“We need to squeeze into the hull.” Feet first, Oron lowered himself through the square opening.
“We won’t all fit in there.” I raised my gaze to the sky.
“I told you we needed an on-deck compartment for ropes and water,” Oron called out of the space. “If you’d let me buy the wood to build one, you could’ve tucked me in there. Being lesser in stature might be an advantage. Who knows? In one hundred years, we small people might be the only ones left.”
A look dark as the Expanse’s greatest depths crossed over Calev’s face. “Let Kinneret in there first, coward.”
I looked at Calev’s hands as he stood beside me. “You’re trembling too,” I said. “I wouldn’t cast labels around so easily.”
“Courage isn’t not being afraid,” Calev said. “It’s standing and fighting through your fear. Protecting those you love.” His eyes softened. “Not that I have to tell you.”
My heart skittered through three quick beats, and I looked away.
“I’ll go down if I think it’s necessary,” I called out to Oron. “Someone has to get us home.”
Whispering the sea’s words over and over again under my breath, I worked with the magic to veer and tug, push and pull our craft toward Tall Man, toward home. Calev stayed by my side. The lantern’s sunset light flickered over his cheekbones and his forearms. He looked made of flame.
Stars pierced the velvet sky. The moon watched, its candle-white glow melting onto the sea. Eventually, Oron climbed out of the hull. Calev stared at him, eyes slitted.
“Oron, will you see to the prow?” I asked. The tiller vibrated against my hand, a current fighting our direction. “I want your eyes on the waters.”
Rubbing his small hands together, Oron nodded but didn’t exactly hurry to his post.
“In case you decide to condemn me for cowardice, you should know I witnessed a wraith Infusing an entire full ship’s crew,” Oron said to Calev. “And yes, I can feel that scornful glare through the tunic on my back.”
“What happened?” Calev asked.
The sail billowed in a gust and the ropes pulled against the blocks. The pulleys knocked against the mast like hammers.
Staring out at the sky, Oron crossed his arms over his chest. “A flock of nine came.”
“Nine wraiths?”
Nodding, Oron said, “They spun around the vessel like the skin of the moon had been peeled away and tossed into the wind. The emotions whisked over me though I was a good league away on another boat. Rage, the desire to inflict control...it was...” He bent his head. “When the wraiths left, I watched their Infusion lights leave the sailors’ mouths and leak back into the sky. We boarded their ship—I rode with a fishing crew then—there was nothing left alive. Men had hung themselves from the boom, their bodies swaying with the movement of the sea, their tongues swollen, eyes popped clean out. Blood covered the decking. I slipped in it. Drew up against a pile of men who’d either fallen on their own yatagans or been murdered by their Infused crew mates.”
He ran a hand over the fat tangles of his hair.
“So when I go to the hull, you’d be wise to follow. We should all squeeze in there like happy sardines.”
The whooshing sound returned.
Calev looked to me. Oron swore.
Another wraith.
The whispering began. Hissing, sighing, moaning in my ears.
I covered my head with my hands and the remainder of the salt I’d used rained onto my face and hair.
Oron was already back in the cabin. Calev grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the tiny space. We’d never fit. Besides, someone had to make sure the lantern didn’t fall over or go out. If it did, the wraiths would swamp us and cover us in their whitewashed shadows—their way of possessing mind and body—and it’d all be over. We either had to be under the shadow of a solid roof in the hull or swamped in the Wraith Lantern’s light.
I snatched the lantern and crawled into the hull behind Calev. Turning, he pulled my back against his stomach and wrapped his arm around me to help me hold the lantern up. His fingers lay on mine, his hips pressing into me. Both of us were shaking against one another as the sounds increased. Oron had to be suffocating behind us. The air was hot and moist with our breath. Our feet stirred up the pungent scent of old lemons and last year’s barley, remnants of the shipments we’d made over our lifetimes.
