by Anna Burke
“For once I agree with her treatment of you on this.” She tossed the lemon and caught it in the same hand. The smack of rind against her palm echoed my heart. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
“I don’t know what to do about her.”
“Right now, you don’t do anything. You rest. Deal with her when you can think straight.” She smirked. “Though maybe ‘straight’ is the wrong word.”
“Funny.”
“I know.”
The lemon continued its trajectory up, then down.
“My leg still kills me, and it hurts to breathe,” Harper continued. “But do you see me running around?”
“You’re still working. It’s not the same.”
“Maybe.”
A pause settled between us, punctuated by the lemon. I followed it with unfocused eyes.
“Raiding Crux makes me sick,” Harper said eventually.
“I know.”
“We could warn them.”
I closed my eyes to shut out the thought I’d been suppressing: the choice was the Gulf all over again. “And then what?”
She didn’t answer.
“Orca might go with you, if you asked,” I said.
“Where would we go? Back to my mom?”
“There are other ships.” I pictured Harper living on the Trench, engineering her way into yet another new life.
“What about you? Would you come with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Miranda?” she asked.
“Miranda.”
“You might be able to have something real if she left this ship,” said Harper. “A fresh start.”
“Is there such a thing?”
The thunk of the lemon escalated into a pounding. I blinked, trying to focus my eyes. The lemon wasn’t moving, but the sound—
“Speaking of Miranda,” said Harper as the door opened.
But it wasn’t Miranda.
Armed sailors swarmed us. I recognized a few, including Reya and Nasrin. Wasn’t Nasrin supposed to be guarding Ching? My head spun as I struggled to process what was happening. Nasrin didn’t meet my eyes as she helped subdue a struggling Harper and bound her wrists behind her back. Another sailor punched Harper in the ribs. She whimpered—they hadn’t yet healed fully—and slumped. I hardly even noticed the hands binding my own wrists behind me.
“Harp!” I flung myself toward her, but was restrained with more gentleness than I expected.
“Go easy, and you won’t get hurt.” I recognized Reya’s voice.
Betrayal soured the air in my lungs. Reya. I worked beside her every day. Reya, who I’d thought one of the few people I could trust. It was Annie all over again, just like I’d feared the day I’d found Ching in the chart room. I aimed a kick at her kneecaps. She twisted me closer, knocking me off balance.
“You’ll hurt your head if you keep fighting.”
My shoulders ached from the binding. I stomped my foot on her toes, and she jerked my arms, straining the joints in their sockets.
“Let’s go,” said a man I didn’t know.
Harper and I were shoved ahead of our attackers and out the door. I stared at it as I was paraded through. The lock hadn’t been forced. That didn’t make any sense. Only Miranda and I had keys.
“My mother will blow you out of the water,” said Harper.
It was the wrong thing to say. Her captor—not gentle Nasrin, unfortunately—slammed her up against the wall of the corridor and cut off her breath with his forearm. She choked, and I writhed in Reya’s grasp.
“We don’t have time for this,” said Nasrin. When the man torturing Harper snarled, she flexed a massive bicep at him in warning, and he lowered Harper back to the ground. She wheezed as we were shoved forward once more.
Captured twice in one month. Not exactly our crowning achievement.
Our progress was slow as both Harper and I fought as best we could. Finally, Reya tripped me. The impact sent stars across my vision. “Get up,” she said curtly, but as she knelt to haul me to my feet, she whispered something else. “Cooperate. We have a plan.”
I let my head fall against my chest to hide my shock.
They marched us to the brig, which was located in the bowels of the ship, and our captors did not care if we stumbled on the stairs or how many sailors stopped to stare. None intervened, though I saw mutterings and confused expressions. This offered little comfort. Even if half the ship still supported Miranda, they were clearly not the active half. I replayed Reya’s words over and over to keep from crying. A plan. They had a plan. We were not all going to die.
Then again, plans failed.
