The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (22 page)

“And lose the race.” Lera’s eyes narrowed to slivers of steel. “Can you afford to take that risk?”

Alyster glanced at her. Even if she hadn’t lost so many of her crew,
Wrack
hadn’t looked too seaworthy to him, but he couldn’t say so. Lera had commanded the ship for three years, and if she wanted to go down with all flags flying, that was her choice.

“Will you refit here?” he said. “The coastal waters might be safer.” Though without refitting, the ship wasn’t likely to reach the coast, and he wondered whether it would be insulting to offer to tow her.

“I doubt the creature’s going to attack us after you leave,” Lera said. “And what safer place could there be than Snakestone? It’s only nine, perhaps ten days away.” She tapped the dot on the map. “There’s a lagoon a kraken might be reluctant to enter, and given that this is an island, there’s bound to be at least one or two Dagran ships stationed there. The Dagrans won’t send their vessels out to protect us, but they’re just as unlikely to sit back and watch if the kraken rises so close to their own.”

That made sense. And she was right, because while the Admiralty just might have forgiven damage to the ships and loss of crew if they won the prize, it would be too ignominious to limp home in defeat after a Dagran stole it.

“I’d still feel safer if we stayed within sight of each other,” he said, phrasing that as diplomatically as he could, “because the kraken did nothing when we were together.”

“Assuming the kraken was present at that time… But I see your point.” She pursed her mouth. “We do need to refit. If you want to, you can wait for us at the Merman’s Palisade.”

“That line of stacks?”

“The very same. Dagrans do have some fanciful names, don’t they? The Palisade is impossible to miss and unless there’s another storm you should be fine there.”

Alyster nodded and got to his feet. “We’ll wait a day for you and then leave.”

“Of course. And whether we find you or not, we’ll head for Snakestone at all speed too.” She had been sketching something on the map, and when she took her hand away, he saw what she had drawn—a tiny squid.

“I didn’t come this far and lose half my crew to give up,” she said, and crossed the squid out with a slash of her pen. “If I can’t return them to their families, I can at least make sure those families won’t starve.”

Word on the ship the next morning was that the race was still on, which didn’t surprise Miri. Besides the two thousand eagles, there was all the prestige riding on victory. The sight of the kraken had made the crew a great deal more cautious—no one sang or talked on the deck at night, and all windows were kept bolted—but they spoke of how the captain had used the ship itself to drive off the monster. Chances were he would prevail the next time as well.

Whether he would or not, Miri wished she had been one of those put off the ship to bring word to the Dagrans overland, though Alyster would never have trusted her to that extent. She helped Reveka in the surgery and Peppercorn in the galley, but she plodded about her duties with less and less enthusiasm as the day wore on, and when she climbed into her hammock, she thought the journey could not be over a moment too soon. She tried to lie unmoving and keep her mind blank so she could sleep.

A knock brought her sitting up, the hammock swaying with the movement. “Yes?” she said without thinking to ask who it was, though only one person was likely to be there long after everyone else had turned in for the night.

The door opened. Alyster had a lantern and the flame felt painfully bright to her eyes, but she made herself hold his gaze without blinking. The muscles of his face looked as tense as she felt.

“May I come in?” he said.

“It’s your ship.”

He stepped in just enough to close the door, not that the cabin was large enough to permit him to do more. The lantern’s light threw his shadow on the wall.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said. “For what I said earlier.”

Miri had expected more persuasion, or even an order to stop avoiding him. “Did you change your mind?”

His brows came together. “Change my mind about what?”

“About whether I should hide what I am.”

The frown cleared, though he didn’t look any happier. “No,” he said finally, and her heart sank so deep it might have been nailed to an anchor. “I think you should come down on one side or another of the fence, and ours is the safer side. But I shouldn’t have said so.”

So he still wasn’t prepared to accept what she was, though who would be? For a moment Miri felt defeated enough to consider trying what he wanted. If she ever returned home, she could move to another city, pretend to be a full-blooded Denalait and have a secure future, at least until someone found out the truth. She might even have a man who cared about her—half of her, anyway. She might not have much self-respect, but self-respect was a bleak comfort. It didn’t keep her bed warm at night.

It just meant if a man ever shared that bed, he would always know she wasn’t lying to him, because she didn’t lie to herself.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, and lay back down, hoping he would take the hint and leave.

