Sea Wolf (A Compass Rose Novel, 2)

by Anna Burke

  I rolled to my side and snared Orca’s ankle between my own before she could complete her coup. She hit the mat beside me. I dove out of the way of her hasty headlock. Her fingers closed over my calf instead, but I kicked her off and bounced to my feet, panting.

  She blocked my next uppercut, as I had anticipated. She did not block the left-handed strike I sent to her middle, though she deflected the force of the blow by leaping backward.

  “Shouldn’t you put your money where your bunk is?” I asked Harper.

  “Nah. Gotta keep her on her toes. Watch your—”

  The hook caught me in the shoulder. Reeling, I took three hasty steps to catch my balance. Orca sprang forward and we went down again. This time, her headlock trapped me. She pulled me flush against her as her elbow clamped around my throat. I clawed at her forearm, then reached for her head. Teeth met my fingers.

  “Foul,” I wheezed.

  “Yeah, you do taste like ass,” she said in my ear.

  I kicked at whatever parts of her I could reach with my heels until she wrapped her thighs around me. Trussed and partially suffocated, I tapped out.

  “You’re getting better,” Orca said as she released me. “Still wouldn’t bet on you, though.”

  “Whatever.” I tugged my shirt back down over my stomach and rubbed my throat.

  “My round.” Harper jumped the ropes and rolled her neck.

  I stretched while they sparred. Orca and Harper were evenly matched, and the grunts and smack of flesh on flesh didn’t seem to favor either one. Orca wore her braids tied up beneath a scarf and Harper had secured her curls in a knot that shed strands each time she lunged. Both panted past grins as they did their best to bloody each other.

  “This one’s for you,” Harper told me as she fixed Orca in a headlock much like the one that had lost me my round. Orca wriggled out with a twist of her torso and leveled Harper with an elbow.

  “Spoke too soon,” I said.

  “She always does.” Orca pinned Harper and grinned, scuffling her arms behind her head. Harper growled, then moved her hips in a slow gyration that blew Orca’s pupils. Sensing the situation devolving, I finished stretching and took my leave. The moment the door shut behind me, my lungs contracted with grief.

  The halls of the ship throbbed with sound. The engine was louder than any fleet ship’s, and beyond the mechanical thrum came the sounds of the crew and their families. Children screeched in games that made sense only to them, and the raucous shouts of people calling good-naturedly to each other reverberated off the walls. Exposed pipes were interspersed with stretches of murals and graffiti near the creches.

  I followed my usual route from the training room back to my quarters, staring at the scuffed toes of my shoes. Fighting had eased some of the lassitude gripping me, but now it settled back around my neck. I wanted to sleep for a year and wake up in a new life.

  “Navigator.”

  Ching’s voice went through me like a spear. I jerked upright and met her gaze. Her hair had grown in a little since I’d first seen her on the Trench, but her eyes were still hollow, and the meat remained melted from her bones. She looked like a woman who’d lost everything. Which she had, thanks to me. The animal part of my brain screamed that my death was imminent. However, a familiar sailor stood on Ching’s right: Nasrin. Her eyes never left Ching Shih, and she had to weigh at least twice what the former pirate queen did now. Nasrin also ran the ship’s main bar, where she bounced her own patrons and “took no shit,” in Harper’s words. Ching would have to be superhuman to get past her to harm me.

  “Ching,” I managed to say in acknowledgment.

  “Keep close to the shelf for as long as you can.”

  With that, she passed right by me, leaving me soaked with sweat and trembling.

  Keep close to the shelf? Directly against the current? That didn’t make sense. Our engines would have to work twice as hard. Sailing through deeper water was far more economical. I turned to ask her for clarification before remembering I was not supposed to engage with her directly—which hadn’t stopped Ching, of course.

  “Amaryllis,” I said.

  Her back stiffened, and her right hand gave a minute spasm. She looked back over her shoulder at me. I got the distinct impression she did not appreciate me using her given name.

  “Rose,” she said, her voice calmer than her body language.

  “What’s in the deeper waters?”

  “Just take my advice, and we won’t find out.”

