The Highest Tide

by Marian Perera

  “You’re only here because I was fool enough to open my mouth to you when I should have kept silent,” she said. “Aren’t you? I told you about Richard Alth so you hotfooted it to this ship. Well, it won’t happen again.”

  Jason looked uncomfortable, though he still met her eyes. “I didn’t say anything to Captain Garser about how I’d heard—”

  “If you did, I’d shove you down the head.” She turned to see the distance they’d traveled from the harbor.

  If she had been the captain, she would have put him off on a boat so he could have rowed back. It would have taken him the better part of the day, but he would be safer there than he would be on board. She didn’t like him, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to die, because too many of her crew had been killed during the race, some before her eyes. They’d known the risks when they’d signed up, but this man wasn’t even armed.

  But Garser must have had his reasons for dragging a landbounder on board like so much ballast. Or cannon fodder.

  “Look, I don’t want to cause any difficulty for you.” His voice was low and tense, and something in it made her glance at him involuntarily. “But this might be the only way to get my job back after what I did. I’m sorry I asked you to tell me more. That won’t happen again either.”

  Keeping a wary distance between the two of them, he walked around her and went down to the deck.

  Jason was careful to avoid her after that, which wasn’t difficult since he stayed away from almost everyone. He wondered about the girl presumably still imprisoned somewhere on the ship, and he wished he could have told Lera about that, but he’d ruined their last conversation about as completely as he’d done their first meeting. And he certainly wasn’t going to risk the little freedom he had by searching for the girl himself.

  The one person on the ship he felt comfortable speaking to was from the Experimental Development branch of the Science Institute. Charlotte Rheme was the kind of person who would study equipment closely for flaws and point out the most minute mistakes in chemical formulae, but she had no such reservations about people. She seemed to take his presence on the ship as a sign of his trustworthiness, and was happy to discuss her work with someone who had the time and patience to listen.

  “So this is a good opportunity to test the rebreather’s performance under field conditions,” she said, holding up the bulky apparatus for his inspection.

  Jason looked it over with no enthusiasm, grateful he wouldn’t be squeezed, strapped and tied into any of it. On the other hand, that was an opportunity to find out more about the warship’s real mission, and he took advantage of it.

  “What problems do you anticipate in its use?” he said.

  “The fact that there’s enough air for a quarter of an hour at the most, and the user only becomes aware of the supply being exhausted once the effects make themselves known.” She tilted her head in a that’s-a-pity gesture. “Underwater, those effects are, shall we say, not insignificant. But we’ll discuss it further with him after we’ve found Princeps.”

  Jason guessed the user had to be Lera’s Denalait companion Kovir, because there couldn’t be any other reason for his presence. He supposed Captain Garser intended to send the boy underwater to sabotage Princeps in some way, but he didn’t see why a Dagran couldn’t have done the same thing, and he said so.

  Charlotte looked surprised. “Didn’t you know he’s bonded to a shark? He can move faster and detect more underwater than our best divers.”

  Recruiting their best divers wouldn’t have bordered on a diplomatic incident or ended in him nearly losing his job, but Jason only excused himself. This was much more complex than finding a ship or engaging it once it was located, and he spent some time trying to see how the pieces all fit together.

  A knock at the door that afternoon got him out of his hammock, but it was a midshipman with a message for him. “Captain Garser invites you to take supper with him in the great cabin at seven bells, sir.”

  “Oh.” Jason was taken aback; supper, in his present state? But he accepted, put his pride away and asked the midshipman to lend him a razor. At least he’d be washed and shaved.

  He was at the great cabin on time, and Captain Garser rose to greet him, offering him a chair to the right of the table’s head. Lera had been placed at the left, so Jason sat down, making a determined effort not to look straight ahead. Her hair was vivid in the candlelight, and he thought of how soft and thick it had felt under his fingers, like a fox’s fur.

