by Mel Odom
“Ship the oars,” Mornis ordered. “Get ready to pull away.”
Sabyna stood in the rowboat’s prow, gazing down into the water where the cog lay. The ship twisted and turned a little, rocking with the currents that held it. The wreckage appeared lifeless, white wood showing where some of the hull had been splintered and cracked under pressure.
Something thumped the inside of the ship, the hollow gonging noise echoing through the water was barely heard above the creak of the rowboat.
Jherek listened to the thumping coming from inside the wrecked cog. It sounded across the flat sea, and stopped after less than a minute.
“All right,” Mornis said, “I need two volunteers to investigate the wreck.”
None of the sailors raised their hands.
“I’ll go,” Jherek said.
“An’ you’re a damn fool if you do,” Aysel said from further back in the stern.
Jherek had seen the big man come aboard when the rowboat had been loaded, but had ignored him. He ignored him again and rose easily to his feet. He pulled off his boots and shucked his cutlass, keeping only the hook and a knife in a scabbard on his shin.
“Anyone else?” Mornis asked.
No one volunteered.
Jherek didn’t blame them. If someone else had volunteered to go, he’d have let them. The water was dark, the illumination wouldn’t travel very far into it, and there was no telling what lay below. He walked to the rowboat’s edge and started taking deep breaths to completely fill his lungs for the dive.
“Brave bunch, aren’t you?” Mornis challenged. He pulled off his own boots, then his shirt. He kept a long saw-toothed knife. He flicked his gaze to Jherek. “You might want to take that shirt off too, lad.”
“I’ll be all right,” Jherek replied, not wanting to chance the tattoo being seen. “The water will be cold.”
The first mate chuckled. “About to dive into something like that,” he gestured at the sunken cog, “and you’re worried about a little chill.” He shook his head. “You ready to do this?”
“Aye.” Jherek marshaled his control, pushing away the fear that filled him. He didn’t know any of these people, much less whoever might be in the sunken cog. He had no business jumping into that water, but he couldn’t pass it up either.
“I’ve got a candle here that’s got a bit of magic in it,” the first mate said, rummaging in the pouch he kept at his waist. “Once it’s lit, it’ll burn underwater as well. Mage who sold it to me called it a candle of everburning. Cost me a lot, but a man at sea in the dark, light gets to be a most precious thing, you know?”
“Aye,” Jherek said. He knew from experience how hopeful lights, even along an unknown coastline, could make a crew feel.
Mornis lit the candle and it caught with no problem even in the breeze blowing over the rowboat. He stepped to the rowboat’s edge and dropped into the water.
Jherek followed the man, cleaving the water cleanly, not leaving the rush of bubbles behind the way Breezerunner’s first mate did. He focused on the candle in the first mate’s hand. The soft yellow glow belled out almost ten feet in all directions before the darkness of the water absorbed it.
The dulled splash of another body diving into the water sounded behind Jherek. He turned and looked up, watching as Sabyna swam toward him. The raggamoffyn took to the water as well, eeling through the ocean with more grace than the young sailor would have credited the creature with. He paused and waved the ship’s mage back. She shook her head at him and kept swimming.
Turning his attention back to the cog now that he was near enough to see it, Jherek knew from the way it had broken in half that the ship had been sheared by its enemy. Arrows jutted out along the hull above where he believed the waterline would have been. A man’s body, bloated and swollen from its time at sea and showing signs of having been attacked by small marine predators, twisted in the ship’s rigging that dangled down from the broken deck.
With the way the cog was tilted, Jherek knew nothing survived in the cargo hold. It had been broken open to the sea and all compartments filled. That left only the stern cabin.
Evidently Mornis had the same thought because the first mate swam for the cabin at once. The cabin’s door was tucked away under the ladder leading to the stern castle. On its side as the ship was, the cabin door faced down.
