We were at the mouth of Ayarazi’s natural bay, with teeth on both sides—rocks poised to tear us apart. Please stay sound, fat, old man hull. Asag’s rocks had nearly ground it open.
Where was Calev?
There, past Oron, at the far end near the prow. He walked up behind the amir, something in his hand. From my vantage point, the object was partially concealed by the whipping ends of the amir's vest.
I needed him here beside me. I needed everything. The ship shuddered as we brushed a rock and a wave splashed over the side. Sailors shouted and grabbed holds.
“Calev!” I bent my knees as the ship lunged through the tight gap. “Pull all lines tight! Hold on! Wait for it!”
Calev had dropped away from the amir, coming up against the side of the ship, braced on the wall. From his right hand, his dagger blinked at me.
My insides turned to ice. What was he doing?
“Kinneret!” Oron was at the base of the stairs, below me. “The sails?”
I counted silently to myself as the ship righted itself and readied to bump—hopefully a light glance—past the last of the rocks lining the gap in the island’s rocky coast. My hand on my chest, I counted. One, two, three, wait…ten, eleven, twelve. I couldn’t let the wind take us in a jerk to port or starboard. We needed no wind at exactly the right time.
Now. “Release the lines!” My heart clanked against my chest and my throat ached from yelling.
The sailors moved as one. The blocks wiggled as the lines ran through them. The sail billowed and the lines flipped into the air. The ship ducked like a tall man going through a doorway. We listed hard, very hard, to port, and I fell to my knees, my head smashing against the wheel.
Ifran screamed as water crashed over the deck in successive waves. I stood, but my legs didn’t want to hold me. The ship seemed to go forward and backward at the same time. I knew that feeling. Whirlpool—a roiling swirl of deadly water. And we had no sails.
Beyond the ribboning current, the water eased onto a black sand shoreline. If we somehow finagled our way through this, we be on shore. We couldn’t catch wind fast enough to keep from being sucked under.
The salt would have to do it.
“Get the sails up! Go! Now! Now!” My throat burned from ocean salt and shouting.
Oron’s face appeared next to mine. “Ifran split his head against the side.” He turned and shouted directions to the sailors, who grabbed at the lines and caught them one by one.
My eyes searched for Ifran in the mayhem of the ship. I couldn’t lose another fighting sailor. These men and women had risked their lives to follow me into this madness. Ifran had been brave enough to give me advice against the amir's wishes.
Ifran lay beside the anchor’s launching hole with the angry whirlpool churning right below. His dark head was a mess of blood.
“Calev!” He looked at me and blinked. “Help Ifran, please!” I shouted over the chaos.
I was fairly certain if it hadn’t been for the ship’s jerking and the blood, the white of bone and tendon would’ve shone through the wound. I ripped another strip from the bottom of my skirt and handed it to another sailor. “Take this to Calev. Tell him to wrap the man’s head.”
Calev did as I asked. Beside him, Oron leaned in and made the Fire’s sign on Ifran’s forehead to bless him.
“What is this?” The amir loomed over them, her voice loud, one hand on a tied line and the other on her dagger hilt. Berker stood at her side like an attack dog. “Stop wasting time with what is replaceable.” She jerked a chin at Ifran’s body, then looked to me. “Get us to that island, kaptan.” With a booted foot, she shoved Ifran through the opening and into the sea.
My body buzzed, my mouth open.
Calev reached for him, but it was too fast, too late.
The amir whipped around and shouted at the fighting sailors to trim the fore stay sail.
A smear of black-red marred Calev’s tunic and Oron’s sash.
“This is a quest for silver,” Berker said. “And you, Kaptan Kinneret Raza, are about to fail. Now get us to shore!”
The ship spun like a child’s string toy.
The amir shouted in anger, gripping the line tighter.
Calev grabbed the side and Oron fell to a knee.
Ifran was lost to the sea. He would become a wraith, his spirit lost, angry, set to Infuse and receive his vengeance on the living. It was my fault.
