Madness.
Bela felt it, gnawing at her mind, darkening the eyes of her crew, drawing in their cheeks, trembling their limbs. Whispers carried on the relentless wind of the blizzard that pounded against the shelter they’d made of the overturned boats.
Four days the storm had battered them. Four days they’d huddled here in the shadows of the feeble protection they’d made.
Madness.
They’d tried to pass the time with stories, but the stories, like their supplies and themselves, were thinning out. Bela knew it was her responsibility, that she ought to do something to fight the shadow back, but what could be done?
Oni, huddled up against her side, shivered and then stilled. Bela managed a smile as she ran her fingers along the furs that covered her maiden. Of them all, Oni seemed the only one who wasn’t teetering on the edge of despair. With every passing hour, it seemed she was the only warmth left in the world.
“Belakané,” Sanyu whispered from across the darkness.
Bela shifted a little within the icy seat her body heat had made over the days. “Yes?”
“I’m worried about one of the straps.”
Some of the other women moved, seemed glad to be listening to something more than the horrible roar of the wind and snow.
“You tightened it before,” Bela said.
A shipwright without her ship, Sanyu had been the one to direct the building of their shelter. And of course, she’d been the one determined to go out for repairs on the second day when a flap of the canvas strung between the shells of the boats had come loose. At Bela’s direction, they covered her with all that they could spare of their garments before she braved the whiteout conditions. It was very nearly a disaster. Three wrong steps, and she lost her bearings, nearly walked off to her death, wearing their heaviest clothes. The next time someone had needed to go outside to check things—Neka this time—they’d tied a rope around her waist first. It would help her find her way back. And should the worst happen, should she succumb to the cold, they could also use it to pull her body back inside the shelter to strip it. Mother’s grace, there’d been no such need.
“I think it’s loosening again,” Sanyu replied. “I should go out.”
Bela shook her head. “We talked about this last time. We take turns.”
“Then let the reader go,” Malaika suddenly said.
Bela almost smiled, thinking it a joke that they would entrust their safety to a man, but then she could see from her face that the grizzled woman wasn’t joking. “Each takes a turn but the reader,” she corrected herself.
“That’s not fair.” Eshe’s voice was a whine.
Bela felt a tight tiredness in her jaw as she nodded. “I agree. It’s not.”
“It’s okay,” Tewrick said. The little man started to cinch up his wool overcoat and wrap.
Bela shook her head. “You will not go, and that’s an order.”
Sanyu grinned. “Eggless runt wants to go.”
“Let it,” Neka said. “Did my own time in that storm.”
Tewrick’s fingers paused at the top buttons of his coat. He looked from the other women back to Bela with uncertain eyes. “It’s only right that this man should go.”
“You can’t,” Bela said. “You’re the reader.”
“The reader!” Malaika was forced to yell to be heard over the din as a particularly strong gale of wind buffeted the outside of their flipped outboats. “And what good is a reader out here? What good are his books now? What good against all this?”
“It’s his books that brought us here,” Neka said. The tone in her voice brought a fresh chill to the air.
“That’s right,” Malaika said with rising anger. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”
Malaika’s face was flushed with hot ire, but Oni, shaking herself up, cut her off before she could yell again. “You know damn well it was your lust for coin that brought you all here. You and the others who heard the High Matron’s call for able hands. You knew the risks. So did all the rest—those we buried on the way and those who went with the Sandcrow to the deep. We all knew.”
The mention of the dead temporarily draped a respectful silence over the crew’s anger.
“They’re still right,” Tewrick whispered. “This man found the book of the Eldrin, found the maps to Ealond. This man translated the description of the portal. If it wasn’t for me—”
“The Isles would have far less hope,” Bela finished. “And our mates died for that, Tew, not for you.”
Neka and Sanyu looked at the white ground, but Malaika still wasn’t ready to back down. “Doesn’t mean the reader can’t take a turn.”
Bela nodded toward the shipwright who’d been with her since she’d first become a shipmistress. “You call me Belakané, Sanyu. The Hero of the Harbor. But a hero for what? A few ships saved from burning. But think of how many I could not save. How many were destroyed? How many girls went to the Mother’s Embrace that night? I was there. I heard the screaming. And that was the attack of but a single airship. The Windborn will come with many. A great fleet. What little time the Isles have is built on hope. And that hope falls upon us. It did the moment we left harbor.” Bela paused to take a deep breath. She looked around at her meager crew, trying to push strength into their weakening hearts, hoping it would make her own stronger too. “A hundred Heroes of the Harbor back in the Fair Isles cannot stop them. But we can. We can reach the portal. We can close it. Without the power of the Stream, their airships will fall from the sky. We can keep the Isles free.”
