The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (33 page)

So she crossed the dining room, went to the bunk, sat down with her back to his, and let herself relax just enough to lean against him. He sighed and pressed back, nearly slumping against her, but the warmth and solidity of his bare skin felt good. She said nothing, only sat there resting against him like two bookends put together, and then his hand covered hers. Their fingers meshed together.

“The Dagrans will bring water and coal and firewood over in an hour or so,” he said. “And they’ve sent word to the mainland for engineers and equipment to repair the boilers.”

“Oh, good.”

“We’re getting it all on credit.”

That explained the flatness of his voice. Miri had no idea how much everything would cost, and while the Admiralty would have anticipated some resupplying at Snakestone, they probably hadn’t expected such extensive—and expensive—repairs.

“The Admiralty isn’t going to dock your pay because of this, are they?” she said.

The pause was answer enough before he continued. “That was one reason I wanted to win.
Checkmate
more than proved herself just reaching this point, especially after everything that happened, but winning wouldn’t just have been prestigious, it would have paid for the repairs.”

He let his breath out slowly and went on. “I keep telling myself it’s not so bad, because at least a Denalait won. I wouldn’t have been able to look Admiral Balt in the face if a Dagran had taken their two thousand eagles, and I’m the only one on our side who still has a ship. But that’s about all I have—a half-gutted ship and a pile of debts.”

“And a way to pay them off.”

Damp hair brushed against hers as he turned his head. “What?”

“The Turean submersible.” Miri turned towards him as well, catching the edge of his profile in her peripheral vision. “Couldn’t we trade it for what we need? We’re the only ones who know where it went down, and that wasn’t in deep water.”

Alyster let out a breath of laughter that vibrated through her. “Miri, you’re amazing.”

For one of the few times in her life, she couldn’t think of any reply. She looked away so he couldn’t see her expression and pressed more closely to the hard warm muscles of his back.

“We can’t sell it,” he went on, the humor and delight giving way fast to practicality. “Only the Dagrans would buy it, and for that I wouldn’t just lose my position, I could end up in Skybeyond. But we can take it back home with us. That will make a huge difference. There might be some of the kraken’s remains left too.”

Miri wasn’t sure what anyone would do with cuttlebone and claws and whatever was left, but it was better than nothing. “So you won’t have any more debts?”

“I hope not,” Alyster said. “But speaking of money, I thought you’d want to know how the prize is going to be divided. Lera will accept half but since she needed a Dagran ship and crew to win, the other half will go to
Enlightenment
’s sailors and their families.”

“That seems fair,” Miri said. “So the two of you…talked?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice. There’s to be a celebration on the island later, and we’ll all have to attend, so I had to make the best of it.”

“A celebration?”

He turned fully to look at her, brows quirking. “You seem happy.”

“Solid ground, food someone else has cooked, interesting foreign customs. And the Tree. How many people can say they’ve seen that?”

“You want to climb all the way up there?” He sounded distinctly unenthusiastic.

“Perhaps you’re right.” Miri got up. “It would be dull, just being on top of a cliff in the shadow of the Tree of Knowledge, no one within miles of us. I’m sure you’ll find something more—”

“No, no, let’s not be hasty.” Alyster reached for his dry clothes. “The Tree of Knowledge is a unique historical artifact, and we should make an effort to see it. Closely. Would you be so kind as to get me some hot water? I’ll need to shave.”

“Of course,” Miri said with a grin, and let herself out.

A single apple puff remained in the basket on the pier, between Kovir and Nuemy, so he cut it in two and ate his half, licking sugar off his fingertips. The two of them sat side by side, bare feet dangling over the water. It was quiet away from all the melee of the feast, and after the unending work of the past week, he liked being able to just sit beside her.

He also felt more comfortable with her than with anyone else on
Checkmate
, but he wished she wouldn’t stay so close to the Turean. The man might have raised her, but Kovir didn’t trust him, although Nuemy insisted Kaig had saved both their lives after the submersible had sunk. Kovir felt sure he could have got them both to safety himself, given a moment or two more, but there didn’t seem to be anything gained by starting an argument over a Turean, especially when they had better things to talk about.

