Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One

by Alisha Klapheke

  “Don’t worry about it,” I growled out, rubbing my toenail with a thumb. “I love being stepped on.”

  The clink of silver coins and the din of gossip bounced off the domed ceilings and sloping walls, and my sarcasm was lost to the noise.

  A flatbread seller’s tray flavored the air with nutty cardamom and cinnamon. My stomach roared, and I ignored the merchants’ wives idly chatting and downing golden dumplings like every bite didn’t cost what I made in two moons.

  When I finally neared the front, Old Zayn shuffled in the door, a hand on his scanty beard and his gaze zeroing in on me. He lifted his shaggy brows and waved. As usual, he’d remembered something, and judging from the gleam of crazy in his sweet, old eyes, it was a doozy of a something.

  But I didn’t have the sun for that. I needed to get out of here before my landlord found me and decided I needed one less finger. Giving Old Zayn an indulgent smile, I waved back and held up my index finger, meaning I’d talk in a bit.

  My caste bells jingled, and the merchants’ wives sneered.

  Putting a hand over my bells to quiet them, I imagined myself as kaptan of the amir’s gloriously enormous, black-sailed ship, and gave the snooty crowd a pirate’s grin.

  Someday. Somehow.

  But I had to laugh at myself. A girl, two steps from starving, daydreaming about running the town leader’s ship? I was crazier than Old Zayn.

  Berker Deniz, a middle-caste ship kaptan with as much charm as a bleeding blister, crossed the tasseled rugs. His feet kicked the hem of his silk tunic and a weasel’s smile cut across his mouth. He didn’t make eye contact, but headed for me like a dog on a scent.

  “Move back, low-caste.” In the mess of people, he tried to step in front of me. It was his right to do so, by law.

  An itch I could never scratch started up under my skin. Considering I’d helped free his barge from the rocks last moon, he should’ve let me keep my place. I pretended not to see him. From the corner of my eye, I watched his face flush. It made him even uglier.

  I was glad for my darker coloring, a blend of every blood that had lived in Jakobden and even across the Pass. When I blushed, no one noticed.

  “You’re just like your mother was,” he said. “No honor.”

  I whipped my face to his. “What do you know about my mother?”

  He grabbed my arm and pulled me back, taking my place in line. The merchants’ wives eyed me, their ten bells shining from their sashes, marking them as middle-caste. One whispered something to the other, and my cheeks burned as I jerked away and settled for the spot behind him.

  “Go ahead and argue,” Berker hissed. “I’d love the officials here to order you to kiss my feet in apology.”

  Breathe. Breathe. I wanted nothing more than to throttle the beast and force him to kiss my flying fist. “I’ll move up someday and people like you will be sorry,” I whispered.

  He laughed under his breath. “I saw you and that high-caste boy together at the docks last night.”

  I sucked a breath as Calev’s face blinked through my mind.

  Berker snorted, glancing over his shoulder. “Just as I suspected. You lust after him.”

  My face was hot as coals. “He is not…”

  The room grew hazy and I grasped for Berker’s sleeve to stay upright. Lack of food was making me lightheaded. Berker’s mouth dropped open, then twisted into a grimace worthy of his sliminess as he stared at my fingers on his fine tunic.

  “I scout port locations for Calev’s people,” I said, letting go quickly. “That’s all. My twice great-grandmother was Old Farm.”

  “Interesting you would bring up an Outcast as part of your argument.”

  How did he even know that?

  I mean it was public record, but still. Besides Avi and me, who cared that a long ago woman had an affair with one of the amir’s house slaves and was Outcasted. How much did Berker know? Did he also know she lost her children to Quarry Isle, where her bloodline slaved until Father proved his worth at a testing—alongside Mother—and that Old Zayn paid for their rise to low-caste?

  Why did it seem like Berker was always at my back, biting at my heels? For a grown man, nearly as old as my father would’ve been if he were still alive, he acted like an overgrown and seriously annoying puppy. A puppy that could ruin my life.

