After passing through the strait together, the crew seemed to be more accustomed to the shark’s presence, but almost as importantly, no one was likely to try swimming or even letting a boat down in the Iron Ocean. She could bring the shark closer rather than having to row away to it, and moonlight gleaming on the water turned the shark’s back to cobalt as it swam lazily alongside the ship. It looked like a sleek, streamlined bolt of metal.
It had learned the morning routine as well as she had, and Yerena thought how ridiculous she was to get flustered over a dream. The shark was the same as it had always been, and no matter how many times she saw it, she felt the same awe and affection.
The huge triangular head rose clear of the water, eyes fixing on her as it did when it was impatient. Scars crisscrossed its snout and head, but its undersurface was pale and smooth as milk—except for the wide crescent-shaped mouth. Yerena smiled back.
“No one will ever hurt you if I can help it,” she whispered, and unrolled a rope ladder over the side of the ship. She climbed down and dropped into the sea.
The shark swam up from below, slowly rather than in the brutal charge that could fling a full-grown seal out of the water altogether. It still displaced enough water that the wash threatened to push Yerena away, which was why she preferred it to come at her from below instead of from one side. Its head dipped before its snout could touch her, and the upward rise of its trajectory flattened out. She reached out with the ease of long practice, and her gloved fingers clamped around the forward edge of its dorsal fin. Her watersuit against the shark’s skin provided enough friction that she wouldn’t slip off.
She bent her right leg so she could brace her knee against the base of its fin, and let her mind touch the shark’s, a slight deepening of the awareness that had existed between them since she had been eight years old and it had been a newly captured pup. Best not to merge too closely, just in case the shark took it into its head to dive, and she liked watching through her own eyes from her vantage position.
She directed it away from Daystrider in steadily widening arcs, sweeping the sea, as it was called. The difficult thing was estimating the distance they had gone. One mile of open water looked about as featureless as the next, and measuring time wouldn’t have helped, because the shark swam at whatever speed it wanted, rather than keeping a consistent pace.
But the warship was soon out of sight. Yerena kept the shark heading east, and noticed how overcast the sky was. While it grew steadily paler, the light was a diffuse glow trapped behind masses of clouds that didn’t let a single ray through. They were heading into bad weather, but at least it was unlikely to be the kind of violent storm that was more common in the south, and a little rain would top up the casks. It had been nine days since they had left the Denalait coastline—of course, technically they were still in Denalait territorial waters—and fresh water was starting to run low again.
The tips of two masts appeared over the horizon.
Those could only be Turean galleys, but Yerena didn’t allow herself to react. There would be time enough for the shark to fight their enemies, and that morning they were just scouts. Down. She pulled her mask over her eyes.
The shark responded, sinking until only the tip of its fin protruded above the waves, which came up to Yerena’s chin. Water spattered in her face. She ignored it and directed the shark to swim on parallel to the ships.
That was the dangerous part, getting close enough to observe the ships without being spotted. Under the clouds, though, the shark’s grey hide made it invisible in the sea, and she tried to keep its fin between her face and the ships as the shark made a slow arc around them.
Turean galleys. They know we’re coming.
The shark veered away and turned back west. It swam much faster—the spray hitting her face from below did so with enough force to go up her nostrils—but what felt like hours passed before she saw Daystrider. By then she was hungry as well as worried, but she pushed everything aside so the shark could feel her pride and satisfaction. Very well done. She slid off its broad back. Go and feed. Just don’t get too full.
She swam to the rope ladder and climbed up to the deck. The crew seemed to have grown used to the sight of her in her watersuit and they continued their work, but Darok looked in her direction, frowning. He said a few words to the master carpenter and came over to her.
“You were gone a long time.” His tone was neutral, and the furrow between his brows looked deeper than the scar on the side of his head.
“I know.” Yerena pushed her mask down. “Captain, may I speak to you alone?”
