waterline. Gripping the rope, she spat in her mask and rinsed it off before she put it on.
The solidity of the hull beside her helped. The ship felt large and strong, a little like the shark’s body, and her usual self-possession settled over her like a cloak as she drew in slow deep breaths, one after another. The last inhalation was the one she had to keep until she came back up to the surface.
She let go of the rope and dropped into the water.
Chapter Eleven
Out of the Depths
Darok watched the two Turean galleys approach, oars beating in measured strokes. From that angle, he couldn’t see the galleys’ names, but the broken chain flew high from their mainmasts, and their prows pointed towards Daystrider. A single catapult rode just behind each prow. Early-morning light struck sparks off the great chunks of granite nestled in the catapults’ cradles, probably ballast stones being used as projectiles. Just two catapults, but they could hardly fail to hit an unmoving target once they were within range.
Though they didn’t seem hasty to close, and under any other circumstances, he would have smiled. So they remembered Rorqual’s sinking. The oars were shipped when the galleys were still half a mile away, but Yerena had not said she would use her shark to cripple the galleys as she had done before. He had an unpleasant feeling about that.
A sliver of sun glowed over the cliffs in the east, and still the captains of the galleys made no move. Darok wondered if they planned to wear him down with waiting. He would have felt better if Yerena had been on board, because she’d been gone too long and yet he didn’t dare show just how heavy she weighed on his mind. He wished he had been able to tell her how much she meant to him, but there had been no time.
What difference would that have made to a Seawatch operative? his more cynical side asked. He’d kissed her once, when she was deeply asleep. He had pressed his mouth to the smooth skin just above the arch of her left brow, on the curved tip of the black tattoo. And remembering that, it felt as though he had kissed her goodbye.
No, he thought as flatly as Yerena herself might have spoken the word. He loosened his sword in its scabbard and cast a look over the deck to make sure his catapult crew was ready—as they had been for the past two hours.
“Daystrider.” The word rang out from a Turean galley, magnified by a hollow horn but distorted too, so it wasn’t clear if the speaker was a man or a woman. “I am Captain Jash Morender of the freeship Dreadnaught, and this is your last chance to save lives rather than throw them away.”
Darok thought he would have been far better off facing a male captain in battle—a man would be direct and easy to fight. Jash Morender was subtler than a serpent and seemed to cloak her most vicious tactics in seeming acts of mercy. He waited to hear the rest of her speech.
“All the Lostlander prisoners are on board,” she said, and Darok knew a Turean accent wasn’t responsible for the mispronunciation. “I will trade them all, alive, for one man. For the captain of Daystrider.”
Ah. He wouldn’t have entertained any ideas of fair dealings with a pirate, but that was a good way for Jash Morender to both inflame his crew and rid herself of inconvenient ballast—simply murder the prisoners while making it clear he could have saved them, but didn’t. He glanced sideways at Alyster.
“Just try it” was the reply to his unspoken question. “I’ll take command of the ship on suspicion of insanity in the captain, and order you locked up. None of the crew will argue.”
That was true enough. Darok watched as two boats were winched over the side of Dreadnaught, and one by one, people began to climb down into them. He wondered how many of them were unhuman creatures in the skins of men. Much as he didn’t want to be in the water anywhere near the white death, that was at least a natural beast.
“Captain!” Jash Morender shouted again. “I say again, this is your last chance. What is your answer?”
Darok started to reply but another voice spoke first, loud and strong over the water that separated them from Dreadnaught.
“You can take me instead,” Lady Lisabe called out between cupped hands, her loud, clear voice echoing off the cliffs.
He turned on his heel, unable to believe he had heard correctly. Lady Lisabe stood with her arms folded, her gaze fixed on the galley, where sunlight glinted in reflection as the captain and officers trained spyglasses on her.
“Lady Lisabe,” he began, “the Tureans have sent us bizarre, murderous creatures pretending to be prisoners—”
“Those boats are full, Captain,” Lady Lisabe said. “They can’t all be like that, surely.”
“One would be enough.”
“I’m sorry, Captain. But I do not retract my offer.”
Jash Morender’s reply almost drowned out the murmurs of the crew. “A Voice of the Unity is worth half the prisoners. Send it over, Captain, and we’ll make the trade.”
