I elbowed him sharply.
“Ow!” He rubbed his arm.
With sweating brows and heaving chests, the fighting sailors gathered around our bamboo and a stack of fine, silk robes on a straw mat at Aunt’s feet.
Calev knelt by the stalks and grabbed two, bent them. “They’ll give and hold like the gaff that holds the sail on a boat, right?”
I nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. If we lash those two together, they’ll be the size of the gaff on the boat you gave us, Aunt.”
She held up a length of draping red silk. Sun glinted off its smooth surface and the wind lifted it briefly as the fighters each took a handful to spread it out.
“I can cut this to fit the framing.” Aunt turned her head a little like she was considering where and how to make the cut.
“Will silk be strong enough?” Oron asked. Standing beside the fair-haired fighter, he fingered an edge of the rosy fabric and scratched his hair.
“Oh yes,” Calev said as he tied two of the stalks together. The muscles and tendons in his forearms worked smoothly, beautifully, like sailing ropes under his browned skin. “Silk is very strong. And light.”
“Light being fairly important if this rig is meant to keep two people in the air for over four hundreds yards or so,” Oron said. He looked at Calev, then me, like we might start in on one another again.
“Why two people?” I asked.
“We have only so much of this expensive silk. And just four good stalks.” Oron kicked the fifth, exposing a splintered edge on the underside. “Two for each…glider. A fighter can stay with me in the boat, in case we’re boarded.”
“Stay in the boat?” Ekrem frowned. “We will infiltrate the fortress. We are masters of such maneuvers and should be involved in the recovery. I see that we will need to glide out. They’ll surely know of our presence with the slaves once we’re there. But Serhat and I should execute the plan.”
Oron held up a hand. “If the oramiral’s men see the boat and take it, then where will the rest glide into? A friendly seastinger’s jaws? A relaxing Pass current that will take them down to a wraith’s death?”
The sailor’s mouth pinched up.
“He’s right.” I wanted to pick up on his thinking. I wanted to go in to get Avi. She’d be so frightened, so weak. She needed me. “Oron and one fighter will stay with the boat. Calev, if you insist on going in, you and Serhat can come with me. I will fly out with her and Calev, you can fly out holding Avi’s hands to the glider’s supports. When thinking of weight, the plan makes sense.”
Calev threw me a dark look, but nodded. “I agree.”
Oron put a hand over his heart. “They agree! The impossible is possible.”
“Cut here. Here. Along this place too. And you two,” Aunt said to Calev and Oron, “saw the fifth stalk into two pieces. You can suspend the piece from the support frame for the handle as Kinneret explained in her plan this morning.”
Aunt handed the silk off to the fighters who began cutting with silver shears in the places she indicated. Oron and Calev traded jokes as they followed her orders. Then Aunt took my arm and led me away, toward the well where a rooster strutted around the stone base, his throat green as Ayarazi’s meadow in the baking sun.
“What has happened between you and the Old Farm?” she asked, her brown eyes seeing right through me.
I glanced toward Calev. His smile made me smile. “Nothing. We…had an argument. He wants to protect me. And I want to lead.”
“Ah. You love one another.”
“Well, yes. But not like that. We can’t…”
“Oh, yes you do. And him too. And you can. You just have to make decisions. There is always a choice to make. If you choose to live outside your land’s caste rules, so be it. I think you two do not care to avoid difficulty anyway. It is not too much to think this attitude will carry you through to loving one another, to mating.”
The sun seared my cheeks. I put a hand up to cover one and turned away. “I didn’t say anything about mating. We don’t talk like that in Jakobden,” I mumbled, my tongue not working quite right.
Aunt laughed and steered me back toward the group. “But there are children enough in Jakobden. Talk or not, there is mating going on.”
I shushed her as we neared the group and Calev gave me a look with a question in it. My cheeks were definitely getting too much sun.