We lifted the lantern as the wraith came screaming toward us. The light spun a web of colors over my forearms, but this creature was strong and some of its power crept under and over the flickering orange and silver. Emotions flooded my mind, rushing in like boiling waves, filling in every crack of my thoughts, my heart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I tried to scream as Calev’s hand fell from the lantern. He yelled, but it sounded far, far away.
Anger. So much anger, burning, burning, burning in my veins, my hands, my head. Wild sadness.
Then I was falling, and the sea was a gaping hole beneath us. A mouth. A well. An abyss, far under the earth’s crust.
We would fall forever.
My hands slipped and moonlight darted into our hiding place, breaking the nightmare hallucination. I jerked the lantern up again, my fingers burning as I squeezed.
“Kinneret!” Oron shouted and moaned.
Seething, swirling, my hands are not my own.
I bit down on my lip, bringing blood to wake myself. I will not be Infused. Their shadow isn’t touching flesh. I’m fine. I’m fine.
Calev’s hands found my sides, shaking but firm. I closed my eyes, soaking in his warmth like it would save me. His body pressed against mine. Every bump and curve and bone and breath of him kept my heart beating, held my mind in check.
“Come closer,” he said through gritted teeth.
The wraith screamed.
His body jolted.
“We can move back farther…” He breathed the words along my neck, making me shiver.
Another wave of blood lust washed over me. My breath hitched. I could not cry. If I fell apart now, we’d be lost. They didn’t know how to use the salt. We were still too far from shore for swimming. And the currents would take us to the Expanse. There’d be no coming back.
I whispered the sea’s words again, chanting them into the rise and fall of the wraith’s emotions. The boat surged, close to the wind, the sea answering me, the Fire helping me.
It wasn’t working. All I could see was blood. Hate roared in my ears.
Then it eased, cooled, lessened, and I could breathe again.
The sweeping sounds receded. The anger drew away.
The wraiths were leaving.
I collapsed, leaning out of the hull’s opening. Calev helped me the rest of the way free and pulled me to standing. His tunic smelled like sun-warmed earth and crushed lemon leaves. I buried my face in his neck, wishing he would always be my safety, my place to come home to, instead of becoming that Old Farm girl’s Intended.
“Near death experiences do lend themselves to salacious behavior, but do you mind waiting until we reach the shore?” Oron found his feet and dusted himself off. “Unlike my dear old mother, I’m not open with all things love. I rather like to be included when such activities are afoot.” He peeked around Calev’s arm, his brows raised. He took my hand in his, kissed it kindly, and pressed it to his forehead. “You were so close to it and still you didn’t succumb. I’m not half the man you are, Kinneret.”
“That’s the truth,” Calev said quietly.
My heart grew a little at their praise. But Avi’s face flashed through my mind. I wasn’t half the woman she’d someday be. I would rescue her. Doubt wasn’t even in the same universe as me.
A sapphire cloud smothered the moon, promising rain and a veil of protection from the wraiths’ infusing shadows. The mainsail had come loose and it flickered like a serpent’s tongue, but with a bit more magic and a few more prayers, we sailed into Amir Mamluk’s most southern port on the Broken Coast.
We were home.
The boat bumped the docking and Oron tied us down with Calev’s help.
“I’ll go to the amir. I’ve brought some of her surplus across the Pass, and a few passengers. Plus my low prices bring all the kaptans’ charges down. Well, once in a while. People like Avi and me are good for Jakobden. Right?” I pressed a hand against my pounding temple. “I’m lying to myself, aren’t I? Why would an amir care about us?”
Calev’s normally smiling lips twisted and he stared down at the rope in his hands.
“Tell me something good.” I knocked the tiller into its resting spot and climbed out to stand beside them, my heart shushing blood too quickly into my fingertips.
“No, maybe you’re right. It is in her best interest to have talented Pass sailors.” He met my gaze, his eyes steady as the horizon. “But shouldn’t we try to talk my father into helping us first?”
I sighed, feeling like I held a sack of oats on each shoulder. He was certainly very careful not to say my high-caste father. A bitter taste stung my mouth. But his suggestion was a wise one. And it wasn’t his fault he’d been born high and me low. It’d never been his fault.
