by Anna Burke
“I’m not cutting your hair. Ask Kraken. He—”
“I don’t want Kraken to do it. I want you to. Please?”
“I don’t know how to cut hair. And yours is so pretty.”
Harper shook her head, letting her thick curls swing forward. “It will still be pretty. I just want you to shave the sides but leave the length on top. Like yours, but longer. I know you can draw a straight line.”
“For coordinates. Not with a razor. Why are you doing this?”
“Because it will be hard to get a skull tat otherwise.”
I took in her determined, red-rimmed eyes, and understood. Harper had worked beside Jeanine every day for the past few months. Jeanine’s acceptance of both me and Harper had been instrumental in soothing the rest of the crew’s suspicions. Beyond that, she was a friend. If Harper needed to do this to begin reconciling her grief, I’d help her.
“I’ll do my best.”
“You’ll do fine. Here.” Using her fingers and a comb, she separated the hair she wanted to keep and pinned it out of the way, leaving a tangle of curls behind. They felt heavy and soft in my hands. Each ringlet was thick enough to wrap around two of my fingers with ease, and I didn’t want to see them lying on the floor, waiting to be swept into the compost bin.
“Are you sure?”
“It grows back. You might want to chop these bits off before you start in with the razor, and try not to cut me open.”
“I still think Kraken—”
“You’re my best friend.” The edge in her voice carried echoing layers of meaning. I pulled my knife out from my belt and rubbed a strand of her hair between my fingers, wishing I could cut out the cancerous growth of loss instead.
My knife was sharp. By the end of one side of her head, however, I had to saw at the strands. “I had no idea hair could take the edge off a knife.”
Harper grunted in reply. I didn’t comment on the tears leaving glittering blue trails of light down her cheeks. Tufts stuck out of the side of her temples and past her ears. I set my knife down and dipped a cloth in soapy water to lather up her scalp. The number of times I’d shaved anything could be counted on one hand, but I understood the principle. Don’t slice skin. Go slow. Try not to leave a bloody mess. The razor glinted in the low light of her quarters. When I set it to her scalp, she took a deep breath, and I tried not to flinch with her as the razor slid over her skin. Each small scrape freed more and more of her scalp. I wiped the shorn stubble on the cloth and chewed on my cheek as I concentrated. What tattoo design would she choose? Sharks, like Jeanine?
The sudden image of Jeanine’s still face superimposed itself over Harper’s.
“Careful,” Harper said.
“Sorry.” I stared at the bead of blood rising from her skin, pink against the foam of the soap. My pulse skittered. The razor felt heavy in my hand, more weapon than tool, and I wanted to fling it from me.
“Not a big deal, unless you leave me looking like this.”
It’s just a razor.
“Rose?”
The metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth. I released my cheek, tonguing a small flap of severed skin, and tried to ground myself. Harper’s fingers removed the blade from mine and set it on the shelf. Her half-shaved head dripped soap onto her shoulder, but her hands were on my arms and she was staring into my face with love and concern.
It was the worst possible thing she could have done.
Tears blinded me. I let her guide me to her bed, and I leaned into her shoulder as I sobbed again for Jeanine and all the others.
“I told you it will grow back,” Harper said, her voice gentle and teasing. “I’ll put some in a locket for you if you want.”
I choked on a small laugh as the more egregious sobs subsided. “After John—”
She stiffened as I named the Polarian SHARK she’d killed to save me. “What about him?”
“How did you . . . how did you keep going?”
“By reminding myself he didn’t give me a choice.”
“And that’s enough?”
“Of course not.”
Would it be easier if I had someone to blame? Faulty, aging equipment had taken Jeanine’s life, but I could have saved her from the squid if I’d only been faster. Smarter. Better.
“What if instead of making things better, we just make everything even worse?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I meant. Our decision to leave Polaris? Defiance of Comita? Defeating Ching?
“Like this half-assed haircut?”
“Yeah.”
She removed her arm from my shoulders and shifted to sit cross-legged on her bed. “I feel like I’ve done that my whole life.”
