“Nice master?” Gorish says.
It's going to break the porthole and get me. “Air. I need. Um.”
They both stare at me.
Screw dignity. I wrench open the door and run for the deck.
I'm not the only person who flipped his lid.
There's an assemblage of us up here, pale and twitchy-looking, trying to stay out of the way of sailors who know what they're doing. Sailors shift cargo back and forth. Why? Are they maintaining the ship's balance? Ships don't just capsize, do they?
I never realized how nerve-racking it would be to be in one of these things. Handling myself on the black water is something I can understand, caring for my own boat and supplies and paddle. But this beast of a boat is out of my control. I can't do anything but ride along and hope no predators show for dinner.
My room is below the black water. I don't think I'm going to be sleeping there. I'd rather sleep in the rain.
I lean on the railing, looking out over vastness that stretches in every direction. There's smoke where the southern cities are, and one column is bigger than the others. Black and thick, even from this distance. That's got to be Cape Hand, destroyed.
Where are Bek's assassins right now? There are a few ships on the horizon. Ships going the way we are, or carrying goods elsewhere. Dots in the distance, with smooth, dark hulls gleaming in the sun.
Bakura probably told Bek where we're going already. So logically, one of those ships is an enemy.
My Travelers aren't up here with me. They're all content to stay down there in the game room, or the bar. Parnum stays below, too. Sleeping, maybe.
I'm alone. Bek is coming. I'm freaking myself out, and I'm starting to think it doesn't matter who sees my maps anymore. We're all going to the Hope. It won’t matter where the good scavenging is anymore. Why was that ever an issue, anyway? Why were we competing instead of working together?
Why did my father hide the clues?
I can’t believe this was about making money, or fame, or something stupid instead of, you know, saving the damn world.
Maybe it was for him.
I don't know anything anymore.
There's a huge room with a table on the second level of the ship, all its windows above the level of black water. This is now my map room, and I unroll my father's map, sliding my hands over the familiar surface. “Aakesh, can you do what Bakura did before? Move the cities over, and float those symbols over them?”
“Of course, my lord.”
I just asked him to alter my father's map. I really have changed.
My map looks so weird with his power shimmering over it like some kind of cloud-fire. Two symbols, earth and water. “I don't suppose you can tell me the significance of these.”
“Incompatibility.” Aakesh looks at me, his eyes half-lidded. “And the power of hidden force.”
“I don't understand.” There has to be some obvious clue within these symbols. The big one—Taurus—is just a huge circle with horns, and it covers the outside row of cities. The two jagged ones in the center, Aquarius, lie at an angle. Maybe they're pointing to something?
“Think of this as you would erosion.” Aakesh tilts his head. “Given enough time, water may defeat even solid stone.”
I sigh, rubbing my forehead. “Okay. So. That’s not helpful. Or comforting.”
“I am not attempting to comfort you. I am telling you the truth.”
Parnum said humans built those clues, which means they planned centuries ago for someone to find the Hope even though they hid it. But Aakesh talks like the Sundered were the ones with the long-term plans. They can't both be right.
“My lord?” says Aakesh.
“Hm?”
“Where did your father go when he disappeared?”
I clench my jaw. “He said north, east of Kanpur, skirting the edge of deep water.” I point at the big blank section that ate my father. “Why?”
He says nothing.
I sigh and stare at my map, so strange-looking with cities in new places. In spite of myself, I trace the path my father said he was taking.
Wait.
At the very top of the map, the Western-Hemisphere city of Liberia and the Eastern-Hemisphere city of Rabat sit exactly on the tips of Taurus’ bull-like horns. Between them is a wide, blank space, deep water, and at dead center between the horn-tips, my father's map has a single little written p
That's weird. P is for predators, but this isn’t right. Everywhere else my family explored, they made marks, little red x's where the Hope of Humanity wasn't, little marks for landfall, little t's for tufts. There are no other marks here—just that p Why is it there? Did we explore this area or didn't we? What the hell? “Well, that's weird,” I say.