The thumping echoed through the sea, sounding eerily displaced and more immediate in the water. The first mate put his shoulder to the door and pushed but couldn’t budge it.
The thumping repeated, suddenly showing more vigor, and Jherek knew someone was still alive on the ship. He swam to the first mate’s side. Mornis moved the candle, showing the gaps between door and frame had been pressed together by the structural damage done to the cog and the depth’s pressing in at it. The lock inside held it closed.
Desperate, his time to stay underwater with the oxygen in his lungs already growing short, Jherek used his knife to pry out the hinge bolts, letting them drop to the ocean bed hundreds of feet below. He sunk his hook into the wood beside the door to give himself more leverage, then flipped around so he could slam his feet into the door.
When he kicked out the third time, already going lightheaded from lack of oxygen and from the effort he was expending, the door turned sideways in its frame.
Mornis reached up and yanked it away, then swam inside with the candle leading the way.
Jherek went after him, trusting that some kind of air existed inside the cabin if someone was still alive. If there wasn’t, he felt he could still make the surface before he passed out.
Books and other debris swirled around in the murky water, lit up by the candle. Even as he neared the surface inside the cabin, he glimpsed the boy standing there against one wall, immersed up to his chest.
The boy couldn’t have been over nine years old, Jherek knew as he surfaced. Small framed and lean, the boy clung to the sconce mounted on the wall with fading strength. He held onto a brass candlestick with the other, using it as a weapon. His black hair was plastered against his head, and his eyes and nose were reddened from crying.
Jherek took a deep, shuddering breath and waited, giving the boy space. Mornis knew the boy was panic-stricken and stayed back as well.
“Easy, lad,” the first mate said softly. “We’re here to help you. Heard you knocking. You look like you’re about all done in.”
“They’re all dead!” the boy screeched, fresh tears wetting his face. He held the candlestick threateningly.
“I know, lad. We seen ’em.” Mornis swam forward, offering his hand. “I need you to come with me. We’ve got to be getting you out of here.”
“Stay away!”
“Lad, you’ve been trying to save yourself for a long time from the looks of things,” Mornis said, “but you can’t hold on much longer. This old ship, she ain’t going to last much longer neither.”
“I don’t know you,” the boy shrilled. “I want my father!”
Jherek felt helpless, watching the boy trapped between grief and fear. It was a bad place to be. He knew from personal experience. His father’s voice haunted him. So, are you gonna be a pirate and take your place proper on Bunyip, or ain’t you? Live or die, boy. The choice is simple. He forced the words away, tucking them back into that piece of his mind where the nightmares hid.
“What’s your name?” Jherek asked softly and calmly.
The boy refused to answer, drawing big gulps of air as he frantically looked from one face to another.
“My name’s Jherek.” Too late, he remembered that he was supposed to keep his identity secret. If Sabyna or Mornis noticed, though, they kept it to themselves. He didn’t think he’d even been introduced to the first mate. “Tell me your name.”
“Wyls,” the boy said. “My father put me in here and told me to stay. Where is he?”
Jherek shook his head and kicked with his feet to take some of the distance away between them. “I don’t know, but we can try to find out.”
> “He should be coming for me,” the boy cried. “He told me he’d be back.”
Jherek took another deep breath, maintaining eye contact with the boy. He willed both of them to be calm. His heart hammered in his chest, though, and he knew his lungs were struggling with the trapped air in the cabin. The ship must have been underwater for hours. Maybe there’d been more air trapped in the pocket earlier, but what was left was fouled from being breathed again and again.
“Let me take you to him.”
“Will you help me find him?”
Jherek looked at the hungry, desperate gaze. “I’ll help you if I can.” He lifted his hand from the water, offering it to the boy. Water dripped from his fingers, making concentric circles across the ocean surface trapped in the room with them.
“Liar!” The boy struck out with the candlestick.
Jherek barely had time to draw his hand back before the instrument smacked into the water. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sabyna wave her hand.
