The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (21 page)

And there were the remains of ships.

He tried not to look at those, most of all.

The sun descended and began to ripen. A warm wind blew from the south, and Alyster was grateful he commanded a steamship. They didn’t need to turn and adjust sails to avoid being driven onto the rocks. He went back to watching the horizon.

The fin in the distance rode so low in the water that he wasn’t sure he’d seen it at first. He called for Thomal and squinted, trying to see what was just behind that fin. Seawatch operatives dressed to blend in with their sharks’ skins—and those in turn blended in with the shifting waves—but as the shark drew closer, he made out the form half-slumped over the dorsal. Thomal shouted for someone to toss the boy a ladder.

Kovir raised his head as the shark drew level with
Checkmate
, but before he reached a hand out to the ladder he licked his lips and called up to Alyster. “Sir,” he said, “
Wrack
…”

“Where is she?”

“When I found her she was just over a day away. But she followed me. Two, perhaps three leagues behind. Last I checked. The kraken had her.”

“Someone help him aboard,” Alyster said, and put the spyglass to his eye again. He saw nothing over the unbroken line of the horizon.

He lowered the spyglass as the boy climbed aboard. One eye showed no dark hollows because the skin around it was stained black, but that eye was as bloodshot as its mate, and once Kovir was on the deck, he swayed as if he were on another ship, one pitching and tossing in a storm. So it was possible he could have been mistaken about
Wrack,
and Seawatch had been wrong about the kraken once already. If Alyster held to the course he’d chosen, no one could fault him, and if the kraken really had surfaced to embrace
Wrack
…

Well, he was that much more likely to win the race.

“Sir?” Thomal said. “Your orders?”

He knew the kraken had attacked
Wrack
deliberately to draw
Checkmate
out of the safer shallows; the beast was controlled by a pirate, after all. “Kovir, did you see the Turean galley?”

“No, sir.”

Wonderful
. Alyster would gladly have charged into battle if there was a chance of stabbing through the problem’s heart, but what now? His officers and all the crew stationed above decks had gathered and were waiting to hear his decision.

Tapping the end of the spyglass against his palm, he looked out over waves starting to turn bloody from the sunset. He didn’t know what he would be traveling into, because no Denalait he had ever known had actually seen a kraken. He wasn’t even sure how he could fight one with his weaponless
Checkmate
. But he did know that if their situations had been reversed, he would have wanted
Wrack
to come to his assistance.

“Draw up the boat and prepare to alter course,” he said to Thomal, then turned back to Kovir. “I know you’ve come far, but the two of you need to take us there.”

The boy’s head lifted, and despite his obvious exhaustion he stood straight. He nodded.

“Good,” Alyster said. The ship started to come about and he felt himself smiling, a smile that didn’t go any deeper than the surface of his face. “Let’s hunt a squid.”

No one cheered or even looked enthusiastic. But at least the murmur of “Aye, sir” came from every voice around him at once, and the ship’s whistle shrilled so piercingly it could have split eardrums. Ah,
Checkmate
. No tridents or cannons or hellfire on board, but she could whistle with the best of them.

The ship’s prow pointed to the southeast, and smoke billowed from the funnels. Kovir had sunk down to sit on the deck, but his eyes seemed about to roll back in his head. That was always a sign a Seawatch operative’s mind was elsewhere—in his case, perhaps twenty feet before
Checkmate
as the shark gave a tired twitch of her tail. She was clearly struggling just to stay ahead of them, and Alyster couldn’t rely on her for any further help. Morale seemed low enough already without the crew watching one of the few familiar sights being torn apart before their eyes, and no Seawatch operative was particularly useful minus a shark.

Water parted smoothly before
Checkmate
’s prow, but behind the ship the waves churned to froth. “More steam,” Alyster said, without lowering the spyglass, and Thomal shouted the command down to the lower deck.

“Giving it all we’ve got, sir!” the chief engineer called back up.

Alyster said nothing, because at that moment he saw the tips of masts flying the Denalait flag. Except they swayed like saplings in the wind.

