Chapter Fourteen

 

 

 

“Change of plans.”

Miranda had called another council, this time without Ching Shih. The pirate captain had retreated to her own ship, for the moment, but we followed in her wake. Orca, Kraken, Miranda, and I stared at her empty chair.

“I need to call a full council soon, once I replace a few sailors,” she continued, her eyes hard, “and what I say to you I cannot say to them.”

She had taken the news of the mutiny better than I’d expected, not that she had shared her thoughts with me. I had steered clear of her, too many conflicting emotions jockeying for my attention.

“This was always a possible outcome. We sprang a leak, and Orca patched it, but not before Ching got wind of things.”

Orca wove thunderheads between her braids.

“It is unfortunate that Ching knows about our trawler, and even more unfortunate that she has facial recognition on Rose, but that doesn’t change things. Leaving the mines in Ching’s hands will lead to disaster. The crew can’t see that, clearly, but they don’t know her like I do. She’s just as bad as the worst parts of the Archipelago, if not worse, and the only equality they’ll get from her is an equally bad deal. Ching is in it for herself.”

There was a bitterness in her voice I had never heard before.

“So,” she continued, “it is time to fall back on plan B. I stay here, and keep Ching occupied. Orca, it’s your turn to trawl.”

Orca’s eyebrows raised. “What about your navigator?” she asked.

Not even Miranda could miss the poison in Orca’s words.

“She stays with me. I need her to track Ching’s movements, and the best way to do that is by keeping her close to Ching.”

“Close to you, you mean.” Orca crossed her arms over her chest.

“First mate,” Miranda began, but I cut her off.

“She’s right. Not about that part, maybe,” I backtracked, trying not to blush at the implications in Orca’s accusation, “but I shouldn’t be on this ship. I should be on the trawler. I am your best shot at navigating undetected.”

And I need to stay far, far away from you, Captain. I met her eyes and felt my resolve waver. I pasted a mental image of Harper’s face, bludgeoned and bloody from a pirate raid, and Miranda, lying unconscious in the helm of the trawler after putting her life before mine.

“And when Ching discovers you’re not on this ship? She’ll kill you, when she finds you,” said my captain.

“She won’t find me.”

“No, she won’t, because you’ll stay here, where I can guarantee your safety. Too much is riding on you.” Miranda dismissed me with a look, and turned back toward Orca.

I took a deep breath.

“Captain, I promised to serve you and obey you, but I am your navigator. You cannot guarantee my safety, no matter where I am. Let me do what I came here for. Let me navigate the coast.”

Miranda’s shoulders straightened, and she turned toward me slowly, blue eyes snapping.

“I’ll go with her, Mere,” Kraken said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “She’s right.”

“I’m the only monster here,” he’d told Miranda. How many of Ching’s words were true, and how many were chosen to unsettle me?

The three of us watched her. Captains and officers, in my experience, did not enjoy being overruled, especially in front of others. Miranda’s scars stood out against her rage-white face as she surveyed us, and I suspected our words came too close on the heels of a near mutiny to merit forgiveness.

“If that is the best course, then there is no discussion,” she said, and my heart broke at the coldness in her eyes.

 

•   •   •

 

Ching’s escort took us close to the coast, so close that I could see flocks of birds if I climbed to the crow’s nest. It was the only part of our ship that breached the surface; the air above the water was foul with hydrogen sulfide and the surface thick with algae. What sunlight managed to filter through had a dank, dappled, green quality that did not bode well for the ship’s hydrofarm or solar cells.

As thick as the surface was with algae, the depths were thicker still with pirates. The scope of Ching’s force was breathtaking. She’d pulled an armada out of floating scrap, transforming half-rigged tubs and salvaged, decommissioned fleet ships into flotillas of raiders— but the real threat lay in the sleek, dark ships that sailed just out of sight, similar in size to the ones that had escorted us into the heart of her territory. This was the Red Flag Fleet, and while the Archipelago still far outnumbered them, I had a sneaking suspicion that the materials in the mines were being put to good use by Ching in the coastal shipyards.

This was why I had to go. I had to know if she was building more ships, and how long it would take before starving the Archipelago of resources became mere entertainment, and she could take the stations by force.

First, however, I had to find a way past her fleet.

“There.” Crow’s Eye pointed, breaking my concentration. “Land.”