“Yes,” I said. “We should.”
“That’ll be entertaining,” Oron said as he leaped off the boat and followed us up the hill. “The chairman of Old Farm might teach me a few new naughty words when he learns his eldest tangled with the oramiral and now the whelp who started the whole thing wants his help.”
I stopped. He had a point.
“Shut it, Oron,” Calev said. “Come on, Kinneret. He’ll listen. He has accepted our friendship.”
“He gave up and let you sneak around town with me. It’s all been jokes and being children together. This is different. You think he’ll be okay with risking his life and his people’s lives to get a low-caste sailor’s sister back? Hm. I know he’s a good man, Calev, but…I don’t know.”
We took the bend in the dirt road and headed toward Old Farm.
Calev studied the ground. “I trust my father.”
“Oh, I trust him too, Calev,” Oron said, walking with his chin held high. He touched the shamar yam at Old Farm’s gate before each of us did the same. “I trust him to say ‘Absolutely not.’”
Calev bunched Oron’s tunic in his fists. “Maybe you should go back to the tavern and sleep off your mood.”
I put hands between them. “He’s right, Oron. Go on. It won’t help me make my case if you joke around the whole time.”
His lips parted, but he kept silent, shaking his head violently. “Fine. Go on. Be fools. It’s not as if I’ve ever been able to change your mind on anything, Kinneret Raza.”
He stormed back the way we’d come, a chunk of my heart going with him.
Calev touched my elbow, his dark eyes were black in the night.
With a sigh, I walked on with Calev. His father would either help or he wouldn’t. We had to at least try.
Passing the ritual bath house, carved from a rock outcropping, I inhaled the scent of ceremonial oils and fresh water. Old Farms bathed there once a moon.
Last cycle, hidden in a tall basket, I’d watched Calev participate in the ceremony. He didn’t understand why I was curious, but to me the ceremony was foreign, mysterious, something to be studied and treasured. He claimed it wasn’t so mysterious, that it wasn’t such a huge deal.
But if the ritual was taken from him, if he were Outcasted for getting too close to me after our Age Day, he would miss it then. He might deny it now, but I’d seen him coming up out of the sacred waters. His wet hair showed the shape of his skull and highlighted his large eyes, his nose, and his perfectly lobed mouth. With his smile, he looked like a creature from the heavens, perfectly glowing and peaceful and happy. A black-robed soul-teacher dripped golden oil over Calev’s naked head as he stepped forward. His white tunic, a second-skin over his lean chest and flat stomach, bled water onto the stone floor.
The experience had stolen my breath.
Now, as the square shape of the ritual bath house faded into the dark behind us, I wished I could go there and be blessed. I wanted to be reborn, stronger and wiser, ready for what was coming. But I wasn’t Old Farm and I had to find my own path to a blessing.
Fatigue tugging at me, I followed Calev under the cedar lintel and entered the whitewashed stone walls of the Old Farm group house. Clay oil lamps set in triangular niches gave the room a yellow glow. Y’hoshua ben Aharon, Calev’s illustrious father, sat at a long table with three other men and two women. Calev’s brother, Eleazar, brought his father a leather-bound book, pointed to one of the pages, and said something about barley.
Y’hoshua untucked his beard from between the table and his stomach. “Talk to Ezra. He’ll know how to handle it.”
“Father.” Calev stood in front of the table, his voice taking on what I liked to call Lord of the Harvest tone.
Everyone in the room paused to look us up and down. We were a disaster of torn clothing and rising bruises.
Miriam came forward, spindle-stick in hand, and whispered Calev’s name. Her wide gaze drank him in, and I hated her more at that moment than I ever had an innocent person. It wasn’t her fault she was set to be the one to share his bed and feel his kisses.
Her lips were thin though. I bet her kisses would be as delightful as mouthing two nasty, little eels.
“Where have you been?” Y’hoshua pushed away from the table, knocking over a bowl of black figs. He put his hands on Calev’s shoulders. I hadn’t realized Calev was the same height as him now. “Are you injured? Who did this to you? The harvest should’ve begun sunset yesterday.”
