by David Estes
“They wanted to get close to you so they could kill you,” I say, feeling strength coursing through me. A sudden desire to ride Passion into battle fills me. Even standing I feel restless, like I need to move, to run, to ride, to fight. “An eye for an eye. We killed their king so they’ll kill our war leader.”
“Maybe so,” Gard admits. “But we don’t know that. Coming into the heart of our camp with a force of only two would have been sure death, suicide. Perhaps there’s more to it.”
I know he’s right, but his words are too patient for me. “What would you have us do?” I ask.
Gard’s eyes bore into mine. “Have Riders replace the normal guardsmen. Double the watch. Be vigilant. If they want badly enough to speak to me, they will return. And we’ll be ready.”
Silence hangs ominously over our heads, a stark contrast to the rare cloudless sky. Finally I feel uncomfortable standing alone in a sea of seated Riders. Awkwardly, I lower myself to a crouch.
Gard casts his eyes over the lot of us. Despite the calmness and steadiness of his previous words, his gaze throws off sparks. “I want them brought to me alive”—his voice booms like a battle drum—“and only then will they answer for their crimes!”
~~~
We work in groups of four, silent protectors of the camp, of my people. If the foreigners show their faces again… The thought trails off in my mind because I know the rest of it will be finished by the dark one who clings to me like my black robe.
Let them come, the Evil says.
I shake my head and pull my hood over my hair as a cautious rain begins to fall. The night speaks in leafy rustles and patters.
My companions also don their hoods. They don’t complain about being tired or having to stand in the rain. Riders don’t complain. We are iron. We are rock.
A drip of moisture crawls into my eye and blurs my vision, as if to remind me that even rock and iron are affected by Mother Earth’s elements.
One of the torches planted in the soft ground beside us flickers when the rain picks up. The flame falters, wavers, and then dies, casting us into darkness. Still we stand. Still we watch, our eyes adjusting to the night.
Something flashes in the corner of my vision, a speck of movement, there and gone again. A trick of the night? A specter?
I train my stare on the spot, unwilling to raise a false alarm until I’m sure. I see only black. And then…
A flash of something lighter, growing in size as someone approaches.
“Who’s there?” I demand.
My companions turn to the sound of my voice, startled. The blob of white stops, says, “My name is Dazz. I come from ice country. My companion is Feve, one of the Marked from fire country. We’ve come to speak to your leader.” I squint to make out the face of either of them. The one who calls himself Dazz steps forward, clearer now, but still shrouded by the night.
My hand tenses on my sword, prepared to draw it, to swing it, to kill if necessary.
“You killed two men,” the Rider next to me says.
The one he called “the Marked” steps forward, just a human-shaped splotch of brown. “They left us no choice,” he says, his voice certain and free of shame. The desire to slice him to ribbons courses through me as I slide my blade from its sheath.
“Please,” Dazz says. “We are only here to understand why you steal our children.”
My next breath comes sharply, before I need it. Exhaling, I regain my composure. “Drop your weapons,” I say. “And come forward with your hands clasped above your head. But don’t be surprised if Gard is less merciful than we.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Huck
I duck beneath the icy water, my eyes burning with salt and dread. Where is she?
I search frantically, seeing only churning white and bubbles. Even the sharp-tooths are noticeably absent, smart enough to escape to a less angry corner of the Deep Blue. I resurface, gasping for breath, spluttering when a wave looms over me. My wet blue uniform sticks to me like a second skin, weighing me down. Just as the wave topples over me, I dive back down, deeper this time, fighting to see through the murk.
A hand waves to me in the distance, but it’s not really waving—more like thrashing. Churning the water around it, unable to generate enough thrust to pull the attached body to the surface. That’s when I remember: Jade can’t swim. None of the Heater servants can. It’s intentional, another of my father’s brilliant ideas. Makes it kind of hard to escape from a ship if you can’t swim and the landing boats are guarded all day and night.
