The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (25 page)

With her back to shield her from anyone’s eyes, she pushed her arm into one of the bins as far as she could, wiggling her fingers past gritty lumps. Her arm was buried to the elbow when she felt something smooth and flat instead, something that filled the bin instead of the coal.

Without hurrying, she withdrew her arm and wiped it as best she could on her trousers. She was careful not to look at any of the engineers as she left the room.

Outside, she tried to think what to do next. Even if the engine started again in three hours’ time, they weren’t going to reach Denalay, much less the Turean islands, but she couldn’t give any indication she knew that. It wouldn’t take much for Ralcilos to start seeing her as half-Denalait, so she had to play her part until she found a way to free the officers.

All right, first find them.

Remembering what he’d said about
Enlightenment
’s crew, she went down to the hold for more supplies, but no one was there. She climbed back up with her arms full of dried fruit and her heart thudding with more than exertion. Then she headed in the opposite direction from the hatch, towards the cabins. The officers couldn’t be confined in their own quarters, because Ralcilos was short enough of crew without assigning half of them as door-guards, but…

The cabins were nailed shut.

So that was the hammering sound she had heard. Short lengths of wood had been nailed to both frames and doors, keeping them shut. She stood in the passageway, wondering how she would give the officers their supper before she remembered what Ralcilos had told her.

For the first time it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Kovir anywhere. Even in clothes rather than sharkskin, he would have stood out among the crew because of his tattoo, and yet he hadn’t been among the officers either.

A creaking board nearby made her jump. Dried apricots went rolling over the floor. Biting her lip, she scooped them up and hurried to the deck before anyone could see her.

It was late afternoon by then, and there was no sign of
Enlightenment
, much to her relief. Without the threat of the cannons and without the kraken in sight, the officers might stand a chance of retaking the ship—provided they weren’t confined, weren’t disarmed and weren’t taken by surprise again. She thought about that as she worked in the galley, because at least it distracted her from remembering Peppercorn.

The Tureans were busy outside as well. Wood crunched and split under the impact of axes, and Miri realized they were hacking away the ruined mast. The deck was still littered with splinters and fragments of metal, but she could take care of that once supper was done.

She picked up everything that had fallen during the attack, then started the meal. No time to marinate the dried beef in lime squeezings. She tossed it all into a stewpot, adding fistfuls of dried peas and two cups of wine, but after that she found herself staring into the flames. The time to make a pudding was while the meat cooked, but for once she couldn’t concentrate on the familiar activity. If the Tureans wanted something sweet, they could eat the dried apricots.

Except they stopped being “the Tureans” during the early supper she served. She had been taught by the
Beacon
to ask and remember people’s names, but she would have done so of her own accord anyway; finding out about people came naturally to her. And the Tureans might hesitate to kill her if they thought of her as Miri, as someone they knew rather than just a half-breed stranger. So she introduced herself as she dished out the stew and asked their names as well.

They looked to Ralcilos as if to see if they had his permission, but when he smiled, they spoke more freely to her, telling her the islands they came from as well as their names. She carried her plate out to the deck—friendlier they might be, but no one tasted their food until she began eating—and answered their questions as best she could. No, she’d never asked her mother who her father was, because she’d never met her mother. No, of course she hadn’t told Captain Juell, she wasn’t stupid. He’d figured it out somehow, telling her she looked like someone called Jash Morender. “Should’ve thanked him for the compliment,” said Flessand, the only other woman in Ralcilos’s crew besides Larl, and they all laughed.

Miri tried to smile, but she was only too aware of Ralcilos standing on the outskirts of the group. Watching, always watching, except when he checked the ship’s hourglass. Two hours had gone by easily, and the engine was as silent as the grave.

She asked his permission to take supper to everyone belowdecks. “Only for Larl, Orvec and Sheud,” he said.

“And Dr. Berl,” Miri said, keeping her voice steady on the last syllable rather than letting it slide upward into a question. Ralcilos’s mouth twisted but he didn’t disagree, so she served an even larger portion for Reveka and carried the tray downstairs.

By the time she returned topside and cleaned up in the galley, the three hours were up and everyone knew it. Ralcilos went down to the engine room with three of his crew. Miri clasped hands now wrinkled with washing and braced for what would happen next.

