The Highest Tide

by Marian Perera

  Kicking out, he pushed away from the hull, and the shark swept past him, slowly enough that he could grasp her dorsal fin as he swung himself on to her back. Although he was starting to enjoy the rebreather, he forced himself to ignore that, because the shark was excitable enough already without him making her any more so.

  She was used to their morning routine, though, and that helped settle her despite the unfamiliarity of his new appearance. Flicking her tail, she moved forward past the stalled ship and into the green.

  With the sun shining down, turning the water above them to the palest of blue, it was like being in a forest. Fronded columns of kelp rose on all sides, swaying lightly in the wake of their passage, and clouds of tiny fish flittered past. The shark wove easily through the maze of green, and Kovir held her to a steady sweep of the Sea. It was dense—visibility was limited to whatever was directly before them—and he anticipated frequent cleaning of the befouled propellers, but there seemed no danger otherwise.

  From the corner of his glass mask, he saw a humanoid figure on the seabed beneath them.

  Turn. He imagined the shark slewing as he did so, and her body veered an instant later. She spun on her axis as the jolt of surprise reached her through their link, but Kovir regretted his loss of control. Obviously what he’d seen had been a statue or figurehead, probably fallen from a derelict ship and now robed in sea moss. Well, with the rebreather he could swim down and take a closer look, perhaps retrieve anything valuable.

  The statue was gone. He took the shark lower, her belly ruffling a thick stand of purple podwrack, and did a slow circle of the area. There was no sign any ship had been wrecked nearby.

  Kovir inhaled and exhaled, letting the shark have her head as he looked all around. He didn’t imagine things. Seawatch operatives weren’t fanciful. So what had just happened?

  Great spreads of watergrass fanned softly beneath him. Feathery fronds whispered. Shadows moved and darted in unseen currents, and he was only too aware of how far beneath the surface he was, so deep the horsetails went from red to the color of long-clotted blood. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, that the seaforest knew him for an intruder.

  The shark felt his uneasiness at once, and she swam in a tight circle, muscles tensing beneath her thick, scarred hide. The skin between Kovir’s shoulder blades prickled. He turned his head as far as he could to left and right, trying to see for certain if there was anything to be afraid of. The fish had all disappeared, but that was what fish generally did when an agitated shark was in the vicinity.

  Maybe his reaction was the result of being in such an unfamiliar place. Or the air in the rebreather was used up and he was feeling the effects. Yes, that was probably it, so he imagined them both rising to the surface. The shark seemed only too happy to comply, and they broke through the waves seconds later.

  Kovir pulled off the mask, sucking in gulps of air, and let the shark feel his relief and satisfaction to both calm and reward her. Then he composed himself before she took him back to Nemesis.

  Charlotte was pleased at the success of the rebreather—he’d been down for the whole quarter of an hour, though it had felt like longer—and Captain Garser lifted a hand as if about to clap him on the shoulder, but apparently thought better of it, to Kovir’s relief. He hated being touched by people he didn’t know very well.

  “Anything to report?” Garser said instead.

  “No, sir.” Seeing a green statue that disappeared was no better than imagining mermaids, and Kovir had no intention of becoming the laughingstock of a Dagran vessel.

  “Good. Cook’s saved some breakfast for you, but we don’t have enough for the shark, I’m afraid.”

  “She doesn’t need it,” Kovir said. Seawatch did everything possible to make certain sharks didn’t connect humans with food. Besides, if his shark expected tidbits in return for obedience, he would have to carry meat when scouting—and knowing her, she would probably spill him off her back and go straight for the meat.

  Charlotte helped him unstrap the apparatus. The cast-iron cylinder was lowered to the deck, and the hood finally came off. Kovir went down to his cabin and Lera vacated it so he could peel off his watersuit, but once he was cleaned off and dressed, she came back in with his meal. He thanked her and ate as the boilers rumbled into life in the engine room beneath them.

  “Did you see any of those derelicts more closely?” she said.

  “No, sir.” The masses of kelp had been disconcerting enough without coming up beneath the looming dark hull of a ship, a once-living thing turned into an outpost of the forest. He didn’t want to imagine what those derelicts would be like inside.

  The ship lurched slightly around them, but the tiny jolt smoothed itself out into the usual steady propulsion, and Lera got up. “I’ll be on deck. Better rest while you can. Even at full steam, it’ll take us a day and a night to cross the Sea.”

  Kovir nodded, but after she had gone he lay in his hammock with his eyes half-open. The ceiling of the cabin above him fragmented into softly stirring fronds, and all around was the whisper of the Sea as his mind locked with the shark’s and his senses fused with hers.

  She felt as though something was watching, too.

  It was a relief, Lera thought, when the ship moved again—not only because it made good speed but because staying motionless under the sun would have been intolerable after long. She wondered if that was how the crews of the derelicts had died—trapped and held to desiccate slowly in the summer heat.

  Best not to think about them, though as Nemesis surged farther into the Sea, she realized how fortunate she was to be aboard a steamship. Watching through a spyglass, she could make out a schooner far to the right, its sails long since rotted away and tendrils spilling from its gunports. Another ship, on the opposite side of Nemesis, was close enough for her to recognize it without the spyglass’s help. The curved stern and single mast meant it was a trireme, with a brutally effective ram mounted on the prow below the waterline—exactly where it would strike other ships.

