The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (11 page)

She spread her clean clothes on a rock and, wearing her other dress, splashed into the river. It was more of a large stream and only came up to her collarbones when she sat, but it was clear and swift flowing. Ducking her head, she shivered with the cold as water sluiced down between her breasts. A fish flashed by like a coin tossed into the river as she stood up and wrung out the dripping mass of her hair.

“Yerena!” someone called out in the distance.

She recognized Darok’s voice and reached for her cloak. It was the one thing she hadn’t washed, and she wrapped it around herself before she went over to him.

Rather than the white captain’s coat and breeches, he wore brown roughspun, and a long knife hung from his belt instead of a sword. Yerena thought his boots were of too obviously good a quality to have been worn on a real whaler, but the rest of him fitted the part. He had taken the bandage off his head so the healing slash running from temple to earlobe was visible. Not that she minded those kinds of imperfections. The shark had far worse scars on its head, and she still found it beautiful.

Why am I comparing him to the shark?

“There’s something I want to show you,” he said. “In the village.”

Yerena couldn’t think of anything there she might want to see, especially since villages tended to remind her of where she had grown up, but it would be rude to simply refuse. She fell back a pace to follow him, but instead he slowed his long strides so they ended up walking side by side. He said nothing further, but she didn’t know how to make idle talk and was relieved it wasn’t expected of her.

Though after a while she thought talking might have distracted her from the feel of wet cloth wrapping her. She was used to being soaked to the skin, but that day the soft heavy linen touching her breasts felt different, and when it swayed against her bare legs, each inch of her skin seemed as sensitive as a fingertip. Perhaps it was just the difference washing in fresh clean water made.

Darok took them past cottages thatched with seagrass and paused before one that had a tiny flower garden in front, a strip of poor-man’s-gold edged with shells. Pigeons cooed from a cote nearby.

“Take a look at what’s behind the house.” He gestured at her to go ahead, so Yerena skirted the corner of the cottage and stopped. Lengths of linen and skeins of wool were hung on long lines, but what startled her were the colors of the cloth—blue and purple and the vivid hue of roses under a red moon.

A woman turned from the clotheslines. “I’m Lauris.” She smiled. “I heard you might be interested in some new cloth.”

Yerena had no idea what to say, though Darok didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong. “One of your dresses was torn when we—uh, earlier. So when I saw all these, I thought you could use a few of them.”

“Feel all you like.” Lauris pulled a few swathes from the lines and held them out. “Most of it’s good wool from our own sheep, and I wove that myself, but there’s some linen too. I buy the best of that in town and dye it.”

Darok rubbed a fold of the wool between thumb and forefinger. “Nothing grey, but surely a few colors would be all right. Maybe the green?”

Lauris selected a length of moss-green wool and draped it around Yerena’s shoulders. Reflexively she raised a hand to touch it. It felt warm and slightly scratchy, in a way that made her think of a man’s cheek after a shave.

“Perhaps this too?” The linen Lauris held up was dyed a deep metallic yellow, like antique gold that glowed in the sun.

“Very pretty,” Darok said. Yerena’s heart sank and she wished something would get her out of there. She knew what was coming next.

“Wonderful.” Lauris beamed. “It’s only twelve crows for both.”

“Thank you, but I don’t need them.” Shrugging the green wool off her shoulders, Yerena handed it back to the woman and turned to leave.

“Nine, then. You won’t do better than that anywhere, truly!”

Yerena walked fast. She had reached the flowerbed before she heard Darok call out an order to stop—he was careful not to use her name—and every instinct told her to keep walking. The habit of courtesy had been too deeply ingrained, though, and she halted in her tracks as he came up to her. Steeling herself, she raised her chin so she could meet his gaze.

“You don’t have any money, do you?” he asked.

To avoid answering that would make it look as though she had something to be ashamed of. Two golden eagles were sewn into the cuffs of her watersuit, but those had to be saved for situations where she might need to bribe or distract someone. They certainly couldn’t be used to buy lengths of cloth unless she wanted to attract attention.

“No, I don’t,” she said.

Darok’s brows came together, but his tone wasn’t so much angry as incredulous. “Doesn’t Seawatch pay you?”

“Seawatch paid my family a great deal when I was accepted for training. Enough for my parents to buy land.” She thought of saying that Seawatch had given her things which could never be measured in coin, like the shark, but changed her mind when she remembered that he always called it a creature or a beast.

“That’s not what I asked. I said, doesn’t Seawatch pay
you
? You’ve risked your life on their orders, so why aren’t you being compensated for doing so?”

“I don’t need any payment.” But she knew it was half a lie. She wasn’t going hungry or barefoot, but if she had even nine copper crows she wouldn’t need to go to the commissary in Whetstone to request cloth. She would have been able to buy what she liked.

“You don’t need any?” Darok said quietly. “Yerena, there’s a name for people who work without pay. They’re called slaves.”

He might as well have slapped her. Heat scorched her face and her vision went white. She blinked until she could see again, forced herself to breathe normally and tried to think of a cutting comeback. Naturally, nothing came to mind.

She spun on her heel and headed back to the river for her clothes. That time, Darok didn’t call her back.

The only good thing about the confined space on a ship, Darok thought, was that it made finding people much easier. Yerena wasn’t on the deck, therefore she had to be in her cabin. He tucked a paper-wrapped bundle beneath his arm and went to knock on her door.

It was well past dark. The carpenters had taken advantage of the opportunity to check the ship over thoroughly from the outside, making whatever repairs were necessary, and had reported in to Darok. After that, he went over the quartermaster’s inventory of the supplies they’d taken on board and wrote the day’s events into the ship’s logbook. He would have liked to write a letter to his family too, but he would have to pay a villager to find a courier to deliver it and he couldn’t risk the letter being read along the way. Finally he admitted he was putting off the inevitable confrontation with Yerena.

