by David Estes
“Oh,” I say, wondering how being unlike the Admiral of the fleet could be a good thing.
There’s silence for a few minutes as we both rest high atop the decks. The wind blows strong and steady, brushing my hair away from my eyes. Jade begins braiding her dark hair into two tight plaits down her back.
Although it should be nice, hanging next to Jade, the silence wears through my skin like an abrasive material, wood-sanding paper or the like.
I breathe a sigh of relief when Jade finally speaks. “I don’t know why my father gave me away,” she says.
I look at her, but her gaze is out to sea, stretching across the fathoms of the Deep Blue. “Perhaps it was a trade,” I say.
“For what?” she says, her voice tight. “What could be worth his daughter’s life?”
“I don’t know,” I say, realizing I’m not helping her. “What about your mother?”
She looks at me, her hard stare softening like melting butter. “Mother was beautiful,” she says softly. When she’s like this it’s hard to believe this is the same girl who threw a scrub brush at my head. “And kind, and loving. No, she didn’t know what my father was doing. I don’t know what he told her.”
My hands are sweaty, not from the work, but because I have the sudden urge to reach out and touch her hand.
Instead I rub my head. “You’ve got a good bloody arm,” I say. “No, a good searin’ arm,” I correct.
She laughs and my heart swells. “I could teach you some other words if you want?” she says.
I nod, smiling. “But not here,” I say. “The men will hear if we talk too loudly.” I motion below.
“Where then?”
I point upwards, even higher. She follows my gesture. “The crow’s nest?” she says, eyes widening. “But I…” Whatever she was going to say fades away like the daylight.
“What?” I say.
“We can’t do this,” she says suddenly. “We’re not the same—we come from different worlds.”
She starts to slide down the mast. “Wait,” I say, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t look up. Slides all the way to the deck and melts into the brown wood below.
~~~
Jade won’t talk to me after that, and I can’t actively pursue a conversation for fear that Hobbs will suspect my true motives.
And what are my true motives?
Bloody hell if I know.
It’s crazy, I know. A bilge rat and a lieutenant? They’ve chucked men overboard for less. And if it came down to it, my father would throw her to the sharp-tooths first, and leave me alive to shoulder the pain.
Although at first I watch her every free moment I get, eventually duty and bad luck draw my attention elsewhere.
The Scurve hits the ship hard. First it’s a woman, one of the laundresses, moaning and crying in the night, waking up half the ship. She dies a week later, alone because of the mandatory quarantine.
Next is an oarsman, whose newfound sense of honor leads him to request to keep working while he’s ill. When I find him, he’s soaked with sweat and burning with fever, clinging to his oar. The other men have all gone above deck, afraid of catching it. When I order him to the quarantine cabin, he cries, and a bit of me rips apart.
Everyone has to work harder to fill the gaps, and my energy is temporarily focused on keeping the ship running smoothly.
Another sailor dies less than a week later. And still we sail on, ever onwards, waiting for the fleet to stop.
I spend a lot of time with Barney, who seems unwilling to leave my side. We sit side by side, watching the sailors, considering how best to operate with the shortages in manpower. “What if I operate an oar while Hobbs mans one of the sails?” I suggest.
“You might as well ask your father to rig up the sails,” Barney says.
I bite my lip because he’s right. Hobbs would never stoop to such a position, even if doing so could save his life. And we haven’t reached that point yet anyway. “How about you?” I say.
Barney’s eyes widen. “Me? Sir, I can assure you, I’m not your man.”
“Can you walk?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Do you have hands?”
“Of course, but, sir—”
“Then you’re my man,” I say, smiling broadly and knowing full well that Barney would faint under a day of hard sailor’s work.
“I’m not exactly…fit for the job,” he says, rubbing his more-than-adequate belly.
I laugh heartily, stopping only when I realize: it’s the first time I’ve laughed in several days.
The ship lists from side to side while I continue to ponder our dilemma. In the end, no matter how many replacement workers we throw at the sails and the oars, with our holey sails we’re not going to be able to keep up with the other ships.
I have to fix them. Alone this time, it seems. The thought becomes a pit in my gut. A searin’ pit in my searin’ gut, I think, almost laughing in spite of myself.
I miss the way she talks, I realize. And the way she laughs and moves and looks at me. At least when she’s not glaring daggers in my direction.
The ships rolls hard to the right and something thumps on the lower deck.
Someone screams.
I stand, seeing a brown body crumpled on the wood. No! I think, already running, leaving Barney’s side and taking the steps two at a time.
Brown-skinned bodies are huddled around the fallen form. The rest of the sailors stand off to the side, just watching, offering no assistance.
Jade is one of the bilge rats standing in the circle. There’s a burst of joy in my chest and I know it’s mean (and wrong), because there’s a young boy, maybe two yars my junior, shaking on the deck, wheezing, stricken with the Scurve. Dying.
“We need to get him to quarantine,” I say, and the bilge rats turn to look at me, opening a gap in their circle. I feel Jade’s eyes on me, but I don’t look at her, can’t look at her, not when there’s a boy dying between us.