I scrambled past him, pressing myself against the plastic and heedless of the bottle of piss at my feet. There was a slight haze against the northern horizon, but nothing more.

“Look through this.” He pulled out a pair of binoculars and handed them to me.

I pressed them to my eyes and gasped.

These were no islands. As far as I could see, the coast stretched on and on, a low lumpy mass of solid ground that looked as endless as the ocean itself. It sent a thrill of hope and fear through me.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Crow’s Eye tone was reverent.

“It’s beautiful.”

It wasn’t, not really, not this far away, but the thought of it was the most beautiful thing in the world— and the most appalling. A place where ships could not sail, where you could not escape the storms by diving beneath the waves, and where water was a scarcity, not a given.

“I wonder if I could navigate on land,” I said, voicing a curiosity best left unspoken.

“About as well as I could walk, Compass Rose.” He slapped the stumps of his legs with a laugh. “We’ve no immunity now to their pestilences. We’ve lost the way of it.”

“How close have you sailed?”

“Close enough to smell it.” He closed his eyes, as if remembering.

“How close could a small craft get?”

“How small are we talking?” He opened one eye. “Say, a trawler?”

“Hypothetically, yes.”

“Pretty close, if she had a good skipper and knew the waters.”

“How about Ching’s ships? You know more about them than I do. Any pirate craft small enough to follow?”

“Sure, a few. Scouts. But no sailor alive would risk it. Waters are too treacherous. They say there are sunken cities there that flood the sonar with the cries of the damned and drag them to the bottom. More like run them aground, but there you have it.”

“Interesting,” I said, an idea forming in my mind.

“Interesting gets you killed, kid,” he told me with a pointed pat on the hand.

I handed back the binoculars.

“Thanks, Crow’s Eye.”

“One more thing.” He swiveled around. “There are sailors on this ship who would like to see you dead for what you represent. I’m not one of them.”

I blushed, unsure how to express how much his words meant to me.

“If you take the coastal route, remember this, kid. The most dangerous thing in the ocean will always be other people. And watch out for squid.”

Squid? As I descended, I wondered if Crow’s Eye was missing more than just his legs.

“Rose.”

I froze on the last few rungs of ladder. The chart room had been empty when I entered, but it was occupied now by the last person on this ship I wanted to see.

“Captain,” I said, dropping to the ground.

“I should order you to stay here,” she said, her face only slightly less livid than it had been the last time I saw her.

“Why? It doesn’t make sense.” I kept my hands clasped behind my back, resisting the urge to touch her.

“I need you on this ship. Stay, and I’ll make you second mate.”

I tried not to focus on how the first three words had sounded. Then the gravity of her last statement sank in.

Second mate? I wavered. Harper’s words came back to me.

“Wouldn’t it be worth it, if you could be a navigator in your own right?”

Being second mate to Miranda was too much. I couldn’t think. It was everything I had ever wanted, and accepting was the last thing I could do. I watched, as if I were in a dream, as a series of images paraded themselves before me.

Me, at the helm, with Miranda at my side. Miranda, Kraken, and I sitting down for a drink in the ship’s bar. Waking up next to Miranda, day after day. Even sparring with Orca had become part of the fabric of my life.

I wavered.

Even if Miranda hadn’t been Miranda Stillwater, I still had a duty to Admiral Comita, and unlike a mercenary I was not free to make my own choices.

“You need me to find out what else Ching is doing, more,” I said, my head still spinning. “You were happy enough sending Orca, and she’s your first mate. You have other people who can navigate.”

“Orca is prepared. Orca is . . .” She trailed off, and I was glad Orca was not here. For all that I hated the first mate, Miranda’s blindness to Orca’s jealousy seemed unnecessarily cruel.

“Orca is what?” I asked.

“Replaceable.”

I stared at her, and I didn’t need to hold my hands back anymore. For the first time since I’d laid eyes on her, Miranda Stillwater repulsed me. I tried to cling to the feeling.

“How can you say that?”

“I didn’t realize you cared so much for her,” Miranda said, her face still a mask of carefully controlled anger.

“I don’t, but she—”

“She is one of mine, and I would lay my life down for her in a heartbeat, but first mates can be trained. What you have cannot.”

“So I’m a tool.”

“Neptune’s balls, Rose, we’re all tools.” She looked up at the ceiling.

