Water & Storm Country (32 page)

Together, we trot over to Siena and I offer
her a hand, pulling her up behind me. Clutching her bow with one
hand, she clamps her other arm around my stomach, squeezing
tightly, like Passion might toss her off at any moment. But Passion
remains calm, occasionally stamping her feet in impatience. She’s
ready to run. Like me, ready for her first battle.

“Are you ready?” I ask Siena. Gard pulls Feve
onto his steed, while two other Riders take Buff and Dazz.

“I don’t know,” she says, and I appreciate
her honesty.

I nod, look back.

“Fightin’ don’t come naturally to me like it
does Skye,” she says.

Although she might believe it to be the
truth, I don’t.

A Rider trots past us with Circ hanging onto
her like he’s in the middle of a fierce storm and she’s a tree.
Behind me, Siena laughs. “It’s nice to see him doing something he
ain’t good at. I never thought I’d see the day.”

For some reason, her light comment slows my
racing heart and evens out my breathing. Remy and his horse sidle
up alongside us, Skye sitting behind him. She’s not hanging on,
just cracking her knuckles and laughing. Remy appears rather
uncomfortable with the whole arrangement. “Back home they’d think
we were wooloo,” Skye says. “It’s like sittin’ on a sand dune that
keeps shiftin’ and bouncin’ between my legs.”

“Only you could make riding a horse sound
so…interesting,” Dazz says nearby. Somehow he’s managed to twist
himself around, facing the wrong way. The Rider who received the
unfortunate assignment of riding with him is struggling to get him
turned back to the front.

Maybe bringing them along wasn’t such a great
idea after all. But then I see Feve’s dark expression, full of
intensity and focus, and I know we’d be fools not to accept their
help.

My attention turns back to Remy when he kicks
my leg. “Be safe,” he says, before urging his horse forward.

Siena whispers in my ear. “I see.”

When Gard digs his heels into Thunder,
starting him into a gallop, Passion springs forward automatically,
not requiring any urging from me. On either side, the Stormers
cheer us on, waving black squares of cloth.

Today every single Rider will ride.

Today we stop waiting for the Soakers to come
to us.

Today we go to war.

S
he didn’t. She
couldn’t. Why would she leave me?

I don’t want to believe my father, but I have
to, because I remember now. I remember everything. Whatever wall
I’d constructed in my mind has been knocked down; not pulled apart
brick by brick, but destroyed in one powerful moment, like a
thunderous wave leveled it.

The fights, her screams as he abused her, the
days and days and days of silence that followed, as if by not
speaking of the past we could wipe it clean.

My mother: changing. She became less and less
willing to do my father’s bidding, almost relishing the beatings
like a badge of honor, as if her version of the medallions on my
father’s uniform were bruises and scratches and scars.

That night. She didn’t ask me to meet her at
the railing to watch the sunset…no. That’s what I wanted to
believe, because that’s what we always did. The sunsets were the
one time my mother looked happy, her sad eyes sparkling with hope,
as if the red sun could reach out over the Deep Blue and take hold
of her, carrying her away to a better place, to a better man. Maybe
it could. Maybe it did.

Her last words to me were, “Huck, Mama needs
to watch this sunset on her own. Just tonight. Just this one night.
It’s for the best—for both of us. I love you, my son.”

But I couldn’t stay away, perhaps because
deep down in my child’s heart I knew.

I knew, and I tried to save her.

Like she tried to save me from seeing it.

Suddenly it all makes sense. Why my father
would seek a bride for me from abroad. Someone obedient. Someone
moldable. Someone as unlike my mother as possible. He never wanted
a wife—only a slave, another bilge rat to do his every bidding.

I’m proud to say my mother was no one’s
slave. My mother loved me.

Tears spill down my cheeks as I watch the
sunrise. I reach a trembling hand out and catch a ray of warmth on
my palm, and I can’t help but to smile through the tears. Because I
feel her, my mother’s touch, her hand on mine, carried by the
sunshine. She found that place after all.

“I love you, Mother,” I say, standing.

