Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One

by Alisha Klapheke

  “That about sums it up,” Calev said.

  “And the amir is waiting to hear from your father on this, even though your father knows nothing about it.”

  “He’ll agree to it.”

  Oron snorted. “Delusional. And they don’t even have drink to blame.”

  “We’re assertive,” I argued.

  “Even if it kills you?”

  Calev and I answered together. “Exactly.”

  “Did Y’hoshua punish you?” I asked Calev as I dropped the stone anchor off the side.

  He looked at the water. “No.”

  “Well, that is one thing, hm?” Oron tied the sails down.

  “Not really,” I said. “When he waits to punish him, it’s always worse. So he didn’t say anything during the harvest rituals?”

  “Not a word,” Calev said. “Acted like nothing even happened.”

  Not good.

  AFTER DROPPING the stone anchor off the side, I skinned off my shirt, skirt, and sash, leaving my small clothes on. Calev peeled his tunic from his back and I averted my eyes from his bare chest and the loose short pants that hung on his hipbones. I couldn’t sit around and enjoy the view. It was time to find the map.

  Avi needed us. And she needed us now.

  The sun-drenched water below the boat glowed like spring grass and lemon peels. As we searched, the light stretched fingers down through the open water, all the way to the broken boards of yet another sunken vessel.

  All day Calev had been amazing at holding his breath under water, amazing for a non-sailor, that is. But his lungs were no match for mine.

  Before I could crawl, I’d been in the ocean, chasing fish, learning the tide’s pull, becoming a Pass sailor. It was why I never feared the rocks or the storms. They were a part of me as much as my own shortcomings—quick anger and stubbornness.

  Kicking my bare feet through the chill water, fighting the Pass’s rough hands, I swam through a hole in the side of a ship even older than the one we’d already scoured. Calev would likely need to go up for air very soon.

  In the ship’s crumbling hull, barnacles like rotten, boiled potatoes sat on stacks of cracked crockery plates. Mostly, the space was empty. The sea had claimed what the looters hadn’t wanted. There wasn’t a wine jug in sight.

  Near a long stretch of what used to be part of the deck, the boat’s figurehead angel stuck one wing out of the mounded sand, its stone feathers gone green and black at the edges. Past that, a small, walled-in area—probably the kaptan’s room—held the skeleton of a bed, a fork, the encrusted remains of iron lanterns, and an astrolabe.

  Where was my wine jug? Where was Avi’s ticket to freedom? Sadness welled inside my chest, pushing and more painful than the need for oxygen. I had to get to Avi before it was too late.

  There was a tug on my toe and I turned to see Calev pointing up. Dying light drifted through the broken vessel’s decking and striped his face. Tiny bubbles huddled beside his fine nose and in the cleft of his chin. He gestured to his chest. He needed air. I nodded, and he twisted, swimming back to the boat and leaving me in the wreckage.

  The tides would turn soon, making it that much harder to swim and sail against the sea’s push to flow out to the Expanse. It also meant another sundown, another day, and with it, Salt Wraiths. I had to hurry.

  We hadn’t checked the tumble of wood to the right of the kaptan’s quarters. Oron was waving the signal stick at me under the water, but I ignored it. Swimming through a cloud of algae-eating creatures no bigger than dust motes, I ducked under the leaning parts of a doorframe. A table, only two legs remaining, hogged the space. A lead plummet rested in my distorted shadow. I tucked it into my top. If I could manage to clean it up, it’d be better than the one weighing my sounding line now. The four transoms of a Jacob’s staff poked out from under the table. I didn’t want that. It was iron, and only the Fire could make use of it now that it had been under the sea for so long. I’d have to keep using my old wooden one to measure the angle between the horizon and the sun or the Far Star.

  Oron and Calev had to be panicking by now. Hot fingers tore at my lungs.

  Just one more look.

  Letting the water tug me to the dark corner behind the mapping table, I reached out my fingers. Then a warm hand snatched my ankle. I nearly inhaled the entire Pass.