The ship rotated again, and the sound of cracking wood snapped through the air. By my guess, we had only a few seconds before we suffered too much damage to make it out of this whirlpool.
Scrabbling for the salt in my pouch, I turned away from the amir and whispered to the sea.
“Release us, waters of salt and sin
Let us breathe another sun
Our lives await, and also our kin.”
The wind surged and lifted the nose of our ship out of the whirlpool, but it wasn’t enough. The current sucked us down again and water swamped the deck. Fighters shouted out and everyone looked to me. But there was nothing left to do.
We all knew it.
We were going down.
Calev ran to me.
“Kinneret, I should tell you—”
With a mighty lunge, the sea spit the prow upward. Every man and woman fell hard as the prow led the rest of the craft free.
Calev and I tumbled against a large crate. I regained my feet first, but he quickly joined me. The sky was blue and clear above us. The water roared.
Oron whooped and threw a hand into the air. “We’re out!”
The fighting sailors let up a great yell of celebration and the amir stormed into her cabin. Berker stood staring at Calev and me. The other kaptan’s lip curled and he mouthed something I couldn’t discern.
“Throw anchor!” I began cranking the anchor’s line out myself, Oron and Calev helping.
As the fighters lowered the sails, I finally took a breath.
In front of us, Ayarazi, lost island of silver and the key to my sister’s life, rose like a dream made real.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The sand was soft as down under my bare feet. My sandals dangled from my fingers as I followed the amir and Berker toward the low, grassy perches of land overlooking the beach.
Disembarking from one of the small boats that took us from the full ship to shore, Oron threw himself to the ground and lay on his back. “Sweet land, I do not care if you are rich or poor, you will do. You will do.”
Calev threw his head back and sucked a deep breath. The sun smiled on the hollows, curves, and lines of his throat. My fingers twitched. I wanted to run fingertips along Calev’s smooth skin and feel his pulse and know he was all right.
The scent of the beautifully rich growth rose like perfume into the air. The grasses smelled like mint. “My father told me the grass on Ayarazi was threaded with silver.”
I bent to see for myself as the party moved beyond us, climbing the rise and entering a vast meadow. The blades of grass cooled my fingertips and a shiver ran over my arms. The place was colder than anywhere I’d ever been. Not frigid like that mist, but crisp—a shade colder than Jakobden’s winter. Squinting, I plucked one blade and held it to my face. Tiny rows of sparkling silver ran through the veins of the plant and gathered at the edges to create a frame.
“Beautiful,” Calev said.
I turned and handed the blade to him. “It is, isn’t it?”
He smiled with half his mouth. “I wasn’t talking about the grass, Kinneret.” His gaze slid over my head and nose and chin.
My cheeks grew hot as Calev grabbed my hand. His eyes were honey and wine. My throat bobbed as I tried to talk, but his eyes and the cool breeze and the promise of this all working out had stolen my words. He touched my cheek.
“Sailor,” Berker barked from above. The amir and her fighters had gone on, so they weren’t around to correct his address.
Calev’s eyes sharpened. His head snapped around. “Address the kaptan properly.”<
br />
He’d taken the words right from my lips.
Berker stared us down. “You are no longer a kaptan, scrapper. You led us here. It’s over now. I’m the only kaptan on this journey.” He began to walk away toward the line of sailors, heading toward the mountains. “Funny how the chill gets in your bones so quickly,” he said over his shoulder. “Someone might die in such an unforgiving climate.”
My temples pounded. That man.
“Don’t worry, Calev.” I squeezed his fingers and climbed the rise to join our party, noticing that Oron was already snoring on the sand behind. “I’ll have a fight with Berker before this is over. And I will win.”
Calev leaped up behind me, and we started through the silvery green, the cold breeze in our hair. “I don’t doubt it, kaptan.”
A smile pulled at my lips as I slipped a rope from a fighter’s pack.
The amir was leading the group toward the closest mountain. As we caught up, the scar of rocky ground branching through the meadow appeared to our left. I tugged Calev’s sleeve and nodded toward it.
