The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (21 page)

“If you say so.”

“I do. I know that shark. I first linked with it fifteen years ago, and we’ve been working together for all that time.” She had to sound certain, if only to compensate for his unconvinced reply. Besides, even a Kovir powerful enough to control an entire pack of killers was unlikely to make the shark go against the decade and a half of its own training to that extent. “I had a dream, Darok, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Good. Because if that beast ever hurts you, I’ll do my best to kill it.” He paused. “The rest of us are in enough danger without having to deal with a rogue shark as well.”

“It won’t go rogue or hurt me. And it’s not a beast.”

“It’s not an
it
either.” He let go of her shoulders, and she heard a soft rasp as he scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Might as well go topside as long as I’m awake.”

Yerena got off his lap, aware that the ship wasn’t pitching as badly. The storm was settling, which meant repairs would be well under way before long, and she needed to decide what to do as they sailed farther into the heart of the Iron Ocean. She couldn’t order the shark into battle against four killer whales, or even three, unless she evened the odds somehow. The shark wouldn’t balk, but the prospect of losing it was more terrifying than the dream had been.

She dressed quickly and went back to her cabin while Darok was shaving. By the time she had eaten and gone up on deck, the crew was busy everywhere—painting the ship’s name on its side, repairing the deck and replacing rails.
Daystrider
had a crude and jury-rigged appearance, but it looked raw and strong too, as if the fire had burned away all its beauty to show the hard bones beneath.

The rain had turned to a drizzle and the wind was no longer likely to rip the sails free, so the sailors unfurled those and hauled on ropes to bring them into position. A red-and-gold bird was painted on each great sheet.

“A phoenix,” Lady Lisabe said when she came up on deck, not looking ill at all. “A mythological creature, but that’s not important. Yerena, may I speak with you privately?”

“Of course.” Yerena kept her voice calm and easy, feeling anything but. “My cabin?” Even if Lady Lisabe turned out to be a spy, she was on familiar ground there.

“That will be fine,” Lady Lisabe said, and made herself at home when the door closed, sinking into the chair and resting her hands along its arms. Yerena stayed by the door, since the education she’d always considered extensive had not included knife-fighting tactics any more than it had covered mythology.

“What did you want to speak to me about?” she asked.

“Can you get your shark close enough to the Turean flotilla to find out where that operative is? I know going with it yourself will be a great risk, but all you need to do is learn his location.”

“You knew all along, didn’t you?” It took all her training to speak with a semblance of calm. She had no objections to someone keeping a secret—how could she, when she had her own assignment to hide?—but anger rose in her at the casual way Lady Lisabe spoke of endangering the one thing in the world that she loved. “You knew the Tureans had a rogue Seawatch operative on their side. That’s why you came on this mission, wasn’t it?”

“It was.” Lady Lisabe looked as though she had been anticipating the conversation from the moment
Daystrider
had sailed. “I am here to do my duty, Yerena Fin Caller. I trust the same can be said of you.”

The use of her full name and the jab about her duty were unexpected, and Yerena would have faltered if she hadn’t seen the gleam in Lady Lisabe’s eyes. “I would find it easier to do my duty if I had been aware of all this.”

Lady Lisabe laughed shortly. “No, you wouldn’t. My dear Yerena, do you think I’m ignorant of your history?”

“What are you talking about?”

“All your instructors agreed on two things. You are the second-most-skilled operative Seawatch has produced. You are also far too attached to that shark. Your feelings for it are… What’s the word your mentor used? Oh yes, inappropriate. She said she had spoken with you, tried to make you see that the creature is nothing more than a tool—”

“I don’t treat it any other way.” Yerena ignored a lifetime’s worth of comportment and deportment to interrupt. “I don’t name it. I don’t even call it ‘him’.” The thought crossed her mind that perhaps
beautiful one
counted as a name, but she wasn’t going to back down.

“If you truly valued it as nothing more than a tool, you would use it rather than keeping it far from any potential confrontations. You have never faced the fact that some day you may have to send that shark into a situation where it will die. It will die to save lives, and it will die for the greater good of Denalay and the glory of the Unity, but it will die. Do you understand? And if you have to kill it to keep this ship out of Turean hands, you will do so.”

“You know about…”

“About that too? I’m a Voice of the Unity, Yerena. There isn’t a lot I’m not aware of. And I wonder if you have it in you to carry out that order.”

Yerena passed her tongue over her lips. She felt the door behind her shoulders and that helped, gave her some solidity in a world that seemed to be shifting just a little too fast beneath her feet. Out of habit she tested the link, feeling what the shark felt. The bite wound on its side hurt, but it had fed and was still moving. As long as it didn’t stop swimming, she was all right.

