by Anna Burke
Walking the halls of my ship felt like swimming through a corridor of squid. Everyone I passed was a potential threat now, and my shoulders tensed as they waited for the sick thud of a knife. Children ran past, shrieking in their games. Adults eyed me. A few nodded in greeting. Others ignored me entirely.
I entered the bridge intact. Miranda wasn’t there. The bridge crew looked up from the instruments, and Reya gave me a distracted wave.
“Where are we?”
“Waiting for intel on Crux’s shipping routes and trying to stay off fleet radar. Where were you yesterday?”
I tapped my head in answer.
“You’ve got to get over that. It’s been, what, three weeks now?”
Finn had warned me it could take months before I started to feel any real sense of recovery. I didn’t have months. As surreptitiously as I could without leaning over her shoulder, I made note of the coordinates on the map beside her and matched it to what my internal compass told me. Close, though I didn’t know if the margin of error was on my side or hers. Impossible to say without the stars.
“I’ll be in the chart room if you need me.”
The chart room—my sanctuary—was occupied. I stared at the woman sitting with her back to me. She didn’t turn, and the stubble on her head now measured the length of a finger joint.
“Navigator,” she said, though how she knew was beyond me.
I inched backward.
“Stay.”
She didn’t command me on this ship. I could flee for safety, perhaps pausing to ask Reya why she hadn’t warned me—Annie’s face flashed in my mind’s eye, all smiles until she had cut me loose—without repercussion.
“I won’t be killing you today. Sit.” The dry humor in her voice would have been disarming coming from anyone else. From her it just raised all the hair on my body. I sat. Ching Shih looked up. Dark circles limned her eyes, and the lines around her mouth were deeper than they’d been when I first met her. The fierce beauty of her plain face was a warning. She commanded attention, even in her diminished state.
“I didn’t realize you were here,” I said.
“And I was told you wouldn’t be here. It would appear I was misinformed.”
Sweat prickled as it rose along with my body hair. The drug might have cleared my mind, but it couldn’t take the edge off the guilt and terror her presence inspired.
“I warned you to stay close to the shelf. The current’s a bitch, but it’s safer than the alternative.”
“You could have said that.”
The look she gave me was cool and almost clinically disinterested. “I am not accustomed to explaining myself to navigators.”
Had that been the only reason? Had I misjudged, assuming the worst of her, and gotten more people killed? Seas, but I wanted to vomit. Nausea was becoming a lifestyle.
“But since you’re here, we might as well make Miranda happy. This is where we’re headed, once she’s done raiding.”
No mention of the fact that Ching was the reason Miranda needed to raid in the first place. She had to know. I looked at the map, because what else could I do? This was my job.
“Symbiont.” Her finger stabbed a location nestled in the continent’s curving arm. “The capital city. It is closely guarded. You won’t make it there without getting picked up by a patrol. What we’ll need to do is ensure the patrol doesn’t sink us before we have time to make contact.”
“Is that a possibility?”
“Potentially. They don’t have much use for old tech.”
“Old—”
“Everything you have is old to them. And you . . .” she smirked and shook her head, but did not elaborate. Before I could muster the courage to ask, she continued. “The sail itself won’t be too challenging unless we need to surface for repairs. Average wave height is fifteen feet, and that’s on a calm day. You’re looking at a good chance of thirty to sixty, and when I tell you this ship cannot survive a sixty-foot wave, I’m being generous. I’ve seen waves reach eighty feet, maybe more. They keep detailed records. You bust another valve, and you’re dead in the water.”
“What about squid?”
“The sizes you’re used to.”
“The ship that attacked us—they didn’t show up on the radar. Will the sea wolves have that technology?”
“They invented that technology. You won’t see them coming. But I speak their language.”
“So we’re dependent on you telling them not to kill us?”
“Essentially.” She dropped her attention back to the charts. I tried to take a steadying breath without making it obvious I was doing so. I didn’t like this at all. Ching had the advantage, and she wasn’t the sort to let advantages pass her by.
“Why did you tell Miranda she wouldn’t get what she wanted from the sea wolves?” I asked. With luck, I’d never be alone with Ching again, which meant this was my only opportunity to ask her the questions festering beneath my clavicle.
“Miranda wants something impossible. It will get her killed one day.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I have no plans to kill your captain. You should be more concerned about your own life.” She mimed throwing a knife. “I hear you nearly had an accident.”
“Was that on your orders?”
“I don’t need to order your death, Rose. People seem to hate you—or what you stand for—enough all on their own. Though I should apologize for Anemone Dive.”
The bottom dropped from my stomach. “Annie?”
“I gave her orders to keep an eye on Miranda, and to protect her from Archipelago influence. It isn’t good for her.”
The drug couldn’t keep up with the assaults on my system. North faded. I spun, again a broken compass. “She was yours.”
“Most of Miranda’s sailors were, at one point.”
