The Reader (15 page)

S
efia slammed the book facedown in the dirt. The pages bent. She didn't care. Standing, she drew her knife in one smooth movement and flung it at the nearest tree, burying it point-first in the trunk.

Archer looked up from where he stood waist-deep in the water, washing their clothes in a pool rimmed by flat stones.

She ignored his doe-eyed expression and stalked over to the tree, wrenching her knife from the bark. Flipping it in her hand, she pivoted and hurled it again.

The blade lodged in another tree.

Ignoring the pain in her bare feet, Sefia stomped through the undergrowth. Yanking her blade out of the wood, she closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose, conjuring up the memory of dishwater eyes and a stippled face, the metallic sting in the air, and a voice like smoke.

She opened her eyes, took aim, and flung the knife.

But as it left her fingers, her memory of the woman in black was replaced by the crooked face of Palo Kanta. A man who feared the ocean. A boy who rescued cats.

Her knife clattered off the bark and landed sideways in the mulch.

Cursing, Sefia went to retrieve it, but Archer got there before she did. He rubbed the dirt from the steel and pressed the cold handle to her open palm.

She took it, but she didn't throw it again.

Archer touched his temple with his fingers and held the blades of his hands together, opening and closing them like the covers of a book.

Sefia closed her fingers around the knife. “Because Captain Cat was a coward,” she said, “and her men paid for it. She said it herself: If she hadn't been so scared of the thing that killed her father, she never would have put them in danger. They died because she was
afraid
.

“I could have stopped them from taking Nin. I was right there. But I'd seen what they did to my father . . . and I couldn't move.” She looked away. At the ground. At the waterfall trickling into the pool. Anywhere but at Archer. “I don't even know if she's still alive. But if she is . . . I have to stop them. I can't let them hurt her anymore. I can't let them hurt anyone anymore.” Tears sprang to her eyes as she sheathed the knife.

Archer nodded, and she followed him back to the edge of the pool, where he picked up the book, smoothed its wrinkled pages, and placed the green feather between them so she wouldn't lose her place.

Sefia curled up by the edge of the water and he sat beside her
as he dried in the sun. He had gained some weight in the past couple of weeks, but his back was freckled with scars. It would take years for some of them to disappear—and others would never fade.

Hatchet's men had left the lake three mornings ago, and she and Archer had continued following them north. They were probably heading for the port city of Epidram, situated in the northeast corner of Oxscini.

Since that night with Palo Kanta, she'd been practicing her vision. She could feel it all the time now, shimmering beneath the surface of things. If she focused just right, and blinked, then it appeared before her. But every time she entered that world of light, she was overwhelmed with images, memories, history, until she was flailing through the endless fragments of time, fighting off headache and vertigo and nausea.

It felt like drowning. Sometimes she got so lost in the flood of sights and sounds and infinite moments in time that she wasn't sure if she'd be able to find her way back to her own body again.

She looked over at Archer. She'd been able to see all of Palo Kanta's life in one quick blur. Maybe she could find out who Archer really was. His story must have been lurking inside him, caged by his silence, even though the marks of it were all over him: the scars at his throat, at his back and chest and arms.

She narrowed her eyes and felt the vision rising around her.

Fifteen burns, lined up like ridges on his right arm.

Fifteen marks.

She blinked, and the golden world unfurled around her.

Fifteen counters.

Threads of light rippled around his arm. They pooled and swirled, sparkling with thousands of tiny motes of light. She fought for control of her vision as images rushed past her in a slipstream of history.

Then she saw the fights.

They had been held all over Oxscini: in circles of hard-packed earth cleared of brush and rubble, outlined with torches that stained the undersides of the leaves black; in basements where the floors smelled like clay; in cages of iron bars through which the spectators prodded the fighters with sharp wooden poles, jeering and shouting.

They always fought in a ring, and someone always died.

Sefia saw them flash before her eyes, quicker than she could follow, making her dizzy and sick: boys with snapped necks; boys skewered by spears; boys bleeding from dozens of deep gashes, dying on the ground; boys with bashed-in, unrecognizable faces.

And Archer standing over every one of them. Archer holding the spear, the dagger, the rock. Archer wrestled to the ground by men twice his size and pinned in the center of the circle while someone burned him with a blazing-hot iron. It happened over and over again. Archer's body hitting the floor. The side of his face in the dirt. The stink of sizzling flesh. His right arm collecting burns like trophies. The pain. The cheers. A mark for every fight he won.

He'd been branded because he survived.