Unity, what had made him say that to her? Slavery had been abolished in Bleakhaven, far to the north, two hundred years ago and had never even existed in Denalay. Little wonder she had been so insulted. Obviously she’d been quite happy with her lot until he’d come along offering unsolicited opinions on how Seawatch treated her. Which was not how he would have treated the driest cabin boy on the ship, but that was between her and Seawatch.

He had to salvage whatever was between her and him, though—assuming there still was anything. Somewhere along the journey, she had gone from a Seawatch operative to a person he…liked.

Oh, admit it
. A woman he wanted as well, not that Seawatch was likely to permit that, much less approve of it. Probably why she always wore drab dresses down to her toes. Though her getting soaked had defeated that purpose, because each time he remembered her with hair soft and tumbled, hazel eyes lit up with a smile and clothes clinging to her like a second skin, he wanted her that much more.

Whether or not she felt anything similar towards him, he didn’t want her to be hurt or angry, which was how he found himself knocking on her door. She opened it and gave him one of those wary, closed looks he remembered well from their first meal together.

“I’m sorry I called you a slave.” With any other woman he might have been discreet and tactful, not using the offensive word again, but he had a feeling blunt honesty would lower Yerena’s shields a lot faster. “It was rude and unnecessary. Please forgive me.”

She was taken aback, and it showed in her face, in eyes widened with surprise. Her lips parted, and Darok wrenched his attention away from them with an effort.
For the Unity’s sake, don’t stare at her mouth.

“I—uh, thank you.” The tense line of her shoulders relaxed. “Of course. I mean, it’s all right.”

Darok took that to mean the apology was accepted, and a weight he hadn’t known he was carrying slipped off his back. He even felt like smiling, because it was so rare to see Yerena flustered.

“Have you eaten already?” he said.

“I wasn’t hungry. I’ve been busy.”

“Doing what?”

In answer, she stepped aside. Two oil lamps in her cabin gave off more smoke than light, but there was enough illumination for him to see what lay across the bunk. It was a blouse, white as foam, the long sleeves untouched by any ruffles or trimming except for narrow strips of grey at their edges. The collar formed a bow at the throat, and that was edged with grey too. The trim was the only thing he recognized.

“Where did you get that cloth?” he said. “I thought you didn’t have any money.”

A small smile curved one corner of Yerena’s mouth, but she said nothing. Darok hoped she hadn’t traded something she needed for it.

“Tell me,” he said. “That’s an order.”

“Yes,
sir
. I made it from the sheet.”

“The sheet? The sheet covering your mattress?”

Yerena nodded, quite unfazed. “It’s good cloth, quality linen. Don’t worry. Once I’ve returned to Whetstone I’ll send you a replacement from the commissary.”

Darok couldn’t have cared less about replacing the sheet, and he hoped it would be a good long time before she went back to Whetstone. No matter how long it was, though, he thought she would always be able to surprise him; she was a still water that ran very deep. Cleverness with a needle wasn’t unusual, but what he admired was her resourcefulness. She had so little and yet she could make something beautiful out of it.

Little, he thought, was exactly what she received from Seawatch.

“I think it’s unfair that you don’t get paid,” he said, “but I won’t say anything more about it.”

Yerena shrugged. “Life isn’t fair, and I’m better off than a lot of people. Well over half the trainees fail Seawatch’s initial tests, and so far no one besides me has linked with the white death.”

“You’re the best operative they have?”

She started to reply, then paused. “No. There was someone else who was much more talented, but he left Seawatch.”

“So you are the best operative they have.” Darok smiled, but there wasn’t much humor in it. The other operative, whoever he was, sounded like a sensible man who’d got tired of being thrown crumbs and had gone to find an employer who valued him. Seawatch should have treated Yerena better as a result, though perhaps they knew she would stay no matter what.

For now, all he could do was treat her the best he could himself. He handed her the bundle he’d carried to her cabin, and she looked taken aback again.

“What is this?” The paper, brown and thin as onionskin, crackled under her fingers.

“Open it and see.”

“It feels like…” She pulled the paper open but stopped when she saw the folds of moss-green wool beneath her hand.

“We don’t have any more sheets to spare.” Darok made his tone cool and formal. “Or sailcloth, for that matter. So if you want to stitch clothes, I must insist you use those instead.”

“Those? There’s more?” She found and held up the length of golden linen which had been below the green wool. Even in the poor light, it brought out a faint sunlit sheen in her eyes.

“Darok, you shouldn’t have bought these.” She looked at her feet, then back up at him. “I can’t repay you.”

“I’m the one repaying you, for saving my life.” He knew how fortunate he was to have escaped from the strait with the loss of nothing more than a sword.

“You don’t have to thank me for doing my duty.”

If climbing aboard a ghost ship alone to help him was nothing more than what was expected of her, he didn’t know what she might do if she chose to go above and beyond the call. “I think people who put their lives at risk for their duty ought to be thanked. I never want to take them for granted.”

Yerena’s skin was tanned from hours spent in the sun, but he still saw the flush that climbed up her face. “Thank you.” She tightened her grip on the bundle of cloth in her arms. “I’ll make good use of these.”

“I know you will, but why don’t you leave them for a while and come listen to some music first?” Darok said. “My brother can play dozens of songs, and if we’re very lucky, he won’t sing along to any of them.”

Yerena smiled, and he stood back to let her go ahead of him up the steps. Alyster sat on the raised quarterdeck, strumming his kithar as a good dozen and a half of the crew gathered around. Yerena stayed clear of them, at such a distance Darok hoped she could hear the music.