Aunt leaned toward my ear. “Don’t let that beautiful man escape you, my Kinneret. You are brave. You take him and you make beautiful babies. Do not allow something as simple as caste deny a real love. It comes once, sometimes twice, in a lifetime. I should know.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off Calev. Once in a lifetime. I believed Aunt. There was no one like him. I couldn’t bear to lose him. He was my luck, my heart, the blood in my veins, and somehow, some way, I would have him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You’re certain you want to go first?” I cupped my hand at my mouth and called to Oron.
From the grass and stick roof, he waved a hand. “Yes!”
He lifted the sideways sail of red silk and bamboo over his head, his body looking tight with the effort. The wind noticed the glider and gave a tug. One of Oron’s feet jerked forward and he caught himself before toppling off the roof.
“Go!” I punched a hand in the air.
Calev shouted suggestions about reaching arms as far out as possible and the fighters cheered. Aunt covered her face with her hands.
The wind took the glider as Oron’s feet lifted from the roof. He began to fall the five stories down to the straw we’d gathered into a massive pile that covered most of the courtyard. He was going fast. Very fast. Then the silk cupped the air and seemed to slow Oron’s descent a fraction.
Oron swore. Loudly.
Then he began kicking and thrashing. “I don’t want to die! I’m rethinking this. Save me!”
His leg movement lurched the glider sharply down on one end and his graceful descent became a typical fall. Fast and ending in pain.
We ran to him.
The glider flipped over his head and landed bottom up. Oron was face down.
I turned him gingerly and his face was coated in dust. A long piece of yellow straw stuck to his cheek.
“Am I alive?” he asked.
“Yes, you fool. You’re alive. If you hadn’t lost your nerve, you’d have been fine.”
Calev leaned over and pushed Oron’s hair out of his eyes. “I’m going next.”
I whipped around. “You are?”
“Yes.” Calev and the fighters lifted the glider and headed toward the ladder we’d set against the outside of the house.
I pressed my lips together. Today was not going to be dull.
AS IT TURNED OUT, Calev was the best on the glider.
“Go!” I called up to him from his perch atop Aunt’s roof.
There was something in the way he leaped forward and into the air without hesitation, the way he kept his body light and still as the silk eased his descent to the earth. As the straw-strewn ground came up to meet his feet, he went into a run, holding the glider aloft and steady with his lean, strong arms. When his momentum was gone, he lowered the glider to the ground behind him.
The fighters and Oron stomped their feet in praise for his skill. Aunt missed the excitement. She’d gone to the market to gather some dried beef and root vegetables for our journey.
“That will never grow tiresome.” Calev ran a hand over his wind-tossed hair and did his stretching thing again, moving his torso around to ease the discomfort in his healed wound.
I didn’t smile like he did when I took my turns with the glider. I liked my feet on a boat deck, the water shifting and familiar under me. To have nothing beneath me…
Calev laughed as we leaned both the gliders we’d created against the courtyard’s mud wall, near the gate.
“You look a little green,” he said.
“I feel a little green.” My stomach rolled like a sea swell. �
�You think the gliders will hold two riders?”
“I do. But we shouldn’t over-test this fabric. It’s all we have.”
“Agreed.”
The others washed and drank at the well in the middle of the yard. We had to go now.
I swallowed and crossed my arms over my stomach, the cutting scent of soap rising over the miasma of cow dung and chicken feed. Aunt had kindly washed our clothes after our first set of practice flights and allowed us to dirty her extra robes and tunics. I inhaled the clean smell and Avi’s face floated through my mind’s eye.
She’d helped me with washing every sundown as long as I could remember.
Splashing. Smiles. The way she pinched up the side of her mouth when a dab of tar sealant wouldn’t come off her skirt. I remembered her putting her underclothes on her head once and doing her version of a trader’s jig. Father had snapped at her, but she’d giggled with me when he finished lecturing. His fussing made her cry when she actually deserved it.
My Avigail. My sister. My only family.
The sudden hot burn of tears pressed behind my eyes and I turned to face the Topa trees beyond the gate and wall.