“I think we should look there first. It may open into the ground. Plus, it’ll be easier to check for silver than drilling into a mountain.”
“Let’s go,” Calev said.
The air, fresh as clean water, spun down the green mountain and swept over the valley where we ran. The grass whisked our legs, and a light shone inside me. The journey here had been so terrible that I couldn’t help but hope we’d find the silver quickly and without too much trouble. If I showed the amir what she could hope to gain, she’d give me any amount of fighters and let me take the ship to the quarry to reclaim my sister.
The land sloped upward, and flat, gray rocks mingled with the grasses and led to the seam I’d spotted from the ship. Turns out, it was less of a seam and more of a set of openings into the earth. At the crest of the rise, the ground broke open. Two more such openings sat nearby. I went to the largest and peered inside, Calev beside me, breathing heavily after our run.
I ran a hand over the dark opening’s walls, feeling a slimy cold. “I can’t see anything. We should get inside.”
There weren’t any rocks near the opening for me to tie the rope around. I kicked at the dirt at the cave’s open ceiling and my toe hit a root.
“It’s from that elder there,” Calev said, pointing to a needled tree a stone’s throw away.
“Elder.” I laughed. “You Old Farms.”
“What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Think the rope’ll hold me?”
“Definitely.”
I helped Calev with a double figure eight knot and made a loop for my legs as well. Thankfully, there were enough roots and drier ledges for grabbing and I made my way down without Calev having to hold my weight. In the dim, the rope pulled taut and I knew I had no more length for exploring.
“What’s it like?” At the top, Calev got onto his stomach and his hair fell over his face.
The walls were a light brown, or at least what I could see of them was. A line of black ran crookedly through the rock ledges, giving me false hope.
“It’s just a cave. No silver.”
“Come on back up. We’ll check this next one.”
With a sigh, I maneuvered my way out of the cave and into the next. After I laced the rope around a stump, Calev went down into a third crack in the island, but still, no silver.
I untied the rope and coiled it around my arm, my heart weighing more than a boat full of Ekrems. Calev rubbed my knee and gave me a half smile.
“I really thought it would be here. That black scar in the first opening looked right from what I’ve heard.”
“We’ll find it. I’m lucky. Remember?”
My heart lifted a little and I dusted myself off. My calves shook with fatigue, but I didn’t want to stop looking. To rescue Avi, I needed the amir’s fighters. And the amir wanted silver. It was both as simple and as difficult as that.
Calev walked beside me as we worked our way through the grass. The strands of light gray in the growth blinked teasingly.
Calev broke off a hunk of shining green-gray and sniffed it. “Is this the island’s idea of a joke?” He looked at the blade closely, his eyes nearly crossing. “It’s really just dots of gray on the surface. I was sort of hoping we could get a scythe out here and reap the rewards, so to speak.”
I grabbed a piece and scratched at the silvery spots. “Don’t get a big head. You’re not that lucky.” The sun had slipped off its zenith and a sudden image of Avi’s golden-brown hair flashed through my thoughts. “How much silver do you think the amir will need before she agrees to send fighters with us for Avi?” I should’ve clarified that in our agreement.
“I’d guess once we locate a seam and begin drilling.”
“We never talked about how many would stay to mine and how many would come with us.”
Calev clicked his tongue. He was more worried than he wanted me to know and my skin itched with the need to leave now. “You should talk to Ekrem about it. He respects you.”
“He does?”
“It’s obvious.”
“And he might know the right way to bring it up with the amir.”
“What’s going to happen when your father figures out where you are?”
“We already talked about this. He can’t do much of anything. She is the amir and she asked me to go.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“That’s not what I meant anyway,” I said. “How is he going to react? Will he get over it when you return home?” Home. Such a chaos of wonderful and horrible. I thought of Miriam and a muscle in my back balled up.
The ground dropped away and I fell into the earth, pain ripping up my leg.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Kinneret!”
