The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (10 page)

No. I’m here to guide and to guard
.

She shoved the knife back into its sheath and knotted the two ropes together, then hurried to the ship’s wheel. She looped the end of the rope over two spokes of the wheel, grabbed the other end and flung it over the ship’s rail.

A howl rang out and the shimmering forms of the ship’s crew loped at her. Yerena ignored them—ignoring fear was the first lesson Seawatch had taught her—and let her mind detach from its moorings, reaching for the shark instead.

She saw what it saw, the hulk of the ghost ship’s hull looming above like a thunderhead, with the jut of the ship’s rudder ahead. The shark lashed its tail and plowed through the water. Teeth the length of her finger closed on the end of the knotted rope.

Right
.

The shark slewed right, pulling the rope with it. The wheel spun smoothly on its oiled hub, and even with her consciousness more in the shark’s body than her own, Yerena registered the deck lurching beneath her feet as the ghost ship began to turn.

A cold hand closed around her wrist, snapping the connection between her and the shark. Yerena twisted, and her skin was wet enough that the hand lost its grip. She backed away to the gunwale as the crew surrounded her. Their bodies materialized fast. Blood running through the fine glass tubes of veins looked dark in the moonlight, before those were covered in swathes of greyish flesh knitted by unseen hands. Rags appeared and spread to form clothing.

But as long as they were focused on her, they left Darok alone. She couldn’t see him past the crew’s bodies, but steel rang and clashed, the sounds coming too fast for her to follow. The crew still whispered, their mouths working as though they were remembering how to speak, but she was far too afraid now to feel any compulsion to listen to them.

Their weapons appeared, jointed spears and double-bladed swords. One man’s arm sprouted a hook, which would have been familiar if it hadn’t grown from his wrist along with his hand. He strode forward and swung his arm like a club.

Yerena hadn’t wanted to leave
Daystrider
’s deck to change into her watersuit, but now her soaked, heavy skirts caught at her legs as she tried to duck. She staggered off-balance. The hook slashed through her sleeve and carved a long shallow line across the back of her arm.

She nearly fell and only saved herself by catching the ship’s rail with both hands. Darok shouted her name, his voice hoarse and desperate, and the shadows of twisted blades came down at her.

She threw herself over the rail, and without a chance to dive, she hit the water with an ungainly slap. It knocked the breath out of her. She came up gasping, spat water and blinked her vision clear in time to see
Daystrider—
now fully turned with its prow pointing towards the ghost ship—seize the advantage and plunge forward. Oars pulled so fast that they turned water to foam.

Daystrider
surged parallel to the ghost ship. At the last moment the black prow shifted a few degrees to the left—all it could turn in such a short distance—and the two ships’ hulls scraped together. Oars snapped like twigs before the men could pull them in, but it was a glancing blow, not the broadside collision which could have had the ghost ship overwhelming
Daystrider
with its colossal mass.
Daystrider
still rolled with the impact, and the ghost ship shuddered as well. Yerena clenched her fists.

To her relief, though, the near-collision must have been enough of a distraction for Darok to escape the ship’s captain. An instant later he flung himself—or was hurled—against the rail. Rotted wood broke away with a crunch, and he plummeted into the water, disappearing in the white froth of the ghost ship’s wake. The featureless prow entered what looked like the end of the strait and vanished.

Treading water—and feeling the stinging pain in her arm for the first time—Yerena watched in fascination as the rest of the ghost ship passed into the open ocean and was simply gone, swallowed up by nothingness. Then the ocean was gone as well. It disappeared like the colors being washed out of a canvas, and another jagged turn of the strait appeared in its place.

But the fog had dissipated and
Daystrider
’s forward movement stopped. That might have worried her if she hadn’t guessed the reason for it—the anchor had lodged in the bed of the strait. It was normal again
.

Water slapped the base of the flint cliff, breaking up in glimmers of black and moonlight, and she didn’t see Darok at first. She would have used the shark’s senses to search for him, except she heard the splashing as he swam towards her. The shark was circling them both, but it wasn’t until she saw Darok that she realized why.