“It’s my fault.” My bells jingled as the people seated at the table spoke to one another quietly. “I took him out on my boat. We sailed near Quarry Isle, and the oramiral’s men took my sister as punishment for coming too close to their territory.”
Y’hoshua’s hands fell to his sides. “But you’re not seriously injured, my son?”
“No, Father, I’m fine, but Avigail—”
Y’hoshua pulled Calev toward his room. “Then you must make ready for the ceremony.” He pushed him through the double doors, still talking as he turned away. “You will lead the first ceremonial cart. You have the best voice for the singing, my good son.”
He was chittering about the harvest ceremony? Now? “We need your help, Chairman Y’hoshua. Didn’t you hear me?”
Calev’s father wove through the crowd, back to the table where four people at once talked about the harvest feast and about the family who’d earned the honor of driving the cart carrying the first sheaves of barley for the blessing.
“Wait!” Calev tried to follow Y’hoshua, but a woman with thick eyebrows held him back.
She chattered to another man while they removed his sash and dagger. “Your harvest tunic is the perfect shade. It will set off the gold of the ceremonial scythe.”
I swallowed a bitter taste in my mouth and stood straighter. What could I say to get these people to stop fooling around with clothing and be serious?
Calev looked at me, his jaw set, as the eyebrow woman tugged his headtie off and replaced it with one the color of a harvest moon. Taking the woman by the arms, he gently, but firmly moved her away.
“Give me a moment, Rachel,” he said, marching toward his father in the adjoining room. “Father. Please, listen. We need to go after Kinneret’s sister now. The oramiral—”
Y’hoshua’s face grew stormy and Eleazar backed away. “No, we do not need to go now,” Y’hoshua said. “You have a responsibility to your people, Calev.”
“As if I don’t know that, Father.” Pain colored his words. “I’m proud of who we are. We are the kind of people who help others. If you’ll just send a group to Quarry Isle—”
“We have never, in over five hundred years, harvested without the chairman’s eldest performing the ceremonial blessing. You have a vital role to play, Calev. We will do what we can for the girl after the harvest.”
My heart shot into
my throat like a cannonball. “After the harvest? She could be attacked for her portion of food while we wait. Strangled while the others sleep! Children are found dead all the time—especially smart ones who stand to gain apprentice spots come test day. The oramiral lets it all go to chaos. You know this!”
“I know how life on Old Farm is.” Y’hoshua’s voice was a crack of lightning. “We have an agreement with the amir and her lord, the kyros. Dealings with the oramiral are a part of that. Believe me, I detest the man. I visited the quarries once.” His eyes brightened like he had a fever. “And never again, if I can help it. The man…he…” Y’hoshua gritted his teeth. “At every quarter meeting, I argue against his treatment of the slaves, how he should free them after seven years as we do, but the amir will not agree to it. And I will not push her. If we don’t make our way of life our top priority, we lose it.” His cheeks above his beard flushed and he took a step toward me. Calev looked ill as his father pulled him close to his face. “We haven’t held on through Quest knights and kyros and amirs and coast raiders and northern men by losing our focus for those foolish enough to tangle horns with men like the oramiral.”
I choked on a sob, stunned.
Calev called my name.
Turning, I pushed through the crowd of Old Farms and headed for the door. As I fled from the house, a voice snaked through the chaos.
“…she’s going to turn him into an Outcast. I know it.”
My sandals pounded the dusty path as I ran toward the town gates.
An Outcast.
I imagined Calev in a torn tunic shoveling muck out of a horse’s stall. Beyond the stable, he stares at a window. Candlelight illuminates the shapes of his father and brother laughing and handing food across the table. His gaze drops to his bare, dirtied feet and he thinks one name.
Kinneret.
I wouldn’t do that to him.
I would never try to pull him away from his people or urge him to forget what they held important. But somehow, some way, I had to get Avi back. My lungs burned and tears pushed at my eyes, wanting to fall.
That man. Y’hoshua ben Aharon.
Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One Page 6