Straightening up, she saw the cliff in the distance, and a thousand nesting birds made the slopes look snow-covered. The thought of eggs still warm from the nest made her stomach rumble, and it didn’t seem too steep a climb.
The birds at the top of the cliff took off in a shrieking cloud. For no conscious reason, Lera hurried to the nearest large rock and dropped behind it, drawing her arms and legs close. Pressing against the rock, she glanced out.
The fluttering mass of birds had left the cliff entirely and a man was visible. Just his torso, since the rest of the cliff hid him, but she could tell he was climbing from the other side. When he finally stood atop the rock, he looked around.
Lera no longer felt hungry. Another survivor washed ashore wasn’t likely to stand in such a conspicuous place with no caution, and it was clear the man was keeping a lookout. He was too far for her to see what he wore or if he was carrying a weapon.
The clouds she had noticed earlier had grown thicker and darker. Thunder grumbled and that seemed to dissuade the man. He turned and went the way he had come. The birds slowly settled down.
Lera took longer to move, in case the man had backed away to lure her out of hiding. Her knees ached from the cramped position, but they loosened as she hurried up over grass-covered dunes, and she felt better once she was in the cover of the trees.
Rain pattered, and she quickened her pace before she remembered her clothes were already damp through. The rain was fresh water, but it was also cold water, and she shivered as she reached the cave.
She called out to let Jason know she was there, but she did so softly, although no one was likely to hear her over the rain unless they were nearby. “All safe here,” he answered, and only then did she go in.
The inside of the cave was too dark to see anything, but it smelled different, and she sniffed deeply while she emptied her hat at the entrance. Jason must have heard her, because he told her it was moss.
“Moss?” Did Dagrans eat that? She didn’t particularly care for it. What a pity she hadn’t told him to find some fruit instead.
“Yes, found a nice spread of that and cut out as much as I could.” He joined her. “I kept it outside to dry it, and brought it in when the rain started. It’s in the back. You can sleep on it, and I found some sourapples too.”
“Oh, good.” She opened the clams while they still had the last light of the day to see by, and they ate those. Jason had collected some wood as well, but after Lera told him about the man she had seen, he agreed a fire was too much risk. Inside the cave, they’d smoke themselves like so much jerky, and in the cave entrance, the glow might be seen.
“But I suppose there’s no harm in taking our clothes off,” he said. “They’ll never dry otherwise.”
Lera suddenly didn’t feel cold, but he had a point about dry clothes. “If you like.” He’d scattered large pebbles over the entrance, so anyone coming in during the night was likely to make a sound.
Rain splattered down, but it didn’t drown the soft heavy rustles as he peeled off his clothes. “I stripped a few saplings and made a rack,” he said. “It’s to your left.”
He was definitely more capable than she had expected, although she still felt responsible for him. Trying not to listen as he continued to undress, she picked up a sourapple. It fit into the palm of her hand, and when she bit into it, it was so tart her mouth tingled. She washed it down with a hatful of rain, by which time there were no sounds from inside the cave. He’d probably settled down for the night, which was good. She could imagine blundering in there and bumping into him in the dark, with him not even having the benefit of a sheet now.
She went inside, staying at the wall so she could orient herself, and pulled off the remains of her uniform, draping it over the rack. Her hair was a thick, sodden rope down her back, and she shook out the braid to let it dry—it would be a mass of tangles come the morning, but it was the least of her concerns. She glanced around self-consciously before taking off her underclothes, but it was so dark she couldn’t see herself, let alone anyone else.
The cave’s narrow mouth kept the wind out, and with her wet clothes off, it would be easier to stay warm. Scrubbing her hands up and down her arms, she padded naked towards the back of the cave. Her bare toes touched something soft but springy, and she guessed it was the moss. It wasn’t as dry as she would have liked, but it was thick and felt much better under her than the floor of the cave would have.
