Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One

by Alisha Klapheke

  Oron held tight to the fishing line. “Take the shaft and when I call it, pull straight away from the point of entry.”

  My throat convulsed. “Aye, aye, kaptan.”

  Oron gave me a wry look. A breath later, he said, “Now!”

  We yanked the arrow from Calev’s back, a wet noise making my skin cold and damp.

  I dove back toward Calev and covered the bleeding wound with the torn square of his tunic. The sea blew behind me, pressing along my back like a friend’s hand. Squeezing my eyes shut, I only thought of Calev’s smile and how my heart swelled when I saw it. There were no words to this kind of desperate prayer. My heart thudded in my fingertips.

  Oron kissed the top of my head like Calev’s Old Farm soul-teacher.

  The immediate threat over, my mind flipped from rescue to rage, and Oron misinterpreted the look in my eyes.

  Keeping one hand on the cloth at Calev’s back, he touched my shoulder with the other. “There’s no blood from the boy’s mouth. A good sign. He’s only asleep from the pain.”

  Good. It was time to settle something.

  My vision went red.

  I spun and stood in one motion like Calev had in his dagger dance. My eyes searched out the fighter who’d loosed that arrow.

  I found him.

  Dark hair. Light eyes. Very, very tall. Ekrem. I paused. Wait. I liked Ekrem. I hadn’t realized he was the one who’d shot at us. The truth stung. Next to him, the blond woman with the beautiful battle axe frowned.

  “You.” I raged toward Ekrem, pushing the others out of my way. Ekrem didn’t back away from me. I shoved his chest. “You hurt the most important member of Old Farm. Your life is worthless.”

  They didn’t know about the amir. I could use her shadow to scare him. I wanted all of them scared. Of me. Of us. So they’d help me with Calev and help me sail away to Kurakia.

  The plan grew roots in my mind. Maybe my aunt could heal him. I’d seen her heal a man with a head injury that had left him sleeping for three solid years.

  “You know I was under orders, Kaptan Kinneret Raza. Kaptan Berker Deniz outranks you.”

  Ekrem’s stiff leather vest was hot under my gritty palms as I pushed him.

  “Well, when the amir hears of this,” I said, “she’ll have you drawn and quartered. Your head on a spike. Or sent to the quarries.”

  My hands fell to my sides and all my energy drained out of me.

  The quarries.

  With the amir dead, how was I going to get Avi back?

  Maybe my aunt would think of a plan for Avi. At least she was probably still alive at the quarry. Maybe. Calev could die at any minute. He could be dead already.

  The rage in me blinked away. I fell to my knees, knowing my shouting did zero.

  Ekrem offered a hand, but I pushed his fingers away. Beyond us, the whirlpool’s eddies smoothed from white and blue-green into a dull blue. The sun was a white circle a finger from its zenith. The tide had changed. The whirlpool had calmed a bit.

  I faced the sailors, my eyes specifically trained on Ekrem. Maybe his guilt would move him toward my goal. All had to be done before Berker returned either with news of the amir or simply with the trouble he liked to cause me.

  “When we left,” I said, standing, “we weren’t trying to do anything against our agreement with the amir.” It was true, but obviously since Calev killed the amir, it hardly made sense. But they didn’t know that. “Kaptan Berker Deniz is simply misinformed. Now, I need two of you to come with us to Kurakia, if you will. My mother’s sister is the only one who can heal this son of Old Farm. If he dies, I guarantee one of your number will die for it, either in the fields under the sun or by the amir’s rough hand. Your amir will suffer too. The kyros also knows and respects Old Farm. He won’t let the amir’s mistake hinder his ability to make silver from lemon and barley trade. Now, who will row our boat and do their duty to Jakobden?”

  The light-haired woman spoke up. “We must wait for the amir’s orders.”

  Oron nudged me. “Kinneret, what exactly are you doing?”

  “Stay with Calev. I have a plan,” I whispered to him.

  “We cannot wait,” I said to the woman. “To wait means death for this Old Farm son.”

  Ekrem raised his blue eyes and nodded.

  I took a breath. “Good. I need one more volunteer. We need two strong sailors to row. I have a Wraith Lantern. We’ll be safe. I am your kaptan.”