“Of course. Come to my cabin after you change your clothes.”
“No, I’d rather speak to you right away. If you don’t mind.”
The frown smoothed itself away and his eyes swiveled east. “I see. Let’s go.”
Yerena pulled off her flippers and padded barefoot after him. “Sit down,” he said when they were in his cabin, pulling out a chair. “Don’t worry about dripping on that.” He tossed a towel at her.
“Two Turean galleys are sailing west.” Yerena sat stiffly on the edge of the chair, blotting her hair. It was starting to come loose, and she could imagine how bedraggled she looked. Is that important? Continue the report. “Sister ships from the look of them, both three-masters with double decks of oars.”
Darok sat opposite her, one elbow resting on the table. “Go on.”
“Both have ramming prows designed like stylized whales. I didn’t see any scorpions on their decks, but they could have been below.” She paused to think whether there were any other details, and her stomach rumbled like a barrel rolling about in the hold. “That’s all,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry I can’t estimate how far away they are, but at what seemed like the shark’s normal speed, it took us most of the morning to reach those ships.”
“You haven’t eaten at all today, have you?” Darok got up.
“Safer not to eat if you might need to swim.”
“True, but you need to eat now—it’s past midday. I’ll have something sent to your cabin.”
“Thank you.” Yerena got to her feet as well, folding the towel. “Let me know when you need to discuss what we’re going to do.”
“I have an idea, and yes, I’ll need your help.” He smiled. “Two galleys, eh? I’ll try to sink at least one of them.”
She knew how casually reckless he could be, but she was still taken aback, and when his grin grew that much wider, she knew her reaction had showed on her face. That always seemed to happen when she was with him, much to her annoyance.
She fell back on the courtesy of her training. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leave.”
Darok nodded, the amusement fading as his gaze went to the side of her face. He reached out, touched a damp lock of hair that clung to her cheek and guided the hair back behind her ear.
Yerena’s skin turned to gooseflesh, and yet she felt warmer than if she were wrapped in a blanket. She was suddenly aware of the supple smoothness of the watersuit against her thighs, reminding her that she wore nothing beneath it. Darok’s hand dropped, and he went to the door to hold it open for her.
“Captain, we don’t have enough to replace all this.” Arnell Grafe, the master carpenter, set his jaw. “Not unless we scavenge all the wood the ship don’t need and saw up furniture. If you’d said so at the village, I might’ve bought logs or lumber—”
“I didn’t know about those galleys when we were at the village.” Darok had also thought asking for anything out of the ordinary might have made the villagers suspect the ship moored just off their shores was no whaler. Though someone had seen through his ploys, if the Tureans were on an intercept course. One galley might have been engaged in trade or travel or patrol, but two meant battle.
“After we engage them, there’s bound to be a lot of broken wood floating around,” Alyster said. “The men are giving three-to-one odds we’ll take down one of those galleys and five-to-one on both of them.”
>
Once they heard that he planned to do so without anyone else on the deck, the odds would be even higher. He had commandeered the cook’s entire supply of clay pots, and they were stored safely up in the crow’s nest.
“Make sure the bases of the masts are protected,” he told Arnell, and the master carpenter nodded stiffly. He had worked on Daystrider since she had been built and was used to doing everything by the book. Then again, anyone hearing what Darok intended to do would think he was crazy, at least at first.
He dismissed Arnell, who touched the effigy tied to his belt as he left. Darok had once made the mistake of calling that a doll, and if looks could have killed, he would have been sewn into a spare sail shortly afterwards. The effigy, Arnell had pointed out slowly and carefully, was a representation of the soul which had been blessed by the Unity. It was just one of the mysteries of the world, why effigies could be in the presence of the Unity but the vast majority of Denalaits could not.
A brisk west wind came to fill the sails, and Darok ordered them taken down. If the wind was blowing against the Turean galleys, they would be tacking into it, which meant Daystrider might be on them before he was ready. Most of all, he wanted to engage them at night.
