“Well, why didn’t he say so? I could have had a cookie to dip in this. I thought it was some kind of strange foreign food.”
“In any case, we only eat flies on holy days.” He grinned at her expression. “I’m joking. We’re not that bizarre.”
She pitched the empty mug at him and he caught it. “Funny. But stop it, because I want to ask you something.”
“Yes?” Benevolent Ones help him, but his pulse beat a little faster at the change in her tone. She sounded—not serious, exactly, because she always seemed serious—but as if she had thought something through deeply and yet couldn’t be sure of her conclusion. He knew she wouldn’t ask him to spend the night with her, because she was obviously worn out and needed all the rest she could get before the battle. But just sleeping next to her, holding her, would have been good.
“Will you stay belowdecks?” She pushed herself off the chest and stood up. “When we attack.”
Jason frowned. “Why?”
An exasperated look crossed her face. “Because you’re a civilian and you don’t know about ordinary fighting, let alone being on the deck of a warship during an engagement.” She sighed, and now she looked tired rather than annoyed. “But there’s more to it. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Jason started to reply, then closed his mouth. Odd that she was so sensible and hard-as-nails most of the time, but would give in to a strange feeling now.
She’d noticed his reaction, and she folded her arms stubbornly. “I’m not silly or superstitious—”
“I never said you were—”
“—but this is how I felt before Kovir got taken prisoner. We thought that would go smoothly and look what happened. I’m worried something will go wrong tomorrow as well.”
Jason considered that, but not for long, because he was the last person in the world who could fault her for following a gut feeling. Besides, it touched him that she wanted him to be safe.
“If it’s important to you, of course I will,” he said. “Probably just as well, because I never learned to swim. But this battle will go one of two ways. Either Nemesis will crush Princeps, given her far greater firepower, or Nemesis will be caught in the blast zone of the explosives, in which case it won’t matter where I am.”
Lera frowned. “Everyone says ships above a tidal wave aren’t affected.”
“Call me skeptical. I’m also half-suspicious that the only reason Princeps isn’t running is so they can lure us into a trap.”
“What kind of trap could there be? I said I had a bad feeling, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with Princeps. That ship will be caught between us and the island. And it’s not like you people have sea monsters at your command. No one could get near the hull without Kovir’s shark noticing.”
Jason had to admit that was true, so he took the empty mugs back to the galley and then, on impulse, went to the infirmary. He walked in as quietly as he could, but although Kovir was lying on a bunk, he seemed wide awake and was watching the ceiling until he noticed Jason.
“How are you?” Jason said. “I hope you got something for the pain.”
Kovir’s shoulder twitched. His eyes had the bright glaze of fever and his left arm, heavily bandaged, lay on the sheet that covered him.
“Numbing ointment on my feet and my arm.” His voice was listless. “I can’t afford to be sleepy.”
Of course, because his shark might be needed in the battle. Jason sighed inwardly. As if everything the boy had gone through already wasn’t bad enough, he couldn’t even take laudanum and get some rest.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” he said.
Kovir frowned. “Why? You didn’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry because this isn’t your fight and it should never have happened to you.” He could see he wasn’t making matters any clearer, so he switched paths. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, but you can stay here if you have nowhere else to go.”
Jason had the distinct impression the boy was taking pity on him—a landbound foreigner with no clearly defined role on the warship, who wasn’t making any sense into the bargain—but it was true he didn’t have anywhere else to go and he certainly couldn’t have slept. He sat on an empty bunk nearby. Kovir didn’t seem to need conversation any more than he needed company, because he kept staring up.
There were neither windows nor an hourglass in the infirmary, so Jason had no idea how much time was passing. He stretched tiredly and leaned against the wall.
“The wind’s changed,” Kovir said.
“Oh?” Jason sat up, not knowing quite why he was doing so. Maybe because there had been the slightest flicker of excitement beneath the flatness of the boy’s voice.