  Now the trireme lay in the water at a slight angle, every scrap of paint long since flaked away from its rotting wood. A blanket of weeds covered it, glistening in the sun.

  Nemesis continued its course, plants spattering away from both sides of its prow. Garser stood there, watching ahead, but some of the off-duty crew had gathered in the shadow of a funnel, talking in low voices. Lera went closer to listen.

  She stopped as soon as she heard Jason’s voice and stayed where she was, half-hidden behind the funnel. “It may be completely random,” he was saying, out of her line of sight. “Not influenced by anything we do or fail to do.”

  A few dissatisfied mutters and silence greeted that, but Charlotte spoke up. “If you consider the number of derelicts we’ve seen, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The number of warships which have passed safely through the Sea of Weeds is far greater, so statistically speaking, we should be fine.”

  No one seemed to like that either. “Yes, ma’am,” a deckhand said, “but what if we’re one of those who—”

  “What d’you think, Captain?” another man said, and leaned sideways to face Lera. There were stirs and rustles as everyone else turned to look in her direction as well.

  Lera didn’t mind being the center of attention when she was on her own ship, but with all eyes on her, she felt as though she’d been standing entirely too close to the funnel—or inside it. Since she couldn’t hide any longer, she stepped out, and the Dagrans moved as if to make a space for her, not that she had any intention of joining them. Particularly since she could see Jason now, and was pretending not to do so.

  “What do you make of it, Captain?” A younger man pulled his cap off. “Why some ships get caught fast and overgrown but others don’t?”

  Lera tried to think. She wasn’t the most imaginative person, especially not when she was the focus
of all eyes, but the young man looked up at her as if he didn’t want to be disappointed. “Something the ships are carrying, maybe?”

  “Plants do display chemotaxis,” Charlotte said. “In other words, they can grow towards certain chemicals. However, we’re not carrying anything that seaweed would need but would be unable to obtain from the ocean.”

  Well, that had been her best effort and she had nothing else to offer, so she shrugged. Much as she didn’t want to admit it, she thought Jason was right—it was probably random, like a lightning strike. The crew would hate that, because it meant there was nothing they could do, but they had to accept it. In any case, by this time tomorrow they would be well clear of the great web of weeds. She went back to the gunwale to keep watching over the side.

  “Ma’am?” someone said behind her. It was the young man who had spoken to her earlier, his cap still clutched before him. He twisted it in his hands, looking for all the world as though the crowd of his friends had pushed him forward to do something the rest of them didn’t want to do.

  “Yes?” she said, trying to sound encouraging.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but what happened to your face?”

  For a moment she didn’t believe she had heard correctly, except the flush creeping up the young man’s skin was more vivid than a sunburn and he looked down at the deck. She glanced sideways at the prow, where Garser’s back was turned as he stared ahead.

  “You wanted to know what happened to my face?” She pitched her voice as loudly as she could, until it felt as though it came from the base of her belly and reverberated off the brass funnels like a bell. Everyone stared, a tool of some kind clattered to the deck, and Garser turned around as she continued at the same volume. “I used to ask personal questions of complete strangers. One of them didn’t like it.”

  The young man went red to the roots of his hair. He muttered some sort of apology to her feet, turned and bolted back behind the funnels. Someone snickered, but there seemed to be no other sound or movement on the deck.

  Lera wished she could feel some sort of vindication, but her face prickled and the sun didn’t warm her any longer. She had long ago grown used to what she saw in a mirror and she hadn’t even hated the people responsible for it, but there were times she longed to look normal, and that was one of them. Turning, she straightened her spine, threw back her shoulders and looked out over the Sea with her head held high. Just come anywhere near me now. Anyone.

  An officer called out a sharp order and the gathering on the deck dispersed. Garser made a small correction in their course. Wind dried the dampness on the back of her neck, and the scent of frying pork stole from the galley, not that she had any appetite. Then she heard heavy footsteps cross the deck towards her.

  She knew who it was at once. Only two men who had witnessed the spectacle would have approached her—Garser, because that was his ship, and Jason, because he had the gall to do anything. Sunlight glinted off the gold trim of Garser’s uniform and made the royal blue look all the deeper in comparison as he stood beside her. She turned her head a fraction to acknowledge him.

  “The men have a wager,” he said. “Each of them pays a half-silver into the pot. Whoever correctly guesses how you became scarred takes it all. I thought it was best you learn about this from me.”

  Lera either knew or guessed that every new recruit to her own crew had wondered about her scar as well. She’d once overheard a speculation that pirates had done that to her, though it had been quickly sunk when someone else had pointed out that pirates wouldn’t have stopped at just disfiguring her.

  What hadn’t occurred to her was that money would ride on the answer. Her chest tightened as if the air had grown thick and difficult to breathe, but her pride kept her from showing any reaction. She didn’t swallow or clench her fingers on the rail.

  “Do you approve of this?” she said.

