Jendara stood on the shingled beach, watching the waves grow taller and taller, until they scraped the night sky. She knew she had to get back to Kran and warn him a tsunami was coming, but her feet had fused to the rock. She couldn’t move.
Jendara! the waves called, in Sarni’s desperate voice. Help me, Jendara! Help me!
“I promise I’ll take care of you!” Jendara called, struggling to lift her feet. “I’m coming, Sarni!”
The wave rolled closer, tearing the stars from the sky until their lights burned within the depths of the sea. The star-filled wave crawled toward her, the foam on its surface drawing together into a dozen faces, a hundred screaming faces, and she knew each and every of them, and they were all begging her to help them, but she couldn’t move and in a minute she would drown in all their terrible need—
Jendara sat up, breathing hard. For second, she wasn’t sure where she was, and then she realized she was in her own bed inside her cabin on the Milady. Darkness filled the room like tepid water. She forced herself not to hold her breath.
Just a nightmare, she told herself. The wind shrieked outside the cabin’s windows. She shivered. Her linen shirt had soaked through with sweat.
Vorrin snored softly beside her. She eased out of bed. Her nap was over—there was no way she could go back to sleep after that dream. Every muscle in her back and legs felt tight, and her jaw hurt. She slipped on her clothes and stepped outside without waking even the dog.
Off toward the bow, she could make out the soft glow of the lantern. The crew had all agreed they needed a few hours shut-eye before risking a trip into enemy territory, and she and Zuna had drawn straws for the two short watches. Jendara thought she’d sleep heavily when she’d finished her rounds, but apparently she’d been wrong. Perhaps it was the screeching of the wind. It certainly seemed louder now.
Jendara crossed to the bench by the gangplank and pulled her jacket more tightly around her. She couldn’t help remembering that room underground where she’d heard Sarni’s voice, only to realize her voice carried on a wind blowing from ancestors-only-knew where. She didn’t want to think about what might be happening to the girl.
Jendara scrubbed her cheeks with her fingers. Before they’d come to this island, it would have been hard to imagine Sarni finding any kind of trouble she couldn’t handle. Trouble might as well have been Sarni’s middle name. Jendara had first met the girl in a tavern, stealing purses from sea captains while she lost wildly at cards. Then she got so drunk celebrating she fell off a table and lost all the purses. That girl could handle anything but herself.
Jendara gave a little laugh and stretched out her legs. The lantern approached, and she saw Zuna headed toward her. Jendara braced herself for more of the woman’s bad attitude.
“Hello, Zuna.”
“Hello, Jendara.” The tall woman stood in front of Jendara, her lantern glaring down into Jendara’s eyes. “May I sit for a moment? I don’t want to shirk my duties, but I wouldn’t mind resting my feet.”
Jendara made room for her on the bench. “Of course.”
The bench creaked a little as Zuna took a seat. Jendara sat quietly waiting for her night vision to return. The breeze shrieked and hissed in the background, reminding her unpleasantly of her dream.
“What were you laughing about just now?” Zuna put the lantern on the decking between their feet. Its glow gave the deck a sense of warmth.
Jendara shrugged. “I was thinking about the first time I met Sarni.” The answer sounded curt, so she added: “She’s spirited.”
Zuna rubbed the toe of her boot against the back of her calf and then studied its surface. “I didn’t like her at first. She was trouble.”
“You’re right,” Jendara agreed. “But she had so much potential I had to bring her on. She’s a smart kid.”
“Yeah,” Zuna agreed. “And she’s one of us now.”
It was an opening Jendara had to take. She didn’t want to coddle Zuna, but she needed her. “Look, Zuna, this crew is like my family. I get pretty stupid about my family. I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”
Zuna gave a dry laugh. “Maybe a bit.”
“Back there at the ulat-kini camp, I was worried about Vorrin. I shouldn’t have cut you down like that.”
