The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (14 page)

From there the voyage would be tricky. He spent that evening looking over a map and reluctantly decided
Checkmate
had to take the long way past the tip of an island. The short way led through dangerous waters, not least of which was an estuary where two rivers spilled into the sea. He might have risked it in familiar surroundings, but not in waterways he’d never seen before. Losing the race would not be as bad as tearing
Checkmate
’s hull out on a hidden reef.

After the brief excitement, the evening dragged by. He heard a fiddle being tortured on the deck, but while he’d occasionally played for the crew of his brother’s ship when he’d been the first officer, that had been pushing the limits of propriety. It would be completely unorthodox for the captain to mingle with the common hands to that extent.

He played his kithar in his cabin, but the notes fell away into a void with no one to hear them. Damn it all. He’d been quite content with his solitude until he’d been forced to share his cabin with Miri, and after seeing her that morning, he couldn’t help thinking what it would be like to have her company again. She smelled good too, of rainwater and raw lye soap and a woman’s warmth. Why couldn’t she have been fully Denalait? He had little doubt she would have been sharing his supper at the very least, if that had been the case.

But would it have been Miri with him, or some other woman? He thought of everything he’d liked about her—and still did. She was resilient and hard-working and optimistic; all qualities, he thought, which she must have developed through years of growing up not only half-salt but alone, since she’d told him she had never met either of her parents.

No, he wasn’t going to think about her any longer. A walk in the night air would help, so he did a slow circuit of the deck to inspect everything in sight. He stopped when he saw Miri leaning against a gunwale, her elbows on the rail and her head tilted back. She straightened up at once, glancing self-consciously at him.

“I was just looking at the stars, sir,” she said.

Alyster felt as stilted and uncomfortable as she evidently was; they seemed to have sailed far from the easy way they’d used to talk, and he was partly to blame for that. Torn between walking away and trying to patch things up somehow, he slid his hands into the pockets of his coat and looked up at a sky full of stars.

“You see it?” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could.

There was a noticeable hesitation before she replied, but she sounded a little less wary when she said, “Yes. It’s in the Coronet.”

“The jewel in the crown.” Alyster had always liked looking at the night sky. “There’s the Hourglass, and the Madwolf is the one with the red stars for eyes. When it eats the…” He stopped, feeling awkward again, because had she asked for an astronomy lesson? No, she had not. “I’m sorry. You probably know all these.”

“I’ve probably read about them. Not the same thing.”

He relaxed, looking back up. For the first time since the start of their voyage, he felt unfettered, the Tureans and the race and even his responsibilities as the captain slipping off his back for just a few minutes. There was nothing in the world except the ocean below and the sky above the two of them.

“Look,” Miri said suddenly.

A falling star tore a bright streak through the night and dropped away. “A meteor,” he said. “That’s supposed to be good luck.” Except as he said that, it sounded absurd. Good luck for whom? Certainly not the crew of
Mistral
.

“Unless it lands on you, yes.”

He tried to smile but she seemed to see right through the effort, especially when he said nothing. “Captain, is something wrong?”

No one was within earshot. Alyster wanted to let a bit more of the burden fall away, and Unity knew she could keep a secret. But it wasn’t confidentiality that stopped him, it was the knowledge that he couldn’t afford to cross any more lines with her than he had already done.

“No.” He straightened up. “Good night.”

Vinsen Solarcis woke slowly, as though swimming up through water thick as treacle. A dull pain throbbed at the back of his head, and his mouth tasted foul, but he was in a hammock that felt warm and dry. He lay with his eyes closed, wondering if he had hallucinated everything—the arms of the kraken,
Mistral
sinking, the screams of his crew. Maybe he’d drunk too much, which would account for the awful taste on his tongue. Then he’d fallen and knocked himself out. Yes. Thank the Unity. Well, he wasn’t thankful his crew would have seen him in such a disgraceful state, but it was better than…better than…

He opened his eyes and wished in that moment he had never woken up, would never wake up again.

The surgery wasn’t the one on
Mistral
. Vinsen struggled to a sitting position and looked around, hoping beyond hope to see some of his crew in other hammocks, or in the flat bunks used for medical procedures. The few men he saw were all strangers. His stomach lurched up and filled his throat.