Now that the shock of the kraken’s death had started to fade, she was opening up a little. She clearly wanted to know more about Seawatch, but she didn’t come out with a dozen questions as someone like Miri would have done. She asked one at a time, didn’t pry and clearly thought more than she spoke, which as far as Kovir was concerned was exactly what a potential Seawatch operative should do. He also liked discussing interesting matters, rather than families, politics and what they would spend their pay on back home.

She even accepted the fact that she would have to join Seawatch in one capacity or another, though only after Kovir had spent some time countering various lies she’d heard about them. He was less able to deal with lies about the Unity, since he knew hardly anything about it, but thankfully the Unity was remote and disinterested compared to Seawatch. The problem was, she wanted the Turean released in exchange for her cooperation.

“You can’t dictate terms like that,” he told her.

“I’m not dictating. I’m just saying that in return for a favor, I have something to offer that no one else does. My bonding to the kraken.”

“The dead one, you mean?”

The look she gave him made it clear that if the kraken had been alive, he would have been wise to get far away from the water. “If I was able to bond with one, I should be able to do it with another. Isn’t that why you get tattoos? If your shark died and you found another, you couldn’t take off that mark and get a new one, but you wouldn’t need to, because you could only link with another tiger shark.” When he said nothing, she hesitated but went on. “I thought that was how it worked.”

She was the first outsider Kovir had met who’d figured out that was why they got something as permanent as a tattoo corresponding to a certain type of shark. Theories were floated in Whetstone about minds being attuned to certain configurations, but Kovir left those to his instructors.

“It’s true,” he said as neutrally as he could. And if she was the only person in Seawatch who could call up another abyssal squid, she might have some leverage when it came to asking such a favor, though Seawatch had never yet allowed a Turean to go free.

She sat motionless on the edge of the pier. He liked that about her too—no fidgeting and no unnecessary movements like swinging her legs or tossing pebbles into the water. That had the potential to attract certain curious sharks.

“Except I don’t want another kraken,” she said finally, her voice quiet and flat. “I couldn’t even save the one I had.”

That was something she’d learn in Whetstone, Kovir knew, how to protect the animal she’d been assigned, to the best of her ability, but also how to prepare for its death. “That’s why you need another one. The next time, you’ll know what to do and how to take care of it.”

“Yes, by keeping it far away from everyone who’ll try to use it, and that goes for Seawatch too.”

“You don’t get to stay in the middle, Nuemy.” Better make that clear right away. “Not if you’re like us, born with this kind of talent. You have to choose one side or the other, and unless the pirates will take you back, that leaves Seawatch.”

She looked away from him, over the water. “I thought of going back to Conger Cove. Kaig has a house there, and a room for me.”

Kovir thought of saying she would have a room in Whetstone too, but clamped down on that. No one could argue with someone who kept quiet. Besides, he had a feeling she knew as well as he did that there was no way she could return there, even if she stole a boat loaded with supplies and prepared for months of rowing.

“Would you try to stop us, if we wanted to leave?” She still didn’t look at him.

Us
wasn’t a good word in that context, and Kovir hoped she wouldn’t make him choose between her and his duty, because his loyalty to Seawatch took precedence over everyone else in Eden. There was only one living creature for whom he might have made an exception, and she wasn’t Nuemy.

“If you’re going to run,” he said, “be as smart about it as you can, and plan on being either followed or tracked down eventually. That’s all the help I can give you when it comes to defecting from our homeland.”

The silence that fell after that was tense for once, and he couldn’t help breaking it. “Why don’t you give Seawatch a try?”

Nuemy turned, the look in her eyes almost as intense as her voice. “Because it’s not like—like carving wood or sewing, is it? A pass-the-time you can pick up and put down? Joining Seawatch isn’t something you try, it’s something you are, and you get a mark on your face to show it.”