I step forward and lift him carefully. He’s all bone and muscle, still shaking, his body in full rebellion against the disease, but clearly losing both the battle and the war.
For a moment his eyes meet mine, and I think there’s clarity in them, like maybe he knows who I am, but then they roll back and all I see are the whites.
I step out of the circle, but stop when I come face to face with Hobbs.
“One of the rats got the Scurve?” he asks, although it’s pretty clear he’s not looking for an answer. Not the way his arms are crossed like an X across his chest.
I try to push past, but his arm flashes out and stops me. “Where are you going?”
“To quarantine.” Obviously, I want to add.
“Throw him overboard,” he says.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I did hear him, all three words, like nails pounded into the frame of a new ship being built. “I’m taking him to quarantine,” I say more firmly.
“Are you disobeying a direct order from a superior officer?” Hobbs says, sounding almost hopeful.
I want to disobey him.
(I do, I swear.)
But I can’t. This boy is dying, and if I don’t do as Hobbs says, I’ll be demoted and removed from the Mayhem, and well, that can’t happen.
(Not when she’s still on board.)
Not when the ship needs me.
(Don’t they?)
I start to push the boy’s body into Hobbs arms, but he jumps back, as if touching any part of his skin will immediately transfer the disease. “You do it,” he snarls.
I’m helpless as my mother slips from my grasp.
I’m strong and evil and a murderer as I push Webb over the side with a swift shove.
Twice it’s been my doing, and this will make thrice. For some reason the number seems ominous.
I stride past Hobbs to the railing, the silence broken only by the click of my boots on the deck.
(Will she ever speak to me again?)
The boy’s body, although wracked with seizures and tortured with pain, is warm, his heart beating wildly against my own as I clutch him to my breast, bent in my arms. Alive, so alive, and yet…hurting, dying.
“Rest,” I whisper to him, low enough that Hobbs won’t hear me. “Go with honor.”
He slips from my arms.
Thrice.
I march straight to my cabin, seeing only his eyes, which flashed with recognition as he fell to the depths below.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sadie
The war leader’s tent is dark when I arrive. I start to speak but stop when the opening twitches, shudders, and then parts, revealing Gard’s hefty form.
“Walk with me, Rider,” he says.
I fall into step beside him as he leads us to the center of camp, to the Big Fire, which crackles and snaps, devouring the tangle of stumps and branches placed by the fire tenders. One of them stands nearby, watching the flames.
“Leave us,” Gard says.
She departs with a short, reverent bow, slipping away like a shadow.
“Have you tamed Passion?” Gard asks, when he’s sure we’re alone.
It’s a rather mundane question that hardly requires a midnight meeting. The fire pops.
“She will never be tame,” I say. “But yes, I’ve ridden her.” Surely Gard already knows this.
He smiles, and I’m surprised how warm it feels coming from a man who could break me in two. Perhaps it’s just the heat from the fire. “That sounds like something your mother would say,” he says.
I should feel pride at the comparison, but all I get is a bulge of despair in my stomach.
I say nothing in response.
We stare at the fire together, watching as it snaps a branch in half like a broken bone.
My mother’s face is in the flames, but I don’t look away.
When I can’t look at her any longer, I turn to him and say, “You asked me here to talk about Passion?”
He continues to stare into the fire. “No,” he says gruffly, “but I suppose you already know that.”
There’s silence as I look away. Then what?
Another branch disappears in the red and orange.
“I want to talk to you about your father,” he says, and I hold my breath, trying not to show the tremor of anger that passes through me.
“What about him?” I ask, unable to hide the crackle of fire in my tone.
He cocks his head to the side, as if thinking, and then says, “Can I tell you a story?”
He’s the war leader, am I to say no? “Yes,” I say, centering my gaze on a tuft of grass outside the stone ring, blackened by the heat from the fire.
“You were three years old,” he says, and I close my eyes.
No.
“Paw was four.”
Stop.
“Our battles had always taken place on the beaches, well away from the camp. The Riders—your mother, me—we protected the rest.”
But not on that night.
“The Soakers had a plan that night. They wanted to cut us deeply, break our spirits. The landing party was a diversion, only a small part of their attack. By the time we realized it…”
“They’d reached camp,” I say, kicking the black grass with my toe. Though brittle, the stalks don’t break.
“Yes. The weak, the untrained, the sick, the children: that was their goal.”
The heaviness of his words presses on my shoulders and I can taste blood in my mouth, the inside of my cheek chewed away.
Stop, I will him again. To speak the word would be weakness, so I chant it over and over in my mind, hoping he’ll hear. Stopstopstop.
“When we struck down our foes on the beach and reached the camp,” he continues, “the tents were on fire, our people were dying. Many fought valiantly, but futilely, saving lives as best they could.”
But not my father. All he could do was run while Paw was murdered.
“Your father,” Gard says, but I don’t need to know the rest, not when knowing cuts deeper than a knife.
