The Coldest Sea Read online

  The orders cut through the tense silence like knives, and as the helmsman wrenched the wheel, Evrett shouted to the crew. Ropes reeled through hands and pulleys, turning the sails.

  The ship’s speed increased, but that meant as she started her turn, more and more pressure was applied to her sails. She began to tilt. Anything that wasn’t tied down rolled across the deck. The keel and ballast were both meant to counterbalance her, but Vinsen also watched closely, gauging how the ship handled and balancing out the effect of each command. She was well into her turn now, and as soon as she completed it, they would go to a broad reach, one of the fastest points of sailing.

  All the sails went slack.

  Vinsen’s head jerked up. He didn’t feel the biting chill any longer, which meant the wind had died completely. Fallstar drifted out of sheer inertia, but her speed was gone.

  “Get the boats down!” he snapped.

  “Sir,” Joama began, “we can’t tow the ship fast enough—”

  “Who said anything about towing? Stow them with supplies and get them down. Now.”

  She started to speak again, but something in his voice or face silenced her. As she gave the crew their last orders, Vinsen called Dannel forward. “Get our passenger up here and tell her to be warmly dressed.”

  “Yes, sir.” He was gone at once. The iceberg bore down on them, faster than any ocean current should have been able to move it, and it was only a mile away now.

  “There’s nothing more we can do?” Evrett said quietly beside him.

  “I’m open to suggestions.” Behind them, muted voices had begun a prayer to the Unity. Fallstar had never been intended to ram other vessels, so she couldn’t be rowed, and as Joama had pointed out, the ship couldn’t be towed either. There was nothing at all to be done about millions of tons of frozen water bearing down on them as they floated, becalmed, before it. All the ships of Denalay couldn’t have withstood that.

  So the most important thing was that someone survived and brought news of the iceberg back home.

  Vinsen turned. Maggie climbed out of the hatch, wrapped in her fur cloak—good, that would keep her warm. The deckhands shoved flasks of water and bundles of food beneath the thwarts of the two boats hanging from the hull.

  “You’re in one,” he said to Joama. “Don’t argue, just pick eight of the strongest rowers and decide who’s in charge of the other. The ropes will be cut as soon as you’re ready.”

  Maggie seemed about to say something, but Dannel hurried her to the gunwale. Vinsen filled his vision with his last sight of her, the tossed dark curls and amber eyes, then turned back to face the iceberg. Whatever happened, at least she’d be safe.

  “Are the boats down?” he said to Evrett.

  “Yes, sir.” The sailing master didn’t seem able to look away from the looming wall of ice either.

  Good. Vinsen heard distant commands and the echoing splash of oars. Eleven people, eleven survivors. That was eleven times better than he’d done with Mistral.

  The air around them seemed to have dropped twenty degrees in temperature, and everything was silent except for the rowboats and the iceberg. Water hissed around it. The giant mass creaked and whined. A great pale chunk cracked and fell from one of the mountainside slopes. Vinsen looked straight ahead and spread his hands along the rail so his fingers wouldn’t tremble.

  It was a physical reaction to the chill rather than fear, because he felt colder than the ice. He owed the sea a death. He’d been saved from the deep once when his crew had been drowned, so he was prepared to join them.

  That would be fast, at least. Whether the iceberg tore Fallstar’s hull out or whether the sheer bulk of it crushed the ship under tons of ice, it would be quick. He wished he’d never listened to the Bleakhavener woman, but it was too late for regrets.

  It was too late to do anything more than watch the wall of ice only half a mile away from them. Vinsen kept his back straight and his head held high. He was still the captain of a Denalait ship, and when pirates had taken him prisoner, they hadn’t been able to get anything out of him. No Bleakhavener magic would make him bend now.

  Fallstar rocked beneath him. For a moment he thought the wind had risen, a last-minute salvation, and then he knew what it was. The water displaced by the berg pushed up against them, jolting the ship as the berg drew closer and closer. It was almost upon them but that didn’t matter, because the boats would have—

  With a soft hiss, long ridges of ice rose out of the waves on either side of Fallstar. Water slid gleaming off their sides.

  Vinsen spun around. The sea peeled back before the ice, broad pale arcs climbing effortlessly into the air and growing in length as well as height. The men in the outermost boat—Joama’s, it had a black-circle-on-white flag at the prow—stopped staring at the sight and rowed faster.

  The wall of ice outpaced them easily, bursting out of the sea before them, wet and white as teeth. Someone in the boat shouted as the water rippled back just before their prow. Joama snatched up an oar. As a pale, gleaming barrier rose before them, she slammed the oar into it.

  Ice crunched. The reaction pushed Joama’s boat back, and in heartbeats, the two arms of ice curved outward and joined. They melded soundlessly into each other and continued to grow in height.

  Vinsen dared a look over his shoulder. The rest of the iceberg was less than two hundred yards away, but it didn’t seem to be moving any longer. The air was hushed and freezing. He saw little clouds whenever he breathed.

  I’m breathing. The thought felt strange. They should have died, but…

  He looked back out at the boats he had thought would escape. They as well as Fallstar floated in a lake that was held within a wall of ice twenty feet high.

