Whisper of Waves

by Philip Athans

  As he spoke he tried to interpret the subtle shifts in her expression: the narrowing of already narrow eyes, the twitch of a lip, the flush of a cheek. She didn’t seem to understand every word of what he said, but Marek felt reasonably sure she knew what he was trying to say. She either didn’t believe him or didn’t care.

  “The people of Innarlith,” Marek went on, not giving her an opportunity to rebut or remark, “are quite enamored of all things Shou. I should think that you will do well here, regardless of what you trade.” He lifted the delicate cup to his lips and sipped the bitter Shou tea. “This, for instance, can make you rich alone. Like me, you are a visitor from a far-off land, and would do well to make friends here. You would do well to understand not only their customs but their perception of yours.”

  “Good advice,” she said, though nothing in the look on her face made it seem she really thought so.

  “If you make the wrong friends,” he said, leaning in just a little, “or if you let people think that you have a strong preference against, say, alternative forms of travel, you could cause trouble for the good people of Innarlith and not just yourself.”

  He knew that she recognized the threat for what it was.

  Ran Ai Yu stood, tipped her head, then turned and walked out of the tea room without a word.

  Marek made up his mind as he finished his tea that he would give her two days to change her mind, then he would make sure she didn’t change anyone else’s.

  35

  20 Flamerule, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

  FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Blue-white lightning sizzled the air, boiling the rain as it fell around them. Ran Ai Yu whirled her thin, straight, double-edged long sword over her head in an effort to draw the creature away from the defenseless shipwrights. The men scattered in a blind panic. The beautiful Shou merchant grimaced when one of the monster fish fell upon a particularly unlucky craftsman. With a mouth as big around as the man was tall, the demonic beast bit the man so cleanly in half that his legs continued to run for fully three steps before falling into a twitching mess on the rain- and blood-soaked deck. Her new ship, still not yet completed, christened in innocent blood.

  The monsters towered above her. In all her travels, from far Shou Lung to the great western oceans and back again, Ran Ai Yu had never seen something so big that was actually alive. There were two of them, one just a little smaller than the other, more blue than green, but they were obviously the same species.

  She thought they looked a bit like eels, but they stood twenty feet above the deck, which was twelve feet above the keel, and there was another five or six feet of wood-beamed dry-dock to the water below. Ran Ai Yu knew enough about what it took to float on water to guess that perhaps two thirds of the things’ bodies were still underwater.

  She swiped at one of them with her sword and when the creature dodged back out of the way their eyes met. Ran Ai Yu detected a certain intelligence—not quite human, but far beyond the blank stare of a fish. That unsettled her more, and she shivered in her rain-wet robes.

  One of Devorast’s crew, a stout dwarf she’d heard called Hrothgar, stood his ground nearer the rail. The smaller of the monster fish clacked its massive, fang-lined jaws at him, sending sparks showering down at them all. The dwarf steeled himself against the nettling burns of the thready lightning and drove at the thing with a heavy wooden mallet in front of him. It was a tool, not a weapon, but in the dwarf’s hands Ran Ai Yu had some trouble seeing the difference, and by the way the giant fish eyed the hammerhead, it felt the same.

  Ran Ai Yu saw Devorast’s face as he spun away from the larger of the two demon-fish. He was irritated, not scared, the look on his face as plain as the danger they were in. If she’d had any time at all to consider anything but her own survival, Ran Ai Yu might have thought him more foolish than brave.

  The larger fish spat a bolt of lightning that momentarily blinded Ran Ai Yu. All she could see for precious moments was the purple, twisting arc of the great spark burned into her vision. She heard the dwarf curse loudly in his own coarse language, and at the same time the footsteps of the fleeing shipwrights echoed away into the distance.

  There was a thud, and Ran Ai Yu stepped back quickly, squeezing her eyes shut to clear the lightning burn. It worked just enough to save her head—she dodged left just as the smaller fish’s massive fangs crashed closed an inch from her ear.