  “Calev isn’t always visiting me by the docks,” I said. “His father sends him to Old Zayn to learn weather. We aren’t doing anything taboo.”

  Berker dusted his striped sleeve and sea salt fluttered to the floor. “Not yet.”

  He was referring to our fast-approaching coming of age. “We’re only associates.”

  “Well, it didn’t appear that way when I saw you. Sometimes I wonder if you low-caste scrappers almost want to be Outcasted.”

  Our local ruler, Amir Mamluk, claimed keeping upper-caste bloodlines strong—making certain only highs bred with highs and so on—kept the right people in decision-making positions in Jakobden and the surrounding area.

  A view worth its weight in dung.

  “Sounds like you know a lot about my low-caste mother. How is that, when you’ve always been a middle-caste barge kaptan?”

  “Your parents and I were on the slave island together.”

  The breath went out of me. My expired license crumpled in my fingers, the wax seal biting my palm. I knew Old Zayn had taken my parents from the island to apprentice on his boat, but that was about all. I’d never heard about Quarry Isle and Berker. My parents had mostly kept their pasts to themselves.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your mother was a liar with no honor.”

  My hands shook.

  “You’re just like her,” he said. “Being dishonorable will get you nowhere.”

  My mouth popped open.

  Maybe this was why he made sure to push in front of me and gossip about me to his fellow middle-caste kaptans. He’d known and hated my mother for some invented reason. My teeth ached from clenching my jaw. No way he was right about my mother. He was the liar.

  “You must earn your way to the top, like me,” he said.

  “Last time I checked, middle-caste wasn’t the top.”

  “I nearly forgot,” he said. “Didn’t you once run a shipment for that new grain farmer on the headlands?”

  “That’s my biggest run each moon.”

  “My apologies. I’ll be running his goods from now on. He had a bumper crop and needs more than your little raft.”

  My knuckles pressed against my skin as I fisted my hands. Raft? That had been my parents’ boat and it was the cleverest craft out there. A lot of good it did me if I didn’t have enough clients.

  The license official raised a palm to Berker. “Good day, kaptan. We have important matters to discuss.”

  Before joining the official, Berker hissed, “Remember where you belong, Kinneret Raza.” He frowned at the bag of salt hanging from my sash, beside my dagger. “Salt Witch.”

  Praying and giving salt to the sea was an older practice than even the amir and her fighters’ Holy Fire prayers. Why was one perfectly fine—expected even—and the other taboo? The only big difference was they used fire to develop new ideas and I used salt to alter current and wind patterns. It wasn’t cheating anymore than other prayers.

  “I am here to pay for the removal of a bell,” Berker said to the official. He held a handful of silver coins high and spoke loud enough for the world to hear. “Please consider my request.”

  I made a gagging noise. I couldn’t believe Berker was moving closer to the top. If he made it to high-caste, he could buy and sell land, take the first fruits from every harvest, and have an even better view as he looked down his squid nose at me. But surely that would take him an eternity. That was a lot of silver.

  The license official smiled, and with a lot of extra hand-waving, removed a bell from Berker’s pale orange sash.

  Berker retrieved two more handfuls of coins from his bag. “I would like to remove fo
ur more bells. Please consider my request.”

  It was like the wind had dropped to nothing on a busy shipping day. I could barely breathe. I certainly couldn’t move.

  The license official went to his work and everyone, except me, stomped their feet in praise.

  Berker now wore five bells on the shoulders of his tunic. He was high-caste.

  The license official raised his rough voice. “I have the distinct honor of announcing that as of today, Berker Deniz is the new kaptan of Amir Mamluk’s ship!”

  My legs became seaweed, and I caught the wall to keep from falling.

  All around me, congratulations rose toward the painted ceiling. Sandals pounded the floor tiles.

  A mean laugh snapped from my lips. I shook my head, picturing the ship’s tall sides and its sails big as the night sky. Fire burned through me. My gaze lit on the fine linen and silk of everyone’s sashes and the deep blues and blacks of their tunics. Their sandals without holes and fleshed out stomachs and limbs.

  They didn’t see the injustice, because they didn’t want to.

