The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (2 page)

Darok could guess the answer. “Because that might give the shark the idea it’ll be fed from this ship. We don’t need the white death trailing around with its mouth open so the men can throw hardtack inside.”

That brought a few uneasy chuckles from the crew, which Yerena put an end to when she said, “If a shark learns that humans give it food, you’d best hope you’ll never be in the water someday when it’s near and hungry and you have nothing to feed it.” She seemed to be reciting a lesson she had learned long ago and did not bother to face Alyster when she replied. Darok rubbed the ball of his thumb between his brows, wondering whether she would leave of her own volition or if an escort would be required.

Someone screamed in the distance. Other cries echoed, starkly panicked, as he spun around. The fishing fleet was in disarray. Men hauled in their nets whether they had taken catches or not, and boats rocked as fisherfolk scrambled away from something in the water. A warning peal rang out from the watchtower.

A tall fin streaked between two boats and sliced through water turned frothing white. Once it was clear of the fishing fleet, it seemed to move even faster. Its course would have brought it straight into the harbor and towards
Daystrider.

The muscles in Darok’s legs tightened, and only an effort of will stopped him from taking an involuntary step back. He couldn’t afford to look weak before his crew, much less a Seawatch operative.

Just beyond the mouth of the port, the fin turned sideways in a wide circle, gleaming a metallic grey where the sunlight touched it. The lookout in the watchtower blew his conch horn again, but the fin sank below the waves as the shark dove deep.

Darok heard the crew’s gasps, but all he could think was,
That fin’s half the height of a man, which means the shark itself…
Like an iceberg, most of the creature was below the water, and he guessed it was at least twenty feet long, perhaps closer to thirty. He pushed his hair back from his forehead, feeling the dampness of sweat on his skin.

“It’s leaving.” Yerena turned from her contemplation of the water.

Darok wished he could tell everyone that, but perhaps it was best the terrified harborfolk not know he’d been partially responsible for what had just happened. The fact that they could no longer see the fin didn’t help, because now they had no idea where the shark was.

Ninety feet away, the captain of
Reaper
caught his eye and pointed to the whaler’s deck, then out to the harbor. Darok nodded with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. Wonderful, he was wasting another shipmaster’s time and resources as
Reaper
patrolled the port in case the shark returned. The day grew better and better.

Yerena drew her cloak close around her. She didn’t show any sign of victory, but she was clearly waiting. Darok set his teeth and consigned Seawatch to the abyss along with all the Turean pirates.

“We’ll cast off.” He kept his voice calm with an effort. “We would have done so this morning, had you been here.”

“I apologize for my lateness, Captain.”

She spoke in the same way she had told him her name—without hesitation or any discernible emotion—and Darok gave up. There didn’t seem to be much else to say, so he picked up her pack.

“I’ll take you to your cabin,” he said.

Yerena stepped into the cabin when the captain held the door open for her, and reached for her pack. Perhaps he had thought it was too heavy for her, but it wasn’t, though it held everything she owned.

He gave it back to her. “Let me know if there’s anything else you require.”

“Thank you,” Yerena replied in a reflex that had been drilled into her before she was eight years old. Comportment and deportment were very important in Seawatch. No matter what the situation, its operatives were polite and composed.

They were also accustomed to less luxurious accommodations than the cabin she had been given. It was small—since space on warships was limited—but clean, and sunlight from the open window fell on a clothes-cabinet, a washbasin and a bunk. There was a mirror on the wall as well. She had expected to sleep in a hammock and to hang her watersuit on a nail.

“It’s customary for guests to dine with the captain on the first day of a voyage,” Darok Juell said. “I hope you’ll do me the honor.”

“Of course.” Though her heart sank a little, because hospitality from him would make her task that much more difficult.

“Supper is served at the sixth bell.” He stepped back and closed the door.

Yerena sat on the bunk, which dipped beneath her. Poking it experimentally, she guessed it was at least twice as thick as her mattress in Whetstone and softer too. She closed her eyes, longing to be back there, even in the black room where hours lasted for days.

Stop it.
There was something more important to be done.

Without opening her eyes, she thought of the shark.

Touch, hold
and
lock
were the three levels of the mental link between her and the shark, each deeper than the one before it, but all she needed to do at that time was show the shark her approval. She breathed out and let the touch connect. It was like thinking of part of herself that she took for granted—her left hand, maybe—except the shark was more of a hand that acted independently of her body.

The touch was enough for her to gauge the distance between the two of them, so she knew the shark was heading away from the harbor, into open water. That was good. She didn’t want it anywhere near people who might hurl gaffs or harpoons at it.

Well done, beautiful one
, she said silently. She often spoke to it like that, despite having been told it couldn’t understand words. Through their link, though, it sensed her emotions, which was the main reason for Seawatch’s ironclad insistence on comportment. The last thing she needed was a great white shark becoming agitated or angry because she couldn’t control herself.

So whenever the shark obeyed her, she was careful to feel only approval and pleasure. She breathed out again, emptying herself, then let those emotions fill her and flow out in warm waves to the shark.
Well done
.

That was the only reward she had to offer, since feeding was out of the question.
If it needs to be fed, it doesn’t deserve to be fed
, was how an instructor in Whetstone had explained the rule, so instead she gave the shark the same contentment and satisfaction it would have felt from a full belly.
Or from good sex
, she thought in her more cynical moments.

The longing welled up again, so she detached before the shark could sense her emotions—and interpret them as a need for its presence. She was happier with the shark than with any person in Eden, perhaps because it never made any demands on her, but the new orders she had been given put it far more at risk than it had been in the dirty, congested waters of Sweet Harbor.