  The light-haired woman cocked her head and breathed out through her nose. Then she raised her palm and bowed.

  A weight dropped off my back. “Good. Your name, please?”

  “Serhat, kaptan.”

  I nodded. “You two, lift Calev ben Y’hoshua. The rest, give up your water skins for our journey please and shove us off the shore.”

  Movement in the distance caught my eye. My heart contracted. Someone was headed here. I licked my lips and hurried to take the water from the sailors who weren’t coming with us.

  “Hurry now, please.”

  Ekrem and Serhat, who’d mostly regained their healthy color, leaned Calev up and put their heads under his arms. They lifted him and I tucked my shoulder under one of his thighs to help get him to the boat. Another sailor joined me, grabbing the other leg. The other two men took oars from the next small boat and placed them in ours.

  Once we had Calev settled on the floor of the boat, we hopped out to push the heavy craft into the water. It took way too long to get the boat deep enough for us to board.

  The people approaching were taking shape now, getting closer. Three? Four? We jumped into the boat, and I held up a hand to shield my eyes from the sun. Berker’s bright tunic caught the light. A smear of darkness marred his sash.

  Blood.

  My heart stopped.

  The amir’s blood.

  They know.

  I spun to face Ekrem and Serhat. “Row hard. We must make the tide to steer around the whirlpool’s tight fist.”

  Oron took up an oar across from me. As he raised his eyes to the beach, his cheeks fell flat and his mouth dropped open.

  “Kinneret.”

  “I know.”

  Thankfully, the sailors didn’t seem to notice Berker and the others trickling onto the beach. Serhat rowed with eyes trained on Calev, who’d begun bleeding again at their feet. Ekrem kept his gaze on me, probably seeing how I measured up in this unconventional situation. The man probably wondered why he’d agreed to this.

  I twisted on my bench seat, trying not to hear Calev’s labored breathing above the splash of water and the wind whistling through the metal rings that kept the oars moving in the right place. The whirlpool remained smoother than it had been when we’d first tried this. I had no more salt in my pouch, so I scooted to the side and cupped a handful of ocean.

  Throwing the water high, allowing the sunlight to sparkle through it, I called out a prayer and a wish and hoped it was enough. My tingling fingers and toes told me I was too worried to do proper Salt Magic. This would have to be mostly skill and brute strength.

  Our craft touched the lip of the whirlpool’s hungry mouth.

  “Hard to port!” The boat rocked, but the current didn’t yet have us. “More! I need more!”

  We rounded the island side of the pool, going counterclockwise. The second we slipped from that arc, we had to row with everything to rip free and head to the opening in the breakers.

  “Starboard! Row hard to starboard! Reverse on port! Go! Go!”

  I tugged at my own oar, the boat shuddering and tossing under me. The handle stuck and the water drew hands over the oar’s tip. I cursed and swore and gritted my teeth and hauled on the paddle until it, and the work of the others, finally pulled us another shift away from the pool.

  At the gap in the black rock barriers and billowing waves, Oron and the sailors followed my directions like they could read my thoughts. My back and arms cramping, we dashed through the pass, unbroken.

  That obstacle crossed, my gaze flew bac
k to the shore’s inky sand.

  Neither the amir’s fighters nor Berker were there.

  Oron pointed behind and east of us.

  Berker and ten sailors had boarded another boat and obviously followed our lead in getting around the pool. There were more fighters than oars, and some drew arrows from quivers on their backs. They were slow to nock them. Berker’s mouth opened wide like he was shouting. His hands jerked through the air as their boat crested an incoming wave near the gap. He fell back and only his head showed above the craft’s side.

  “He’s trying to get them to fire,” Oron whispered to me.

  Ekrem turned. “They will not attempt to hit us, Kaptan Kinneret. I did not intend to strike the Old Farm. The wind took my shot.”

  Serhat nodded, her blond braid shifting over her shoulder.

  I swallowed and cleared my throat. “Why won’t they attack?”

  “Because you showed loyalty to Ifran. The amir did not. Kaptan Berker did not. We value loyalty above all.”

  His words steeled my heart. What could I give Ekrem and Serhat for all this? I had nothing. Nothing but a trip across the Pass to foreign Kurakia, a trip that would most likely involve thirst, hunger, and to top it all, Salt Wraiths.