Chapter Ten
The brig smelled like algae and brine. Recent flooding had left grime on the walls, and it was easy to see where the scrubbing crews hadn’t gotten around to cleaning yet. Salt encrusted the floor and clung to crevices. The ceilings were even lower here than they were elsewhere. Pipes twisted above us—some filled with biolight, others pumping electric currents. The dried husk of a jellyfish hung from one.
“Get them in,” said the sailor guarding the brig hatch. Nasrin opened it, her muscles bulging as she cranked the door, and Reya pushed me through.
The brig had several cells. Two were quarantine cells—one designed for a single occupant, and the other much larger, intended to house small crews. The other cells were uniform in size. Harper’s captor unlocked one, then sent her sprawling to its floor. Reya was only slightly gentler with me. I landed half on top of Harper, who groaned as I crushed her ribs.
“Wait—” I called out as the door shut.
Darkness fell. The cell had a small biolight built into the plex of the ceiling—they didn’t want us hanging ourselves on exposed pipes—which illuminated little. Harper’s face was a kaleidoscope of shadow. I rolled off her, my arms still bound, and absorbed our surroundings. Hard plex walls. Windowless door with a slot for feeding. A bunk. A toilet. Nothing more.
I focused instead on Harper’s wheezing breath. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better.” She rolled into a sitting position. “What did they tie us with?”
“Hang on.” I worked my body through my arms, thanking my flexibility, until my hands were in front of me. “Just rope cuffs.”
Easy enough to undo. I freed Harper, who in turn freed me, and we rubbed our shoulders for a few silent minutes.
“We need to get out of here,” she said eventually.
“Yeah.” I told her what Reya had said.
“No offense to Reya, but she fucking locked us in here, so I’m not going to count on that.” She stood, wincing, and hammered on the door. “Hey, shark-dicks, want to tell us why we’re in here?”
Nobody responded. Harper kept up a barrage of insults until I stopped her, saying, “You’re killing my head.”
She slumped beside me on the ground. “I’m not dying in here.”
“They don’t have the others.” Yet. I didn’t say it, but we both heard the unspoken word.
“Wait.” Harper raised her head from my shoulder. “They had a key.”
“I know. But how—”
“They must have the captain.”
Now it was my turn to surge to my feet and pound on the door. “Miranda,” I screamed into the plex. She’d hear me if she was in the brig. No answer came. I continued screaming until my voice faded to a croak and Harper cradled my bruised hands in hers. My head throbbed. The drug was wearing off, and I had no way of getting more.
We fell asleep tangled together on the floor. I held Harper close, burying my face in her curls and tucking her body into mine as we’d done when we were younger. Unlike then, pain hitched our breathing, and there was no promise of morning.
Sounds woke us. My throat was parched and raw from shouting, and I tried to moisten my lips without success. A door opened, then another, and several thuds followed. Bodies. But they had to be alive—we didn’t store the dead in the brig. We pressed our faces to the feeding slot, and I tried to make out the few blu
rred shapes I could see beyond. The footsteps receded.
“Orca?” Harper called out.
A groan answered.
“Miranda?” I tried to speak, but my voice didn’t carry. Harper took over.
“Miranda? Kraken?”
“Alive,” said a voice that made me want to weep in relief. She was here. She was alive. Nothing else mattered.
“What happened?” Harper asked.
“Mutiny,” said Kraken in a defeated rumble. “Ching’s captain, now.”
I clutched Harper’s hand as dread chilled me. Reya, I begged, please. I didn’t know where else to pin my hopes.
“Are you hurt?” Orca’s voice was little louder than mine.
“No,” Harper answered for us. “You?”
“We’ll live.”
“Not for long,” said a different voice. “Shut the fuck up in there.”
“It appears we have a guard,” said Harper. “Hey, you barnacle- fucking fuck, can we get some water?”
The guard didn’t reply.
Harper banged her fist on the door, once, then subsided. “When we get out of here, he dies first.”
My head swam. “How long have we been here?”
“No idea. You were out for a while.”
