Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One

by Alisha Klapheke

  Driving my feet back and forth, I propelled myself toward Avi, not caring that Calev was already well on his way to her, because her arms unfurled from her sides like a banner dropped from a cliff. My body went numb and everything was moving too slowly. I drove toward her, but she was disappearing into the dark, Calev her shadow.

  Bringing my arms forward, then thrusting them back, I sped forward. Below and beyond me, Calev stopped. His tunic billowed around him like a storm cloud. I couldn’t see Avi anymore. Then Calev whipped around and Avi was in his arms. I opened my mouth, forgetting I was in the water and salt puckered my tongue. With a look at me, Calev—his mouth a line and his eyes furious—kicked his feet and swam toward the surface. He was too slow. She’d be taking in water. She was weak. She would drown.

  I swam up beside him and put my hands under his elbow and his thigh, pushing him with every one of my surges upward. We broke the surface, Calev and I gasping, Avi still limp.

  Oron and Serhat’s faces appeared over the side of the boat. Shouts bounced into my ears. Behind us, the island’s rock walls curled lukewarm air off the water and threw it back at us along with threats from the oramiral and his men above.

  Our sails weren’t up. We were unmoving targets.

  Oron reached his arms down. “Hand her up. I have your salt here, Kinneret. You can help her.” Calev and I lifted Avi as best we could, the boat bumping against us. “Get our kaptan onboard quickly,” Oron said to the sailors and Calev. “She has healing to do.”

  “I can’t heal,” I mumbled as Oron tugged Avi over the side and I began climbing the small rope ladder.

  Calev put a hand under my thigh to heft me up. “You can. You will.”

  Something thudded into the boat by my hand. A short, wooden shaft. Feathers. A crossbow bolt.

  Calev blasted up the ladder behind me, scooping me into the boat with him. We tumbled to the deck as another two bolts banged into the boat’s mast and side.

  “That’s why the sails are down,” Oron said, widening his eyes.

  “Well get them up now!” I scrambled to my feet and rushed to where Avi lay chest-down near Serhat.

  The fair-haired sailor struck Avi’s back and water poured from my sister’s mouth. On her knees, she coughed and fell forward into my arms. She was light as a bird. Cold as ice.

  “Avi? Can you hear me? You need to stay awake. I’m going to sit you up.” With Serhat’s help, I raised her into a sitting position.

  Avi’s face was a puzzle of white, purple, and pale greenish.

  She wasn’t breathing.

  Calev and Oron shouted instructions at one another as they raised the jib and halyard. The wind shouldered into the sails and we pushed westward.

  “Avigail,” I whispered into her face. My hand searched blindly for the salt pouch Oron had kept for me. “Breathe. Please breathe. We have you now. You have to live to help me deal with Oron.” I searched the deck. “Where is the salt?” I shouted at Serhat and everyone who would listen. Leaning back down to Avi, I said, “And Calev needs someone to help him irritate me.”

  “Here,” Calev was suddenly there, kneeling and holding the bag of salt. He lifted my hand to his mouth and said a prayer against my skin.

  “May the One who blessed our foreparents, mothers, fathers, bless and heal the one who is sickened, Avigail, sister of Kinneret. May the Shining Pure One overflow with empathy and love upon her, to refresh her, to raise her up, to make her strong, to heal her.”

  I swallowed. “Thank you.”

  My soul was turning itself inside out. I drew a handful of salt from my pouch. What words had Aunt said over Calev?

  It didn’t matter. I just had to try. I’d already done things I never thought I could. Father’s long, bedtime lectures about thinking on my magic before taking up the salt made so much more sense now. I could still see the worry in his brown-green eyes and the way he tucked my and Avi’s sleeping blankets so carefully like he could protect us with mere bedding.

  With his caution in my heart and my mother’s magic in my veins, I prayed.

  “Salt, blood of the oceans, heal,

  Wake this one’s lifefluid.

  Feed your strength to her.

  Enliven, spark, breathe!”

  My arms shook. I pressed my salty hands against Avi’s bony chest. A rasping sound came from her mouth and my heart lurched.

  “Please, Avi. Breathe. Cough. Live.”

  Her cheek, her ear, were warming. Her chest rose in another breath.

