by Anna Burke
“You good?”
She meant, I knew, good to fight; there was no question about my emotional state. I could feel my face twitching as I struggled to keep from screaming, snarling, or crying—hard to say which one. She crouched into a waiting stance, and I lunged.
She let our bodies collide. The force, concussive and wonderfully solid, would have borne us to the ground if she hadn’t turned at the last second and let our momentum spin me off. Stumbling, I steadied myself on the far wall and lunged again. She caught my fist in hers but didn’t try to land a blow in response. I brought my leg up in a sweeping kick; she blocked that, too. The snarl won out. Her lips curled in a satisfied smile as I charged her, growling, all the finesse she and Harper and fleet prep had tried to drill into me forgotten.
I landed on my back with the wind partially knocked out of me and Orca pinning my hands over my head.
“Get me off,” she said, the double entendre presumably accidental.
I kneed her in the groin. She managed to dull the worst of the blow by taking it in the thigh instead, but that was all I needed. I flung myself on top of her and battered her shoulders with my fists until she locked her hands behind my back and my legs with hers, holding me until my ribs creaked with the force and her shirt was drenched. I thought it was sweat, at first. Only after several minutes did I realize I was sobbing.
Orca didn’t comfort me. Not in words, at least, or anything resembling a kind gesture. She kept me trapped against her as the fury and fear and hurt and hate ripped through me. I breathed in the familiar scent of her sweat and her hair and our enmity, and was grateful. We’d both grown and healed since that day in the ship’s training room months ago, when, like today, I’d been angry and heartbroken. I’d kissed her then, and she’d been angry and heartbroken enough to kiss me back. I did not want to kiss her now. I smelled sex and Harper on her skin, and while Harper would always be my first and dearest friend, in this moment only Orca understood me.
“You good?”
This time, she didn’t mean good to fight. My head pressed into her shoulder. My arms were trapped against my sides. I wanted to peel off my skin and slither away like an eel. I was the least good I’d been in my entire life.
“Did you know Ching’s on Seraphina’s ship?”
“Shit. No. How did that come up?” Her voice rumbled through her chest. Gradually, she released me, and I flopped onto my back beside her on the floor to stare at the ceiling.
“Seraphina told Miranda.”
“I wondered what had happened to that fucker.”
I doubted Orca would ever forgive Ching for commandeering Man o’ War on her watch.
“I didn’t know she was alive,” I said.
Orca rolled on her side and propped herself up with an elbow. The shells and bones in her hair clinked. “Only Kraken and I knew, aside from the captain. It wasn’t personal. Though, honestly, you probably should have guessed.”
She never pulled her punches.
“Orca,” I said, taking comfort from the heat of her body, “do you hate me?”
“What?” She blinked her gray eyes and frowned. “I mean, I hate your face, but you’ve grown on me.”
“No, I mean for what I did.”
The frown deepened. “What did you do?”
“Helped the Archipelago blow up the Gulf.”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged with one shoulder. “Nah.”
“I committed genocide.”
“Your ego,” she said, miming something large, “is ridiculous. You didn’t tell them to light the fucking ocean on fire, did you?”
“But the channel—”
“We’d most likely be dead if we hadn’t gone through. You’re not blaming yourself for that shitshow, are you?”
“Miranda is.”
Orca gripped my arm and shook me gently. “The captain knows fuck-all. She’s still blaming herself for Gemini. Don’t be like her. The Archipelago’s been trying to off the rest of us for generations. We had shit choices, Rose.”
I wanted to believe it was that easy to absolve myself.
“Look at it this way if you’re going to be an idiot. I was the captain of the trawler. If you want to blame someone, blame me.”
“What do we do, then?”
“About what? I’ve had approximately two hours of sleep. Use your words.”
“About Ching.”
“That’s up to the captain, Rose. It always has been.”
••••
We remained docked beside Seraphina’s ship. Sailors ferried supplies back and forth, and Man o’ War periodically clanged with the sound of repairs. Harper was busy overseeing the work; Orca, presumably, was busy with the same. I hesitated outside the captain’s quarters, then opened the door.
Miranda wasn’t inside. I hadn’t expected her to be, really, and relief brought shame alongside it. My body ached as if I had a fever, and the sick lurch of self-loathing accompanied me, closer than my shadow. I did not know what to do. I needed to talk to Miranda, and I was so afraid of what she might say. The empty room—save for Seamus, who slept on the back of a chair—felt like her. I wanted to be back in the dream of her comfort. I wanted . . . I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted Ching Shih to be dead and I wanted to rid myself of the knowledge that my actions had led to a massacre. I wanted to curl up in my bed and lie there for days. I wanted, more than anything, to be home on Cassiopeia with the mother I hadn’t seen in nearly a year.
“Rose.”
I startled, still in the doorway, and turned to face Kraken. His bulk offered a bulwark against which I might throw myself, but he was Miranda’s man. Did he carry the guilt I now did? He’d been with me. He’d known, better than anyone, what was likely to happen, and he’d said nothing. Why?
His eyes, those warm, brown, grief-stained irises surrounded by fearsome tattoos, held mine. Kraken knew how to carry his dead.