  As she dropped away to the deck, she brought her sword up. The blade bit into the creature’s slimy, fine-scaled flesh and dragged a bloodless furrow half a yard long in the thing’s neck. The creature didn’t flinch, and made no sound. Its eyes rolled to follow her, but she detected no reaction to pain. Pulling the sword out of the creature and rolling away she saw that the wound had already closed.

  Though the sword was of fine craftsmanship and had been in her family for six generations, it was not enchanted. Ran Ai Yu had heard tell of creatures that could only be injured by a blade forged with the Weave, but she’d never found herself face to face with one, and the prospect scared her more than the fangs, the sheer size of the monsters, or the lightning.

  Hrothgar slammed his mallet into the side of the smaller beast and Devorast grabbed up a machete from a scattered pile of shipwright’s tools that littered the deck. Armed thus, Ran Ai Yu knew it was but a matter of time before the giant eels had tenderized them with their lightning only to eat them in one or two gory bites.

  “It will not kill them!” she shouted even as Devorast’s machete sank deeply into the larger fish, producing no blood and not even a quiver of the eel’s skin to mark its presence.

  She could see by the twitch in Devorast’s eyes and forehead that he was drawing the same conclusions as she.

  “Well then what in the name of Clangeddin’s steaming bile do we use on the damned things?” the dwarf bellowed.

  Ran Ai Yu had no answer, and she looked to Devorast.

  The red-haired man banged his machete against the blazing white fangs of the larger fish, sending sparks of lightning scattering all around them. His arm jerked and he grimaced in pain. The huge creature snapped its head back and Ran Ai Yu thought it looked the same as the way Devorast’s arm had jerked.

  “The mouth!” she said to the dwarf, but the weapon he was using was made of wood.

  Still, Hrothgar struck at the smaller monster so hard he lost his footing on the rain-slick deck. The demon-fish took no notice of the hammer blow to its fangs and quickly bent to take the dwarf in its powerful jaws. Hrothgar looked up into the face of his certain death and opened his mouth to scream.

  Ran Ai Yu dived head first at the dwarf, barrel-rolling in midair with her sword held straight out in front of her. The monster fish opened wide its jaws to eat the dwarf and instead got the Shou blade lodged between two teeth.

  Lightning discharged from the crease at the edge of the monster’s mouth and smashed into Ran Ai Yu. Pain flared through her body. Her jaw clenched, her chest tightened, her back arched, and her hands wrapped around her sword pommel so tightly she feared her arms would break, then they tightened some more.

  Her left forearm snapped like a dried twig, sending another spasm of pain through her still-seizing body. Her vision dimmed and blurred and she was certain she was dying—passing out at least, and that would surely mean a hideous death.

  She opened her eyes as wide as she could and only with the greatest effort of will she’d ever managed did she draw in a deep breath. It was enough to keep her awake, but her twisted, broken arm couldn’t hope to hold onto her sword and it stayed lodged in the monster fish’s gums.

  The thing drew its head up, which revealed Devorast facing down its larger cousin.

  Devorast glanced back at her and they made eye contact long enough for Ran Ai Yu to see the concern in his eyes. She knew it wasn’t a feeling he was entirely familiar with.

  A shadow fell across her face and she looked up to see the smaller fish, her family’s blade still protruding from its mouth, fal
ling toward her.

  It means to smash me, she thought.

  Ran Ai Yu couldn’t move at first, and when she finally put out her arm—the arm that bent at an agonizingly unnatural angle—to push herself into a roll, she screamed in pain.

  It was Hrothgar’s turn to save her, and he did so by jamming his mallet to the deck head first, with the handle sticking straight up. The massive fish came down on the edge of the handle, which was too blunt to pierce its skin, so it succeeded in stopping the enormous bulk with barely a handspan to spare. Ran Ai Yu was not crushed.

  Hrothgar grabbed her uninjured arm and pulled when the smaller fish reared up again, its too-intelligent eye lolling down to find its target once more below it. Lightning flickered around the sword in its teeth. The obscene blue-green folds of skin that sufficed the demon for lips twitched and quivered in time with the arc of blinding light.