In response, her raggamoffyn familiar shot up from the water in his serpent’s shape. Before anyone could react, the raggamoffyn exploded into hundreds of wet fabric pieces that flew through the air. They hovered around the boy like a bee swarm, twisting and turning like gulls gliding through storm weather. The fabric pieces covered every inch of the boy’s body, including his eyes, nose and mouth, slamming into place with wet splashes. When the raggamoffyn finished, the boy looked like a mummy. He screamed, his voice thin and hollow, echoing in the limited space. The raggamoffyn held fast, following every movement with its shape. The boy clawed at the fabric pieces, trying to rip them free.
“Foul beast,” Mornis exclaimed, drawing back fast enough to make even the magic candle gutter for an instant.
Jherek started forward, his knife already in hand.
“Leave him alone,” Sabyna said.
Torn by what was going on, feeling guilty for even being a part of it, he glanced back at her. The boy’s screams continued unabated. “This isn’t right. He’s going to be more scared than ever.”
She looked at him and didn’t flinch from the accusation in his eyes or the whimpers the boy had been reduced to. “This way he’ll live,” she said. “We all will. Can’t you feel the currents changing?”
Now that she’d mentioned it, Jherek did feel it, and he knew what it meant. “It’s getting colder,” he said. “We’re sinking again.”
“Aye,” she said. “If we’d waited for the boy to get calm enough on his own.…”
“She’s right,” Mornis said. “I don’t like that thing either, but it’s saved us some time.” He took a deep breath and disappeared under the water until only a faint glow from the magic candle was visible.
The boy fell silent suddenly, then lurched free of the sconce and waded into the water after Mornis.
As the light left the cabin, Jherek looked at the ship’s mage. Her face remained calm, but there were unshed tears in her eyes.
“It was the only way,” she told him in a shaky voice. “Skeins will keep him safe enough till we reach the surface. The raggamoffyn is controlling his body now.”
“Aye,” Jherek replied. “You did what you could.”
“You don’t think I should have done this.”
“Lady,” Jherek said, “I only know what I should do. I wouldn’t dare to presume to tell another what to do.”
“You’re so young,” she said. “How’d you get to be so judgmental?”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” she said. “Maybe you don’t realize it yet. You’re going to have a hard, narrow path ahead of you.” Without another word, she dived beneath the rising water that claimed the interior of the cabin.
Jherek followed her, feeling the whole cog slide deeper into the ocean. He felt confused about her, about what she’d said. He didn’t know what he was going to do about that, or why he felt he had to do anything at all.
XXI
15 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet
The boy sat inside Mornis’s cabin less than an hour later, wrapped tightly in a blanket now instead of the raggamoffyn. He ate warmed-over chowder greedily from a beaten metal bowl, pausing only to chew the chunks of fish.
“Do you know who the pirates were that attacked your ship?” Captain Tynnel asked.
The boy shook his head, still chewing. “No, sir.”
One of the few Breezerunner’s captain had allowed into the room, Jherek stood near the doorway, watching the boy. Wyls was educated and mannered, the son of a merchant who’d hired the cog as transport. He’d had a good life ahead of him, the young sailor reflected. Now all that had been lost, unless there was family he could get home to.
Wyls stared into the chowder bowl. “They came out of nowhere and attacked our ship,” he said. “The captain tried to run, but they had a faster ship. My father locked me in the cabin before they got on our ship, but I heard the fighting.” His breath seized up in his throat.
“Easy, lad,” Tynnel said, dropping a hand to the boy’s head. “You just take your time. I only need to know a few more things, then you can sup till you’ve a full belly and cover up in those blankets.”
The boy nodded and continued holding the bowl in both hands. After a moment, he asked in a broken voice, “What else do you need to know?”
“When did the pirates attack the ship?”
“It was early, soon after morningfeast. I remember because I’d only been out on deck a short time before my father locked me away.”
“When did they break the ship up?”
