The Drowning Eyes (5 page)

“Goddammit, Chaqal,” called Tazir from where she was working the sail. “Get her below and get your fat ass up here!”

Shina tried to fight the quartermaster as she was peeled away from the railing, but it was no use. Wrangling the storm had torn every last ounce of strength from her limbs, and she hung limp in the other woman’s embrace as they hobbled across the deck to the hatchway.

The quartermaster dropped Shina down the hatch as gently as she could; Shina tried to stand at the bottom, but fell into a heap instead.

“Oh, sweetie, it’s all right.” Chaqal bent down to scoop Shina up, and realized that she was still sobbing. “Let’s just get you into bed here.”

“I let it happen,” Shina said. “I—I just
stood there
and—”

“Hush, hush.” The quartermaster helped her get into a hammock. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“No, it’s not,” Shina whimpered. The ship was groaning in the wind; waves beat against its hull. The storm was on its own now. Whoever had built it must have known that it would be much stronger than the one who called it.

“It will,” the quartermaster insisted. “We still have the ship, and we still have our lives and limbs.” She shuffled in her pocket. “And,” she said as she pressed a hot ball of leather into Shina’s palm, “we still have this.”

Tazir longed to gulp the water down, to put the skin to her lips and suck it dry in two or three mighty swallows. Instead, she forced herself to take it in sip by conscientious sip. They were two days out from the nearest port, and they had less water than she liked to stock on the average day voyage.

And the kid still hadn’t woken up.

“We’re picking up a little speed,” said Chaqal as she sat down beside her. “The wind’s still strong on our fore.”

Tazir grunted as she corked her water skin again. If the wind coming in to Kuhon had been freakishly good, then the wind coming out was just as freakishly bad. The whole point of the
Giggling Goat
’s design was that she could trudge through pretty much any wind, but these swirling garbage breezes on the edge of a sudden magic storm—this was, to put it mildly, an interesting challenge.

“Come on,” her quartermaster said. “We made it out.”

“Yeah?” Tazir fought the urge to spit over the railing behind her. “Lot of good that does us now.”

“Look, we’ll be in Moliki in two days.” Chaqal rolled her eyes and stretched. “And we’ve stretched water thinner than this before.”

“That doesn’t mean I like doing it,” Tazir grumbled. “Besides, you don’t know what’s gonna happen between here and there.” She swept her arm in the general direction of Moliki. “We could get attacked or becalmed or blown half the way to fuckin’ Darjai by the time our wind wakes up again.”

“We’ll make it fine,” Chaqal said. “I think the storm’s pissed itself out.”

For the last day and a half, they’d had their eyes glued to the south, watching the storm that had begun as weird grey vomit. It billowed high above Kuhon, blocking the sun and whipping the water beneath it into a sheet of grey foam. The
Giggling Goat
was lucky to have escaped before it gathered its full strength—Tazir had weathered some nasty shit, but a black wall of a storm like that was enough to make even the hardest sailor hunker down in a bar somewhere.

Now, the storm had either moved south or grown smaller. It was still lined up right with Kuhon, which was now smoldering in the sunlight. Now and then, Tazir swore she could catch a whiff of wood smoke and charred flesh coming from the port.

“Is she awake?” asked Chaqal.

Tazir shook her head and pulled her pipe from her sash. “Moanin’ and cryin’ like she’s coming off some harsh dope,” she said. It was just as annoying as it had been on the way into Kuhon, but really now. What kind of rank sow was gonna complain about a girl, freaky and unnatural and severely misguided or not, who’d pulled that shit to save her?

“I can’t say I blame her,” Chaqal said. She frowned at the hatchway. “That’s—watching that happen—”

“And not for the first time, either.” Tazir shook her head and packed a fresh wad of tobacco into the pipe.

Chaqal opened her mouth to say something, then shut it and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?” Tazir raised an eyebrow at her as she lit her pipe.

“I was
agreeing
with you, Cap,” Chaqal said. “I do that sometimes.”

“Hmmph.” Tazir took a puff of the sweet tobacco and shook her head. “At least you’re being subtle, I guess.”

“Subtle about what?”

“You knew she was a runaway wet-eyes this whole time,” Tazir said. “So now you get to gloat.”

For a few moments, her quartermaster looked at her with her mouth flat and her brows lowered over her eyes. Then, she shook her head and leaned back against the ship’s railing. “Sorry, I guess.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For whatever I
did,
” Chaqal said. “Ever since Shina spat that storm up, you been glaring and muttering and snappin’ at me like it’s my first week on board.”

“Oh, is that all?” Tazir let out a sharp-edged laugh. “Well, excuse
me,
” she said, standing up. “Next time I get blown out to sea with a thin-stocked larder and
no fucking water,
I’ll make sure to kiss my quartermaster’s ass a little more sweetly.” She bowed deeply to Chaqal.

