The Coldest Sea Read online

  That felt soothing, and the methodical work of rubbing it in mellowed her mood considerably. If they did escape, she’d need to earn her way with her hands. Once she was done, she put her fingerless gloves back on, picked up Vinsen’s jerkin and let herself out. The ship was still dark and quiet, though the tension that had filled the air like smoke was gone.

  The door to the infirmary was open, but she went past so quickly all she caught was a whiff of blood and carbolic soap. Then she was at the large cabin located in the stern. It occurred to her that she didn’t know for certain whether it was Vinsen’s; she’d assumed so, because the officers’ quarters were always in the stern. Well, she could find out.

  She knocked lightly and waited. No answer. Then it had to be his, because he was in the infirmary, and she opened the door.

  The cabin was so warm it brought tears stinging to her eyes. She couldn’t have prevented herself stepping in any more than she could have avoided holding her hands out to a fire, and the door closed softly behind her. Oh, so comfortable.

  The candelabranch on the table cast a circle of light on a scatter of papers and a little carved horse holding them down. More carvings filled a shelf—ospreys like the one he’d given her, but she couldn’t help feeling pleased that only hers had caught a fish.

  Other than those, the cabin was bare and impersonal, with a cheerless air to the place. Well, she wasn’t there to note or improve the décor. She just had to leave his jerkin there and go.

  Another door in the wall opposite her probably led to the bedroom, so she strode over and pushed the door open. Then she stopped in the doorway as if she’d been pinned to the spot, because Vinsen was in the bunk a few feet away from her.

  A single candle burned on the shelf above the bunk, but he was asleep, much to her relief. She could breathe, as long as she did it quietly, so she hung his jerkin over the door’s handle and glanced at him to make sure he was undisturbed.

  One hand rested on the blanket covering him. The usual composure was gone, and he looked tired instead, oddly vulnerable, his hair damp and rumpled. It looked darker on the bandage wrapped around his head. Maggie watched the slow rise of his chest, only to make certain he was breathing. The bedroom was warm from stones that lay in pans of sand, and the air shimmered slightly above them.

  It was an intrusion on his privacy for her to be there, and she closed the door noiselessly. But despite the barrier between them, it wasn’t easy for her to leave. Not only was the cabin pleasantly warm, she felt safe there, and no longer alone.

  Which made no sense, given that he was so deeply asleep he hadn’t woken up at her knock. Fighting the Bleakhaveners and falling into liquid ice would have exhausted him, and if she had the measure of Dr. Ciura, he wouldn’t hesitate at a drop of laudanum in the captain’s coffee.

  She made herself go back to her cabin, stopping along the way to eat a piece of hardtack from the galley. Then she got into her hammock and cocooned herself in her cloak, with a tiny opening for breath. Thuds and creaks and voices from above meant work on the damaged parts of the ship was in process, perhaps a plan to escape, and yet she could do nothing to help.

  Just lie there like a log in a woodpile, except less useful. She didn’t even want to read her book any longer, since it mentioned Vinsen. Her emotions were complicated enough without her being reminded of him.

  Though being wrapped in the fur cloak was warmer, and being awake all night left her tired despite the sounds of repairs. Closing her eyes, she told herself all she could do now was wait.

  She didn’t know how long she slept, but a light shake to her shoulder made her twitch instinctively, trying to avoid whatever that was. A memory of the Bleakhaveners flashed across her mind, and she started up with a jerk, the fur cloak falling around her shoulders and the hammock swaying. Her vision half-blurred, she looked up at Vinsen.

  He cleared his throat. “You didn’t answer when I knocked, and I couldn’t see you under that.”

  Maggie blinked. “Is everything all right?”

  “We haven’t been attacked again, if that’s what you mean.” Vinsen looked a great deal more awake than she felt, and his brows came together as he glanced at the damp rug. “But your cabin’s cold. Do you want to sleep in mine?”

  The relief that filled her was startling—it was so instinctively swift and so unwanted. She had no intention of allowing him to get any closer to her than he had already been.