  Still rowing, sweat pouring down my back and temples, I did my best to look calm and deserving of his service and his mate’s. “I will reward you in any way I can, though the prize may only be friendship and a place to lay your head at the end of all this.”

  Not taking his hands from his oar, Ekrem closed and opened his eyes, nodding his head in acknowledgment. Serhat gave me a grim smile and went back to her rowing.

  “Kinneret,” Oron said quickly, his eyes shining. “You have given me more tales than I ever thought to hold in my heart.”

  “It isn’t over yet,” I said. In the shadow of the boat’s side, Calev’s lashes drew black lines against his sickly pale cheeks. “Calev better live through it with us.” A vice tightened around my chest and I gripped the side to keep from falling.

  “My wish too, kaptan. My wish too,” Oron said, his voice rough as the waters and his gaze on Calev’s shivering body.

  My throat burned with the need to scream.

  I straightened my shoulders, ignored the struggling boatload of Berker and his fighting sailors behind us, and gave the order to drift into the Pass’s main current.

  AFTER TWO DAYS RIDING A CURRENT, Kurakia’s coast, barely discernible at this distance, was a calligrapher’s practice stroke on the eastern horizon. We had to reach its shores before Calev’s body stopped fighting and I lost my best ally in my fight to get Avi back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Clouds shrouded the moon and drew a blanket of pale blue over the looming shoulders of Kurakia’s coast. My body shook with fatigue as the others took a break from rowing to sleep. With one hand on our makeshift tiller—simply an oar I held out the aft end of the little boat—I did my best to use the currents to direct us toward my aunt. The Wraith Lantern scattered light over my arm as I scooped another handful of ocean water, threw it, and whispered magic.

  The white-black sea shushed against the boat, and I dipped fingers into the water, my heart easing just a little. There hadn’t been as many rocks coming from Ayarazi to Kurakia, thankfully. It’d been two nights on the Pass, but it felt like an eternity.

  A wet cough and a moan sounded from the bottom of the boat. Calev.

  With a small rope laying wet at the bottom of the craft, I tied the tiller oar to the stone circle anchor sitting at my feet. Edging past Oron’s slumped and sleeping body, I leaned toward Calev and touched his cheek. His skin was sticky and cold. He opened one beautiful eye.

  Swallowing, he tried to talk for the first time since we’d removed the arrow on Ayarazi’s coast. “Where…is that…Kin…”

  I pressed my palm gently against his jaw, my heart seizing. “I’m here. You’ll be fine. We’re almost to my aunt’s. She’ll fix you. Just rest.”

  He’d managed to drink from Serhat’s water skin earlier and worked down two bites of minced fish Oron had miraculously netted. Hope burned in me like wildfire, out of control and raging through any common sense I’d picked up through my short life. I refused to sleep, thinking if I let that fire rest, it might go out.

  “Kinneret,” Calev rasped.

  “I’m here.”

  His eyes went wide and rolled before closing again, like he was trying to see the two sailors that surrounded him. “Do they know I killed the amir?”

  I sucked a breath and touched my fingers to his lips. A prickling sensation ran over the back of my neck. Serhat slept, mouth open and her eyes firmly shut. To my left, Ekrem also lay still, but his chest wasn’t rising and falling like a sleeping person. It was dark though. Surely he would’ve said something if he’d heard Calev.

  Calev seemed to be sleeping again though, or lost in pain, so hopefully he wouldn’t repeat his question.

  At some point I had to tell Ekrem and Serhat about Calev’s Infusion and the murder. Would they still value my so-called loyalty when they learned I’d helped their master’s killer escape? If they rose against us, we were lost. We could never fight them off with Calev so badly injured. I couldn’t carry him on one shoulder and flee or fight.

  As I crawled back to the tiller, a Salt Wraith dragged across the moon.

  Raising the lantern high, I hissed a warning to the others. “Wraith. Block your ears. Stay low.”

  The rest, except Calev, stirred and crouched on the bottom of the boat between the bench seats, their fingers jammed in their ears.

  This wasn’t the wraith that had Infused Calev. This felt like ones in the past had, all raging, nonsensical hate smashing my reason into splinters. Gritting my teeth, I shook harder as the grating anger skinned me alive. Thank the Fire the lantern glowed strong and true.