Something heavy was dragged and rolled up the steps towards the hatch. The chief engineer stumbled out, back bent as he struggled to pull an iron-banded cask up to the deck.

The fresh water
, Miri thought.

The rest of the water supply was similarly heaved onto the deck. Miri closed her eyes but couldn’t shut out the sound of water gurgling out, spilling over the deck in a flood. One after another the casks were emptied and Ralcilos ordered the engineers back down.

“You have three hours more,” he said. “At the end of that time, if the ship isn’t moving, I’ll have your captain hanged.”

Chapter Ten

Into the Whirlpool

Three hours.

Miri’s supper was a stone in her belly. Three hours and then… No. She would find a way to keep Alyster alive, somehow.

If only she had found out before supper, she might have drugged the food. Not having any drugs on hand might have interfered with that plan, but she could have sneaked something out of the surgery, if she’d managed to get word to Reveka without anyone noticing. She could have kicked herself for not thinking of it sooner.

She found a broom and started to clean up. The thought of scrubbing Peppercorn’s blood off the deck made her feel ill, but at least in the early-evening gloom, the stains weren’t easily recognizable. Ralcilos was seated on an empty cask nearby, sharpening his knife, but the soft rasp of the whetstone stopped when he saw what she was doing.

“I told you, you don’t have to slave like that,” he said. “Once it’s daylight and the ship’s moving, we’ll get one of those mainlanders to do it.”

“I don’t mind, really. And if we’re going to sleep up here, we might as well be comfortable.” Liggar and Sheud had brought mattresses from the crew’s quarters, though Miri would have given anything to be back in her tiny cabin with the door locked.

Ralcilos returned to his work. “Jash will like you,” he said after a pause. “She says a commander should be able to do any task on a ship, even the most menial.”

Until then, Jash Morender had been just a name, and if she had been a person at all, she would have been a person so far away she didn’t seem real. But for the first time Miri wondered what it might be like to meet someone who not only said something she agreed with, but who looked like her too. She didn’t really resemble anyone in her uncle’s family, because all her cousins had blue eyes.

She opened her mouth to ask what Jash was like and closed it again at once.
What the hell am I thinking?
She not only needed to get her priorities straight, she needed to remember that sharing half her blood made no difference. Ralcilos and his crew were pirates who had seized two ships, killed one man before her eyes and were going to murder another. It didn’t matter that she knew their names and where they came from and what Liggar thought of her stew.

Besides, she didn’t belong with them any more than she did with Denalaits. Head down, she continued sweeping until she reached the place where the mast had been.

The axes had hacked it free, and it had been tipped over to sink along with home flags and courtesy colors, but the stump remained, jagged and ugly. She cleaned around it, darted a look at the hourglass and returned the broom to the tiny storeroom next to the galley. Nearby, someone was humming a melody she didn’t recognize, obviously Turean music.

Two hours.

A sudden clanging echoed from below the deck, the sound of metal on metal, fast as a drumbeat. Ralcilos started up, knife in hand, and everyone reached for their weapons.

“Sir!” a man shouted over the noise, but the voice sounded more angry than panicked or fearful.

“That’s Cuyven,” Ralcilos said and went to the hatch. After a hesitant pause to see if anyone seemed likely to stop her, Miri did the same. She didn’t know what she could do belowdecks, but she certainly couldn’t do much topside when all the Tureans were awake and watchful.

And while she couldn’t be certain, she thought the sound came from the surgery.

The clanging ended in a crash of something flung aside. Ralcilos stopped at the surgery door and kicked it open the rest of the way, then slid in, knife in hand.

“What’s happening?” he said.

“Sir, you said we could see the healer if we needed to.” The man who had spoken sounded furious, and the words came out as if each one was a nail being pounded hard into a door—or a body. “But she’s crazy.”

That brought Miri into the surgery, because in Endworld, accusing another person of insanity could be an insult with significant repercussions, depending on how the target felt about being compared to people from Lunacy. The man didn’t bother to look at her.

“She wouldn’t answer and she just kept pushing that at me,” he said, gesturing at the floor with his left hand because the right one was swollen and discolored. On the floor, pieces of a slate were scattered between him and Reveka, who had backed up against a wall, some sort of surgical tool like a pair of oddly shaped pliers in her hand. The surgery looked the same as always except that a metal pan lay upended beside a bucket of the sand that was scattered to absorb blood.

