I ran as fast as my shaking legs would carry me.
The oramiral would get to Avi before me.
There was no way I could save her.
Avi screamed. “Calev!” She saw me. “Kinneret!” Her foot pushed at the base of the crossbow and her fingers strained against the draw weight.
I climbed over the rocks, dodged two dead men.
Oron tried to get to her and suffered a slash from the man fighting him, forcing him back into that life or death fight.
An idea shone in my head. Calev’s dagger. It would only work if he acted fast with no questions and only if my guess was right.
“Calev!” I shouted, running. “Your dagger! Northwest, now!”
Without a blink, his hand uncurled in the direction of the approaching fighter. The blade zipped past Avi and speared the oramiral’s yellow-swathed chest, right over the heart, with a thick sound. He fell forward into the sand.
The oramiral was dead. Blood poured through his fine clothing as fast as it did any slave’s. Caste meant nothing when it came to death.
I smiled grimly. We had done it.
But we didn’t have the sun to enjoy the victory.
Calev’s attacker grinned at his lack of a weapon as I caught Avi in my arms and threw her to relative safety around the craft’s prow. The slave’s yatagan arched toward Calev. Just when I thought I’d planned wrong, that my recklessness had once again shadowed a loved one’s life, Ekrem finished the man he’d been fighting with one slice across the throat. Ekrem leaped between Calev and the other slave and drove his yatagan into the man’s belly.
With a shout of victory, Serhat finished off the man coming at her and Oron scrambled around the back of the man fighting him and stabbed him through the liver. Oron kicked the man into the incoming waves. With that, all our attackers were down and it seemed the gray-clothed slaves had swamped the oramiral’s yellow-garbed men on the rise above us.
There was a shout and a cluster of fighting sailors—3 large men—scrambled down the slope toward us.
Oron swore. “It’s Berker.”
My body went numb. My anger was steel and ready to work.
He’d stolen someone’s red leather vest. With a yatagan extended and blood running from a deep cut along his face, he and the fighters who remained loyal to him closed in on us.
“Try to edge them around so our backs are to the cliffside,” I whispered as Ekrem, Serhat, Oron, Calev, and Avi gathered near.
Berker and his men came in with knees bent and weapons ready.
“You’ve already lost,” I said, stepping at an angle and silently encouraging Berker toward the sea.
His weasel smile turned my stomach. “No, no. This isn’t over. If I capture you, I could convince the rest that you and your little party here must at least go to trial in Jakobden. Isn’t it sad? After all you’ve accomplished, it might still come down to me being high and you low.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Calev and Oron helping Avi onto the higher rocks on the cliffside. Ekrem and Serhat stayed close, their blades wonderfully menacing at my sides.
“See?” Berker gestured toward Avi. “Even your most loyal are jumping ship, so to speak. How much easier will it be to persuade the rest of those still alive to follow the laws that have been in place for ages?”
I laughed and rubbed my salty hands together. “I’m pretty convinced I’ve witched up all the laws now.”
His grin faltered.
Reaching my salty fingers toward the shore’s rumbling waves, I prayed.
“Waters, meet me, higher, deeper,
I need your cold, your power rushing.”
Berker launched his yatagan at me, but the waves were already growling and swamping him and his men. The shush of the sea muffled their shouting. I let myself float below the surface, hoping the others were safe on the cliffside.
In the water, under the rolling wave, I spotted Berker’s flailing legs and his men as they fought to swim. The sea was only listening to me and my prayers now. Their strong swimming did nothing. The current sucked the fighters farther and farther until they were only smudges in the blue-gray. Berker’s head dipped under the surface as the water pulled him down. He refused to give up his heavy weapon. He met my eyes, jerked once, and sank and sank and sank.
WHEN THE SEA had edged away from the shore, Calev retrieved his knife from the oramiral’s body, which was lodged between two large rocks.
Soaking wet, I pulled Avi into my arms. I held her tightly, my injuries thumping and complaining. But they were less deep now, still cuts but not bleeding. The sea must’ve begun to heal them.
