The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (25 page)

Climbing aboard seemed to take the last of her strength, and she stood clutching the gunwale. Her clothes looked Denalait, but they seemed to have been made for someone larger. Her eyes were sunken and exhausted.

“Captain?” Her voice rasped like sandpaper. At Darok’s nod, she continued. “I—I was sent by the commander of the Turean ships. She’s taken everyone else prisoner.”

“Everyone else?” Darok knew what was coming next.
We’re too late.

“Lastland has fallen.”

A low angry mutter spread through the crew and the woman’s breath hitched, but she went on. “May I have some water? Please?” Someone brought her a dipper and she took a gulp so hasty that some of it spilled down her chin, but Darok saw she had the good sense not to drink any more too soon.

“Captain Morender ordered me released.” She licked her lower lip dry. “So I could deliver a message.”

“What message? And how did you reach us so fast?” That was another suspicious thing, a woman rowing a boat all the way from Lastland with no evidence of food and water on board.

“A pair of blackfish towed me most of the way.” She shuddered, as though the killers had terrified her worse than the Tureans had. “Captain Morender says you will answer for—for what happened. She means to sink this ship.”

Yerena held the shark to an easy cruising speed just below the water’s surface while they put more and more distance between themselves and
Daystrider
. She glanced back twice, but each time less of the tall ship was visible over the horizon, sinking slowly into the ocean. She didn’t look a third time.

Forget it. Think of the killers
. She had no experience in dealing with whales, but she suspected she was about to get a great deal, the hard way.

The killers, by no means unintelligent on their own, also had a Seawatch operative guiding them, though Yerena thought he was unlikely to risk his own safety. He hadn’t been riding any of the whales on the night of
Rorqual
’s attack, after all. The killers also overmatched her in strength of numbers, even after one of them had been trident-pierced. The shark measured twenty-five feet from snout to tail, but so did adult male killers.

The shark’s only real advantage was that it didn’t need to surface to breathe, and it lost even that slight edge if it was carrying her.

That gnawed at her, because she wasn’t used to being a liability to anyone.
Except…
Her fingers tightened around the sail of the dorsal fin. There was one way she could be of use on the shark’s back. The plan would only work once, and it would be the most dangerous thing she had ever done—someone else’s recklessness was obviously influencing her for the worse—but it just might tip the odds in the shark’s favor.

First, though, she had to see where it was wounded. She put her mask on. Relying on her watersuit to provide enough abrasion for her not to fall off the broad sleek back, she hooked an ankle over a pectoral fin—rigid for balance, that wasn’t likely to bend—and let herself slip beneath the water’s surface, her body parallel to the shark’s so she could see along its side.

The bite was a crescent of angry marks that looked redder against the pale hide, but to her relief, the shark had escaped with just wounds in an arc longer than her arm. She guessed the killer hadn’t been able to get a good enough grip before the shark had wrenched free, and while the wound hurt, it wouldn’t impair the shark’s mobility as a great chunk of flesh torn away would have done. Best of all, it wasn’t bleeding. They couldn’t afford to fight off other sharks.

She scrambled on to the shark’s back. Now she needed an inhabited island nearby, one large enough to support a fishing fleet, and her memory sketched a map. Rainstone, Pearl, Shellshield, Spider Isle… She decided not to risk the last one and chose Rainstone. That was a day’s journey at least, but Pearl Island was farther, and Shellshield too well defended.

The shark kept moving steadily. Every few minutes Yerena glanced around at the expanse of ocean, alert for black fins, and that tired her. She was almost relieved when it became too dark to see anything. By then she guessed Darok would have reached the island he was making for—and she could even have met him there, since the island was a little off the route she’d chosen to Rainstone—but she had to deal with the killers first.

Slumping against the shark’s fin to rest the aching muscles in her back and shoulders, she wondered if she should have stayed on board
Daystrider
. From the safety and comfort of the ship, she could have locked with the shark’s mind to make it search out the whales. They would have torn it apart, but it could have injured or killed at least one of them before it died.