  “Where will you sleep?” At least now she was no longer drowsy.

  “Same place.” If he felt any awkwardness about their being in close quarters, he didn’t show it. “I’ll string up a hammock for myself. It’s the least I can do to thank you.”

  Maggie wished he would go away. She didn’t want or need to be thanked, especially not by him, and not like that.

  “That’s quite all right.” She fell back on her pleasant-but-dignified tone, acknowledging his response but making it clear such offers were quite unnecessary. “I’ll get some oven-stones from the galley.”

  “The infirmary and the officers’ quarters and the fo’c’sle have to be kept warm. That’s taken up all the stones.” His voice hardened. “I’m not going to touch you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Heat jolted from her chest to the pit of her stomach, and for a moment she thought the hammock was rocking around her again, far more than it had done before. It took an effort of will for her to speak not just calmly but gratefully, as if he had taken a weight off her shoulders.

  “Oh, what a relief!” she said. “Thank you. I’d like to take you up on that.”

  Vinsen’s face set in a cool surface, unrevealing except for the muscles going taut in his jaw. “I’ll send a cabin boy to help carry your things,” he said and left, shutting the door behind him. Not slamming it, though now she felt like doing so. Vinsen, she was starting to realize, was never loud, no matter how furious he got.

  He rarely if ever showed what he felt, which explained his outburst earlier. Maggie was used to people who made it clear when something bothered them. Both her oldest brother Darok and her father were like that, perhaps the one thing they had in common. In comparison, Vinsen was close-mouthed as an oyster until he finally gave way and spoke out about something that he seemed to have resented a great deal.

  Worst of all, a pull like an unseen current still drew her to him. Sleep had lulled away her defenses and just looking at him had been a mistake. If she closed her eyes, she could see him there, his gaze intensely blue and watchful on her.

  But it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t touch her and she had no intention of giving in to any mere physical reaction she might feel because she missed the man she really wanted. Which meant she could share his cabin with no qualms, especially if the alternative was to shiver in the cold.

  So she got out of her hammock and gathered the few things she had to have wherever she went: her violin, her flute, her book and clean clothes. She didn’t need a cabin boy—or anyone—for that.

  Trying not to show he was fuming, Vinsen climbed up the ladder to the deck. He felt better once he stood there, and it wasn’t just because there was plenty to do on the ship.

  The deck had been cleared of bodies and most of the snow, while the carpenters were hard at work—not on the splintered rails, but on building something new out of the wood they’d scavenged. A lookout was on watch, eyes trained on the slopes of the iceberg. At the stern, Joama had made a pile of the weapons they’d gained in the attack—heavy-bladed axes and picks like the tusks of walruses. It was past noon now, and she didn’t seem to have slept at all.

  “We’ll use the anchor to smash the ice,” she said when he asked her about the bodies of the dead Bleakhaveners. “We can weigh them down and drop them after that.”

  The anchor’s ton of weight could only break the ice directly around Fallstar, though, so the ship would still be trapped. When Vinsen lea
ned over the rail, it was like looking into translucent cloudy glass. Chopping a wide enough path through that for the ship to reach the wall would take hours.

  “How are you now?” Joama said behind him.

  Vinsen straightened up. His head ached slightly, but he couldn’t indulge that. “Never better. You?”

  She shrugged, though there were hollows around her eyes and her voice sounded like she had swallowed sandpaper. “What are your orders?”

  Thank the Unity he’d had time to think about that. “We release the Bleakhavener woman tomorrow at dawn. I trust she’s been fed?”

  “Fed, yes.” Beneath fur-trimmed hood and tangled hair, the upward jerk of Joama’s brows was visible. “Release?”

  “Here’s the plan,” Vinsen said, and told her. She considered, standing with her face half-turned away. A loose lock of brown hair streamed out from within her hood like a ragged banner, and his gut tightened. Wind, there was a fine wind, and if not for the ice his ship would be racing over the waves.