Someone was at his side immediately, holding a basin before him and gently pressing his head down. Vinsen tried to speak and retched instead.

“Alan, let the captain know,” the man beside him said, and rapid footsteps pattered away. “Captain…Solarcis, is it? I’m Dr. Charvyne.” He handed Vinsen a clean rag and a metal tumbler half full of water. “You’re on board
Enlightenment
, and you’re safe. Captain Terlow asked to be informed when you were awake.”

Vinsen washed his mouth out and forced himself to swallow some of the water before he wiped the chilled sweat from his face. The simple action was an effort. His arm was impossibly heavy, and he wondered how long he had lain there senseless. Licking the last of the water from his lips, he crushed the rag hard so his fingers wouldn’t tremble.

“How much is Captain Terlow aware of?” he said.

A flicker went through the surgeon’s eyes, and there was an odd wariness in his expression. “I beg your pardon?”

Something’s wrong
, Vinsen thought. “Does Captain Terlow know about the kraken?”

“Oh, the Turean ship?” The furrow between the surgeon’s brows disappeared. “We saw nothing in the storm, I’m afraid. So they attacked you?”

Vinsen swallowed the rest of his water in a gulp. Best not to say too much to the rank-and-file, or even the officers.

“Well, don’t worry,” the surgeon said. “Just finding you was warning enough for Captain Terlow, and he doesn’t plan to be caught off-guard by any ship, Turean or otherwise.”

He will be
, Vinsen thought and his gut twisted sickeningly again. He would be, because he expected the attack to come from the surface. Seawatch had a saying about thinking three-dimensionally, but it had never applied to ships of the Denalait navy until that time.

Some of what he felt must have showed on his face, because the surgeon asked if he was in pain and then gave him a bitter, ground-up pulp of herbs. He realized how hungry he was too—his belly was a gnawing void—and asked how long it had been since
Enlightenment
had found him.

“Three days now, Captain.”

Unity
. Vinsen closed his eyes, then opened them again. Exactly, the Unity had protected them for all that time until he’d woken up, so he couldn’t waste a moment more. He looked at the door, willing Terlow to come through it. In his condition, trying to get out of the hammock would be enough of a challenge without having to go to the captain’s stateroom as well.

“You must be hungry,” the surgeon continued, “but it’s best to start with very small portions of food or you’ll be sick.”

Vinsen nodded and was washing the herbs down with more sips of water when a boy who looked perhaps twelve years old appeared in the doorway. “Sir, Captain Terlow’s in a meeting,” he said.

A meeting with his officers could be carried out at any time. Vinsen still felt half-dead, but that was half an improvement over how he’d been when he had first woken up. “All right,” he said, trying to marshal all his resources. “I’ll go to his stateroom.”

“No, you—” the boy began. Then his mouth snapped shut and he scurried out of sight.

The surgeon looked away quickly as if to hide his expression and busied himself with some instruments nearby. Vinsen gritted his teeth until his jaws hurt, but the pain felt far better than the wet-rag consistency of his limbs. Something was hiding beneath the helpful, courteous surface of
Enlightenment
, but whatever it was, he wouldn’t find out about it in the surgery and it wasn’t as important as the kraken. The longer the Dagrans delayed, the more likely they’d be attacked too.

He started to toss aside the blanket which covered him, then realized he was naked beneath it. “Where are my clothes?”

“Captain,” the surgeon began, “you should rest until—”

“Where are my clothes?” He was beginning to want his sword as well.

The surgeon’s eyes went hard and flat as coins. “You may want to bear in mind, Captain, that you are a guest on this ship and a patient in this surgery.”

Vinsen rolled to one side and tipped himself out of the hammock. He landed awkwardly on a floor strewn with white sand, but he pulled himself to his feet. Equal parts of anger and fear gave him the strength he needed to stand on trembling legs, holding the blanket as best he could around him. There were no women in sight—of course, it was a Dagran ship—but he didn’t want to be completely naked in front of the men either; his story would be strange enough without that. Holding on to the wall, he stumbled towards the door.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the surgeon said.

