The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (33 page)

In the silence, Leff’s head and heels made staccato thuds against the floorboards as the onset of convulsions shook him. No one else moved and Jash slid her sword back into its scabbard. “Do what you like with him, Wurane. Maybe Arv—maybe Caldiss can take the leg off.”

Quenlin would not have bothered, because the venom would have reached every part of Leff’s body long before then. He was already dying, his face swollen and fingertips turning blue.

“Captain.” The coralhost spoke from outside the cabin.

Jash turned and the smile vanished. Quenlin breathed again. He wiped his mouth dry as she left the cabin, and leaned sideways to look out, to make certain she had gone. The limp body in the coralhost’s arms made him forget about everything that had just happened, at least for a moment.

“The eye.” The coralhost stared down at her. “Just like that one’s.”

“Well done,” Jash said. “I’ll question her. Bring her to my cabin.”

Chapter Twelve

A Star to Steer Her By

Darok took the steps topside at a run and reached the deck breathless, grasping a ratline for balance. What now? He couldn’t have shouted an order to abandon ship if he had wanted to, but it was the only choice left, because he couldn’t allow his men to drown at their posts when the ship fell apart around them.

When she does.
But she was in one piece so far and
he didn’t plan to go down so easily either.

“Captain?” Alyster called out from across the deck. Darok heard the carpenters clambering up topside and knew the looks on their faces would tell the story—if anyone was looking in their direction.

“All speed ahead,” he said.

“Aye, sir.” There was a deeply skeptical look in Alyster’s eyes, but he shouted the order nevertheless and oars dug into the water.

“Sails down.” Darok let go of the ratline, eyes fixed on the galleys ahead, but Yerena had disappeared while he had been belowdecks. Was she even alive? He wished her shark would go ahead of
Daystrider
as it had done in the strait, a sign that she was with them. “Ready the catapult!”

“Aye, sir!” That was more enthusiastic; the men had been without a fight for too long, and they were still confident in him.

He pushed through the press and came closer until only Alyster was in earshot, then lowered his voice. “The Lastlanders—the women, at least—and those of our men who are wounded. Have boats made ready for them and prepare the remaining boats for us. Understand?”

Alyster breathed out, a sound like a candle flame extinguishing in a wind. “The hull?”

“
What
hull?” Darok said bitterly, and went past him to the prow.

The warship’s figurehead, the armored maiden holding up the sun, turned in the direction of the galleys. The hot sun beat down, striking gleams from polished brass and iron, and belowdecks a drum beat as well. Oars whipped the water.

“Battle speed,” Darok said. Both galleys ran up red pennants like slashes through the sky, signals to the rest of their flotilla that battle had begun. Their decks were crawling, swarming, chaotic. Between them, the boat crammed with half of the Lastlander prisoners seemed to be unnoticed. Some of those prisoners tore at the mooring ropes holding the boat to the galleys, while a few others leaped overboard. Darok wasn’t sure which of them caught the Tureans’ attention, but a catapult on
Dreadnaught
spun on rollers. The boulder in its cup glittered fiercely in the sun.

No,
he thought, but it was already too late. The catapult’s firing arm swept up. Screams from the boat ended in a heavy splash and the liquid crunch of wood and bone being pulped simultaneously.

If his crew had needed anything further to spur them on, that would have done it. A roar rose up and the oars flashed through the waves. Though within a few seconds Darok knew they would never be able to ram the galleys. White wedges of foam streamed from either side of the prow, but
Daystrider
was nowhere close to battle speed. The twisted hands of coral sprouting from her hull grasped the water, slowing her down.

The catapults on the galleys let fly.

Jash Morender didn’t fear meeting any man or ship in battle, but she needed a respite, a pause to think. She felt as she had done when she’d been a new shipshand on the galley
Fortune
, the first time she’d been caught in the teeth of a storm. Soaked and trembling, she stood on the stern with a knotted rope abrading her palms.
We can’t be traveling
that
fast
, she thought, and moments later a man was swept off the deck past her.