That morning, she had been on her way to the port—walking, since she didn’t have money to hire a carriage—when an errand boy had intercepted her. The message he gave her said simply that Martil Trawter wished to meet her at a certain inn.

Trawter did not need to provide his rank, because Yerena knew he was Seawatch’s liaison with the Unity, which placed him in the guild’s upper echelons. She made a detour to the inn at once, and was shown into a private room where he was waiting.

“Yerena Fin Caller,” he said when they were alone. “What is your assignment?”

Yerena stood an exact pace from the door, her arms straight by her sides, her back straighter. “To travel with the warship
Daystrider
when it sails to the relief of the loyalists on Lastland, and to break or sabotage the Turean pirates’ blockade.”

“You have additional orders now.
Daystrider
must not be allowed to fall into Turean hands. If this appears unavoidable, you are to sink the ship.”

The order felt like a jab in the stomach, and only long years of training kept her features expressionless. Sink a warship…with her shark?
She knew which one would come off worse from such an encounter, unless she planned it very cleverly or waited until the ship had already taken significant damage.

But that wasn’t Trawter’s problem, it was hers. “Is the loss of all hands acceptable?”

“Yes. Though regrettable.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Do you have any other questions?”

Yerena managed a shake of her head. There was nothing more to say. She knew why
Daystrider
had been sent on such a mission alone, and knew too that once they were among the Turean islands, their chances of success were slim at best. Little wonder the Unity was prepared for failure and would not risk humiliation into the bargain. Well, she would do her duty if or when the time came.

The floor rocked beneath her feet as the ship moved out of the port, and a breeze stole through the window, redolent of spices and fish and smoke. She got up and began to unpack.

She hung her cloak on a peg, then stowed her watersuit, mask and sewing kit in the cabinet. On top of it she put a comb, a jar of bleed-no-more and a pot of grease, which had been wrapped safely in clean underclothes and her one other dress. Shaking the dress out, she wondered if she should change into it before the evening meal. Probably. The dress she wore was damp beneath the arms.

She stripped it off and washed as best she could. The sounds of the port gave way to the creak of timbers, the muffled thuds of men moving about on the deck, and the
whap
of sails unfurling to catch the wind, a wind no longer heavy with cinnamon and smoke and rotting fish guts. The clean salty scent of the ocean filled the cabin as she put on her other dress.

She had sewed it herself six years ago, but it was identical to the one she had just taken off. Seawatch operatives did not call attention to themselves, so the sleeves came to her wrists and the skirts to her ankles. In a spurt of rebellion, she had cut the neckline in a V-shape, but one of her instructors had seen it and asked her what she imagined she had to show off. Embarrassed, she had filled in the neckline with a triangle of grey linen. She buckled her knife-belt around her waist and combed her hair before she coiled it neatly at the back of her neck again.

It was still bright outside. Yerena straightened the quilt and sat down in the single chair, her hands folded in her lap. She was trained to wait patiently, to keep her mind blank until its talents were called for, but it wasn’t always easy to do so.

And it didn’t help that, the past night, she had dreamed she was drowning.

That morning,
Speared Lord
ran up the signal flag which meant
prisoner
, so Jash Morender sent two of her crew to the galley in a boat. “Come back with the prisoner,” she said. “Captain Stylor is welcome to attend too.”

Haraden Stylor, the master of
Speared Lord
, was not likely to be pleased at having to surrender his prize, but Jash commanded the freeships of the Turean flotilla, and unless
Dreadnaught
was sinking, she didn’t plan on leaving it for her captains’ galleys. That would be a loss of face, and in the Archipelago, commanders owed their position to the confidence of their peers, rather than to formal organizations or divine powers. Jash watched the men row away, then went to her cabin to decode a message from one of her spies in Denalay.

The men returned four hours later, and her aide asked where she wanted the prisoner. “In here.” She rose from her desk. “Pass the word for Arvius.”

Other than being gaunt and dirty, the prisoner didn’t look much in need of the ship’s surgeon. His hands were tied behind his back, not that Jash would have worried overmuch if he had been freed. The men shoved him into a chair and one of them handed her a leather bag. “Captain Stylor says that was in his boat, sir.”

Jash dismissed them and opened the bag, but it contained nothing except for a half-empty flask and some rations wrapped in a cloth. She dropped it and faced the prisoner.

“Did they send you away or did you escape?” she said.

Sweat gleamed in the hollows of his face, but he said nothing.

Jash smiled, something she never did when she was happy. “Understand this. If you tell me what I want to know, I give you my word that I will not allow you to be killed or imprisoned or tortured. If you don’t—”

The man’s lip curled. “The word of a pirate?”

“This pirate commands the Turean freeships and holds your life in her hands. If you refuse, all I have to do is turn you over to my crew and order them
not
to kill you. No matter what else they do.”

The apple in his throat bobbed visibly as he swallowed, but he said nothing. The silence was broken only by a knock on the door, and her aide showed Arvius Tayan in.

Jash could not have asked for a more effective entrance, because Arvius had clearly been interrupted in the middle of his work. He wore an apron stained with blood, and various metal implements protruded from his pockets. His sleeves were rolled up, showing thick forearms covered with brown hair, and he looked more like a butcher than a surgeon. The prisoner half-twisted in the chair and stared at him.

“You—will you swear?” He turned back to face Jash. “To what you said before?”

Jash bent her fingers and touched the knuckles of both hands to her chest, just over each breast. “By the gods of sky and water, I swear I will not allow you to be killed or imprisoned or subjected to pain if you answer my questions with truth.”