He stood there. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you can say whatever you like.”

“You’re still angry.”

Miri pushed herself up on an elbow. “No, just careful.” The lanternlight picked out every angle of Alyster’s face and turned his eyes to liquid gold, but that didn’t matter either, not when she felt so raw inside. “I wouldn’t touch a lit coal more than once. If you wanted to go through the appropriate courtesies by coming to me, you’ve done so and I hope you sleep well tonight. If you want anything more, I’ll have to disappoint you.”

“I see.” His voice was quiet but hard. “You seem very unforgiving of mistakes.”

And you’re not?
she wanted to shout. Half of her was a walking, talking mistake, and he wanted to erase it as easily as rubbing a chalk mark off a slate. She swallowed the words, because no matter what he said or did, she wouldn’t let her guard down again. Even being openly angry with him was too much of a vulnerability.

“Forgiveness is a gift, not an obligation,” she said instead.

“Indeed,” Alyster said, so coldly she was surprised the lantern’s flame didn’t freeze. “Good night.” The door closed behind him.

Chapter Nine

Red Sky at Morning

After the third time Nuemy stopped the kraken changing course, it seemed resigned to their new direction—and she knew it was tired of struggling against both her and its own condition. It had been fortunate. The crossbow bolt could have entered its brain or put out an eye, or it could have lost more than a single arm.

On the other hand, the stump burned as if a brand was being pressed into raw flesh and the bolt was lodged deep beside its skull. In Conger Cove, Kaig had a scrimshaw engraving of a whale bristling with old harpoons, but the kraken didn’t have a coat of blubber a foot thick to protect it from that kind of injury.

For the first time she wondered if it would die.

The thought frightened her more than she wanted to admit, especially since that wasn’t likely to be a quick death. The kraken’s sheer size meant sharks would stay away until it was unable to defend itself, but she was so closely caught in its network of nerves that she felt fish nibbling at the edges of its wounds—fish too tiny to be attacked or dispersed for long. The kraken needed safety, needed the quiet depths of the Iron Ocean, and knew it would get neither.

She didn’t dare find the Dagran ship again and confess she hadn’t been able to even damage
Checkmate
. At first the solitude had made her feel afraid too—she was so used to Kaig being nearby—but it was easier to breathe now and the pain in her face dulled. Besides, that was nothing compared to what the kraken had suffered. To spare it as much as she could, she took on its sensory functions, allowing its primitive consciousness a respite. One of her fingers felt like it had been sawed off, but she could endure that for at least a little while.

The kraken’s mind floated free. Since it was still linked to her, when she closed her eyes she saw bright points in the abyss like stars fallen into the depths, and shadows flickered through the darkness as fish darted away. A cool heavy weight of water wrapped and soothed her. The kraken dreamed of the depths that descended to the heart of the world, and Nuemy, her pulse pounding in anticipation or dread, sank with it to places neither of them would ever see again.

She’s only just turned five
, someone said quietly.

Her eyes opened, and her head came up so fast that the broken fibers of nerves brushed tickling along the side of her face. The voice had sounded familiar, but she knew the control chamber was empty. She had
Nautilex
to herself.

Who just turned five?
she wondered. The kraken was much older than that.

One more year.

One more year for what?
And she didn’t have one more year—perhaps not even one more week, going by the number of freshwater pods in the control chamber. Fewer than the fingers she had remaining. She tapped into the kraken’s systems again, felt the usual rhythm of water sluicing in propulsion through its siphons. Yes, that was better. She couldn’t afford to get distracted, much less have her mind mixed up. She had to think of her orders instead, because no matter what she felt for Ralcilos, he was trying to keep their homeland safe.

Just one more year. Please
, a woman whispered in the back of her memory and was gone. Relieved, Nuemy wondered if that happened to Denalaits when they bonded with sea creatures as well.

She had never before thought about Seawatch agents as people, only as the enemies she had to fight some day. No shark could have done more than dent
Nautilex
’s hull, but she didn’t want the kraken to be hurt further. And if she felt what it did, maybe Seawatch agents felt what their sharks felt as well.