“The weather gauge.” Kovir’s eyes turned sideways to him. “They’re downwind of us, so they can’t alter course at will to attack. Captain Garser should move now.”
“Is it dawn yet?”
“It will be, soon enough.”
Jason couldn’t be certain, but he thought the constant rumble of the engine below them was growing louder. Though the sound was drowned by the clink and rattle of equipment sliding as the ship began to turn. Kovir didn’t exactly smile, but the corners of his mouth moved a little.
Oh yes, definitely louder. The engine was a muted roar, and Jason couldn’t help wishing he was on the deck to see the first—and hopefully last—naval battle of his life. Kovir was fortunate that way, being able to watch through his shark’s eyes.
Overhead were more heavy grinding sounds. Jason glanced up reflexively, but he knew at once it was the cannons being readied, or heavy shot rolling across the deck. His heart thumped like an echo.
“I suppose Captain Vanze will be topside,” he said.
Kovir’s eyes were half-lidded and his voice distant, detached. “Don’t worry. She’s used to battles.”
Far away, a drum sounded and a trumpet sang out in a call to arms. Jason heard the thud of feet and muffled calls as the crew moved into position. Dr. Strant and his aide entered, clanking surgical instruments on a table before they both looked askance at him.
“Is there something we can do for you, Mr. Remerley?” Dr. Strant asked.
“He’s taking care of me,” Kovir answered before Jason could say anything. Dr. Strant didn’t look as though he either liked or believed that reply, but he said nothing. Jason glanced at Kovir. Impossible as usual to read anything into the boy’s expression, but he knew Kovir was very well aware that after the Princeps incident, no one on Nemesis was going to refuse him any but the most outrageous demands.
He was glad to stay, though. “What are they doing?”
“Gunports open.” Kovir’s eyelids drifted shut. “Ours and theirs.” There was a distant, muffled sound of thunder. “They fired, but we’re not close enough yet. I think we have the longer guns too. Oh, they ran up a battle flag.”
Nemesis turned again and moments later the cannons blasted overhead. The sound was so deep and powerful that Jason felt it in his bones. “Direct hit broadside,” Kovir said.
Jason got to his feet, because he couldn’t remain sitting any longer. Something was…off. Richard Alth had picked his position well—safely beyond the Sea of Weeds, an island at his back so he couldn’t be taken by surprise—and he’d played most of his cards right. So why wasn’t he doing something clever like using those explosives? He had to see how outgunned he was, and he had to have planned for that eventuality.
Again the thunder struck, but Jason pushed it out of his mind. The explosives were unlikely to be on the seabed, and since they didn’t float, they weren’t anywhere near the surface either. Or on Princeps, which would be suicide. That left…
…the island? But what use could they possibly be there?
“What the hell?” Kovir said.
“What is it?” Jason said tensely.
That time, when the thunder roared, Nemesis trembled. Everything down to the flames in the lanterns swayed slightly and Jason held on to a partitioning wall, but Dr. Strant shook his head. “That was a glancing blow,” he said. “Probably to divert our attention from Princeps. What’s the ship’s name, Kovir?”
“Pelican. Flying the red as well.”
So Richard had two ships. Jason wasn’t sure how Nemesis would fare against both of them, but that had almost distracted him from his line of thought. The island. Why would the explosives be there?
He imagined the island, saw it in his mind’s eye as if he was about to paint it. The long, low eastern beach, pale in the dawn, sloping up to clusters of trees that in turn gave way to rocky hills. That was the heart of the island. From there the ridge of hills spread out to the south, wide rolling stretches of rock that rose and fell like dunes—or waves. Those ended in great grey cliffs that jutted out over the water at such a steep angle no ship would ever have sailed beneath them. One tap on the undersurface of those cliffs might be all they needed to come…crashing…down.