“She couldn’t say anything to you,” Miri told the man—Cuyven, that was what Ralcilos had called him. “She’s mute.”

He glared at her. “That’s a lie.”

“It is not. I’ve never heard her speak—or make any sound, for that matter.” She guessed Reveka had called for help by striking the pan with the pliers until Cuyven had flung the pan away.

“How could she have become a healer without talking?”

“Is that important now?” Kneeling, she picked up the shards of the slate. “She would have written down what kind of treatment you needed. Why didn’t you read it?”

The silence in the room was answer enough before Ralcilos laid a hand on her shoulder. “Some of us needed to learn other things.” His grip was just hard enough to make her wince before he released her. “She’ll write it down again and you can read it to us this time.”

Reveka scribbled on the floor with a piece of broken chalk, hunching a little as if trying to ward off a blow, and Miri knew why when she read the words. “She says his fingers have set badly. They’ll need to be rebroken and resplinted correctly.”

“In the morning.” Ralcilos sheathed his knife again. “Cuyven.”

The two of them left, but Sheud was still on guard at the door. “She really can’t make a sound?” he said to Miri. “Did she have her tongue pulled out? I heard tell that kind of thing happens on the mainland if people talk against the Unity.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Miri caught the edge of a low bunk and pulled herself to her feet. The very few people who attempted to incite sedition against the Unity tended to disappear into Skybeyond, rather than be obviously maimed in a way that still left them capable of plotting.

“Guess it doesn’t matter. A woman looks like that, she doesn’t need to talk.”

Miri stopped where she was, one hand still full of slate pieces pressing sharp into her skin. She hoped fervently she had mistaken his tone, but when she looked at him she knew she hadn’t.

“Ten says I can make her scream,” Sheud said, and moved forward. Reveka shook her head. There was no obvious fear on her face, but the deliberation in the gesture suggested that if Sheud laid a hand on her, she would plunge the pliers into his face, or her heart, or possibly both.

“Leave her alone.” Miri knew there was no point in calling for help from Ralcilos under these circumstances, and if he thought she was anything like Jash Morender, he probably expected her to fight her own battles. The only other person in the surgery was Captain Solarcis, and he was unconscious. “Unless you want to be responsible for someone like me.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’ve always wondered if my father raped my mother.”

That wasn’t true, because her parents—like the Unity—were an off-limits area for her mind, but Sheud hesitated, his mouth curling as though he had tasted something sour. Glancing down, he went back to his post at the door.

Miri wanted nothing more than to sag against the wall or even collapse into a bed.
Once this night is over
, she thought and went over to collect the empty plates instead. Reveka put the pliers away and touched her arm briefly as if to thank her. Miri couldn’t think of anything to say in reply, but Reveka spared her from doing so by picking up a jug and shaking it at her. The little water in it sloshed.

Damn
. “I’m sorry, but there’s no more water.”

Reveka’s eyes widened. She tilted her head down at Captain Solarcis as if to say, what am I going to do about him?

Miri wondered if they had saved him from a slow death at the Tureans’ hands only to give him a slower one. His bare chest was wrapped tightly in bandages, but it was obvious he had lost weight and his face was gaunt, the closed eyes sunken.

“How is he?” she said in a whisper, and handed over the fragments of slate for an answer.

Reveka selected the largest piece, turned it over and scribbled,
2 br ribs, ext brsg, DEHYD. Sons of b
. Miri didn’t understand much of that, though the last sentiment was clear enough.

She went back up to the deck and left the plates in the galley. Most of the Tureans were asleep by then, but Ralcilos stood at the stern, chewing on what looked like strips of white pith. They smelled good—tart and astringent—and he held one out to her when he saw her looking.

“Just don’t swallow,” he said. “Spit it out when you’re done.”

Another island custom. Miri bit down on the surprisingly soft wood. The clouds had cleared, but the night sky reminded her of how she had stood on the deck with Alyster, tracing the shapes of the constellations and watching the North Star.

