The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (13 page)

Except her hands tightened on the watersuit until it felt as though thousands of minute teeth were biting her palms—which was actually happening, since the suit was made from sharkskin, a field of tiny overlapping scales with knife-sharp edges. The pain made no difference, other than her fingers spasming open involuntarily. She didn’t want to get into the water.

She had once ridden a horse. For some reason—perhaps her birthday, despite those not being celebrated in Whetstone—her mentor had taken her up to the small village which supplied the stronghold. Two horses had been saddled and waiting for them.

It had been a miserable experience. The horse was an odd-smelling animal laden with harness and strapping, and each step of the bumpy ride jarred her thighs and backside and spine. Being so far from the ground made her wonder what would happen if she fell off, especially if the horse burst into a gallop. Broken bones seemed likely. Worst of all, she felt no connection to the horse, since she didn’t understand the movements of its body or the workings of its mind.

Being with the shark was so different. When she was on its back—she didn’t sit astride it, because its girth was too wide—and held on to its dorsal fin with a gloved hand, she felt like part of the sea. The shark’s every movement was smooth and graceful; she needed no reins to direct it, and best of all, she had nothing to be afraid of when she was with it. The horse wouldn’t have been of much use had a pack of wolves attacked them, but nearly everything in the ocean left the white death alone.

She had never been afraid of the shark itself, until then.
That damned dream again
.

The drowning part was familiar. As always, in the dream, she’d been lying in the mud of a seabed as something held her down. The surface wasn’t too far because sunlight turned the water blue-green seventy feet above her head…but the distance might as well have been seventy thousand.

Then the shark swept in, mouth yawning wide, and all she saw were teeth and teeth and teeth as its jaws closed on her.

Yerena shuddered involuntarily, then got a grip on herself. She allowed herself to feel such fear once—which was all the self-indulgence she could afford—but it was time to think clearly again. The shark wouldn’t bite her unless it was so maddened with agony or terror that it was snapping at anything in the vicinity, and she was responsible for making sure it was never reduced to such a condition. She’d managed that well enough for fifteen years, and felt sure she could continue to do so.

So she peeled off her shift, which was sticking to her. For the first time she felt self-conscious naked, and she threw a quick look at the door. Of course it was closed. Bolted, too. Though she knew Darok wouldn’t have come in if it had been wide open, unless she wanted him there.

Which she didn’t, of course. No matter how long she lived, she would remember the blunt, coarse way he’d spoken to her.
Vulgar
, was how her mentor would have put it. Seawatch trained its people to be dignified even in anger, so none of the men she had known would have talked to her like that, much less touched her in public.
Or compared me to a crab.

It didn’t matter. She opened the pot of grease she had brought from Whetstone and began to coat her bare skin. The grease protected her from the chafing friction of the watersuit, slowed the development of saltwater sores and supposedly tasted foul, just in case any other sharks attacked her.

She had smeared herself with it hundreds of times, but her skin had never felt so sensitized as her fingers made circles over her breasts and trailed down her stomach. When her slickened hands stroked between her thighs she shivered again, not in fear, and bit down on her lip. The only good thing was that her hands weren’t large enough or callused enough to remind her of Darok’s—not that she had any interest in his hands. Damn him for arousing her so much. She wished he
was
in the cabin so she could throw something at him.

Finished with the grease, she jammed the stopper in with more force than was necessary and stepped into her watersuit. She laced it up at the front, hung her mask around her neck and went topside before she put her flippers on.

After passing through the strait together, the crew seemed to be more accustomed to the shark’s presence, but almost as importantly, no one was likely to try swimming or even letting a boat down in the Iron Ocean. She could bring the shark closer rather than having to row away to it, and moonlight gleaming on the water turned the shark’s back to cobalt as it swam lazily alongside the ship. It looked like a sleek, streamlined bolt of metal.

It had learned the morning routine as well as she had, and Yerena thought how ridiculous she was to get flustered over a dream. The shark was the same as it had always been, and no matter how many times she saw it, she felt the same awe and affection.

The huge triangular head rose clear of the water, eyes fixing on her as it did when it was impatient. Scars crisscrossed its snout and head, but its undersurface was pale and smooth as milk—except for the wide crescent-shaped mouth. Yerena smiled back.

“No one will ever hurt you if I can help it,” she whispered, and unrolled a rope ladder over the side of the ship. She climbed down and dropped into the sea.

The shark swam up from below, slowly rather than in the brutal charge that could fling a full-grown seal out of the water altogether. It still displaced enough water that the wash threatened to push Yerena away, which was why she preferred it to come at her from below instead of from one side. Its head dipped before its snout could touch her, and the upward rise of its trajectory flattened out. She reached out with the ease of long practice, and her gloved fingers clamped around the forward edge of its dorsal fin. Her watersuit against the shark’s skin provided enough friction that she wouldn’t slip off.

She bent her right leg so she could brace her knee against the base of its fin, and let her mind touch the shark’s, a slight deepening of the awareness that had existed between them since she had been eight years old and it had been a newly captured pup. Best not to merge too closely, just in case the shark took it into its head to dive, and she liked watching through her own eyes from her vantage position.

She directed it away from
Daystrider
in steadily widening arcs,
sweeping the sea
, as it was called. The difficult thing was estimating the distance they had gone. One mile of open water looked about as featureless as the next, and measuring time wouldn’t have helped, because the shark swam at whatever speed it wanted, rather than keeping a consistent pace.