Zuna turned to face Jendara. “You and Sarni are a lot alike. I didn’t like you much when I first met you, either. I’d known Vorrin for years, worked with him on two different ships. I thought you’d get him in trouble.”
“I’d put trouble behind me by the time you met me.”
“That’s what you say, but I think you’ve got some kind of magnet for trouble. You don’t mean for things to happen, but they do when you’re around.”
Jendara couldn’t read the other woman’s face or her tone. “Do you think I asked to have my house flooded, or to come here and get attacked by fish people? If so, you’re crazy, Zuna.”
Zuna shrugged. “I call it like I see it. Before I met you, I’d never been attacked by a pirate or seen a goblin. I’ve led a nice quiet life. I go to sea, I get time off, I spend my money on my lady. But when I’m around you, all kinds of excitement breaks out.”
Jendara opened her mouth to protest and then went quiet. Like it or not, her own history argued that Zuna was right.
Zuna let out a face-breakingly wide yawn. “Sorry. I tried to sleep, but I kept having these weird dreams. Spiders, mostly. By the gods, I hate spiders.”
“Me, too,” Jendara agreed.
“Jendara!” Vorrin shouted from the captain’s cabin, his voice hoarse and urgent. “Where are you?”
Jendara sprang up and ran to the cabin door. Vorrin pulled her inside. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said.
By the soft light of the lowered lantern, she could see Kran crouched in the corner, clawing at the wall and whimpering. Fylga nosed at the boy, but he didn’t stop. Jendara knelt beside him and stroked his cheek. “Kran? What’s wrong?”
“He won’t wake up,” Vorrin explained. “He was walking around, knocking things over. That’s what woke me. I tried to get him out of it, but he just dropped to the ground and started crawling around.”
“Kran.” Jendara shook the boy’s shoulder. “Kran!”
The boy pulled away. His eyes stared at nothing, their pupils huge and black. His hands scrabbled before him as if he could dig his way through the air.
Jendara seized hold of his hands. “Wake up,” she said, gently. “Wake up, Kran.” His hands twisted in her grip, but she held him fast. “Wake up.”
He suddenly jerked and blinked. He looked around himself, confused.
“Kran? Are you awake?”
He rubbed his eyes and looked around again. Finally, he nodded.
“Do you know where you are?”
He leaned to see around Jendara, the chart table, his empty cot, Vorrin and Jendara’s unmade bed. He nodded again.
Jendara eased back to sit on his cot. The dog clambered up into Kran’s lap to lick at his face and paw his chest. After a minute he pushed the dog away and reached for the slate he’d left beneath his cot.
His handwriting slanted tiredly. Sleepwalking?
“Yes,” Jendara answered. “And you wouldn’t wake up.”
Bad dream, he wrote. Something in a pit moving. I threw rocks but it didn’t stop. He paused a second and wiped his hand across the slate. It wanted to eat everything. You. Vorrin. The whole world.
“I had a nightmare, too,” Vorrin said. “Something was trying to bring down the Milady. When you were knocking things over in your sleep, I thought it was really happening for a second.”
Jendara cocked her head. “I had some bad dreams, too, and so did Zuna. I don’t like that.”
Vorrin shrugged. “We’ve been stuck on this island for two days; I’m not really surprised we’re having nightmares.”
“This island is a nightmare,” Jendara agreed. She paused, looking from Kran to Vorrin. “We have to stick together here.”
Kran cocked his head, not sure what she meant.
“You have to listen to me while we’re here. You did a good job while we were looking for Vorrin, and I’m proud of you, but we’re going to be in really dangerous territory once we go back to the ulat-kini. I don’t want you to try to be a hero.”
Kran tipped up his slate so she couldn’t see what he wrote while he wrote it. He looked at the words for a long moment and then turned it around. You are.
She laughed. “I’m a lot older than you, Kran. Give it time.”
He shook his head and wrote again. Even when you were a kid.
She sighed. “It only sounds like that in the stories. Trust me, if I hadn’t had my father to bail me out, I’d have gotten myself killed by the time I was six.”