Something clanked, then a flask clattered to the ground beside us. Harper popped the cap and sniffed. “Water. Here.” She held it to my lips. I swallowed, then swallowed again, cool water soothing the burn in my throat.
“I’m not going to be much help,” I said as she drank her fill. “I feel . . . cracked.”
Her hand found my forehead. “Then rest. Nothing else we can do, anyway.”
I jolted awake some unquantifiable time later when the door to our cell opened. My eyes struggled to focus, and I flinched in anticipation of pain as two people entered. One brandished a cudgel.
“Move it, Comita,” he said. Harper drew back her fist to hit him. The cudgel hit her first. She collapsed, clutching her half-healed leg, and the second sailor hauled her out of the cell by the back of her shirt. It all happened in the space it took me to draw breath. I rolled off the sleeping nook and crawled to the door, shouting something incomprehensible as the sound of their footsteps faded.
Orca screamed her name for hours. I curled up with my hands over my ears and tried to block out her flayed voice, because it matched the jagged hollow in my chest too closely. Not Harper, my mind screamed with her. Please, not Harper.
I’d die if Ching killed her. My heart would splinter if her smile broke beneath Ching’s cruelty. I loved Miranda—but Harper was home. Harper was the person who knew me best, better even than my mother, and without her I would have no frame of reference for my world. It was inconceivable a world without Harper could even exist. Time stretched in the darkness. I didn’t feel hunger or thirst. I floated, suspended by terror, every filament strung out. The ocean was lost to me, but pain offered new coordinates.
“Harper?”
Orca’s shout alerted me to noise beyond my cell. My door was unlocked, and then something fell to the ground. I scrambled forward. “Harper. Harper.”
She was warm to the touch, and I found the pulse in her neck. “She’s alive.”
“What did they do to her?”
My hands searched her unconscious body for signs of trauma. No blood matted her hair, and her breathing was steady, so her lungs had not been punctured. No broken arms. No—
I stopped. Her right hand was wrapped in a bandage, and I felt it gingerly. Only a thumb and three fingertips poked out from the wrapping.
“Rose. What did they do to her?”
Bile soured my mouth.
“They . . . they cut off a finger.”
Orca must have flung herself at her door, judging by the pounding that erupted seconds later. I wanted to do the same. Instead, I pulled Harper’s head into my lap and stroked her hair, unsure whether I was glad she was unconscious or desperate for her to wake. Her hands were her life. Engineers needed to be nimble, and while fingers were lost in accidents, Harper was careful. She took care of herself. This would devastate her.
“Rose?” Harper’s voice sounded like Orca’s: jagged.
“Hey,” I said, smoothing my thumb across her forehead. “You’re back.”
She turned her face into my stomach and sobbed.
We were pulled apart hours later by the same two sailors. This time, I was the one led out. Harper scrabbled at their hold on me, smearing blood across their hands, but we were outmatched. Miranda shouted first for them to let me go, and then for me. Her words faded as fear grayed out my world.
They brought me to my old room. Ching sat on a stool, studying me. She wore Miranda’s whip and sword. Two sailors flanked her. One looked away, guilt clouding his expression, but he made no move to help me.
“Isn’t this cozy,” Ching said.
Fear felt distant. My head was a sick, wet lump on top of my shoulders, and it throbbed with pain. Nausea roiled in my stomach. My system couldn’t handle the stimulus. I clung to what I knew: if Ching killed me, my head would stop hurting.
Focus. Salvage what you can. Beg if you have to.
“Harper didn’t do anything to you,” I said with effort. “You could let her go. I’m the one who—”
“Don’t be naïve. It doesn’t matter what she did, or what you did. If I have her, I control Comita. And if I have you . . .”
She smiled, and even in my dazed state I could fill in the blanks. If she had me, she controlled Miranda. I wasn’t going to die. I was going to be used against the people I loved.
“You’re a monster.”
How could I have believed, even for a moment, this hadn’t been her plan all along?