  Garser’s brows shot up. “Did I say I approved, Captain Vanze? My duties don’t involve supervising the men’s leisure time, but I do expect them to treat you with the respect you deserve as a guest on board, no matter what they say and do out of your hearing. So I’ll make sure such incidents are not repeated. It should never have happened in the first place. Paul is a young fool and I apologize on his behalf.”

  Lera turned back to watching the Sea. She supposed if Paul had been smarter and more patient, he might have tried to wangle his way into her confidence rather than blurting out what everyone wanted to know. All of her face felt as stiff as the right side.

  Garser seemed to take the hint and moved away, but much as Lera appreciated her solitude, she felt very much alone. She didn’t mind that when she was on her own ship, with plenty of duties to see to, but it was different being a guest on a foreign vessel.

  Rather than joining the crew at the galley, she kept her distance from them. In any event, it wouldn’t hurt her to miss a meal or two. Half a lifetime on sailing ships had turned the muscles in her limbs to whipcords, and she would have liked it if all her body had the same hard trimness. Instead her breasts were the reason she kept her uniform coat on at noon, and no amount of climbing through the rigging had reduced the flare of her hips.

  The water had disappeared entirely by then. Nemesis cut a swath through plants, like a plowman through a field of tall grass, and progress slowed. Lera guessed that was more due to the sheer thickness of the weeds rather than the propellers being fouled, because Kovir wasn’t called for. By then she was hungry enough that it distracted her from watching, so she went down to her cabin to wait until dinner.

  The continual, muffled roar and clank and gurgle of the combustion chamber, boilers, pistons and crankshafts was as loud as always. No ship was truly silent until it was dead, but a steamship was so strident that she tried to exert herself as much as possible during the day, to make herself tired enough to sleep despite the sounds. It was just as noisy then, but she could see from the window that the ship moved as if through sludge.

  The sun dipped to the horizon and the Sea swallowed it up. With a sound like a deep rattling sigh, the machinery stopped.

  Lera rolled out of her hammock. By the time she was topside, the last wisps of smoke were drifting from the funnels, which reflected the multiple gleams of the lanterns hanging from the ship’s single mast and along the stays. Kovir was already in his watersuit, which Seawatch operatives wore like a uniform whenever they anticipated action, but he wasn’t wearing the rebreather.

  “I can stay on the deck while I have her clear the propellers, Captain,” he said when she asked him if he was going over the side. That was good. Even weed-infested to the point where nothing was visible below the surface, the water hadn’t bothered her during the day, but now she felt surrounded by a jungle. The air smelled pungent, and the usual whsh of waves, a sound as familiar to her as her own breathing, was changed too. Soft wet scratchings filled the night instead, as though thousands of minute tendrils were rubbing against the hull from all sides.

  The sooner we’re out of this, the safer.

  Kovir’s eyes took on a distant blankness, his face losing what little expression it usually possessed. Garser and Charlotte watched him, but there was no sign of Jason anywhere, which Lera thought was also good. He belonged belowdecks at a time like that.

  She glanced over the rail. Impossible to see anything, even a fifteen-foot-long shark, through the great spreads of weeds, especially since the red in the western sky had darkened to crimson by then. Then again, the propellers were far enough below the surface that the shark would—

  Kovir jerked, stumbling back. As Lera caught the movement in the corner of her eye and spun around, he gasped as though an unseen pillow had been pressed down over his face.

  “She—can’t breathe.” His voice was soft and choked.

  “What?” Lera said.

  “I—she can’t breathe. It felt like sticking my head in an oven.”

 
; “She’s in the water, right? How can she not breathe?”

  Charlotte frowned, but on her it was clearly a look of concentration. “It must be the plants. They use up the air dissolved in the water too, and in the dark, they’re not replenishing any of it—”

  “Have to get her away.” Kovir struggled for breath.

  The rustlings all around the ship grew louder, like wordless whispers. In the light of the lanterns, she saw Garser open his mouth as if to speak but then he shut it, probably realizing Kovir wasn’t going to condemn his shark to a slow death by suffocation.

  “We’ll have to wait till morning,” she said. “Then we can send someone down to clear the propellers.”

  Garser’s look told her he didn’t like someone else making those kinds of decisions on his ship, but he nodded curtly and that was all the agreement Lera wanted or needed when it came to the safety and well-being of Denalaits. Once Kovir seemed to have recovered, she turned her attention back to the Sea. The normal sounds of waves turned to heavy liquid slitherings in the dark, but if that was all it could do, they could outlast it until daylight. Night terrors always seemed smaller come the dawn.

  The ring of lanterns at the ship’s periphery glowed, but the light traveled for no more than a foot or two. After that, it might as well have fallen into ink. The lookouts stood at their positions and the rest of the crew waited, but the enforced inactivity seemed to be taking its toll, and she heard the officers on the quarterdeck talking in low voices.

  Garser certainly couldn’t fire cannons at the weeds holding the propellers fast, she knew, so that option was out. Hellfire, then? No, because although the coppered hull protected Nemesis from the worst of that, hellfire floated on water, so it would only burn what was on the surface. And perhaps he might not want to disturb the Sea… Well, any more than it was disturbed already.