“Your father observed this same omission, as the mark in question has been there for a very long time,” Aakesh explains casually.
Did he just give me a clue? “Is that so?”
“Before he bequeathed his original map to you, he copied the sections he intended to explore on his own.”
Something in my chest tightens. “He had a clue, and he left me behind?”
He nods.
The ultimate betrayal. I lean on the table, jaw so tight. “How?” My voice is rough. “How do you know all this?”
Aakesh touches my face, startling me into looking at him. “His pride was pricked. He knew you would, in time, notice this thing he himself had overlooked. He went north to find it first.”
I want to deny it all. “He wouldn't just leave me.”
“He faced the choices you do now. In your position, Harry, he ran away.”
“Dammit, Aakesh!”
He just looks at me, and I know he’s speaking truth.
Suddenly, I weep.
I lean forward, trying to stop the tears, but I can’t. Grief built over years tears through me. Lies. Betrayals. He ran away, and everybody knew more than I did. I was set up to fail. My father didn't care if I'd succeed. He left me to fail. He left me.
Damn my father. Damn him to Hell. I still miss him. There is so much wrong with me. “You can't understand!” My hands shake as I wipe my face. “Do you people even love your parents?”
“We do not have parents,” Aakesh says gently, so gently. “Though I have observed enough to have some understanding of your ‘daddy issues.—’”
“Screw you.” But something about his phrasing makes me laugh, just a little. He’s serious, and it punctures the bubble of pain, the hopeless pall that's covered my eyes since the first time I saw the Iskinder legacy for what it was. “Well, guess what? You're resting the fate of your people on a guy with daddy issues. You’re doomed.”
“I know.” He didn't say that gently. He said it coolly. Like whatever I am, I'm enough, but barely. And he doesn't have any other choice.
I'm heading north to a place I know has predators, pursued by bad guys, surrounded by people who don't trust me. If I didn't own this guy, I'd have nothing on my side at all.
“Nice master?” says Gorish, patting my thigh.
“It's okay. I'm okay.” I'm not okay.
I have to stop crying before I take this new information to Parnum. He might as well know.
“Nice master?” Gorish wonders.
“Yeah?”
He wriggles in place. “I like you to be alive, nice master. Just you.”
I stare at him. I think he just told me every other human on earth can die for all he cares.
What will the Hope do, really? Is it a weapon? Would it set the Sundered free?
Would they kill everybody?
Parnum thinks so. I think I do, too.
I'm afraid.
● ●
● CHAPTER 31 ●
He Can Do This Claimed
Low-water freakout still has me by the balls, so I stay on deck in the dark.
Six other people huddle nearby like paranoid insomniacs, and we think our own thoughts while sailors work around us, ignoring us sort of politely. Seasickness does not
a bad-ass make.
“It's pretty, isn't it?” I say softly. “The stars. I never take the time to look at them, usually.” Gorish wriggles closer, asking wordlessly for me to pet him. I do, rubbing the spot between his eyes. “I don't suppose you can tell me which of those stars you came from.”
“No, nice master,” he says sadly.
I wonder if they miss their home. I suppose any Sundered alive now never even saw it.
It's stupid to stay awake. I lean against the mast and rub my eyes. I must be overtired, because I swear that dark cloud looks like a hand. A huge hand, black against the purplish night sky.
The hand starts to glow.
There's no time to cry out. The hand opens with a sweep as if it's throwing crumbs to the birds, and a ball of darkness flies out of it and smacks the water with enough force to raise a wave.
It hits us, and the whole ship tilts, creaking. People shout and scramble away from the stern.
I freeze. Aakesh grabs me from behind and presses me against the mast, into a rough rope that provides a hand-hold. I clutch it, in shock, unbelieving. Am I asleep? Is this really happening?
A stack of cargo boxes on my right explodes.
