The Drowning Eyes (3 page)

While she went back to her patrol of the deck, Shina wrapped the blanket around her shoulder and sat on a fish crate to watch the stars go by. It was almost dawn, and unless she was mistaken, she could see some of the lights of Jepjep on the horizon.

Now and then, the Captain would look Shina over with her eyes narrowed. A few times, she tilted her head and opened her mouth as if to say something, but she stayed silent.

It wasn’t until they passed the first jetty that the Captain rubbed the back of her neck and let out a long, acid hiss. The sun was coming up, and the clouds blushed coral violet.

“Well,” the Captain said, “we’re here.” She waved her arm in a broad sweep against the crescent of wooden buildings that lined the docks. “Is it everything you imagined?”

Truth be told, Shina hadn’t put much thought into imagining what Jepjep would be like. In her mind, all ports were built on a pile of rocks, just down the beach from a sleepy little straw-roofed village. Humma, with its rows of wooden houses and storehouses and shops all in together with each other, had surprised her with its hustle and bustle. Jepjep, as she had expected, did the same.

Jepjep was built on the southern tip of Moliki, which was first in a little string of eastern-ish islands that boasted snow-capped peaks. The hills started to rear up almost at the water’s edge—the city was built on one that was shallower than most. Brightly painted wooden houses grew fancier and fancier as they got higher off the water, and then there was a band of green around a small hut that had to be the storm temple.

“Better put those silks back on,” said the Captain, snorting at Shina’s openmouthed silence. “You’ll find a cleaner bed at an inn if you look nicer.”

“Are we staying overnight, then?” Shina raised her brows.

The Captain looked at her with wide eyes and a flat mouth. “You wanna get gone in a hurry, don’t you?”

Shina looked at the ground.

“Well, what do you want here?” She clicked her tongue. “New clothes, I bet—get your hair changed.”

“I just need to visit my sister,” Shina blurted. “She—she won’t be able to help me, but I need to
see
her, all right?”

“Fine.” The Captain put her hands up and backed away. “As long as you keep the money coming, my ship is yours.”

They didn’t speak to each other as the Captain moored the ship to the dock at its east end; when the first mate came up to help her, he communicated only in grunts. They were one of only a few boats tying up in Jepjep that morning. The threat of the Dragon Ships had been keeping boats away from ports like this one, where there was no Prefect rich enough to keep a private navy. Storm temples all around the islands had learned a cruel lesson in how powerless they were against the raiders. Once their natural eyes were replaced with windstones, they lost the ability to create the kind of freakish weather that could destroy ships and ruin towns. They could only aid the Prefects’ warriors—and the Prefects didn’t have enough swords to guard ports
and
temples.

“I won’t be long,” Shina said to the Captain as she put her shass set back on. You could tell she’d stowed it, but it wasn’t too much the worse for being hung up down below.

“Good,” said the Captain. “You can help us get the supplies loaded.”

Shina decided not to ponder whether that was meant as an insult. She trudged down the gangplank and headed along the dock, only stumbling a little bit on legs that were used to a ship’s deck.

The sun was climbing, and the streets were waking up. Shopkeepers’ children were setting baskets of colorful fruits in front of stores; goats and chickens demanded their morning meals beside the butcher shops. In front of a temple to Shula, a line was forming for public breakfast. Although Shina stopped to bow to the green-haired goddess, she kept a quick pace as she made her way uphill.

Doubts and worries had begun to swarm around her head like flies. She’d only met Aksa-auntie once, and that had been a brief introduction at a temple dedication ceremony. There was no guarantee—maybe not even a likelihood—that she would recognize Shina, that she would recognize Shina as a student Windspeaker, that she would believe that Shina was the last one alive after the raid on Tash.

As she got closer and closer to the temple, Shina became more and more certain that she was in the wrong place. She was passing big, ornate houses now, and servants gave her suspicious glares as they swept the verandahs and hung the shade mats in the eastern openings. The packed sand of the road was becoming rockier and loamier—after it passed a tall purple house with a lush garden in front, it narrowed to a dirt path just wide enough for a pushcart.

Just approaching the temple was enough to calm Shina’s thumping heart a little bit. No, it wasn’t the temple on Tash, or one of the familiar rural temples where the students would go to learn alongside the grown Windspeakers, but it was a storm temple nonetheless. Wherever Shina went, these simple round mud huts with their roofs of dried leaves would be home.

When she reached the threshold of the hut, Shina knelt and prostrated herself. After a few moments, she heard an old woman clear her throat.