  The doctor, the first officer and Kovir had already taken their places, so Charlotte was the last to arrive. Once she was seated, Garser poured rum with an enthusiastic hand. “Gentlemen, and ladies,” he said when each of them had a full glass. “To our safe journey through the Sea of Weeds.”

  “Our safe journey!” The toast echoed around the table, and Jason silently asked the Benevolent Ones for unhindered passage back as well. The steward served the soup, a clear mussel broth with salmon eggs floating on its surface, but before Jason could enjoy any of it, Garser turned to him.

  “Do you know anything of the Sea of Weeds, Mr. Remerley?” he said.

  All eyes turned to Jason—except for Lera, who seemed intent on her soup bowl—and he put his spoon down as he tried to think. Edenography had never been his forte, but he could hardly say that it sounded like a sea with a lot of plants in it. Thankfully, a line from an old poem came to mind.

  “It’s strewn with wrecks caught fast in a green net,” he said, and finished the rest of his rum.

  Garser chuckled and passed the bottle on another circuit of the table. “How dramatic.”

  Jason felt needled. “So there are no wrecks?”

  “Oh, weeds grow faster in the Sea, and there are certainly derelicts. But that’s due to the confluence of wind and current—both are calm in this particular latitude, so the kelp grows tall and sailing ships are becalmed. At least that’s not a concern for a steamship.”

  Jason noticed the slight emphasis on that, and apparently he wasn’t the only one who did. Lera tilted her head.

  “Will the weeds interfere with the propellers?” she said.

  Garser smiled warmly at her. “You know your ships, milady.” The smile grew broader. “I mean, Captain Vanze. They may indeed, but perhaps young Kovir’s shark might be of use there.”

  Kovir set his glass down. “I’m not sending her anywhere near a working propeller.”

  Jason couldn’t imagine any of the midshipmen of Kovir’s age speaking like that to the captain and getting away with it. Garser leveled a sharp look at Kovir and signaled the steward to serve the next course.

  “But nothing may happen,” he said. “Last year about this time, the Queen Anne crossed the Sea and returned with no difficulty whatsoever, and she’s a frigate much like this.”

  “Interesting,” Lera said. Jason glanced at her, but she had turned to address Garser, resting one elbow on the table like a barrier between her and everyone else. Mostly him. “That Dagre has done away with the feudal system and yet some ships still bear traditional names.”

  “Oh, a few remembrances of royalty past won’t hurt anyone. Are there no ships in the Denalait fleet named after your leaders, Captain Vanze?”

  Lera licked a drop of rum off her upper lip, and Jason wondered if she’d done that deliberately. “We only have the one, and it needs no such glory.”

  The steward served cuts of venison cooked in wine, though Jason didn’t have much of an appetite when he realized Garser was taking more of an interest in Lera. His next question to her was about the mysterious presence which supposedly governed Denalay.

  “I’ve heard no one has actually seen the ruler of your land.” He refilled her glass. “Is that true?”

  “Only the Council of Eyes and Voices can look upon the face of the Unity.” Lera’s tone suggested she’d memorized that explanation at her mother’s kn
ee and, as a result, saw nothing odd or interesting about it. Jason didn’t understand at all. He believed in the Benevolent Ones, certainly, but he would have been instantly skeptical of any person who claimed to have a special, secret connection to the gods that no one else could share.

  “How intriguing,” Garser said. “They’ve seen the Unity, but you feel no wish to do the same?”

  When Lera smiled, one corner of her mouth curved up while the other stayed where it was, trapped by the thick barrier of scar tissue. “You can look at the noonday sun through a spyglass, Captain. Why don’t you do so?”

  Garser’s grin turned to a deep chuckle. “Well said, Captain Vanze.” He lifted his glass. “To the Unity!”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Lera said and clinked her glass against his. Jason wondered if she knew Garser was married. Perhaps she did and it didn’t matter; they were both away from home, after all. Garser didn’t flirt too obviously with her—he wasn’t that rude a host when there were others at the table—but it seemed only too noticeable to Jason.