  ••••

  The coordinates Ching gave Miranda to give to me, which Miranda had delivered through a note instead of in person, hovered off the coast of the southernmost continent. I stared at the charts with a cup of tea in my hands and the sounds from the bridge below familiar and soothing. I spent more and more of my time in the chart room. Miranda never came here, and I could be alone, save for the occasional shout from Crow’s Eye above in the crow’s nest. Then, I’d climb up and see for myself what had caught his eye. Squid sometimes, or a swarm I hadn’t felt in my distracted state.

  Today I planned to finish up the last set of charts for Admiral Comita, but I couldn’t concentrate on the task. Sailing south still felt like such a fool’s errand, and for what? I’d loved Miranda’s idealism once, but now it merely seemed delusional. Worse than delusional—she’d thrown away our relationship for a whale’s tale. If she hadn’t still clung to this hope, would she have lied to me?

  I knew it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever was simple where she was concerned. But blaming the coordinates was easier than blaming myself for my own naivete. The tip of my finger traced the route we’d take.

  The sea wolves. The grief living in my chest shifted, presenting me with a different, half-remembered face: my father. He hadn’t been a sea wolf. I was sure of that. But if he’d been descended from them? Was the truth about my uncanny navigational abilities as simple as recessive genetics? Could my entire existence be reduced to “Oh yeah, forgot to mention your grandmother was a fucking legend?” Did my mother know? Had she lied, too? Or had he lied to her? Could anyone around me tell the truth?

  Worse, what if we got there and the sea wolves took one look at me and dismissed me out of hand? What if they didn’t want to claim me either?

  The storyteller on Trench was wrong. History only hurt. It didn’t have anything to teach me I didn’t already know. I didn’t belong anywhere or with anyone.

  Sinking into self-pity wouldn’t help me get any work done, but I couldn’t pull myself out of it. I missed Miranda. I hated not touching her, not laughing with her as we lay in bed at night going over the day, not falling asleep to the sound of her breathing. Now, when I saw her in the halls or at meals, she gave me a cold nod. I’d hurt her, that nod said, and so she’d give me what I’d asked for: space and the cold professionalism of a captain-navigator relationship. The few times I’d called after her, she just kept walking.

  At meals, she sat beside Kraken and Ching. Sometimes Ching said something too quietly for me to hear, and Miranda would smile. Once, Ching brushed a strand of Miranda’s hair out of her face in a gesture that spoke of years of familiarity. It wasn’t sensual or motherly or sisterly, but something in-between, and Miranda didn’t even seem to notice. Ching didn’t look up at me afterward and flaunt her closeness with my captain. She didn’t say “I made her,” as she had once before. She didn’t need to. Maybe she didn’t even realize she’d done it. There was coldness still between them, but it was the coldness of a relationship that ran too deep to sever. I understood, as I watched them day after day, what I hadn’t fully understood before.

  Ching, Amaryllis, whatever she wanted to call herself, was more family to Miranda than anyone else on this ship, save maybe Kraken. Definitely more so than I’d ever been. Miranda might not have agreed with Ching’s methods when it came to the Archipelago, but she loved Ching Shih. Truly loved her. I’d been an idiot not to realize it before, or what it meant for me. If Miranda had been willing to break w
ith Ching over ideological differences, then breaking with me over the same was inevitable. I would never come first. When I’d asked her for time, I’d been too hurt to process anything but my own heartbreak. I’d wanted a moment to breathe and lick my wounds. I hadn’t meant to end things. Not really. But she’d clearly taken it that way.

  This is what you wanted, her eyes said each time they met mine. You asked for this, not me.

  I’d hoped she’d come to me. I’d hoped, like an idiot, for a grand gesture or an apology or some sign she’d be willing to change or provide proof I mattered to her, and instead she’d turned on me like a wounded cat.

  “She’s been hurt too often and too badly,” Kraken said one evening as we walked together. “Give her time. Right now she can’t see past the pain, and she can’t be rational.”