No.
She smoothed the flat of her gloved palm against the shark’s hide, although it couldn’t feel so light a touch.
I won’t make you do anything I won’t risk myself for. We hunt together, you and me.

That made her feel much less lonely. Large as the shark was, the endless miles of the Iron Ocean stretched out around them on all sides, reducing her one point of familiar solidity to nothingness.
You have to think three-dimensionally as well
, she remembered her mentor saying. The water extended below her too, and battles could be fought all the way down to the depths.

That was an idea too. She put it in the back of her mind and fell into a half-doze until the sun came up again.

The second day was harder. She finished her food without tasting a mouthful of it, though she was sparing with the water. Sitting upright in one position left her backside and thighs numb where they weren’t cramping, and her skin itched from a crust of salt. She wished she was a shark, just not one linked to a Seawatch operative.

To her relief, a ridge of rock appeared on the horizon. She held the shark back to a careful distance as they circled the island. They passed the dock where the fishing fleet was moored, then found the north face of the island, which sloped up to a plateau on which a crude sculpture jutted to the sky—a tower of stones precariously balanced one atop the other.
Rainstone
.

In the last light of the sunset, she also saw faint wisps of smoke rise from cottages farther inland. She touched the shark’s mind, and it flicked its tail, propelling them both closer to land, on the opposite side of Rainstone from the dock.

When she was still fifty feet away, she slipped off the shark’s back, although it wasn’t likely to beach itself in water that deep. Swimming hurt at first, but slowly her muscles began to recover, and she soon staggered up out of the foam. At that time of the evening, the beach was deserted. She looked out to sea, at the jutting fin which moved slowly through the waves like a flag sending her a signal, waiting for her to respond.

Even if what she felt for the shark was inappropriate, she didn’t care. It was all she had in the world—and she was all it had too. It would never lie to her or belittle her or decide it preferred some other Seawatch operative. Deep down she knew that someday it would not be enough, that she would want the same connection to another person as well, but for now the shark was all she needed.

Eat and rest
. She gave it all her praise and satisfaction, trying not to let it feel her fear that those whales would find them before tomorrow. Whether her efforts worked or not, she didn’t know. The fin dipped beneath the water’s surface.

Yerena lurched a little farther inland and collapsed into a bank of thick sandgrass, which was likely to keep her as warm as possible under the circumstances. She tugged her gloves and flippers off, closed her eyes and was asleep.

There were only two places to put the woman—the brig or the cabin Yerena had left empty—so Darok gave her the cabin. The woman’s name was Lucee Colliten, and she said her husband had been the former master of the fortress on Lastland. From the hollow look in her eyes, Darok guessed he was probably dead. There wasn’t much reason for Tureans to keep Denalait prisoners alive for long, especially since those prisoners needed fresh water.

But to his relief, before nightfall they reached the island he had in mind. It was called Rosefall, and the breeze drifting towards them smelled sweet and thick, like a pudding made with petals. Though since he couldn’t see a single rosebush or tree through his spyglass—and since the island was supposedly uncolonized—he was suspicious at once, and thought gloomily that when their supplies gave out, the crew would have to be that much more careful when they went ashore. The scent might have been seductive if he hadn’t remembered how Yerena had smelled in his bed. Clean linen and rain and herself, warm and womanly.

He pushed her memory away and focused on finding the inlet that had been marked on the map. It led to a tiny bay sheltered from the wind, and Darok had the anchor lowered once
Daystrider
was well within the narrow inlet. The cliffs on either side were tall, but he didn’t feel hemmed in as he had in the Strait of Mists, nor was the inlet as twisted. When they stopped at the mouth of the bay, he had a glimpse of the ocean at the inlet’s other end, just narrow enough that he could raise a finger and span it.

He didn’t think the Turean galleys would try to ram them, especially since any such galley would be a target for most of the two-mile length of the inlet, but that only meant the Tureans were likely to try something different—perhaps an approach from the island itself, under cover of darkness. Once they found out where
Daystrider
was.