“You can come in,” said a worn voice. Shina rose, tightened the bottom knot on her shass, and stepped inside the temple.

Aksa-auntie sat, as was customary for Windspeakers, on a round seat of black stone that had been brought up from the Sunrise Temple on Vihar. Dressed only in a simple linen frock, she had her white curls shorn as short as Shina’s. She had always been a small woman, and in her old age her posture had become stooped from the weight of her eyes. Although the heavy stone orbs had been pitch black when they’d been put in (like everyone else’s), nearly seventy years in Aksa-auntie’s head had turned them a beautiful pale pink. The green veins spreading across them had begun to develop purple spots like flowers on a vine.

“You’re nervous,” Aksa-auntie said, cocking her ears toward Shina. Her button nose twitched as she sniffed the air. “You smell like smoke, and you’ve been on a fishing boat.” Aksa-auntie beckoned for Shina to come over. She grasped in the air as she approached. When Shina was close enough, Aksa-auntie grabbed her skirt and held it to her nose, then gripped her leg and felt her way up to her hand. Shina winced at the touch, but let Aksa-auntie pull her arm to her face and sniff it.

“You’re wearing clothes that aren’t yours,” she said. She sat back, took a deep breath, and let out a short laugh. “And you hurried up here.”

“Yes, auntie,” Shina said.

“Give me your face.”

Shina held her breath and shut her eyes as she bent down for Aksa-auntie’s inspection. The old woman’s thin, frail hands were gentle as they brushed against her cheeks, prodded at her eyelids to see if they contained living flesh or cold stone.

“You know,” Aksa-auntie said as she released Shina’s head, “I once told somebody that I hoped I’d never give this compass to anybody.” She motioned for Shina to step back and stood up, leaning on a rough wooden staff. “But now that you’re here—” She shook her head as she walked to a patch of the reed mat floor and started thumping her stick against it. When it rang hollow, she knelt and picked up a section of the mat. Under the mat was a board, and under the board was a hole. Inside the hole was a sealed jar, which Aksa-auntie lifted with a smile.

“Here it is, my dear,” she said, holding it toward Shina. A wry smile crawled across her round, wizened face as she rattled it. “Go on—give the jar a good smash. Make it count.”

Shina took the jar in both hands. She stared at it, surprised by its weight and aghast that Aksa-auntie was so—so
irreverent
about it. “Smash it?” she said. “Are you—”

“You’ll only get to do this once in a lifetime.” The old Windspeaker held up a finger. “If I were you, I’d take the chance to make some noise.”

Shina swallowed and raised the jar above her head. “Here goes,” she said.

She brought the jar down with all the might in her arms. When it hit the floor, there was no crash of breaking pottery, but instead, a clap of thunder that made Shina jump and made Aksa-auntie throw her head back and roar with laughter.

“That’s the spirit!” the Windspeaker said, waving her walking stick in the air.

Shina gasped as the shards of the pot shuddered, burst into flame, and dissolved into black smoke. When the smoke took the shape of five black birds and began circling her head, she squealed.

“Now open your mouth!” cackled the Windspeaker.

She didn’t have to tell Shina to do that—her mouth was already gaping—but she could have warned Shina that she might choke and cough as the birds flew down her throat one by one. She sank to her knees, trying not to vomit in this sacred place as she hacked and coughed.

The Windspeaker was giggling now, circling Shina at an excited hobble.

“Oh, yes, oh, yes,” she was saying. “It’s you, all right. It all depends on you.”

On the floor by her hand, Shina noticed a stone ball she hadn’t seen before. It was pure milky white—except, when Shina picked it up, a red spot appeared on its surface. No matter which way she turned the stone, the dot stayed in the same place, just at the edge of the top right quadrant.

“Those storms will not come out of you any easier than they went in,” said Aksa-auntie. “And if you ask me, they’re likely to be much worse.”

“Storms?” Shina grimaced. “Entire storms?” Releasing a storm could kill you if you still had your wet eyes. “But—but how do I—”

“Don’t ask me,” Aksa-auntie said as she walked back to her chair. “Until you bring the icon back, the only things I know about Windspeaking are the ones that come from here—” She touched her ear. “And here—” She tapped her nose. “So I would hurry, if I were you.” She settled herself back on her seat with her walking stick in her lap.

“Is—is this—all?” Shina asked, cocking her head to one side.

