The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) Read online

  So whenever the shark obeyed her, she was careful to feel only approval and pleasure. She breathed out again, emptying herself, then let those emotions fill her and flow out in warm waves to the shark. Well done.

  That was the only reward she had to offer, since feeding was out of the question. If it needs to be fed, it doesn’t deserve to be fed, was how an instructor in Whetstone had explained the rule, so instead she gave the shark the same contentment and satisfaction it would have felt from a full belly. Or from good sex, she thought in her more cynical moments.

  The longing welled up again, so she detached before the shark could sense her emotions—and interpret them as a need for its presence. She was happier with the shark than with any person in Eden, perhaps because it never made any demands on her, but the new orders she had been given put it far more at risk than it had been in the dirty, congested waters of Sweet Harbor.

  That morning, she had been on her way to the port—walking, since she didn’t have money to hire a carriage—when an errand boy had intercepted her. The message he gave her said simply that Martil Trawter wished to meet her at a certain inn.

  Trawter did not need to provide his rank, because Yerena knew he was Seawatch’s liaison with the Unity, which placed him in the guild’s upper echelons. She made a detour to the inn at once, and was shown into a private room where he was waiting.

  “Yerena Fin Caller,” he said when they were alone. “What is your assignment?”

  Yerena stood an exact pace from the door, her arms straight by her sides, her back straighter. “To travel with the warship Daystrider when it sails to the relief of the loyalists on Lastland, and to break or sabotage the Turean pirates’ blockade.”

  “You have additional orders now. Daystrider must not be allowed to fall into Turean hands. If this appears unavoidable, you are to sink the ship.”

  The order felt like a jab in the stomach, and only long years of training kept her features expressionless. Sink a warship…with her shark? She knew which one would come off worse from such an encounter, unless she planned it very cleverly or waited until the ship had already taken significant damage.

  But that wasn’t Trawter’s problem, it was hers. “Is the loss of all hands acceptable?”

  “Yes. Though regrettable.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Do you have any other questions?”

  Yerena managed a shake of her head. There was nothing more to say. She knew why Daystrider had been sent on such a mission alone, and knew too that once they were among the Turean islands, their chances of success were slim at best. Little wonder the Unity was prepared for failure and would not risk humiliation into the bargain. Well, she would do her duty if or when the time came.

  The floor rocked beneath her feet as the ship moved out of the port, and a breeze stole through the window, redolent of spices and fish and smoke. She got up and began to unpack.

  She hung her cloak on a peg, then stowed her watersuit, mask and sewing kit in the cabinet. On top of it she put a comb, a jar of bleed-no-more and a pot of grease, which had been wrapped safely in clean underclothes and her one other dress. Shaking the dress out, she wondered if she should change into it before the evening meal. Probably. The dress she wore was damp beneath the arms.

  She stripped it off and washed as best she could. The sounds of the port gave way to the creak of timbers, the muffled thuds of men moving about on the deck, and the whap of sails unfurling to catch the wind, a wind no longer heavy with cinnamon and smoke and rotting fish guts. The clean salty scent of the ocean filled the cabin as she put on her other dress.

  She had sewed it herself six years ago, but it was identical to the one she had just taken off. Seawatch operatives did not call attention to themselves, so the sleeves came to her wrists and the skirts to her ankles. In a spurt of rebellion, she had cut the neckline in a V-shape, but one of her instructors had seen it and asked her what she imagined she had to show off. Embarrassed, she had filled in the neckline with a triangle of grey linen. She buckled her knife-belt around her waist and combed her hair before she coiled it neatly at the back of her neck again.

  It was still bright outside. Yerena straightened the quilt and sat down in the single chair, her hands folded in her lap. She was trained to wait patiently, to keep her mind blank until its talents were called for, but it wasn’t always easy to do so.

  And it didn’t help that, the past night, she had dreamed she was drowning.

  That morning, Speared Lord ran up the signal flag which meant prisoner, so Jash Morender sent two of her crew to the galley in a boat. “Come back with the prisoner,” she said. “Captain Stylor is welcome to attend too.”