  It was Oron, his hair like squid tentacles around his wide face. He waved a frantic hand for me to follow. With one glimpse at the unexplored corner, I finally obeyed my lungs and my friend, and headed to the surface, my feet like a tail behind me.

  “Didn’t you see the signal?” At the surface, Oron roughly wiped ocean from his face and hefted himself up the hook-topped ladder that Calev held steady against starboard.

  The signal stick—berry-dyed and beaten to bare spots like a bad donkey—sat on the side of the boat, dripping wet. Below the ladder, I treaded water and pulled air into my neglected lungs.

  “I want to go back down,” I said.

  The sky was the orange of Kurakian chicken and the purple of spiced wine, the memory of the last like pines and flowers on my tongue. I bit my lip.

  Closing my eyes, I hated myself. I was a monster for thinking of my stomach, rather than Avi’s.

  “We still have sun,” I said.

  The sea lurched me sideways, and I grabbed the ladder, my legs flying in the water.

  “No.” Oron leaned over the side of the boat as he worked himself back into his tunic. “It’s nearly sundown.”

  Calev, on the other hand, was taking his tunic off again. “I’m going with you. This is no time for cowardice.”

  I smiled sadly and dipped under the choppy waves to wait for him.

  Like an arrow shot into the water, Calev dove into the sea. For me. For Oron. For Zayn. For Avi. And I loved him for it.

  Where would I be without Oron and Calev? I might’ve found the map on my own, but it would’ve been so much harder. I wished I could do something for them, but nothing that wasn’t stupid came to mind. Anything said wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t have any items to give them to show my gratitude.

  Calev came up in front of me and grinned. It took everything in me not to wrap my arms around his neck and press my mouth to his. I wanted to kiss the tiny scar at the side of his full lips. Instead of making a complete fool of myself, I dashed through the water, aiming for the map room.

  THE LIGHT in the underwater room was no longer a diffused, golden glow. Because the sun had fallen, swimming into the small area was like walking into one of Oron’s blue glass gaming pieces. Like my shadow, Calev stuck to my side as I maneuvered past the table and the tools to the corner. Praying for the absence of eels, I felt around the darkness.

  Smooth shapes. A tube—ah—the neck of a vessel. Two of them. Two jugs.

  Sharp nests of twigs surrounded the containers on their broken shelves. Seeing what I was about, Calev pressed forward to help me uncover our finds.

  No large cracks marred the jugs, at least none visible in the twilight. As we tucked them under our arms and kicked back to the boat, I spared a thought for what might actually be left of a map that had lived in salt water for around one hundred years. Probably depended on what it was made of. Parchment. Vellum.

  The Quest knights used vellum, calfskin, for religious writings. My father had taught me that much in our talks between spearfishing and sail-mending. He’d explained the kyros had faith, but his views differed somewhat from the Old Farm’s religion, and also the Quest knights, who’d controlled Jakobden before the map’s existence. The details of everyone’s belief systems was lost on me, but I remembered Father’s description of Quest knights’ holy writings, words ringed with paintings as colorful as Meeka Valley flowers. So if the map was important to them it would probably be vellum too. Did it last under water? I doubted regular papyrus did, being made of plant material.

  Oron helped us one by one into the boat, his big eyes drawing a line between the jugs and the darkening sky.

  I squee
zed the ends of my curling hair, hurrying so I could tug my skirt and shirt back on. Something about being half naked near a similarly half naked Calev made me feel very, very dangerous.

  “What do you think the map is made of?” I asked.

  Popping his head through his tunic, Calev opened his mouth.

  Oron cut him off before he could say anything. “I see you’re finally wondering what could possibly survive a century under water.”

  Calev ran his hands along his skull to press the water from his dark head. I tried very hard not to stare at the angle of his jaw and the slender bulge of his arm muscles under his damp tunic sleeves.

  “The map is likely parchment,” Oron said. “Made from animal skin. Not papyrus.” He hurried over with me to the jugs. I was glad his gaze wasn’t worrying over the sky anymore. He was focused on our goal now, like me.

  I lifted the first gritty container. It was heavier out of the water. A blackened plug clogged the jug’s mouth.