Aksa-auntie shrugged. “I’m afraid that your teachers were being very literal when they told you that we’re powerless without the icon in its proper place.” She shook her head. “Don’t want a bunch of useless old ladies with big mouths? Find it. Bring it home.” She smiled up at Shina. “We trust you.”

Shina nodded. “Thank you, auntie,” she said.

“Don’t thank me,” the Windspeaker replied, picking up her stick and waving it. “Get out and bring us our power back!”

Tazir cracked one eye open, then shut it again. She drew her knees to her chest and sucked in a slow, deep breath. She was getting too old to drink like this.

“Fuck,” she groaned, rubbing her temples with her fingertips.

“Ehhhn?” Chaqal’s warm, soft form shifted in the hammock beside hers. She put a hand on Tazir’s shoulder.

“Fuck!”
Tazir repeated.

“Nnhhhn.” Chaqal shifted again. “I’m getting too old to drink like this,” she groaned.

“Don’t even start.” Tazir brushed Chaqal’s hand aside, sat up, and waited for her head to stop swimming. “I—” The rest of the sentence had already left her brain. “Hmm.” She smacked her lips together for a few moments. Something was wrong. Out of place. Off schedule—

“Oh, what the
hell,
” Tazir growled as she swung over and put her feet on the floor. “Broad damn daylight, and you don’t wake me up for the morning shift.”

Chaqal reached out and grasped her wrist. “The kid’s doing the deck,” she murmured. “Remember?”

“What?” Tazir turned around to glare down at her quartermaster.

“I told you,” Chaqal said. “She came by this morning.” She was beautiful like this, squinting up at Tazir with her hair flying around her face. Black tattoos spiraled down her arms, turning into fish here and leaves there. She’d had some already when she’d met Tazir. Most of them were newer.

“Come back to bed,” Chaqal said.

“You just took that girl at her word?”

“Kodin was with her.” She tugged gently at Tazir’s wrist. “Come on—the fruit place isn’t even open yet.”

Tazir yanked her hand away and pulled her chest bindings from where she hung them above the hammock. She hissed all the air out of her lungs while she wound the dirty linen around her heavy breasts. As she bent over to tie the knot behind her back, she heard Chaqal groan.

“For the love of—” she said. “Why do you have to be like this?”

“I’ll tell you why!” Tazir snapped. “Because I
own
this ship and I
care
about this ship and I don’t want—”

“I
said
Kodin was with her,” said Chaqal. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Come on, Cap. I just wanted to give you a morning off.”

“You don’t give me
shit,
” Tazir said, putting her vest on over the wraps and storming over to the hatchway. “It ain’t your place.”

* * *

She regretted those words as she patrolled the deck, her arms crossed and her pipe clamped between her lips. It had always stung like hell when Mati used to tell her what was and wasn’t her place—but then again, Chaqal wasn’t her wife, and Mati hadn’t been the Captain of the ship.

“That’s why you don’t shit where you eat, I guess,” Tazir muttered to herself, staring out at the blank sea. They had a good wind—a
great
wind, actually—that was moving them northeast at the same no-nonsense pace they’d made all day yesterday. Maybe the Windspeakers had finally stopped mourning Tash and gotten to work.

As she paced, she couldn’t help but glance at Shina sleeping on the mat she’d set out on the deck. She was a great deal quieter when she was in the open air. Tazir figured that whatever nightmare-giving horror happened to her must have happened indoors.

“You still don’t believe me,” Kodin said. It was her fifth or sixth lap around the ship, and far from the first time he’d caught her glancing at Shina.

“I believe that you
want
me to believe you.” Tazir glared at the boards below her feet. The salt, scum, and moss that tended to accumulate on ships’ decks had indeed been scrubbed off with stones already. Tazir hadn’t been able to find a square inch that hadn’t been done to her standards. “I guess I’d believe that she told you where you missed a spot.”

“It’s not that hard to scrub a deck,” Kodin said. “You know she likes being helpful.”

Tazir looked at the great length of girl curled up on the mat, her smooth skin rippled by her backbone and the gentle contours of ribs. She was snoring gently—a vast improvement over the moaning and yelling.

“Probably can’t sleep until she wears herself out,” Tazir said. “It’s good for these rich kids.” Despite her best intentions, poking fun at Shina had lost some of its fun.

Kodin shook his head and flattened his mouth. “I don’t know what happened to her,” he said, “but I doubt it was good.”

“Yeah?” Tazir shrugged. “Well, it was good for us.”

“Don’t say that.” He sank his brows over his eyes. “She’s just a kid.”

