The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (11 page)

“Raelf?” he said, then raised his voice and called out again. There was no answer.

What the hell?
Vinsen half-ran and half-slid to the rail. If Raelf had been taken overboard by a surge, too fast to shout for help… Except when lightning lit up the sky, he saw only the foam of the lashing waves below. His heart pounding, he shouted again, but thunder drowned his voice. What was—

The ship’s stern bucked upward. Vinsen lost his balance, staggered back and sprawled flat. He had a glimpse of something shapeless moving over the taffrail and a pungent stench filled his nostrils as he scrambled to his feet, his back to the mizzenmast. He drew his sword.

Lightning struck again and he saw them. Massive coils, far thicker than pythons, glistened in the light and looped over the stern, slithering over each other and crawling closer to him, each tipped with a claw as long as his handspan.

Then the flash was gone. In the darkness the ship reeled again, but downward that time. Everything that wasn’t tied securely flew towards the great jointless arms that were dragging the ship’s stern into the depths. Vinsen grabbed the mast with his free hand, digging his fingers into the wood until splinters drove under his nails. A man fell screaming from a crow’s nest as the mainmast tilted. A rope snapped, and a rain barrel rolled past him, striking the gunwale and smashing apart.

He slashed out wildly, unable to see the huge coils in the dark but only too aware that they were crawling nearer. The ship had tilted but it couldn’t be pulled down completely—he just had to—

The wind shifted. The creature’s mass dragged
Mistral
in the wrong direction, and a wave slammed her broadside. A wall of water rushing down at him was the last thing Vinsen saw, and the ship began to capsize.

Chapter Five

Kraken Rising

Since Miri’s cabin was only four feet wide, she sat with her back to one wall and her heels braced against the other, so she couldn’t be thrown about while the ship pitched. She kept a bowl beside her, though by the time the storm broke she was reduced to dry-retching.

Finally the ship stopped heeling and she got stiffly up on jellylike legs. At least a small cabin took little time to clean, and it soon smelled of lye soap again. She used her share of drinking water to bathe as best she could without a tub, finally dunking her head in the basin to wash her hair.

She’d started using her ration that way after working in the galley, because she hated a residue of salt itching against her skin from washing in seawater. Instead, she had drunk the seawater and waited anxiously. Nothing had happened, and she hadn’t felt thirsty afterwards either—just ashamed.

Well, to hell with it. The ability to thrive on seawater might be a Turean trait, but it was also a useful trait. She got dressed and went to the surgery to see if Reveka needed any help.

The doctor had just finished splinting Vallit’s leg, so Miri brought boiling water to soak the bloodstained linens, then fetched enough breakfast for all three of them. One of the privileges of rank she had learned about, after leaving Alyster’s cabin, was that the officers were served eggs and bacon for their morning meal, while the crew got hardtack. “And Peppercorn eats everything,” a deckhand had told her.

“Only one casualty?” she said as she laid the tray down.

Reveka wrote on a slate,
We were lucky.
She also used the slate to tell Vallit how long he had to stay in bed. He didn’t seem pleased by the answer and neither did Alyster, when he came in to check on any casualties. Not that it made a difference to Reveka, who looked as blank as she was silent, as though she hadn’t even heard the explanation of Vallit’s work as a stoker, let alone understood it. Finally they came to an agreement that when he could get around with just one crutch, he could return to active duty—and, Miri guessed, full pay.

She pushed herself farther into a corner of the surgery and continued to eat, though it wasn’t just the previous night which made it difficult to choke down her food. If not for the fact that leaving would have made her conspicuous, she would have been out at once. Alyster clapped Vallit on the shoulder, winced and turned to go.

Reveka blocked his way and looked at his right arm.

“It’s just bruised,” Alyster told her, but when she refused to move he muttered an invocation to the Unity and took his coat off—not without a little effort, Miri noticed. Rolling up his sleeve revealed bluish-purple flesh, and Reveka inspected it before scribbling some questions on her slate. He read them.

“No, I don’t have any injuries you don’t know about. No, I’m not bleeding from any orifice, and I wouldn’t tell you if I were. And
what
pain, other than the one in my neck?”

Miri would have laughed under any other circumstances, but at that moment all she could see was Alyster. He’d had his coat off before when they had been in his cabin, but he had been facing her then. Now his back was to her instead, and her gaze wandered over the span of his shoulders beneath clean linen. Then Reveka moved away, and Miri returned her attention to her empty plate.