And how many still are?
“Did Miranda know?”
The look she gave me was nearly pitying. “I have no idea. She’s hotheaded enough to have walked Annie before she gave a full confession, and Annie knew how to keep her mouth shut. She loved Mere.”
“She had a pretty fucked-up way of showing it.”
“Don’t take it personally.”
I opened my palm and stared down at the scars tucked in the creases of my skin. Should I be relieved to finally have an answer? I felt nothing. Annie, who had shown me kindness and then left me adrift. Annie, the first to die as a direct result of my existence.
“Why did you let her mark you?” I asked as the jellyfish sigil on my hand stared back up at me.
“I once swore the day I took an order from her would be the day I lost my fleet. I’ll admit freely I never expected that day to come. But I keep my word.”
I said nothing.
“We’re not like your people out here,” said Ching. This time there was definite pity in her voice, and I wanted to strangle her with it. “Mere told me you had no idea what your admirals would do to my fleet, and I believe it.”
I flinched.
“But,” she said, her voice hardening, “ignorance doesn’t absolve you. And now here you are, helping pirates raid the people you sacrificed mine to protect. I truly do not understand you.”
The judgment in her voice lashed my cheeks. Get up, I urged my body, but every limb felt heavy and sullen. Her words pierced the infection of my guilt. It ran hot and thick over my tongue. I deserved this.
Ching wasn’t done.
“The biggest irony, as I see it, is that you broke things off with Mere because you somehow, like a child, think you still have the higher moral ground. We’re at sea. There is no ground to stand on.”
Her voice sharpened from lash to razor.
“If I thought tossing you overboard would do her a lick of good, you’d be dead already. But that’s where you and I finally agree: she’s too broken to fix.”
“I don’t think—”
Ching raised her brows in response. This time, my body obeyed my command, and I pushed back f
rom my chair. “We’re done here.”
“Suit yourself. And remember what I said about the Antarctic. Don’t surface. And for fuck’s sake, keep us close to the coast until we get there.”
Footsteps pounded on the stairs.
“Rose.” Miranda’s voice was ragged with panic. She crossed the chart room at a run and looked me over, no doubt for evidence of stab wounds. Ching’s words echoed in my head: There is no ground to stand on. Had I been wrong, not just about Miranda, but about Ching? If she hadn’t been leading us astray and really intended to make good on her word to my captain, then what did that make me?
“I’m fine,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest in a gesture I knew looked defensive, but I needed the security of arms around me, and couldn’t ask Miranda in front of Ching—shouldn’t ask Miranda at all, after what I’d told her I needed.
Miranda’s gaze passed over me to the table, and she noticed the room’s other occupant for the first time. “Where’s Nasrin?”
“It’s Beck today, and he went to get us food.”
“He—” Miranda cut herself off, frustration evident in the click of her teeth as she snapped down on her words. “I thought I made it clear I don’t want the two of you in the same room.”
“We were just going over the charts. I didn’t know she was here,” I said. I wasn’t defending Ching Shih, but I wanted some control over the situation.
“You should still be resting.” Her tone was gentler than it had been when we’d fought earlier that day, but still reproachful.
“She’s doing her job,” said Ching. “She can rest later. Mere, your charts are horribly out of date.”
“And yours are at the bottom of the ocean. This is what we have to work with.”
I saw the flash of anger in Ching’s eyes at the callous statement. Miranda seemed to have noticed it too, because she tried to backtrack. “Amaryllis—”
“From water we came, and to water we return.”
“Water is life, and watery is the grave,” said Miranda. The exchange had the rote feel of a call and response, but one I’d never heard before. “You know I didn’t mean that.”
“I do,” said Ching.
“How badly out of date?”
“I’ve made what corrections I can. And as I’ve been telling your navigator, you won’t be able to surface once you pass the Falklands. The seas down there aren’t anything like what you’re used to.”
“All the more reason to raid for supplies,” said Miranda in what I thought was a brave attempt at pretending the raids were her idea, rather than a response to a stirring mutiny.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“There’s still time to change your mind,” said Ching.
“You know that won’t happen.”
Ching shot me a look as if to say, See? I told you. Broken.
“I just came to grab some charts,” I said, desperate to get out of there.
“Grab them. I’ll take you back.” Miranda waited while I swiped charts at random, unable to focus. The pounding in my head sounded like drums.
When we were in the stairwell that led from the chart room to the bridge below, she placed a hand on the back of my head to protect it, then leaned me gently against the wall. Her eyes searched mine.
“You swear no one hurt you?”
“I swear it. I was just doing my job.”
“Your job—fuck your job. I have other navigators. Do you know what it would do to me if—” She broke off and hauled on her braid, her frustration now violent. With the drug in my system, I could see she was close to breaking. The hand that held her hair was white-knuckled, but the hand cradling my skull remained gentle, and in that dichotomy I saw the stress fractures that ran through her and into the ship. Ching was wrong, however. She wasn’t broken beyond repair.