He had been using the broken section of rail to stay afloat and when he shoved it towards her, she held on to it as well. Water plastered his hair to his forehead and diluted the blood trailing from a gash at his temple, but more of it welled up, dark as ink in the moonlight. Yerena didn’t know whether there were more wounds she couldn’t see—and Darok was gasping too hard to speak—but there was more than enough blood in the water. The shark would probably not attack her, but it had no familiarity with him.

He knew that as well as she did. He clung to the broken rail, his head turning to follow the shark’s dorsal fin as it traced a narrowing ring around them.

“Captain,” she said. He didn’t seem to hear her. “Darok.”

He glanced at her then. The muscles of his jaws tensed and his throat worked as he swallowed, but at least he hadn’t panicked—yet. The shark was only thirty or so feet away from them, close enough that the water it displaced pushed up against Yerena’s body in surges, and the fin gleamed like polished iron. Darok’s fingers clutched the rail in a death grip.

“I know this is easier said than done, but don’t be afraid.” She shifted closer to him. “Don’t look at it. Look at me and keep your breathing slow.” One or two of Seawatch’s operatives had learned—after days in the black room—to regulate their heartbeats, but the best she could do was control her respiration and hope that would bring her pulse into line. Since the shark could detect a heartbeat when it was close enough, that was a skill worth learning.

Oars bit into the water on either side of
Daystrider
and the ship began to move towards them. Darok turned his head to watch it.

You won’t reach it in time.
“Move up beside me,” Yerena said, keeping her voice as calm as if they had been playing cards.

“I don’t want you to be hurt if that creature decides to—”

“I won’t be.”

He was so near that she saw individual hairs in the stubble covering his jaws, blue-black in the moonlight. Slowly he moved closer until his legs touched hers, and when his chest pressed against her breasts she felt his heart hammering. He was afraid—it was obvious in the intent, unblinking way he looked at her—but at least she had distracted him.

“You lost your sword,” she said.

“No, I know exactly where it is.” The strait’s water was cold, but his breath felt warm and slightly tickling against her face when he spoke. “In that bastard’s gut up to the hilt, not that it seemed to make much difference to him.”

The shark still circled them in a way that was half corralling them in and half waiting for any further sign of weakness, but she was too used to it to be afraid.
Calm, beautiful one.
Her breathing settled into a pattern of deliberate inhales and steady exhales, so she felt as if she were floating in a tub of soapsuds. Even the pain in her lacerated arm, which stung worse from the seawater, was distant. She sent her placidity out to the shark in a slow soothing tide.
No hunger, no prey, nothing here. Go now.

The circle broke. The fin dipped like a warning flag being lowered. The shark’s sleek body disappeared beneath the water, and she sensed it heading further east along the strait, searching for the open ocean and the better hunting there.

Darok sighed, relaxing against her, and as her mind returned to its moorings, Yerena was aware of the solidity of his body pressed to hers. He was tall enough that his unshaven cheek touched her hair when his head bent forward, and a drop of blood fell from the edge of his jaw to skin left bare where her dress had been torn.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve never used a woman as a shield before.”

Shield and spear and shipkiller… Yerena thought she was many things, but a woman was probably the least of them. She drew away from him and pushed the heavy weight of her wet, loosened hair back from her face.
Daystrider
had pulled close enough that they could swim over to it, and the crew let a rope ladder down.

Lady Lisabe stood at the rail, smiling as if she had fished them both out of the sea herself. “Well done, Captain. You said there was nothing in here which could stand before a Weapon of Denalay. There was definitely nothing in the strait which could defeat two of them.”

Chapter Five

Taste of Fire

“No one goes ashore without permission,” Darok said.