I scream, ducking, as shrapnel pelts the deck, and two people go over. They don’t resurface. The water got them. The water got them.
People come boiling up from below deck like the ship was on fire. Parnum runs toward me, shouting something, something I can’t hear because everybody is shouting, and then he hits the deck as the cargo on my left blows up, too.
The giant hand sends down another black ball of power right away, and it hits so close the whole ship founders. It tilts, crazy-tilting, bending to a power like the heat that comes off Aakesh, bowing like a Sundered One forced to kneel.
We roll back the other way, violently, and everyone is screaming.
Sailors run around, working rigging, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and it's useless, because we're all going to die.
Why aren’t we sunk? Why aren’t we exploded?
Whoever’s attacking is having fun. They wants us to know we’re dying, want Parnum to know they won. The hand hovers over to the left.
“Turn! Turn!” the captain screams.
“Nice M ... ” Gorish freezes, and something rises out of him, straight up through his head, something I can barely see, shaped like those m-shaped bird-spirits in the tunnel over Tenisia.
His eyes go white.
“No!” I scream, out of my mind, and let go of the mast to grab him, his limp, suddenly heavy body. “Aakesh, save him!”
And Aakesh is there, just there all of a sudden with his hair streaming over his head like that hand's trying to take him too, but he’s too strong to be taken. He puts his left hand over Gorish's spirit and pushes it back down.
And Gorish breathes. Gorish breathes. I clutch him, one hand back on the rope, sobbing a little.
The hand shoots again, a power-ball that sheers off our mast half-way and takes it down into the black water. I scream as broken pieces of malleum pelt me, raining down.
Aakesh pushes Gorish’s soul back down again, but other little m-shapes fly up from below deck, into the hand. It's eating all the Sundered. “Stop it!” I scream at the sky. “Stop! Aakesh, make them stop!”
“Set me free!” He crouches with his hand over Gorish, keeping Gorish's soul down, his hair streaming above him and his white teeth bared. “I cannot do this with the boundaries you have placed!”
What? What?
The next blast whizzes over the ship, splashing hard, scaring everyone to move to port, but I know what they’re doing, because the ship will tilt that way and everybody will fall off—
“Harry!” Parnum shouts from somewhere. The floating hand opens wider, probably eating more souls.
Set Aakesh free?
I can’t! He’d kill us! He’d run away! I’d be alone!
Aakesh bares his teeth and roars, inhuman, leaning on Gorish and fighting to keep Gorish's tiny soul in his tiny body. “Release me!”
“I can't!” The hand twists like a marionette’s owner, and the ship begins to tilt. I lose it. “Do whatever you have to do to stop Bek! I give you full permission! No restrictions! Stop them!”
This is not what he asked for, and the look he gives me is cold, a door closed forever, a chance lost. But he stands, Gorish's soul rising with him just enough to make my orange Sundered twitch against my chest. Then, hair flying all around him in whorls, Aakesh raises his right arm and holds it straight out.
I twist to watch.
There's a ship in the distance, suddenly visible because of the orange light that engulfs it from below like there's fire in the deep. But that’s not fire. What bursts through the water's surface are tentacles.
Each one is half the size of the ship. One, two, three huge pointed fleshy things, covered with what I know are suction cups and spikes, wrap around the other ship like it’s a toy, and they squeeze.
The ship buckles. Breaks in half like burnt toast. Is pulled under.
Gone.
It's all so far away that the ship's death is silent. The giant ghost hand disappears.
Nobody realizes the threat is over. They scream, run, panic. Somebody falls overboard just by being panicky, and I cling to the rope, my hand aching, Gorish clutched against my chest.
Aakesh lowers his hand slowly, his hair settling down around him like spider webs, tiredly pushing Gorish's soul once and for all back into his body. Then he looks at me hard.
I'm afraid. He can do this claimed. He can control monsters claimed.
