Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One

by Alisha Klapheke

  Muscles and tendons in Calev’s cheek moved as his lips pressed together.

  He was right to be scared.

  WHEN I SHOOK ORON AWAKE, he shouted, “I paid you already, you muck-mouthed, goat-herding—”

  I slapped a hand over his lips.

  Calev and I looked from Oron to the fighting sailors and Berker. Surely Oron’s broken dream and shouting would wake them. But none stirred. Strange.

  The sun was already painting the sky and readying for dawn, and these fighters trained every day at dawn. But now their chests rose and fell in sleep. A few looked pale. Two at the edges of the camp ring moaned and held their heads in their sleep.

  “Is everyone ill?” Calev whispered, his face blue in the almost-dawn.

  We didn’t have the sun to wonder about this miracle that might save our lives. I pulled Calev and Oron toward the path to the sea. “It doesn’t matter now. Oron, there’s been an…accident.”

  “Why are you tugging at me? What are you talking about?” Oron jerked his arm free.

  “We’ve no sun to explain. Come. Please.”

  With a nod and one last look around camp, he followed Calev and me across the meadow.

  The sea crashed, promising both challenge and escape. The full ship bobbed in the waters just before the whirlpool. In the shoreline’s pale sand, the five small boats that had brought our party ashore lay like beached whales. Together we pushed the closest one into the lapping waves.

  As we climbed in, Calev explained everything to Oron.

  Oron paused in rowing, and his oar nearly slipped out of his hands before he caught it.

  I took over rowing with Calev.

  “No one will believe this story, Calev.” Oron frowned.

  The ship loomed above us, and I snatched a grappling hook from the bottom of the boat and threw it over the side.

  “It also doesn’t help that Calev has the throat-blood oath with the amir,” I said.

  Oron held the rope steady as Calev and I climbed.

  The sea gave a heave, and the rope slid across the side of the craft, catching on a porthole. It jerked under my grip and I clung to the ship, Calev and Oron swearing in chorus.

  “Hold on,” I called over my shoulder.

  Calev still held to the rope, but he’d lost his foot-over-foot grip. The waves came in like a bully again, stomping against the ship. There was a storm somewhere out at sea. I tumbled over the side and onto the deck, then I checked on Calev. He slipped a yard down and his head banged against another porthole.

  “I could use some help here,” he said, his words tumbling under the sound of the waves on the hull.

  Oron fought with the rope, his weight shifting the small boat. “I don’t think it’s going to go well for your lucky boy if he ends up in the drink right now!”

  Yanking salt from my bag, I tossed some into the wind.

  “Peace under the waters and above,

  I wait for your will but send prayers still.”

  The sea eased into a quiet swell, gentling like a guilty horse, and Calev turned his face up, nodding thankfully.

  “Hurry!”

  I reached a hand down and after three more upward thrusts, he grasped it and slipped over port side to land next to me. He rubbed his skull.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Fine. Fine.”

  He was anything but.

  With my dagger, now clean of the amir's blood, I cut the rope holding a large Wraith Lantern to the mainmast. Calev caught it neatly, the sun an orange hill at the edge of the sea behind him.

  A shout echoed from the shore.

  Berker and two fighters stood on the sand, a battle axe and a bow raised. The man with the bow suddenly doubled over, coughing. Berker wiped a hand over his own forehead like someone with a fever.

  “They’re ill,” Calev said, gripping the lantern. The ship listed, but he bent his knees and kept his feet. He was becoming a sailor.

  “Exactly what I was thinking.” If they were, we’d have more sun to find a way around the whirlpool. But if the sailors were sick, what about Oron? He’d stayed the entire night with them.

  At the side of the ship, Calev and I leaned over to check on Oron. He looked up with imploring eyes.

  “Do hurry, sweetings.” His tunic billowed in a gust of salty wind. “They’re sending arrows in place of prayers this morning.”

  Proving his point, an arrow zipped past my head.

  I tied the lantern onto my sash. Calev steadied the rope as I climbed down to Oron, and when my feet were in the teetering boat, I looked up.