  And she opened her eyes. Tears ran into my mouth as I laughed.

  “Drink?” she rasped. I could barely hear her.

  Before I could scramble around for fresh water, Calev’s hand appeared at her mouth with a water skin. His hand was steady, holding the drink to her chapped and bleeding lips. I cupped her head and helped her position herself better to swallow. After coughing up the first sip, she worked a few swallows down. I put my hand on Calev’s, moving the container away, and he looked at me.

  “But she’s still thirsty.” Water droplets shone on his lashes, confusion in his eyes.

  “She has to drink slowly. Or it will make her sick.”

  He nodded, plugging the skin with its cork. “I’m so glad they hadn’t yet fitted her with a bell.”

  I nodded. It would’ve made our escape and her landing that much more difficult.

  “Kinneret.” Avi twisted. Her eyes seemed so much larger than before. Before. It was like an age ago. “Are we going home?”

  Icy fingers walked down my back. We couldn’t.

  “We’re going to visit Aunt.”

  “And then home?”

  “Close your eyes and rest, Avi.” I ran a hand over her head.

  She nodded and settled against me, her body shuddering in a deep breath. Waves rose around our boat like blue-green hills, blocking most of our view to the island. No more arrows came our way. No more shouting. We’d made it.

  Avi was here in my arms and we were headed to safety in Kurakia, where they wouldn’t question us about our past. We could start new there, maybe wait until Berker and the rest of the fighters managed to get off Ayarazi and sneak back there ourselves.

  “Kaptan!” Oron stood at the bow, one foot on the side of the boat, his hand up to shield his eyes from the white-hot sun.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Avi.

  “I’ll take her.” Calev gathered her into his arms. His smile had to be an unguent for her pain.

  When I ducked past the rigging, I saw it.

  The oramiral’s ship.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  My hand went to my throat. “No.”

  “Yes.” Oron swallowed loudly. “We should arm ourselves.”

  I laughed hysterically. “Oh yes. With our four weapons. That’ll work perfectly!”

  Calev came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. Past him, Serhat now sat with Avi, who peered over port, her eyes trained on the oramiral’s yellow sails.

  “Kinneret,” Calev said. Corded muscles ran down his arms and I wished more than anything that strength and luck were enough to help us escape our enemies. “Do you have any ideas?”

  I breathed out of my nose, my head spinning with worry for Avi. She didn’t even seem like the same sister. Wisdom earned through pain had lurked in her eyes as I’d held her. She could not go through imprisonment again.

  What power did we have? What advantage?

  The oramiral’s boat could outrun ours. He had slaves aplenty that were obviously still on his side, both gray-tunic and yellow. The struggle on the island must’ve switched track and gone his way. As usual, the world did no favors for those in slavery. It was why some respected those who’d been through it and risen to a higher caste with strong business skills or a stroke of luck. Slavery stripped you down and turned you into a lean, fierce version of your former self. The transformation bled into the generations that came after, into children, grandchildren, making them stronger and smarter. But slaves had to earn
their way out. Serve consistently, convince visiting merchants and tradesmen to buy their freedom, or impress their owners to such a degree that they emancipated them. And breaking Avi out of the quarry hadn’t impressed the oramiral. What would?

  Oron held his dagger sideways in the air, surrendering as the ship approached. Ekrem dropped the sails.

  “Kinneret, what’s in your head?” Calev still stood in front of me now, eyes questioning.

  I bit my lip. It turned my stomach, but… “You tell him Old Farm sent you to retrieve Avi.”

  “Why? He’ll need a reason. A strong reason.”

  “Tell them she’s your Intended.”

  Calev cocked his head and rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing Oron as he came near.

  “A good plan. I don’t like it.” Calev’s gaze flashed to me, a question and an answer in those eyes that I didn’t have the sun for now. “But it might work.”

  Our fighters surrounded Avi, their uniforms making a wall of red leather.

  “You have your father’s ring?” I asked.

  “What are you two planning?” Oron frowned and kept his face turned to the approaching ship.