Which they already knew, as he found out just past seven bells, when the lookout blew his conch horn. He hurried up the steps and Alyster met him at the hatch. “Another rowboat headed this way, sir.”

Yerena?
But he knew it wasn’t likely unless her shark was dead, and as the boat drew closer he saw a man plying the oars in weak jerky pulls. Half the crew was topside by then, and they gathered around as the boat drew level and the man climbed aboard.

He was in worse condition than Lucee Colliten had been, wrung out like a rag from exertion and thirst. Between sips of water, he told them his name was Gerall Kemay, and he had been a mason on Lastland.

“Helped build the inner wall, for all the good it did. They poisoned our well and got over the wall.” His head bowed as if he no longer had the strength to keep it upright. “Captain,” he said in a voice so hoarse he might have been drinking sand instead, “I was told to give you fair warning. Captain Morender—she says if you surrender, your lives will be spared and you will only be imprisoned until Denalay ransoms you. There will be no torture, she—”

“Look at me.” Darok didn’t trust any Turean leaders, especially when they spoke through a Denalait’s mouth. “Your story’s unconvincing enough without you not being able to meet my eyes.”

Through stubble, Kemay’s face darkened as though the deep smolder of the sunset was reflecting off it. “I was shamed, that’s all. Being let go when there were women down decks in that cage they call a brig. I asked to let one of them go instead, but that Turean bitch wouldn’t.”

“The question is why she let you go.”

“I told you, to give—”

“Fair warning, yes. I don’t believe that either. Even if this Captain Morender wanted to parley terms, which she hardly needs to do, why not send a pirate out here under a peace flag? She’s putting prisoners and rowboats into my hands instead, and I want to know why.”

Seated on a crate, Kemay stared up at him. “I—” He started to rise, only to freeze in midmovement as a dozen men around him drew their weapons, and he sank back. “You think I’m one of them? Pull up a bucket and I’ll show you how much I can drink before I spew my guts up. Or if Lucee managed to reach you—and I’m guessing she did, because you said ‘prisoners and rowboats’—she’ll recognize me.”

Which would confirm that either both of them were loyal Denalaits or both of them were Turean spies. Darok wondered if that was why Jash Morender had sent him both those people. Surely not.

Kemay went on. “And if you think I’m armed, have your men search me. To the skin, if that’s what it’ll take—”

Darok lost what little patience he had left. “That’s enough. Take him to the brig.” He had enough problems already without having to deal with newcomers whom he couldn’t trust. “Give him half-rations and water.”

The master-at-arms ordered the men back to their stations, and Darok drew Alyster over to the taffrail so they could speak as privately as possible. “What do you make of this?”

Alyster shook his head. “Assuming he’s telling the truth, I don’t know. Is this Morender trying to exhaust our supplies that much faster by sending us her prisoners to feed and water?”

“There’s another possibility. Either one or both of them is carrying some contagious disease.”

“Unity.” Alyster clearly hadn’t been
that
suspicious. “Well, Julean could…” He stopped.

“Exactly. Wilyerd could examine them, but what if there aren’t any signs yet, or he misses them?” Darok pushed his hair back from his forehead. What the hell was he going to do if the Tureans sent yet more prisoners to him? At some point they had to run out of rowboats.

Alyster’s chuckle was dry and humorless. “The Tureans aren’t far now. Kemay didn’t mention any blackfins towing him to us, but he doesn’t look strong enough to have rowed for long. They can’t be more than a day away, probably less.”

Darok went back down to his cabin and tried to get what little sleep he could under the circumstances. Naturally, the lookout’s horn woke him again towards dawn. He’d crawled into his bunk in most of his clothes in preparation for that, so he only buckled his sword-belt and allowed his steward to help him into his coat. “Coffee,” he said, thinking he had to be growing old if he didn’t wake up all at once. Still, perhaps it was Yerena approaching, so he hurried up to the deck.