“My little lion.” I cupped Avi’s face as we sat beside the others at the base of the path leading up the cliffs.
Perched on a boulder, Calev and Ekrem were slicking seawater off their heads and laughing. Near them, Oron and Serhat grumbled to one another, but Oron worked a smile out of Serhat.
“I’m so sorry for all of this,” I said to Avi. “I’ll never put you at risk for something as ridiculous as silver ever, ever again.”
She hugged me back, then stared at me. “It wasn’t for silver. It was for us. For Calev. Old Zayn. Oron. I know that.”
I pressed her sweet head against my shoulder, watching the faint moving shapes above the cliff tops, where the fighting went on.
“Promise you’ll stop me if I ever try to do something mad again,” I said.
“I promise no such thing, Sister.” She pulled away and smiled with all her crooked teeth. “We made it through this, didn’t we? If we kept to safe things forever, we’d have no kind of life at all.”
“She’ll be insufferable now that she’s become so wise,” Oron said, holding a scarf against a cut.
Over her head, I smiled shakily at him.
“I can’t believe it. We’re alive.” I laughed and my throat felt raw.
Calev held out his hands. “Seems we are.” He looked at the rest of the island that rose into the sky. “Unless I’m having the strangest dream ever.”
Oron rolled his eyes. “In that case, you’d still be alive, Calev. One cannot dream whilst dead.” Oron shook his head, then said to me, “Do you truly want to spend large amounts of sunlight with this dolt?”
Calev’s dagger whooshed past Oron’s shoulder and lodged in a grassy mound.
Calev raised an eyebrow. “This dolt could cut your tongue out if you’re not careful.”
“Ooo,” Oron said, blinking repeatedly.
The sounds of cheering erupted from the top of the island.
Oron pulled Calev’s dagger free. “Kinneret always had a penchant for flashy things.”
Ekrem, Avi, and Serhat laughed at that, following Oron as he started up the incline.
“We need to find a boat,” I said.
“We’ll have to get to the dock. It means going back up. Into that.” Oron pointed toward the movement on the cliff tops. The goat path we’d used dangled down the rock and growth like a fraying thread.
Agreeing, we started up the incline.
Before we reached the top, a group of slaves in gray and fighting sailors in red danced down toward us, arms around shoulders and chanting something into the salty wind.
“Kinneret Raza, warrior and witch!”
They were smiling, not judging or threatening. I stopped, trying to soak in this new reality.
“We saw the sea obey you and kill Kaptan Berker!”
“And the Old Farm who struck the oramiral on your command!”
My stomach turned, but I took the praise and grinned with all my teeth. My enemies were dead. I felt a hollow sort of triumph, nothing like what I thought I’d feel. The slaves and fighters gave us another nod and hurried past us to the beach, maybe to get a better look at the carnage.
“That’s that, then,” Oron said. “But I still want off this dirty piece of rock.”
Avi grinned, then flashed her lion look. “An island of silver only my sister can find, enemies dead, and freedom for everyone
.”
I laughed. “Paradise!”
Oron and Calev echoed me and an invisible weight slid off my shoulders. Avi would use what she’d suffered. Not to become someone else, haunted and anxious, but to grow into a stronger version of herself.
As we walked, Calev elbowed me. A question rose in his eyes, a question that made my heart turn over and my head spin. I smiled.
“You go on ahead,” he said to the others. “We will meet you at the western dock.”
On the path ahead of us, Ekrem and Serhat rounded a rock that grew grass like a fur coat. Oron and Avi followed them, Oron shouting sailing advice that sounded very much like thinly veiled instructions for the bedroom.
Calev looked at me through his dark lashes and heat flashed under my skin. “I know we don’t have the sun for this. But…”
My heart thundered and I put a hand over my chest. I had our lives safely in hand. Was I pushing luck to ask that I have him too?
I reached and touched the skin that met the edge of his tunic. “How will we explain all this?”
“When Oron planned this uprising, he told everyone to hold their tongues until we could talk to them. He has a story to spread. And I think I know—”
I pulled him into a kiss.