“That’s where they are,” he said, turning to Kovir. “The explosives. You couldn’t find them in the sea because they’re on the island, somewhere on those cliffs to the south. No, not on them. Buried deep enough that when they’re detonated, they’ll split the entire cliff off from the island.”
“But what would that…” Dr. Strant stopped and Jason knew he’d figured it out too.
“What anything entering the sea does.” Kovir’s eyes opened, but alone among them he sounded completely calm. “It displaces its own volume of water. And the faster it enters, the more of a splash—except in this case, the splash will be a wave—”
The cannons thundered out again, this time from both sides of Nemesis, and Jason’s ears rang. He might have taken the next report as an echo, but the ship lurched with the impact, rocking to one side before she steadied. The infirmary’s walls seemed to have moved a little closer together and the air was thick, warm from the lanterns. Far away, he heard screams.
Kovir must have noticed the sound too, because his gaze grew unfocused. “Bows,” he said. “Pelican closed with us enough for our starboard battery to rip the guts out of her—but she could never have matched us in firepower anyway. She was a sacrifice ship, that’s all, and most of her crew was hiding on deck with bows.”
Jason could imagine the withering hail that had fallen on Nemesis. He hoped to all the gods Lera wasn’t hurt.
“Doctor!” someone shouted, and Dr. Strant spun around. A sailor staggered in, supporting another man bleeding from an arrow’s shaft lodged in his back. In the next instant the aide had tossed a clean cloth over a table and sand on the floor, almost in the same movement, and Dr. Strant helped lift the man on to the table for surgery.
“We’ll deal with what you told me as soon as the battle’s done, Mr. Remerley,” he said over his shoulder. “Bill, the shears.”
A midshipman stumbled into the infirmary, one red-sleeved arm hanging by his side, but he shook his head at Dr. Strant’s quick look. “I’m all right, Doctor. I can wait.” His face was sweat-filmed, though, and Bill made him sit down.
“How goes the battle?” Jason hoped that would take his mind off the pain. The midshipman’s lips drew back from his teeth in a rictus of a smile.
“Very well,” he said.
Jason tried not to wonder what it would have been like if the battle had been going badly. More men were coming in—or being carried, leaving dark trails across the floor, and he helped lift an unconscious Lieutenant Drale into a free bunk. He could barely hear the slam of cannon-shot striking home over the groans of wounded men—and the occasional cry of pain.
He slipped out of the infirmary and went down to the brig. If there had been a man still stationed there, he would have gone back, but no one sat on the crate outside. Meghan lay on the pallet, not lifting her head as he came up to the bars.
“Where’s the man who’s supposed to be on guard here?” he said.
“Everyone’s needed in a battle, I suppose.”
Jason rubbed his jaw, feeling bristles rasp under his palm. “Hypothetical question,” he said. “You have a choice between two outcomes. First, you go back home and submit yourself to the judgment and mercy of the Council. Bearing in mind that they’re bound to be lenient, given that you proved yourself helpful to our mission.”
She propped herself up on an elbow, blue eyes staring at him and through him. “Go on.”
“Second, you leave. The only land nearby is one of these islands, but none of them are inhabited. You wouldn’t starve and you’d be left alone. From there, I’m not sure what would happen. Maybe a neutral ship of some kind would rescue you, maybe you’d build a raft and sail back home, where you’d be wise enough not to tell anyone your real name. Or maybe you’d be injured, and without anyone to help you, you’d die.”
“The second one.” Meghan spoke without hesitation.
Jason wondered how much a nineteen-year-old might have seen—or done—that would make her prefer solitude and a possible early death to social justice. His childhood looked positively rosy in comparison. But she had made her decision.
His hand came up with the bunch of keys he’d taken from Lieutenant Drale’s pocket, and he turned the correct one in the lock. “Choose your moment carefully.” Though he didn’t have to tell her of all people that. “And good luck.”