She was sharp, he had to give her that, and she had a good idea what she was getting into. He couldn’t see the problem, because being part of Seawatch—and on the winning side—was better than being with the pirates any day of the week, but he knew better than to say any of that.

“At least you have until we go back to think it over,” he finally told her.

Nuemy bit into the remaining half-a-puff, chewed steadily and swallowed. “I already have.” She brushed the back of her hand across her mouth. “It’s like a shark swimming, I suppose. You can’t go backward, only forward.”

Kovir saw his parents perhaps once a year, and they always hugged him before he went back home—well, his mother hugged him and his father tousled his hair—but even if Nuemy needed comforting, no one embraced in Whetstone, so he wasn’t about to try that now. He cast about for some reassuring words instead.

“If this helps at all, you won’t regret everything about it,” he said, then wondered if that had been too dry and understated. But a faint smile settled on her face, and the silence that fell was much less strained. He thought he might like spending time with her in Whetstone as well.

Then he saw the fin closing the distance between them.

That was odd. The shark should have been hunting, but perhaps she had been spooked by the fireworks and the unfamiliar ships and other predators she wasn’t used to in foreign waters. He asked Nuemy if she could get them more food, and once she left, he slid off the edge of the pier. Given the choice between an upset shark and spending the rest of the night in wet clothes, wet clothes were the lesser of two evils.

Treading water, he touched her mind, feeling only the slightest unease that ebbed as the familiar link asserted itself. The shark moved in a slow circle around him, then altered direction. Her tailfin barely disturbing the waves, she headed to one side of him. Kovir lifted his arm, wondering if she had a suckerfish attached to her hide that she wanted him to pull off.

Before he could lower his arm and feel for parasites, she brushed gently past him. Her course was so gradual that the ton and a half of water that she normally displaced dissipated without force, rocking him lightly where he was. Her sleek powerful body stroked his side as she passed him, and then she turned to emerge from beneath the pier.

Stunned, Kovir turned too, staring at her. That had felt like…not a caress, exactly, but an almost friendly gesture. Sharks weren’t dogs, that was drilled into every trainee, and they didn’t rub up against anyone like pets wanting their ears scratched. And yet, for the first time in his life, his shark had done so. She completed a leisurely loop that brought her back to him, and he held out his hand so he could stroke her skin when she did it again.

Then she snapped at him.

Several rows of triangular teeth clashed together inches from his belly, and Kovir’s reflexes acted before his mind could. He jerked back. His hands came up to defend himself, and his head thumped painfully into one leg of the pier before he recovered, the usual ice filling his mind to numb him from everything. He stared into the shark’s jet-bead eyes and thought,
One day you’re going to push us both too far
.

But at least it would not be that day. Swimming in strong but deliberate strokes to complete the work of calming himself down, he let himself drift back to get out of reach of her tail as she spun about her own axis. Then, with a flick of fin which managed to be affectionate and mocking at once—and which splashed water in his face—she headed into the shallows of the lagoon to feed.

The feast was ongoing when Miri and Alyster went down to the dock. She climbed into a boat with the cloth-wrapped parcel she’d obtained—the only thing which could have made her leave—while he untied the painter. Although she’d told him she could row herself back to
Checkmate
, he had accompanied her.

“I’m tired,” he said as they began to scull, “and it was getting a little dull anyway.”

Miri didn’t think so. She had loved every minute of it from the speeches to the fireworks—she’d never seen anything like those before—to the food. The only thing they hadn’t been able to do was get a closer look at the Tree, because by the time the celebration was underway it was already dark. So they had decided to go back the next day. She could have spent the entire night enjoying the festivities, but she now saw Alyster had something on his mind. Perhaps he needed to plan their return to the Palisade as soon as possible, to retrieve the submersible before the Dagrans got wind of it.

“What’s that you’ve got?” He tilted his chin at the bundle in her arms.

“Paper and pens and ink.” One of the Dagrans had given her those, and if the boat had started sinking, she would have held the bundle above her head for as long as she could. “What did you get?” One of his coat pockets was bulging.