He laughed against my mouth, warm and sweet and sour.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen when we return to Jakobden,” I said, “but I refuse to miss out on this.”
He leaned into me and dragged his lips over mine. A delightful shudder poured through my tired, injured limbs, making me feel nothing but pleasure. He must have felt the change in me because he made a noise like a murmur and the kiss burned from sweet into spicy. His hands tore into my loose hair. His lips and tongue moved smoothly, roughly, and everything in between over my mouth. I was his fire and he was my luck. Fire help the person who tried to stop us.
“Calev ben Y’hoshua,” a deep voice said.
Calev’s eyes went wide and he jerked back.
As I turned to see who had said his name, I realized the Fire must possess a strong streak of humor. I wasn’t amused.
Because there, on the path, was Calev’s father.
Aside from a slight narrowing of his eyes, his face was blank of emotion. His hair, as black as Calev’s but with a streak of gray down the middle, fell to his shoulders and his beard was longer than I’d remembered it ever being. A group of Old Farm men and women walked with him, their sashes embroidered with pomegranates and lemons. They were disturbingly quiet.
“Father?” Calev wiped a hand across his slightly swollen mouth.
I crossed my arms and raised my chin. “We are glad to see you, Y’hoshua ben Aharon.”
Regardless of the red in Calev’s cheeks and the way he had to turn away from his father and his brother as they approached, I wasn’t about to cower after all we’d been through.
“We heard word of the amir’s missing vessel. I knew you’d end up here, going after this one’s sister,” Y’hoshua said in his rocky voice.
We needed a story and we needed it now.
Calev blew out a breath, strode to his father, and moved like he was about to embrace him.
Y’hoshua stopped him. “You have some explaining to do, my son. I see there’s been a rebellion. Chaos reigns at the quarry—the oramiral and his men are dead—and we’ve heard some disturbing reports as to the amir and her kaptan, Berker Deniz.”
Calev ran a hand over his head. “It is a very long story.”
“Very,” I added as we trailed Y’hoshua down to the shoreline, where the ruined boat floated beside the bodies.
Moving to a stretch of rocky shoreline away from the gore, Y’hoshua told Calev to make a fire and wait as he explained to Eleazar how to organize the gathering of the highest ranking slaves still alive for questioning. He found someone to send rock doves to Jakobden to inform Old Farm they would be gone another day.
A woman with a coiled brown braid noticed my arm. “Let me help you with that.” She pulled a cloth and a small jar from her shoulder bag. With fresh water from a skin, she rinsed the cuts the oramiral had made in my skin. Her quick fingers told me she was used to this work.
Beyond her, Calev bent to pick up two long sticks of bleached driftwood.
She glanced at him, then at me, her mouth tightening. “I’m Miriam’s sister.”
The name was an arrow in me. I’d almost forgotten she existed.
My cheeks went hot. “Um. I don’t—”
She made a noise of dismissal. “Don’t bore me with lies.”
I jerked my arm away and pain shot up my arm. I finished the knot she’d started in the wrapping. “I wasn’t going to lie. It’s none of my business.”
The girl put a hand on her hip. Her seal ring reflected the lowering sun. “Ha. You don’t look at a man that way unless you already made him your business.”
“Thank you for tending to my injury,” I snapped and walked toward Calev, who’d made a spark with his dagger and a flint. A moon-hued blaze flickered in the driftwood bones.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Miriam’s sister glare at me before heading off the way the others had gone.
Calev and I were alone.
“You’re not going to tell your father the truth, are you?” I found a seat on the massive piece of driftwood next to Calev, who prodded the flames with his dagger.
He sat and pushed his hair behind his ear. The fire sparkled in his eyes as he glanced at me. “Of course not.”
I squeezed my knees. “Good.”
“Have any ideas on what I should tell him?”
I did actually. And if I could stop thinking about that girl’s comment, I could fill Calev in.
Calev touched my bandaged arm. “I…oh.” His eyes flicked to mine. “That was Miriam’s sister, wasn’t it? The healer?”