No, she couldn’t think like that. She clenched her fists until her unpared nails dug painfully into her palms and continued the fruitless search for
Checkmate
, staying a dozen feet below the waves. Losing an arm had not only startled and hurt the kraken, it had disrupted the link between them. By the time she’d calmed the kraken, stopped its instinctive dive—before it could sink deep enough for water pressure to crush the submersible—and brought it back up again to the surface, cautiously, the steamship was gone.

Now the world above them grew dark with nightfall. She continued to scout ahead, extending the kraken’s arms to sift the sea, and tried not to imagine what would happen if she didn’t find anything.

They would go back to Kaig, of course.

If she could find him. If she didn’t run out of water first. If he still needed her—which he didn’t, now he had a ship.

That was another unnerving thought. She had always been needed to play a valuable role in the war—Kaig had told her that all her life—but then they had sent her away. To find
Checkmate
, yes, but could it also have been because the kraken was hurt and of no further use, because they didn’t trust her? She’d only dared to refuse Ralcilos once, but maybe once was enough. It was like going in a circle from fear to loneliness to confusion and back to fear, and as soon as she managed to overcome one obstacle, another took its place.

While the kraken’s hearing was by no means good enough to detect high-pitched sounds like the hunting calls of predatory whales, it would have heard something if it was close to a steamship. The ocean was silent, though, and now she wished she could find a Denalait ship just so she wouldn’t be alone. Even an enemy vessel would be something living and familiar in the center of a vast foreign world. She might let the kraken surface at night to listen to the people on board—

Oh, don’t be stupid
, she thought wearily. She couldn’t speak to them from within
Nautilex
, and even if she could, what was there to say? All she could do was keep searching for at least a little while longer before she turned the kraken to find her way back to
Enlightenment
, somehow. Just for a few hours more.

Just for one more year.

The line of stacks called the Merman’s Palisade jutted out of the coastal waters. A dozen stone columns were all that remained of a headland worn away by thousands of years of erosion. Alyster took
Checkmate
within half a mile of them, which was as close as he dared to go. The jagged slopes of the stacks were white and grey with nesting seabirds, so he sent two boats to see what could be found and a third with a sealed letter to be delivered to authorities in Dagre. The rest of the crew looked over the ship. The engine was halted so the paddlewheel and boilers could be inspected as well.

It was late afternoon by then, and the two boats rode low in the water when they returned hours later, carrying a sackful of eggs, buckets of crabs and some lobsters that took pride of place at supper. Alyster was relieved his crew could retreat to relatively safer waters and enjoy a feast, because not only did they need it after seeing the kraken, it was likely to be their last chance for a respite. Once
Wrack
reappeared, or once the sun rose the next day, whichever came first, the race would be back on, and Lera could be very cutthroat when it came to winning.

The meal was delicious, though when he went to the galley later to compliment the cook, Peppercorn told him the recipe had been Miri’s doing. Alyster hadn’t spoken to her since her stony reaction to his apology.

He thought of inviting Reveka to his cabin and getting Miri off his mind for good, but realized at once that that was the problem—his mind. Reveka didn’t intrigue him the way Miri did. No unusual, thought-provoking conversations there, let alone anything amusing, and he didn’t know what they might do other than make love in silence. As for afterwards, he could imagine lying there, feeling no closer to her than he’d done before, and Unity alone knew what she would be feeling, since she certainly couldn’t tell him.

Work on the ship went on past supper and well into the night. The engineers were clearly happy at the opportunity to look over her systems, repairing and cleaning and making fine-tuned adjustments at their leisure. Alyster sat alone in his cabin, candles burning in pools of wax, wrote the last entry in his logbook and wished he had something more definite to report.

What preyed on his mind was where the Tureans might be. If he had known the race was likely to turn into a run-for-your-life from a rabid dog likely to bite the slowest competitor, he would have thought twice about it—though if he had backed out, he would never have been given another command. The kraken was just the spearhead. If he could find the spearman…

He stared at the charts and maps covering the table. Was it likely the Tureans could have sent a galley so far, following closely without ever being noticed? No, it was not. So the Tureans had to be somewhere else, but if they weren’t on the surface, they had to be below the water.

Which seemed ridiculous, but if there was no other probable choice, he had to at least consider it. All right, could they breathe water? Maybe. Best not to put anything past them. On the other hand, if he could breathe water, the Admiralty would have ordered him to cut anchor lines and weaken hulls, yet he had heard no reports of mysterious sabotage to Denalait vessels. So it wasn’t likely the Tureans could travel underwater unless they carried their own air.