Vorrin smiled at her. “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. I’m thinking five, tops.”
Jendara laughed again and got up off the cot to stand by her husband. “I owe you an apology, too. I wasn’t careful back there with that crab-monster. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen if I got hurt. If we’re going to be a family, I can’t go off half-cocked. We’re a team.”
“Well, you’re the one with all the experience,” he said.
She stepped in closer. Vorrin’s brown eyes twinkled at her, the lantern’s glow softening his sharp features. He smelled of her laundry soap, the stuff she made every summer when the lavender bloomed.
Someone rapped on the cabin door. With a sigh, Jendara opened it a crack.
“Dara? Are you all awake in there?”
“Yes, Glayn.” As she answered, Vorrin sighed and reached for his jacket.
“I started some food. Couldn’t sleep, so I figured a bit of belly timber was in order.”
She opened the door wider and frowned down at him. “You had nightmares, too?”
He nodded. “But I’ve got biscuits baking, so I figured I’ll be fine in no time.”
Jendara had to agree with him on that one.
* * *
Jendara piled the clean plates back onto the shelf. Glayn had been right: a big, hot breakfast had been just what they needed. There was nothing like a full belly and ordinary domestic tasks to clear away the fug of bad dreams. Now Kran, who had just finished the washing up, sat with Glayn at the big table working some kind of elaborate cat’s cradle; Vorrin had a book out, and even the prisoner looked content as he munched a biscuit and a slice of ham.
Zuna, though, sat on her own, face covered by her long black braids. Jendara brought the last of the biscuits over and watched the other woman as she took a pair of pliers and painstakingly crushed the silver bell at the end of a braid.
“Need a hand?” Jendara asked. She held out half of the biscuit. “I could help with the back.”
Zuna shook her braids back over her shoulders and then took the biscuit. “If you don’t mind. I got a lot of hair.”
Jendara reached for a braid. “Can we just take them out?”
“Don’t have time,” Zuna said. She tapped one of the shorter braids by her chin and made the bell chime. “It’d take hours to finish all the ends, and we need to be quiet.”
Jendara squeezed the second silver bell between the pliers’ powerful jaws. “I’m sorry.” Zuna had never set out to be a fighter or an adventurer, but working on the Milady had forced her to become one. It wasn’t fair.
Then something shiny caught in between two braids distracted her. “Hey, look at this.”
Jendara pulled out a thread, long and shimmering, and held it where Zuna could see. Thicker than a string of silk or linen, the thread caught the light and broke it up like glitter.
“Shiny,” Jendara mused. “Where’d it come from?”
“Was that in my hair?” Zuna squinted at the thread. “Must have brushed off of something. It’s pretty.”
Jendara reached for her empty tea mug. “Let’s keep it. It reminds me of … something. I’m not sure what, but maybe it’ll come to me.”
With a sigh, Vorrin closed his book. “If everyone’s finished, we better start gearing up.”
“Oops. I’m almost done.” Jendara hurried to crush the last few bells, and gave Zuna an awkward smile as she passed over the pliers. “I’ll miss the sound of them.”
Zuna shrugged. “I’ll probably just get beads the next time I get my hair done.” She turned away to put the pliers back in her pack.
Jendara wasn’t sure what to make of the other woman’s response, but there wasn’t time to chatter. She beckoned Kran over. “Do you have some extra dried beef for Fylga? We don’t know how long this will take.”
He nodded. Then he reached for his slate. You like Fylga now?
She made a face. “Don’t push me, kid. Now get up on deck and make sure everyone gets a lantern.”
He hurried away, a spring in his step. He might not have gotten a solid nap, but at his age, he recovered faster than the rest of them. Jendara’s limbs felt leaden with tiredness, but there was nothing for it. Boruc, Tam, and Sarni were depending on her.
She made her way up to the deck. Outside the cave, she could see the clouds jamming up in the sky.