He could probably hear the blood boiling in my veins. “So?” I demanded.
He trailed one finger up my good arm, raising unseen flames under my skin. A grin tweaked his mouth as he leaned toward my ear.
“Miriam is the meanest little snake I’ve ever known. Just like that sister of hers. I am not going to marry Miriam,” he whispered.
My heart crashed like a wave into my throat. “You’re not.”
I tried to make it not sound like a question. I was not going to ask him to do anything for me. I would not beg. He might break my heart, but no one would ever again tear down my spirit. No matter what caste I was in.
His lips drifted over my ear, and gooseflesh spread over my back and thighs. “No. If you’ll have me, I will marry you.”
“You will marry me.”
He laughed quietly, the air ruffling the small hairs around my temples and neck. “Yes. And I will enjoy everything that comes with it. You, too, if you’re up for it.”
Heat cascaded down my throat, chest, belly, and lower until I thought I might start my own fire and all the work he’d done to make the sea-colored flames in front of us would be an enormous waste of sunlight.
“Oh, I’m up for it,” I whispered back, turning to face him. His dark eyes promised a storm I’d happily die in, lightning and all.
“Calev.”
We both jumped.
It was his father.
The man had the timing of Oron at the tiller after two flasks of stolen ice wine.
AROUND THE BLUE FLAMES, we wove a story that people would talk about for ages. Calev picked up my line of thought, and we spun that tale like when we’d been in trouble as children together.
Y’hoshua shook his head and tugged at his beard. “So Kaptan Berker found out you had chased off the oramiral when the other fighting sailors were ill.”
“Yes. The oramiral killed the amir right in front of our eyes.” I let my fatigue play as sadness in my words.
“Turns out, the oramiral was obsessed with the amir.” Calev pursed his lips. I was pretty sure he was holding back a laugh.
Y’hoshua nodded. “Many men were. Tragic.”
&n
bsp; Eleazar came scrambling down the path and spoke into Y’hoshua’s ear.
The older man looked at me, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. Then he gestured for Eleazar to sit beside Calev.
“I…I’m glad you’re alive, Brother,” Eleazar said.
“Me too.” Calev clasped Eleazar’s shoulder kindly. “I have some amazing things to tell you about.”
“There’s sun enough for that later, boys,” Y’hoshua said.
“Yes, sir,” they answered in unison, their eyes wide and submissive.
I bit my lip to stifle a laugh. Calev looked downright adorable. For some reason, it made me want to smother him with kisses.
“You know,” his father said to me, “despite your age, as the last appointed kaptan, you have a strong influence on who the kyros will name as the next amir of Jakobden.”
I did know that. And I knew exactly who I’d suggest. “Ekrem will be my choice.”
Calev’s father straightened and Calev smiled.
“The fighting sailor?” Y’hoshua said.
“Yes. The man is an expert at strategy. He has a cool head. He would be perfect.”
Y’hoshua stood, indicating this meeting was over. “Well then. Eleazar has informed me that none of the fighting sailors or slaves will speak about the events that occurred this day or earlier. They wait for their leader, they say. And that,” he pointed at me, “is you, Kaptan Kinneret Raza. Never did I think I’d say that to the sweet-faced dock rat that dragged my son into all sorts of trouble.”
Calev’s face had darkened at rat. “Father. I plan to wed Kaptan Kinneret, if she will have me. Please show respect to my Intended.”
Y’hoshua’s face hardened. “You would risk your place, your place as my son to have a low-caste sailor?”
Calev grasped my hands, his face was all hope as he looked at his father. “I would.”
His father turned to me. “And you would risk his well-being simply to have him as your Intended? Your sister will suffer too.”
I swallowed. “I am a kaptan now. And if that isn’t enough, along with the silver we found at Ayarazi, we will manage as best we can.”
“You are set on this.” The vein above his right eye twitched as he looked at Calev. “Even if everyone at Old Farm and in Jakobden proper refuses to speak to you, work with you, or acknowledge your union?”
Waters of Salt and Sin: Uncommon World Book One Page 29