Clothing rustled as it was rearranged and silence fell. She glanced up, wondering why he hadn’t left already, and realized he’d seen her. He finished slipping on his coat and tilted his head at the door.

Wishing he’d just pretended she was invisible, she stacked the dishes and carried the tray out while he held the door open. “I take it you’re all right,” he said once she was outside.

“Yes.”

“Yes,
sir
.”

Miri had learned to control herself no matter what anyone said or did, and only that kept her from tipping the tray over his starched shirtfront. Besides, he probably liked provoking her.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and he fell back a pace as she carried the tray topside, shifting her balance to keep the tray level. Out of habit, she turned to see the other ships to left and right, but they were gone.

“What were you looking for?” Alyster said from behind her.

If his tone had been at all mistrustful, as though he suspected her of trying to signal to Turean vessels, she wouldn’t have bothered with the truth, but his voice was quiet and neutral. Besides, after the long night, she was too tired to be angry.

“It’s a small thing,” she said, “but I always looked for the other ships, as if I was orienting myself. They were all I could see other than the ocean.”

It did sound like a small thing, put that way. So the storm had dispersed the ships. Best get used to it, because that happened at sea. Maybe she’d just think of the world beyond the deck as a naval seascape, one where the artist had applied a few smears of pale blue paint to erase mistakes, leaving the horizon clean and perfect and empty.

“Look for the North Star.” Alyster’s voice surprised her out of her reverie. “That’s a fixed star, so we use it to find the latitude. It’s not as close as other ships, but it’s better than nothing.”

A tiny but unexpected warmth touched her deep inside her chest, like a sunbeam in a bare echoing space. She hadn’t expected him to understand, much less suggest a solution.

“I’ll do that tonight,” she said, settling the tray’s edge against her stomach before it could tilt. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and went back down the steps.

As storms went, James Terlow had known worse. A yardarm had snapped, taking the fore topgallant with it, but his crew was all safe and the carpenters were hard at work.
Enlightenment
sailed on, her washed-clean brass gleaming in the morning light.

It appeared his competitors’ ships had not all been so fortunate, and he wondered which of them might have gone down.
Checkmate
, hopefully, because that craft was built for speed, and if not for fear of a Turean ambush, she would have been going full steam ahead. But he loved a challenge and had been planning ways to outdistance her long before the race had started.

He went to the prow and noticed the offering that had been tied to the bowsprit in a red cloth was gone. Riciad, whose moods could change as quickly as the seas he watched over, had evidently accepted the gift, which accounted for their good luck. James whistled under his breath as he walked back to the sterncastle, but stopped when a lookout hailed him.

“A body, sir!” he shouted. “Two points off the larboard quarter.”

James lifted his telescope to see. The corpse was slumped over a bit of broken wood face-down, but what made him frown were the clothes. Whiter than chalk and brighter in the sun, a color he knew was reserved for captains in the Denalait navy. Of course, it was possible the Denalaits had dressed the corpse of an able seaman in those clothes and cast it off as a delaying tactic. They had a reputation for being cutthroat when it came to winning a race.

Turning, he scanned the rest of the ocean, but no other ship was in sight. He supposed that settled it. Even if the poor bugger was a dead man he didn’t know, the only decent thing was to pull the waterlogged cadaver out and perform a burial, with some actual gods invoked.

The wind was blowing against them, which meant tacking into it to approach the corpse, an arduous process that had James grinding his teeth, because he kept looking at the hourglass and calculating how far the other ships might have gone. By the time they reached the piece of wood, though, the corpse was trying to raise his head.

James hailed him from the deck, receiving no response, but since the man looked half-dead, he supposed he couldn’t expect any. Two of his crew swarmed down a rope ladder and pulled the curved piece of wood closer—it looked like part of a barrel—to get a hold of the man’s arms. Together they heaved him up to the deck, where the ship’s surgeon was waiting.

Despite his bedraggled state, Captain Solarcis of
Mistral
was recognizable enough, and James was secretly relieved he’d made the right decision. Solarcis’s half-lidded eyes showed white as his coat. He twitched as the surgeon checked his vitals, then slumped back into senselessness.

The surgeon got back up. “Bump on the head, sir, but there don’t seem to be any broken bones. Just a concussion.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Inform me as soon as he’s awake and coherent.”

The surgeon nodded, and his two mates carefully lifted Solarcis onto a canvas stretcher. James watched them carry the man to the nearest hatch, frowning.

