The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (16 page)

“I’ve never known a woman quite like you,” he said quietly.

Again she hesitated. Only the faintest edge of moonlight from the open hatchway showed the soft waves of her hair and one shoulder in the darkness.

“A woman who was half-salt?” she finally replied, and he had the impression she’d used the pause to make certain only a cool edge of disdain showed in her voice. He didn’t think he’d allow her the chance to get a shield up again. He didn’t think he wanted there to be anything between them again, at least not for that night.

“Half-idealistic and half-exasperating and all remarkable,” he said, and closed his hands around her shoulders, pulling her against him. He couldn’t see her face in the dark, but he heard a gasp escape her, and he found her mouth with his. Her lips parted and he kissed her.

This time he wasn’t trying to tease her or to prolong the anticipation. He tilted her head to fit his mouth closer against hers and kissed her with an impatient hunger. He used his teeth and drew her tongue past his lips, tasting and sucking and claiming her mouth, and it still wasn’t enough, it would never be enough.

She was trembling, her hands between their bodies—though if she wanted to push him away, holding on to his coat in a death grip wouldn’t accomplish that. Nothing would. Over a rushing sound in his ears, he heard her groan low in her throat, and he managed to break the kiss so they could breathe again. They were both panting as if they’d been nearly drowned.

As he wanted to drown in her, wanted to sink into her until she was gasping and helpless under him. There was no need to search for her mouth a second time. She kissed him back, one arm sliding up around his neck, and her fingers caught in his hair. He shuddered, and his mouth went to her throat.

Her skin was unlike anything he had expected to feel. Smooth and cool to the touch as a basket of pears, but without even the faintest residue of salt left from washing. He licked the sleekness, loving the taste of her, and nipped her to hear her whimper before he raised his head.

She was leaning against him, leaning into him, but when he stopped kissing her she tried to straighten and draw away. Alyster had no intention of letting her go just yet. He released her shoulders only to cover her breasts with his hands, and she jolted as if she had been struck by lightning. Without touching her anywhere else, he cupped and fondled her breasts in his palms before his thumbs grazed the tight knots of her nipples. Her heart pounded beneath his skin as he forced himself to let her go.

“Do you want me?” He barely recognized the sound of his own voice.

In the darkness, he heard her swallow, and the sound made him take a quick step back before he could lose the last vestiges of control and push her up against the wall. “Yes.” The word sounded like a sigh, albeit a sigh dragged out of her with a fishing gaff.

A tension he hadn’t realized was present drained out of him. “Then come to my cabin,” he said, and walked away.

Miri stood in the empty passageway, not quite believing what had just happened. After hearing about the Tureans being preemptively removed from geography and probably history as well, she’d been both unhappy and frustrated. She knew there was something very wrong about that—an old saying about those who did not remember the past being condemned to repeat it came to mind—and yet she also knew no one would understand why she felt that way. Worse, it would be taken as sympathizing with the enemy, a sign of treason, the salt in her blood rising.

So she hadn’t expected anything from Alyster, but he had taken her aback anyway by kissing her and she had startled herself by responding. But that had been nothing compared to how she’d felt when he had turned on his heel and left—with the invitation to come to his cabin.

The arrogant bastard. She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth and clenched her fist to stop her fingers trembling. He thought he could just arouse her and walk off, confident she would follow him like a puppy. Well, to hell with him. She headed for her cabin instead and slammed the door.

The tiny space was quiet and dark, smelling of lye soap, and she started to calm down. Her body still tingled where it didn’t ache with need, but she could take care of that. She pulled herself into the hammock.

Something shot out under her with a yowl, and Miri was so startled she almost fell out as well. She caught the hammock reflexively, clinging on as it tipped over, but when she heard a plaintive mew at the door, she closed her eyes, breathed out and lowered herself back to the floor. She yanked the door open.

“Out!” she said, and the cat fled with its fur standing on end. She shut the door again, but now she didn’t feel like getting back into the hammock. While she didn’t want to give Alyster the benefit of the doubt, her cabin’s sleeping arrangements weren’t exactly suited for trysts of any kind. Though that didn’t mean she was going to his cabin either, especially not on his say-so.

She sat in a corner, leaning her head against the wall, and thought about the Tureans instead. It was odd. In a profession where her pay depended on discoveries and investigations, she had never once thought about the inhabitants of the islands, the people who had stopped being Denalaits three hundred years ago. She was curious about everything except them, and it wasn’t even to do with her fear of being found out.

It was because she had tacitly accepted there were two things she would never write about. One was the Unity, because the Unity was so far above ordinary people there was no point in trying to describe him or her or it. The other was anything Turean-related, because…well, the same reasoning, except with “below” substituted. Decent people didn’t want to know what Tureans thought or did any more than they wanted to watch their neighbors using the privy.