“Captain wants us,” he said, his voice vibrating on the level of whale song.
“Where is she?”
“Seraphina’s. Can you pull yourself together?”
His question was delivered with a measured calm that told me everything I needed to know about my face. I nodded.
“Good.”
Orca joined us in the docking bay. She arched a brow at me, and I gave her the same nod I’d given Kraken. Together, the three of us entered the plex tube connecting the ships like an umbilical. I could see the lights of the ships through the hazy bioplastic, and beyond that, dark water. Sunlight filtered through the upper levels of the ocean, but we were subbed well below the wave zone.
“Any idea what this is about?” Orca asked Kraken. He didn’t respond. We all knew what this was about.
The awe that had accompanied my last visit to Seraphina’s ship was a bleached memory. Her gardens did not soothe me. The smell of cooking did not rouse my appetite. I doubted anything ever would again. I closed my ears against the whispering chant of song and story. Miranda’s insistence that history meant something was just another reminder our history might damn us.
Kraken stopped outside a door on the upper level. Nothing marked it as special. Just plain, gray-green plex with a simple handle, lacking ornamentation or graffiti, and unmarked by labels of any kind. It could contain anything. He opened it, and my heart thudded sickly.
The room beyond smelled like tea. I detected the slight tang of the metal teapot, and the harsh, herbal aroma of hot leaves. Smells I associated with the memory of Ching on Man o’ War, serving tea to us while her armada floated nearby. She’d drunk rum.
Miranda and Seraphina sat at a low table in the center of the room. A plush carpet served as seating, and the walls were covered with geometric tapestries. I took these details in like water to my lungs, a passing afterthought to drowning. The third person in the room looked up at me from her cross-legged position across the table from my captain. My bowels liquified with dread.
The intervening months had not been kind to Ching Shih, former pir
ate queen of the Red Flag fleet. Named for an ancient pirate by those who feared her, she’d brought hell down on the Atlantic; now, hell looked like it had swallowed her up and coughed her back out. Her once shining straight hair was gone, shorn to stubble on her skull. It accented the plainness of her face and the faint lines around her eyes and mouth. Her square jaw and broad forehead, however, framed eyes that cut with a startling, cruel beauty. They were a brown so dark it was nearly black, like a kelp garden in the evening, and the shadows beneath them only cast them into sharper clarity. Those eyes looked at me and knew.
A hand pressed into my back, steadying me. Orca stood close enough the gesture was hidden from sight, and I leaned into her touch for the brief moment of contact, taking strength where I could find it. I’m with you, that touch said, and I was grateful for the second time that day for her presence in my life. Funny how time changed things. Once, I’d wished her buried in the Mariana trench.
“Please sit,” said Seraphina. Kraken and Orca moved to comply, and I did not want to draw attention to myself, so I followed suit, folding myself into the space between them instead of the spot beside Miranda, as that would have put me directly in Ching’s line of sight. And . . . because I did not trust myself. Miranda’s nearness might undo the slim control I had over my emotions.
Kraken, Orca, and I made up Miranda’s inner circle: spy master, first mate, and second. This was ship business. Miranda’s face was a study in composure. No traces of the woman who’d broken down before me last night remained, and her hands rested easily on her tea cup.
“Shall we parley?” asked Seraphina, looking around at each of us in turn.
“Yes,” said Miranda.
“Yes,” said Ching. Her voice raised a cold sweat on my skin. I’d heard it too many times in nightmares.
“Well,” Ching began, taking over the conversation. “I admit I never expected to find myself in this position.”
“And what position is that?” Miranda sounded pleasant, as if she were having tea with an old friend. Maybe Seraphina had drugged her.
“Needing your aid.”
I counted off the cardinal points as I listened, focusing on things that made sense.
“Aid?” Miranda’s voice cracked almost imperceptibly.
“Perhaps you didn’t notice, but I appear to be short a ship—and an armada.”
I flinched. Ching’s eyes flicked in my direction, and I regretted being born.
“The navigator,” she said softly. “Hello again.”
“Captain Shih,” I said, hiding behind fleet formality. She gave me a small and crooked smile. It was not the reaction I’d expected.
“I rarely underestimate my enemies. But you surprised me.”
What could I say to that?
“There are no enemies on my ship,” said Seraphina.
“Let’s dispense with that illusion, Sera. But I am reasonable, and I do not believe you acted on your captain’s orders, did you?”
I looked to Miranda for guidance, but she was watching Ching. Now that Ching’s attention was not on her, I saw the cracks again. Her eyes devoured Ching like she was afraid she was a cloud mirage, and her lips quirked downward with the effort of suppressing her emotions.
“No,” I said.
“You nearly killed your captain and your crew.”
“Yes,” I said again.
“But she’s seen fit to keep you. I cannot object, as questionable as your judgment appears to be.”
This last was directed at Miranda.
“I did not come here to discuss my navigator,” said Miranda.
Why did you come, then? Ching’s eyes seemed to ask, but that might have just been my terrorized imagination.
“I have a proposition for you. I need a sturdy ship and crew to get me where I need to go.”
“Taking you aboard compromises the safety of my crew,” said Miranda.
