The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (14 page)

“I don’t see why you can’t fight them during the day,” Lady Lisabe said when he met with her and Yerena that afternoon to tell them what he planned to do and where he needed them both. Specifically, belowdecks and in locked rooms. The thought of losing a Voice of the Unity was not a pleasant one, though it didn’t make his heart tighten like the prospect of losing Yerena.

“Oh, we could pull this off during the day.” He poured rum for them all. “But we are one ship in the Iron Ocean. If even a third of the Turean flotilla gathers against us, we’ll be torn apart before Lastland gets a sight of us.” Under those circumstances, he could only hope Yerena and her shark would get Lady Lisabe to safety before she fell into Turean hands. That was probably the real reason the Admiralty had assigned a Seawatch operative to his ship.

“And fighting in the dark will make a difference?” Lady Lisabe sounded skeptical.

“No, but defeating them in the dark will.” Darok knew when to follow his instincts, and those instincts told him he didn’t just have to defeat one or two Turean galleys. He had to smash their morale as well, to show them Denalay meant naval force so superior and terrifying that their only choice was to flee at all speed. He wanted fear to spread through the Turean ranks long before they saw
Daystrider
, and the cover of nightfall would help in that regard. Besides, he didn’t want them to notice the shark until it was far too late.

“Very well, then.” Lady Lisabe drained her cup and took her leave. Yerena got up too, but rather than going straight to the door she paused, resting one hand on the back of her chair. She’d made the green wool into a skirt, Darok noticed, simply cut and snug at the hips but falling to the middle of her calves in looser folds. Obviously there hadn’t been enough material for the skirt to reach her ankles, but he didn’t mind that at all. With her white blouse and her hair in a braid, only the tattoo marked her as a Seawatch operative.

That, and her cool controlled voice. “Please be careful. What you’re planning is a considerable risk for the captain of a ship.”

“I know. That’s why I’ll never make admiral.”

“Do you want to be?” A little of the ice melted out of her eyes, and she sounded genuinely curious.

Darok stretched back in his chair, legs extended before him. “Not really,” he had to admit. “In any case, I couldn’t be promoted before Kiti—I mean, Katerin Marl.”

“The captain of
Hawk Royal
?”

“Yes. There’s always been some rivalry between us, but it’s partly because
Hawk Royal
’s the flag of the fleet and I wouldn’t mind seeing
Daystrider
take that position. I think the men are wagering on that too.”

Yerena said nothing. She looked distant and preoccupied, as though the brief connection while they talked had been cut as cleanly as a thread, and now she had something more important to think about. He got to his feet but she let herself out of the cabin.

He finished her drink as well as his own and met with Alyster to plan their strategy down to its bones. Alyster’s careful, methodical approach was just the support Darok’s wilder schemes could always use, though once or twice Darok had thought he should have groomed his brother for eventual command of his own instead. Well, he would give Alyster command of the ship during the upcoming engagement, and once they returned home he could see about doing more.

After that he went up to the deck. The sunset was a red-streaked blaze in the direction of Denalay as he made a swift inspection. The bases of the masts had been wrapped in layers of canvas stained the same color as the wood. He paced the deck from stern to prow, touched a taut shroud and found the little nick in the port rail where a throwing axe had missed him three years before.
I’m sorry to do this to you, but once we’re back in harbor you’ll be better than ever.

A tiny light flared in the shadows beneath furled sails. Darok went closer, but he smelled the pungent smoke before he saw Julean leaning over the rail and holding a cheroot. The tip glowed redly.

“Would you like one?” Julean took another cheroot from a pocket.

“No, and I hope you don’t do this on the deck tonight.”

“I won’t.” Julean blew out smoke and spoke more quietly. “Captain, I want to ask that if we take any Tureans prisoner, you will allow me to question them.”

Darok looked at him with no liking, because he could imagine what ways and means a surgeon might use to question prisoners. If the only way to keep his crew safe or succeed in their mission was to resort to torture, he supposed he would do so, but he wouldn’t have left any such interrogation in Julean’s hands.

“Why are you bringing this up now?” he said.

Julean took a long pull on the cheroot before he replied. “I didn’t think we’d get so far. I was prepared to go down in the strait.”

Darok couldn’t blame him for that. “Well, in answer to your question, we’ll see when the time comes. I can’t make promises regarding prisoners we haven’t even taken yet.” He turned to leave.

“She was pregnant, you know.”

He stopped in his tracks, wanting to walk away but unable to do so. Julean tossed the cheroot over the rail.

“She sent a packet back.” He spoke as if recounting what he had eaten for dinner. “There were maps and detailed reports and a letter for me…which I only received after the Admiralty had read it and tested it for any hidden messages. She said she was three months along.”

“Why didn’t she go back at the time?” Darok said. “I mean, if she was able to send a packet.”

“Some Seawatch agent brought that back.
Dragonfly
’s captain must have believed they were safe enough so far north, when the Turean strength was concentrated in the islands.” He looked at Darok. “It would have been our first child.”

And your last.
Darok set his teeth against a surge of instinctive sympathy. The problem with Julean was that when it came to his wife, all bets were off. Darok had little doubt that Julean would lie to him without a second thought if doing so would bring his wife—or his wife’s remains, more likely—one step closer to home.

“Good night, Doctor.” He started for the hatchway.

“That’s all you have to say?”

Darok stopped for the second time, because the question—or call it what it really was, a challenge—wasn’t something he was accustomed to from his subordinates. He leveled a sharp look at Julean, watching to see what would happen next.

“Do you know how long I’ve waited for the least news of what happened to my family?” Julean said.