“After the fighting stopped and they looted the cargo hold. I remember hearing the winch creaking. I unlocked the door and lay under the bed. When the room was searched, they were hurrying so much they didn’t find me. I locked the door again after they left.”
“Then they broke the ship?” Tynnel asked.
“Yes. I was looking out the window when they sailed their ship over ours.” Wyls looked up at the captain and asked, “Will you help me find my father?”
“Aye, we’ll search, lad. Maybe they were put off in a lifeboat.”
The boy nodded.
Even though he knew why Tynnel had said what he did, it sickened Jherek to hear the lie. If the boy’s father yet lived, he’d have demanded sanctuary for his son as well. Jherek left the cabin, satisfied the boy was going to be taken care of.
Back on the main deck, he stopped at the railing and breathed deeply. He still carried a chill from swimming even though he’d changed clothes. Glancing at the prow, he spotted Sabyna sitting there alone. She was swaddled in a heavy woolen blanket.
Uncomfortable with how things had been left between them after the encounter over the raggamoffyn, Jherek went to the ship’s galley and got two bowls of chowder from the cook. A pot was generally kept going for the men taking the night shift.
He carried the bowls of chowder to the prow. “I thought maybe you’d like some soup,” he said quietly, extending one of the bowls.
She looked up at him, then took it graciously. “Thank you.” She put the bowl in her lap, gray tendrils wafting around her as Breezerunner sailed in ever-widening circles in the attempt to find other survivors of the pirate attack.
“May I join you, lady?” he asked, feeling uncomfortable and afraid that she’d tell him no.
“You’d want to sit with me after what I did to that boy?”
“Aye.”
She shook her head. “Then sit.”
He did, folding his legs. The wind had a chill bite to it now. He ate the chowder in the silence that stretched between them.
“Are you cold?” she asked, setting her bowl aside.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shivering.”
“Only a little.”
“Here,” Sabyna said, stretching the blanket out, offering him part of it.
Hesitantly, Jherek took the blanket and wrapped himself in it. Immediately, he became overly conscious of her body heat saturating the blanket, and of the w
ay she smelled of lilacs in spite of the swim.
“Is the boy all right?” she asked.
“He’s eating, and from the look of him, hell be sleeping soon. He told the captain that Skeins scared him, but he understands why it had to be done.”
“Good.” Sabyna pushed wet hair from her brow. “He’ll start to feel the real pain in the next couple of days, when he realizes he’s survived and his father hasn’t.”
Jherek knew that was true, and that there was nothing he could do to spare the boy that pain. Living hurt was a fact he’d learned early, and one that had stayed with him the longest. “What will Tynnel do with him?”
“The best he can,” Sabyna answered. “He’ll post for the boy’s family and leave him with a temple in Athkatla when we reach the port for care. He’ll check on him, but that boy could well end up being an orphan. It happens. This is a hard world.”
“Aye.” Jherek hunkered in the blanket for a time, wishing he felt more like sleeping. He felt drawn to the woman. In the three days aboard ship, he’d watched her and liked what he saw. Rescuing the boy the way she had, though, had shown him some of the differences that lay between them. He wished it would have made him like her less. The attraction, however, remained.
“I heard the boy tell Tynnel that pirates took the ship,” Sabyna said.
Jherek nodded.
“Pirates killed my brother,” she went on in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper, “but I told you that, didn’t I? My father was ship’s mage on Glass Princess back then.”
The ship’s name struck a chord in Jherek’s memory. Something moved restlessly in his mind and he instinctively shied away from it. Anything that far back couldn’t be good.
“We were attacked by Falkane’s ship, Bunyip.”
Jherek’s heart skipped a beat.
“I remember it well,” Sabyna continued. “My mother and I had just put away the remains of morningfeast, and a fog swelled up from the south as it sometimes will during this time of year. Only on that day, Bunyip was following it in. We ran a race for a time, our sails filled with the wind.”