But the warship was soon out of sight. Yerena kept the shark heading east, and noticed how overcast the sky was. While it grew steadily paler, the light was a diffuse glow trapped behind masses of clouds that didn’t let a single ray through. They were heading into bad weather, but at least it was unlikely to be the kind of violent storm that was more common in the south, and a little rain would top up the casks. It had been nine days since they had left the Denalait coastline—of course, technically they were still in Denalait territorial waters—and fresh water was starting to run low again.

The tips of two masts appeared over the horizon.

Those could only be Turean galleys, but Yerena didn’t allow herself to react. There would be time enough for the shark to fight their enemies, and that morning they were just scouts.
Down
. She pulled her mask over her eyes.

The shark responded, sinking until only the tip of its fin protruded above the waves, which came up to Yerena’s chin. Water spattered in her face. She ignored it and directed the shark to swim on parallel to the ships.

That was the dangerous part, getting close enough to observe the ships without being spotted. Under the clouds, though, the shark’s grey hide made it invisible in the sea, and she tried to keep its fin between her face and the ships as the shark made a slow arc around them.

Turean galleys. They know we’re coming
.

The shark veered away and turned back west. It swam much faster—the spray hitting her face from below did so with enough force to go up her nostrils—but what felt like hours passed before she saw
Daystrider.
By then she was hungry as well as worried, but she pushed everything aside so the shark could feel her pride and satisfaction.
Very well done
. She slid off its broad back.
Go and feed. Just don’t get
too
full.

She swam to the rope ladder and climbed up to the deck. The crew seemed to have grown used to the sight of her in her watersuit and they continued their work, but Darok looked in her direction, frowning. He said a few words to the master carpenter and came over to her.

“You were gone a long time.” His tone was neutral, and the furrow between his brows looked deeper than the scar on the side of his head.

“I know.” Yerena pushed her mask down. “Captain, may I speak to you alone?”

“Of course. Come to my cabin after you change your clothes.”

“No, I’d rather speak to you right away. If you don’t mind.”

The frown smoothed itself away and his eyes swiveled east. “I see. Let’s go.”

Yerena pulled off her flippers and padded barefoot after him. “Sit down,” he said when they were in his cabin, pulling out a chair. “Don’t worry about dripping on that.” He tossed a towel at her.

“Two Turean galleys are sailing west.” Yerena sat stiffly on the edge of the chair, blotting her hair. It was starting to come loose, and she could imagine how bedraggled she looked.
Is that important? Continue the report.
“Sister ships from the look of them, both three-masters with double decks of oars.”

Darok sat opposite her, one elbow resting on the table. “Go on.”

“Both have ramming prows designed like stylized whales. I didn’t see any scorpions on their decks, but they could have been below.” She paused to think whether there were any other details, and her stomach rumbled like a barrel rolling about in the hold. “That’s all,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry I can’t estimate how far away they are, but at what seemed like the shark’s normal speed, it took us most of the morning to reach those ships.”

“You haven’t eaten at all today, have you?” Darok got up.

“Safer not to eat if you might need to swim.”

“True, but you need to eat now—it’s past midday. I’ll have something sent to your cabin.”

“Thank you.” Yerena got to her feet as well, folding the towel. “Let me know when you need to discuss what we’re going to do.”

“I have an idea, and yes, I’ll need your help.” He smiled. “Two galleys, eh? I’ll try to sink at least one of them.”

She knew how casually reckless he could be, but she was still taken aback, and when his grin grew that much wider, she knew her reaction had showed on her face. That always seemed to happen when she was with him, much to her annoyance.

She fell back on the courtesy of her training. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leave.”

Darok nodded, the amusement fading as his gaze went to the side of her face. He reached out, touched a damp lock of hair that clung to her cheek and guided the hair back behind her ear.

Yerena’s skin turned to gooseflesh, and yet she felt warmer than if she were wrapped in a blanket. She was suddenly aware of the supple smoothness of the watersuit against her thighs, reminding her that she wore nothing beneath it. Darok’s hand dropped, and he went to the door to hold it open for her.

“Captain, we don’t have enough to replace all this.” Arnell Grafe, the master carpenter, set his jaw. “Not unless we scavenge all the wood the ship don’t need and saw up furniture. If you’d said so at the village, I might’ve bought logs or lumber—”

“I didn’t know about those galleys when we were at the village.” Darok had also thought asking for anything out of the ordinary might have made the villagers suspect the ship moored just off their shores was no whaler. Though someone had seen through his ploys, if the Tureans were on an intercept course. One galley might have been engaged in trade or travel or patrol, but two meant battle.

“After we engage them, there’s bound to be a lot of broken wood floating around,” Alyster said. “The men are giving three-to-one odds we’ll take down one of those galleys and five-to-one on both of them.”

Once they heard that he planned to do so without anyone else on the deck, the odds would be even higher. He had commandeered the cook’s entire supply of clay pots, and they were stored safely up in the crow’s nest.

“Make sure the bases of the masts are protected,” he told Arnell, and the master carpenter nodded stiffly. He had worked on
Daystrider
since she had been built and was used to doing everything by the book. Then again, anyone hearing what Darok intended to do would think he was crazy, at least at first.

He dismissed Arnell, who touched the effigy tied to his belt as he left. Darok had once made the mistake of calling that a doll, and if looks could have killed, he would have been sewn into a spare sail shortly afterwards. The effigy, Arnell had pointed out slowly and carefully, was a representation of the soul which had been blessed by the Unity. It was just one of the mysteries of the world, why effigies could be in the presence of the Unity but the vast majority of Denalaits could not.

A brisk west wind came to fill the sails, and Darok ordered them taken down. If the wind was blowing against the Turean galleys, they would be tacking into it, which meant
Daystrider
might be on them before he was ready. Most of all, he wanted to engage them at night.