  Calev lifted a hand. A gold band, brushed by age and wear, circled his thumb. The Old Farm sigil, a sun rising behind a smooth leaf, was barely visible on the flattened top. His dark eyes glowed and he clenched his jaw. My heart skipped. He looked more like his Old Farm ancestors than ever. The colors that made up his skin, hair, and clothing echoed the brown sand, black soil, and blue seas. His people had survived the Quest knights’ takeover, then the line of kyros thus far.

  I ran a finger over his ring. My own veins held a tiny bit of Old Farm’s blood. My twice great-grandmother had been Old Farm—pushed from the community and made an Outcast because of her affair with my twice great-grandfather, one of the amir’s house slaves. I was a jumble of every kind of people that had lived in Jakobden.

  A bang, then another, broke us apart. Two grappling hooks housed themselves in the boat. The full ship rose beside us, sails like clouds of tawny poison. Slaves in the same yellow as the sails boarded the ship in a silence that set my teeth on edge. The only sounds were the waves against the hulls and the sour clangs of bells.

  The monkey-faced slave that first attacked the day they took Avi sauntered up to Calev, Oron, and me. Rukn. He took Oron’s offered dagger and tucked it next to his undecorated steel yatagan. “The oramiral is eager to see you.”

  My skin burned. “You and your oramiral have sinned and you will pay.”

  The slave put a finger against my lips. The heat under my flesh shook me.

  Calev moved to grab the man’s arm, but I beat him to it. My fingers laced around the slave’s wrist.

  “Why are you even loyal to that beast? You enjoy cleaning up his piss and cooking his meals?” I spit at his feet. “Pathetic.”

  He laughed. “You know nothing, girl. I am Rukn, master of slaves. You are the one with no future. Well, you do have something keeping you alive for the next few days.”

  “What is that?” Oron asked quietly.

  Rukn’s black eyes turned. The slave sniffed down at Oron and grinned at me. “The oramiral has two great talents.”

  A heaviness draped over me like a sail had fallen from its ties and landed on my back and shoulders.

  “One is shaping slaves into weapons,” Rukn said. “The second…”

  “Bone and shell game strategy?” Calev asked, nudging his way between us.

  “A fine hand with the oud?” Oron blinked and strummed an imaginary instrument.

  Rukn’s grin fell into a grimace.

  Where was my sister?

  I couldn’t stand the space there was between us. I wanted her in my arms as if I could protect her from all this. A stupid thought. Across the wet decking, a wan-faced slave held her quill-thin arm.

  Serhat and Ekrem were restrained beside her. They were dead too. We all were. Instead of only losing Avi, I’d thrown Oron and them into the storm. Maybe Calev would get out at least. Maybe.

  “Joke all you want, prisoners,” Rukn said. “You’re dead men. But only after the oramiral has enjoyed pulling every form of scream from your trespassing throats.”

  “The young girl.” Calev jerked his chin at Avi, who shivered. “She is my Intended.”

  Oron made a noise, then covered it with a cough.

  Calev raised his hand and his Old Farm ring flashed in the sun. “I am Old Farm—Calev ben Y’hoshua, son of Y’hoshua ben Aharon—and under the amir’s protection, therefore so is the girl. You had no right to take her.” Thank the Fire for the strength and confidence in his voice.

  Please let it be enough to save her too.

  The slave’s face fell, then he narrowed his eyes. The longer hairs in his eyebrows moved in the sea wind. “Why was she not wearing Old Farm henna if she was so recently Intended?”

  “She was sick,” I lied. “Unable to participate in the henna ritual.”

  The slave leered at me, then at Calev. “Why was an Old Farm, and a sick one at that, on a worthless little boat? Why are you here?” he asked Calev. “She’s no full ship kaptan.” He pointed. “What is your business with these scrappers, Old Farm?”

  So Rukn did believe Calev. At least the part about him being Old Farm.

  “We were headed to her aunt’s home in Kurakia,” Calev said. “She’s known for her healing abilities.”

  It was another good lie. Truth made deception easier to swallow. Something about the liar’s eyes.

  Straightening, one hand on his yatagan, the slave called out to the men at his sides. “Lies. All lies. Take them on board. All of them. And drag their craft.” He spun and leaped deftly to the ship, flying over the netted float skins and the slapping waters between the boats. “They won’t be needing it.”

  His loud laugh ripped the veins from my arms, the heart from my chest.