Sefia blinked again, and the light washed away, leaving her gasping. The fights were a blur inside her, but she had seen enough to know what had happened to him, what he had done,
why the story was locked up inside him like an animal. She felt like she had been inside his skin, and his blood was her blood—his heart, her heart—a closeness she'd never felt before, and hadn't earned.

It was a cruel kind of thievery, stealing into someone's worst memories. She held her aching head in her hands, fighting back the throbbing at her temples and behind her eyes. She wouldn't do that to him again.

But she understood now, some of it anyway. Digging into the pocket of her vest, she fished out her coin purse and dumped its contents into her palm: some gold colbies, an uncut tourmaline, and a piece of rutilated quartz as long as her thumb.

The crystal was shot through with streaks of black and gold like shooting stars, and when you held it to your eyes the whole world seemed to be blasted with fireworks.

Archer looked on with interest as she held out the piece of crystal in the center of her palm.

“I want to give you something.”

He touched the quartz with his forefinger.

“Nin gave me this when I was younger,” she explained. “She called it a worry stone. And whenever I got caught up, remembering all the bad things that had happened . . . my mother dying . . . my father . . . You rub it with your thumb and it reminds you that you're safe. That you're not back there anymore.”

As he took the crystal, his thumb brushed her palm, leaving a drop of water in the creases of her hand. He held the stone to the light, where it sparked black and gold, and rubbed his thumb across it once before tucking it deep in his pocket.
He grinned at her. He had a huge, handsome smile, with sharp canines.

Sefia was suddenly aware of his skin, of the dips where the water pearled and the sheen of bronze on his bare arms. And she didn't know what to do with her hands, so she hugged her elbows and smiled awkwardly back. She could still feel the water in her palm like a tiny gleaming star.

Archer made the sign for the book, flapping his open palms like wings.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I'll read now. But if Captain Cat continues to act like a yellow-bellied coward, we're skipping it.”

Captain Cat and Her Cannibal Crew (Continued)

H
e saw the news go through her like a bolt of lightning.
Not turning back?
Captain Cat gaped at him, thunderstruck.

Before she could respond, there was a crash from belowdecks.

“Help!” The cries exploded across the ship. “Help!”

Reed was at the door before the other three had even left their seats, out of the great cabin and onto the deck, where the crew had gathered around the main hatch.

“It's the captain,” they murmured, parting for him. “The captain's here.”

As he descended into the hold and approached the sick bay, a deep sense of dread rose up in him. He began tapping his fingers together—thumb and forefinger, thumb and middle finger, thumb and ring finger, thumb and little finger.
One, two, three, four . . .

He reversed the order, starting with the little finger. That made eight. Eight taps. He reached the door.

The doc looked up from where she knelt beside a
huge man cradling a limp, skeletal body in his massive arms. It had lost most of its hair, and its hands were thin and overlarge on its wrists.

Harye. He barely looked human.

Doc closed Harye's eyes with two long fingers.

The man holding the body was Horse, the ship's carpenter. He had broad shoulders and bulging arms, hands like hammers, and the leathery skin of a man who'd been sunburned so many times his naturally creamy complexion had grown tough and brown as rawhide.

“I came to check on him.” Horse nodded at the large flask lying on the floor next to him. Sniffling, he pulled the yellow bandanna he wore on his forehead down over his eyes. “You know, maybe give him a little pick-me-up. But when I came in, he took one look at me and charged. I didn't know what was happenin'. He came at me outta nowhere. He was crazy, screamin' something . . . I don't know what. I—I hit him. To get him off me, you know? But he's so light. He went flyin' across the room into the wall.”

There was blood on the wall next to him, but not much. Maybe Harye didn't have much blood left in him.

“He wasn't gonna last the night anyway,” Reed said, squeezing his shoulder. It was never easy, taking a life. Especially for a man like Horse, the kind of man who'd drop in on a total stranger to cheer him up. “Right, Doc? We took him off that boat too late. He wasn't gonna make it.”

Doc nodded.

Horse slid his bandanna back up to his forehead. “But why'd he do it?”

There was a scream—a keening animal sound. Captain Cat shoved her way past Reed and into the sick bay, where she fell next to the body, her hands fluttering uselessly over his withered limbs.

“I'm sorry, Captain,” said Horse. “I didn't mean to.”

As she looked on the giant who'd killed her last crewman, Cat's eyes widened. “The black spot,” she muttered, pointing a trembling finger at his hands.

They were speckled black with pitch.

She recoiled, baring her teeth. “You've been marked,” she said. “You're the next to die.”

“What?”