Only two possibilities,
he thought. Either the storm had smashed
Mistral
or the Tureans had laid her to sleep on the ocean’s bed. He wondered if they had left a survivor as a warning to him, but if he’d been in their position, he would never have spared the captain of an enemy vessel. A mess boy, perhaps, but not the ship’s master. Chances were, Solarcis had simply been fortunate enough to escape.

Though that might be the extent of the gods’ benevolence. James couldn’t pin any hopes on the man waking up to tell him exactly what had happened. So he had to assume the worst, which meant planning for pirates who might well try to do to his ship what they had done to
Mistral
. Especially since he had something the Denalaits did not, the four cannons on board
Enlightenment
.

His ship could easily have taken twice that number, but he hadn’t wanted to weigh her down and had never expected there to be pirates in the race. He would have to keep constant watch from here on, and perhaps practice a little more to make certain his crew was ready for battle. And if the pirates heard the roar of cannons…

Well. That might draw them closer, and he had no objections to such an outcome.

Treading water, Kovir watched the shark swim towards him and knew what would happen. He knew it because tigers were naturally aggressive, and because this one felt the need to periodically remind him that no matter who gave the orders, she was bigger and faster and had far more teeth. He felt no fear, only waited in cold detachment as a ton and a half of muscle plowed at him, jaws gaping.

The teeth came together with enough force to shear through bone and bend steel—but they did so in the water. The shark slewed. The wash she displaced slammed into Kovir, shoving him well clear of her tail as she turned, though it also drove his shoulders against
Checkmate
’s hull. He was careful never to descend near the stern, because if the shark tried that trick there, he could end up being sucked into the paddlewheel.

Now he bent his knee, put the sole of a flipper against the hull and pushed off to join the shark. Once or twice he’d thought that if she actually did bite him, he would still watch, feeling nothing as he died.

On the other hand, Seawatch had taught him that was the best response he could give. Since the shark sensed his emotions, she took any sign of fear as an indication that she had the upper hand. His only weapon, other than locking her mind down and forcing her to do what he wanted, was to control his own responses, showing her he would never be afraid, no matter what she did.

He had once been assigned to a ship whose captain had suggested he punish the shark for such a dominance display, which had been the stupidest thing he had ever heard. He could hardly deny her food and freedom, and if he hit her, she either wouldn’t feel it or would be angry enough to retaliate. Seawatch could be ruthless when it came to disciplining trainees, but no one was permitted to hurt a shark.

Not that the rules were lenient, because if the shark ever posed a serious threat to other Denalaits or to himself, a threat he couldn’t control, he had to kill her. If she just snapped at him occasionally, that could be ignored. But there was no middle ground. Physical injury that didn’t kill was simply cruel, and Seawatch was never cruel, at least not to sharks.

The shark turned again and swam parallel to him so he could catch her dorsal fin. He pulled himself onto her back in the same movement, sat astride and let himself relax. Flexible though she was—her relatively small size allowed her more maneuverability—she couldn’t twist in two to bite something on her back, so he was safe for now. He let himself sink partway into her mind, just enough to urge her on in a particular direction.

Checkmate
had survived the storm with no losses, but none of the other ships had been in sight once the clouds cleared, so he had scouted for them. He’d found nothing for the past two days, and his failure gnawed at him. Besides, there was nothing for him to do on board. Something about the presence of a Seawatch operative tended to silence most people, and outsiders rarely talked about anything he thought was interesting. That was one more reason he liked being with the shark, temperamental though she could be.

That afternoon, it had occurred to him that when he’d scouted for the other ships, he’d done so to either side of
Checkmate
but not behind her, because the steamship was so fast he was worried about falling behind. Finally he decided to take the risk. He might find nothing, but at least he could be certain no one was following them.

The shark swam through waves left frothing in
Checkmate
’s wake. Kovir held her just below the surface, so the water splashed against his chest. It was dark, but he wouldn’t risk being noticed.

They had swum perhaps two miles when he heard a sound like thunder in the distance. He looked up, wondering if a storm had begun, but the night was clear and the sound had been wrong somehow. Thunder was a long, low roll, but that had been more of a sharp report, and it was followed by another sound like an echo.

It was too dark to see anything by then, so he released the shark’s dorsal and got to his feet just behind her fin. That was enough to tell him that they were downwind of the sound, which was why he’d heard it so clearly despite the usual murmur of the ocean. Seawatch trained its operatives not to be afraid of anything—sharks, deep water or the dark—so he wasn’t afraid now, but he wasn’t certain of what to do either.