  Rather than try again to smash Ran Ai Yu or Hrothgar, the smaller fish shook its massive head. Fins like prayer fans fluttering at the sides of its neck. The sword bobbed and shook, and longer, brighter arcs of electricity played around it, but it appeared to be firmly embedded.

  A strange noise like the tinkling of bells demanded Ran Ai Yu’s attention and she reluctantly tore her eyes from the thrashing giant.

  Devorast whirled a length of chain over his head as the huge fish tried once, then one more time to bite it out of the air.

  He looked at the Shou and bellowed, “If I miss, catch it!”

  His eyes flickered to Hrothgar, who nodded. The bigger fish, having grown weary at last of toying with its prey, came in fast with its huge jaws agape.

  Devorast let fly the chain but had to jump away at the same time to narrowly avoid being bitten in half. The chain flew toward the Shou long sword that the smaller demon-fish still hadn’t managed to tear from its gums. Had he not had to jump away, it might have hit its target, but instead it fell to the deck.

  The larger fish smashed deck planks to splinters, biting at the still unfinished ship out of pure frenzied frustration.

  At the same time, both Ran Ai Yu and Hrothgar dived for the falling chain. The Shou merchant fell to her knees under the onslaught of pain from her broken arm but smiled when she saw the chain in the dwarf’s hands.

  “The sword?” Hrothgar shouted to Devorast.

  The red-haired man kicked at the side of the larger eel’s head, trying unsuccessfully to push it away from the ruined section of deck. Even as he kicked, Devorast grabbed at the other end of the chain, which flew through the air around him, made wild by the giant demon-fish’s frenzy.

  Devorast still had the machete in his hands.

  “Yes!” Ran Ai Yu yelled to the dwarf, Devorast’s intentions playing at the edges of her mind. “My sword! Hook to the sword that chain!”

  The dwarf seemed to understand, though Ran Ai Yu was having some trouble trying to translate her desperate thoughts into words in the Common Tongue.

  Not sure what else she could do, Ran Ai Yu backed up, and when her heel caught the edge of something heavy, she went down. Her broken arm bounced against the deck, and she had no choice but to scream. The cry gave her a mouthful of rain water, but it also bought Devorast a precious heartbeat’s worth of time.

  The larger of the two creatures reacted to the sound, jerking its head up from the deck and opening its mouth in a silent roar.

  Devorast chopped across with his machete, lodging the blade deeply into the edge of the creature’s jaws.

  It didn’t react at first to the wound, and again there was no blood, but then the blade must have touched something inside—something that made the lightning spark from its mouth. There was a small explosion of blue-white light then a constant rippling of lightning bolts that arced and twisted, danced and blazed between the depths of the wound and the rusty old blade.

  The dwarf cried out in incoherent triumph and Ran Ai Yu saw the chain hooked around her heirloom blade. The smaller of the fish continued to whip its head this way and that, but the blade held firm, and the chain held just as firmly to the sword.

  The monster battered the very air with its head, sending the chain whipping around fast—too fast for Hrothgar to avoid. Ran Ai Yu rolled away, shielding her eyes, but she still saw the chain hit the dwarf in the side of the head and hit him hard.

  Hrothgar went down in a shower of sparks, and his right leg spasmed when he sprawled unmoving on the deck. Blood poured from a deep gash on his forehead.

  Ran Ai Yu scrambled to her feet but had to dance back when the chain flashed across her vision, missing her own head by the length of an eyelash. Sparks of burning lightning danced between the links, making the chain all the more terrifying.

  The dwarf rolled over and grunted. He sat up and Ran Ai Yu dived on him, pushing him back onto the deck. He must have been very weak still from the blow to the head, otherwise her thin frame would never have moved the sturdy dwarf anywhere he didn’t want to go.

  “Devorast!” Hrothgar gasped.

  “The chain!” Devorast called at the same time.