Though that made her wonder where Jason was. She had stretched out on the moss cautiously, since Unity only knew if there were bugs lurking in it, but now she propped herself up on an elbow. There was no sound other than the rain outside, echoing slightly in the confines of the cave.
“Jason?” she whispered, in case he was sleeping.
He didn’t sound drowsy at all when he replied. “Yes?”
“You can sleep on the moss if you like.” She added quickly, “I mean, there’s enough for both of us.”
That wasn’t entirely true, since she could stretch out her arms and feel exactly how much of it there was. They would have to sleep side by side, with only a handspan of distance between them, to get a good night’s rest on it without rolling off.
A slow hot wave flowed beneath her skin, but she told herself nothing would happen, because he was the kind of man who would only touch a woman if she wanted him. In the dark, he wouldn’t know if she was aroused, and she wouldn’t give him any encouragement. They could sleep naked together, without ever touching, which she would never have thought possible.
Then again, the impossible or at least the unlikely so often seemed to happen around him.
“Thank you,” he said. “That would be more comfortable.”
Kovir had never known a captain who was content to be kept off the deck of his own ship, and Garser was no exception. He felt sure that if it had been an arm injury, Garser would have been topside, arm in a sling, directing their retreat, but it wasn’t good for morale if the captain had to be carried up and kept in a chair. Or worse, if he tried to move and fell flat.
So Garser was installed in a bunk near Kovir’s, and the mess boys took turns relaying news to him. Kovir listened with one ear, but all his other senses were outside, in the shark’s body as she wove through the waves, searching for Captain Vanze.
Nemesis had pulled well away from both enemy ships by then, the foundering one and the other still afloat. Garser sat up, knocking a tin mug to the sand-strewn floorboards and drawing Kovir’s attention to him.
“No sign of her?” he said.
“No, sir.” There was no sign of Jason, either, but he had been taught only to give as much information as was requested. Besides, he didn’t have the strength to speak. He’d expended all his energy on first the skirmish and then the search. His arm throbbed dully, his feet felt worse, and he longed to sleep.
Garser leaned down, fresh sweat breaking out on his forehead, and snagged the mug. There was no sound in the infirmary except for an occasional cough or a man groaning in drugged sleep, the noises almost swallowed by the deep, subsurface rumble of the engine. He punched his pillow into a bolster and leaned back.
“How many of them did you get?” he said.
“I didn’t count. Perhaps twenty.”
Garser let out a low whistle. “I wouldn’t mind having a few such sharks on our side.”
Kovir had heard that before—from a Denalait captain, who might have been expected to know better. People always looked at what the sharks could do, but people saw only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface was a brutal training that honed both minds and bodies like blades sharpened steadily to a single point. Beneath the surface were the winding tunnels and the drip of water in pools into which he’d climbed for hours and days and years. Outsiders never saw that, just as they never saw what could sometimes be a daily struggle to order and protect and adjust to a huge predator with insti
ncts and needs of its own.
Dr. Strant came over, wiping his hands on his apron. “How do you feel, Captain?”
Garser looked up at him. “I’d like to strangle Alth with my bare hands for the men we lost. Captain Vanze is missing, the forward funnel is so badly damaged the engineers are trying to keep it from toppling, and my leg is singing like a bird. Other than that, I’m dandy.”
“Well, you’ll be dandier when you hear this.” Dr. Strant glanced at Kovir and reached for the crutches.
Garser waved him to a halt. “Sit down. Kovir will keep it to himself.” Unless someone takes a branch to my feet, Kovir thought bitterly, but he nodded. It meant something that Garser had still expressed faith in him.
Dr. Strant sat on the bunk, carefully avoiding Garser’s injured leg beneath the sheet, and lowered his voice. “Remerley thinks the explosives are on that island.”
“What?” Garser stared at him.
“He said if that cliff gives way and comes down, it could cause a huge wave—and that would certainly be more feasible than having a fuse three hundred feet long, don’t you think? Except he told me in the middle of the battle, and I had to send him topside to help bring men down. No one seems to have seen him after that.”
