by Anna Burke
She held up her good hand in a gesture of surrender. “Fine. Easy, Rose. Neptune.”
“Orca’s your first mate?” Kraken asked. His eyes slid to Miranda, who still hadn’t looked up from her rum.
“Yes.” It was easier to keep my voice firm this time.
“Consistency is good,” he said. “Have something to eat.”
I fell on my food, grateful for the excuse to hide my face. Pretending I knew how to be a captain made me feel like squidshit. Miranda’s presence didn’t help; she dripped authority from her pores. The stark contrast didn’t cast me in a good light, and her silence leached my strength.
Cleanup duty fell to me. Soap frothed as I scoured the dishes with salt water, drying them with a hemp towel that had clearly come from a fleet ship once. The constellation for Orion was stitched into one corner.
Harper was better, I told myself as I stacked the dishes in the cupboard. Miranda’s dire warnings that she wasn’t out of the swarm yet were just that: warnings. They weren’t prophecy. Harper would pull through. Was pulling through. There was no reason for the dread drying my mouth. A hot tear slid down my cheek and joined the soapy salt water in the sink.
Miranda didn’t roll over to accommodate me when I pulled back the curtain. I stared at the curve of her back, frustration coursing through me in waves. I needed her. Not even as a captain, but as a partner or, barring that, a friend. Seamus purred when he saw me, and the smell of rum wafted out of the alcove.
I couldn’t handle it. “Sleep well,” I said, and clambered onto the empty bunk above her.
Dreams pounced with brutal efficiency. I drowned and watched my friends drown in turn, and all the while Ching traced a knife along Miranda’s scars, opening fresh wounds until her skin ran red with blood. My throat ached from screaming.
“Hey.”
I woke with a flinch and turned toward the voice, expecting to find Miranda. Kraken’s broad hand clasped mine.
“I—I had a nightmare.”
“I know.”
My fingers stretched to curl around his as I shook off the disorientation of dreams.
“Want something to drink?” he asked. “Water? Rum?”
“I’m okay. Thank you. For waking me up.” I would not be like Miranda, dependent on rum to function.
“Anytime, kid.” He patted me on the shoulder and left me to lie in the semi-darkness of my bunk. I cried myself back to sleep.
The sound of people arguing woke me up.
“You need to sleep.”
“I’m fucking fine.”
“Don’t try that with me.” I recognized Kraken’s voice. The other belonged to Miranda. “We need you functional.”
“Why? I’m not captain.” Her words slurred.
Was she drunk? I’d never seen her drunk. Drinking, yes, but not drunk. I listened intently.
“Were you in your bunk at all today?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
“Fuck off.”
“She was screaming, Mere. Like you used to. And you weren’t there.”
Silence.
“Pull yourself together. We’ve lost everything before, and we’re still here. This is no different. You’ve got an hour till the shift change. Sleep. Please.”
I heard the sound of the curtain below me open and then close. It took her breathing a long time to settle into sleep.
••••
“You two look worse than I do,” Harper said with glee when Miranda and I stumbled into the common area. Red rimmed Miranda’s eyes, and her hair, normally sleek and shiny, was dull and lank in its braid. I smelled rum when she passed close by me, but neither of us acknowledged the other. Harper took this in and wisely shut up.
“How do you feel?” I asked her.
“Like a new person.”
I glanced at Orca. Her expression did not carry the same confidence, and, following her eyes, I noticed that the red streaks in Harper’s arm had not receded. The antibiotics were holding the worst of it off, but if they couldn’t vanquish the infection itself, she was still in trouble. What little appetite I’d woken with vanished.
Miranda showered while I talked with Harper. When she emerged, her hair a wet tangle down her back, she looked slightly more human.
“Ready?” she asked me.
I hugged Harper and led the way to the helm.
“Do we need to talk about this?” I said when we were out of earshot of the rest of the crew.
“About what?”
“Your drinking.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Don’t we? You’re hiding. You should be captain. I don’t want this. And Harper—”
“Rose.” Her words cut into mine. “I have cost you everything. If Harper dies . . . I know what she is to you. So tell me. How, exactly, am I supposed to deal with this? I should not be captain, and you were right. I should not be with you. I’m a danger to everyone around me.”
I thought of how it often felt like death followed me everywhere I went. I thought about how easy it would be to blame Miranda and Ching and Comita for every wrong decision I’d made since leaving the North Star. I thought about the guilt I felt for Jeanine and Annie and all the sailors who’d died in the Gulf, and how it ate at me.
“Kraken’s right,” I said, hating myself for what I knew I had to do. I couldn’t show her tenderness. Not yet. Tenderness would shatter her. “Pull yourself together.”
The hurt in her eyes hardened. “You—”
“You think I don’t understand? You think I’m going to just let you check out?” I stood, shouting now.
She stood in reply. The scars on her face flushed a darker red in warning. “Don’t stress your head, Rose.”
“Fuck you.” I put all the venom I could into the curse. “All this talk of Miranda Stillwater, the most fearsome sailor the Archipelago ever produced, and look at you. You’re pathetic.”