  Oron raised a hammer. “Shall we crack it open or do you think we can get the plug out in a more graceful manner?”

  I jerked the metal tool out of his hand and knocked the neck of the jug, breaking the top from the container. One of the handles, embossed with a Quest knight rose, came off along with the neck and rattled along the deck. I peered inside the jug.

  Darkness.

  My heart in my stomach, I looked up at Calev and Oron. “It’s empty.”

  Oron twisted, then shoved the second sea-grimed jug into my hands.

  It was empty too.

  Knees shaking, I stood. Is Zayn wrong? Or was the right container still out there, under the waves? I looked out over the orange-tipped waves.

  “Kinneret,” Oron said. “We need to get to shore.”

  Calev set a gentle hand on my arm, his fingers cool and damp. “We can come back tomorrow.”

  I nodded.

  Night peered out of the East. Oron began tugging the anchor up, his fingers white on the rope. Dripping arms and legs of water, the line marched from the Pass like regimented fighters. I couldn’t blink. I just stared, Avi’s braid in my mind’s eye.

  Calev stepped closer.

  Hugging my arms to myself, I tried to stop shaking.

  This was one more night added to Avi’s time at the quarry. One more night in a slave’s bell brace. A shudder crashed over me. One more night surrounded by people who would cut her throat with a sharp flake of stone for her share of bread and oil.

  I spun and knelt near the jugs. What if the map wasn’t parchment or papyrus? What if I’d missed it? What if was an object or something I hadn’t thought of yet?

  Upending each container in turn, I shook them out to check. Nothing.

  “What is it?” Calev asked, probably thinking I’d lost my mind.

  Oron let the sail out. “I need your salt work to get us moving, Kinneret.” He frowned at the pink sun sitting on the waves. “Now.”

  I raised the hammer and smashed both of the jugs.

  “What are you doing?” Calev asked. “We need to get back to shore. Becoming Infused out here won’t help Avi.”

  Ignoring him, I shuffled through the pieces. The first container’s insides were like the outside, red-brown and unmarked, nothing like the ones in the amir’s hall that were blue glazed and covered in lotus flowers and phoenixes.

  I lifted a big section of the second jug’s body and flipped it over.

  Blue.

  I held it up to Calev, struck dumb.

  He wrinkled his nose. “Why is the inside glazed?”

  White scratches interrupted the color someone had painstakingly slicked inside before firing the thing in a kiln. There was a long line and several notches like tiny mountains. On the left, a snaking strip of white. To the right, another.

  My mouth went dry. I smiled, laughed as the world seemed to open up in front of my eyes.

  “This is the map.”

  Oron appeared at my side. “And I am the kyros. And Calev is my pet donkey.”

  I glared. Calev glared.

  Oron held up his hands. “What? I thought we were having a bit of pretend to ease the pain of crushing defeat.”

  I pushed him out of the way to find the rest of the pieces. Not that one. No. This one was blue, but not marked. Ah.

  “Look.” I held the bit I’d found against the other marked piece. They fit like lovers. The new section showed a thumb-sized triangle. I ran a finger over the serpentine lines. “This is Jakobden. This, Kurakia.” Touching the tiny mountains, I said, “This is the Pass.” My finger found the triangle. “And this. This is Ayarazi.”

  Oron’s hand went to his mouth and Calev made a sound like a sigh.

  “You did it,” Calev said. “You found it.” He shook his head. “I knew you would.”

  I gave him my best smile because he deserved it. He looked away from my mouth and swallowed.

  Tucking the map pieces into my wide sash, I stood. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The wraith came on fast.

  Years ago, when Calev and I first began sneaking out together, we finagled our way onto Old Farm’s full ship right before dawn. The sun yawned over the fields and dock. With him behind me, I scrambled up the mainsail mast. It hadn’t been easy. The night before had seen a strong rain and every climbing post along the tall beam was slick as olive oil.

  Calev pointed out the dark backs of seals sloping out of the orange-tinted water and I leaned to look past the rigging.