“Is a coward,” I say. “Despite my mother, it’s in my blood, I know. You want me to leave the Riders,” I say, realizing it at the same time I speak it. My head slumps to my chest.
“Sadie,” Gard says, but I can’t look up, not when the only thing I have left is about to be taken away. All because of him.
“Sadie,” he repeats, and I lift my chin with my hand, force my head to the side. My eyes meet his, which are dark and serious. “You’ll be a Rider for life. Doubt anything, but not that.”
I’m at a loss, my head spinning. “What are you saying?” I ask, probably a little too harshly.
“That your father is not a coward, not even close to one,” he says, one of his fists tightening. “To hear you say such a thing angers me deeply.”
His fist scares me, but not enough to stop my refutation. “You don’t know,” I say. “He left Paw to die. He sent Mother to die. You. Don’t. Know.”
He can hit me if he wants, and I’ll take it, and for a moment I think he will, as his knuckles grow white from the tension. But then his hand relaxes and he pushes out a deep breath. “Sadie,” he says. “I was there too. Are you sure you remember? You were very young.”
“Y-Yes,” I say, hating that my voice falters. My mother would never show such weakness.
“What do you remember?” he asks.
I close my eyes, strain against the memories that have been incomplete for so long. Fire. Darkness and shadows. Shouts in the night. White-skinned men. Harsh blades, cutting down Stormers indiscriminately. Paw’s scream.
Where was I?
My head hurts when I squeeze my eyes shut too tight.
“Father and I were inside our tent,” I say, remembering looking out into the night. Paw is standing alone, crying, scared and unsure, gawking at the carnage around him.
“No,” Gard says. “You were inside your tent. Your father was not.”
In my memory, I look around, searching for my father’s cowardly expression, his huddled form.
I’m alone.
Where is he?
A log falls in the fire, kicking up sparks, and I flinch, my eyes darting to the flames, which melt into the inferno in my memory.
“Where?” I say.
“Look outside.”
I do, and this time Paw’s not alone. My father tries to pick him up but it’s too late, a Soaker is upon him, brandishing a sword.
“No!” Father screams, grabbing a branch from the ground with one arm while using the other to push Paw behind him.
The Soaker laughs and slashes at my father, cutting the branch in two. My father throws the pieces at him, while yelling for Paw to Run!
The man slashes at Father, but misses. Paw’s halfway to the tent, and for a moment I think he’ll make it, but then Father’s down, his leg bleeding, his scream not for his pain, but for us, who he’s looking toward even as the Soaker comes at us.
And I can only cry. Because I’m scared. And I’m weak.
And the man’s sword slashes downward. At Paw.
He dies, not a foot from me. Not a foot.
And I’m next. The man sneers, and I hate him, and I want to rush from the tent and punch him, kick him, bite him. And I start to, but then Mother’s there, and she cuts the man open, and there’s so much blood, a lot of it Paw’s. I see Gard’s massive form behind her, watching.
Not my father’s fault.
But why?
Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t my mother tell me? Why did they let me hate him for all these years?
My memory is incomplete.
“What happened before Mother arrived?” I ask harshly.
“I wasn’t there,” Gard says.
Ignoring him, I ask, “Why was I in the tent and Paw not?”
“I wasn’t there,” Gard repeats.
“But my father would’ve told you,” I say.
“He refused.”
“But he would’ve told m
y mother,” I push, “and she would’ve told you.”
“She refused.”
None of it makes any sense. Why such a big secret? What could hiding the truth possibly accomplish?
“And what of my mother?” I say, frustrated with my missing memory despite having been only three years old.
“Do you mean the mission to ice country?” Gard asks.
I nod, running a hand through my hair. “Did my father know she would die?”
“Yes,” Gard says.
The anger swarms back through me, washing away my confusion. The world is right again, my father still to blame.
“Did you know?” I ask, my words burning with accusation.
“Yes,” he admits.
I’m afraid of myself, that I’ll hit him. I tuck my hands underneath me as a safeguard, take a deep breath. “And you did nothing?”
“No,” he says. “Your father came to me first, told me about his vision before he told even your mother. Begged me to forbid her from riding with the others. Said he’d ride in her stead.”
“But you refused him?” Another accusation, hurled like a stone.
“No.” Again, the answer surprises me. “I agreed, except for the part about him riding. Neither of them would go.”
I frown. “Then what happened? Why did she go?”
“We couldn’t stop her. She knew the truth and still she went. She said if we refused her she’d take her own life anyway. The threat was real in her voice. Your mother could be…stubborn.”
I have to close my eyes to stop my head from spinning. My father did everything in his power to stop my mother from riding to her death. He tried to sacrifice his own life to save Paw’s.
“I think I’ve made a grave mistake,” I say, my voice quivering as much as the dancing flames.
“It’s not your fault,” Gard says. “You didn’t know and no one told you.”
Which again begs the question: why?
“I have to go,” I say, standing quickly. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You needed to know. Now more than ever.”
Gard saw the anger eating me away and was worried it would affect my performance as a Rider, is that it? Is that why he’s telling me? Something tells me there’s more.