Tazir took a long pull on her pipe. “I guess,” she grumbled, squinting into the sun. There was no sign of the island they were supposed to be passing by the afternoon. “Where were we at dawn?” she asked.

“Just leaving Mun behind,” he said.

Tazir snorted so hard, she nearly blew her tobacco out into the water. “What?”

“The wind kept up all night,” said Kodin. “Hope we didn’t stumble into someone’s private merchant route, but I haven’t seen any ships yet.”

Tazir laughed. “You can’t bribe a Windspeaker to make a wind run this long,” she said. “Their high temple or whatever won’t let them.”

“You never know,” he said, crossing his arms. “Wet-eyes aren’t common, but they happen.”

“Mm-hmm.” Tazir rolled her eyes and smiled. Kodin had been raised just south of the temple on Tash, where they taught young Windspeakers to control their abilities. Sometimes, full-grown Stormcallers with wet eyes and dangerous talents were brought to the school in chains, to have those eyes gouged out and replaced with stones that reined them in. Some of the stories that came with those rogues were enough to entertain even a grizzled sailor like Tazir.

“Sometimes,” Kodin murmured, “they show up in pickup bars in blouses that don’t fit them right.”

“Uh-huh,” Tazir said. She took a long draw on her pipe. “So you’re telling me that some twenty-year-old wet-eyes, who can spit storms well enough that she can sing up a wind like this”—she pointed at the red-and-purple-striped sail of the
Giggling Goat
—“has to drop forty thousand qyda on some pisstub fishing boat to take her up to the long banks for no reason.”

Kodin frowned. “She has the Tashi accent,” he said. “The Dragon Ships hit that temple hard—burned them all alive, I heard.”

“You been letting pretty Myrans blow smoke at you again,” Tazir said.

“Nah, these were Tashi.” Kodin arched his heavy brows. “Said they tortured the nurses until they told them where they were hiding the children.”

“I guess that’s a step up from describing the pretty virgins they were raping,” Tazir snorted. “They’re just thieves, Kodin. They show up at places with bad security, they take what they can as fast as they can, and they leave enough wreckage behind them to get away.”

“We’ve seen gangs of thieves before,” Kodin said. “Those ships are full of monsters.”

“You know,” Tazir said, “I’ve found that the biggest difference between a common crook and a—a superhuman abomination is usually a few degrees of being good at your job.”

“See, this is why I won’t go through the Tejji Mists with you.” He shook his head. “Everybody’s gotta be just as beady-eyed and practical as you are—”

“Oh, I’m beady-eyed now?”

“Beady-eyed and salt-knuckled.” Kodin rolled his eyes. “You’d sell the wind itself—”

“I would do
exactly
that.” Tazir smiled. “None of this ‘I’m gonna make it rain on my island and fuck up the winds for two months’ amateur chickenshit—that’s how the school catches them, you know.” She puffed on her pipe. “Nah, if that were me, I’d be real quiet about it. Maybe practice a little bit here and there, get just good enough to kick up a little wind.”

“I know a few stories that start just like that,” Kodin snorted. “They can’t control the power they have—not forever.”

“Oh, sure, that’s what they
say,
” said Tazir. “How the fuck else are you going to get a kid to live in a monastery for a decade and then get his eyes gouged out? What the fuck kind of life is that?”

“They got some religious thing going on,” Kodin said.

“Yeah, they
religiously
tell the kid he’s a monster and beat him down into accepting his lot in life like a damn dairy goat.” Tazir puffed on her pipe and shook her head. “I bet there’s some wet-eye Windspeakers out there who are clever enough not to get hauled to that slaughterhouse in chains.” She took the pipe out of her mouth and pointed it at Kodin. “But if they’re that clever, then they’re probably making a hell of a lot of money somewhere else.” She put the pipe back in her mouth. “Besides, if she’s got the Tash accent, what’s she even doing with those eyeballs? More likely she killed a servant by accident and needs to hide out for a while.”

“Maybe,” Kodin said. “I’m just saying, that wind didn’t drop a lick all last night, and it’s skidding us right up—”

They both turned around at the sound of a drawn-out grunt behind them. The kid thrashed her legs, muttering something into the blanket that covered her face. She went quiet, curled up, and then let out a sigh.

“You awake?” Tazir asked.

Shina was silent for a moment, then curled tighter, then stretched out slowly and groaned. For the first time, Tazir noticed the soles of her feet—worn down and hardened by a long time walking with no shoes.