I hoped she found inspiration there, because I had nothing for her.

“Then let me do my job.”

“Fine. If that’s the way you want it, fine. But if you get yourself killed it’s not just your Admiral you have yourself to answer to. I’ll drag your ass out of Davy Jones’s myself.”

She closed the distance between us and the momentary repulsion passed.

“No point in flogging a corpse, Captain. The Archipelago will be fine. You’ll be fine. There are other navigators. Look hard enough, and you might even find one half as good as me.” I gave her a weak smile.

“Don’t be an ass, Rose,” she said, and for a moment I was back in the helm of the trawler with my arms around her neck, losing myself and my sense of purpose beneath her. I shook my head to clear it.

“I can’t do this,” I said in a half-whisper that cut through me.

“You don’t have to. Stay here. I’ll send someone else out.” She took my shoulders in her hands.

“Not that. This.”

I gestured at her, then at myself, and her face froze.

“Remember what I told you, Rose? I don’t care who my crew fucks, as long as it doesn’t distract them from their duties. I overestimated you. If you can’t stay focused, then you’re right. You can’t do this.”

The injustice of her words felt like a slap to the face, complete with the involuntary, hot prick of tears.

“You think I’m distracted? What about you, Miranda? You just tried to keep me from doing my job.” My voice shook.

“You’re not a distraction.” Miranda’s voice chilled by degrees. “You’re a compass, and I’m a captain. Forgive me for wanting to keep my tools close at hand.”

“What was all that about guaranteeing my safety then?” I was shouting, and I didn’t care.

“I’ve got a lot riding on you, Rose. But you’re right. This, this right here, is distracting me. I can’t afford to waste my time listening to this bullshit with Ching on my ass. You think you’ll be of more use to me out there? Then go. But whatever you think is going on between us is over when you come back. You are my tool. Nothing more.”

“Okay,” I said, swallowing the words. They settled like stones.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, Captain.”

She slammed the door behind her, my last word echoing around the empty chart room. I swallowed that emptiness, too, and it came to rest beside the stones, as lifeless and barren as the bottom of the sea.

 

•   •   •

 

I probably would not have risked it, if it had not been for my encounter with Miranda, but later that day I tracked down Orca to finalize our departure. Her mood didn’t look much better than mine, which was something of a small comfort.

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” I said to her, cutting her off mid-tirade as she yelled at a group of passing sailors.

“And how the hell do you plan on doing that?” she asked.

My plan was simple, if a little crazy. Man o’ War was in need of supplies from the mines, and our trawler was just the sort of vessel suited for making a short delivery run, not to mention the fact that we carried a load of salvaged parts and supplies in our hold that the mines certainly could use. As long as I stayed out of sight and Miranda came up with a decent excuse for my absence from her ship, I thought we stood a chance, at least for a little while.

How I would stay out of sight during Ching’s inspection was another matter entirely, and one that held little appeal. I decided not to think about that just yet, and filled Orca in on the details of my plan.

“Huh,” she said, in a voice that suggested that just because she couldn’t find fault with my plan now did not mean she would not blame me later if things went wrong. “What happens once we’ve finished trading?”

“We hide along the coast and see what else Ching is up to.”

“The coast.” Orca stopped walking and stared at me. “Do you have a death wish, jelly?”

“I might, after a day or two sailing with you,” I said.

To my surprise, Orca gave a short laugh.

“I could always kill you myself and spare the rest of us,” she said.

“So much less satisfying that way for me, though.”

“You really think there’s enough space in Davy Jones’s for the two of us?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, continuing down the hallway, “it wouldn’t be hell without you.”

 

•   •   •

 

We inspected the vessel together; Orca didn’t trust the launching crew, and I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. Hating Orca was a welcome distraction.

“You ever been in a trawler before?” I asked, watching her run her hands over the controls in the helm. The contrast between the unpleasant tension between me and Orca and the memory of the far more pleasant, if equally destructive, tension between me and Miranda grated on my nerves. I wouldn’t even be allowed to keep those memories pure.

Stop thinking about her, I scolded myself. She made herself clear. You’re done.

North, south, east, west. I would not cry over Miranda Stillwater. Especially not in front of Orca.

“I have standards,” she said. It took me a moment to remember what I’d asked her, and another moment to realize that she’d insulted me.