She felt the same way now. Everything moved so fast that she was afraid, deep down, of losing sight of details which would matter later. The coralhost had secretly infected
Daystrider
’s hull, which would sink the warship whether or not its hold bulged with hellfire, but that damned Seawatch thrall had warned them. Jash had to assume the warship’s captain had heard the warning and would act on it. The Voice of the Unity might have set at least one of her fears at ease, but the Voice of the Unity was so much blood-soaked silk.

On top of all that, the
other
damned Seawatch thrall had supposedly summoned a greatshark. Jash wasn’t sure what to make of the threat, partly because she wouldn’t have trusted Quenlin to tell her if it was raining, and partly because she wasn’t sure what exactly a greatshark was. He’d made it sound as though he was raising the goddess of the sea herself, and unease gripped her belly.

The woman could tell her more. Jash gave command of the deck to her first mate, Parras, and led the coralhost to her cabin. The woman’s body was clasped in wet bare arms, her head lolling, but she started to revive as Jash opened the door. She pushed at the coralhost’s body with a gloved hand.

The coralhost’s body oozed where it touched her, Jash realized with distaste. The woman’s thick leathers had rasped away the coralhost’s skin, and the flesh beneath was bluish-grey, weeping a translucent fluid. Jash grimaced and pulled a chair forward.

“Put her in that,” she said.

The coralhost obeyed, but rather than leaving the room it stared down at the woman. “This is nearly ripe for budding.” It raised a hand to its head, where the scalp wore only a white crown. “Another host will be needed soon.”

“You’ll have one.” Jash wouldn’t have sacrificed Turean lives to something so grotesque, but she could spare a Denalait. Though the prospect of more coralhosts worried her more than she dared to show. She dreaded the thought of it—them—turning against her someday.

Sometimes she wondered if she would ever have allies she could trust.

Still, the coralhost was useful as long as it did what it was told. “Stay if you like, and hold her.”

Hands clamped down on the woman’s shoulders, and she gasped. Her eyes were open, the left one enclosed in a dark sail-shape.
I could give you another black eye to match that
, Jash thought, and did.

The woman’s head rocked back against the coralhost’s unyielding frame. The blow had been so hard that Jash’s own fist stung, and the woman looked half-dazed. Jash gripped a handful of wet hair and pulled the woman’s head up again. She started to struggle, and the coralhost’s hands moved down, closing on her upper arms like steel bands.

“Is there hellfire in the hold of that warship?” Jash said.

“I don’t know.”

The next blow was a backhand that snapped the woman’s head to one side, despite Jash’s tight hold on her hair. Blood trickled from a corner of her mouth, but when she answered, her flat cold tone was unchanged.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t raise her voice or lower it in fear either, and the indifference reminded Jash of Nion Vates. “Captain Juell didn’t permit me to enter the hold.”

Jash stared at her. Was that true? No way to be certain, of course. If only she could have questioned both the Voice of the Unity and this woman, using the words of one to confirm what the other said. The woman looked back steadily, unblinking as a fish.

“Does Seawatch teach you how to summon a greatshark?” Jash said.

A flicker in her eyes was the only indication that the question had startled the woman. She started to shake her head and winced. “A megalodon? No. You have to—have to make contact with a creature to link with its mind, and it would be impossible to catch one of those.”

So Quenlin had been bluffing. “Good. Now call your shark to this galley.”

The woman’s face went masklike in its lack of expression and her lips parted without any sound emerging. Jash eased a shortsword from its scabbard with her free hand. “Call your shark or—”

“Captain!” Her aide flung the door open. “You’re needed on deck.”