“You?”
Her eyes looked everywhere but at me. “I’m the admiral’s daughter. She wanted me to be perfect.”
“You’re brilliant—”
“She wanted another commander, not an engineer. I never cared how people worked, though. Just ships. I can fix ships. I can’t fix people. And each time I tried to stick it to her, I got other people in trouble. Look at what happened to you.”
“I’m not your fault. You saved me.”
“Fair. But maybe she wouldn’t have paid you as much attention, no matter how good you are, if you hadn’t been my best friend. She might have sent someone else.”
“Then I wouldn’t have ended up with Miranda.”
Exactly, said Harper’s face, but she didn’t say it. Instead, she said, “And John. He was an ass, but if he hadn’t been sent to guard me, he’d probably still be alive.”
“John—”
“And I’m the one who sent Jeanine and Dev down to the storage bay.” Her voice broke into a sob.
“Stop.” Listening to Harper beat herself up over things outside her control was too painful. It wasn’t the same as when I did it, and she deserved better. She deserved to be happy. “You were just doing your job. So was Jeanine.”
“Then so were you. And not even—it wasn’t your job to rescue her, but you went in there anyway. You gave her a chance. We both know I wouldn’t have made it even half that far if I’d dived.” The self-loathing was back in her voice.
I took her face in my hands and gave her my best glare. “Since coming onto this ship, you’ve prevented how many major breaches?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“At least six.”
“Then that is six times you’ve saved us. And you saved us when you joined the crew. You know that, right? We’re protected from the Archipelago because you’re on this ship. Nobody fucks with Comita’s daughter.”
“Just Comita.”
“Well, yeah.”
“And you saved the entire Archipelago,” she said, blinking tears out of her large brown eyes.
“That was dumb luck.”
“You forget I sailed the channel with you. We could have died a thousand times without your navigation.”
“I just wish . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I just wish I could have saved Jeanine. “We were so close. The squid—”
Harper wrapped her arms around me. I rested my head against her soapy skull, and we sobbed until snot and drool and salt half-drowned us.
“Gross.” Harper wiped at her face with her sleeves. I did the same, sniffling. Hair-flecked soap coated my cheek.
“I don’t know how to live with this,” I admitted. “I was so young when my dad left, and we never really found out if he was even dead. I haven’t lost anyone since. Not really. Not like this. Even the war—”
“I know.” She took my hand and pulled me off the bed. “It’s fucked up. But I do know I’m not walking around with my head half-shaved.”
My grip on the blade was more confident as we returned to the mirror. When I finished, Harper had only two small cuts, and the sides of her head gleamed the same smooth brown as the rest of her skin. She braided the top in a loose fishtail that left the majority of her hair spilling down her back, and I couldn’t help
grinning despite my puffy face.
“I look fierce as fuck,” she said.
“Hell yeah, you do. Orca is going to lose her shit when she sees you.”
“Probably.”
••••
Miranda found me in Harper’s quarters half an hour later. I raised my head from Harper’s pillow at the pounding knock on the door.
“Rose?”
The door opened, and Orca and Miranda strode inside. Miranda’s face was a mask of tension. It eased as she took in my presence.
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“I was here,” I said, too groggy to make sense.
“Clearly.” She held out her hand. I rose from Harper’s bunk and stumbled toward her, dimly aware of Orca’s gasp as she took in Harper’s haircut.
“Sorry.” I leaned into Miranda as we walked the short distance between rooms. “Harper needed me.”
“You needed sleep.”
“I needed her, too.” I frowned at Miranda, the expression sending a dull ache through my head. All my facial muscles were sore from sobbing.
She let out a short, frustrated exhale. “No, I’m sorry. You just scared me so much today.”
“I know.”
The door to our quarters opened and shut. Seamus gave a plaintive meow and immediately attempted to wind his orange way between our legs.
“If you—” she broke off. I heard the unspoken words.
“I didn’t.”