Vinsen knew everyone in the surgery was staring at him, but he didn’t bother turning around. His head still throbbed, and the constant ache rasped away the last of his restraint.

“I will see Captain Terlow, now,” he said. “If I have to go there naked and crawl every inch of the way, I will see him.”

As he had expected, the surgeon gave him his clothes, albeit with ill grace, and it occurred to him that if they needed to stall until Terlow was done with his meeting, letting him dress bought time as well. So he put his clothes on as fast as possible. He felt the weight of his watch still in his coat pocket, but he guessed gloomily that water had got into its works and left it little more than an expensive paperweight. He didn’t bother buckling the sword-belt around his hips, only held the scabbard in one hand and left the surgery.

The boy, Alan, took him to the closed door of what he said was the captain’s stateroom, but a steward was on duty outside and told him to wait. Vinsen heard low murmurs behind the door. He thought of diplomatic incidents, thought of his dead crew and reached for the handle.

The steward’s hand shot out to grab his wrist. Vinsen didn’t have the strength or the coordination to engage anyone in a fight, even if he had wanted to start one alone aboard a foreign ship. He swung his scabbard instead. With the weight of the sword, it knocked the man’s arm aside and he let out a grunt, more of surprise than pain.

Vinsen stared the man down. The surgeon had a point—on board the Dagran ship he was a guest, not an officer—but he thought of the power and presence of the Unity of Denalay behind him. The Unity would not want him to back down.

“Stand aside,” he said.

“Sir!” the steward called out, but he had already moved away, hands raised as if to protect himself or throw a punch. Vinsen opened the door and stepped in.

A man wearing the indigo-and-gold of an officer in the Dagran navy had drawn his sword, the blade gleaming as if it concentrated all of the late-afternoon light and distilled that down to a few bloody drops. Two of the men seated at the table had pushed their chairs back to face the door, but they wore the grey drab of common sailors and playing cards fanned out in their hands. So much for Terlow’s important meeting; this was just a couple of his deckhands playing cards with…

Vinsen felt as though he had been kicked in the gut. Too fast for him to have seen the blow, but the shock and breathlessness registered only too clearly. The fourth man in the room was a Turean.

Physically, Tureans might have been indistinguishable from Denalaits other than their ability to drink seawater, but their styles of clothing were distinct enough, all seals and seashells. Besides, after a lifetime fighting them, Vinsen’s skin would have crawled and his muscles tightened no matter what the sons of whores were dressed in.

He no longer felt weak at all. Moving sideways, he put his shoulders to the wall and closed his hand around the hilt of his sword.

“Captain Solarcis!” the officer said, but the Turean didn’t move. He sat relaxed, one elbow resting on an arm of his chair, and seemed about to prop his chin on his fist to study his cards more closely. But his face belied the apparent ease in his posture. His eyes were full of watchfulness and nothing else, like holes in which scorpions lived.

“What is he doing here?” Vinsen said without looking away from the Turean. He wanted to speak with assurance and authority, but his voice came out in a rasp.

“Ralcilos Phane,” the Turean said, as if welcoming him in. “I’m a guest on this ship.”

“A guest?” Vinsen would have laughed at the lie, if not for the fact that the Turean wasn’t chained. He even seemed to be permitted the freedom of the captain’s stateroom, the same room Vinsen had been barred from entering.
No wonder
.

The officer shoved his sword back into its scabbard. “Yes,” he said, gesturing at the steward to close the door, “but there’s much you’re not aware of, Captain—”

“I could say the same for you,” Vinsen cut in. “Do you know they have an actual kraken, not a ship?”

“Be quiet!” the officer said. “Do you want the whole damn ship to know about it?”

Vinsen felt the wall behind him, but it seemed to be the only solid thing holding him up, and his thoughts whirled. They’d known about the kraken and a Turean was an honored guest on their ship. For the first time he wondered what they would do with him, because they could never risk his returning to Denalay after what he’d found out.

“You knew,” was all he could say. His hand had tightened so hard on the hilt of his sword that his fingers were numb.