“Watch your tone, sailor.” Authority snapped out of her like a gale.
I seized the front of her shirt in my hands, relief a tonic in my bloodstream, and pushed her against the wall of the helm. This was my captain. Her arms encircled me, first gently, then with urgency as I kissed her hard enough to bruise. Her body was warm and solid. I slid my hands from my grip on her shirt to her neck, and let her turn me so that I was the one against the wall with her hand cradled behind my head to protect it. Her thigh parted mine, demanding. Her lips moved down my jaw to my neck, kissing and biting as we both did our best to make up for lost time.
“Is everything—”
“Not now,” I said to whoever stood in the doorway.
I heard a chuckle, which sounded like Nasrin. “Sure thing.”
Miranda found the sensitive spot at the base of my neck and rendered further thought incoherent.
••••
“I do want to talk to you,” she said when we’d collapsed back into our seats, breathless and sore. My body craved more of her touch, but we were on duty, and these were dangerous waters. “Just not about my drinking. Leave that alone.”
“About what then?”
“About us.” Her glance skimmed the instrument panel, but I felt the avoidance of her gaze as strongly as if her eyes bore into mine.
“Okay. What about us?”
“I meant what I said. You were right about asking for time.”
This wasn’t something I knew how to respond to, so I waited.
“And I know things got complicated before we had a chance to talk.”
“Complicated is one word for it,” I said, giving her a half smile.
“Your brain was a giant bruise.”
“Still might be.” I grimaced, rubbing at the back of my neck. “Why do you think I was right?”
“Do you want the short list or the long?”
“I’m a bruise, remember? Short.”
“I don’t know how to do what we’re doing. The other people I’ve been with were never ranked officers, or at least not officers serving
under me. I have no idea how to treat you half the time. I can’t show favoritism, but by trying not to show favoritism, I’m just a saltwater douche to you.”
“Thanks for that,” I said, clamping my legs shut and shuddering at the visual.
“And I’m so worried someone’s going to try to hurt you to get to me, or to get back at the Archipelago, that I can’t think.”
“You were right to be worried apparently.”
“I’m so fucked up, Rose.”
I thought about what Orca had said to me. Maybe she was wrong. Miranda did know she had some issues. “So am I.”
“And you fuck me up most of all.”
I looked at her. Both her hands were clenching her chair.
“I cut a crew member’s throat. I don’t—he tried to kill you, I know. I’d do it again. But do you see?”
I did see. And I remembered, also, what Harper had said about a clean slate. I still didn’t believe in clean slates, but at least here we were with friends. I’d fallen for her on this tub once before. Perhaps it could happen again. Or perhaps the thing between us had never really stood a chance.
“I know, Mere.”
“Keeping things to myself is how I’ve stayed alive. Lying to you was never my intention.” She looked up at last from the instrument panel. “I don’t know if I can ever be what you want me to be.”
The heaviness that had followed me since Jeanine’s death grew still heavier—the pressure at the bottom of an ocean trench, the weight of past and impending loss. I took in her fraying braid and the livid blue of her eyes in the biolight.
“All I’ve ever asked is that you try,” I said. “Can you do that for me?”
Anguish twisted her mouth. “What do you think I’ve been doing, Rose?”
If that was her best effort, I wanted to say, then we really were doomed.
“I want this to work,” I told her instead. “But we can’t keep on like we have been.”
“No.”
“I don’t know how to fix it, either.”
“Will you give me another chance?” Miranda as supplicant. I’d never heard this particular catch in her voice or seen her eyes so wide and hopeless. My chest constricted with longing. More than anything I wished to say yes. My half-healed brain and my broken heart both yearned to reach for her. But I wasn’t as much of a fool for Miranda Stillwater as I’d once been. If we were ever going to be anything to each other, I needed to stand my ground.
“Yes,” I said, “but Mere, let’s take it slow.”
“‘Take it slow,’ she says, when one of the many things we don’t have is time,” said Miranda as she touched my cheek.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.” Her hand fell back to her side. “Let’s start with trust.”
I nodded. “How do we do that?”
Her laugh, bitter and self-deprecating, brought an equally twisted smile to my lips as she said, “I have no idea.
“We could start by sharing any secret plots to take down entire civilizations,” I suggested.
“Touché.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything. I just . . . I just want to be a part of your decisions.”
“You always are.”
“But you choose for me. I don’t need you to do that.”
“That’s what a captain does for her crew.”
“I know. But I don’t want to just be your crew.”
“Technically, I’m your crew now.”
“You know what I mean.”
She reached for my hand and laced our fingers together. “I’ll try. That’s all I can promise you. But you have to do the same. If you have doubts, tell me before you steal a ship and run.”
“I can do that,” I said.
“And Rose?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. For everything.”
••••
Days stretched in a tense daze beneath the southern sky. We settled into a routine that was at once familiar and strange. Kraken kept us fed and hydrated, which was an increasingly difficult task as worry for both Harper and our collective future stole away with our appetites. The ocean required my constant attention. While I navigated, Miranda and I spoke tentatively about things we’d never broached before: her time on Gemini, my resentment toward my father, how we might find a mate for Seamus and what we’d name his kittens.