  He tried to enjoy the rest of the meal, because the pear tart with sharp cheese was delicious, but Lera showed no indication of leaving the table when he finally thanked Garser for the excellent meal and the steward showed him out. Kovir was quick to follow, which made Jason feel a little better; the Denalait boy hadn’t seemed thrilled to be eating at the captain’s table either.

  “Are you going to your room?” he asked, for lack of anything better to say. From behind the closed door of the great cabin, he heard Garser’s rumbling laughter, and his ears strained for the sound of Lera joining in. Assuming she laughed, which wasn’t exactly a given. Why couldn’t he have fallen for some nice, ordinary woman instead of a foreign hellion?

  “No,” Kovir said. “I’m going topside.”

  Jason would have liked to do the same thing, to watch the stars and feel the wind on his face, but music drifted down from the deck and the sailors began an old song. He’d heard that one before—it was about a man who saw a mermaid rise out of the sea.

  Her kiss was the taste of the mist and foam,

  Her touch stole the memory of his wife and home.

  Her cool silver blood was a witch’s potion,

  Her arms took him down to the deepest ocean.

  And locked like a pearl in a guarded vault

  Her sweet swelled breasts hid a heart of salt.

  He shook his head sharply. No, he didn’t need to think about anyone’s sweet swelled breasts, especially not tonight.

  “Is your shark nearby?” he said instead.

  It sounded like a stupid question, and he knew he’d only asked it because he was still distracted by everything that had happened in Garser’s quarters. But evidently inquiring about the shark had been the right thing to say.

  “Always,” Kovir replied, and there was more warmth in the one word than in anything he’d said at the dinner table. “If you’d like to see her, I’ll be at the starboard rail tomorrow after breakfast.”

  Something to look forward to, Jason thought, and sure enough Kovir was at the right side of the ship the next morning. If the rebreather had been unusual, Kovir’s clothes were completely outlandish. He was covered from neck to wrists to ankles with a kind of leather Jason had never seen before, a smooth brown hide patterned with faded darker streaks. A wet glass mask hung around his neck, gleaming when he turned, and more water dripped from his hair and outfit, though if he was in any discomfort he didn’t show it.

  Jason joined him, but a quick, cautious glance showed nothing out of the ordinary in the water. He leaned a little farther over the rail, in case the shark was swimming in the shadow of the hull.

  “Isn’t it here?” he said finally.

  “She’s close.” Kovir didn’t seem especially interested in elaborating on that and turned to look toward the prow. “The Sea of Weeds is close too.”

  Jason could see what he meant. Strands of seaweed already threaded their way through the waves, and against the water, the fronds stood out clearly—brown and green and reddish-gold. They bobbed in the froth churned up by the propellers, and here and there the weeds grew densely enough to weave themselves into mats which lay thick on the surface. With a shriek, a seagull fluttered down and alighted on one of those, beak diving down to peck at the tangled weeds.

  Something like the halves of a huge bear-trap snapped shut around bird and plants alike. Both were gone in the next moment. A heavy form slapped water aside as it fell back into the waves, but it twisted gracefully once it was beneath the surface. Half-rolling, it swam parallel to the ship, pointed dorsal and stripe-dappled back flashing into view before it was nothing more than an indistinct shape below the waves.

  Jason had all but leaped back from the gunwale when the shark’s jaws had come together, and his heart hammered as he peered over the rail again. Kovir looked as though nothing could ever take him by surprise, least of all a shark.

  “I told you she was close,” he said.

  “Is she likely to grow any more?” Jason pushed his hair back from his forehead, feeling dampness on his skin. “Until today, the largest fish I saw was a freshwater pike, stuffed with mushrooms and served at a banquet.”

  There was no change in Kovir’s expression, but he actually sounded pleased when he replied as briefly as always. “No, she’s reached her full size.”

  “And you ride on her back?”

  “Every day before dawn. But I’ll do it more often once we enter the Sea, to guide and to guard.”