“I don’t see why you can’t fight them during the day,” Lady Lisabe said when he met with her and Yerena that afternoon to tell them what he planned to do and where he needed them both. Specifically, belowdecks and in locked rooms. The thought of losing a Voice of the Unity was not a pleasant one, though it didn’t make his heart tighten like the prospect of losing Yerena.
“Oh, we could pull this off during the day.” He poured rum for them all. “But we are one ship in the Iron Ocean. If even a third of the Turean flotilla gathers against us, we’ll be torn apart before Lastland gets a sight of us.” Under those circumstances, he could only hope Yerena and her shark would get Lady Lisabe to safety before she fell into Turean hands. That was probably the real reason the Admiralty had assigned a Seawatch operative to his ship.
“And fighting in the dark will make a difference?” Lady Lisabe sounded skeptical.
“No, but defeating them in the dark will.” Darok knew when to follow his instincts, and those instincts told him he didn’t just have to defeat one or two Turean galleys. He had to smash their morale as well, to show them Denalay meant naval force so superior and terrifying that their only choice was to flee at all speed. He wanted fear to spread through the Turean ranks long before they saw Daystrider, and the cover of nightfall would help in that regard. Besides, he didn’t want them to notice the shark until it was far too late.
“Very well, then.” Lady Lisabe drained her cup and took her leave. Yerena got up too, but rather than going straight to the door she paused, resting one hand on the back of her chair. She’d made the green wool into a skirt, Darok noticed, simply cut and snug at the hips but falling to the middle of her calves in looser folds. Obviously there hadn’t been enough material for the skirt to reach her ankles, but he didn’t mind that at all. With her white blouse and her hair in a braid, only the tattoo marked her as a Seawatch operative.
That, and her cool controlled voice. “Please be careful. What you’re planning is a considerable risk for the captain of a ship.”
“I know. That’s why I’ll never make admiral.”
“Do you want to be?” A little of the ice melted out of her eyes, and she sounded genuinely curious.
Darok stretched back in his chair, legs extended before him. “Not really,” he had to admit. “In any case, I couldn’t be promoted before Kiti—I mean, Katerin Marl.”
“The captain of Hawk Royal?”
“Yes. There’s always been some rivalry between us, but it’s partly because Hawk Royal’s the flag of the fleet and I wouldn’t mind seeing Daystrider take that position. I think the men are wagering on that too.”
Yerena said nothing. She looked distant and preoccupied, as though the brief connection while they talked had been cut as cleanly as a thread, and now she had something more important to think about. He got to his feet but she let herself out of the cabin.
He finished her drink as well as his own and met with Alyster to plan their strategy down to its bones. Alyster’s careful, methodical approach was just the support Darok’s wilder schemes could always use, though once or twice Darok had thought he should have groomed his brother for eventual command of his own instead. Well, he would give Alyster command of the ship during the upcoming engagement, and once they returned home he could see about doing more.
After that he went up to the deck. The sunset was a red-streaked blaze in the direction of Denalay as he made a swift inspection. The bases of the masts had been wrapped in layers of canvas stained the same color as the wood. He paced the deck from stern to prow, touched a taut shroud and found the little nick in the port rail where a throwing axe had missed him three years before. I’m sorry to do this to you, but once we’re back in harbor you’ll be better than ever.
A tiny light flared in the shadows beneath furled sails. Darok went closer, but he smelled the pungent smoke before he saw Julean leaning over the rail and holding a cheroot. The tip glowed redly.
“Would you like one?” Julean took another cheroot from a pocket.
“No, and I hope you don’t do this on the deck tonight.”
“I won’t.” Julean blew out smoke and spoke more quietly. “Captain, I want to ask that if we take any Tureans prisoner, you will allow me to question them.”