“I did,” Kovir said. “He and Captain Vanze were in the water, but I don’t know what happened to them after that.” He touched the shark’s mind, urging her back to Nemesis, and managed to summon up some approval and pleasure for her to feel when she obeyed. Losing Captain Vanze wasn’t good, but losing his shark would be devastating.
Dr. Strant rubbed his forehead tiredly. “I hope to heaven they didn’t go overboard on purpose.”
“Whether they did or not, we can’t do anything for them,” Garser said. “Not now, anyway. What do you think of Remerley’s theory, Malcolm?”
“Might be. Alth did say the explosives were on the seabed, didn’t he? Very decent of him to give us such a specific warning, now that I come to think about it.” He paused. “But this is good news. Bringing down part of the island shouldn’t cause as powerful a wave, especially after that wave has gone all the way back through the Sea of Weeds to reach the coast.”
Garser said nothing. Kovir wasn’t sure why, because Dr. Strant had made sense. Any ships in the way would feel the effects of the wave, and the islands nearby would be ruined, but they were uninhabited. There was likely to be some damage along the coast, but nothing like the loss of thousands of lives.
“Captain?” Dr. Strant said. “Most of the force of the wave will be spent by the time it hits the coast, won’t it?”
“Which coast?” Garser said. “Ours or Iternum’s?”
Kovir blinked. He’d memorized maps in Whetstone, but Iternum was so isolationist it just hadn’t impinged on his awareness. How close was it? Ten miles, eight?
“They can’t have ships at sea.” Rather than making a simple statement of fact, Dr. Strant sounded as if he desperately hoped he was right. “Or anyone living off the mainland. They’re not allowed to leave their borders.”
“It won’t matter if we have a chance to find those explosives,” Garser said.
Kovir wasn’t sure how much of a chance it was, since Nemesis had to be three miles or more from the island. Princeps was closer, and most importantly, the island was sure to be guarded. To reach the island and make a search, they would somehow have to travel around Princeps, assuming that ship didn’t move. The moment Nemesis was spotted, either by watchers on the island or by lookouts on Princeps, an order could be sent to detonate the explosives.
But a slow smile spread across Garser’s face and his eyes glinted. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Eleven
Siren’s Touch
Lera heard soft footsteps as he came closer. Quickly she shifted until she felt the cave wall at her shoulder, to leave as much room as possible for him. The moss compressed beneath his weight as if it was water, with ripples spreading out from him to touch her, and he was close enough for her to hear his steady breathing. Her skin felt exquisitely sensitized, far too aware of him. At this rate she would never be able to get to sleep.
“Lera—I mean, Captain Vanze.” The deep sound of his voice so close made her shiver, and she was relieved he couldn’t see that. “May I ask you something?”
She breathed in slowly, to be certain she could speak as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. “Sure.” He wouldn’t question her about the scar, but what then? Something else about her? “And, um, you can call me Lera. As long as no one else is around.”
There was an undertone to his voice that made her sure he had spent a moment trying not to chuckle. “I’ve been wondering. Who or what exactly is the ruler of your land? It seems like such a mystery.”
Oh. That. Lera didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved, but at least there was an easy answer, and nothing at all intimate about the response. She’d been lying on her back with her arms crossed, hands clasping her elbows, but she was able to relax now. Her tight clasp slipped away.
“There’s not much of a mystery about it,” she said. “We have a council like yours. I think every few years, they elect one of their number in secret and make him or her the Unity, the head of the Council and the ruler of Denalay.”
“I see.” Jason sounded puzzled. “But you told Captain Garser only the Council can see the face of the Unity.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, then, if you’ve seen all of the Council, you have seen the Unity, haven’t you? And why be so cloak-and-dagger about who the Unity is, anyway?”
