Water & Storm Country (14 page)

“I cannot predict the future, sir,” Barney
drones.

“I want to go on deck,” I say, but each word
cracks like a hammer to my skull.

“You should rest, Lieutenant.”

I push the plate away, clench my fists in
frustration. I was gaining respect from the men, improving the
ship’s performance, instilling work ethic…and then a bilge rat—and
a girl no less—had to go and mess it all up. If I can just find
her, talk to her, ask her why she did what she did. Try to
understand. And if I don’t like her answer, maybe I’ll throw her
over the rail myself. I laugh inwardly at my thoughts, knowing full
well I wouldn’t have the stomach for that sort of thing.

“Bring Cain down if he’s available,” I
say.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Barney says, opening the
door. Over his shoulder, he asks, “Shall I invite Lieutenant Hobbs,
too?”

“No. This will not be in regards to the
investigation.”

“Very well, sir.”

I sit in bed for a few minutes, chewing on my
lip and thinking, but eventually my eyelids grow heavy and I slump
onto my pillow once more. I hear the door open and, behind my
eyelids, see the room darken as someone blows out the lantern.

“Goodnight, Lieutenant,” Cain says. “I’ve
spoken to Barney. Don’t you worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

And my last thought before sleep takes me:
He knows.

~~~

I’ve been watching her for a week. And she’s
been ignoring me, going about her business as if I don’t exist. But
I know she knows I’m watching her, because yesterday she walked
right past me carrying a bucket of soapy water, and “accidentally”
sloshed it over the side and onto my boots. She didn’t look at me,
but I detected the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of
her lips. The nerve of this girl!

She has to know I hold her life in my hands,
that with a simple accusation I can make her life worth less than
the new scrub brush she’s been using to scour every inch of the
ship.

And yet she continues on with her disrespect
and subtle insults. Even now, as she uses her extraordinary and
unique climbing ability to scrub the main mast so hard it’s like
getting the salt off is an offering to the Deep Blue, I can see the
rebellion in the lines of her hard jaw, in the way her eyes smolder
each time they flash around the mast, piercing me with hot anger. I
know she wants to throw another brush, perhaps to add a matching
red bulge to the opposite side of my forehead, but thus far, she’s
restrained herself, either fulfilling a deep need for
self-preservation, or simply due to the multitude of witnesses on
deck.

As I keep the bilge rat girl on the edge of
my vision, I curl my nose when a putrid scent fills my
nostrils.

“Why does it always smell like fish?” I ask,
sniffing the air.

Beside me, Barney laughs. “It’s Stew, the
cook. He thinks fish heads keep away the demons. He stashes them
everywhere. No one can stop him or find them all, so we’ve all just
learned to live with it.”

Typical Mayhem mentality. “Tell him that I
order him to stop with the fish-head-hiding,” I say, shaking my
head. “Or I’ll send him to the brig.” Since recovering from my head
injury, I’ve used the brig as often as possible. Although the ship
is still the worst-performing in the fleet, our speed has improved
by double and you won’t find a single midshipman lounging on the
deck under the warmth of the afternoon sun. Everyone works.

“If you send Stew to the brig, we’ll all go
hungry,” Barney says.

I’m finally getting used to Barney’s awkward
sense of humor, so I don’t bat an eye. “If I’m forced to send Stew
to the brig, you’ll take his place as cook.” Although I say it with
a light tongue, I’m not joking.

“I’ll inform him immediately,” Barney says,
scurrying off.

As I watch him go, I feel the hairs prick up
on the back of my neck. I glance at the bilge rat to see if it’s
the strength of her glare that’s raising my hackles, but she’s no
longer clinging to the mast, having slid to the deck in search of
something else to clean. A presence looms behind me.

Hobbs. “What do you find so interesting about
the bilge rat girl?” he asks.

Good morning to you too.
I stand, look
him in the eye, try to conceal the fear I still feel when he’s near
with a steady gaze. “I’m concerned with everyone on my ship,” I
say. “A watchful captain is a ready captain.” When my father taught
me that expression he had just forced me to watch as a young boy
was horse-whipped for stealing bread from the kitchen. I’m still
not sure what watching a beating prepares anyone for, but the
lesson stuck with me, so maybe that was the point.

“It’s not your ship,” he says.

“Is it Captain Montgomery’s?” I ask,
motioning to the opposite end of the quarterdeck, where Jeb swings
back and forth in his hammock.

Even Hobbs, with his rules-are-rules
mentality, doesn’t have an answer for that one. He frowns. Score
one for me.

“How’s the investigation going?” I say,
changing the subject without ever really changing it.

“None of the women saw anything,” he says.
“And Lieutenant Cain is questioning the last of the men as we
speak. We may never find your attacker.”

I nod absently, watching as, right on cue,
Cain crosses the mid deck. A handful of bilge rats do their best to
get out of his way. In his wake, I see the girl, angry and
brushless, her scrubber discarded on the deck, issuing what appear
to be whispered rebukes. Is she berating them for having been in
Cain’s way in the first place, or because they were so quick to
move aside for him? In any case, even her own friends seem to be
scared of her wrath. Strange.

We meet Cain at the top of the steps.
“Anything?” Hobbs asks.

I try not to hold my breath, but I do
