The stench of the water around the ship was strong enough to penetrate its exhaustion, but it felt no impulse to leave. Dimly, it realized that the effluvium of the ship—and the shelter of the bay—blocked it from what it had sensed in the ocean, the leviathan which had risen from the depths. It could stay where it was, and there seemed to be nothing more to do.
Vibrations eddied out next to the ship, solid mass colliding with solid mass and transmitting tremors through the water. The shark paid no attention, but the next scent it caught was familiar enough to rouse a flicker of interest. It had smelled that blood before.
Its huge triangular head turned in that direction. Water sluiced through its gills and lapped into its nostrils. It was confused, because it recognized the faint trace of blood. That belonged to the alien-yet-familiar presence which had always been with it so far, its hunting partner, and yet there was nothing of her warm, steady presence in its mind.
Splashes of rapid swimming thrummed through the water, and were followed by sounds the shark didn’t recognize, but which spoke of panic. Unsure of what to do, it swam forward, then turned back. Normally it feared nothing and would have swum past the ship to investigate what was happening, but it knew how battered and worn down it was. And how alone.
No, not completely alone. Deep in the base of its brain, a warning sounded. Millions of years into the past, a common ancestor had given rise to two different species, and those in their turn had bred and diverged to the point where they were more different than similar. The shark’s forebears had avoided any waters where the far more powerful predators hunted, and although nearly all of the giants had died out, its instincts were still strong.
And also growing strong was the smell, the scent of a creature that outstripped the shark in length and weighed five times what it did.
The megalodon was coming.
“What’s the second reason?” Quenlin said when she didn’t reply.
Lisabe felt all of her forty-nine years, weary and drained, but she made a last effort. Quenlin wasn’t just her son, he was a brilliant man, so why couldn’t he see the sense in her position?
“Do you really think we’ll be better off, in the long run, by giving a horde of pirates what they want?” she said.
“To be honest, Mother, I don’t care. I had self-denial for breakfast and propaganda for dinner every day in Whetstone. Always placing the land and the Unity first, when it was clear the land would just use me until there was nothing left to be used. As for the Unity?” He chuckled, and there was nothing amused about the sound. “So I’ve had enough of that. What’s your second reason?”
The Council had been divided when Lisabe had explained what she intended to do. The general consensus was that her son’s shame was not hers, and she was respected enough that a Voice who hoped to ascend to her position had tried to dissuade her.
On the other hand, no one except themselves could look upon the Unity and live. Which meant Quenlin had to be dealt with, but given that he had fled to the Farflung Provinces, the expense of hiring an assassin to travel the distance and run so many risks would be prohibitive—assuming a willing assassin could be found. “However, no one would suspect one of us,” Lisabe pointed out. “And someone of my position would merit a substantial escort.”
Thankfully the matter of Lastland provided a plausible reason one ship would be ordered to sail into the Iron Ocean. Lisabe was grateful she’d had the chance to save half of the prisoners, but even if she had only bought them a little more time before the end, they were not as important as the duty she had to carry out.
It has to be me. She had brought him into the world, and bitter though her duty was, the prospect of anyone else trying to hurt her son was unbearable. Seeing him and listening to him lodged a hot rock in her chest, but she’d had months to reconcile herself to her task.
No, what gave her pause was his mention of a megalodon. If she killed him, might it go mad as its only restraint snapped? Ships weren’t natural prey for such leviathans any more than sparrows were normal fare on people’s tables, but could she be certain it would return to its proper place after there was no one calling it?
Whether she was or not, though, she had to kill him. The Council had passed judgment, she’d come too far to change her mind, and in Turean hands she was going to die anyway. She had to take her son and his crime with her.
She started to answer his question and knew at once she’d waited too long while she considered the consequences. A frown formed on his handsome face, and she could almost see the suspicion growing behind his eyes.
Her heart beat like the thrashing of a bird’s wings against the cage of her ribs.