All the crew who weren’t on active duty below gathered on the deck. Reveka was nowhere in sight, but she would be boiling water and scattering sand on the floor in preparation for the battle. He was relieved Miri was out of sight too, because when he saw the kraken, his guts felt as though his belt had just been tightened by a few more notches.

Arms mottled in purple and red reached up out of the sea, half of them clasped around
Wrack
’s prow to engulf her figurehead in the kraken’s bulk. The other half clawed and coiled around anything within reach—sails, rigging and crew. The entire ship tilted downward, and her deck was a chaos, littered with smashed wood and ripped canvas. A yardarm broke with a snap Alyster heard even at that distance, and the wood came away in one of the kraken’s arms, trailing rags and ratlines.

The kraken pulled itself up farther, and
Wrack
lurched deeper. A man fell from the crow’s nest, only to be snatched out of the air by a whip before he could hit the water. A few of the arms were bleeding, Alyster realized—they drooled blue from gashes—but the wounds didn’t seem significant enough to slow the kraken, and anyone on
Wrack
’s sloping deck was struggling to keep out of reach.

Half of the kraken’s body was out of the water by then, unbalancing
Wrack
further with its weight, and Alyster lowered his spyglass. They were close enough that he no longer needed it. He couldn’t quite take in the kraken’s entire form, so individual details sprang out at him instead. Its eyes were the size of basins, but more disturbing than their size was the way they looked in two different directions, one staring forward while the other rolled back as the kraken noticed
Checkmate
. And the kraken’s body was oddly lumpy and misshapen, with a round dark thing in the center of its back that looked like a third eye.

He tore his attention away from it with an effort. In the distance, he heard the screams of sailors in the water, as well as multiple squelching sounds that were the kraken’s arms peeling away from
Wrack
, but he ignored both as he strode towards the stern.

“Bring the ship about,” he said to the helmsman.

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

The wheel spun and the ship began to turn. The kraken pulled away from
Wrack
completely, bringing down half of the remaining rigging as one arm was completely enmeshed in ropes. The ship bucked and more shrieks rang out, but the kraken no longer seemed to notice anyone in the water. Liquid darkness spilled from its body, spreading through the sea, and when it dropped beneath the waves it was no longer visible at all—though Alyster knew it was headed for
Checkmate
at speed.

Fear and frustration stood out starkly on his crew’s faces. They were all aware they couldn’t even help the drowning sailors, let alone fight off the kraken. No one was fool enough to ask if they were fleeing as
Checkmate
completed its hundred-and-eighty-degree spin, but some incredulous glances were directed his way.

Only Thomal seemed to realize what was happening. His eyes narrowed and then he grinned.

The kraken’s arms rose from the sea, extending to grasp at
Checkmate
, and Alyster raised his voice. “Reverse engine!”

“Reverse engine!” the shout echoed from below. Levers clanged and the steamship began to move back towards the kraken—with its giant paddlewheel leading the way. Easily ten yards across, the paddlewheel moved so fast its individual spokes were a blur, and it thrashed water into froth that flew gleaming into the air. The kraken’s arms recoiled, but one of them was too close. The tip was sucked into the whirling mass of the paddlewheel. The rest of the arm followed and bits of flesh spattered out.

Checkmate
plowed on, but the other arms disappeared below the ink-black surface at once. Alyster shouted for the engine to be stopped before the steamship drew too near to the sailors who had fallen from
Wrack
’s deck or rigging. Kovir’s shark kept a safe distance, but other fins poked above the water—apparently the Dagran ocean had sharks too, and those were a metallic blue.

Trying not to show any fear, he drew his saber and leaned over the rail, half-expecting the kraken’s arms to leap up out of the black water at him. Nothing happened. With
Checkmate
’s engine halted, fish darted in to feed on the scraps in the water—not all of which were from the kraken, he realized. The Dagran sharks drew closer too, but
Wrack
was starting to toss lines to the men in the water.

“Kovir,” he said, not daring to look away from the water. Damn all that ink. “Is it gone?”

There was a momentary pause. “Yes, Captain.”

Alyster crushed an impulse to sag against the gunwale in relief. He fixed a slightly bored, I-expected-that expression on his face before he turned around, but Thomal’s grin was broad.