“Which is why I have something to offer you.”
“And what is that?”
“What you asked me for years ago.”
Miranda’s face did a strange thing. Her lips parted in surprise, but her eyes glittered with an emotion disturbingly similar to malice.
“Why now?” she asked.
“I have nothing more to lose.”
“If you’d done it years ago—”
“The outcome would have been the same. I’ll tell you again what I told you before. You won’t get what you want out of it. But if you’re still determined—”
“Yes.”
Beside me, Orca shifted, her frustration showing. So she didn’t know what was going on, either. A small comfort. Kraken remained implacable.
“A small part of me hoped you’d say no,” said Ching. “But you’ve never taken my advice. Shall we establish terms?”
Orca cleared her throat. Miranda glanced up as if she’d just remembered the rest of us were there.
“Captain, could you tell us what we are agreeing to?”
“An opportunity.” Miranda’s eyes slid to mine, then away. “We’re taking Amaryllis home.”
“Ama—” Orca began before cutting herself off.
But I knew. Ching had told me herself that Ching Shih was a title, not her birth name. Of course Miranda would know her real name.
“Where?” It took all my courage to ask the question. I did not want those eyes turned back on me.
“90 degrees south, Compass Rose.”
I stared at Ching’s—Amaryllis’s—mouth in order to avoid her eyes, noting the chapped skin and the determined bow of her upper lip, and had one coherent thought: What the actual fuck?
“What the fuck?” Orca echoed my thoughts, slamming her hand on the table in what I assumed, dimly, was shock. “Nobody sails there. The water—”
“Isn’t the real danger,” said Ching. I couldn’t quite bring myself to call her Amaryllis.
“Like hell it’s not.”
“Orca,” Miranda said in warning.
“I’m just very confused about why you’re suddenly insane, Captain.”
“That is a conversation we will have later. For now, assume it is worth our while.”
Orca’s molars made sounds of protest as she ground her jaws, but she did not argue the point. I wished she would. Sailing into the Antarctic ring didn’t make any sense. Neither did the motivation. What did Miranda want so badly she’d be willing to take Ching onboard, risking Comita’s wrath, not to mention all our lives? Ching was one woman, but she was a woman who by her own admission had nothing left to lose. What if she tried to kill Miranda? Or me?
“Here are my terms,” said Miranda. “You will grant us an introduction. You will refrain from contact with my crew as much as can reasonably be helped. You will make no attempts to exact revenge on my navigator or any of my other sailors. You will obey my orders. You will incite no mutiny.”
“I’m in no position to do any of the things you think me capable of, Mere.”
“Precautions.”
“And here are my terms,” said Ching. “I will grant you an introduction, but you will not hold me responsible for the results. My warning stands. This will not end the way you want it to.”
“I never asked for anything else.”
Ching briefly closed her eyes. Their lids were a dark bruise blue. “Then we have a deal.”
Miranda drew her belt knife, and my palm prickled. She sliced a thin line over the matching scar on her palm, raising beads of bright blood. Then she held the knife out to Ching. Orca tensed. Even Kraken stilled in his seat, eyes intent on the blade.
“Do it yourself, and do it right,” said Ching. She and Miranda held each other’s eyes for an interminable length of geologic time. At last, Miranda jerked her head in a curt nod and reached for Ching’s overturned palm. Her left hand held Ching’s wrist steady.
Orca hissed beneath her breath as Miranda’s knife carved an inexorable curved line over Ching’s palm, followed by three smaller lines underneath: the jellyfish sigil of the Man o’
War. Ching made no sound. She just gazed at Miranda with something horribly like tenderness.
••••
Miranda took my hand as we exited the Trench what felt like a lifetime later. I let her, aware of the blood drying in the creases of her palm. Kraken and Orca flanked us. Orca muttered to Kraken in a voice just low enough to be unintelligible, but I had a suspicion I could guess the content.
“I need to check on the hydrofarm to see what stock we can spare,” Miranda said. “Orca, make the arrangements.”
“Captain,” Orca said, turning and blocking the hallway. “I don’t trust her.”
“Neither do I.”
Orca’s mouth thinned, but she seemed satisfied by this response. She and Kraken parted ways, leaving me and Miranda alone. I walked at her side and tried to quell the tempest in my rib cage. It was too much. It was all too much. And I needed Miranda desperately, but was afraid to look into her face, in case that silent accusation lay behind her eyes. We didn’t speak until we came to the hydrofarm.
“Over here.” She pulled me into the shadow of an eel tank. The strong odor of the pirate hemp crop clung to my nostrils. It was possible for us to be overheard, but unlikely. Pumps rushed water and nutrient baths over roots, and the low hum of the handheld pollination wands created the sort of ambient noise that drowned conversation.
She’d brought me to a public forum, I realized, instead of our private quarters, to forestall another fight. I pulled my hand from hers.
“Rose—”
“I don’t like sailing blind.”
“Then let me explain.”
“Why did you mark her?” I hadn’t known I was going to lead with that, but the pain in my voice was obvious even to my ears.
“It’s complicated. And not something we have time for right now.” At my expression, she reached for me again. I tucked my hands behind my back.
“Then what do we have time for?”