  We were headed back out to sea. That frigid mist was going to hit us hard. “We need a blanket,” I called up to Calev.

  Nodding, Calev disappeared, then came over the side with two hefty woolen bundles under one arm. Another arrow flashed past, grazing his leg and bringing a scant amount of blood to the surface.

  “Throw the blankets down!” I held out my hands.

  Oron and I caught Calev’s stolen goods with outstretched arms as more shouts rode from the beach and over the surf. We tucked the blankets under the benches as two more fighting sailors ran to join Berker. If I squinted hard enough, I could see gray around their eyes and mouths. Definitely ill.

  Gray.

  Silver.

  A spark lit my mind as Calev’s weight hit the boat.

  He and Oron grabbed up the oars.

  “Did you see the strange light last night?” I untied my sash.

  Calev rowed on the side opposite me, across the boat’s belly from Oron and me.

  “No.” Oron’s gaze flickered between the sailors on the coast and the whirlpool we headed toward. “The only thing I saw was the black behind my eyelids, a lightless heaven.”

  The sailors nocked arrows and raised them high. A bead of sweat dragged down my temple.

  Berker probably hadn’t found the amir yet. He most likely suspected we planned to tell another party about the silver.

  There wasn’t sun enough to talk about my guess why the fighters and Berker were sick. “We have to go southeast and slip past the whirlpool. There might be a way to lip around it.”

  A volley of arrows splashed short of the boat as the sucking sound of the whirlpool reached my ears.

  I caught bits of Berker’s shouts. “…the whirlpool reaches too far…”

  My oar didn’t want to move in the water, and my arms trembled with fatigue. I felt for my salt pouch. Nothing but a bit of dust. I’d thought there would be sun to refill it.

  The whirlpool’s blue-green and white waters churned all the way to the black rocks of the breakers leading to the Pass.

  “I think we can make it,” I whispered, one hand in my pouch and one on the oar. A road of water, unmoved by the whirlpool’s deadly current edged the path toward the breakers. If we could line ourselves up with that…I turned to Calev, my mind thinking twenty things at once. “Did you not see the light last night?”

  He faced me, tugging his oar, his eyes tight. “I-I…no. Just you. I…” His words tumbled together and a red flush lay across his fine cheeks.

  I’m sure my own blushing matched his.

  “Oh ho,” Oron shouted over the water. “Don’t believe you’ve shared all your adventures.” He tried to smile even as he glanced at the whirlpool. His features tightened.

  Still blushing and full of ripe fear, I joined Calev to help him row.

  “What?” Calev asked, shifting on his seat. The look on his face reminded me of when we’d been caught leaping from the Old Farm stables’ roof onto his father’s favorite steed.

  “Your color tells me even more than the fact that you can’t sit still over there, young man.” Oron laughed, then yelped as another volley of arrows zipped into the air.

  “Hush, you two,” I said. “There was a strange silver light around the island last night, around the camp. Only us three ate your greens, and we’re not sick. I think the light is poison somehow. The greens must give us some temporary protection.” />
  Oron twisted and lifted his eyebrows. “Though not from arrows, I’m guessing.”

  One of the sailors’ shots hit the hull. The arrow’s yellow and black fletching colored a spot not two fingers from Oron’s elbow. His face whitened.

  “We have to go back,” he hissed.

  I nodded, my neck tight. “The fighters are weakened. Maybe we can get back to shore, fight them off or trick them, and disappear into the hills. If I can watch the tides turn, I might spy a path past the worst of the whirlpool and plan a way out.”

  “You’re the most valuable to them, Kinneret,” Calev said, his flush gone and confidence giving his words legs again. “Because of what you did to get us here. You stand with me beside you and we’ll wave a surrender.”

  His reasoning was a little flawed considering I was the one Berker trusted the least, but I agreed. We had no choice anyway.

  “Reverse stroke, Oron,” I said. “Calev, pull hard.”

  I did too and our boat swung around, putting our backs to the shore.

  “The only surrender I know is the formal one done at the harvest contest at the amir’s field,” I said.