“Maybe. I’m also captain of this ship. If you eat, you eat by my leave. If I let you live, you live by my leave. And if you want your friends to eat and live with you, you’ll tell me exactly what I want to know.”
Her eyes—a brown so dark it was nearly black, and framed by short thick lashes—held mine as she leaned forward. I nodded. I would tell her everything, because I knew what she would do if I didn’t. I’d sit, bound, while she removed another finger from Harper’s hand, or cut the eyes out of Orca’s tattoos, or—I couldn’t think about what she’d do to Miranda, because I suspected it would involve my own flesh. And Kraken—vast, unshakeable Kraken. What would she do to him?
“Good. I need you to give me the key to fleet code.”
I noticed the box beside her for the first time. On a bed of vermillion-stained cloth lay Harper’s finger.
“Why?”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“No. I mean why did you do this?”
She seemed to understand that by “this” I meant betraying Miranda, as she said, unsmiling, “Because she gave me every reason to.”
“You swore an oath.”
“And I kept it. I did not orchestrate this mutiny. Her crew did that all on their own. As for the rest of that oath, the revenge I’m after has nothing to do with you. Miranda should know that. She also knows that captains earn their position, and that their crew can take it away.”
I didn’t understand. I was so damn tired of how much it hurt to think.
“What will you do with us?” I asked.
“I’ll give Miranda the same choice she gave me. As for you and Comita’s spawn, you’ll serve your purpose.”
Panic should have flooded me. I should have raged against her words. All I felt was empty. Everything about this encounter felt inevitable; revenge was as cyclical as the seasons. When she handed me a pen and paper, I did not even attempt to obfuscate. What did it matter? What did anything matter?
••••
Harper held me in her lap when I was dumped back in the cell an eternity later. I would have sobbed if the neurons in my brain remembered how to fire, but instead I lay still, spinning, spinning, spinning into darkness.
Hours later, another sound woke me. This time it was the grunt of the guard, followed by an od
d slither. Harper stiffened. I could feel her straining to listen beside me. Someone cursed under their breath. Then our door swung open.
Nasrin and Reya stood framed by the light of the brig. Nasrin glanced behind us, swore, then grabbed the keys from Reya and fumbled with the next cell.
Reya motioned for us to stand. Weak from hunger, blood loss, and, in my case, my head, we managed to help each other up.
Outside our cell Orca and Kraken waited. They must have been imprisoned together. Harper whimpered as Orca crushed her in a fierce hug, and I looked away.
Miranda was the last to be released. I pushed past Orca and Harper and stumbled into her open arms. The smell of her sweat encompassed me, and I inhaled, willing myself not to cry from exhausted relief. I didn’t realize she’d lifted me until she turned and I turned with her. I let her hold me until I felt her arms begin to tremble. Deprivation had weakened her, too. I wriggled free to stand beside her.
Physically she looked unharmed. As I looked into her eyes, however, I saw the damage. They were wide and stunned with betrayal.
“We need to move,” Nasrin was saying. “Finn is on the boat. We have an opening of fifteen minutes, tops, and we’ve just wasted five. Captain, I’m sorry.”
“Let’s go.” Miranda kept her arm around my waist as if she was afraid if she let me go, I might vanish. I felt the same way about her.
It must have been night. The ship was hushed, as if even the walls slept, and Reya scouted the corridors ahead while Nasrin led our band of exiles. I refused to think about what this meant. Staying alert took all my concentration anyway. Miranda’s fingers dug into my waist each time Reya turned a corner or opened a hatch. Discovery was one pair of eyes away.
Ahead, Reya threw up her hand. Nasrin ushered us back and yanked open the door to a supply closet. It was a tight fit, especially with Kraken, but she got us all in before shutting the door in our faces. Voices murmured outside.
Inside, we stank.
Days of fear-sweat and no access to fresh water had taken their toll, and my eyes watered.
At least it isn’t lemons.
The thought was so incongruous I nearly laughed—hysteria setting in—before realizing this was the first real sign of improvement I’d seen in myself. Not that it would matter if we were discovered.