As in a submersible.

No, that wasn’t likely either, because while the Admiralty had experimented with submersibles—successfully, in one case—those couldn’t propel themselves. Seawatch had offered the largest shark they had to tow the submersible, but the Tureans had no such…

Of course they do
. Except the kraken didn’t strike him as being seaworthy—if that was the word for something below the water.
No, streamlined
. Traveling with Seawatch operatives had given him an opportunity to see the sleek tapering bodies of their sharks, so different from the kraken’s misshapen form. It might be carrying a load of eggs, which was a horrible thought—he sure as hell didn’t need hundreds more giant squid swimming about.

Or maybe it was diseased. He preferred that. The round thing in the center of its back, like a flat black eye, wasn’t something he’d seen on any sea creature. Piercing that through might be like lancing a boil, releasing all sorts of foulness.

All right, enough woolgathering
. He had to work out where the submersible could be and how to stop it.

Maybe it was just two thoughts colliding when he was too tired to stop his mind wandering, but he remembered the kraken’s swollen body and pictured a submersible. What if that
was
what he’d seen? A snake which had swallowed an egg would bulge in its midsection too. What if that black circle was how the Tureans emerged from the beast?

Now he felt much more alert. Perhaps it was a crazy idea, but he’d seen just how the Tureans could manipulate coral. Maybe they’d done the same with the kraken, so it carried the submersible. That was the best explanation he could think of for the creature’s distorted shape.

Besides, how better to control it than to be part of it? Tureans didn’t have the talent Seawatch operatives did, but they probably pulled on its horns or feelers or whatever squids had, to make it go in a particular direction. Not important. What mattered was that he’d stumbled across the answer to a lot of questions.

And that was an advantage. If they killed the kraken, its puppetmaster died as well, two fish on one hook. That was an edge he hadn’t expected to have, and he jotted his suspicions down in his journal, since speculation, even reasoned speculation, didn’t belong in the ship’s log. He would take some pleasure in noting the date and time and means of the kraken’s death, though.

It was past midnight by the time he slept, but he was up just before dawn the next day.
Checkmate
couldn’t wait any longer. Now that all the machinery had been inspected and cleaned, it was time to put on full speed and see if a kraken could keep up with a steamship. He got dressed and went out, but Thomal met him before he could reach the hatch.

“Sir,” he said, “there’s a ship approaching, perhaps two miles directly astern.”

Alyster frowned, since it wasn’t
Wrack
, which would have sailed to them from abeam. “Which ship?”

“
Enlightenment
, sir.”

Alyster would have been delighted to see
Wrack
again, but
Enlightenment
wasn’t a bad consolation prize. At the very least, he could warn them of what he suspected, so he grabbed a spyglass and went up to the deck.

The sunrise glimmered on the waves, but despite the dazzling reflections he saw the ship’s damage clearly.
Enlightenment
hadn’t come off well from her engagement with the kraken. The hull was marked and scarred, one arm of the figurehead had been snapped off, and there were far fewer hands on board than were needed on a ship that size. Alyster knew just how much manpower it took to keep the sails positioned, always turning to get the most from the wind. If it hadn’t favored them, he doubted
Enlightenment
would ever have caught up.

“Can’t see the captain on board.” Thomal had a spyglass as well and was watching beside him.

Alyster didn’t like to think of what that implied. He looked up at
Enlightenment
’s flags and saw the black-on-white which was a request to stop for important communication. Hopefully the vital news wasn’t that half their crew had been killed, because their only choice would be to drop out of the race, since he couldn’t spare any of his much smaller crew for anything short of urgent medical assistance. They were close enough to the Dagran coast that at least
Enlightenment
’s survivors wouldn’t have to wait too long for anything else.

“Run up the colors,” he said to Mejan. “Request acknowledged. Proceed.”

“Aye, sir.”

The ship drew level with
Checkmate
until she was perhaps a hundred yards away, far enough that they couldn’t shout to each other. Though the handful of Dagrans on the deck were much more preoccupied with slowing
Enlightenment
to a halt, struggling to do the work of a crew that should have been three times their number. Two were officers, he saw from their uniforms, but they hauled at the sails just like the deckhands.