  Without thinking, Ran Ai Yu reached up and tried for the wildly swinging chain. One attempt after another failed, but finally the chain hit her palm with bruising force and she wrapped her fingers around it. Her arm tingled and sparks began to play around her wrist.

  Devorast was there, though she couldn’t imagine how he’d made it across the section of ruined deck.

  He took the chain from her with a cryptic smile and said, “Close your eyes.”

  His voice was so calm, Ran Ai Yu was certain in that moment that the red-haired man was insane.

  She didn’t close her eyes and so was able to see him swing the chain over his head with one hand while pulling with the other in an attempt to hold the thing steady. The smaller fish fought against him like a horse resisting the yoke.

  The larger fish left off worrying over the machete in its jaws long enough to make another try for Devorast.

  Just like it had the fleeing craftsman, the great jaws came down around Devorast and the man disappeared into the thing’s mouth from the waist up.

  But he was still holding the chain, and—

  Everything went blue and there was a sound like an animal grunting but so loud it rattled Ran Ai Yu’s eardrums. The sound was so alien, it made her scream. Her vision went white, then black. There were flashes of images like shockingly realistic paintings:

  Devorast flying through the air, his face twisted with agony and his body contorted in a massive, all-over convulsion.

  Hrothgar jumping out of the way of whatever was happening, but not sure which way to go, so just … jumping.

  The two enormous demon eels, connected by the length of chain, lightning meeting lighting from steel blade to iron chain to steel blade.

  Lightning meeting lightning.

  Blue meeting white.

  The giant fish bursting.

  Blood.

  Electricity.

  Screaming.

  Ran Ai Yu screaming.

  Then merciful darkness and comforting silence.

  36

  10 Uktar, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

  FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Though the attack by the still-unexplained and unidentified demon eels had set back their schedule some, Ran Ai Yu’s ship was ready to depart less than four months later.

  “She is fine ship,” the Shou merchant said.

  Devorast, whose eyes continuously darted from rail to mast to deck to rigging, always checking for the tiniest imperfection, nodded. Ran Ai Yu did her best to detect any trace of pride in his manner but saw none. He appeared satisfied, but that was all, as if he’d known all along how the ship would turn out and was in no way surprised by his success. Ran Ai Yu found it impossible to feel the same.

  “I have never seen like of it,” she said, running the tip of a finger along the rail and admiring the way the light rain beaded on the ceramic surface.

  “No ship like it has ever been afloat,” he to
ld her.

  “It will be a long voyage back home,” she said, “and we will stop in many ports along the way. You will be busy building more very soon, I know.”

  “There’s no need,” he said. “It’s been built already. Let others do it again.”

  “Ah,” she said, “I see. You are the first but will sell the plans and—”

  “I have no intention of selling the plans,” he said. “You have a copy I made for you, to aid in any repairs you may require should circumstances dictate, but I will destroy mine.”

  Ran Ai Yu found herself at a loss for words, less because of what he’d said but because he actually noticed her confusion.

  “I have built the best ceramic ship I know how to build,” he said. “I will find a new challenge.”

  “You will turn away gold bar after gold bar after gold bar,” she said. “It is bad trade. Bad … business.”

  Devorast smiled, even laughed a little, and said, “Your Common improves by the day, and if ‘bad business’ is all I’m ever accused of, I’ll die a happy man.”

  Ran Ai Yu could only shake her head.

  They stood in silence for a long while, watching the last of Devorast’s shipwrights climb into a dinghy. Hrothgar was the last in, and the dwarf made no mistake about his discomfort on the little boat.

  “Coming, then?” Hrothgar called to Devorast. “I can’t swim, you know.”

  Ran Ai Yu spared the dwarf the indignity of the laugh she felt bubbling up in her throat. Then she had to hold back a tear when Devorast stepped away from her, turned, and held out his hand.

  “Miss Ran Ai Yu,” he said, “I wish you safe journey.”

  She took his hand, but when he tried to let go, she wouldn’t let him.

  “I wish I could return sooner,” she said. “I have found our work together here rewarding, if not dangerous.”