Oni, beside her, smiled. “Heroes of the Storm.”
Bela wanted to kiss her for that. She softened her voice, softened her face. “If we find Ealond … when we find Ealond, we will need to follow the maps, to understand the descriptions. I read waves, but I cannot read books. We will need to record what we find there, but I cannot scribe. Perhaps we will need an ancient tongue to close the portal. Perhaps we will need to learn that language. Can any of the rest of us do this?” Her eyes moved around the shelter, marking each of them in turn. “The High Matron was wise to give us someone able to read. Wiser still to provide us with a scholar able to read any scripts we should find or speak any tongues. He’s the one person of our number who cannot be replaced. All of the rest of us—even me—are replaceable.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “So stay warm, Tew. I’ll go out again.”
*
The storm struck her like a great slap, and Bela buckled to her knees in front of the canvas flap of their shelter. Her eyes were shut against the sheer rage of it, her teeth gritted as she absorbed the relentless buffeting upon her back. She flexed her jaw as she breathed into her scarf, trying to keep the moisture she exhaled from freezing too quickly into the cloth.
After a moment, she unsealed her eyes to a squint. The world was a spin of sheeting white, but she focused on the things she could make out. The dark gash of the canvas flap. The mounded shape of the snow-covered boats protecting them. The line of the rope that would let them pull her body back inside if she died out here.
Straining, fighting to keep her balance, Bela stood. Then, with slow, heavy steps, she walked away from the safety of the canvas flap, drawing out the rope, before she swung around toward the other end of the huddled boats, where Sanyu thought a strap was coming loose.
Halfway there, Bela stopped and stared out into the storm, beyond their meager shelter.
There was a white mound out there. Half as large as one of their boats. A drift, she thought.
Then it moved.
It took a moment for her mind to recognize what her eyes saw. She wasn’t alone in the snow. The beast that had taken Mabaya had hunted them. It had returned.
The bear, white as the sky, rose up on four legs. In the slashing snow, Bela saw its heavy head swivel toward her. Its black eyes were blank, but she could feel that it saw her, that it knew what she was. What she was made of.
The bear opened a maw as big as Bela’s head. It was filled with sharp teeth. It roared, though she couldn’t hear the noise in the storm.
Then it lumbered forward.
Bela, too, was screaming. But even as her shouts were ripped from her throat, she knew they were useless. Her crew would hear her no better than she could hear the savage beast’s rage.
She tried to back away, tried to turn and run, but her feet caught against a crusty ridge in the snow. She fell.
The bear caught her.
It charged into her with its head down like an angered bull, tossing her away like flotsam off a wave. Pain turned the white world a sudden orange.
Bela sprawled. Ribs broken and sharp at her side.
She tried to scramble through the agony, and for a moment she thought she might get away. Her feet caught and held on the snow, and she was up.
Then the rope around her waist went taut and yanked her backward.
Her crew. They must think she was lost. They were trying to get her back inside.
Bela turned, and the white beast was there. Mouth open and hungry. Her arm went up out of instinct, and the bear’s jaws crashed down upon it.
She tried to twist away. The beast thrashed its neck, teeth grinding. Her body whipped like a storm-shaken palm. Then it tossed her out and away through the air.
She hit the side of one of the boats, and where she hit the ground, the snow was red with blood. The rope around her waist pulled still. It inched her along the cold, smearing it. Her arm was in front of her. The bones were splintered through the ravaged meat. Beyond it, the bear was coming fast. Its muzzle was pink.
Hands grabbed her. Big hands. Neka’s hands. They were uncovered, and through the haze of Bela’s shock, she wanted to tell her to get inside. She was going to get frostbite.
Neka was yelling. Bela could hear it distantly. And there were answering shouts.
More hands. Pulling her. The bear was there too. The world going black. Malaika had one of the swords. Oni had the other. They were slashing in the torrential snow, freezing to death as they tried to fight off the blood-hungry beast.
Blinking, fading, Bela saw Sanyu. She was the other one pulling at her. They almost had her into the flap now. Like Neka, she was screaming back at the boat. Screaming for Eshe.
And then, just as the world mercifully went black, Tewrick burst through the canvas, leaping over her. There was a harpoon in his hand, and a look in his eyes that Bela had never seen before.