“Your mother didn’t,” I said, and just like that the brief respite I’d had while trawling with Miranda, Kraken, Finnegan, and Jeanine might as well have never happened. At least Orca and I were just trading insults, for now, instead of blows.

“I hope you sail better than you fight,” she said.

It was an uncharacteristically weak comeback, and I glanced at her, almost concerned. She was staring out the helm, one hand absentmindedly touching the wheel. There was nothing beyond the glass worth looking at.

“Well,” I said, deciding I didn’t care, “I’m going to go see what’s in the hold for the inventory.”

“You do that,” she said, still lost.

I paused at the doorway.

“Orca,” I said, not really sure why I bothered. “You want to grab a drink?”

“Not really.”

“Suit yourself.” I turned to go.

“I’d rather beat the shit out of someone. You game?”

We sized each other up.

Now that she mentioned it, punching Orca sounded like exactly what I wanted to do.

We walked to the training room in silence. It was empty, which suited my mood, and I wrapped my hands with vengeful precision.

“Whatever you think is going on between us is over.”

That was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? To keep the chain of command clear? To end any entanglements that would make it impossible for me to do my job, and to eliminate the conflict of interest that was part and parcel of Miranda’s identity?

That didn’t make it hurt any less.

Orca stretched, her lithe body warming up to do what it did best: bruise.

Maybe it was just fun for her, I thought, jumping up and down on my toes to loosen my legs. Emotions were overrated anyway.

I did not fool myself. I was not Harper, who had mastered the casual fling by seventeen, nor was I capable of that level of self-denial.

I sized up Orca. It had been a week, at least, since we’d sparred, and I felt oddly calm. She couldn’t hurt me any more than I’d already hurt myself, and she looked less intimidating, now that I’d seen pirates and dead bodies, and sold my people to Ching Shih.

We danced around each other for a few steps. I knew Orca’s pattern. She always made the first move, and she struck low and hard.

This time, I struck first.

It threw her off, and she took a step back. I struck again, getting past her guard and landing a blow on her upper arm.

It felt good.

I moved in again, and again, forcing her back across the mat until she let out a growl of frustration and launched herself at me in a flurry of feet and fists. I edged away, smiling. Whatever was bothering Orca clearly had thrown her off her game.

“What,” I taunted, “losing your touch?”

I was rewarded with a kick to the side that sent me staggering backward.

“Don’t get cocky, fleeter.”

I grunted in pain and lashed out with a left hook that took her in the jaw.

The look on her face as she caught her balance was almost worth the agony inside my chest, compounded now with pain from what felt like several ruptured organs.

Pure and unadulterated shock flitted across her features, sending ripples through her gray eyes.

“You hit me.”

I hit her again.

The anger that felt like it had been boiling inside me for as long as I could remember erupted. I kept my core tight and my muscles loose, and I rained blows down on Orca like a cat o’ nine tails.

She fought with all her strength, but she didn’t have despair riding her like a whitecap, and I brought her to the ground in a tangle of sweat and blood.

“Fuck you,” she said, as I pinned her arms over her head.

I had busted open her cheek, and a trickle of blood ran down her face onto the mat, but her nose and perfect teeth, which I had at one point vowed to break, remained intact.

Her eyes had flecks of green in them, like islands lost in fog. Her skin shone with sweat.

I didn’t say anything. Her braids fanned out around her head, the tiny shells white against the stained mat and her black hair. I remembered the panic in her eyes after she’d beaten me, lifting my shirt over my head in the shower, snarling as she walked me in front of her, keeping the discontented mercenaries at bay.

I didn’t feel panicked. I didn’t know what I felt.

“Don’t have anything to say?”

Orca’s taunt bounced off me. It was fragile, like her, and brittle as glass.

I looked at her. Really looked at her, and the girl beneath me looked back.

“God damn you, Compass Rose,” she said.

My hands tightened on her wrists. Something dark and forceful pulled me toward her, like filaments to a lodestone, and I let my anger and betrayal guide me as the cardinal points fell silent.

I kissed her, surprising us both, and then her body surged beneath me and she met me with a passion that matched me grief for grief, despair opening up a hunger that went bone deep. I couldn’t get enough of her lips, but she turned her head, her eyes closed and her breath coming quickly, and when I hesitated she broke one hand free from my grasp and pulled me down toward her, the roughness of the gesture breaking down the last of my inhibitions. I kissed her neck, her skin smooth and yielding beneath my lips and teeth, and Orca wrapped her hand in my hair and begged me with her body not to stop.