  He’d meant to reassure me. Instead, he’d just confirmed what I already knew, and what I’d told Miranda: she would always be the only one who mattered in our relationship. What I needed was immaterial.

  Being right sucked.

  I shook my head to clear it and got back to the charts.

  ••••

  Man o’ War made wake, and our new parts held. The course I’d plotted took us along the South American coastline. Ching’s cryptic warning hovered at the back of my mind as I battled the prevailing current. On the bright side, if Comita ever caught up with us—when she did, I reminded myself, as it was always safer to assume the worst—at least we could make a case that we’d been continuing her research. Not that she would give us time to make a case. Absconding with her daughter wasn’t something she was likely to overlook.

  “Check that out,” said a lean pilot named Reya. She tapped the sonar screen, then pointed at the view out of the plex. I left the helm, where I’d been making sure the coordinates I’d plotted matched with the ship’s instruments, and joined her. The sonar screen was blank, save for variations in the seascape. A few splotches of color appeared, then scattered as the waves clarified, but I immediately saw what had drawn her interest.

  To our right lay the sharp slope of the continental shelf. Sunlight pierced the water in shafts, illuminating the incline. To our left, according to the sonar, rose an underwater mountain. I reached for the currents. This deep, the water generally stayed stable, and I’d kept us subbed to avoid a passing storm. Now, though, I detected a disturbance.

  “Neptune’s balls,” I said, pulling back into myself.

  “Is it active?” Reya asked.

  “Very.”

  Superheated water poured from the volcano’s mouth. Though it was half a mile away and invisible to the naked eye, I felt the impact of the eruption in the roiling water displaced by the temperature change. We didn’t want water that hot anywhere near us. Our systems were built to filter water, not to cool it, and the gasses that would escape with the heat were even more deadly.

  “Adjust.” I called out coordinates to the bridge and took the helm, feeling for any more surprises, like vents in the ocean floor. Surfacing wasn’t an option. Waves still dominated topside, and I sensed a large swarm to the east. Ordinary terrors. Volcanoes were different. Fleet prep covered their hazards, but because the Archipelago floated in deep ocean, far away from active vents and mountains, the exercises were largely rhetorical.

  “We should be far enough away, right?” asked Reya.

  “We should.” I tried to scrub my doubts from the words. Why hadn’t I sensed this? Had it been too far away? Or had I been too distracted by my own eruptions to notice the threat? I couldn’t afford to slip in unknown waters. Volcanic activity vibrated through the ship just past the range of hearing. At least in another decade or two, when the area cooled, there’d be rich mineral deposits to mine, provided we survived long enough to report it.

  The wheel felt strange under my hand. I’d gotten used to inputting coordinates, and the manual override reminded me of the trawler I’d sailed with Miranda, Orca, Jeanine, Kraken, and Finn. Man o’ War, however, was a much larger ship, and I kept my touch steady to avoid overcompensating as I took us closer to the shelf and farther away from the active blow.

  “Incoming.” Reya pointed at the sonar again. Shapes took form from the deeps.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.” I gritted my teeth anyway. The other reason volcanoes were dangerous was their propensity for attracting squid. I didn’t understand it. They were normally drawn to cooler waters, but something about eruptions lured them, whether it was minerals or a food source we hadn’t identified, and they didn’t like intrusions. We watched them circle the ship, first on the radar, and then in front of us through the plex. Long bodies jetted past, equipped with eyes the size of plates and long, questing tentacles. Sweat poured down my back as nausea gripped me. Squid like these had killed Jeanine, and had nearly killed Orca back on the trawler.

  “Get the fuck outta here,” said another crew member.

  I, too, wished the squid a speedy return to Davy Jones’s. One plastered itself to the plex. Reya, after an initial burst of cursing, held her hand to the plastic. The sucker nearest was easily the size of her palm, and the creature dwarfed her. Crow’s Eye had to be getting a real show. At least I was glad I was not in the crow’s nest.

  “You really fought one of these?” Reya asked as if reading my mind. I wondered who she’d heard the story from, for it varied depending on the teller. I pinched the web between my forefinger and thumb to try to ease the nausea.