Kicking hard, I swim toward Jade’s thrashing hand, grabbing it before she can sink further into the abyss. When she feels me, she jerks, as if I’m a monster of the sea come to claim her. But then she sees it’s me and lets me pull her. She’s choking, jerking her head about, swallowing seawater, unable to hold her breath any longer.
Clutching her around the waist, I kick and kick and paddle with my free hand, surprisingly desperate to get back above the water and into the fiercest storm we’ve seen in a long time. My lungs are on fire, burning with the desire for air. My head breaks the surface and I gulp in a deep breath, getting a mouthful of water when Jade unintentionally spits it in my face. Using both arms, she clings around my neck, frightened and exhausted, choking me, threatening to pull us both back under.
“Jade, relax,” I manage to squeak out. “Yer chokin’ me.”
Her grip relents slightly, giving me the chance to suck in a breath. My head on a swivel, I look around, locating the end of the toppled mast, floating nearby. I make for it, Jade on my back. When I’m finally close enough to grab part of the bird’s nest, I realize: the winds have weakened, the rain has slowed, the waves have shrunk. The storm is dying.
For a while we just hang onto each other and the mast, content to be alive, her cheek on my shoulder, my ear resting on the crown of her head.
Eventually there’s a shout and a rope splashes nearby us in the water. I grab it, my fingers cold and unsteady, wrap it around Jade, under her arms, and then around me, tying it tightly in a classic fisherman’s knot. I raise a hand as high as I can, signaling to the rescuer who I can’t see above the angled mast.
The rope tightens and begins to drag us in. I hug Jade without shame. She hugs back.
We reach the ship and I steady us against the side with a firm hand as we rise slowly out of the water, the rope twisting and spinning, showing us wood and then sky and water and then wood again. Strong hands pull us over the railing and we collapse on deck in a pile, like fish tumbling from a net. The day’s catch.
Looking up, I see the eyes of our rescuer, dark brown and almost shining with glee. “Look what the Deep Blue spat out today,” Hobbs says with a sneer.
~~~
I don’t know where they took Jade, but I was so shocked at seeing Hobbs that I did nothing to help her, just watched them drag her away, below deck somewhere, presumably to get her dry clothes and a blanket. Something to warm her up. All that matters is that she’s alive.
“I should’ve left you out there to drown,” Hobbs says as I strip off my shirt.
Barney helps me to my feet, loops one of my arms over his shoulders as I stumble, my feet like jellyfish. “Then why didn’t you?” I snap, a flash of anger hitting me.
Surprisingly, Hobbs smiles at me. “Because I’d rather find out what the admiral will have in store for you.”
My father. I try to swallow down the unwanted sour taste of fear that fills my mouth, but it sticks in my throat, lingers. I stare at Hobbs, trying to hide my fear. “Until then, stay out of sight until you’re called for,” Hobbs says with a sneer. “Clearly you’re not needed up here.”
Barney grabs my arm, says, “We need to get you cleaned up.”
I know it’s an excuse to run, to hide, but I’ll take it. With Barney acting as my crutch, I limp away, hating the way my heartbeat thunders in my chest when I see the rest of the ship:
The collapsed mast hangs eerily over the side of the ship
, angled like a plank into the water, leaving a trail of splinters in puddles behind it; half of the railing is bent and destroyed, broken under the weight of the mast; dripping white sails cover a full quarter of the ship, swirling with a tangle of ropes; barrels are shattered, spilling their contents—rice and beans and recently caught fish—onto the rain-slick deck.
But despite the significant level of destruction, that’s not what causes my heart to pound, to speed up. No, it’s the people who shame me. Men and women, young and old, bedraggled and half-drowned and bone-weary, hanging on what’s left of the railing and on each other, staring at me—and not with respect, like they used to. Watching me with narrow eyes full of accusation.
For I abandoned them. No…it’s more than that. I abandoned them to save a bilge rat.