“Rainy raids are the luckiest,” Jendara murmured. Her father had sworn by that particular bit of folk wisdom. Her hand went to the handle of her belt axe. It wasn’t the timeworn weapon she’d inherited from her father, but it reminded her of him anyway. He would have approved of its craftsmanship. A sudden lump rose in her throat. It had been only two days since her birthday, but it felt like a hundred, two hundred. Boruc was missing. Tam and Sarni, too. Three of her best friends, stolen from her by this island.
“Just what we need, right? Shit weather.” Zuna looked in her pack. “Glad I packed a scarf.”
Jendara had to smile at that. She’d grown up on these islands, but Zuna and Glayn were newcomers to this part of the world. Ice and snow were still an enemy to them. She glanced over at Glayn. He was already wearing the woolen cap she’d knitted for him a few years ago. Suddenly she felt less gloomy.
“Let’s go get our friends,” she said.
They made their way up to the main boulevard in comfortable silence, but once they passed the crab-thing’s corpse, Vorrin pushed Korthax out in front. They’d tied a rope to his waist to make sure he wouldn’t cut and run. “Which tunnel do we take?”
Korthax gave his elbow a flap; his hands were bound in front of him and lashed to his waist so he could move them no more than a few inches. “At end.”
Vorrin looked back at the others. “That’s where we found the trident.”
Jendara’s hand went to her axe. She didn’t like Korthax and she didn’t like his little deal. But at least they were on the right track.
They entered the cross-tunnel. This one was broader than either of the two they had explored, the floor the smoothest. Only a few puddles showed in the light of Glayn’s lantern as he moved at the head of the group, Vorrin and Korthax on his heels. Jendara looked up at the ceiling, lost in the darkness above. This tunnel didn’t seem like the other cross-tunnels at all. With its high ceiling and finer stonework, it had the same gloomy grace as the main boulevard.
Kran tapped her elbow and pointed to Fylga. The dog kept her nose close to the ground, sniffing hard. He raised an eyebrow.
“This is where Yerka went yesterday,” Jendara mused. She watched Fylga snuffle at the first closed door. Jendara leaned close and listened. She didn’t hear anything except the whisper of the wind. She gave the door a shove and felt it swing open. The heavy stone slab moved far more easily than the other doors she’d tried opening on this island.
Fylga trotted in and went immediately to the farthest wall, darting from place to place while sniffing hard. Jendara played her light around the room. “No debris.”
“It’s like someone cleaned it out,” Zuna said. She stooped down beside the spot Fylga was examining. “I can’t tell why the dog’s so interested.”
They left the room behind, although Kran had to urge Fylga out. Jendara eased the door shut and watched the dog move up the hallway, pausing to sniff every few steps. Jendara brought out her handaxe. It wasn’t just the dog’s behavior that made her feel uncomfortable and exposed. It was the strangely clean room and hallway. The tunnel felt well used and well tended, somehow horribly alive inside this rotting shell of a city.
“Wait up, Glayn,” Vorrin called out.
Jendara hurried to catch up. The tunnel ahead split, one hallway bending off to the right and one staying mostly straight. The two hallways narrowed, and the ceilings descended to the height of most of the others. Their floors still looked preternaturally well maintained and clean.
“Which way do we go?” Vorrin asked the ulat-kini.
Korthax turned from left to right, clearly uncomfortable. “I only come this way once.”
“Which I’m certain was a memorable experience,” Vorrin said in a dangerous voice. “Which way?”
“Uh—straight.” The ulat-kini took a few steps into the hallway ahead. “Yes. Straight.”
Kran caught Jendara’s sleeve. He jerked his head in Fylga’s direction. She was nosing around the entrance of the right-hand path.
She looked from dog to prisoner. Vorrin and Glayn had followed the ulat-kini into the other hallway, and their light was already fading. “I guess we can double back if he’s wrong,” she said. Her gut told her to follow the dog, but she wanted to see where Korthax would lead them.
Kran raised his eyebrows. But they both followed the light and the ulat-kini hybrid.