He went back to the infirmary, but just as he replaced the keys, Dr. Strant called him over without looking up from his work. Jason tried to join him without actually observing the surgery, but Strant waved him impatiently away with an elbow. His hands were gloved in red. “They’ll need help getting the rest of the injured down from the deck,” he said.
There was a distinct undertone of make yourself useful instead of taking up space in his voice, and Jason left hastily. In any case, despite the nature of his work, he’d never been too comfortable with copious quantities of blood or exposed internal organs, and he wanted to make sure Lera was all right. He turned sideways to allow an officer on a stretcher to be carried past him, then hurried up the ladder to the deck.
Sails of fire.
That was the first sight he had of the ship Pelican. Nemesis would have spat hellfire at it, aiming high at the sails while the cannons bit into the ship’s belly, and the ship was dead in the water. The burning sails were vividly bright against the sky, giving off more smoke than Nemesis’s funnels did, and the wind only seemed to fan those flames.
On the warship’s other side, Princeps’s cannons fired occasionally, and the sound made him crouch below the gunwale, but water spurted up where the shot landed. Maybe Nemesis had already moved out of range of them, if Garser preferred to engage one enemy at a time.
Screams rose from the water. Jason realized men were leaping off Pelican’s deck, and they might have been able to swim to Princeps or at least stay afloat long enough to be picked up. If not for the shark. Some of those shouts of panic or pleas for help seemed to be cut off halfway. Much like what happened to a man in a shark’s jaws, he supposed.
The deck was covered with debris and the occasional body clearly so dead there was no point in taking it below. He stepped over those and moved towards the quarterdeck.
Something spanggged off a funnel. Jason ducked reflexively, but realized a moment later that arrows were still flying at Nemesis. He glanced out from behind the funnel. Archers hid behind a line of barrels on Pelican and fired out from between those—perhaps they’d seen striped death prowling the water and had decided to die on their own deck. Feathered shafts stuck quivering from Nemesis’s gunwale and the mast.
A few yards ahead of him on the quarterdeck, he saw Garser fall.
Blood streaked the quarterdeck and was slippery beneath his b
oots, though that made it easier to drag Garser behind the capstan, the only cover Jason could see. The arrow had gone deep into Garser’s thigh, but he was conscious, struggling to sit up. From Pelican came a long, low crrrrk.
Jason glanced up, just as Pelican’s tallest mast came down.
It crashed into the next mast, then collapsed in a rush of flames and splintering wood. The archers vanished from sight, and he doubted any of them were alive to scream, but the broken, burning mast tilted at an angle before it came down ponderously. The tip, with the crow’s nest turned to a crown of fire, slammed into Nemesis’s rail.
The warship’s deck lurched in that direction. Jason lost his balance and staggered against the gunwale. This time, the sound of splitting wood was much closer. Already weakened by cannon-shot, part of the gunwale gave way. In the next moment he was falling, and the water closed over his head.
Chapter Ten
Marooned
He can’t swim.
Lera had been crouched by a gunwale, determined to keep her head below the rail, but when Garser went down—he wouldn’t hide on his own quarterdeck—she glanced around for something to use as a shield while she helped him. She saw the head of a barrel and grabbed it, just as Jason ran to Garser’s side and pulled him out of the way.
What felt like only a heartbeat later, the masts fell. Lera flinched, but when she saw Jason go overboard, she started up. He couldn’t swim.
No rope nearby, no one she could rely on for help. The water had closed over his dark head and the shark wasn’t in sight. She flung her coat off. The round piece of wood went spinning over the side. Then she drew in a deep breath and dived.
After the smoke and sweat of the battle, the water was shockingly cold on her skin. It was also more murky than she had expected, and all she saw were vague shapes moving nearby. Shapes that might not all be men. Kovir would do his best to keep his shark from hurting her, but a cold cramping dread closed on her stomach, because there could be other sharks in the water. Besides, no Seawatch operative’s control was perfect all the time, and especially not after severe injuries.
The Highest Tide Page 20
