The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (24 page)

That isn’t me
, she thought before her shoulder slammed into the deck. The impact hurt so much she thought she had broken something, but it also snapped her out of the dazed shock. She blinked her vision clear. No more than a few feet away from her, Peppercorn sank slowly to his knees, his head bowed as he stared down at a length of steel protruding from his chest. The rest of the saber was in him.

She didn’t try to get up—her head rang where he had hit her—but she looked at the Tureans at once. The man who had killed Peppercorn pulled a knife, but before the crew could rush him Thomal’s shout cut through the clamor.

“Stay where you are, all of you!” Ignoring the Tureans, he was at Peppercorn’s side at once, but it was far too late. Peppercorn collapsed face-down, and his weight drove the steel through his body until the wet red point punched through the back of his shirt. Miri swallowed, feeling light-headed all over again. She would never have wanted him dead for hitting her—or hitting anyone, for that matter.

“Stand down,” Thomal said to the crew. “Drop your weapons.”

For a terrifying moment she thought they wouldn’t listen to him, that they would rush the pirates and the next blood spreading across the deck would be Alyster’s—before
Enlightenment
blew them to pieces. Then an engineer let his knife clatter to the deck.

The tide began to turn. Sullenly, the officers complied first, and the crew did the same. Thomal watched them to make certain they were obeying, before he turned to Ralcilos.

“The crew will be allowed to leave unharmed,” he said.

“Those were the terms. They can take all the boats except the one we used.”

Miri pulled herself to her feet.
Checkmate
lay lengthwise between
Enlightenment
and the rowboats, so at least the cannons couldn’t target the crew. The boats were lowered as Ralcilos ordered the officers to the stern, and she hoped desperately that they weren’t all going to be murdered as they stood there in a knot, watching the Tureans warily.

No, at the very least Ralcilos would want the engineers alive. He waited until the crew had climbed down into the boats and the other Turean made certain they had cast off. Then he lowered the knife and shoved Alyster between the shoulder blades. Alyster stumbled forward and raised a hand to his throat as if not certain his neck was still there.

Miri didn’t dare show any reaction. The wound across his throat was dark with dried blood, but he was alive and that was what mattered. Ralcilos ordered him to join the other officers and came over to her.

“Are you all right?” he said.

She had to lean against the gunwale and hold on to the rail, but she was in better condition than poor Peppercorn—and
Checkmate
itself, for that matter. “Yes. What now?”

“Now,” Ralcilos said loudly enough to be heard from the stern, “my crew joins us.”

On
Enlightenment
, people in Dagran uniforms were lowering a boat. At first Miri thought they only needed a single boat because at least a handful of their number would remain to keep the cannons trained on
Checkmate
, but no one was visible on the deck. Alyster looked at the approaching Tureans as if he couldn’t believe how few there were.

“I wouldn’t try anything if I were you,” Ralcilos said easily. He was a little too close to Miri for comfort—hers, if not his, because she was only too aware that he wouldn’t hesitate to use her as a shield too if the need arose.

“Oh no?” Alyster was at the forefront of the small group, and he looked half an instant away from diving for the weapons on the deck. “Why not?”

Ralcilos dropped into a crouch behind the gunwale. “What are you—” Miri began, before he grabbed her trouser-leg and yanked her down to the deck again. The other Turean disappeared behind one of the funnels. A startled moment later, the officers moved as well, in a dash for the weapons. No one reached them.

The explosion on
Enlightenment
was loud as the world shattering apart. Miri flung her arms over her head.
Checkmate
rolled with the shock, weapons sliding across the deck, and fragments of metal thudded and clinked down like strange hail. She wasn’t sure where they had come from, but a sharp stink rose from them, and she realized they were red-hot. The deck smoldered where they had struck it.

Ralcilos was on his feet at once. The other Turean darted out from behind the funnel and grabbed up an axe, but none of the officers seemed ready to attack. Alyster picked himself up slowly. The cut to his throat had opened again, but he didn’t seem aware of it as he turned in
Enlightenment
’s direction.