Then I turn to deliver the beating of Jade’s
life.

~~~

Jade doesn’t meet my gaze as I approach,
pushing through the crowd that has already gathered to watch. I
want to punch them, to kick them, to shout at their carnal need to
witness the punishment I’m being forced to deliver. I know she
doesn’t look at me for both our sakes.

If my father hadn’t appeared last night,
would I really have set her free? Would we have stolen a landing
boat, slipped away into the night? My heart skips and stutters, out
of rhythm, because I realize the answer:

Yes.

Even before my father shucked off his coat of
lies and showed me his true colors, I would have left. The
realization bends me at the waist, like I’ve been punched in the
gut. I don’t need him to be proud of me anymore. I don’t need
him.

Does that mean I’m really a man now?

Do men whip the ones they care the most
about? If my father is any example, then yes, but he’s the last
person I want to emulate.

He waits for me beside Jade, cat o’ nine
tails in hand—a long leather whip that splits into nine thinner
endings. Each stroke nine times more brutal. Each blow yielding
nine times more blood, more scars.

Can I do this?

Do I have a choice?

As my father hands me the whip his eyes bore
into mine, and I consider turning it on him, cracking, cracking,
cracking it against his face until the casual smile he’s wearing is
red with blood. His guards, three burly men with broken-nose faces,
will be on me before I can snap the whip even once.

If I refuse to do this, what then?

My father leans in, whispers in my ear. “I’ll
kill her if you don’t do this.”

With one hand gripping the whip, I reach my
other hand to my neck, which is still tender. I picture my father’s
hands surrounding Jade’s neck, choking the life out of her and then
tossing her overboard like a bucket of fish bones. He’s not
bluffing. He doesn’t bluff.

I have no choice.

The crowd jeers and taunts and stomps their
feet. There’s not much entertainment on the ships and this is as
good as it gets.

Although I’m gripping the whip so tightly my
knuckles are splotched with red and white, I can’t feel it, like my
fingers have gone numb. I take a deep breath.

One of my father’s guards spins Jade around,
pulls the ropes attached to her hands tight around the wooden pole
so she won’t be able to turn away to soften the blows. Her back
faces me.

Sweat trickles down my spine.

I’ll kill her if you don’t do this.

Is beating her to save her life something to
be proud of?

My father speaks, his voice instantly
silencing the crew. There’s no doubt who’s in charge here. “For
unlawful entry into the bird’s nest by a bilge rat and endangering
my son’s life, this rat—”

“Jade,” I mutter under my breath.

“Excuse me?” he says.

I go to look at him, to repeat her name, but
my gaze stops on Cain, who’s just behind the admiral.
No
, he
mouths, shaking his head.

He’s right. Though I’m trembling with anger
and fear and disbelief at what my life has come to, now is not the
time for boldness. Boldness could end the life of the girl standing
before me. And that can’t happen, not when I’ve begun to feel so
much…so much what? What is it really? Caring? Concern? Righteous
anger at her plight and the plight of her people? Something
more?

I shake my head, tossing aside the thoughts
that don’t matter right now. My father assumes I’m answering his
question. He nods. “Good.” Motions to Jade. Continues: “This rat is
sentenced to eighteen lashes, to be carried out by Lieutenant
Jones. Are there any objections?”

Waves lap against the side of the boat.
Big-chins swoop overhead, chased by gulls, chattering to each
other. No one speaks. I am silent.

(Is my silence weakness or intelligence?)

(Is anything I’ve ever done right?)

“Carry on, Lieutenant,” my father says, as if
I’m about to give an order to drop anchor or man the sails or swab
the decks. As if I’m not about to change my relationship with Jade
forever.

I raise the whip above my head.

The nine leather ribbons tickle my back.

I pause, thinking how easy it would be to
chuck the cat o’ nine over the railing, into the sea. It would take
my father a while to locate another one. But that would only delay
the inevitable. And he might even take it to mean I won’t do
it.

I can’t have that.

I can’t.

I swing my hand forward, not hard—but not
soft either—just enough to bring the whip arcing over my head,