“I had to see you.” Only a lifetime of service as a Voice of the Unity enabled her to say that gently and steadily. “To ask your forgiveness.” She rose with as much grace as she could muster, robes whispering together like skeleton leaves on the wind, and took a step towards him.
Quenlin’s head turned slightly, as though she was no longer in focus in his vision, and his lips parted. He suspects but he’s not sure how. She wore no jewelry, which ruled out a convenient spike-ring, and she had been searched before Captain Morender would give her the courtesy of a private meeting. Turean hands groping inside her sleeves, patting her at the small of her back, feeling between her breasts. Just remembering it disgusted her, but they hadn’t found the single knife she carried.
She sank to a sitting position before Quenlin, knees bent and legs folded beneath her at an angle. Her left foot was under her but the right extended beyond her body. Seated, he could not have flinched away if he had wanted to, but his feet and elbows edged as far back as was possible and unease showed on his face. A Turean stepped forward, obviously realizing how unusual it was for a Voice of the Unity to kneel to a condemned traitor.
“Mother,” Quenlin began, “what are you—”
Lisabe kicked off her right shoe. Clear strands of silk bound the knife to the sole of her foot, and they broke as she yanked the blade free. The knife had no real hilt, only a strip of rough leather wrapped around its broad end—she’d limped a little but the Tureans hadn’t bothered to investigate her feet—and the blade was crusted with cobramilk. She swung it in a short hard slash at Quenlin’s leg.
He was faster. As her fingers closed on the blade, he threw himself back. His chair rocked, his center of gravity shifted, and the chair toppled away from her. His legs flew up from the floor and the knife missed him.
The Turean in her direct line of sight yelled for help—obviously he’d seen the blade—but the one behind her ran forward. She didn’t need to hear his boots to feel the thump of them against the floorboards. Quenlin’s chair crashed down as she turned and threw herself flat on her stomach. The Turean’s cutlass sheared through the air where her head had been, and before he could strike again, she drove her blade into the meat of his calf.
He shrieked and pulled away, much to Lisabe’s relief, since with her hands tied she didn’t have much leverage to free the blade on her own. Ignoring the blood, she staggered to her feet. Quenlin had rolled away from the fallen chair and pushed himself up on his hands and knees, shaking his head. The other Turean reached behind his shoulder and drew an axe, but he stayed at the door. Lisabe started towards Quenlin.
He raised his head, saw her and grabbed the back of the fallen chair. If he had thrown it at her, it would have knocked her sprawling but, dazed from the fall, he swung it instead. The chair’s legs smacked hard into her shins and she lost her balance. She fell forward onto Quenlin, stabbing down blindly, but he caught her wrists in one hand, fingers digging into the knot of ropes. The blade halted inches from his face, speckling him with blood.
Lisabe struggled to bring her knife down, with no success. Abruptly she stopped doing so, shifted her weight to an elbow braced against Quenlin’s shoulder and brought her right leg up. He twisted away instinctively to avoid her knee and his hold on her wrists slipped.
A shadow fell across her an
d she looked up to see the Turean with the axe—the axe raised high over her head.
The axe came down.
Quenlin rolled away, fighting an urge to vomit. He wasn’t going to be weak in front of the Tureans, wasn’t going to show them any vulnerability.
He retched anyway. The shrieks of the injured Turean had faded into sobbing gasps, and all Quenlin could think was how easily that could have been him. Spots of the man’s blood were drying on his face. He’d always expected it would be Seawatch which sent an assassin after him, not the Council and not his own mother. She had come to murder him and she had nearly succeeded. His stomach heaved again.
“What the…” Jash said.
Quenlin hadn’t heard her come in. He straightened up and turned, bile dribbling down his chin. Jash saw that, and a smile spread across her face like a widening cut as she strode in. She turned his mother’s body over with a booted foot, one of her twin shortswords held drawn and ready as she did so.