And if she was?
I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her lips. They tasted like rum. She did not respond at first, and my lower lip slid over hers, the curve and softness of it familiar and new each time. The barest suggestion of a whimper escaped her mouth. I kissed her with more urgency. When her lips parted, I pulled her into me, and the wall of our ship held us up while Miranda put all the things I knew she couldn’t say into the kiss.
Nothing had changed. I still needed time. But I was worried, so seas-damned worried, that time was the one thing we didn’t have.
I undid her braid when she returned me to her quarters. She sat at my feet on the floor while I sat on the bed, and the thick fall of her hair loosened beneath my ministrations. Slowly I worked the knots out of the strands until I could run a comb from her scalp down to the tips. She relaxed against my legs. I pictured each loop of hair as a current while I braided. The clarity granted by the drug wavered once more, and I couldn’t tell if the water running through my hands was real or imagined.
“I’m losing my ship.” Miranda’s voice interrupted my tumbling thoughts. My hands stilled in their work.
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
I tied off her braid and placed my hands on the tight muscles of her shoulders, kneading them.
“Your crew is loyal to you. We’ll distract them with this raid, and then . . .” I hesitated. “Then we find the sea wolves.”
“You were right.” Her muscles remained rigid beneath my fingers. “The crew doesn’t care.”
“They care; we—”
“I can see it so clearly, Rose.”
With her face turned away, I couldn’t see her expression, but the pain in her voice was palpable. “See what?”
“How it could be better. With the right technology there could be enough to at least make this life worth it. I’ve read the histories. We had a chance to start over out here, and instead we’re making the same mistakes, again and again and again. But maybe you’re right. Maybe there isn’t a better way. Maybe we’re just wired to exploit each other.”
“You don’t exploit your crew.”
“No, I just carve my mark into their palms.” She laughed without humor. I rested my chin on the top of her head and reached down to take her hands. The scar on her palm matched the scar on mine—ridged, unlike the smooth lines of the jelly scars all over her body.
“How much time do we have?” The warm smell of her hair filled my senses, and it didn’t smell like lemon. I held her and the currents tightly to me.
“I’m not sure. If they . . . if they were bold enough to make a move on you in front of me, not long.”
“We could go.”
“A captain doesn’t abandon her ship.”
“Then call for a vote.”
She laughed again.
“You could,” I pressed. “Then, if they choose Ching, you’re free.”
“I don’t even know if they’d elect Ching. She failed them, too.”
“Then we run.”
“I can’t, Rose. I worked—”
“Ching worked hard, too, and look what happened to her. I love your dream. I love that you believe in it. I want to live in that world someday, Miranda, but we can’t build it if we’re dead.” I disentangled myself from her and slid to the ground to face her. She looked tired. She looked beautiful. She looked lost.
“I’m your navigator. I’m supposed to tell you when you’re sailing into trouble.”
Her thumb brushed the scab on my forehead.
“And I’m your captain. I’m supposed to keep you safe.”
••••
Harper lounged on the couch, tossing a lemon into the air and then catching it again. The ship rumbled with the sounds I associated with evening. Laughter and friendly shouts from the day shift filled the halls, and the skeleton crew that oversaw the ship in the evenings trekked to their posts.
“I still say we shouldn’t trust her,” said Harper.
“I’m not saying we should. I’m just saying—”
“I get it. But you’re an idiot if you think this is all your fault.”
�
�How is it not? I took us out from the coast—”
“Because there were active mother-fucking volcanoes.”
“Still—”
“And her cryptic ‘Stay close to the shelf’ hallway exchange? Dumb. I would have turned us dead into the gyre immediately if she said that to me.”
“But—”
“The real issue is that you’re trying to navigate at all,” said Harper. “Have you told Miranda yet that you can’t?”
“What are you talking about?” I turned my head too sharply to stare at her, earning a lance of pain.
“I know you, Rose. I can tell when something is wrong.”
For a moment, I considered lying. Revealing this truth would mean facing it, and I wasn’t ready—which made me no better than Miranda. A lie was a lie was a lie.
“No,” I said. “I haven’t told her. I haven’t told anyone.”
“That’s what Orca and I thought.”
“Please, Harp. If anyone finds out—”
“You were hit super hard in the head. Of course you’re hurt. It will come back.”
“You don’t know that.” My voice cracked, and I stared at the ceiling.
“And you don’t know that it won’t. But I don’t think you should smoke that stuff anymore.”
Seeing as I had taken the drug already that morning, I didn’t immediately respond. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is, actually. Rest and recover. Can you even be sure you’re okay to navigate high?”
“I verify the coordinates.”
“So you’re doing twice the work? How does that make sense? Other people can cover for you until you’re better. And you were nearly killed the other day. Stay in here and stay safe.”
“You sound like Miranda.”