  His voice quietened and grew solemn, as though the last phrase had been the words of his house. If there were such concepts in Denalay, which Jason couldn’t be sure of. He didn’t have anything else to say, so Kovir went to the nearest hatch, leaving a damp trail behind him.

  Jason stood at the prow, watching the water before Nemesis turn gradually green, and hoped Kovir was indeed able to do what he had just said, because the poem he’d read about the Sea had been called “The Poison Garden”. And where there was a garden, there was sure to be a serpent.

  By nightfall, they were at the Sea of Weeds.

  Chapter Five

  Wild Sargasso Sea

  Kovir hated the rebreather.

  He said nothing, because Seawatch operatives didn’t complain, but his head might as well have been stuffed into a sausage skin. The hood with its attached glass mask smelled strange, and a flexible tube that tasted stranger went into his mouth. The tube led into another complicated part of the equipment strapped to his chest, but that wasn’t as heavy as the cast-iron cylinder he had to carry on his back. He couldn’t walk ten paces with it on.

  Charlotte paced a circle around him, twisting and poking and adjusting various parts of the apparatus. “You know,” she said to Captain Garser, “if we could put a harness on the shark, we could attach two air cylinders to it and the weight wouldn’t be a concern.”

  “She’s not a pony,” Kovir mumbled through the tube in his mouth, but no one seemed to hear him. He was grateful it was just before dawn, when there were fewer people on deck to gape.

  They had reached the Sea of Weeds the night before, but Garser had decided not to enter it at that time. Kovir thought that was sensible, though as Lera pointed out in their cabin, the decision might have had something to do with the derelict they’d sighted. When they had dropped anchor for the night, the derelict had been so far away it was little more than a clump of greenery poking up from the sea, like a tiny island.

  It seemed slightly closer now, though, and before he’d been ordered into the rebreather, Kovir had taken a look through a spyglass. He made out two masts wrapped in weed, and rigging that had turned to a sheet of fronds that seemed to twitch despite the lack of wind.

  The ship’s engine had been stopped the night before. Bluffly confident though he might appear, Garser was not taking any chances, which was why Kovir would be sen
t to both scout ahead and test the rebreather. The prospect didn’t scare him, because Seawatch training emphasized never feeling fear—the sharks were only too quick to sense that and respond to it. Besides, even if the rebreather malfunctioned several yards below the waves, he had his shark. He could remain in control long enough for her to bring him back to the surface.

  “How does it work?” Jason said.

  Charlotte looked pleased to have been asked. “The design is of course proprietary, but the principle is simple enough. To a certain extent, air is safe to breathe after it has been exhaled, as long as the waste gases are removed from it.” She touched the tube leading out of Kovir’s mouth. “That conveys exhaled air to a chemical chamber, and after it’s been purified it can be breathed again. Though not over and over.”

  “Are the chemicals safe?” Lera said suspiciously.

  “Oh yes. Well, as long as nothing tears open the chestpack. Sodium hydroxide is a caustic—”

  “Another advantage of such a system,” Garser cut in, “is that rebreathers don’t produce bubbles, so they’re not likely to give away your position to someone watching from above. But we’re wasting time. Kovir, are you ready to start?”

  Kovir went to the gunwale where a rope ladder hung ready. Climbing over the rail was an effort, and by the time he managed that—thankfully without needing assistance—he was sweating beneath his watersuit and the thick coating of grease that covered his skin. Unable to bend his head far enough to see the rungs of the ladder, he felt for each with his flippered feet as he moved down. He also touched the shark’s mind to make certain she was calm, in case she took it into her head to attack the air cylinder.

  The waves closed over his head and most of the weight disappeared.

  Oh. He’d forgotten about the buoyancy effect of the water. He felt the solidity of cast iron at his back, but the straps no longer dug into his shoulders, and although the air both smelled and tasted funny, he didn’t have to surface for a breath. He could stay down without any ill effects and scout underwater without having to constantly monitor himself for signs of air deprivation.