“So you
do
think this is my fault, don’t you?” The younger woman rolled her eyes. “It’s always got to be
someone’s
fault. Bad things just don’t
happen
for—”

“Bad things happen every damn day of my life!” Tazir snapped. “But me and Kodin and the kid down there, we’re
prepared
when they fucking happen!”

“Oh, so you
like
Shina now?”

“Yeah,” Tazir said. “I have a tendency to like people who make themselves fucking
useful
.”

With that, she turned around and stormed to the hatchway. Chances were, the kid was still asleep, which at least made her company a far sight better than Chaqal’s was right now.

Shina didn’t even stir in her hammock when Tazir came thumping down into the hold. She must have worn herself out wailing and thrashing, at least for the time being. For the moment, she was just snoring—maybe getting some mumbling in there while she was at it.

Truth be told, Tazir wasn’t sure what to do with Shina when she was like this. She’d never had any babies of her own, and for good reason—mothering came as naturally to her as goat herding came to an eel. Mostly, she stared at the kid with her hands on her hips and her eyebrows sunk low. It was almost a shame that nobody was trying to fight her. She would have known what to do if someone was trying to fight her.

“Well, Shina,” she said after a couple minutes staring down at the girl. “I’m not saying you need to wake up
now,
but it would help us a lot if you
did
.”

Silence.

Tazir let out a heavy sigh and got herself seated in the hammock next to hers. “All right, kid,” she said, patting her on the shoulder. “I guess you can have another day.”

Gently, softly as she could with her gnarled old hands, Tazir uncorked the water skin and put it to Shina’s lips. They’d had to do this for her dying grandfather—you couldn’t just pour the whole thing in, and you had to hold their head up and watch carefully to make sure they didn’t start choking.

“That’s it, girl,” she murmured, smiling at the kid as she swallowed the water. “You’re a tough little shit, you know that?”

She knew she had plenty of reasons not to show an ounce of affection for this dipshit Windspeaker who’d lied to her, led her on some fool quest to sink the Dragon Ships, and then gotten her blown out to sea on short water and a shorter temper. But still, she couldn’t help but feel some—some
admiration
for this sheltered little songbird. It took a lot of good, sailorly virtues to pull off a stunt like Shina had just done. Even if she did sleep for two days afterward.

Tazir figured it was because she was young. Young, weak, and trained from god knows what part of her infancy to rely on her teachers like a drooling melonhead who couldn’t walk straight. Maybe if she spent some time around better people—strong people, people who valued fending for themselves—it wouldn’t be so hard on her, this weird gift from a nasty, powerful old goddess.

“That’s all I got for you now,” Tazir said, brushing a drop of water from the girl’s lower lip. For a moment, her hand lingered on Shina’s face. Tazir snorted, stood up suddenly, and walked back over to the hatchway.

The sun was creeping down toward the horizon by the time the kid responded to anything at all—and that was almost slapping Tazir across the face when she tried to give her water.

“Fuh—fuh—” Shina’s eyes flew open, and she bolted upright in the hammock.

“It’s me, Tazir,” she said, stepping back. “The Captain.”

Shina shook her head and took a few steadying breaths, staring at Tazir. Then, she looked at her feet, shook her head, and leaned down to stretch her back.

“Where am I?” she asked. She got herself sitting with her legs dangling on the floor. “Did—are we—”

“We got out of Kuhon fine and dandy,” Tazir said. “Thanks to you.”

Shina’s mouth hung open. “I—” Her cheeks darkened. “I didn’t—” She sucked a long breath into her chest. “I didn’t do what I was supposed to.”

“Well, if you don’t tell us what you were supposed to do,” Tazir said, “then we won’t be an inch the wiser.” She handed the kid the water skin. “Here, drink up, but not much more than a cup—we never did get to Amasita’s to refill our casks.”

“Thank you,” Shina said, reaching out for the skin. Like Tazir, she sipped it slowly, savoring the coolness as it washed down her throat. “Where are we?”

“About two days out from Moliki, the—” Tazir bit back her comment about the wind. The kid sounded like she had enough misplaced guilt on her shoulders already. “The water’s not gone yet, but we’re tight on it.”

“I won’t drink too much, then—”

“Nah.” Tazir held her hand out to the proffered skin. “You need to keep your strength up.”

“For what?” Shina’s eyes narrowed as she sipped the water. “Are you going to turn me over to one of the Prefects?”

“Oh, right,” Tazir said. “Talking to a Prefect about this fugitive who
paid me forty thousand qyda
to take her
up to the fucking long banks
no questions asked is
exactly
what I want to do on my day off.”