  Haraden Stylor, the master of Speared Lord, was not likely to be pleased at having to surrender his prize, but Jash commanded the freeships of the Turean flotilla, and unless Dreadnaught was sinking, she didn’t plan on leaving it for her captains’ galleys. That would be a loss of face, and in the Archipelago, commanders owed their position to the confidence of their peers, rather than to formal organizations or divine powers. Jash watched the men row away, then went to her cabin to decode a message from one of her spies in Denalay.

  The men returned four hours later, and her aide asked where she wanted the prisoner. “In here.” She rose from her desk. “Pass the word for Arvius.”

  Other than being gaunt and dirty, the prisoner didn’t look much in need of the ship’s surgeon. His hands were tied behind his back, not that Jash would have worried overmuch if he had been freed. The men shoved him into a chair and one of them handed her a leather bag. “Captain Stylor says that was in his boat, sir.”

  Jash dismissed them and opened the bag, but it contained nothing except for a half-empty flask and some rations wrapped in a cloth. She dropped it and faced the prisoner.

  “Did they send you away or did you escape?” she said.

  Sweat gleamed in the hollows of his face, but he said nothing.

  Jash smiled, something she never did when she was happy. “Understand this. If you tell me what I want to know, I give you my word that I will not allow you to be killed or imprisoned or tortured. If you don’t—”

  The man’s lip curled. “The word of a pirate?”

  “This pirate commands the Turean freeships and holds your life in her hands. If you refuse, all I have to do is turn you over to my crew and order them not to kill you. No matter what else they do.”

  The apple in his throat bobbed visibly as he swallowed, but he said nothing. The silence was broken only by a knock on the door, and her aide showed Arvius Tayan in.

  Jash could not have asked for a more effective entrance, because Arvius had clearly been interrupted in the middle of his work. He wore an apron stained with blood, and various metal implements protruded from his pockets. His sleeves were rolled up, showing thick forearms covered with brown hair, and he looked more like a butcher than a surgeon. The prisoner half-twisted in the chair and stared at him.

  “You—will you swear?” He turned back to face Jash. “To what you said before?”

  Jash bent her fingers and touched the knuckles of both hands to her chest, just over each breast. “By the gods of sky and water, I swear I will not allow you to be killed or imprisoned or subjected to pain if you answer my questions with truth.”

  After that it was easy, if not exactly satisfying. The prisoner said his name was Colyn Belforic—information Jash hadn’t asked for—and she suspected he was trying to make them see him as a person rather than as a Denalait. Even after she was done with him, he wouldn’t be a person. Though he would be infinitely more valuable than a Denalait. I swear that as well.

  She told Arvius to sit down, which he did reluctantly, and questioned the prisoner about the fortress on Lastland and why he had left. He told her the fortress’s defenders had opened a postern gate for him, hoping he could take a boat and slip through the blockade. Jash considered that an act of sheer desperation, given that there were eight galleys surrounding Las
tland and two thousand miles between them and the Denalait coast.

  “This postern gate…” she began, but the prisoner told her the defenders did not expect relief or reinforcements to arrive from Denalay. Jash hoped that meant they were all going to commit suicide, but apparently they were building another wall instead, a granite wall within the iron-banded gates. They were sealing themselves into their fortress, turning it into their tomb.

  So ramming the gates wouldn’t work. “How long can their supplies hold out?”

  “Two months at the most.”

  The blockade had already lasted a fortnight by then, and Jash knew she couldn’t simply wait three times as long. Even if Denalay did nothing during that time, her captains and crews would be reluctant to let their ships sit idle in the waters around Lastland. Besides, her reputation as a commander would suffer if she sat on her hands until starvation did her work for her.

  She questioned him further on the few unguarded points of Lastland, but didn’t learn anything helpful. Underground passageways had been dug or carved beneath the fortress, to be used as a last resort, but they all led out through the Honeycomb, and her people had been stung there once already. Arvius was tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair by then, a noise that stopped when she smiled at him.