anyway.

Cain’s gaze flickers to me before settling on
Hobbs and his question. He shakes his head and I push out my breath
slowly. “Nothing. No one saw a bloody thing.”

Hobbs curses, lifts a fist to his mouth where
he bites on his knuckles. “The admiral will not be pleased,” he
says through his hand. “I’ll tell him at first light when we drop
anchor.” He stomps away so loudly that Captain Montgomery snorts
out a throaty snore and rolls over, his eyes flashing open for a
moment before fluttering closed once more.

“Huck, we need to talk,” Cain says when Hobbs
is out of earshot.

“I know,” I say. Although on multiple
occasions I’ve felt compelled to ask Cain to explain exactly what
he meant when he said my secret’s safe with him, I haven’t broached
the subject as of yet. Secrets are better kept if they’re left
unspoken.

“My cabin. One hour,” he says.

T
he world flashes by
in blurs and blustery whispers. There’s dark skin and pulled-on
clothing, and I should be embarrassed by mine and Remy’s exposed
nakedness, but I’m not, and we’re not even looking at each other
anyway, because…

There are so few Riders returning from the
mission. My mother—his father: Are they among the survivors?

I’m breathless and frantic, and I can tell
Remy’s in a similar state because he keeps stumbling as we run side
by side back to camp, hearts pounding.

The Riders are already there when we scramble
between the borders, past the circles of tents, and into the
center. Dark horses stamp and snort, their hides crusted with
dark-red dried blood. One of them falters, its legs giving way,
crumbling beneath its weight. The young Rider atop the horse
tumbles off, clutching her side, red staining her fingers. It’s not
my mother, but familial bonds don’t matter now.

I rush to her, help her put pressure on the
wound, which is deep and gaping, her robe shredded to the skin.
“Help!” I scream. Her name is Aria, but the Riders call her Demon
Blade due to the quickness with which she wields the duel daggers
that are her weapons of choice.

But no amount of deft knife-work can save her
now as I press my palm against her wound, my flesh the only thing
keeping her insides from spilling out.

Remy’s at my side, mouth agape, yelling for
help, too, but his voice, like mine, is lost in a chorus of men and
women with similar pleas.

Aria’s eyes roll back as blood trickles from
the corners of her lips. She stops breathing at what seems like the
exact moment her horse does. I want to cry for them both, but I
can’t because my mother might be out there, and because I’m a Rider
and I have to be stronger than the common Stormer.

Remy clutches at Aria’s robe and I remember
that she was like a sister to him growing up, that when her mother
and father died of the Plague, Remy’s family took her in as one of
their own, clothing and feeding and training her.

I grab his hand and pull him to his feet,
slap him hard across the face. The time for mourning will come.

He stares at me with blank eyes, but lets me
pull him away from Aria, away from his pain, which, based on his
expression, tries to cling to him like mud on a rainy
afternoon.

Through the chaos we move like skeletons,
stiff and numb and searching. Dark-robed Riders stride here and
there, some spattered with blood, some clean because they weren’t
sent on the mission. All carrying the injured, trying to get them
into the hands of the Healers, who are visible due to the white
robes they wear.

We force ourselves to look at the faces of
everyone who passes.

Eventually we see Gard, as upright and
gregarious as ever, bellowing orders and pulling the wounded Riders
from their horses, carrying two at a time to the area that’s been
set aside for healing.

“Father!” Remy shouts, but his voice is a
whisper. He releases my hand and runs to Gard. The bubble of joy
that bulges in my stomach is popped instantly by the dozens of
needles of jealousy and fear that prick my skin and dart through my
insides like tiny hunters.

He’s found who he’s looking for and I’m alone
again. I start to turn, anger and frustration and sadness burning
in my chest, when I hear him say, “Have you seen Sadie’s
mother?”

I whirl around, shocked.

Gard places two groaning Riders on the ground
next to a line of five other groaning Riders. Two waiting
white-clothed Healers immediately begin cutting their clothing off
to inspect their wounds. He looks past his son, sees me, and I
know—
I know
. His face is grim and he shakes his head, but
then he says something that makes me gasp. “I brought her back
myself—she’s in her tent,” he says, answering his son’s question
but speaking directly to me.

And I’m gone and leaping over the body of a
dead horse, my bloody hands churning at my sides. Our tent is wide
open and I dive inside, nearly colliding with the Healer who’s
tending to my mother.

Her head is up, held by my father, who’s
squeezing drops of water from a wet cloth into her mouth,
whispering words that sound eerily similar to ones spoken while
he’s in his deepest meditation. The front of her robe is cut away
and ragged on the ground next to her, revealing her wound.

Her wound.

It reminds me of Aria’s wound, a deep chasm
spilling endless streams of blood and showing pink tube-like parts
of her that were never meant to be seen.

I choke and the tears are hot flashes of
lightning in my eyes that burn and blind me. “Save her,” I croak
out, as if it will empower the Healer to perform miracles that only
Mother Earth is capable of.

But my words don’t have power. And my tears
are for nothing.

Because there, in our tent, my mother’s eyes
find me, her lips part, and she says, “Listen to your father, for
he is wise,” and then she dies.