Dreading what she would see, Miri looked as well. The ship hadn’t been destroyed, thank the Unity, but the sight was bad enough. One of the cannons was gone, leaving a smoking emptiness where it had been—the gunwale had been blasted to splinters, and pieces of the cannon were scattered across what remained of the deck. The ropes which had bound it lay like empty snakeskins, their ends smoldering red.

“That’s why,” Ralcilos said. “And we’ll do the same to the rest of them if any of you get it into your heads to die a hero. Want to try us?”

Checkmate
’s crew had vanished past the Palisade by the time the other Tureans climbed on board. There were only ten of them, so they were evenly matched with
Checkmate
’s officers, and for all Ralcilos’s claims, Miri didn’t think he could do anything more with
Enlightenment
’s cannons at that distance. She had a feeling that if the other cannons exploded, that might cause enough damage to put
Enlightenment
at risk of sinking, which would provoke the Dagrans into joining the war.

Besides, the Dagran ship, looking more and more like a ghost with her empty rigging and bare deck, had already started to drift away. By then Ralcilos and the other man were armed, and the officers weren’t. Miri felt sure that while Alyster would have risked his own life, he wouldn’t be as quick to order his subordinates into a bloodbath unless the Tureans were going to slaughter them all anyway.

For now, Ralcilos had the upper hand and everyone seemed to know it. Reveka caught Miri’s eye and tilted her head down at Vinsen, who hadn’t moved since they had carried his body to the stern.

“Ralcilos?” Miri said. He didn’t look away from the officers. “May we take anyone injured to the surgery?”

“No one’s injured.”

“Captain Solarcis is.” She tried not to think about how he had been beaten—probably over a period of time—by the man she now needed favors from. “If you have to negotiate with the Admiralty later on, you’ll find it easier with living hostages.”

She knew Ralcilos needed all the advantages he could get if he meant to take a stolen ship back through Denalait waters into the Iron Ocean, but his eyes narrowed when he heard that. He picked up a rope and ran the length rasping through his hands as if about to tie a noose.

“I won’t need to negotiate.” His voice was flat and hard as a stone floor. “And you’d be better off not feeling sorry for them.”

Miri knew the next thing she said would be the last—not only because Ralcilos’s patience seemed to be at an end, but because her throat was so dry she could barely swallow. Whatever she said had to work, because at least one man’s life depended on it.

“It’s not them I’m sorry for,” she said. “If any of your crew are hurt, it might go better for them if Dr. Berl isn’t forced to watch injured Denalaits dying and is then ordered to save injured Tureans. Don’t you think?”

Ralcilos stared at her, his gaze as pointed as a skewer. Miri’s heart pounded so hard that she was surprised he didn’t hear it in the near-silence, but after a pause that lasted for a year, he turned to the Tureans tying up the boat and shouted at them to toss him the bailer. He plucked it out of the air and tied a knot around the handle.

He tossed the bailer over the rail. “Just him. No one else. And you’ll have to take him belowdecks, because I can’t spare anyone to do it.”

Miri nodded, relief turning her knees to jelly. Ralcilos pulled up the bailer, half-full of seawater, and offered it to her. She drained it, wondering if she would have to do anything else to prove her blood, and then went to help Reveka.

Two of the Tureans followed them as they carried Captain Solarcis down to the surgery. She lighted lanterns and laid out supplies while Reveka undressed him, her mouth twisting at the condition of his body. Miri wanted to ask how badly he was hurt, but Reveka was intent on her work, so she stood in silence until it was clear there was nothing more she could do. One of the Tureans came back up to the deck with her.

Checkmate
’s officers were gone. The empty place at the stern where they had been hit her like a fist, and she stopped in the hatchway. Only the absence of fresh blood kept her on her feet, and she managed to step aside when the Turean, almost as much on edge, drew a sword. He pushed past her, looked around, obviously found nothing out of the ordinary, and glared at her before going to report to Ralcilos.

Stay calm
. She waited for the man to finish before she went to Ralcilos. Peppercorn’s corpse had disappeared, but she saw the stains where he had clearly been dragged to the rail.

“Is there any duty you would like to assign me?” she said. There was an odd sound from the lower deck, a repeated
thud-thud
like a hammer.
No one’s being tortured. Stay calm.