  I shook, my teeth grinding, and the bells of my sash jingling. My dreams were broken, cracked at mid-mast and beyond repair.

  Words spilled out of me. “The lack of bells doesn’t make someone a good kaptan. He may be high-caste, but he’s a high-caste idiot!”

  All heads turned, and before I could worry about what I’d done, the guards rushed forward and shackled my arms with their iron-strong grips.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Let me go.” I tried to peel their fingers off as the room erupted into hissing and whispers.

  “Stop struggling, low-caste,” the guard on my right said as they dragged me toward the door. “Don’t want to work off all the tasty bits. Our prison rats are sadly underfed.”

  Before I could make a colorful remark about feeding his generous backside to the vermin instead, Old Zayn scurried over.

  “Please, let me take her,” he said in a clear voice. Everyone froze, then looked from him to the license official. “She’s not been right since her parents’ death. Neither her nor her sibling.”

  People called Old Zayn mad. He might’ve been. But I was fine with his madness—it was always tempered with kindness and a flood of childhood memories. I was especially fine with his madness if it rescued me from this mess.

  “They died over five years ago,” Berker snapped.

  I squeezed my hands tight.

  “Have mercy.” Zayn bowed awkwardly. “I’ll make certain she doesn’t speak out again.”

  The official frowned. I was going to rot in a cell.

  “Please,” Zayn pleaded. “It’s harvest. Time of plenty. Be merciful.” He made the sign of the Fire on his forehead.

  “Fine then.” The official ran fingers over his beard, the Old Farm representative standing beside him watching everything. “But if she causes trouble, the amir will hear of it, and her life and yours will be in Amir Mamluk’s hands.”

  While I waited by the door, Old Zayn secured my updated sailing papers. Seas, I had Calev’s kind of luck today, catching Old Zayn in one of his lucent moments right when I needed him. The old friend ambled over, thrust the documents into my sash, and pulled me into a corner. His wide tunic sleeves almost covered his raisin hands.

  “Thank you, Zayn.” It wasn’t enough, but it was all I had. He’d risked his own freedom to keep me out of trouble.

  A smile ghosted over his whiskered face. “You’re like your mother, but ten times worse. You’ll never settle for a small life, will you?”

  More about my mother. My heart gave my ribs a nudge at the memory of her bright eyes and strong voice, but I didn’t have the sun for this. I had to go to that farmer and get back his business.

  “I need to—”

  “Wait,” he said, looking at the line of people past the elephant tusk.

  No one was peering at me anymore. They’d gone back to their lives. Berker had disappeared.

  “Ayarazi exists,” Zayn whispered.

  The strange word echoed through me like a song I’d forgotten.

  “That’s a children’s story.” I touched his arm gently. “Mother and Father used to tell me about it. The lost island of silver is filled with pretty horses and green grass and a mist that’ll freeze your toes off if you don’t clean your dinner plate and wash behind your ears. It’s a myth; a sweet, exciting one, but a myth just the same. Now, may I walk you home?”

  His eyes flashed. Intelligence lived in their cloudy depths.

  And maybe a dash of anger.

  “Did I seem out of my wits in there?” He jerked a thumb toward the license room.

  “No,” I admitted. “But you come and go…”

  A seed of maybe sprouted in my mind. Ayarazi—moon land was what the amir’s fighting sailors called the lost island of silver—didn’t exist, but maybe he knew of another island, a place I might sail to and find silver or copper coins in ship wreckage or something of the sort.

  “I made a promise to your parents,” he said.

  “What?” This was the first I’d heard of this.

  “I promised I’d watch out for you. You’re set on rising above your status,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

  My gaze flew to his face, and I imagined Calev’s shining eyes, his jet hair, his hands. “More than anything.”

  He nodded. “And you want more for your sister and that dwarf you pity…”

  “Pity? Oron—the best sailor I’ve seen and I’ve seen a load—has saved my life and Avi’s about a thousand times. But go ahead and pity him.” I could picture him, tying back his thick locks of purposefully tangled hair and looking up at me with his face of scars and sarcasm. “Oron loves silks. Adores northern ice wine. But pity? Pity is his absolute favorite.”