Daystrider
was anchored half a league’s length from a fishing village that perched on a finger of land jutting out into the Iron Ocean, just south of Drowner’s Bay. It was their last chance to take on food and water, but he didn’t want any of the villagers coming too close to his ship. For some reason the place showed no signs of Turean raids, and suspicion made him wary about sending too many of his crew ashore.

“Only Bleysey and enough men to load supplies on the boats,” he said. Alyster nodded. “No uniforms and no weapons unless they’re the kind whalemen might carry. And not one word about our mission, where we sailed from or where we’re going.”

“Understood. I take it there’ll be no drills until we’re out of sight of land?”

Darok shook his head. “The men can have the rest of the day to themselves. We’ll raise anchor at dawn.” That was enough time to take more supplies on board. As far as he was concerned, fresh water was the priority, because if they ran low on food, Yerena might use her shark to catch them seals or large fish. Once that was settled, he went up to the deck.

In her new guise,
Daystrider
had two whaleboats, one of which had already been filled and lowered. Hevard Bleysey was on board, and Lady Lisabe stood watching as the men began to row.

“Were you hoping to go ashore, my lady?” Darok kept his tone neutrally polite.

She shook her head, making the smooth mass of her hair gleam—it was a silver that looked polished under the sun. “I don’t think Voices of the Unity normally travel on whalers.”

“Yes, I was going to suggest you dress as someone’s wife if you wanted to visit the village.”

Lady Lisabe smiled like a contented cat. “No, I don’t need to do so. My time on board has been very pleasant.”

Darok could guess why. Naturally, he had to bite his tongue in lieu of saying so, and he had the distinct impression Lady Lisabe was enjoying his irritation. He hoped Alyster wasn’t getting more involved with her than was wise. There were no prohibitions on Voices of the Unity having relationships as long as those didn’t interfere with their first duty, but he didn’t trust her. Of course, he couldn’t say anything to Alyster either, since his brother looked very satisfied of a morning and probably wanted to continue being that way.

Yerena climbed up from the hatchway, a bundle of clothes tucked under one arm—grey clothes, of course
.
“Captain? I’d like to go ashore, if I may.”

“Of course. The next boat will be ready soon.” He planned to go with them as well, to have a few words with whoever was in charge of the village. Yerena nodded her thanks and crossed the deck to the opposite gunwale—either so she could look out to the ocean or to give them privacy.

“A good girl, that one,” Lady Lisabe said.

A pity she hadn’t stayed to get a pat on the head
.
Darok felt sure someone of Lady Lisabe’s experience was never unintentionally patronizing, so she was trying to bait him again, to see how he really felt about Yerena. He decided the best thing to do was to disagree, but not in a way that obviously complimented Yerena.

“She seems a little long in the tooth to be a girl,” he said, then wondered if he had said that because he was going to be thirty next winter.

“I suppose it’s her name that makes me think of her that way.” He frowned and she went on. “
Yerena
means ‘girl’ in the ancient tongue.”

“Oh.” That didn’t make sense. Yerena had told him her parents couldn’t read, so how had they given her a name so obscure that only a Voice of the Unity knew what it meant? He’d always thought people in simple traditional villages gave their daughters simple traditional names like Jhane or Rutha.

And it wasn’t even an accurate name. He thought of how Yerena had looked two nights before in the Strait of Mists, her hair no longer confined in a knot but tumbling over her shoulders, her wet clothes clinging to her body, the calmness in her steady eyes. Whatever else she was, she was definitely a woman.

Kneeling in the river’s shallows, Yerena hummed as she scrubbed her clothes and watersuit until the residue of salt was gone. The blood was another matter, though. She’d sewn up the long tear in the dress she’d worn in the Strait of Mists, but the stains wouldn’t come out.

Thankfully the cut in her arm hadn’t been deep. The ship’s doctor had bandaged it with a poultice and without comment, and she could move her arm without much pain. She decided to go swimming again the next day. Darok hadn’t been badly hurt either, but he would have a far more obvious scar. Though hopefully no nightmares about the white death circling him as he bled into the water.