  “That’s all, Keneer,” she told her aide, who had been writing down the prisoner’s answers.

  “Captain?” The prisoner shifted in his chair. “You promised—”

  “I know. Arvius, come here.” She went to a corner of her cabin and knelt before a large iron pot that had been brought there almost a week earlier.

  Looking almost as uneasy as the prisoner did, he heaved himself out of the chair. He was taller than Jash and strong enough that the crew submitted meekly to surgery rather than risk being wrestled onto a table, but when he saw what was in the pot, his face paled. “Brain coral? Captain, I can’t—”

  “Do it.”

  Jash spoke quietly and without moving her lips, but the prisoner heard. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” he cried out.

  “I won’t.” Jash placed the pot in Arvius’s arms and he took it as he would have handled a nest of scorpions. “I’m just going to change your mind. Keneer, take our prisoner to the surgery. Oh, and give him poppy juice, Arvius. I did promise he wouldn’t be in pain.”

  After they had gone, she sat before her desk with a cup of nettle tea, looking over a detailed map of Lastland. She wasn’t sure how brain coral could help in that regard, but then again, no one knew what brain coral was capable of once it was in a suitable host, and she wouldn’t lose anything by experimentation.

  Keneer knocked at the door again. “Captain, the taileye’s returned.”

  Jash didn’t particularly like their single Denalait ally, and she could never trust anyone who was not a Turean, but she vastly preferred to have him where she could see him. It would also be interesting to see what he made of the message her spy had sent. She finished her tea and climbed the stairs to Dreadnaught’s upper deck.

  The first thing she saw, as always, was the east coast of Lastland. Beyond it the ocean stretched vast and unbroken, and sometimes Jash dreamed of taking a small swift vessel and sailing away, to search for the water’s end.

  Once the war was done, when the circle banner no longer flew over the fortress. A circle was just one link in a chain, and the eight galleys surrounding Lastland all flew a broken chain on a blue field.

  Eight galleys were half of her flotilla, but for once they almost matched the number of Denalait vessels. After the galleys had reached Lastland, a spy sent word that an armada of twenty warships, led by Hawk Royal, had sailed into the south, heading for the Archipelago.

  Fear had tightened around Jash’s heart. The Turean strength was spread over five dozen islands, but the largest was the southern isle of Scorpitale, where she had been born. The Denalaits would burn the villages on Scorpitale after taking enough supplies to sail on to Lastland.

  Merely praying for a miracle had seemed inadequate. So she had turned two captives over to Nion Vates, and whatever he did with them pleased the gods. A freak storm struck, smashing eighteen warships, and wreckage washed up on the shores of Crypthouse for days. Hawk Royal and Tramontane limped back to the mainland, but Jash knew her people would never be left in peace.

  What bit like acid into her was that the Denalaits had so many advantages. They had all the mainland’s resources and traded for what they didn’t have, while Dagre and Bleakhaven refused to aid the Tureans because of a pact to take no hostile actions against other lands of Eden. And Arvius complains about coral, Jash thought. When the dice were so heavily weighted against her, what else could she do?

  Now her spy—thankfully there were no obvious physical differences between Tureans and mainlanders yet—had sent word of the Denalaits’ next tactic. Jash slid her hands into the pockets of her sealskin vest and crossed the deck of Dreadnaught to her ally.

  He was bent over a rain cask. Her crew collected that water for bathing, but Quenlin Fench cupped his hands in it and drank—further evidence, if any was needed, that it was the Tureans who belonged to the sea. Mainlanders couldn’t stomach its waters and had to drink what came from the sky or the land instead.

  Quenlin dragged a sleeve across his mouth and leaned against the rail, elbows braced on it as he looked out over the water at Lastland. Five days ago, he had requested a boat and had set sail without informing anyone of his whereabouts, not that Jash had been concerned. She had known he would return. Mostly because he had nowhere else to go.