“Ah, Kinneret,” Calev said. He put a hand gently on my back. “That oramiral…” His voice went low and menacing. “We will take her back.”
Suddenly, strangely, the courtyard blurred and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed all of Calev or none of him and I was tired of worrying about what would happen if I did get him, of what would happen under the threat of being Outcasted. My skin itched and my heart thunked erratically.
I spun to face him and my emotions exploded into a jumble of anger and fear. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Calev’s eyes widened like I’d slapped him, and no wonder. I was acting like a maniac, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
“All right,” he said. “But we—”
My hands rested on his chest. His tunic was both soft and rough beneath my fingers. “I know.” I took a heavy breath. My lungs didn’t want to expand. “But don’t lie to me. And don’t try to touch or kiss me again. I won’t make you an Outcast. You’ll have enough to overcome without an unconventional union.”
The words spilled out of me without my direction.
“I…I don’t think I can take the beauty of your attention, only to have it ripped away from me when, or if, we return to Jakobden.” I was shaking all over then. My hands. My heart. Voice.
Calev blinked quickly and leaned away a hand’s width. “What do you mean, if we go back to Jakobden?”
“You will be tried for killing the amir. I hope we can convince them that you were Infused. Your father will help I’m sure, and the amir’s fighters we have on our side, but the kyros will be involved.” I grasped his tunic and stared up at him, willing him to understand the danger. “You may have strong luck, Calev ben Y’hoshua, but this. This could mean your death.”
He put his hands over mine, then his mouth tensed and he dropped them to his sides again. “You’re the only one who believes I’m lucky.” His grin was sour-sweet with sadness. “I only believe in the Fire’s will for my life. Well, that and the arrogance of my father.” He laughed quietly.
“Don’t make this a joke. I’m tired of joking.” I released him, my thoughts flying like wild birds. I’d never wanted to move from Jakobden, but now…it was the only way. As long as I could work the sea, it would be fine. “I want to rescue Avi, then take you and her and Oron and whoever else wants to come and go to a place where no one knows us. We’ll sail far, far away. To the Great Expanse. To a new land.”
Calev’s head swept to the side and he clenched his fists at his sides. “I can’t leave my family, my people, Kinneret. I am Old Farm. I will always be. It’s who I am. Like the sea is for you.”
A chill poured over my skull and back. He would never leave Jakobden. I’d known it already. I’d only been denying it the last few days. He would remain at Old Farm. Even if it killed him. Even if it kept us apart, in a way we could never be joined as husband and wife. The cold seeped into my chest and shook me hard. No matter what I did, I would lose him.
If he returned and was killed for slaying the amir, I’d lose him. If he was pardoned, he’d have to marry his Intended. It wasn’t really his fault. But after all this, if he wanted to remain Old Farm, he’d have to do as they wished in marriage. He said he was Old Farm and would always be. His first loyalty was to his people. Not to me. Not to the love sprouting between us.
I would never wake up to find Calev sleeping beside me in our own home. I would never carry his dark-haired babies in my belly. I would never feel the length of his body against my own. He would keep secrets with another woman. I would be outside their world. Another type of outcast. Like I’d always been. Kinneret. Scrapper. Low-caste. Witch. I’d lost all chance at kaptan when I’d crossed Berker.
Even if we were considered innocent of conspiring to kill the amir—which most definitely was not a certainty—I’d never kaptan the Old Farm ship. Of course, Calev wouldn’t have to pay with his throat’s blood for that promise he’d made to the amir because she was dead. But I would pay instead. I would never lead a crew and run a full ship across the Pass. Honestly, I didn’t so much care about that part anymore. I wanted my own small craft, a business so I could purchase food and supplies for Avi and me and Oron. I longed for Avi’s safety, our freedom, and Calev. But I would never, ever have him because he refused to leave Jakobden and its caste system.
Feeling numb, I pushed past Calev. “Oron! Ready?”
Oron tucked his dagger into his sash. “Yes.” He gestured toward the fighters at his side.
Ekrem took a drink from the well cup and set it on the stones.