“Harry!” Parnum kneels beside me, his strong arm around my shoulders and his other hand gripping the rope. “You're all right!”
I nod at him. Can't speak. Can't look away from Aakesh. His irises are glowing.
“Harry,” Parnum says. “Harry, look at me. It's all right. We're all right.”
Aakesh turns away with disgust on his face. Gorish whimpers a little in my arms, and I cradle him, trembling.
Aakesh scares me so much. And I just pissed him off.
I blew it. I blew it so badly.
Nobody can decide what happened, exactly. The sailors have already announced it's another mystery of the sea, and the passengers are too afraid to talk about it for long.
Not even Parnum can coax me below deck, so he stays up with me. He waits with me in silence, watching me cradle Gorish and ignore Aakesh, until sunlight returns to chase away the last bad shakes from the night before.
Aakesh is ignoring me, too, so it's okay. He sits with his back to me, his arms around his knees. He said he’d protect me, but I panicked. Now ... I can’t just go back. I can’t just randomly turn him loose. We’d never make it.
“They've never stopped until destruction was complete before.” Parnum looks a little tired, but it doesn't take away from his dignity. It sharpens the planes of his face, the contrast of his mismatched eyes. “Did your Sundered One ... ”
“Yeah.” What else am I going to say?
Dammit. I feel like I failed a test I didn't know was coming.
Parnum sighs. “Harry. Can you guarantee Aakesh will remain on your leash as we go north?”
“As far as I know, sir.” I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.
Aakesh is listening, his head turned slightly. I can just see his profile.
“Good. I don't know precisely what we will face when we find the Hope, but I doubt it will be good. There are no shipping routes that far north.”
I can't wait to hear the rest of this. No, really.
“The area is swimming with predators,” Parnum says. “The captain suggests it is bad luck to even consider traveling there. He will take us to Shangri-la—which is at the very southern tip of the map—but we may have a problem hiring anybody to take us north after that.”
“So we row ourselves.”
“There will be ice,” Parnum says, “and with predators, we cannot afford to be in smaller boats, not even wit
h your Sundered One. It's too big a risk. If we fail, our entire species ends.”
It comes out without my permission. “As opposed to theirs ending if we succeed?”
Parnum just nods. That's all. He's already wrestled with these things. I can't make him feel shame. “We will use trickery, if necessary, to procure a boat. Can your Sundered One help with that?”
“Aakesh can do anything,” I hear myself saying, and have to swallow back the hysterical laughter that wants to bubble after. Anything! That's right! Including controlling deep-water monsters like puppets!
Parnum puts his hand on my shoulder. “We'll be at Shangri-la in a couple of weeks. By that time, we'll have a plan.”
A couple of weeks of this? Of having to think about things because there's nothing else to do? Screw that idea, doctor. “Yeah.”
Parnum pats my shoulder and stands, heading off to talk to the captain, who smiles when he sees him coming. Everybody likes Parnum.
I look at Aakesh.
His hair moves a little in the breeze. “It will be done.”
He knows what I want. We're speeding up. It’s not just the water choosing to move us. “Thank you.”
Demos walks by, slowly. His arm's in a sling—he must've broken it somehow last night, and nobody's Sundered has fixed it yet. I don't know if he overheard us or not. I don't know if it matters.
I can't do this alone.
I try to picture paddling alone in the north of the world, no one to share with, no one to hear. Alone. Shudders and nausea battle through me, ripping me apart. I can't do this alone.
Aakesh looks at me sidelong, his irises no longer glowing, and it's my turn to know his unspoken request: freedom.
I can't, Aakesh. I can't.
I don't even know when I decided he can hear my thoughts. I just know he can. Why not? It's no crazier than anything else that's happened.
I can't, Aakesh.
He nods and turns his face away.
I guess that conversation's done.
● ●
● CHAPTER 32 ●
Shangri-La
The sailors are pretty spooked to find Shangri-la in sight the next day.
The Sundered Page 23