“I can’t lose you. Do you understand that?” Desperation roughened her voice. “I just can’t. I can’t, Rose.”
“Mere—”
“When they told me you’d gone in—”
“I was the best swimmer there. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You did. Don’t be noble. Don’t be a hero.” She searched my face, holding me at arm’s length. I saw the panic in her dilated pupils.
“Miranda, I had to try. You would have done the same thing.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s not.”
“I’m the goddamn captain. Of course it’s different.”
I wrenched away from her, suddenly furious. “I do not need a lecture right now. Two people died today, and neither of them was me.”
She looked, for a moment, like she wanted to argue further, but then her face softened, and her pupils relaxed their choke hold on her irises. A shuddering breath tore through her.
“Dev was just a kid.”
I lay down on the bed and patted the mattress, encouraging her to sit. She remained standing.
“And Jeanine—fuck. I love that bitch.” She took a long pull from her hip flask.
I watched the reality of the day’s losses roll over her as she paced, and realized she’d been holding this moment at bay by fixating on me. Her fist collided with the wall, tearing through the canvas of her Portuguese man o’ war painting. My muscles twitched as they tried to rouse my body into action, but the lassitude of grief and spent adrenaline had finally caught up with me.
“Everything is always breaking, and it doesn’t need to be that way. We don’t have to fucking live like this.” Her shout echoed off the walls. “We shouldn’t have to rely on rusted-out parts. We shouldn’t have to spend half our lives wondering if we’re going to die from tetanus—tetanus—because the Archipelago can’t bear the thought of losing their monopoly on vaccine tech.”
“Parts break on fleet ships, too, Mere.”
“Not like this. You didn’t see the breach. I just inspected it. The valve was so rusted the supports around it gave, too. That whole section of hull crumpled. Harper’s patch is brilliant, but on a fleet ship we’d have spares. My old ship—”
She did not speak of her Archipelago ship. Ever. The only thing I knew about it was its name, and I’d learned that from Kraken: the Inevitability. An unfortunate choice, all things considered, if an accurate one. She was always going to mutiny. Even if her brother hadn’t been killed in a raid, something else would have caused this infection, so long as things remained the way they were.
Inevitable. Inevitable, too, that one of this crew would die in an accident. Inevitable I’d eventually lose someone I cared for. And inevitable that I’d end up here, with her, grateful she had words for the violence in my own chest—a chest that felt as raw and as torn and bloody as Jeanine’s.
“Fuck,” she shouted, and then kept shouting until the words subsided into sobs and she sat on her haunches on the floor, rocking on her heels with her head on her knees and her hands tugging at her hair. I slithered off the bed and curled around her. She moaned, a wounded animal, and crumpled like her hull into my arms.
••••
In my dreams, I walked the decks of an empty ship, looking for Miranda. The biolights burned bright blue, bluer than the sky, bluer than her eyes and almost violent in their intensity. Shadows flickered in that unearthly light. I had to find Miranda before it was too late. The certainty of my dread propelled me forward down twisting halls. No real ship would have been designed this way, but dream logic did not answer to architects. A door opened to my right. I reached for my knife; it remained stuck in its sheath as if glued.
Ching Shih stepped into my line of sight, holding Jeanine’s disembodied head. Blood dripped from her severed neck and pooled at the former pirate queen’s feet. A jellyfish swam in the gathering pool in denial of physics, its bell the dark rust-red of organ meat. Ching’s smooth black hair hung around her shoulders. She smiled at me, the expression conspiratorial, almost friendly, save for the glint in her eyes.
“I made Miranda. Whatever little plot you think you can hatch, remember that. Your people broke her and threw away the pieces, and I put them back together. She owes who she is now to me.”
Old words. Jeanine raised an eyebrow. Ching carried her by her hair, and the sharks tattooed on her skull swam in lazy circles around her scalp.
“She’s not yours anymore,” I said.
“Don’t be naïve. We don’t ever really let anyone go. You’ll see. In the meantime, you forgot something.” She tossed Jeanine’s head. It landed with a wet thunk at my feet. Jeanine glared up at me in disapproval as she wobbled on her cheek.