Serhat nodded at me. “We are prepared, my kaptan.”
Calev came up beside me as I gathered a bedroll and opened the gate for the fighters who’d lifted the gliders.
“Kinneret. What is it? What did I say? We’ll be fine at home. Father will speak for me. These sailors will speak. You had nothing to do with it. You only fled to protect me. Kinneret! Stop! Look at me!”
But I didn’t, and the others were wise enough to simply follow us in silence. I left Calev standing, open-mouthed, at the first turn of the path leading away from Aunt’s estate. She’d agreed to meet us with the food on the beach where the boat waited, under watch of a boy she’d paid to do the job.
When we were far enough from Aunt’s place that Calev was a dark smudge on the horizon, Oron tugged my rolled sleeve.
“Is he not coming with us?” he asked.
Ekrem grunted as he adjusted the glider on his shoulders. Although we would definitely need to find a way to fold the creations to make for easier running and climbing on the island, I don’t think the sailor’s grunt resulted from carrying the thing. He was upset Calev wasn’t with us. I knew enough of military operations to realize missing an operative was not the best.
“He’ll come.” I set my gaze firmly on the slim path pointing toward the sea’s shushing tide. “He loves Avi enough to risk his life for her.”
“Then why are you mad as a squashed bee?”
I glanced at Oron. “He likes to risk his life. It’s pleasurable for someone as lucky as him. It’s the drudgery of sun-to-sun sacrifice he won’t be a part of. Not for anyone.”
Oron’s mouth became a tiny circle as he lifted his eyebrows. “Oh. I see. Doesn’t care to run off into nowhere with a lowly non-Old Farm girl who just happens to hold both his heart and his—”
“Oron.” I glared at him. “I have not mated with him. Not that it’s your business.”
“Doesn’t matter. You hold all the balls in this game.” He snickered at his own stupid joke. “The boy won’t be able to leave you alone.”
“I disagree, Master of Love Experience.” I walked a little faster.
“Point taken,” Oron grumbled.
Guilt niggled at me, but I didn’t apologize. No one asked Oron to get involved in this.
And he was wrong. Very wrong. I didn’t hold any power between Calev and me. Calev held all of it. In the way his smile made me shine. His caste, allowing him all kinds of choices and respect from everyone. And in the potential mates he probably had clamoring around his father at Old Farm. Miriam, for one. A bitter taste slicked over my tongue. I wondered if she had taken that trade trip north yet with her mother and father. Too bad there hadn’t been many reports of wolves.
I shook my head to clear it. We were headed to Quarry Isle to break Avi free. All my focus had to pinpoint on that. If I wasn’t my best, and the rest along with me, today’s sun would be the last one we’d see.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The sun whitened the undulating road of the Pass. The heat rolled over our heads as we neared the oramiral’s island. We’d opted for an afternoon escape as the slaves were forced to work from the middle of the night until the sun was directly overhead. They then had sun to rest and eat.
Oron tugged at his tangled, thick locks of hair. “I still think this is madness. They’ll see us coming a mile away.”
In taut silence, Calev helped me tighten the rope that curled the largest of the triangular lateen sails, adjusting our track a bit. He opened his mouth to say something and I shot a glare, closing that pretty mouth of his. Rocks like tombstones crowded the water to the West. A hazy block of white and brown and green, the island hulked northeast of us.
We were ignoring Oron. It didn’t work.
As the island grew and eventually loomed over us, I threw the anchor overboard into the shallow water. The anchor’s splash was unheard over the crash of the Pass against the island’s rocky crust. There was no movement in the watch tower directly over us.
“Just because we don’t see them, doesn’t mean they don’t see us.” Oron knotted a rope, making a circle at one end. He threw it over the nearest tall rock at the base of the island.
Calev strapped one of the gliders to Ekrem’s back with some extra rope. We’d undone the lashed strips of bark and coconut rope that held the two main bamboo supports together on each of the gliders and folded them for easier maneuvering while on the island.
Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One Page 23