  “I only hope if we spend time breaking through the wall, the Bleakhaveners don’t just freeze it again,” she said finally. “Tomorrow at dawn, then.”

  He stopped at the galley for two cups of piping-hot coffee, then went to the infirmary. Dray was happy for the drink, and the butcher’s bill was less than Vinsen had expected. They’d lost three men in the attack, and another seven were injured, recovering in the infirmary.

  “What about the Bleakhaveners?” he said. “The injured ones.”

  “There aren’t any.” Dray made his way through the infirmary while Vinsen followed, wondering what he meant. After he’d been helped to his cabin the night before, he’d retained just enough strength to ask the deckhands about the raiding party, and they’d told him the Bleakhaveners had called a retreat, running over the ice. That didn’t exactly sound like men who’d had the chance to take their wounded with them.

  But when Dray stopped, it was before a row of sailcloth-covered figures at the farthest end of the infirmary, lying like cordwood beside the wall. Vinsen knelt, drew a corner of the cloth back and looked at the face of the first man. There were four other shapes beneath the cloth.

  “What kind of injuries did they have?” he said.

  Drey crouched too. “Two were stabbed, so it’s possible they bled out from those. One got the dog’s teeth in his face. Another had a lump on the back of his head. This one had a broken leg. The men found him on the ice, so he must have jumped down to follow the others and landed badly.”

  “It’s not possible to die from a broken leg. Is it?”

  Dray blew out softly as if to say, who knows. “Shock, maybe.” But he didn’t seem too convinced. “I was busy seeing to the crew, so I’m not sure if he was alive when he was brought in here.”

  Vinsen wondered if Bleakhavener magic might have killed the men, both to avoid putting hostages in enemy hands and to prevent him from questioning them. He pulled more of the cloth back to look at the next man’s face.

  “Interesting, don’t you think?” Dray said. “Ruay’s blaze is on the right side of her face, but theirs is on the left.”

  Vinsen had been so preoccupied with their convenient deaths that he hadn’t noticed. He got up, wondering how long Dray planned to keep the bodies there; they were sure to rot soon. Still, a medical man might want to open them up—he didn’t like to think about surgery, let alone dissection—so he said nothing.

  He stopped to exchange a few words with those patients who were awake, mentally making a list of which of the crew he would take with him, and finished his coffee before he left. Before he reached his cabin door, he heard music from beyond it, except now a voice sang as well. He paused outside the door to listen.

  Castles rise and fall in sand, at the siege of wind and waves,

  And centuries touch island crags with secret hollows, treasure caves.

  He had heard a lot of sea-shanties, but the lilt of Maggie’s voice was new. Much as he wanted to listen to the rest, someone began to climb down the nearest ladder, and he opened the door. She broke off in mid-chord, the bow lifting off the strings, and replaced the violin in its velvet-lined case.

  “Don’t stop on my account.” Vinsen tried to speak calmly, without any discernible emotion in his voice, but that didn’t seem to work.

  “Why not?” She closed the case with a click. “I can’t think of a better reason.”

  Oh, Unity. He felt tired, as though he’d been carrying a weight all over the ship. Because he hated it if anyone noticed he’d lost control, he went to the window and stared out, seeing nothing. Circles of mist appeared on the glass before his face. Paper rustled and he guessed she’d put the sheet music away. Back to silence.

  The prospect of spending the evening that way was not a pleasant one. Vinsen didn’t mind his own company—he’d had a lot of experience when it came to being alone—and he could tolerate being ignored by the crew, but this was different. She’d been friendly and welcoming on the second night of their voyage, and he missed that.

  He turned from the window, bracing his hands behind him on the sill. Since he’d been responsible for the situation, it was up to him to resolve matters.

  “Look, about what I said earlier,” he began. “What can I do to make up for it?”

  Maggie blinked, clearly not having expected that, but she recovered quickly. “You could try telling me if I say something that offends you.”