  Visions of men on swan-necked steeds decked out in tasseled saddles flashed through my mind.

  “It’s the only one I know too,” Calev said. He met my eyes. “Ready?”

  If this failed and the fighters aimed well, this could end with our blood coloring the boat and Oron lost in the whirlpool, destined to become a Salt Wraith. He’d never have the strength to row out and he certainly didn’t have the talent with magic.

  I steeled myself, not allowing my hands to shake as Calev gave them a quick squeeze, but my heart galloped.

  We stood as one and raised our hands, one arm bent and angled toward the other in the sign of surrender.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Surrender!” I shouted with Calev.

  The sea lifted the boat and turned her west as we edged away from the whirlpool. On shore, the fighting sailors held their bows high, and the arrow tips glinted in the sun, poised to strike. Voice contorted by the sea’s noise, Berker shouted something. The fighter on his left let one arrow fly.

  Calev shoved me to the boat’s bottom and threw himself over me. My elbow hit a bench seat on my way down and pain splintered my arm. The boards under me reeked of old ocean water.

  On top of me, Calev’s body jerked.

  He grunted, and the hand that clutched me to him loosened and fell limp. I pressed it against my shoulder to make him hold me, but his breath came out in a hiss.

  A cold knowledge crushed me.

  Then Oron was talking. Shouting rose from the beach. We needed to get back to the oars. The current was pulling us toward the whirlpool again.

  I eased my way out from under Calev, settling him, stomach down, in the boat’s belly and taking his head in my hands.

  “Where exactly is he hit, Oron?” My voice was strangely calm.

  Calev’s beautiful brown eyes fluttered open and shut. “I’m all right.” He sucked a breath and his body shivered. “It’s my side.”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Oron had maneuvered his bulky self around an oar handle to view Calev from the back. Oron’s tangled locks fell over his wide nose as he crouched to see the point of entry. Calev was shaking in my hands, his knees butted against my own. The boat dipped under us, the tide now taking us too close.

  I met Oron’s gaze over Calev’s heaving form. “We have to row. Now.”

  I leaped up and grabbed the nearest oar, Oron doing the same. The whirlpool was a slurping, sucking monster ready to devour us, more dangerous even than Asag because no weapon could force it to change course. I could feel my will draining, like a wraith sweeping over me. Without more salt in my pouch, more strength in my gut, and more confidence in our chances, we’d never make it.

  It was as if we weren’t rowing at all.

  The current sped across our path, tearing a wide ripple between us and the shallow water leading to the shoreline. Calev made a noise, and I dug my oar deeper into the waves and strained the wooden handle back. Every muscle in my arms and back and neck screamed. We weren’t going to make it.

  “Kinneret. The salt.” Oron’s voice was dry and cracked. He knew I didn’t have anything but dust.

  With one last haul on the oar, I wedged the handle under my arm and struggled with the pouch strings. The boat tossed with only Oron to row it. Calev’s arm dropped to the decking with a knock. He groaned. My blood screamed, my heart hitting my ribs painfully.

  Not my Calev too. Please not my Calev too.

  Salty grit under my nails and in my palm, I tossed what little magic I had into the air and shouted to the sea.

  “Send us out,

  Send us beyond.

  We know not your depths,

  And want not your charms.

  Out, out, out, out.

  Please, sea,

  Please listen to me.”

  I grabbed the oar and slammed it into the water. The boat turned its nose a subtle fraction toward the sky. Rowing and heaving and praying aloud, we dragged at the boat. The current fought us. The salt hadn’t worked. I’d shouted, and anger never got anyone anywhere with the salt. I closed my eyes and put everything I had left into one last tug on the oar.

  Then the craft began to edge out of the current.

  Tears or sweat or maybe both poured down my face. As Oron whooped, and with a few more pulls, the tide brought us ashore.

  All my thoughts turned to Calev.

  Oron leaped from the boat and joined the others in pulling the craft out of the waves. One sailor vomited beside the boat. They were still suffering from the silver toxin.

  Berker was snapping and lashing out commands I didn’t hear.