A slow smile spread across his face. “What can you do?”

Her skin crawled all the way down her spine, but at least the water she had drunk earlier helped her speak more normally. “That was the cook who hit me earlier, so I can take over in the galley. And I can keep the deck clean.”

Ralcilos’s smile faded. “I’m happy to have you cook for us, but we’re not
them
. You don’t have to settle for the most menial work that will leave you like this.”

He reached for her wrist and turned her palm up. Miri looked down, seeing the reddened skin and short nails as though they belonged to a stranger. There was a healing burn too, from the stove.

“You don’t have to be a drudge,” he said.

Miri closed her hand and drew it free, feeling unaccountably ashamed of it and then annoyed at herself. After everything else that had happened, the condition of her hands was hardly of importance.

“How many should I cook for?” she said. A drudge. Was that how he saw her?

“Thirteen.” The number included her, she noticed. “You could only feed us, anyway.”

“Why, is everyone else dead?”

The bluntness actually worked better than a coy approach would have, and Ralcilos chuckled. “Not yet. And as long as they don’t try to be clever, they might stand a chance of seeing their precious mainland again.” He’d cleaned off his long-bladed knife, and it slid back into a walrus-hide sheath. “Now the deck’s secured, I’m going to watch how this ship works. Do you want to come with me? It’ll be some time before you have to cook the night meal.”

Miri went with him but regretted her curiosity when they reached the engine room. The place was silent except for the clink of a tool against some huge piece of machinery she didn’t recognize. One Turean, clearly a guard, stood at the door with a double-bladed axe between his feet, but another, a woman with a long brown braid, had her arms folded and her mouth set tight. The engineers stood in a morose triangle around a giant brass cylinder, examining tubes and dials in a desultory way.

Ralcilos’s feet gritted on dust. Three large bins of coal were set against the other wall, filled to the brim and with more black lumps scattered around them, but the heat in the room was barely more than that of the sun beating down on the deck above. The room smelled unpleasantly of sweat, smoke and the whale oil in the lamps.

“What’s happening here, Larl?” Ralcilos said.

The woman shook her head wearily. “They say the engine’s malfunctioning.”

“Do they?” He turned to the engineers, and his tone made Miri want to leave as fast as possible. She stayed where she was not out of curiosity or because retreating would make her look like a coward. She stayed motionless because something told her Ralcilos was being pushed to his limits and anything, even a soft step towards the door, might set him off.

The chief engineer straightened up, looking more tired than Larl did. He was tall and spare, with hair turning silver at the temples and a deeply lined face.

“This is delicate machinery,” he said. “It was damaged when you fired on this ship.”

“Or it was damaged when you knew your ship would be seized,” Ralcilos said, and Miri silently asked the Unity not to let it dawn on him that the engineers might well have done that while she had spent a good few minutes talking to him on the deck. “What’s wrong with it?”

“The fusible plug was dislodged and that caused hyperpressurization in the piston cylinder, with the primary steam outlet valve being insufficient to deal with the rapid expansion. The crankshaft is misaligned by approximately four degrees and the combustion chamber—”

“Shut up.” Ralcilos glanced at Larl. “Did you understand any of that?”

“Not really. If he showed me what all those were—”

“We still couldn’t believe a word of it.” He turned back to the chief engineer. “If this ship isn’t moving in three hours’ time, you’ll regret it. Understand?”

There was no reply. Ralcilos’s hand shot up and closed around the chief engineer’s throat, tightening like a vise. The man choked, dropping the wrench he held, and another engineer took a step forward before the Turean at the door hefted his axe.

“Understand?”

The chief engineer’s face was dark, suffused with blood, but he croaked out an acknowledgement, and Ralcilos let him go. Gasping, he staggered back against the wall. The marks of fingers on his throat were pallid against his skin.

“Three hours,” Ralcilos said. “Starting now.”

He strode out, and there was silence except for the chief engineer’s quick harsh breaths. Miri didn’t dare say a word to any of them, but she moved to the other side of the room in what she hoped was a casual way. Stooping, she picked up all the lumps of coal that had fallen from the bins. That could have happened during the firing, certainly, but it was odd that the bins looked so full…