Which was why she hadn’t been angry with Alyster for his initial reaction when he had first found out about her—she understood it completely. If she had always avoided thinking about her father’s people, about that half of her blood, she could hardly expect him to be open-minded about her. She’d only become furious when he’d threatened to have her arrested for spying, which went far beyond even the unpleasant response she expected and had come to terms with.

But then he had talked to her, and while there had been some awkwardness and caution in their conversations after the fact, there had also been an unaccustomed honesty. She’d bedded other men before and enjoyed it, but she had made it clear that all she wanted was a pleasant, casual and on-the-surface experience. She had never fought with any of her lovers, but she had also never shared her fears or dreams with them as she had done with Alyster.

Damn it, why did her thoughts keep circling back to him? She told herself he had been toying with her—if she went to his cabin, he wouldn’t bother opening the door. But she knew at once that he wasn’t so petty. A self-important uptight bastard, yes, but not petty.

A handsome self-important uptight bastard, she thought furiously. With looks that undoubtedly turned every woman’s head, except she wasn’t every woman. She might be attracted to him, but it was a side effect of everything that had happened to her. After running for her life and being press-ganged into a ship racing from pirates, it was natural to want some relief from the strain, something that was to do with pleasure rather than hardship and survival. And there was only one man on the ship with whom she felt at all comfortable, much as she hated his aloofness and superior manner.

Fine.
She got to her feet. As long as it was just that—satisfying a purely physical need rather than trusting him again or letting him anywhere near her heart. Unhurriedly, she finger-combed her hair back from her face, straightened her shirt and left the cabin.

Chapter Seven

Mare Crisium

Ralcilos stretched his arms until the joints popped and rolled his shoulders to limber them up. He needed strength as well as wits for the night ahead.

The ship was becalmed. Terlow showed no signs of frustration—since there was only so much a man, especially not one born to the sea, could do—but Ralcilos chafed at the delay.
Checkmate
didn’t rely on the winds and would leave them far behind.

He had no intention of remaining a prisoner, but first he would deal with his guards. There were two of them, as always, both with knives at their belts. The master of the ship didn’t strike Ralcilos as a tactical genius, but he was certainly careful. The guard was changed regularly as well, so no two men were with him for longer than eight hours, and they stayed awake while he slept. As for bribing them, Ralcilos would not have risked it even if he’d had more pearls. After all, what could they do if they took his payment and let him go? Jump into the ocean or wait for Terlow to deal with them?

That left him few options. So he played cards, as much to learn the game as to see what his guards were like. That night, the two on duty were called Brand and Ollie. Brand looked like a strip of walrus leather dried with age, and it was clearly Ollie’s first posting to a ship, but neither of them drank as much as Ralcilos had hoped.

Disappointing, that
, he thought. They had brought their ration to sip over the game that spread its way across the table once the captain had retired for the night, but it was clear they didn’t mean to get tipsy. No doubt they would guzzle it all at the end of their shift to give themselves a pleasant sleep, but that didn’t help him.

“How about a wager?” He gathered up the cards. “If I win, you give me both those drinks. I’ve never tasted good Dagran rum.”

“And if we win?” Brand said, frowning.

Ralcilos considered. “I’ll give you something you’ll find valuable. Damn near priceless.”

“What would that be?”

“You’ll find out if you win.” Ralcilos smiled when the deckhands looked suspicious. “What, you mean the entire ship hasn’t heard of Captain Terlow’s pearls by now? The Archipelago holds treasures which make those look like pebbles.”

For a moment he thought they would refuse. For a moment everything balanced on an edge, and then Brand shrugged. “Why not.” He scratched his bearded jaw. “Even if you win, it’s just today’s ration.”

Even if I win, yes
. Ralcilos had been very careful to lose the games he’d played. Ollie said they should deal the cards so Ralcilos handed them over, leaned back in his chair and won the game—by such a narrow margin that it could be accounted for by luck rather than skill. Both deckhands looked at him sourly as they pushed their mugs across the table.

Ralcilos gulped those down, exclaiming over the taste as Brand told him, “Here now, you’ll be sick.” He was the callow islander completely overwhelmed by the citified delights his hosts took for granted, he was. Soon his speech became slurred and his voice louder, to the point where they both told him to shut up before he woke the captain.

Ralcilos nodded rapidly, then froze to show the abrupt movement hadn’t agreed with him. Pulling a cloth from a pocket—the cloth was one of Terlow’s fine linen napkins, not that the deckhands noticed—he pressed it to his mouth.