“Yeah,” Shina said, sitting up. She raised her arms over her head and rolled her neck around. A great yawn filled her lanky form, thrashed it around on its way out. “What time is it?” she asked.

“On about nine hours,” Tazir said. She took a step back, looking the kid up and down. “Kodin here says you been scrubbing the deck with him.”

Shina nodded, covering this yawn with one hand. “I was awake,” she said. “Might as well help.”

“Hmph.” Tazir nodded. Nervously, she cracked a smile at Shina. “Thanks, then.”

“You’re welcome.” Shina smiled back, blinking into the sun.

* * *

By the time Tazir climbed back down into the hold, Chaqal had already set breakfast. The table was folded out and secured with its straps. A big bowl of doli, two bladders of water, and a basket of sliced fruit were all wobbling back and forth within its raised border. The quartermaster herself was relaxing in her hammock, her own skin of water in one hand and papaya on her face.

“Everything all right up there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Tazir said. “The kid helped Kodin do the deck, I guess.”

“You
guess
?”

“I don’t fuckin’—” Tazir picked up a bladder and took a few big gulps of water. “Just, let’s not talk about the kid, all right?”

“All right,” Chaqal said. Her thick, long brows were arched in a semicircle on her forehead. “No need to ask how the rum’s treating you.”

“Sorry.” Tazir shut her eyes and took in a deep breath. “It’s just—she’s making me nervous, you know?”

Chaqal grunted as she got out of the hammock. She was dressed again in her plain, dumpy working clothes. “Nervous?” she asked.

“You seen her feet?” Tazir pointed at her with the doli spoon.

Chaqal shook her head. “You know, I’m not really a foot girl.”

Tazir rolled her eyes. “You know what I’m saying,” she said. “I saw her up there this morning—she looks like she’s never owned a pair of shoes in her life.”

“And that makes you nervous because . . .” Chaqal blinked at her.

“It doesn’t strike you as strange at all that a girl who’s never owned shoes is blowing forty thousand qyda on a trip to the long banks in a fifty-foot dhow?” Tazir raised her eyebrows and took another gulp of water from the bladder.

“Not if she stole more than forty thousand qyda,” said Chaqal.

Tazir was struck by the sudden need to defend the kid from this brazen accusation. “How the hell do you steal forty thousand qyda?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why I work on a fishing boat and don’t ask questions when people want to
give me
forty thousand qyda!”

Tazir grunted and started shoveling doli into her mouth. Now that they could afford to put some lemon juice and chili pepper in it, the root mash was almost delicious. As she ate, Kodin came down the hatch and started fixing his own meal of doli and fruit.

“Shina spotted land,” he said.

Chaqal choked on her water and coughed. “What?”

“We’ve had a weird wind,” Kodin went on. “Think we’re in somebody’s payoff route.”

“All right,” Chaqal said. “And the mysterious rich person with the Tash accent isn’t—you know—” She narrowed her eyes and made a wiggly motion with one hand. “We’re not suspecting her of maybe—”

“The Captain won’t hear of it,” Kodin said. “And she’s awake now, so watch it.”

“Fine by me,” Chaqal said. She set her jaw and gave Tazir a wide-eyed stare. “But don’t tell us we didn’t warn you.”

Tazir glared up at Chaqal’s ass as she climbed abovedecks.

“You know I’m right,” Kodin said through a bite of guava.

Tazir sucked down some more water and shook her head. “You read into things too much,” she said. “Why would we care if you’re right?”

“Guess I don’t have an answer for that one,” Kodin said. He gulped down his bowl of doli, set his bowl down, and got settled into the farthest hammock from the table.

* * *

They arrived in Kuhon around six in the evening—a full day and a half ahead of what Tazir would have called “good time.” Tazir watched Shina carefully as she helped Chaqal and Kodin into the slip. Kuhon didn’t have a dock that served boats this small, but when the tide was high, you could pull up all the way into a sandy slip marked by log pontoons.

At least one of them had been keeping a wary eye on Shina all day. If not Tazir, then it had been Chaqal or Kodin. They weren’t obvious about it—one nice thing about sailing a fifty-foot dhow was that it made it easy to watch someone discreetly. Nonetheless, all those hours of observation failed to yield any new information about Shina. She was awkward, soft-spoken, and eager to do anything that might get a smile or an approving nod from someone on the ship. But Shina didn’t work like Mati had, cautiously, in stops and starts. She watched patiently as the crew showed her the basics of a task, and she did it as quickly and easily as if she’d been doing it her whole life.