  I slipped. It was a long fall and should’ve broken my back like what happened to Abraham, former scout on the Old Farm ship. But even though the fall didn’t break me, it knocked every bit of air from me faster than I could scream.

  And now, in this breath, in this moment, the wraith was that quick.

  That unexpected.

  Though now I was nearly an adult, I screamed like I was a child again. We didn’t have a second to scramble to the cabin or light the lantern.

  A scraping sound leaked from the spirit’s gray-white, sparkling shape. It looked like a flash of starlight, then took on an almost human form, became shifting sands of salt, sometimes with arms or legs or a mouth, but always with reaching fingers.

  Its presence pinched at my reason, instead of smashing it like the other wraiths did. It was a pinpoint of a feeling. Clear. Strong. Focused. But, though the wraith’s warped emotions were unmistakable, they remained nearly impossible to fight. It was like trying to dig an inking out of your skin.

  Some wraiths were like this, subtle and intelligent. From the stories, they usually had specific revenge in mind and once completed would give up their Infusion victim.

  A shiver rattled me.

  Ranging high near the moonlit husks of clouds, the wraith’s shape unfurled and snapped like a banner. Its emotion smothered us.

  Oron stood staring, caught in his fear.

  Wouldn’t his blood look beautiful like a Kurakian scarf around his neck? the wraith said into my mind.

  No, I answered back, silently, whimpering like a fool.

  But he doubts you. Always doubts you.

  The spirit talked on, convincing, luring. I sucked a breath, grabbed Oron, and thrusted him toward the hull. I turned to Calev.

  Like a hawk, the wraith swooped low, then high, and hovered, ready to strike its prey. Its arms—wings now—were white smoke, tattered strings of diamond salt as it dove for my dearest friend.

  My heart smacked my chest and I lunged toward Calev. The wraith shot forward, the moon poised dead perfect, a spotlight for this sick player and his tragedy.

  Everything happened at once.

  The wraith’s moonshadow struck across the deck and glanced against Calev’s bare foot.

  Or did it?

  There’d been no time to watch for the wraith’s Infusion light, to see if it had soaked into Calev’s body. I snatched Calev’s sleeve, missing a good grip on his arm, and pulled him back, half a second from Infusion myself. I grabbed the la
ntern.

  Wrestling the tangle of my thoughts and those of the wraith’s, I rushed toward the opening to the hull behind Calev. Inside, I pressed into him and he shoved against Oron. None of us could hear, I was sure of that. The whipping sound of the wraith masked all other noises of the water against the sides and our breathing.

  The pinprick, knife-slice of black thoughts bleeding into my reason, my shaking hands found my flint and knife. I set the lantern outside the hull’s opening, on deck, and lit the wick with a speed I didn’t know I had. Orange, silver, and black flames danced inside the glass, illuminating the decking, the mast, our lines.

  I looked up.

  The wraith was gone.

  The night only held stars and the moon and the memories of clouds. No wraiths. Dropping my hands, I choked on a sob, my cheeks burning with shame at what I’d thought about blood and death.

  I spun to Calev. “The wraith…it’s gone.”

  He blinked and wobbled. He put a hand on the boat’s side.

  Is he Infused? Had the wraith crawled into him? There was no way to tell, really. The Infusion light was invisible until the wraith’s revenge or blood lust was satisfied, slaked. Then the light would leave the mouth, vomited like a sickness.

  My skin cold, I fisted a hand in his tunic. “Calev? Can you hear me?” My heart buzzed and flopped between my ribs like a beetle on its back. “Calev!” I shook him hard.

  Oron shouted too, his voice tight, his eyes white and scared in the near dark.

  Calev’s gaze fell past my face to the deck beyond the hatch, like he couldn’t see me.

  Oron pushed us both out of the hull. He held my fishing spear. “Get him off the boat, Kinneret. Throw him over. Now. A waste, a loss, a grief, but we won’t go down with him.”

  I stuttered, then found my tongue. “Oron! Shut it!”

  Calev raised his head. “I’m fine. Stop. Stop yelling.” He pressed palms to his temples. “I’m fine.”