It? Darok had even less intention of bargaining with the Tureans after that, but Lady Lisabe was already pulling off her gold bracelets, lifting the chain from her neck, and dropping it all in a glittering heap into her guard’s cupped hands. He wasn’t sure if that was a sign of practicality or as much of a slap in the face to the Tureans as she could manage under the circumstances. They would have her, but not her wealth.
They would have her. And even if he and his crew escaped somehow, what on Eden would happen when he returned home? If the Admiralty didn’t believe that he just stood by and allowed a Voice of the Unity
to die, he’d be under suspicion, but if they did believe it, he might be put on trial—not in a maritime court, but in Skybeyond itself.
Reining in his imagination, he looked around for inspiration—she wasn’t likely to listen, much less obey, if he just ordered her to stay where she was—and he saw the expression on Alyster’s face. His brother looked not so much struck by lightning as drenched by a downpour he’d expected for days.
“Did you know about this?” He kept his voice very low.
“Not specifically, but…” The apple of Alyster’s throat moved as he swallowed. “She said she had to sacrifice herself some day, to pay for a great wrong. She—she told me that was one reason she wanted me in her bed, so she could enjoy as much as she could before the end.”
What the hell? Darok had always considered himself responsible for the safety of a Voice of the Unity on board his ship, but it hadn’t occurred to him that that particular Voice had a death wish. Was she crazy, or had the Unity itself condemned her to go into the Iron Ocean and die there? For what purpose? Whatever she had done, it must have been unforgivable.
Lady Lisabe finished divesting herself of her jewelry. Reaching into a sleeve, she drew out a letter sealed in wax, and when she handed it to Darok he saw the seal of the Council of Eyes and Voices. “When you return to Denalay, Captain, this should be sufficient for anyone who doubts your account of what happened here today.” Her head lifted, chin tilted up. “May I beg you to have a boat lowered for me?”
Yerena couldn’t recall spending so much time so close to a ship’s hull. She had sunk Turean galleys using a prototype submersible, but she’d never completely trusted the device and had been constantly afraid she would suffocate in its cramped interior, although the Whetstone engineers had given her crystals which supposedly changed color when the air was no longer safe to breathe. Still, she had felt bulky and fettered inside the submersible, and had been silently grateful that Seawatch hadn’t required a repetition of the experience.
Compared to that, now she was not so different from the fish which stayed at the hull, feeding off the slime that covered the wood. A newer ship would have been coppered, but Daystrider’s hull was thick enough not to be affected by a few barnacles. She could use it to orient herself as she swam around the ship, looking for a man’s corpse dozens of feet below. It might be safer to have something solid at her back, too.
Starting at the prow, she worked her way to the stern, coming up for air when she needed it. She kept only her right palm against the hull, and her arm still ached dully from the bruise, but there was more than enough friction between her glove and the pebbled surface of the hull. The methodical work helped steady her as well. There was no sign of the shark, but then again she had let herself into the water gently to avoid splashes and she hadn’t called it either.
Reminding herself to be prepared for the sluices which led away from the head, she continued her search. An underwater landscape spread itself out beneath her—rocks cloaked in green, fish swimming in and out of crevices, stars scattered here and there—but she didn’t see any bodies.
Something poked the center of her palm.
Yerena turned her head, but before the movement ended she knew that if she could feel something through the sharkskin glove, it wasn’t likely to be just a barnacle. She moved her palm away, simultaneously bringing up her other hand so she could hold on to the hull, but as she did so she saw what grew from the wood.
It was small and white. It looked like a fang sinking through the hull from the other side, so all that penetrated the outer surface was the tooth’s tip, but as she watched in bewilderment, it thickened and protruded further into the water. Almost as though it had known where her hand was. Then it divided, split by an unseen axe, and now two pale fingers gripped the hull.
Coral. So close and through her mask, she saw the minute pockmarks in the white surface. But coral didn’t grow that fast, didn’t grow on wood—
Slowly but inexorably more branches of coral threaded their way through the algae and barnacles. When she glanced down she saw coral crawl over the ship’s keel, branching as it did so, like swollen veins filled with snow instead of blood.
Another point of coral jutted into her other palm and she snatched it away from the hull, then realized she’d forgotten about breathing. Her chest was hot and tight, and she scissor-kicked hard to drive herself up.
Her head broke the surface and she sucked in air. She wasn’t sure what was happening to the hull, but it couldn’t be anything safe and Darok had to know before the rot spread any further. She’d surfaced off the port bow, so she kicked out again to swim to a mooring rope.