“Well done, sir,” he said, and there were looks of relief from the crew. Alyster sheathed his saber, glancing over his shoulder to where
Wrack
’s distress flag was being taken down.

“Have a boat lowered,” he said to Thomal. “You and I need to gam with Captain Vanze.”

Lera Vanze received them in her cabin with Reimond Lorque, her second lieutenant, and her sailing master, a grizzled old man who had lost all his original teeth and replaced them with ones taken from various sea creatures. The first lieutenant was dead, along with half the crew, and most of the other half was carrying out repairs.

If Lera felt at all daunted, she didn’t show it. She thanked Alyster for his timely assistance, assured him she wasn’t in need of supplies and poured drinks for the five of them. “The Seawatch operative didn’t come with you?”

Alyster shook his head. “He was worn out. In any event, he’s a good Seawatch operative but he can’t be twenty yet. And they’re not known for useful advice when it comes to anything beside naval tactics involving sharks.”

“True.” Her faint smile lifted a corner of her mouth on the pretty side of her face. “I’m glad he’s not hurt. I guessed he would lead us back to your ship, but we lost sight of him more than once in the night and he kept having to circle back so we could follow. We would never have found you if not for him.”

Alyster wasn’t sure if their finding
Checkmate
was entirely a good thing, since the kraken had only attacked
Wrack
to lure the steamship closer. Still, it was a relief to no longer be alone.

He downed half his drink without tasting it. “The question is, what do we do now?”

Lera exchanged a look with her officers and shrugged. “Depends on what we want to accomplish. Fight the Tureans, win the race or save what’s left of our ships? Because I’m not sure we can do all three.”

“Where is their galley, anyway?” Reimond said. “How has it come so far without us noticing?”

“Are we sure there actually is a galley?” Lera said.

Alyster nodded. “Remember all that ink in the water? I asked our operative about it before we left
Checkmate
, and he said that’s what squid do when they’re escaping—they eject a cloud of ink to distract predators while they flee. But this one did the same thing when it was attacking, so either it’s independently intelligent enough to go beyond its instincts or there’s a Turean controlling it.”

Lera slouched in her chair and stared at her half-empty glass as if it was the cause of all their troubles. The sailing master didn’t look capable of conversation with a mouth so full of teeth, but Thomal spoke up.

“If we can’t find the damned galley, we certainly can’t fight it,” he said. “The kraken, then?”

“Did you have a specific strategy in mind, sir?” Reimond said.

An uncomfortable silence fell. Alyster was aware that even if he had fishing nets on the scale a trawler used, the kraken could tear through those with its beak and the claws on the ends of its whips. And while harpooning worked on whales because they had to surface, at which point they could be struck again, a kraken didn’t need air. Besides, its Turean master could make it snap the line in two. He also knew that the trick he had played earlier would never work again.

Lera straightened up. “Do you carry poison on board?”

“No,” Alyster said, a little blankly.

“Well, there goes that plan.”

“I’ll be sure to do so in future.”

She gave him another half-smile. “I also thought of luring the kraken to attack
Checkmate
and blasting all the boilers apart against its maw.”

“And I thought of tossing you to the kraken in the hopes it would choke on you, but perhaps some plans are better as last resorts.”

She chuckled. “All right, so we can’t fight it, not without me losing the rest of my crew and you losing your ship. What now? If we find Terlow and combine our strength…”

“I wouldn’t place too much hope in that if I were you. It took our Seawatch operative a good deal of time and effort to find you, and he nearly ended up dead.” If they had been in Denalait waters, aware of the patterns of currents and trade winds, he would have tried an educated guess as to where
Enlightenment
might have been by then, but everything in Dagre was unfamiliar. “Besides, even if we send him scouting again, we can’t just drop anchor and wait here.”

“We could do so at the coast, sir,” Thomal said.

Lera spread a map over the table. Her maps tended to be idiosyncratic affairs covered with notations, cryptic warnings and little drawings she had made, but at least the coastline was mostly visible. “There aren’t many safe places to anchor on the Shiptrapper Coast,” Alyster said finally. “Pelican’s Nest is the closest port, or we could make our way to the Witchwater.”