“Oh, not here.” Brand pulled Ralcilos to his feet. “Steward’ll kill us. C’mon, up to the deck—you could use the air.” Ollie was gathering the cards quickly, but Ralcilos knew he would join them too.

Cloth to his mouth, he made a sound of distress as Brand propelled him by main force to the door. And then it happened. Brand turned to stretch out a hand and open the door, but that meant his body was between Ralcilos and Ollie, and his guard was down.

Ralcilos snatched the knife from the sheath at the man’s hip and drove it hilt-deep into his chest. He twisted hard to make sure of the strike as he grabbed Brand’s shirt with his other hand. Letting the man’s convulsing body fall with a loud thud wasn’t part of his plan.

As Brand’s knees buckled and he sank, Ollie saw what had happened. His eyes bulged, but even in his shock he reached for the hilt of his knife. Ralcilos lowered the corpse, not bothering to pull the blade free—it was lodged fast and he didn’t have a second to spare. Cloth in hand, he took three strides forward.

Ollie tried to shout for help and Ralcilos’s arm shot out. He crammed the napkin into the boy’s mouth, choking any sound off, and grabbed Ollie’s wrist with his other hand. A spike of pain in his belly told him he hadn’t been fast enough, but it didn’t matter. He drove his head down and forward. His forehead smashed into Ollie’s nose, but Ralcilos had been braced for the shock. The Dagran hadn’t. He reeled, nearly blinded, and Ralcilos rammed a knee into his groin.

Despite the pain, he was starting to enjoy himself, especially after the months of forced inactivity. Not that his guards had been much of a challenge, but the rest of the night might well be one. Ollie was in no condition to fight any longer, so Ralcilos locked both hands around his throat and silently counted to fifty. Then, to be certain, he counted back down to none.

If you had won, I would have given you something you would have found damn near priceless.
He maneuvered the limp body back into a chair.
Your lives.

He looked at the spreading patch of blood on his shirt. The wound didn’t seem too deep, so he bandaged it as best he could, then picked up Ollie’s knife and slipped it into his belt. He gathered the cards and put them back on the table.

Ollie’s head was down, resting on his arms, making it look as though he had fallen asleep at his post and hiding the napkin wadded half down his throat. The knife in Brand’s chest had stopped too much blood from leaking out, so Ralcilos lifted the body and tucked it into the hammock strung up in a corner of the stateroom, where he normally slept. He pulled a sheet up over the corpse.

It wasn’t likely to fool anyone for too long, but Ralcilos liked the little extra shock of a normal-looking room hiding horrors. He took care to move a rag rug over the stain Brand had left on the floor.

Your turn now, Captain Terlow?
He turned to the closed door of the bedroom.

No
. He had listened each time Terlow retired for the night, and he’d heard the heavy
clank
of a bolt sliding home. If he threw his weight against the door to rip the bolt free of the frame, he’d not only make enough noise to draw attention, he would wake Terlow.
Another time,
he thought and took a candle before he left.

He needed clothes indistinguishable from those of the crew, and hadn’t particularly felt like stripping either of his guards, but he saw another man leaving the head. After he had dressed, he bundled his own clothes up beneath his arm and went down two flights of steps.

The hold was quiet and deserted. He searched it until he found the water casks, nine of them lying on their sides on a shelf reinforced to take their weight. There were only eight clamshell-buttons on his shirt, so he opened the spigot of a cask just enough for water to drip out. Hopefully that would be taken for an accident.

He unfolded his shirt and snapped the shells open. Pearls of a different kind were in those, pellets of a poison Jash had chosen. Diluted in so much water, they weren’t likely to kill, but he didn’t need them to. It took him only a few minutes to tilt up each cask, balance it against his hip, open the spigot and sweeten the water, though before he had finished, the wound in his belly was bleeding again. Still, the kraken would be nearby, closer than any sharks.

The work finished, he debated whether to find Captain Solarcis. The brig was likely to be nearby, but the Dagrans wouldn’t have actually imprisoned the man. Ralcilos hadn’t been fooled by the little show in the stateroom. Terlow might have wanted to make himself look good before his Turean guest, but if he had to choose between a captain of what was essentially an upjumped Dagran colony and a pirate on the side of a losing war, Ralcilos knew beyond a shadow of a doubt which one he would have picked.

So. Captain Solarcis, wherever he was, could be dealt with later. He went topside instead.

The officer of the watch saw him from the other side of the ship, but since he was in uniform, the officer only nodded to him and Ralcilos raised a hand in salute. He leaned on the gunwale as if taking in a breath of air. The officer was no longer looking in his direction, but a helmsman was on duty, and there were likely to be at least two more men above him in the nests.