“I’m sorry about your wife and child—”

“I can tell.”

Darok decided to ignore the sarcasm. “—but there is no place for personal agendas on a ship of the Guardian Fleet. Especially when we have a mission and are in dangerous waters to boot. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

“No,” Julean said flatly. “That sort of callous unconcern isn’t something I’ll ever understand.”

“You don’t need to understand the fact that other people have different priorities. Just respect it.”

He went to the hatchway, though as his bootheels thudded against the steps he wondered what he would have done if he had been in Julean’s position, if a woman he loved had vanished somewhere in the heart of the Iron Ocean. Good thing that wasn’t likely to happen. He’d had women, most of whom he still liked, but he hadn’t fallen in love with any of them.

Perhaps it was also a good thing Yerena had no interest in him, because what was the point of caring about a woman who couldn’t return the feeling? Even if she became fond of him, he’d come a very poor third in her heart, after Seawatch and the white death.

He reached the end of the steps. Just outside his cabin door, Yerena had been turning away and she stopped when she saw him. It was so dark he couldn’t see her face clearly, but he could smell her—clean linen and soap and sea wind.

“Did you want something?” he said.

“No, I…” Her head came up. “Yes.”

Her voice was low and controlled as always, but the word was a whisper that stroked his senses like velvet. Darok moved without a second thought, pushing the door open with one hand as the other closed around her wrist and drew her into his cabin.

After she’d left Darok’s cabin that afternoon, Yerena went back to her room and finished embroidering a handkerchief, struggling to keep her attention on her stitches as she worked. In a handful of hours the Turean galleys would reach them, and she thought of Darok facing the pirates alone on the deck. In Seawatch he would be considered insane at worst and dangerously rash at best.

She could tell he liked an all-odds-against-me challenge, though, which was one of the differences between them. Another was that he had connections to so many people—his brother, his crew, other captains in the fleet. He was like the hub of a wheel. She had taken lovers among the Kovirs in Whetstone, but she had never confided in them or cared about them, partly because they treated her as they would have treated any other Yerena and partly because becoming emotionally involved with someone would compromise her efficiency.

But perhaps that was already compromised. If so, would going to his cabin make matters any worse?
She wasn’t at risk of having a child, because the bleed-no-more she took every night to make certain she could swim at any time of the month also meant she was at no risk of conceiving. It was her mind and heart she was worried about, not her body.

She looked down and realized she had put the last stitch in the last leaf of a delicate wreath of lilies-of-the-lake. So the handkerchief was for her mother. She didn’t write to her parents, because even if someone else read the letter to them, she wasn’t sure they would either understand or be pleased about her work in Seawatch. And without money to buy gifts of any kind, the most she could do was embroider little things for them, to be sent with Seawatch agents who traveled Denalay on recruiting runs, searching for children with sparks of talent.

Her family was gone. She didn’t resent Seawatch for that, because taking her to Whetstone hadn’t been done out of malice, it had been done so she could defend her homeland. But she wasn’t going to lose anyone else. The connections in her life were so few and so far between that she had to keep them for as long as she could.

Biting off the green thread, she slipped the needle into one of the flannel leaves of her needle-book, then folded the handkerchief and put it away in her sewing pouch. Out of habit she glanced in the mirror and smoothed her hair down, except now she looked a little more closely at her face. That seemed the same as always, so she had no idea what Darok found attractive, what made him behave as none of the Kovirs had done.

Not that they had been inconsiderate or rough. Her mentor had recommended them, after all, and she hadn’t been either regretful or unsatisfied after nights with them. But they had never been carried away, and they had never touched her spontaneously, outside of those specific circumstances. Compared to them, Darok was as predictable and safe as a tropical storm.

And I want him anyway.

She blew out her lamp, closed her door and went to his cabin. Even if he hadn’t told her to come to his quarters if she wanted him, she would have done so, because one of the Whetstone rules about intimate relations was that women always went to the rooms of the men they’d chosen. That way, the women could leave when they pleased, whereas if it was the other way around, it might not be easy to expel men who overstayed their welcome.

She had a feeling, though, that beyond the threshold of Darok’s cabin, she would be finished with the rulebook and done with the chart. Her pulse beating fast, she knocked on the door.

There was no answer. She knocked again, then looked around and put her ear to the door. She couldn’t hear anything.

Maybe he was somewhere else. He would be easy to find on the deck, but the thought crossed her mind that he could be in someone else’s cabin. She wasn’t the only female company he could have on the ship, since one of the carpenter’s apprentices was a tall young woman in a leather apron. If he put her through all that and then went to someone else, she would shove him overboard. After they had dealt with the Turean galleys, of course.

She knocked for a third time, without any hope that the door would be opened, then turned to go back to her cabin. A footstep stopped her, and she glanced back to see Darok on the stairs. What little light there was came from a lantern outside, and it was behind him, but she recognized his silhouette at once.

“Did you want something?” he said.

“No, I…” She stopped. The thought of being in his bed made her mouth go dry, and not just with desire, but after coming so far, she wasn’t going to turn back. “Yes.”

He was at her side in the next moment, grasping her wrist and pushing the door open. She went with him, feeling caught by a riptide too strong to fight. The door closed and he let her go.

She heard him move away. “What are you doing?”

“Lighting a lamp.”

“Don’t.” In the light, he would see all the apprehension she couldn’t keep off her face, and she would see…him. She felt overwhelmed enough by his touch and by the sound of his voice without looking at him on top of it. Blindly, she stretched out a hand and touched the fabric of his sleeve, then curved her fingers as best she could around the hard muscles of his arm.