Her hips pressed against mine, and she moved beneath me with an urgency that quickened my blood, her breath warm against my ear.

I moved down her throat and toward her shoulder, tasting the clean sweat on her skin, and then she slid her leg between mine and I gasped, following the motion of her hips as she drove all conscious thought from my grateful mind.

This is what I needed. Violence. Oblivion. Lust.

“When you’re finished here,” said a voice that poured over me like a bucket of ice water, “we have work to do.”

Orca and I broke apart, and if I had thought I was heartbroken before, it was nothing compared to the look on Miranda’s face.

She turned her back on us and walked back out of the training room, her shoulders stiff and my insides trailing after her.

Orca and I exchanged an agonized look, united, at last, in guilt.

 

•   •   •

 

The knock on my door disrupted the slow swing of my hammock. I rolled out, not caring that my eyes were bloodshot and my clothes rumpled.

Please be Miranda, I thought, even as my heart pounded with dread.

Kraken filled the doorway.

“Are you here to drown me?” I asked, shoving my hands in my pockets to hide their spasm of disappointment.

“I thought about it,” he said, looking me up and down.

I squinted up at his face. It was hard to tell when he was joking with those damned tattoos.

“Here,” he said, tossing me a flask. “You look like you need this.”

Rum. Rum sounded nice.

“So you’re not going to kill me?” I asked as he stepped around me, filling the room with his bulk.

“I’m a cook, not an executioner.”

Something about his tone warned me that beneath his casual words was a layer of very real anger.

“Miranda,” I said, making her name both a question and an explanation.

He sank into the chair, and I climbed back into the hammock, rocking myself back and forth with one foot.

“Why’d you do it, Rose?”

“I don’t know,” I said. So many things had seemed clear only a few hours ago.

“Calling it off was the right decision. She should have done that herself before she got back to the ship. Orca, though.” He shook his head.

I took a drink and offered the flask back to him to avoid meeting his eyes.

“Is she okay?”

“Miranda? She’ll be fine, or as fine as she needs to be.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting her drunk?” I asked.

“She’s more than capable of doing that alone. Besides,” he said, taking a swig, “someone’s got to make sure nobody kills you before you get on that trawler tomorrow.”

“Let me guess. You drew the short straw?”

“I volunteered. Wanted to make sure you hadn’t cracked. I don’t want to deal with any squidshit from my navigator while we’re near the coast.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“You damn well better be.”

“Yes sir,” I said before I could stop myself.

He laughed.

“I’m drifter trash, kid. Don’t call me sir.”

“Yes, Kraken.”

“That’s better. Enjoying Andre’s quarters?”

“Andre?” I flinched at the thought of the sailor with the bloodstained whip who’d made his dislike of me so clear when I first arrived.

“He led the mutiny while Miranda was off ship. Orca walked him.”

Making him the second person to die because of me. I reached for the rum.

“Maybe he was right,” I said. “Not to mutiny, but about the Archipelago. They wouldn’t even allow him on a station, let alone thank him. Why help a nation that would rather see you dead than benefit from their technology?”

“You’re Polaris’s prodigy, kid. You tell me.”

“Why is Miranda really helping the Archipelago, anyway?” I asked him, ignoring his comment.

“That’s Miranda’s business.”

“Ching told me what happened.”

Kraken look pierced through the rum.

“Do you really want to know?”

I nodded.

Kraken took a long pull of the rum, nearly emptying the flask.

“I told you my family trawled near Gemini. I met Miranda shortly after she was made captain. She should never have been appointed that young, but Gemini station couldn’t resist her.”

There was a familiar bitterness in his words.

“I hated her, the first time I met her. She seemed too good to be true. She wanted to open a medical center for drifters, and she came down to the quarantine docks to talk to us. This was right after I’d lost my family. I gave her a piece of my mind.”

He shook his head a little, as if remembering.

“She listened. That’s what surprised me. Called me Kraken, because all I wanted to do at that time was pull everyone around me down to Davy Jones’s. She came back to talk to me a few times. Gave me that pair of dice, and promised they were lucky. Said she always won with them.