Occasionally someone laughed.
“This is ridiculous,” I said on the twelfth day of our sail. Water lapped at the plex as we bobbed between massive waves, and I craned my neck to try to make sense of the stars before we were forced to submerge.
“It’s not great,” said Miranda. She gripped the controls and did her best to keep us stable. “Do you have a reading?”
“No.” I threw the sextant across the room. “Take us under.”
“I can give you a few more minutes—oh, fuck.”
Something huge and black blotted out the stars. At first, I didn’t register what I was seeing. A cloud? A ship? Vague stirrings at the edges of my senses warned me of danger, but I couldn’t parse them. The trawler bucked as we hit a deep trough.
Oh.
Ching’s warning about surfacing in the Southern Ocean mocked me. Miranda punched the backup accelerant, and the trawler dove beneath the cresting rogue wave. Objects clattered as the undertow tried to catch us up in its tumult, but, growling, she held us steady while the ship’s systems did their best to stabilize. Water hissed into the bulkheads.
I emerged from my huddle in my chair when Miranda touched my shoulder.
“You good?” she asked.
“I. Hate. This.”
“You’re getting better.”
“At what, throwing things?” I cast around for the sextant.
“Your brain. You’re focusing for longer, and your eyes aren’t as glazed as they used to be.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
“It will come back. Give it time.”
“You don’t know that.” I gave up searching for the sextant and watched the black water churn around us. “What if this is permanent?”
“Then you’re going to wish you hadn’t chucked that.”
I smacked her arm. “You’re lucky I don’t flog crew.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with a whip. Check this out.” She pointed out the plex. I squinted, then gasped. Pale squid jetted around us, too small to pose a risk, but beautiful in their pearlescent whites as they fed below the churning waves.
“What are they eating? I don’t see anything.”
“We’re far enough south there might be krill.”
I hadn’t thought we were that near the pole yet. “They’re almost cute.”
“You have questionable taste.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, throwing her a meaningful look. She grinned and settled farther back in her chair.
“And you didn’t even have a head injury back then to blame.”
“It’s not my fault you’re attractive,” I said.
“That’s a matter of taste.”
“Uh, Rose?” Orca stood in the doorway dressed in rumpled clothing, as if she’d just rolled out of bed—which made sense, given the hour.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Sorry about the turbulence,” said Miranda.
“It’s not that. Harper’s fever is back.”
All the joy drained out of me.
“What? How long?”
“I’m not sure. I woke up to it.”
“But she was getting better.”
“She’s maxed out our antibiotics,” said Miranda.
“What do we do then?” I asked.
“We—”
“What the hell is that?” Orca stumbled back into the hallway.
“Squid,” Miranda said dismissively.
Orca shook her head. My skin prickled at the look in her eyes, and I turned back to the helm at the same time as Miranda let out a string of cur
ses.
A ship yawned before us. I’d never seen anything like it: smaller than Man o’ War, it appeared to undulate through the water as its sides reflected light. No—it was undulating. I was so fascinated I didn’t even realize Miranda was fighting with the controls.
“What?” I asked when I registered her shout of frustration.
“We’re about to be—”
She didn’t finish as the ship swallowed us. A hole opened in the side of its hull, illuminated briefly by our lights. The edges of the maw were fringed and organic, as if it truly were a mouth, and it leered as it stretched to accommodate our trawler. Miranda slammed the thrusters, but there wasn’t time to maneuver. One moment we were in the ocean, transfixed, and the next we were in a steadily draining hold.
“Rouse the crew,” Miranda said to Orca.
Orca took off at a sprint. Meanwhile, biolight filtered through the murk of the hold, and I felt our ship shudder as it was moved into a berth by some sort of machinery. I could see people beyond the shrinking water level. Distorted shapes gestured, and then water streamed off the helm as we surfaced.
Before us was a landing bay, but it bore no resemblance to any landing bay in my experience. For one thing, the walls glowed. And for another, the machinery retreating into the wall looked . . . alive.
“I think,” I said, my voice sounding very far away, “that we just found the sea wolves.”
Chapter Fourteen
The helm was too small to fit our entire crew. We managed anyway. Even Harper crammed herself in, though Orca circled her protectively with her arms to keep anyone from jostling her injury.
“Neptune’s balls,” said Finn.
I agreed. The water around us glowed bright blue with bioluminescence, and the deck—if it could be called that—glowed too. Some sort of biological material covered it. I didn’t think it was algae, but I couldn’t be sure. Besides, glowing walls were the least interesting thing about the landing bay. Now that we were above water, I could see the machinery that gripped us, and I pressed back into my chair. It looked like the massive arm of an octopus, right down to the suckers that had suctioned themselves to the side of our trawler. I couldn’t tell where it began, but I knew I wasn’t alone in scanning the water’s surface for a leviathan. My heart beat painfully in my throat. The walls of the bay were covered with more of the growing, glowing substance, and the brightness hurt my eyes. I blinked through the pain until I adjusted, and then I blinked from shock.