Lera thought everyone in Denalay who had devoted a moment’s consideration to the matter had come up with their own idea of what the Unity was, but hers was a great deal more plain and simple than some theories she’d heard. Though she preferred plain, simple explanations, which were more likely to be right.
“It’s not like being made—I don’t know, a king.” She started to turn on her side so she could talk to him more closely, and caught herself. Keep speaking to the roof. “Whoever becomes the Unity doesn’t sit on a throne waving a scepter, so they’re safer, because an assassin wouldn’t know which of them is the Unity and the people would respect them all equally. And if someone elected you the Unity but didn’t tell me about it, I could say honestly that I’d seen Jason Remerley, but I’d never seen the Unity.”
“Doesn’t that seem overly secretive to you?”
“Sure. But politicians usually make things more complicated than they need to be. Besides, people like mysteries. They want to believe in—in ghosts, or predicting the future, or this great powerful presence called the Unity. Oh, and that’s another reason for the story. Which one is more likely to keep folk in line—a leader who’s an ordinary human like them or an entity who’s closer to a god?”
“That makes sense,” Jason said. “Thanks for explaining it.”
“You’re welcome.” Lera would never have thought talking about the Unity of all things would relax her, but it had taken her mind almost completely off Jason’s nearness. She was still aware of him and she felt the warmth of his body close to hers, but she wasn’t as much on edge as she’d been before.
“I should let you sleep.”
That was considerate. Wriggling her shoulders a little, she flattened out a comfortable hollow in the moss, but she didn’t feel at all drowsy. She listened to Jason’s steady breathing, then realized she could hear him because it was so quiet outside.
“The rain stopped.” The silence felt like something delicate she might break if she spoke above a whisper, but at the same time she hadn’t felt safer all day. It didn’t make sense, not when she’d been marooned on an island which might well be mined with explosives and crawling with their enemies, but the cave felt far away from everything else. It was their own place, warm and still, and if she didn’t have anything beyond that night, she wanted to spend it with
him.
“The rain?” She heard him shift, and the breath on her shoulder meant he’d turned on his side, facing her. “I didn’t notice.”
“You didn’t?”
“The sky could have fallen and I wouldn’t have noticed.”
Slow heat flowed down through her body, a silent singing in her blood, and she finally surrendered, gave in to it completely. He wanted her too, and they’d waited long enough for this.
She sat up, then moved so she was on her knees and ran her palm along clumped springy mounds of moss until she touched his arm.
Her fingers slid along warm skin and closed around his wrist. When she pulled, she felt him shift his weight and rise up to his knees so he was facing her. He still didn’t speak, but she didn’t need that to know he wanted her. She felt it in the pulse that beat under her palm, and the rough breaths that came quicker, though she couldn’t have told whether that was his breathing or hers. Her fingers opened to release his wrist, though only so she could raise her hands, searching for him.
She touched the smooth skin over the taut muscles of his chest and his breath caught. Prolonging the moment, she flattened her hands and slid them upward slowly, skimming the stiff nubs of his nipples with her palms. Over the hard ridges of his collarbones, over his shoulders and then turning sideways, bringing her hands together so she could find his face in the darkness and cup his jawline in her palms.
She leaned forward. She’d meant to explore his face with her mouth, learning the angles of cheekbones and jaw and feeling the roughness of his unshaven skin against hers, but her lips brushed over his first. A strange thrill shivered down through her as if a spark had traveled from his mouth to hers. She deepened the kiss, pressing his lips open and reaching in with her tongue.
His arm was around her waist in the next moment, pulling her against him, and when she gasped in reaction, that was enough for him to enter her mouth. His tongue tasted and licked and found hers. She shuddered, but he didn’t give her a chance to recover before he kissed her more intensely, his tongue moving deeper and withdrawing in a rhythm that thrummed all the way down to tighten between her legs, where she wanted to be filled as easily as he filled her mouth.
The Highest Tide Page 22