  Rukn’s men swamped the deck and grabbed Calev with quarry-strong hands. Calev went pale. I reached out and put a hand on his back and tried to piece him and myself back together.

  “They believe you,” I mouthed.

  Untruth on top of untruth.

  As they wrestled Calev onto the full ship, Oron whispered up at me. “What are you doing?”

  The men tore Avi from Ekrem, whose lips went white in his beard. My heart flapped in useless ragged beats between my ribs. Serhat pushed another slave off her arm and climbed aboard the oramiral’s ship on her own.

  I pushed away from Oron and around another slave as they dragged Avi across the deck. The slave next to me whipped around and hit me across the mouth.

  Wincing, I dipped low and rammed my shoulder into his side, moving forward. “Avigail!”

  She shouted my name and her eyes fluttered like dying nightwingers as two hands latched onto my arms and kept me where I was.

  “If you injure an Old Farm Intended, you suffer drawing and quartering!” I said.

  Oron sucked a breath and glanced at me in question.

  “It’s true and you know it, Rukn!” I jerked my arms free, but didn’t run. There was nowhere to go. “Remember that!”

  It was an old law, one the first kyros enacted as proof of good intention toward Old Farm in exchange for the brightest lemons, the best barley, and the silver that came with their trade.

  The slave holding me ripped my dagger from my sash, tucked it into his own, and hauled me onto the full ship. He threw me on the bigger ship’s deck next to Calev. Blood trickled from Calev’s brow and he held a hand against his arrow wound. I licked my lip and tasted blood. I wished it mattered that I was bleeding. That he was. But it would only be the first of our blood spilled.

  Oron landed beside us as Rukn called out orders for the lines and sails.

  Around a cough, Oron mumbled, “That law doesn’t come up very often.”

  Calev titled his head. “Not too many Old Farm head out to sea with wild, mixed-blood sailors.”

  He smiled sadly at me. He hadn’t meant to insult. I k
new him. Humor was his coping strategy. My hands shook as I pressed them against the worn deck.

  “Not many Old Farm are exciting enough for wild, mixed-blood sailors,” I said.

  “I’m beginning to think excitement is overpraised.” Oron pulled himself to standing.

  Rukn stood atop a set of stairs as his crewmen rushed around the ship, working lines and watching the waters.

  “The Intended and Calev ben Y’hoshua will enjoy a cup of wine in the oramiral’s quarters below. Tirin, please escort them out of the sun.”

  “Yes, Rukn,” said a gray-shirted slave with a wide brow and deep-set eyes. He lifted Avi with a care that surprised me.

  “Sailor,” Rukn said as he looked at me. “You and your crew will wait below until the oramiral sees fit to judge your future.”

  I glared at him. Calev’s eyes widened at the black mouth of the full ship’s hull. The odor of unwashed flesh and stale water curled between the bars of the opening.

  Oron, the fighting sailors, and I walked, with yatagans’ points digging into our spines, toward the place that would be our temporary prison.

  “This is not the day I thought it’d be,” Oron grumbled.

  My gaze darted to him as the slaves raised the barred entrance and gestured for us to climb down the ladder into the near dark.

  “You thought we’d die in the escape,” I said. “So this is better than your hopes.”

  Oron gave me a withering look before I started down the ladder. “Save your determined optimism for the rats, Kinneret. Their minds might be soft enough to soak it in. Mine is not, although agreeing to this entire endeavor speaks strongly against my argument.” He touched his head sharply and held a hand to Ekrem and Serhat. “Please, go ahead. I wouldn’t want the amir’s own fighters to wait on measly little me.”

  The ladder rungs were greasy. When I made it to the bottom, I wiped my hands on my skirt. Ekrem and Serhat climbed down to join me. Above, sunlight ringed Oron’s head. He turned to Rukn.

  “Speaking of,” Oron said, “won’t the amir be a trifle ruffled if she hears you threw two of her best fighting sailors into a hull filled with despair and possible infection?”

  An invisible hand curled around my throat and I put a hand against the ladder as it shook under Oron’s weight. It made sense to bring up the amir, to try and use what we had to gain an advantage, but the mention of her title, the fear that the oramiral and all of Jakobden might know we had a hand in her death…