“There were a lot of raids that year. Ching had just moved into Archipelago territory, and Gemini didn’t have a large enough fleet to hold them off. The Council refused to send in reinforcements. One of Miranda’s brothers was a captain on a ship Ching’s sailors sacked, and she snapped a little when he died. Started talking about seceding from the Archipelago if they didn’t start intervening. She wasn’t the only one who felt that way, but she was the loudest. She sent her demands to the Council, threatening secession if they didn’t provide more ships. In response, they shut down the mutiny and destroyed half the station. You’ve never seen so much blood, Rose.”

“Pirates attacked Gemini,” I said, wishing there was more rum. Kraken’s story directly contradicted the official report.

“Pirates were there, but no pirate ship at that time could do what the Council did. They threatened to sink the station if Gemini didn’t stand down and give up the ringleaders. Miranda chose to walk herself, rather than face the Council. When they couldn’t get her, they executed the others, but they named it the Stillwater Mutiny for a reason, and her family paid the price.”

“What do you mean?”

“They executed her parents, and her surviving siblings were stripped of all rank.”

This was too much information to absorb. Kraken’s voice continued to flow around me, while my mind struggled to keep up with the changing coordinates.

“I joined up with Ching right after the mutiny. I couldn’t stay near Gemini after that, and I was tired of trawling anyway. When I heard that Ching had pulled a woman out of the water, I identified her. I was the one who told her about her family. You could say we bonded over our mutual hatred of the Council. Ching fueled that hatred, and Miranda used what she’d learned as a fleet captain to help Ching rally the Red Flag Fleet and hit the Archipelago where they were weakest.”

This was not what I wanted to hear.

“Why did she change?”

“She won a ship in a game of Crown and Anchor from one of Ching’s captains. Changed the name to Man o’ War, can’t imagine why. She was a different person when she was away from Ching. Ching knew it, too, but she also knew keeping Miranda on a tight leash would only piss her off.”

“What’s the debt Ching was talking about?”

“Miranda owes Ching her life. That’s a serious debt out here.”

“Is that why Miranda hates her?”

“She doesn’t hate Ching. She just doesn’t agree with her. Ching’s vision of the future is not that different from your Council’s, only Ching would put herself in charge, and kick the Archipelago citizens to the seven seas and call it justice. Miranda has been fighting for a middle ground her whole life. She doesn’t want to trade one tyrant for another.”

“But the crew thinks Ching Shih has the right of it, don’t they?” I asked.

“Some of them. Not as many as you think.”

“What do you think?”

“Me? I think people fuck up power, no matter who they are. You?”

“I think I’m drunk.”

“There are worse things to be, kid.”

 

•   •   •

 

I rolled out of bed with a hangover the size of the Pacific and a hole in my chest that wasn’t much smaller. I seriously contemplated drowning myself in the shower rather than eating breakfast. Jeanine took one look at me and rolled her eyes, muttering something under her breath that I did not care to decipher as I took my seat at the captain’s table for what might be the last time. Orca and I sat ourselves on opposite sides, and Miranda ignored both of us. I tried not to look at Andre’s empty chair.

We all departed from the mess hall separately. Miranda’s cover for my absence was all too believable; there was just too much work to do. It would be easy enough to claim that I was working through meals, and if things went according to my plan, we would be back before anyone grew too suspicious.

Kraken arrived at the vessel bay first. He was alone. I wondered how he had managed to dismiss the usual bay crew, but didn’t ask as I slipped down the hatch. He had done it, which was the important thing, and now all I had to do was hide until we were past Ching’s ships.

This was the part I had been dreading, although this morning I was past caring. There was only one place to hide on the trawler where I was sure I was not going to be found, and it was the last place on earth I wanted to be.

Well, second to last. The first was definitely inside my own head.

I wanted to take back yesterday. I wanted to expunge it from the record, and I really, really didn’t want to be on a trawler with Orca.

“Are you ready?” Kraken asked from behind me.

I swallowed hard and nodded as he handed me an oxygen tank and mask. Memories of my near fatal squidding expedition flashed through my mind.

Kraken led the way to the port side bulkhead and opened the maintenance hatch.

“It won’t be for long,” he promised, patting me on the shoulder.

“If I drown,” I said, looking at the salt-stained walls, “tell . . .” I trailed off. Tell who, what? I had nothing to say that could be said out loud, and no way of getting a message back to Polaris. “Tell Orca I’ll save her a place in the locker.”