  “Kraken and Orca did the fighting.” All I’d done was save Orca’s life; she’d wielded the sword that stopped the squid from dismantling our ship.

  “That’s not what I heard.” The squid currently latched to the plex peeled away and dove back to its lair, leaving a few of its smaller brethren to harass us as we sailed. “Orca says you held your own.”

  “She’s just building me up so she looks better when she kicks my ass in the ring,” I said, trying to inject a lightness into my tone I didn’t feel.

  “Sounds about right. You sure we can’t head deeper? We could avoid all this.” She gestured at the plex, then at the sonar.

  I hesitated before answering. The coast was volatile. Every day could be one near disaster after another. Deep ocean carried comparatively fewer threats. Ching’s warning made little sense. And now that I thought about it, why had she delivered it in the hall instead of passing it through the channels set up by Miranda?

  Doubt gnawed like a ship’s rat. What if Ching hadn’t wanted Miranda to know she’d told me to stick to the coast? Possible reasons for this scenario flashed before me like the jetting squid. Maybe she had friends lying in wait. Leave it to Ching Shih to plot an ambush from afar. Or maybe she wanted to watch the ship sink, her own life be damned, in a twisted game of revenge. I’d let her get under my skin and affect my judgment, putting us at risk.

  The smart thing to do would have been to go to Miranda for clarification and ask her to interrogate Ching for more information. But I couldn’t.

  “Mapping this shit isn’t worth it,” Reya added.

  “I know.”

  The look on her face suggested she understood the subtext of my words. None of this felt worth it to me.

  I’d tracked our location on the charts earlier that day, making note of measurements that differed from previous accounts. Depth readings varied drastically, and in them I read cataclysmic change. Whatever shift in plates had made them must have caused a tsunami unlike anything recorded. It also revealed the unpredictability of our course.

  “I’ll check the charts,” I said to Reya. “We can at least avoid this sector.”

  My constant awareness of the ocean calmed as I directed Man o’ War past the shelf. The drop-off yawned beneath us, and past it was open ocean. The ship’s engines stopped their somewhat asthmatic chugging as we broke free of the current, and subsided into a pleased purr. I’d reassess our course tomorrow, I decided, and consult with Miranda, no matter how painful that prospect would no doubt be.

  ••••


  Walking back to my bunk took me past the captain’s quarters. I slowed instead of hurrying as I’d done over the previous weeks and rested my fingers on the handle: not to open it, but to pretend, just for a second, I was going home.

  Inside, I heard voices.

  “Absolutely not,” said Miranda. The words were muffled, but she’d spoken loudly. Another voice responded. I couldn’t make it out. “. . . my crew,” Miranda continued, more quietly, but I caught those two words. Something in her tone alarmed me. I pressed my ear to the door.

  “. . . willing to make sacrifices,” came a voice I hadn’t wanted to ever overhear coming from Miranda’s rooms. My cheek felt suddenly feverish against the plex and damp with perspiration. Of course it was Ching fucking Shih. I pictured her sitting on one of the couches, elbows on her knees as she leaned forward to make her case to Miranda. My Miranda.

  “I said no.” Miranda’s voice was firm and cold. Hearing it reassured me.

  “You don’t have anything else to offer them, Mere.”

  “Get out.”

  I jumped as I realized Miranda had just ordered Ching to leave, which would bring me face to face with both of them the moment the door opened. No thank you. I bolted for my quarters, whipping inside just as I heard Miranda’s door open. Safe. But what in all seven seas had Ching said to piss Miranda off?

  ••••

  The following day brought us into a patch of sea calm and clean enough for us to surface. Miranda brought the ship topside and cleared the decks for recreation and dispute resolution. I stayed in the chart room, avoiding the confrontation I needed to have with my captain about our course.

  “Hey, what are you doing in here?” Harper leaned in the doorway, smudges covering her face and coveralls. “Come get some sun while we still can.”

  “I’ve got work.”

  “It can wait a half hour. When was the last time you breathed fresh air?”

  “The air is fresher in here than it is out there.”

  “You’re the ass that gave the all clear.”