  “It wasn’t anything you said.” That book was on the table before her, and Vinsen avoided looking at it. Bad enough being sent to Fallstar without being reminded of how he’d sunk there. Mistral had capsized during a storm and a kraken’s attack, but that didn’t make her crew any less dead, nor had it changed the Admiralty’s minds about his reassignment.

  Maggie’s brows came together, and she studied him for a long moment before she spoke. “Do you really envy my brothers?” Her voice was quiet now, without the cool caustic edge he’d heard in her cabin. “Alyster seemed to trust you as much he’d trust any colleague in the same line of duty. I can’t believe he’s such a poor judge of character.”

  With an effort, he held back a wince. “It’s not envy,” he said as evenly as he could, though whatever it was tasted bitter as bile. He’d followed orders and done his best, only to end up sentenced to uselessness on a cargo carrier. How was that fair? Hell, Maggie’s older brother had a reputation for being insanely reckless, to the point where he’d taken on a pirate flotilla that had destroyed his ship. The result? He’d been given command of Wildtide, one of the new ironclads. Maybe if I’d sunk Mistral deliberately, I’d have a new warship too.

  He pulled a chair away from the opposite side of the table and sat down. “I respect your brothers’ hard work and capabilities,” he said. “I just—work hard too.”

  Maggie’s gaze grew more intent, unblinking as if she didn’t want to miss anything. “Wait,” she said, “when you said you were retiring—is that because you were given command of this ship?” Vinsen nodded wordlessly and she went on, speaking as if she was moving across stepping-stones. “Isn’t it possible that in the future, you’d be reassigned to a warship? Once you’ve served some time on Fallstar, I mean.”

  “How long might that last?” Vinsen asked. “Besides, there’s more to the situation. Parrick Chansver was the captain of this ship for twelve years, but he fell ill. From what I heard, it was a slow sickness. He kept getting thinner and weaker, and the doctors found he had some sort of growth in his belly that’s killing him by inches. So he’s on land now. Not dead yet, but probably wishing he was.”

  “Unity.” The word sounded like a release of breath held too long. “I didn’t—”

  A knock interrupted her, and Vinsen got up to find Joama outside, waiting to speak with him. He asked her for a minute and closed the door long enough to say quietly but ruthlessly, “Joama should have been promoted, but the Admi
ralty in their wisdom gave me the post six months ago. Now do you see why this would have been my last voyage whether we’d run into an iceberg or not? I don’t envy anyone, but it’s best not to mention a banquet to a starving man.”

  Maggie tried to be grateful for having the cabin to herself after Vinsen had gone. It was warm and quiet, but most of all, she no longer had to deal with that subtle yet undeniable longing that seemed to pull her to him despite all her better sense telling her to stay away.

  Not just her better sense, but the fact that she had nothing to give him. At best he would come a very poor second in her bed. She admired how he’d defended the ship, and when she had seen him face a Bleakhavener on floating ice, something in her chest had lurched in terror and concern. But she would probably have felt the same for anyone she knew. Nothing special about him.

  That didn’t change the fact that, rather than being hundreds of miles away, he had been so close he might have heard her breathing. She wished Anthny had given her a bracelet or a pendant, some memento she could wear next to her skin and touch if ever she felt drawn to another man.

  Though as talismans went, that would have to be a powerful one to counteract what she felt. The warmth had soaked into her bones, untying her nerves, and just looking at Vinsen had taken down even more of her defenses. He hadn’t shaved for a day or so, though it would take a lot more beard to hide the strong angles of his jaw.

  Damn it, she had to do something to take her mind off that. Off him. She went through finger exercises to limber her hands, then unpacked her flute and practiced scales. The lockstep predictability of those helped.

  Once she was finished, though, something felt odd. She glanced around the cabin, then shook her head impatiently. Distractions were a waste of time while she was playing. She’d always loved music; her earliest memories of her parents were of her mother singing as her father accompanied her on the harpsichord. So she took out some sheet music and began “All the Stars for Eyes”.