  Oron and the sailors winced against the wraith’s attack, eyes shuttered and shoulders tensed. The wraith whisked its charcoal-white, glittering shadow over us and Calev jerked awake. I crawled to him. His cheek pressed against the boat’s bottom, and he gave me a small nod, reassuring me. A muscle worked at his jawline. He was feeling the wraith, as we all certainly were, but he was still him, still whole in heart.

  Checking Oron and the sailors, I lay down, my head resting on Calev’s tunic-swathed calf, and his sandal’s edge butting into my belly. I breathed him in, pushing the angry thoughts out, out, out.

  Finally, the wraith’s shadow disappeared.

  The sky was clear.

  “No more?” Oron scratched his head, making one tangled length bob.

  I sat up and squeezed my hands to try to stop their shaking. “All clear.”

  “Too bad. The whole Wanting To Kill Everybody thing was tamping the whole Our Future Is Looking Pretty Crap thing down really well.”

  I shot him a look.

  “Kinneret,” Oron whispered, his big eyes watching the fighters settle into their rowing. “This whole business with the yatagan-eyed wiseman and the golden axe-wielder,” he nodded toward Ekrem and Serhat, “it’s…we should’ve left without them. Not that I don’t love the blond’s looks of death. They’re like rich dumplings that turn your blood to sludge as you grin and take another helping.”

  Sunlight crept over the hills of the Kurakian shoreline.

  Ease washed over me. We’d made it. “Hush, Oron. Please.”

  “Pardon me for interrupting your moment with the sunrise, but we need to—”

  “You did not tell us your truth.” Ekrem sat up.

  My hands strangled the oar I was using as a tiller.

  Eyeing me without a hint of emotion on his rugged face, Ekrem tugged his vest into place and splashed a handful of water over the back of his neck. His voice was loud over the water shushing against Kurakia’s red sand shoreline.

  “I heard Calev ben Y’hoshua mumbling in the dark. The Old Farm murdered the amir.”

  I went cold as he and Serhat stood in unison.

  “Yes, but…”
What was the best way to explain this?

  Oron raised his thick eyebrows in an I-told-you look. I curled my lip at him.

  My oar slid easily from the water, but I dragged it slowly into its ring like it weighed four Ekrems holding nine Serhats. Oron and I began to row us closer to shore. He gave me yet another look, his lips pale and his throat moving in a swallow.

  Both fighting sailors stood in front of us with arms crossed, pieces of their hair like whips around their stern faces. Their oars sat on their benches like a sign of rebellion. My stomach felt empty and full at the same time. If I didn’t word this wisely, the little chance we had to save Avi was over, not to mention the rest of our lives.

  And there was precious little hope of rescuing Avi. What could we do? Even if Ekrem and Serhat spared our lives and stayed by our sides, what could five people do against the oramiral?

  Nothing.

  “Please. Just…” I didn’t know what to say.

  A shudder ripped through me. I pressed my lids closed and tears bled out of my eyes. I was losing her. And Calev. If the fighters didn’t believe our story, Oron and I too would be killed.

  What was the point of trying?

  My oar slipped from my hands. I opened my eyes as Oron jumped in front of me and caught its handle before it could disappear into the water.

  “Kinneret,” he said softly, holding my oar with two white-knuckled hands, “you must move forward. If you don’t move forward, the worst will happen. If you do move forward, it may not.”

  I took a jerking breath, wiped my eyes, and took the oar from him.

  “Before we left Jakobden,” I said, looking around the fighting sailors to the Pass, to the challenges we were leaving behind, “Calev went with me and Oron to get the map to Ayarazi.” My gaze flicked to Ekrem. “You heard about the map, yes?”

  He nodded.

  “After our dive, Calev was Infused. I didn’t realize it then. He was still Infused on Ayarazi. The wraith ordered the amir’s death. I watched the Infusion light leave his mouth.” Unblinking, I met their gazes, showing them the truth in my eyes.

  From my periphery, I saw Oron nod across the boat from me, his eyes swiveling from one sailor to the other. Calev lay silent and shuddering between the bench seats at the bottom of the rocking craft.