One look at him was all the warning Jash required. She slammed the sword back and released the woman’s hair, though she had no intention of allowing her a quick death. Not after Stamat Corving had described the havoc the shark had wreaked on
Rorqual
and its crew. Before her brain was replaced with a new growth of coral, the shark sorceress would confess everything she knew about Seawatch—and if any of the surviving men from
Rorqual
wanted a taste of her, they were welcome to it. Wiping her hand off on her breeches, Jash went to the door.

“Pass the word for Nion Vates,” she told her aide. “He’s to take her into safekeeping.” She glanced back at the coralhost. “Only once he’s done that will you come on deck.”

She hurried up the steps towards the hatch. Much as the coralhost unnerved her, it couldn’t be fought off or intimidated—and if it was considering the woman as a potential host, it would be that much more unlikely to let her escape. The one thing the woman could do was summon the white death, but Jash wasn’t afraid of that. If the shark came at them from the ocean, there were six ships between it and her, and if it was in the inlet—well, the catapults on
Dreadnaught
and
Bowhead
were primed to let fly.

Her boots thudded against the deck and men moved away for her. “Captain!” Parras shouted from the prow, and she ran in that direction, slipping around the huge catapult to join him. Sunlight glinted on the heavy links of the broken chain, each large as a torc, swaying from the prow’s fist.

There was no need to ask what Parras had seen. She heard the slap of oars in churning water, and a drum on
Daystrider
pounded out a frenzied hammering as the warship went to ramming speed.

Straight towards her galley. If the hold was full of explosives—

“Destroy it!” She fought down her fear, making the order a loud command rather than a scream. “Catapults. Smash it apart!”

“Loose!” Parras roared at the catapult crews, and axes chopped into taut ropes. On
Bowhead,
parallel to her, men did the same, but the first stone flew from her galley.
Daystrider
wasn’t presenting her broadside to them, but the warship was too large a target to miss. The stone drove into its starboard side, splintering the gunwale and shearing away part of the hull as it fell. Ratlines snapped. Parts of oars flew into the air. Parras was already shouting orders at the catapult crew to reload as
Bowhead
loosed.

The boulder struck perfectly on target, biting into the ship’s foremast. A man fell shrieking from the crow’s nest. The catapult on
Daystrider
loosed too, but the barrel of burning pitch fell just short of the men on
Dreadnaught
, landing on the prow’s huge fist instead. Wood cracked and the galley shuddered with the impact, chainlinks dancing and clanking together, but the fist remained in place when the barrel fell hissing into the sea.

Cheers rose from both Jash’s crew and Stamat Corving’s, on
Bowhead
. Jash was silent, though.
Daystrider
’s oars lashed at the water and the warship came on, slowing but not stopping. Did the hellfire in the hold give the captain suicidal courage against such odds? The ship’s hull was being eaten away by coral and that would have sent it safely to the bottom of the inlet given time, but there was no more time.

“Again!” Parras shouted. Archers on
Bowhead
fired at the enemy ship’s catapult crew, scattering them so there would be no return strike. The warship was close enough for her to see the splintered swaying ruin of the foremast, sails flapping despite the lack of wind. The catapult on
Dreadnaught
loosed with a heavy
whomp
, and that time the stone smashed into the warship’s quarterdeck, smearing it red. Screams echoed off the cliffs on either side.

Another sound rose over them—the shell-carved battlehorns on
Speared Lord
and
Lynx
, the galleys furthest from the inlet, the watchers she had stationed. Why were they signaling alarm? And why didn’t the warship sink? The foremast was tilting crazily, the deck a bloody chaos and still it came on.

They want to take us with them.

“Back water.” That time she couldn’t hide the panic in her voice. “Get us away. Back water!”

Parras shot her a sharp look but he knew better than to contradict her orders. He echoed the command, and the oarmaster’s drum pounded, faster than her own heartbeat.
Bowhead
, Jash realized, hadn’t waited for her command, but she knew Stamat Corving. The galley’s oars all but flew as
Bowhead
retreated, and
Dreadnaught
backed water as well.

“Captain,” Quenlin said behind her.