He didn’t want to look at his mother, or what remained of her. He glanced at Leff instead, only to regret that.
“She had a knife, Captain.” Wurane wrenched his axe free with an effort. “Under her—”
“You fools,” Jash said quietly, coldly, and at the sound of her voice, Leff’s moans of pain stopped. “You goddamned fools.”
Sweat trickled down the back of Quenlin’s neck, and he touched the megalodon’s consciousness, urging the beast onward. That time, he didn’t bother walling his emotions off. Let it sense his desperation and urgency; let it strike the Turean flotilla before Jash decided to kill him too. Judging by her grin, he’d be safer in the water.
“The master of that slaveship says his hold is full of hellfire,” Jash went on, each word slashing like a whip. “I think he’s lying but I have to be sure. I would have gotten the truth out of this whore one way or another. How will I do that now?”
In the silence, Leff’s head and heels made staccato thuds against the floorboards as the onset of convulsions shook him. No one else moved and Jash slid her sword back into its scabbard. “Do what you like with him, Wurane. Maybe Arv—maybe Caldiss can take the leg off.”
Quenlin would not have bothered, because the venom would have reached every part of Leff’s body long before then. He was already dying, his face swollen and fingertips turning blue.
“Captain.” The coralhost spoke from outside the cabin.
Jash turned and the smile vanished. Quenlin breathed again. He wiped his mouth dry as she left the cabin, and leaned sideways to look out, to make certain she had gone. The limp body in the coralhost’s arms made him forget about everything that had just happened, at least for a moment.
“The eye.” The coralhost stared down at her. “Just like that one’s.”
“Well done,” Jash said. “I’ll question her. Bring her to my cabin.”
Chapter Twelve
A Star to Steer Her By
Darok took the steps topside at a run and reached the deck breathless, grasping a ratline for balance. What now? He couldn’t have shouted an order to abandon ship if he had wanted to, but it was the only choice left, because he couldn’t allow his men to drown at their posts when the ship fell apart around them.
When she does. But she was in one piece so far and he didn’t plan to go down so easily either.
“Captain?” Alyster called out from across the deck. Darok heard the carpenters clambering up topside and knew the looks on their faces would tell the story—if anyone was looking in their direction.
“All speed ahead,” he said.
“Aye, sir.” There was a deeply skeptical look in Alyster’s eyes, but he shouted the order nevertheless and oars dug into the water.
“Sails down.” Darok let go of the ratline, eyes fixed on the galleys ahead, but Yerena had disappeared while he had been belowdecks. Was she even alive? He wished her shark would go ahead of Daystrider as it had done in the strait, a sign that she was with them. “Ready the catapult!”
“Aye, sir!” That was more enthusiastic; the men had been without a fight for too long, and they were still confident in him.
He pushed through the press and came closer until only Alyster was in earshot, then lowered his voice. “The Lastlanders—the women, at least—and those of our men who are wounded. Have boats made ready for them and prepare the remaining boats for us. Understand?”
Alyster breathed out, a sound like a candle flame extinguishing in a wind. “The hull?”
“What hull?” Darok said bitterly, and went past him to the prow.
The warship’s figurehead, the armored maiden holding up the sun, turned in the direction of the galleys. The hot sun beat down, striking gleams from polished brass and iron, and belowdecks a drum beat as well. Oars whipped the water.
“Battle speed,” Darok said. Both galleys ran up red pennants like slashes through the sky, signals to the rest of their flotilla that battle had begun. Their decks were crawling, swarming, chaotic. Between them, the boat crammed with half of the Lastlander prisoners seemed to be unnoticed. Some of those prisoners tore at the mooring ropes holding the boat to the galleys, while a few others leaped overboard. Darok wasn’t sure which of them caught the Tureans’ attention, but a catapult on Dreadnaught spun on rollers. The boulder in its cup glittered fiercely in the sun.