  They were trapped.

  In her cabin, Maggie lit a candle and placed it in a blob of wax that hardened instantly in the cold. The flame made no difference to that, but no more sunlight glowed through the window now that a great shadow fell across it. After a moment she closed the shutters. Better that than looking at a world of ice.

  She pulled her cloak around her. It was a gift from her mother, heavy black fur with a bluish cast, so warm and soft she could have gone to sleep in it if she hadn’t always hung it up and brushed it down at night. Now, she shivered beneath it.

  After the ice cut them off, Vinsen had recalled the boats and the men had rowed back across the calm water. The iceberg had been motionless, but she hadn’t been able to stop watching it, waiting tensely for it to do something else.

  Had Ruay made it trap them? Iternans could have. Maggie had never seen one of them, but she’d heard of their magic. The difference was that no Iternan could leave their homeland, under penalty of death, whereas there was no such check on Bleakhaveners.

  So she supposed the only reason the iceberg hadn’t smashed into Fallstar was because the impact would have killed Ruay as well—and killed her first, given that she was chained up naked in the hold. Maggie had known naval discipline could be harsh, but until then she hadn’t seen it for herself. Vinsen wasn’t a safe man to cross.

  Except there was nothing he could do to an iceberg. If Fallstar had cannons, they might have blasted a way through the wall; if it were a steamship, boiling water might have done the same thing. But it was not just a cargo carrier, it was one of the older vessels, soon to be phased out and replaced.

  Sooner than they thought.

  She shivered again. It would be suppertime in a little while, but she didn’t know if a meal would be cooked. What if heat and fire angered—no, she couldn’t think of it as a living being—affected the iceberg somehow? The ship’s bell didn’t ring, as though the crew was afraid loud sound would dislodge slabs of ice, rolling them down the slopes of the berg like a landslide. Any movement on the deck seemed so hushed that the crew might all have died up there without her ever knowing.

  Stop brooding.
She put on fingerless gloves of fine muskox wool and tried to practice, but for once that effort failed. Nothing had seemed real from the moment Ruay had jammed the shears to her throat. Then Vinsen had kissed her—though she tried not to remember that because she had kissed him back—and now they were in an iceberg’s grip.

  If only she could go to sleep and wake up with the journey over, like a foul dream. Her father had warned her she would regret going off to sea—as he put it, he’d lost two children to the navy already and didn’t want to lie awake at night wondering if a third would come safely back—but she didn’t think he’d be happy to be proven right.

  She tried to read, but a soft thump at the door made her start. Shutting the book with a snap, she wished she had some weapon close at hand.

  Don’t be paranoid. She’d never learned how to use so much as a knife, and she doubted Ruay could have escaped from the hold, so she got up to open the door. Vinsen was outside, a steaming mug in each hand and a covered oblong dish balanced on his forearms.

  “I thought you might want something to eat,” he said, “and I told Cutwater not to prepare anything hot except for coffee—we might need all the fuel we can get.”

  Maggie set the mugs down and opened the dish. By then she was hungry enough that anything would have tasted good, but two sausages, a handful of dates and a slice of cheese wouldn’t go far for two people. Still, they didn’t know how long they might be trapped. Vinsen sank into the other chair and pushed dark hair back from his forehead.

  “Have some,” she said, and tried a sausage. It was stuffed with pork and peppers, so there was a bite to it despite the cold, and she finished hers off fast. Vinsen ate the other, though he was clearly so preoccupied he didn’t notice what he was eating, and he seemed to be gazing into the candle’s flame rather than seeing anything in the room. She wrapped her fingers around the mug, grateful for its warmth.

  Vinsen finally looked up from the candle as though he’d come to a decision about something. “You should know. I’ve stationed lookouts with orders to report any changes in the iceberg. So far there’s been nothing—and no signs of any survivors either. I’ll wait another hour, then question that woman. See if she’s softened up any. If not, we’ll have to break through the ice.”

  Maggie wondered how effective such an effort would be, against ice that could simply rise out of the sea, but it wasn’t her place to say. He was a naval officer no matter what kind of ship he served on, so he wouldn’t simply sit on his hands waiting for something to happen. And thank the Unity, he hadn’t mentioned the moment of madness which had come upon them both. They could put that behind them. She drank, welcoming the scorch of liquid down her throat and the pleasant heat spreading out from her belly.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, just tell me,” she said.

  “I want you to stay as safe as possible. I should never have brought you into this.”

  “I didn’t exactly object.” She thought ruefully of how idealistic she’d been, talking about a mission of mercy. A lot she had known. “And I’m grateful.”

  He stared at her. “Grateful? For what?”

  That you’re my friend, and you saved my life. “That you tried to get me safely away earlier.”

  Vinsen shook his head a little as if to say that was nothing. His face looked dark with shadowed hollows and unshaven skin, his black-gloved hands darker on the ceramic mug. The blue eyes were a startling contrast to that. He drank deeply, then set the empty mug down.

  “About what happened…” he began.

  Oh hell. She cringed inwardly, wishing they could forget it and go back to where they had been before, but if he wanted to get it out in the open—well, she could be strong enough to do the same.