~~~

The clouds will forever be darker, the rains
harder, the lightning brighter, and the thunder louder. For my
anger is in the sky, in the air that we breathe, in my every act
and my every word. It washes the sadness away to a place where no
one will ever find it.

“You knew!” I scream at my father. “You knew
and you didn’t try to stop her!”

The heavy rain pounds our tent, but I can
feel every drop on my skin, as if I’m one of the dead lying in the
center of town, awaiting the passing of the storm before they can
be burned atop the funeral pyre. Like my dead mother.

He says something, but I can’t understand him
because he mumbles into his hands and the anger-infused thunder
booms at just that moment, drowning him out.

“Why?” I scream. “Why did you let her
go?”

I’m standing and Father’s cowering. His
cheeks are wet with tears and mine are dry. I allowed myself the
weakness of tears for half a day, my head buried in my pillow like
a child, until I could take it no more. When I wiped away the wet
and salt, the anger swallowed me in red and black and questions. I
won’t cry ever again.

Not ever again.

“It wasn’t my choice,” my father says, and I
think he’s repeating what he said a moment ago, when the thunder
overwhelmed his grief-stricken voice.

I shudder as a burst of cold finds its way
through our tent. “She knew?” I ask, my voice losing a small
measure of its sharpness.

He nods, buries his face in both hands.

I look away, at the wall of the tent, which
is dancing with shadows. Our shadows: anger and grief.

“Tell me everything,” I say to the tent.

My father’s shoulders are shaking,
convulsing, his tears spilling between his fingers like rivers
through cracks in the rocks. Like blood through flaps of torn
skin.

“Tell me,” I say more firmly.

His shaking stops, but the tears keep
dripping off his hands. I should go to him, comfort him.

I don’t.

A few minutes pass, and when he finally looks
up his face is shiny black and puffy. “Sadie, I—”