That should be reason enough to live, I figured as I climbed inside. If I drowned, my last words would be delivered to Orca, instead of to the people I loved.

 

•   •   •

 

Air hissed as the ocean flooded in. I was grateful for the diving suit I found stowed inside, courtesy of Kraken, and pulled it on over my clothes in the darkness as the trawler took on water and sank through the first airlock.

I had no idea how long I would be stuck in here. This oxygen tank was much larger than the one I’d used with Annie, and in theory should last me at least twelve hours. If it took longer than that, I would start wishing I was dead, anyway.

The total blackness was disorienting. I hung on to the hatch handle as water flooded in around me, rising past my ankles, then my knees, then my waist, and finally over my head. I had to force myself to listen to my inner compass. Every instinct in my body screamed that I was trapped, with no way to tell up or down, only the crushing pressure of the ocean pressing all around me.

Hours passed, giving me too much time to think. I could not hear anything, and despite the suit and the warmth of the water I grew chilled and huddled up around the door like a piece of lonely flotsam while the tears I had not spilled the night before flowed freely.

Sobbing while on an oxygen tank takes a special kind of skill. I nearly drowned before I calmed myself down, but not before my mask fogged up and the tears pooled at the bottom, stinging my cheeks. I tried not to think about my nose and what might have gathered in my air tube.

Miranda and I were finished before we had even had a chance to become something. I was not naive enough to believe that I had been simple entertainment for her, not with Kraken’s warning to her still ringing in my head, but I didn’t think her pride would let her acknowledge that now, and what Orca and I had done was unforgivable. There might have been hope before that, but I had seen Miranda’s face.

At least you know, now, that she was lying, I thought. She cares.

The knowledge came at too high a price, and too late.

With it came another realization: I wanted to stay here, with this crew, despite the attempts on my life, the crappy food, and the murky origins of the captain.

Fat chance of that now.

This was supposed to be a good thing. The right decision. The only decision I could make, really, when I thought about it. Falling in love with a mercenary captain was about as smart as surfacing in a storm, and with similar consequences. Not only was it a violation of my training, but there was no future in it. I would return to Polaris and my fleet, and she would remain a mercenary. Miranda Stillwater would never be welcomed with open arms in the Archipelago, even if she spared us a war. And even if she wanted me, too, I couldn’t stay here.

Knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Part of me wished it had been Miranda who broke things off, as that would have followed chains of command I was used to. I could follow orders. Making the rules myself was a hell of a lot harder.

Another part of me wished she had fought me. It would not have taken much to make me change my mind. A kiss. A few words. A small declaration of caring.

Then I remembered how cold her voice had sounded as she’d explained why Orca was replaceable, and shuddered.

Orca.

I repressed a vivid memory of the first mate. For someone who jockeyed continually for domination in the ring and on the deck, she had certainly been quick to give it up the minute things got heated.

I had never been as thankful for anything as I was when I heard the hiss of compressed air forcing the water in the bulkhead back out again, freeing me from darkness and my thoughts. I pulled off the mask and scrubbed my face as soon as there was enough airspace, hoping my eyes were not as red as they felt. When the water stabilized a foot or so below the hatch, I floated by the ladder and waited.

“Ready to eat something?” Kraken asked, swinging the hatch open and spilling beautiful, blessed light into the bulkhead.

I clambered out to drip on the floor before him.

“You have no idea.” I stripped out of the suit and took the offered towel, then followed him to the common room.

It looked the same as before, only with Orca sitting in Miranda’s seat. The comparison did not boost my mood.

“You look like a drowned rat,” she said, making a courageous attempt at returning to how things had been before.

And you look as miserable as I feel.

“How did the inspection go?” I asked instead.

Orca was the first mate, and as such the acting captain on this vessel. I would follow her lead.

“We hid most of the grain in the other bulkhead,” Orca said. “Good thing, too, because they took what we didn’t hide.”

“Even our supplies?”

“Kraken switched those out into some old drifter grain sacks. Nobody touched them.”

She glanced down at the food cooking on the stove, and I hoped Kraken had sterilized the sacks, first. There was a reason not even a pirate would touch drifter foodstuffs.

“So we’re good, then?” I wanted to get out of my wet clothes and into something clean and dry.

“For now.”

I tried not to dwell on the ominous note in her voice.