dragging the nine endings through the air like bolts of lightning.
When my arm reaches the point where it’s parallel with the deck, I
snap my wrist.

Crack!

Jade grunts, but doesn’t cry out. Nine tears
split the back of her shirt, showing her brown skin beneath. As I
watch, the brown turns to red.

I did it. I really did it. Can I ever go
back? Can things ever go back to how they were?

Then I realize the crowd’s booing, low and
mournful, some of them spitting and shouting insults, like
“Weakling!” and “Piss-ant!” My father steps forward, flush with
anger.

Once more, he hisses in my ear. “If you
embarrass me, I’ll kill her anyway. Swing like you mean it or the
eighteen won’t count.”

My lips tremble, barely holding back my rage,
barely stopping me from spitting in his face.

When he steps back, I focus on a spot above
Jade, where the mast is stained white from the sea spray. It’s the
type of uncleanliness Jade would normally go out of her way to
remedy. I stare at that spot like it’s a beautiful sunset, like
it’s Jade’s face in the bird’s nest, alive with near-joy as she
tells me about fire country, about her sisters.

I swing, harder this time. Much harder.

CRACK!

The shrill sound echoes in my ears, slices
through my skull, threatens to wrench tears from my eyes.

Jade is silent and I’m focused on the
white-stained wood.

CRACK!

My breath is coming in ragged huffs and I’m
on the verge of a breakdown. A low moan rumbles from Jade’s lips,
but I pretend she’s someone I don’t know, stricken with the
Scurve.

CRACK!

Finally, she cries out, and I almost drop the
whip in surprise, because I’m not hitting her, I’m not doing it,
I’m just watching the sunset with my mother.

I don’t stop. Can’t stop until it’s done.

CRACK!

She screams. I can’t look down, can’t see
what I’ve done. It’ll break me as I’m breaking her.

CRACK!

Her cry has become distant, like a dream,
fuzzy and fading and not real. The only thing real: Jade’s smile,
her eyes, alive alive alive.

CRACK!

I’ve lost count, which I can’t do, because I
have to know when to stop. I retrace my swings, try to work it out.
Seven. I’m sure of it.

Again and again, cracking and snapping, just
whipping a salt-stained mast, almost like I’m practicing for the
real thing. Fifteen times already.

She’s stopped screaming with every blow, her
reaction nothing more than a soft whimper now. Does that mean it
doesn’t hurt anymore? Or has she simply screamed her lungs dry?

Three more.

My mind is red and orange and pink and yellow
with a long-ago sunset as I bring the whip down once more. This
time she shrieks, and I almost do it,

(I almost look down.)

but I remember myself at the last second and
keep my chin tilted back, above the agony and pain and stark
reality.

The second to last blow falls, but I don’t
even realize my arm is moving, like it’s not mine anymore. Like my
father has taken control, like he always does, forcing me to bend
to his will.

She howls and my heart snaps in two.

One left. Can I finish it with a broken
heart?

My eyes finally snap down when I feel him
striding toward me. I want to look to the side, to see what’s
happening, to prepare myself for whatever’s coming, but I can’t
pull my gaze away from her.

She’s dangling from her wrists, which remain
tied tightly to the pole, her wrists red and raw and chafed. Her
knees drag on the deck, scraped and bleeding. Her once beautiful,
brown skin is slick with a sheet of red, darkened and clotting in
stripes of torn skin, like a battleground after a war, its trenches
filled with the blood and bodies of the dead.

I’ll never be able to touch her again.

And then he’s there, my father, muscling me
out of the way, ripping the whip from my gnarled grasp, raising it
over his head like a scythe—

—bringing it down hard, at least ten times
harder than my own strokes—

—Jade’s final cry, a horrible howl of pain
and surrender—

—and then my father is raising the whip
again, even though it’s been eighteen blows, and

the crowd’s screaming for
more blood, more
blood

and I can’t believe these are my people,

these are who I belong to.

I grab the whip as it dangles behind my
father, just before he snaps it forward for the nineteenth blow.
His eyes widen in surprise and he drops it, whirls at me, swings a
heavy fist at my face.

I duck, lower my head, barrel into him,
pushing him back with all my might, not stopping until he crashes
into the crowd behind him.