  “Where were you?” she said when she stood beside him.

  “Trenchtrawling.”

  Jash had heard there was a chasm somewhere in the Shoreless Ocean, a trench that supposedly descended into hell or the heart of Eden. She had no idea why he would spend time searching such a thing, but then again, he was not just a mainlander but one who had been molded by the nightmarish institution called Seawatch into the bargain. A few mental defects were to be expected.

  “I have news,” she said. “The warship Daystrider left the naval shipyards on the Greater Horseshoe five days ago. It’s bound south.”

  Quenlin straightened up and nodded in acknowledgement, because obviously one ship deserved nothing further.

  Jash smiled. “There’s a rumor a shark sorceress is aboard.”

  He turned.

  The tattoo on his face looked like the tail flukes of a whale, and his eyes narrowed to the point where she could barely see the left one in the blackness of the ink. “Do you know what she’s linked to?”

  “No. But she’ll only have one shark. Can you deal with that?”

  “I intend to.” His mouth tightened to a line and he turned back to look out over the sea. “Here,” he said, in so low a whisper that Jash would not have heard him if she had been a little farther away.

  A black wedge slashed through the waves. Another fin rose behind it in a dark reflection. The third, taller but deeply notched, trailed a spray of spume, and the fourth whale leaped clear of the water, so close that Jash saw the eye just forward of the white splash on its head.

  The killer whales spouted, plumes of mist filling the air, then dived again. Quenlin put his back to the rail and leaned against it, so he was facing not the fortress, but the two thousand miles of water separating them from Denalay.

  “Let her come,” he said.

  Chapter Two

  There Is a Tide

  Alyster suggested they wager on whether Yerena Fin Caller would be late again, but she knocked at Darok’s door just before the sixth bell rang. She had changed her dress, and he wondered if she owned anything that wasn’t grey.

  Then again, perhaps she had to wear a uniform just as he did. He rose and held a chair out for her. She was about as expressive as a figurehead, and her shoulders didn’t touch the back of the chair when she was seated. He knew she wasn’t at ease there, and she said nothing after he had introduced her to Alyster.

  Alys
ter was excellent at breaking the ice, but either Yerena was a thicker berg than any he’d encountered or he simply disliked her. So a silence descended on the table until a cabin boy admitted Lady Lisabe. She had dressed in vivid red silk for the occasion, and when she moved her hands, gold bracelets caught the light. The flamboyant draperies suited her, and the smile Alyster gave her had more than mere appreciation behind it. Darok thought of reminding his brother that she was a Voice of the Unity, then decided that if she had seen the Unity face to face, she could cope with a first officer trying to flirt with her.

  The last person to enter was Julean Flaige, the ship’s physician, although Darok hadn’t been certain he would obey what had been, out of necessity, an order to join them for supper. Darok did not tolerate insubordination, but there was little penalty he could levy on someone who cared about nothing but his work. Julean had previously served on other ships until every penny of his pay had been docked, and only the fact that he was the best doctor in the fleet had kept him out of the brig.

  Darok had repaid a long-ago favor—one which had left him with his life and a scar longer than his handspan—by requesting that Julean be transferred to his ship, but there were times he regretted it. Julean hadn’t dressed for dinner, partly because he was indifferent to what he wore and partly because he couldn’t afford anything other than a shabby blue jacket and trousers patched at the knees. The only thing of value he wore was a silver locket on a thin chain.

  He took his place at the table, acknowledging his introduction with a minute nod. Lady Lisabe’s gracious smile did not change, but her eyes did, and Darok gestured at the steward to fill their cups. The sooner they finished and went their separate ways, the happier everyone would be—which was probably true of their mission as well as their meal.

  The first food of a voyage supposedly presaged the rest of it, so the cook had prepared his best that night. The steward poured wine and served a clear fish soup, a whole crab crouching at the bottom of each bowl. Alyster asked Lady Lisabe if she was accustomed to living on a ship, which Darok assumed she was, since she ate and drank with a hearty appetite.