  I dragged Calev up and put his good side against mine, his arm over my shoulder. He mumbled something and I kissed his forehead, not caring for even a breath if anyone thought anything of it. If they tried to Outcast him for this, I’d kill them all. Twice.

  I supposed I should remove the arrow from Calev’s back and staunch the bleeding. I draped his body, chest down, over a patch of blue-green grass. Like rain drops, blood trickled from the place where the arrow’s shaft sunk into his skin, more of it oozing from the top of the wound. He panted like a dog with sun-stroke, his breaths short and labored.

  Purple rings circled Berker’s eyes—probably from the poisonous silver light—as he yammered on.

  “I didn’t intend for the fighters to injure Calev ben Y’hoshua, but this is your doing, sailor,” he spat. “As soon as the amir returns from her walk, I will inform her of your attempt to steal away and find a new associate to help you take all the silver for yourself.”

  My jaw ached from clenching my teeth. At least he didn’t know the amir had been killed.

  The silent fighters beside him shuffled their feet and mumbled with one another, voices low and worried, faces tinged with gray and yellow sickness.

  “I don’t have sun for your blathering, Kaptan Berker Deniz.” With my dagger, I pressed sideways into the arrow shaft sticking out of Calev’s shivering back. The wood snapped and left a shorter length that would be easier to grab and pull.

  Berker tsked at my words and stormed toward the camp, his tunic whipping around his ankles. The sailors stayed with us.

  I looked to Oron. Sand cloaked his chin and shoulder. He brushed it away impatiently. “This is the worst sort of place to treat such a wound,” he said.

  “But we’re near the ocean.” The sea had the most magic. Its salt would be Calev’s best bet against this wound. I put a hand near the arrow. Calev’s torn tunic was rough under my fingers. The patterns in it made my tired eyes flinch. “Do you think it’s a good idea to take it out now? He’s still awake.”

  Oron knelt. “He won’t be when you do the job.” He began tearing Calev’s tunic away from the wound.

  One sailor hissed sympathetically and two held Calev still.

  I grasped the arrow sh
aft.

  “Hold it and him still while I make a cut.” Oron unsheathed his dagger.

  I tried to keep breathing as Oron sliced the blade through Calev’s skin, making a cut two fingers long.

  Oron met my gaze. “I have to touch the arrowhead. I need to see if it’s stuck in bone or bent from a muscle contraction.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them and nodded.

  Calev shouted as Oron’s finger slipped into the bloody wound. Oron tilted his head, his tongue between his teeth, and Calev went limp.

  Pulling his digit free, Oron stared grimly into the grass and sand. “It passed between two ribs. I think it may’ve nicked his lung, but we won’t know unless he…”

  “Unless he what?”

  “Unless he stops breathing well, smells of pus, and dies.”

  I blew out a harsh breath. I would focus on doing what we could, not what horrors might happen. “Now what do we do?”

  Oron was eyeing the fighting sailors. “Since it’s not stuck in bone, we can pull it free. But I need something to loop around it. Anyone have a length of wire?”

  A fighter with a voice like a raven said, “Would fishing line work?”

  Snatching it, Oron began muttering. “If he dies, Y’hoshua ben Aharon will have me in his fields working off the blood price until the sun goes black.”

  I tried to swallow, but my throat didn’t want to work. “The fields aren’t his.”

  “Oh, don’t you start too. I know. I know. Old Farm belongs to all at Old Farm. Everyone is equal and all that.” He snorted. “But you don’t see any other Old Farm boys meeting with the amir, now do you? They exist in a caste system as we do. They’re only more skilled at masking its uglier side.”

  He was doing his best to distract me with an argument. “If Calev dies, we all work in Y’hoshua’s fields until we die. It’ll be one big celebration.”

  Oron worked the line into a loop and eased it into the wound. “Remind me to educate you further on what is enjoyable and what is not. Considering this journey you were so keen to embark on, plus your take on working in fields, I feel you’ve quite forgotten the basics.”

  The arrow’s shaft trembled from Calev’s unconscious shaking, and my palms grew damp.