A hand closed tightly around her ankle and yanked her down.
She was barely able to clamp her mouth shut before the waves closed over her head. Bubbles streamed up before her eyes, obscuring her vision, but she pulled her knife from its sheath as the grip on her ankle loosened. Before she could see who was in the water with her, another hand closed around her throat and shoved her hard against the ship’s hull.
Shock and impact slammed the rest of the air out of her lungs. But her attacker was in front of her, a man dressed in rags, his forehead speckled with pallid growths of coral. In her last few seconds of lucidity, before the urge to breathe took over, she drove the knife into his shoulder.
The blade grated on more coral and lodged there. He rammed his forehead into her mask.
She saw it coming—the only advantage of being under water was that he moved fractionally slower than he would have on land—and her eyes shut. The glass broke. Splinters jabbed into her skin, though the pain was nothing compared to the growing heat in her lungs. She had to breathe, but the hand around her throat was like a steel vise, and she couldn’t see any longer. Her jaws ached from the effort of holding them shut against the clawing fire that surged up from her chest.
The shark. She had to call it, except she couldn’t control her terror. Need to breathe—call it or you’ll die—breathe—
The man kicked hard and rose, dragging her with him. She gulped water along the way and reflexes took over, making her cough and gasp violently, but they broke the surface in the next moment and she took in air instead. She couldn’t struggle and could barely see. The only thing that mattered was breathing, though in the back of her mind a voice whispered that it could just be a vicious game the man was playing—half-drowning her, reviving her, and repeating the torture for reasons of his own. The shark, now!
Before she could call it, he spun her around and hooked his arm around her, trapping her throat in the crook of his elbow. She could breathe, but her body was clamped so closely against him that she felt disoriented—his back was pressed to hers, which bent his arm around her neck at an angle that should have dislocated it. Straining the tendons in her neck to the breaking point, she craned her head just enough to bite deep into his arm.
Her teeth grated painfully against coral and a bitter slime filled her mouth. Her head reared back involuntarily and she spat, gagging on the taste. The man didn’t seem to notice. His other arm moved steadily as he swam, towing her away from Daystrider.
She couldn’t call the shark now. Even if it was alive and if she wanted to risk it further against something that wasn’t even human, she was held so tightly against the coral-creature’s back that the shark might inadvertently bite her if it attacked. She managed to get her good arm up and tore the useless mask away from her face—having jagged points of broken glass so close to her eyes wasn’t helping calm her.
The coral-creature swam steadily, but a shout rang out over the splash of water and her own harsh panting breaths. Her eyelids blinked open, careless of splinters. A trickle of blood ran down past her right eye, warm as a tear, but in the bright sunlight she saw the men crowd at the rail as they noticed her.
She couldn’t make Darok out among them, but it didn’t matter. The coral-creature was already a dozen or more yards away, swimming harder to put more distance between them and the shi
p, throwing up spray that glittered in the light. Yerena drew in a breath and let it out.
“The hull!” she screamed as loudly as she could.
The coral-creature reacted at once. The arm around her neck tightened, and that time she knew it would not relax at the last moment. She heard herself make ugly gurgling sounds as red blotches appeared before her eyes. They spread wider to eclipse the sun and darkened into black.
“Well, Captain,” Jash Morender called out. “The Voice of the Unity saved a dozen lives. Do you have the strength to do the same, now that you see I hold true to my word?”
Darok grimaced. The woman made dirty fighters in Denalay look like the most chivalrous of men in comparison. He looked over to where Alyster was closely inspecting the Lastlander prisoners as each of them climbed aboard, one at a time, though he had a feeling they were all what they appeared to be. Jash Morender didn’t seem like the kind of person who had to resort to playing the same trick twice.
“I’ll sweeten the offer, Captain,” she went on. The galleys hadn’t moved, but Lady Lisabe hadn’t appeared either, after she had been taken on board Dreadnaught. “Turn yourself over and we’ll allow your crew to leave—in your ship. Unharassed all the way back out of our waters. You have my word. I’ll release the rest of my prisoners before you row over, if you wish, as a sign of good faith. Will you save them, Captain? Will you send your crew safely home or will you condemn them to die?”
Beside Darok, Kaneth Strave had been watching the galleys through the spyglass, but at Jash’s words he lowered it. “Sir…”
The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) Page 22