Outside, the men were whispering among themselves. “It ain't right,” said Camey. He rubbed his hawklike nose and glanced around to see if he'd garner any support from the crew. “I tell you, it ain't right.”

Greta, a stout woman with sallow skin and black hair that seemed to drip down her head like candle wax, tutted her tongue disapprovingly.

Camey elbowed the cabin boy who'd come aboard with them in the Paradise Islands. “It ain't right, is it, Harison?”

Jigo, the oldest man on the
Current
, shoved him from behind, growling, “Shut it,” from beneath his bushy whiskers.

Camey fell silent, but Greta clicked her tongue once more.

“Enough,” the chief mate snapped.

Meeks watched them all with interest.

“Horse is our carpenter,” Reed explained to Cat. “His hands always look like that.”

Captain Cat backed up against the bunks. “It wasn't Harye's fault. He didn't know. You don't understand. You weren't out there with us . . . All those endless days . . . You don't know what it was like.”

“You ain't out there no more,” Reed said.

She looked at him sadly. “I'm
always
gonna be out there. If you don't want to be out there with me, you've got to turn back.”

Reed shook his head. “Beggin' your pardon, but we set out to accomplish something, and we ain't turnin' back till it's done.”

Her fingers were claws. Her teeth were fangs. “Didn't you listen?” she snarled. “You're all gonna die out there!”

The crew was whispering again.

“Did you hear what she said?”

“I don't wanna end up like that.”

“Captain,” Reed interrupted, silencing the others. “I'm gonna give you a choice. We're goin' to the edge, with or without your permission. If you like, you can come with us—we'd be glad to have you. Or you can get back in your longboat and take your chances with
the sea. You might make it. There's a shippin' route a coupla weeks east of here. But I won't make you go any farther'n you want to.”

Her jaw went slack, her breathing heavy. “I'm—not—goin'—back—in—that—boat,” she said. “And I'm not goin' with you either.”

He studied her thin face, her ragged hair, the way her skin clung to her bones. It only took him a second to understand what she meant.

In her mind, she was still out there, surrounded by the bones of her crew, and no matter how healthy she got or how much distance she put between herself and the sea, she was always going to be out there.

“Captain, you can't—”

“I can,” she said. “I'll do it anyway, if you don't help me.”

She'd used up the last of her life telling her story, and with Harye gone, she was ready to join her crew. To make it forty-two. Forty-two dead. An even number.

L
etting his hands fall to his sides, Reed drew the Lady of Merc
y
.

I
n the faint light of the sick bay, the revolver seemed to glow. Its long silver barrel was embellished with cottonwood leaves and clusters of seedpods, its ivory handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Some said it was the most beautiful gun ever made, crafted by a Liccarine gunsmith for her lover, and never a more perfect expression of yearning and devotion had there ever bee
n
.

G
asps went up among the crew. But the other gun remained in its holster, with only its black grip showing beneath Reed's restless thum
b
.

A
s Captain Cat rose, she lifted her chin, walking out of the sick bay with as much dignity as she could muster. The crew parted for her. Some of them bowed their heads as she climbed the steps to the main deck. In the moonlight, she looked like a corpse already, with shadows in the pits of her eyes. She climbed the rail, refusing assistance when the crew tried to help her, and clung to the rigging, her body wavering in the cool ai
r
.

“
T
his is it, Captain,” Reed said. “You're sur
e
?”

“
N
ever been more sure of anything in my life,” she answered. Gripping the line in her blistered hands, she was fragile, but prou
d
.

E
very man and woman on the crew watched as the captain raised the weapon. He pulled back the hammer, and the sound struck the ship like thunde
r
.

“Last words?” he asked.

Captain Cat stared at him. Facing down her own death, with the hissing of the sea behind her and the night spread out like a cape, she seemed to have grown taller, haughtier. Her voice rang out like a bell. “Maybe they'll remember you, Cannek Reed,” she said, looking at each of the crew in turn, letting her gaze come to rest, finally, on Camey, who scratched his hooked nose uncomfortably. “But who's going to remember your crew?”

Reed pulled the trigger.

There was a flash and a
bang
, and then the body of Captain Cat was tumbling away from the ship, her hair streaming out behind her, her arms and legs splayed. She fell into the water with a splash, and then Catarina Stills, daughter of Hendrick Stills the Southern Explorer, last captain of the
Seven Bells
, was gone.

But her words remained. Meeks was already repeating them to himself, staring at the blank space she had occupied mere moments before. They were words Reed never forgot.

Who's going to remember your crew?