  She straightened her back and spoke calmly. “It’s understandable. You’ve been at sea for some time, and I—well, I wasn’t thinking. But there’s no need to be concerned. It won’t happen again. I value your friendship very much, Vinsen, and I don’t want to jeopardize that, or affect your marriage in any way.”

  Vinsen let his breath out as though he’d been holding it during the course of her carefully thought-out speech. “I’m not married.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I was divorced five years ago.”

  Maggie stared at him. She wasn’t provincial, and divorce didn’t startle her, but then…why had she been under the wrong impression? Of course, she’d said she was sure he was happy being married, and he had kept quiet. Odd, how she remembered a casual conversation with him so well, but now she was too embarrassed and annoyed to dwell on that.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Damn it, that sounded as though she had a right to know about his life. “I’m aware it’s none of my concern, but—you let me think you were married, didn’t you?”

  He met her eyes and nodded, without speaking.

  “May I ask why?” His silence didn’t make matters any easier, and she struggled to keep her feelings out of her voice. “Did you think I’d throw myself at you otherwise?” She wouldn’t have done so. Vinsen was good-looking in his own way, but he wasn’t the man she loved, not that she intended to tell him any of that.

  “No, I—” He was on his feet as though he couldn’t remain still any longer, and he turned as if to look out of the shuttered window. The words came out jerkily. “Look, Maggie, I’m—attracted to you, but we can’t act on it.”

  Maggie rose too, and went to stand by the window so he didn’t have any choice but to face her. She could understand having other priorities under the circumstances, but…

  “But you let me make a wrong assumption on the second night of our journey. Before you ever heard about that.” She tilted her head at the window and what lay beyond it. “Why?”

  Despite the shadows away from the single candle, she saw the muscles beside his mouth tighten, stretching the skin taut over his cheekbones. He might think it had been an error of judgment to act on their attraction, but it had definitely been a mistake to stand so close to him. Even annoyed with him as she was, heat flowed involuntarily down through her body as if she was a candle too, lit from the blue-steel spark in his eyes.

  She wondered if he felt the same. The tendons in his throat stood out like ropes, but his voice was as controlled as always.

  “I wouldn’t be any good for you.” His eyes were hooded now, half-lidded as a cat’s, and more alert. “I could fuck you easily, but I couldn’t give you anything else.”

  She lifted a brow. “Do you think strong language bothers me? I’m used to sailors, remember?”

  “Sailors I never want to be reminded of.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at the closed, leather-bound volume on the crate, and the edge in his voice was evident. “You read that. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Are you drunk?” She’d only read half the book so far, so maybe there was some explanation for his reaction in the other half, but she couldn’t think what it might be.

  “All right, I’ll spell it out.” The words snapped like a whiplash. “Your brother lost a ship in the Iron Ocean. The second-finest ship in the fleet at that time, and I know because I was one of the people sent into the Iron Ocean to fish him out of it. The Admiralty rewarded him with a better ship. Your other brother didn’t even win the damn race after he blew the guts out of his ship trying. The Admiralty let him keep his position and his ship. I was ordered to compete in that race, my ship was sunk and I ended up here.”

  Maggie wanted to step back from him, but the floor beneath her feet wasn’t entirely solid any longer. The bitter undertone to his voice came through clearly, and she felt as though she was looking at a stranger.

  “You’re jealous of my brothers?” she said.

  “What on Eden would I have to be jealous of?” The sarcasm was evident as well. “I don’t expect the world to be a fair place, but I don’t need
that unfairness rubbed in my—”

  “Get the hell out of my cabin.”

  Vinsen leveled a hard look at her, but didn’t say any more. He turned on his heel and the door closed behind him a moment later.

  It took a little while for Vinsen to calm down. He was furious at himself; he’d never revealed so much to anyone, though that was because he hardly spoke to anyone else. Well, he had work to do now, and that would keep him away from a woman who had somehow got under his skin.

  He updated the logbook, then collected a flask of water and two of the deckhands before he went to Joama’s cabin. She joined them and one man went ahead, with a lantern in hand, as they descended to the hold.

  The confined spaces of a ship were normally warmer than the deck, but the hold was so chilled that Vinsen hoped Ruay hadn’t died down there. He’d stationed another deckhand on watch nearby, and the man got up from a keg as they approached, pulling off a knit cap. Vinsen told him he could go off duty, and the man obeyed with every indication of relief.

  Can’t blame him. Ten feet away from her, he smelled the reek. She’d been chained to an iron ring jutting out of a bulkhead and hadn’t been released to go to the head, so the tin pail beside her stank. He went closer with the lantern, Joama at his heels, and Ruay turned her head away from the glow.

  Gooseflesh and dirt showed on her skin. No bites yet, but the rats wouldn’t have approached while she was able to struggle or kick. He crouched beside her and shook the flask to make the liquid slosh inside.

  Her head turned slowly, though her eyes were still slitted. A bruise was dark on the side of her jaw where he’d hit her earlier.

  “My offer stands,” he said.

  “All right,” she whispered, and Vinsen held the flask to her lips. She gulped thirstily, water spilling down the sides of her mouth onto her bare breasts.