“Next time, catch me,” said her head.
“You couldn’t save Jeanine, and you can’t save Miranda. Go home, fleet scum.”
Another voice spoke, one that didn’t belong in my dream. I fought the cloying grip of sleep as I’d fought against the water in the hold, dragging Jeanine behind me. My last, half-lucid thought before waking was I’d always be carrying her like this, her weight buoyed by the ocean, her blood in my mouth.
Miranda shook me awake. I burrowed into her shoulder and gasped as sobs wracked my body. She stroked my back, her hands smoothing the fear away down my spine. The dread and the loss remained.
I should have known better than to hope the recurring nightmare would spare me just because I was in mourning. Jeanine’s inclusion in the familiar plot twisted the knife. Miranda didn’t ask what the nightmare had been about. She probably didn’t need to. My vocal cords ached as if I’d been shouting in my sleep on top of crying.
Ching’s dead. I repeated this, willing it to be true, and wishing I had the courage to ask Miranda for verification.
“It’s time to wake up anyway. Seraphina’s here.”
••••
The sailor who met us in the landing bay was nondescript in every way possible. Short, dense, dark hair. Nori-brown eyes. Stocky build. Practical clothing. Only one earring, which was little more than a glint in an earlobe. I took them for middle-aged at the earliest, and nothing about their bearing screamed “Welcome to my decadent orgy ship.”
“Sera,” said Miranda.
Seraphina—for that was who this must be, I realized half a second later—enveloped Miranda in a hug that lasted several seconds and made me think, irrationally, of my mother. Miranda relaxed in her embrace, and the relaxation lingered even after she withdrew, though purple circles shadowed her eyes, as t
hey did all of ours.
“There’s my favorite monster,” Seraphina said to Kraken. He crushed her to his bare chest and kissed the top of her head. I blinked at the blatant display of affection, fighting the bleariness of too little sleep.
Then she turned to me.
“My navigator, Rose,” said Miranda. “And Harper, my chief engineer.”
“Rose.” Seraphina took my hand and clasped it firmly. Her brown eyes crinkled with what appeared to be genuine pleasure to greet me. I touched the raw patch of skin on my cheek with my tongue and made myself meet her gaze. She didn’t comment on my eye color, which was a nice change, and instead squeezed my hand, released it, and smiled. “Welcome aboard the Trench.”
“That’s what she named her ship? The Trench?” Harper asked in a low voice. Orca had stayed back with the ship as acting captain, since she was the first mate. She and the rest of the crew would have a chance to mingle with Seraphina’s people once Miranda and Harper took care of business.
“There’s a story she had it dragged up from a fault line, but I don’t believe it,” said Kraken as we followed Seraphina into the hatch of her ship. Harper hovered at my elbow. I leaned into her for creature comfort.
“You know the drill,” Seraphina said to Miranda.
Miranda handed over the manifest. “No infection.”
Seraphina skimmed the log. “Checks out. So, what the hell happened?”
“We blew a valve.”
“Damage looks worse than that.”
“And compromised hull integrity,” said Miranda.
“You’re lucky you’re still floating. Anyone injured?”
“Two dead. A few more with minor injuries.”
Seraphina touched Miranda’s cheek with the backs of her knuckles and gave her a look of such profound empathy that tears sprang to my eyes. “I can send someone to do the service.”
“Thank you.”
“Come have a drink. All of you.”
Beyond the hatch lay a hallway lit with bioluminescence in varying shades of blue and green and yellow. The effect was as calming as Seraphina’s smile, but even so, I wasn’t prepared for what lay on the far side of the door.
Black ocean surrounded us outside, visible through a vast plex dome. Inside, however, biolights hung around a massive garden. The entirety of several upper decks had been devoted to it, and pools lay interspersed with reeds and flowers and trees. Small glowing fish darted through the roots of the trees nearest me, and people basked in the water, some clothed, others not. The air smelled fragrant and clean, and—