Shina pursed her lips; her wide, dark eyes scanned Tazir’s face.

“What, you think I’m so prim and proper that I count every fish?” Tazir rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t hanging out in Shasa’s looking for actual runaway brides.”

“You’re still a sailor,” she said. “More likely than not, you’d rather drown me than give me some of your water.”

“Drown you?” Tazir laughed. “Kid, I’m starting to like you. That stunt you pulled back there saved all our—”

“That wasn’t
me,
” Shina said. “I mean—it was
in
me, but—” Her mouth flapped open for a few moments before she shut her eyes and shook her head. “Where is the compass?” she asked.

“Should be hanging above your head with the rest of your shit,” Tazir said. “You’ve been out cold for a couple of days.”

“I couldn’t—” She shook her head, rubbed her temples with her fingertips. Without another word, she turned around to untie the canvas sack where Chaqal had stuffed her shass set and the burning orb that Shina called a compass.

Tazir’s eyebrows shot up when the kid pulled it out of the bag. Instead of flaming coral pink, the orange-sized sphere was chalky white. Shina stared at it intently, her lower lip caught between her two front teeth.

“I got this from the storm temple in Jepjep,” she said. “It—it was in a jar, and the Windspeaker there told me to break it hard.”

“Like you do,” said Tazir with a smile.

“So I broke it,” Shina continued, “and this was inside, and there were—these—they were like dark gulls, made of shadows and little bits of cloud.” She looked up at Tazir. “There were five of them, and when I opened my mouth they all flew inside.”

Tazir’s eyebrows shot up. She nodded. “Huh.”

“Aksa-auntie said they were storms. Too big for me to handle right now. I’m starting to think they might be too big for
anybody
to handle on their own.” She took another sip of water and stared down at the compass. “I had—I mean, I needed to get us a strong wind, and I thought—” She stared down at her lap. “I could control the first one,” she said. “It wasn’t even hard.”

“To be fair,” Tazir said, “the Dragon Ships weren’t attacking when—”

“It’s not just the Dragon Ships,” Shina said.

“Huh?”

Now Kodin was stirring in his hammock in the dark end of the bunks. “Hey,” he murmured. “Can you two—”

“Shut up,” Tazir said. “She’s explaining her quest.”

Kodin grunted and shifted again. “I wanna be on a quest,” he said, sitting up. “Can I be on the quest?”

“Of course you’re on the fucking quest,” Tazir said. “You’re the only one on this ship who can read.”

“I can read,” Shina offered.

“Yeah, but it’s your damn quest. You’re already on it.”

Shina put her palms up. “All right,” she said.

“That’s what I thought.” Tazir nodded. “So go on, what about the Dragon Ships and the storms and, I’m assuming, that freaky ol’ ball you got on your lap.”

Shina sucked on her teeth. “Well—umm, so. When the Dragon Ships hit Tash, they took our icon from the temple. It’s—” She looked up at Tazir. “What do you know about the icon?”

Tazir shrugged. “You sacrifice babies to it?”

“No, we don’t sac—” Shina clamped her lips shut. “All right. So, the icon was given to us a
long
time ago by one of the deep ocean spirits. A gift to the great Queen Mushaka’i after she brought down the Five Tall Witches. You know that story?”

“A few versions,” Tazir said.

“Fine, fine.” Shina waved her hand. “The icon is a stone statue of a great big seahawk brooding on a nest, you know?”

“I’ve seen ’em,” Kodin said.

“Yeah. So, after one of us at the school on Tash has studied hard enough, and learned to meditate like a grown-up and understand the weather patterns, we get presented to the icon. And that spirit—whose name I am not allowed to say before I go through this—judges you and sees if you’re ready.”

“All right,” Tazir said. “Is this where the whole eyeball thing comes in?”

“Yeah,” said the kid. “If you’re ready, your new eyes will pop out of the icon like eggs, and they put you to sleep—” She rolled her eyes at the disgust on Tazir’s face. “And when you wake up, it’s as if—it’s as if you’re connected to the storms like never before.”

“Uhh,” Kodin said, “but doesn’t it weaken—”

“I wasn’t finished,” Shina said. “It’s—it lets you see the big patterns, and connect with the other Windspeakers. And they can see you too.” She took a sip of water and looked at the ceiling for a few moments. “So, like, Papa Tu-huin off of Sapanji, a few years ago, came in, and they had to force him through the process.” She grimaced. “But then when he had the stone eyes, when he would start to build a storm, the new Windspeakers assigned to him would take it apart as he put it together. A lot of work, but good practice.”

Tazir nodded. She’d been on the fringes of one of the storms that son of a bitch had sent rolling up the Tahanas Isles, punishment for some Prefect’s slight to one of his wives. “But now—”