No, he thought, but it was already too late. The catapult’s firing arm swept up. Screams from the boat ended in a heavy splash and the liquid crunch of wood and bone being pulped simultaneously.
If his crew had needed anything further to spur them on, that would have done it. A roar rose up and the oars flashed through the waves. Though within a few seconds Darok knew they would never be able to ram the galleys. White wedges of foam streamed from either side of the prow, but Daystrider was nowhere close to battle speed. The twisted hands of coral sprouting from her hull grasped the water, slowing her down.
The catapults on the galleys let fly.
Jash Morender didn’t fear meeting any man or ship in battle, but she needed a respite, a pause to think. She felt as she had done when she’d been a new shipshand on the galley Fortune, the first time she’d been caught in the teeth of a storm. Soaked and trembling, she stood on the stern with a knotted rope abrading her palms. We can’t be traveling that fast, she thought, and moments later a man was swept off the deck past her.
She felt the same way now. Everything moved so fast that she was afraid, deep down, of losing sight of details which would matter later. The coralhost had secretly infected Daystrider’s hull, which would sink the warship whether or not its hold bulged with hellfire, but that damned Seawatch thrall had warned them. Jash had to assume the warship’s captain had heard the warning and would act on it. The Voice of the Unity might have set at least one of her fears at ease, but the Voice of the Unity was so much blood-soaked silk.
On top of all that, the other damned Seawatch thrall had supposedly summoned a greatshark. Jash wasn’t sure what to make of the threat, partly because she wouldn’t have trusted Quenlin to tell her if it was raining, and partly because she wasn’t sure what exactly a greatshark was. He’d made it sound as though he was raising the goddess of the sea herself, and unease gripped her belly.
The woman could tell her more. Jash gave command of the deck to her first mate, Parras, and led the coralhost to her cabin. The woman’s body was clasped in wet bare arms, her head lolling, but she started to revive as Jash opened the door. She pushed at the coralhost’s body with a gloved hand.
The coralhost’s body oozed where it touched her, Jash realized with distaste. The woman’s thick leathers had rasped away the coralhost’s skin, and the flesh beneath was bluish-grey, weeping a translucent fluid. Jash grimaced and pulled a chair forward.
“Put her in that,” she said.
The coralhost obeyed, but rather than leaving the room it stared down at the woman. “This is nearly ripe for budding.” It raised a hand to its head, where the scalp wore only a white crown. “Another host will be needed
soon.”
“You’ll have one.” Jash wouldn’t have sacrificed Turean lives to something so grotesque, but she could spare a Denalait. Though the prospect of more coralhosts worried her more than she dared to show. She dreaded the thought of it—them—turning against her someday.
Sometimes she wondered if she would ever have allies she could trust.
Still, the coralhost was useful as long as it did what it was told. “Stay if you like, and hold her.”
Hands clamped down on the woman’s shoulders, and she gasped. Her eyes were open, the left one enclosed in a dark sail-shape. I could give you another black eye to match that, Jash thought, and did.
The woman’s head rocked back against the coralhost’s unyielding frame. The blow had been so hard that Jash’s own fist stung, and the woman looked half-dazed. Jash gripped a handful of wet hair and pulled the woman’s head up again. She started to struggle, and the coralhost’s hands moved down, closing on her upper arms like steel bands.
“Is there hellfire in the hold of that warship?” Jash said.
“I don’t know.”
The next blow was a backhand that snapped the woman’s head to one side, despite Jash’s tight hold on her hair. Blood trickled from a corner of her mouth, but when she answered, her flat cold tone was unchanged.
“I don’t know.” She didn’t raise her voice or lower it in fear either, and the indifference reminded Jash of Nion Vates. “Captain Juell didn’t permit me to enter the hold.”
Jash stared at her. Was that true? No way to be certain, of course. If only she could have questioned both the Voice of the Unity and this woman, using the words of one to confirm what the other said. The woman looked back steadily, unblinking as a fish.
The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) Page 24