  “Yes,” the old man said, smiling, misunderstanding me completely, going on like I’d said nothing at all. “I’ve watched you your whole life. With your fire, if you found riches, you’d put them to good use. Maybe you’d even marry well, marry him, and cease my worrying about you two. Outcasting is shameful. Shameful. One of the worst things the Empire encourages, in my opinion. As if your blood changes when you move up or down. Stupid! I should know…you two are meant for one another…remind me of your mother and father…”

  My throat went dry. “Zayn. Please. Focus. What are you trying to tell me?”

  He grinned. “My greedy, foolish cousin died. He never found the map. But you could. Now that he’s dead and won’t be coming after you with a rusty yatagan.” He tapped the sore side of my head with a dirty finger that smelled like goat. “Smart girl.”

  “Zayn. Out with it. What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a story in my family. And in it hides the clue to finding the lost island of silver.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Zayn’s half-rock, half-mud home was a tumble of rusted fishing hooks, line weights like lead bags, and nets. The place smelled of charcoal and dirt. A hot breeze poured through the window where Calev often stood with Zayn, working on learning the weather’s hints.

  A moon after Zayn warned Old Farm of a hard frost and saved the lemon harvest, Calev’s father sent the man a crate of the fruits, carried by his eldest son. Ever since, Calev visited regularly to work on reading the sky and earth for crop-killing surprises. I loved the arrangement because Old Zayn’s hut wasn’t too far from the dock.

  Beside the window, maps smothered a spindly table. Some of the maps were drawn on yellow parchment, others on wrinkled paper, and more still scratched onto wide pieces of tree bark. Layouts of the sea, the borders of our town, and the swathe of rich land where Calev’s people farmed along the southern edge of the jagged coast.

  “What is the clue, Zayn? I don’t have all day to gossip with you. Avi is waiting. You know how she gets.” She was fourteen going on forty-five. Oron better have roused his lazy self to help her with the oil.

  He made a tutting noise. “Sit. This is nothing that can be rushed.”

&nb
sp; A dingy hammock swung over the dirt floor. There was no evidence that this man was formerly high-caste. No silken tunics left over or fine furnishings. The only clue that he once scribed for the amir was the quill and ink pot sitting on the maps.

  He gestured to a stool near the table and I took it, hoping I wasn’t wasting sun being here.

  Zayn ran a hand under his nose. “My cousin searched for the map every day. Every day, he returned to his home empty-handed. You remember seeing him once. I’m sure. A bald man, raging into and out of here. He said he’d murder you in your sleep if I told you.”

  “Hold on. What map? You have to explain this all to me.” He had to be cracked. Ayarazi? It couldn’t be real. He hadn’t had family living here with him in a long while. But that’s how his mind was, in and out, with days disappearing and reappearing. I did remember the cousin though.

  “My ancestor was a scribe for the Invaders.”

  I blinked. “That was over three hundred years ago.”

  “He learned the Invaders knew the lost island of silver’s location.”

  The Invaders hadn’t attacked Jakobden in generations. They were from the far West and mainly ravaged the northern climes and the Empire’s outskirts on that side of the world.

  “He recorded clues,” Zayn said, “and hid them in a wine jug that sank in a wreck along with my ancestors’ employers.”

  “This…this is madness.” I pinched at one of the bells on my sash, my foot bouncing. I needed to leave, to get on with my day. This was nothing more than daydreaming.

  “Treasure hunting is not always so good for a soul. Dangerous work.” Zayn picked a clod of dirt from the map and chewed his lip, making his beard stick out on his chin. “I don’t have it in me to search. Takes a certain drive.” He bumped a knuckle under my chin. “You have it, Kinneret. Inside you.”

  I touched my bag of salt for magic and ran a finger over the fraying, leather ties.

  I did have that desire, that drive Zayn spoke of. I felt it, hot and unrelenting, in my veins, my heart, my head. I met his gaze.