I should stay above, help repair the damaged ship. But I don’t. The storm has passed, the sea is calm, and we’re safe for now. Hobbs is right: I’m not needed or wanted above.
Head down, I walk past them.
~~~
“What will they do, Barney?” I ask.
My humble steward sets a hot mug of tea on the table next to me and snatches my sopping clothes that lay in a haphazardly discarded pile on the floor.
Barney doesn’t answer, just stares at me with tired eyes.
“What will they do to her?” I say, modifying my original question to what I meant in the first place. Although I’m not so selfless as to not care what happens to me, I’m trying not to think about that, to focus on Jade, whose life hangs in the balance once more. I’m not sure what was more dangerous for her: being tossed on the ocean’s waves of fortune, or being tossed back on deck by Lieutenant Hobbs.
Barney answers this time, but grudgingly, slowly. “She…was…where she shouldn’t have been.”
“She was scared. We all were. She was trying to repair the torn sail and got spooked, went up when she should’ve gone down. Should she be punished for that?” My questions aren’t for Barney’s ears, but I ask them anyway, speaking my thoughts aloud, testing them out before I have to use them for real on my father.
“You went after her too soon.” His words pound like nails in a dead officer’s coffin, just before it’s set alight and pushed floating across the Deep Blue.
I disobeyed a superior officer. I abandoned the ship when they needed me the most. I climbed the mast to save a servant girl, before it was even clear that she required saving, putting my own life at risk.
And she will be blamed for all of it—that’s the worst part. Sure, I might be punished, receive some harsh words from my father, perhaps sent to the new worst-performing ship in the fleet.
But Jade will be…
My father is likely going to…
Knowing his temper he’ll…
(I can’t even think it.)
“My life is bloody well over,” I say.
Barney sighs, shakes his head, but he doesn’t contradict me. Because he knows. He saw her peg me with the brush, saw the burning desire in my eyes not to tell anyone. He saw me spending hours with her repairing the sails, talking more than any self-respecting lieutenant would ever talk in the presence of a bilge rat. He saw what I did today. He knows she means a great deal to me, and if she dies, I will die a little with her. Maybe more than a little.
Finally, he says, “You don’t know he’ll kill her.”
“I do.”
“For your sake, I hope you’re wrong.”
I roll onto my side and pull the sheets over my head. I hear Barney close the door. I’m alone again. My tea grows cold as I lay in bed, unable to sleep, my thoughts running rampant through the murk and cold of my mind.
I’ll die before I’ll let him kill her.
~~~
Eventually, I must have fallen asleep, however, because I jerk awake when I hear pounding on my cabin door. I blink away the churning waves and rising bubbles that cloud my vision, the last lingering remnants of an already forgotten dream.
There’s a commotion outside my room. Angry voices. But still the pounding continues.
“Yes?” I say, rubbing at the bubbles in my eyes.
Hobbs pushes through in a burst, but Cain’s not far behind him. “Leave him alone,” Cain says, pushing Hobbs.
Hobbs shoves back, says, “I’m afraid that’s not a possibility. I have a message from your father. You are to appear before him at once, not as his son, but as a witness to an unfortunate crime involving a bilge rat girl.” Every word is a nasally sneer, filled with sick joy.
“I said I would tell him,” Cain growls.
“You…weren’t given the order,” Hobbs says. Giving Cain a final shove, he exits, slamming the cabin door.
“What the ruddy hell happened?” Cain says when we’re alone.
I can’t tell him, not when he helped me kill a man to save her once already. And now I’ve gone and thrown that sacrifice away. For what? To be forced to watch while she’s fed to the sharp-tooths?
I stare at my feet, which are sticking out from beneath the blanket.
“They’re saying you saved her during the storm,” Cain says.
He doesn’t mention any details, but I can tell he knows everything. His eyes sparkle with pride.
“I’m no hero,” I say.