Alyster. She couldn’t ask Ralcilos to spare his life, because Ralcilos had no reason at all to do so and would only think her a traitor if she seemed too attached to a mainlander. She wondered if Ralcilos would accept anything less than
Checkmate
—say, the plans for the engine, with explanations of how to fuel and maintain it—but no, that wouldn’t work either. He could hardly return home on a set of plans, and the engineers would have to answer to the Admiralty for allowing such a concession to pirates.
Oh, Unity, what a mess.

“What is that doing here?” Ralcilos said.

Miri spat pulped wood into her hand and turned to follow his line of sight. The cat curled around the base of the capstan, ears pricked and tail up.

“He’s called Brandy,” she said. “Don’t you have cats on your ships?”

“Galleys.” He stuffed the rest of the pith sticks into a fold of his sealskin vest. “And those animals are bad luck, everyone knows it.”

Go away
, Miri thought at the cat.
Get back down and hide in my hammock again
. Instead Brandy padded straight over to her and rubbed against her ankles, throat thrumming.

“How do you keep the rats down?” she said, hoping Ralcilos would be distracted.

“Poison.” He reached down and grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck. The purr changed to a hiss, but he held the cat far enough from him that its claws flailed the air with no effect.

“Look at it.” His lip curled. “You can tell mainlanders have more food to throw to their animals than we have to give our children.”

With a smooth movement of his arm he tossed the cat overboard and its yowl ended in a splash an instant later.

Miri stood frozen, her throat so tight that breathing hurt. Ralcilos leaned over the gunwale, and whatever he saw on the other side must have satisfied him because he finally turned away, rubbing his palm on his breeches as if to clean it. By then Miri thought she might have regained some control over her features, if not her emotions. She went over to the rail as well, to toss her handful of chewed wood over the side, because she would bring her dinner back up if she put that in her mouth again.

One hour.
Think of that instead
. One hour left.

She needed some reason, any reason, to get away from Ralcilos, so when she saw the bailer she had drunk from, she picked it up at once. “I’ll put this back in the boat,” she said, and he nodded.

The single remaining boat hung from its davits. She had meant to toss the bailer down into it, but changed her mind when she thought of the loud clatter waking everyone up. Instead she climbed over the rail, grabbed a rope and lowered herself into the boat, wondering if there might be supplies stored beneath the thwarts. A flask of fresh water would be a welcome find. A weapon of some sort would be even better.

She felt around and found nothing except for the drainage plug that had been removed so any seawater in the boat could drain out. A habit of tidiness made her move to replace it, but before she could do that, the water rocked beneath her and a shape rose out of the sea.

Her heart gave a jolt as though trying to leap out of her chest. Dropping the plug, which bounced off the side of the boat and plopped into the water, she shrank back, thinking it was the kraken. But when there was no further movement, she peered out. Moonlight glimmered off sleek wet skin. A man treaded water just below the boat, and the face upturned to her was dark with a stripe on one side.

Thank the Unity
. Miri put a finger to her lips and gestured up. She didn’t dare say anything, and spending too much time in the boat might make Ralcilos suspicious too, so instead she held up three fingers, folded one down and folded another. The last she drew across her throat.

He nodded slowly and a fin cut its way across the waves towards him.

Alyster sat with his back to the wall and watched the door.

Without candles, he couldn’t see the nails that had been driven into the door from outside, but he had tried to open it earlier. He’d leaned his whole weight against it, feet braced on the floor, and the only result had been the creak of wood. He thought of ramming it with his shoulder, but even if that worked—and the bedroom was too small to allow him to draw back and run—the noise was sure to attract the Tureans’ attention.

And he had no weapons at all. The Tureans had even taken his shaving supplies before they had shoved him inside. He had a bed, a cabinet and a washstand—all three bolted to the floor—as well as a tin basin and a jug. The jug was half-full of water, but that did nothing to stop the hollow growling in his belly.

The fear was far worse than the hunger. His neck, bandaged with a strip of torn linen, ached dully and reminded him how close he’d come to having his throat slit. Miri might have managed to get half his crew safely away, but he had no illusions about what would happen to the other half. The best-case scenario was the engineers closing all the safety valves so the boilers exploded.
Checkmate
would either sink or burn to the waterline, but at least the pirates wouldn’t have her.