An easy stroll took him to the davits from which a rowboat hung, and he pulled his knife. Trying to make the posture look casual, he leaned over the rail and sawed at the ropes. They parted easily, but the side of the boat scraped hard against the hull as it tipped, and Ralcilos tensed, wondering if anyone had heard.

“Hey!” The shout came from above. Question answered. “What the hell are you—”

The boat fell. So did Ralcilos, leaping over the side to land with a splash in the water. He pulled himself into the boat, grabbed an oar and rowed as fast as he could while a clamor broke out on the deck. The Dagran weaponry…could it find him in the dark?

Before it could, the waves rose beneath him, tons of water shoved aside by a great mass rising to the surface. He saw nothing in the complete darkness and he clutched the gunwales as the boat pitched, but the odd, pisslike odor of the kraken was impossible to mistake. Levers clanked and grated as the hatch opened, and Ralcilos wasted no time in returning to
Nautilex
.

The door to the captain’s quarters was closed, as Miri had expected, but the narrow gap beneath it and the floor was dark, and she heard nothing within. She raised her hand to knock, then hesitated. Some of her anger seemed to have evaporated while she had walked there. Then again, she had never found it easy to hold a grudge, because life would have been that much more difficult for her if she did.

Well, she couldn’t stay here all night.
Either do it or go back
, she thought, and the prospect of slinking back to her cabin in defeat just might have been the worse outcome, because she knocked before she could stop herself. The knock was harder than she’d intended—a peremptory rat-tat that made her glance down the passageway to see if anyone else had heard it.

She counted under her breath, because if he didn’t answer by the time she reached ten she would leave, but at nine the door creaked open. Someone needed to oil the hinges, but she forgot about all practical matters when she saw Alyster. The light of a single candle in the room glanced off the width of his bare shoulders, and her gaze dropped. A linen sheet wrapped the lower half of his body, and she looked up quickly, her face hot.

“You were in bed?” was all she could say.

He looked almost as surprised to see her. “I didn’t think you’d actually come here.”

That seemed true enough, since his hair was rumpled from lying down. She hadn’t wanted to go to a man who’d be smugly sipping brandy while he waited for the rest of his after-dinner relaxation to arrive, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he would retire to bed instead. Perhaps he wasn’t as convinced of his own charm as she’d thought he was, and now she felt abashed at having woken him up. “If you’d rather sleep, I can—”

“No, no,” Alyster said quickly. “I mean, uh, come in. Please.” He moved aside.

Miri stepped in, thinking that yes, they probably didn’t want to talk where any of the crew could see their captain in such a state of undress. Alyster closed the door.

“Would you like to sit down?” he said. Miri sat, realizing that was how he reacted when he had been caught off-guard in any way—he fell back on cool formality. And while she still wasn’t sure if the two of them would end up in his bunk, she did know that, infuriating though he could be, she liked being with him.

The table was bare except for the single candle and the usual spread of papers. Alyster sat down on the opposite side, much to Miri’s disappointment. Some views were better than even a night full of stars. He said nothing, though, and she felt self-conscious. She wasn’t shy—no one in her profession could be—but matters between them now seemed careful and deliberate, rather than making her feel carried away as she had been when he’d kissed her earlier.

So she resorted to what she usually did, which was to ask questions. “What made you change your mind?”

“Change my mind about what?”

“About me.” She crushed the urge to tack a sarcastic
what else?
to the end of that.

“I never changed my mind about you.” She stared at him, wondering if he had been interested in her all along, and he cleared his throat. “I mean, I thought you were attractive when we first met.”

“Really?” The heat had left her face, thankfully, except now it seemed to be pooling lower down. “But then you said I looked like a Turean woman.”

Alyster rearranged the papers on the table one-handed. “I suppose that was ill-advised.” Miri said nothing, because keeping silent was a tried-and-true tactic when it came to wanting people to talk, and sure enough, he went on. “It’s true to a certain extent, because you do look a little like her—your chin, the shape of your mouth. But definitely not your eyes.”

His voice, low and thoughtful, made her want to shift on the chair, and she forced herself to be still. She felt as though he had looked at her a great deal more intimately than just a study of her mouth and her eyes.

“That must be thanks to my mother.” She tried to keep her voice casual.

“You really never met her?”

She shook her head. When she’d been little, she’d wished she had parents like everyone else. But there was no point in longing for the moon, and focusing on other things—new discoveries, hard work, other people—left her too busy to be lonely.

“She asked my uncle and aunt to raise me, and they’re good people.” She shrugged. “Can’t blame her for not wanting to be reminded of a mistake or a horrible experience.”

Alyster’s face hardened at once, and there was no more gentleness in his voice when he replied. “You’re not a mistake or a horrible experience, and your mother should be damned proud of who you are.”