“That remains to be seen,” Cain says, his words prying my eyes away from my feet.
“What’s going to happen?” I ask.
Cain answers with a sternness in his voice I’ve never heard before. “You’re going to get dressed and go see your father. Deal with the consequences of your actions.”
“But what if…”
(…the consequence is Jade being killed?)
“You’ll know what to do,” Cain says, reading my thoughts.
Do I? What will I do? Fight him? Dive in after her? I can’t see it happen, can’t see another person I care about end up overboard.
(Blood in the water.)
“I don’t,” I say, sounding childish even to my own ears.
“You will,” Cain says, his tone now more like a pillow than a plank. “When the time comes.”
He leaves and I dress quickly, struggling with the buttons and with getting my arms and legs in the right holes. My hands are shaking.
Heart pounding in my throat, I climb the steps to the quarterdeck. Sunshine hits me full in the eyes when I emerge from below. Where were you yesterday? I think, cursing the skies for warring with the Deep Blue. If only they’d made peace, everything would be the same and Hobbs would be leaving soon.
But would things be the same? How could they? Knowing what I know, feeling what I feel: nothing can ever be the same. Eventually I’d have to make the hardest choice of my life. The war between the ocean and the sky has only forced me to decide sooner.
The entire fleet is here, each ship anchored and still in the calm waters. Although none of the vessels were unscathed by the power of the storm—their sails hanging limply, their railings splintered and chipped, their decks a mess of shattered barrels and snapped ropes—the Mayhem seemed to take the worst of it, the only ship with a broken mast.
But none of that seems to matter, the repair work left unfinished for now.
A crowd has gathered already, as surely word has travelled to each and every ship.
A bilge rat is on trial!
The admiral’s son is a witness!
The Mayhem’s deck is completely full, and those from the other ships that couldn’t fit have climbed the masts and the ropes of the nearest adjacent ships to watch. No one will miss this.
I expected something more private, because of who I am, but I shouldn’t have. Crimes are always tried in public, under the law. My father wouldn’t make an exception, even for his own son.
A hush falls over the crowd when they see me. Ignoring their stares, their whispers, I scan over their heads until I reach the ship’s center, where the main mast remains toppled like a freshly chopped tree.
I see her.
Alive and dry and breathing.
&
nbsp; Her expression is stoic, like she’s posing for a painting. Even under the circumstances, I have the urge to smile when I see her.
My lips remain flat when I see my father, decked out in his pristine blue uniform, littered with gleaming medallions, his admiral’s hat dipped low in the front to shield his eyes from the sun, casting the top half of his face in shadow. His expression is a neutral mask.
And beside him: Hobbs, equally presentable, but grinning like a mermaid who’s suddenly sprouted legs.
Cain stands opposite, watching me, offering a slight nod of encouragement when my gaze falls upon him.
I push through the crowd, pulse pounding.
I catch shards of conversations, like broken glass to my ears:
“I heard he’s requested to run away and join the Stormers with her.”
“I heard she’s pregnant with his child.”
“A very reliable source told me she’s actually his sister.”
In another situation I might laugh at the absurdity of the comments. But not today. Not now.
I reach my father, stand before him with my legs locked tight at the knees, willing them not to tremble. Wait for his verdict.
Silence ensues, and I can feel Jade’s gaze, but I won’t look at her. Can’t. Not yet. Not until I know for sure.
He doesn’t waste time with formalities. After all, that’s not what the crowd is here for. “Do you deny that this bilge rat climbed to the bird’s nest, which is forbidden of her kind?” He says her kind with such contempt that it sounds like he’s spitting it, although his words are free of moisture.
“No, but I—”
“And do you deny that you disobeyed the order of a superior officer in order to rescue her?”
“No, but I can explain—”
“I’ve made my decision, Lieutenant,” my father says, finally lifting the brim of his hat to reveal his striking blue eyes.