I gripped at everything, anything, and my buzzing fingers latched onto a mound of wet earth and grass. My feet dangled above darkness. I’d fallen into the opening of another crevice.
Calev grabbed my wrists and helped me up, his eyes wide and his fingers strong. “Are you all right?”
He patted my arms, my head, then held my face softly. I turned my mouth toward his parted lips and a shiver danced over the backs of my legs.
A burning sensation drowned all the good and I looked down to see a tiny stream of blood leaking into my sandal.
I lifted my skirt a little and Calev knelt to inspect my wound.
“It’s just a cut.” I was lightheaded, but I wasn’t sure whether it was from the fall, the blood, or because Calev’s mouth was very near my thigh.
He cleared his throat and stood. “Doesn’t look serious,” he said, blushing.
It wasn’t. Just a nip. I spun to face the crevice I’d so gracefully found.
“Should I tie the rope off?” Calev’s head turned.
I bent and leaned over the yawning mouth of the cave. Plant life obscured most of the light, making the walls black. Calev moved behind me and a beam of afternoon sun hit the opposite wall and glinted back. Just a wink. Probably nothing.
“Do you see anything?” Calev asked.
“It’s hard to tell.” The surface inside alternated between smooth and rough. My hand slid over a slick spot and something sticklike stopped its progress. I ran fingers over the object imbedded in the smooth area. Its end curled like a fern’s leaf and my heart danced.
“Silver.”
“Where?” Calev pushed against me and shoved his hand into the opening. “Ah! I feel it! In some calcite crystal, I bet. Like the mine between Jakobden and the capitol.”
“This shallow, it won’t be that much labor to free it. A shaft dug. A pulley system. Picks. We don’t even need those drills. We’ll have to set up a smelting station. Nothing we haven’t seen. There are people enough in Jakobden who could mine it and work it into useable pieces.” I stood and pulled him to his feet. “You’ll help me, won’t you? I’ll need you to make an appearance now and then to keep the amir in check.”
I was already seei
ng Avi rescued and our lives moving into a place of full bellies and smiles and respectful nods from the men and women I’d sailed with during this trip.
“Of course.” Calev grinned. “This is amazing. I never thought…Ayarazi.”
A herd of horses in every color of a northern autumn forest pounded past us, whipping us with the force of their passing and shaking the ground under our sandals. Burnt ochre. Yellow and orange. Deep purple like my sail. Their tails and manes snapped like pennants as they galloped, the sun flashing from the silver hiding in the white and brown of their hair.
The look on Calev’s face was pure joy.
We had done it. Found the lost island of silver. Grabbed the only chance to save my sister.
A laugh bubbled out of his mouth, and he covered his face with one hand, shaking his head in disbelief. Another laugh, and the deep sound melted over me, warming me in the brisk air.
My mouth wanted to taste his neck, and my body longed for the heat and strength in his arms. I wouldn’t make the first move. He knew how I felt now, surely, and I wasn’t about to make a fool out of myself even if it was all I could do not to leap onto him. His hair lifted in the breeze, and the sun reddened his browned cheeks.
“Kinneret,” he whispered, taking my hands in his. His lips forming my name was worth all the silver under our feet. “You slay sea demons, fight storms, sail like none other, and work magic in a way that makes it holy rather than the abomination so many want to deem it. Why do you even bother to be my friend?”
He laughed, but at the word “friend” my chest clenched like the air was suddenly poisonous. I forced myself to breathe normally. Avi needed me. Even more than Calev did, it seemed. Shaking a little, I pulled my hands away.
“I need to show the amir the silver. Avi needs me now.”
Calev’s brow and mouth torqued out of line. Then he nodded slowly and followed me toward the slash of red-clothed fighting sailors heading up the hills.
WHEN THE GROUP was within hearing, I called out to the amir, wondering where Oron had gone. “We found the silver!”
The fighters spun, eyes wide, and shouted. Everyone began talking at once, patting my shoulder and Calev’s, and offering congratulations.
Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One Page 15