Darok looked at him with no liking, because he could imagine what ways and means a surgeon might use to question prisoners. If the only way to keep his crew safe or succeed in their mission was to resort to torture, he supposed he would do so, but he wouldn’t have left any such interrogation in Julean’s hands.
“Why are you bringing this up now?” he said.
Julean took a long pull on the cheroot before he replied. “I didn’t think we’d get so far. I was prepared to go down in the strait.”
Darok couldn’t blame him for that. “Well, in answer to your question, we’ll see when the time comes. I can’t make promises regarding prisoners we haven’t even taken yet.” He turned to leave.
“She was pregnant, you know.”
He stopped in his tracks, wanting to walk away but unable to do so. Julean tossed the cheroot over the rail.
“She sent a packet back.” He spoke as if recounting what he had eaten for dinner. “There were maps and detailed reports and a letter for me…which I only received after the Admiralty had read it and tested it for any hidden messages. She said she was three months along.”
“Why didn’t she go back at the time?” Darok said. “I mean, if she was able to send a packet.”
“Some Seawatch agent brought that back. Dragonfly’s captain must have believed they were safe enough so far north, when the Turean strength was concentrated in the islands.” He looked at Darok. “It would have been our first child.”
And your last. Darok set his teeth against a surge of instinctive sympathy. The problem with Julean was that when it came to his wife, all bets were off. Darok had little doubt that Julean would lie to him without a second thought if doing so would bring his wife—or his wife’s remains, more likely—one step closer to home.
“Good night, Doctor.” He started for the hatchway.
“That’s all you have to say?”
Darok stopped for the second time, because the question—or call it what it really was, a challenge—wasn’t something he was accustomed to from his subordinates. He leveled a sharp look at Julean, watching to see what would happen next.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for the least news of what happened to my family?” Julean said.
“I’m sorry about your wife and child—”
“I can tell.”
Darok decided to ignore the sarcasm. “—but there is no place for personal agendas on a ship of the Guardian Fleet. Especially when we have a mission and are in dangerous waters to boot. I hope I’ve made myself
clear.”
“No,” Julean said flatly. “That sort of callous unconcern isn’t something I’ll ever understand.”
“You don’t need to understand the fact that other people have different priorities. Just respect it.”
He went to the hatchway, though as his bootheels thudded against the steps he wondered what he would have done if he had been in Julean’s position, if a woman he loved had vanished somewhere in the heart of the Iron Ocean. Good thing that wasn’t likely to happen. He’d had women, most of whom he still liked, but he hadn’t fallen in love with any of them.
Perhaps it was also a good thing Yerena had no interest in him, because what was the point of caring about a woman who couldn’t return the feeling? Even if she became fond of him, he’d come a very poor third in her heart, after Seawatch and the white death.
He reached the end of the steps. Just outside his cabin door, Yerena had been turning away and she stopped when she saw him. It was so dark he couldn’t see her face clearly, but he could smell her—clean linen and soap and sea wind.
“Did you want something?” he said.
“No, I…” Her head came up. “Yes.”
Her voice was low and controlled as always, but the word was a whisper that stroked his senses like velvet. Darok moved without a second thought, pushing the door open with one hand as the other closed around her wrist and drew her into his cabin.
After she’d left Darok’s cabin that afternoon, Yerena went back to her room and finished embroidering a handkerchief, struggling to keep her attention on her stitches as she worked. In a handful of hours the Turean galleys would reach them, and she thought of Darok facing the pirates alone on the deck. In Seawatch he would be considered insane at worst and dangerously rash at best.
She could tell he liked an all-odds-against-me challenge, though, which was one of the differences between them. Another was that he had connections to so many people—his brother, his crew, other captains in the fleet. He was like the hub of a wheel. She had taken lovers among the Kovirs in Whetstone, but she had never confided in them or cared about them, partly because they treated her as they would have treated any other Yerena and partly because becoming emotionally involved with someone would compromise her efficiency.
The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) Page 10