“I won’t sacrifice that shark on anyone’s say-so,” she said. “It didn’t have a choice to be used by Seawatch any more than I did when I was a child, and even if I had a choice now, it wouldn’t. That makes its well-being my responsibility. And if the only way to sink this ship is to force the shark to kill itself, that’s not an acceptable loss.”

Lady Lisabe rose. “Do you realize this is insubordination?”

“Yes, and I’ll take the consequences for it. Some orders should not be carried out.” Without turning, she twisted the handle of her door and pulled it open. “You’d better leave.”

“You don’t understand what’s at stake here.” Lady Lisabe shook her head as though unable to believe what she had just heard, and brushed past Yerena as she would have squeezed by a rotting bulkhead. She stopped just outside the door.

“Captain.” She strode on with a
whsh
of flapping robes, and Yerena spun around, hoping that was a nasty little attempt to scare her. She looked up into Darok’s eyes.

“What did you mean, sink this ship?” he said.

Chapter Eight

Taste of Ice

Yerena had learned not to feel afraid when controlling a shark or confronting Tureans, but all her training seemed to desert her at that moment. Her throat tightened, and she couldn’t feel the deck beneath her feet any longer; she might have been half an instant away from dropping through something insubstantial into the ocean.

Darok didn’t look obviously angry. There were no veins popping out in his face, no hands clenched at his sides, but the look in his eyes was harder than stone, and it made her want to be on another ship, another continent, anywhere else but there.
No.
She regained control of herself.

“You were listening?” she said.

He stepped into her cabin, making her back away, and closed the door. “You were talking to a suspected spy on my ship. What did you expect me to do?”

The words
my ship
stressed his possession of what she had been ordered to destroy. Yerena guessed her best strategy was to be as honest as possible, and she remembered what he’d said to her last afternoon when asking about the rogue Kovir.
Let’s hear it.
He would only be more angry if she beat around the bush.

“Initially I was instructed to join this ship in my usual capacity.” She fell back on cool formality. “But my orders were amended on the morning we sailed. If there was a significant chance of this ship being seized by Tureans, I was to sink it.”

“I see.” Darok’s tone matched hers. “What were you ordered to do regarding the crew and myself?” In the silence that followed, he went on. “Let us drown, I’m guessing.”

“I didn’t want to—”

“And why didn’t you tell me any… Oh, of course. Seawatch gave you that order.”

The Admiralty probably knew just as much about it as Lady Lisabe did, but Yerena didn’t say that. The last thing she needed to do was make him think he was the only person kept in the dark, except staying silent didn’t seem to make matters any better.

“I suppose the only reason this ship isn’t at the bottom of the ocean is that you’re just a little more fond of your shark than you are obedient to Seawatch,” he said.

Yerena wasn’t sure whether it was the sarcastic edge to his voice or the assumption that she was a dangerous rogue only one step away from destroying the ship, but her restraint began to fray. “Just last evening you talked about Dr. Flaige not doing his duty. What did you expect me to do about mine?”

“Oh yes, your duty. To guide, to guard and to gut us if you feel it’s called for.”

“If necessary! Do you
want
the Tureans to capture this ship?”

“Listen to me, Yerena.” The mercurial change in his tone took her aback, because now he was measured and cold, speaking so quietly it unnerved her more than if he had shouted. “I’ve sent men to their deaths before. I’ve watched them die on my orders. What I’ve never done is be indifferent to it.”

“You think that’s what I am?” Almost from the start of their journey, she’d struggled to control her emotions and remember what she had been ordered to do.
No, don’t fool yourself
, she thought bitterly.
Ever since the first day, since you met him.

“I think the only things you care about are Seawatch and that shark.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Would he prefer it if she hated and distrusted them as much as he seemed to do?

“What’s wrong is that you’re so hellbent on holding on to them that you’ll throw away anything better you could have.”

“Like what? I’m a Weapon of Denalay, not some poor little waif in need of anything…from you.”

She stopped, suddenly realizing what he meant. He didn’t understand her past and couldn’t have been a part of it in any case, so he kept trying to drive a wedge between her and everything to do with Whetstone. “That’s what’s really upset you, isn’t it?”

“Not in need of anything?” He looked down pointedly at the green skirt she had made from the fabric he had given her. Hidden in the folds of it, she tightened her fingers on the soft wool, wishing she could tear it off and fling it at his feet to show just how much she needed it.

Of course, that would have left her nearly naked from the waist down. Damn him to hell.

“That’s why I prefer the shark,” she said coldly, trying to recover her usual control. “It doesn’t play those kinds of games. I suppose that’s why you’ve been jealous of it from the start.”

“I’m not jealous.” For the first time there was a snap in his voice, and she felt fiercely pleased that she’d been able to get under his shell for once.

“Oh, please,” she said. “You’d be delighted if it died and I had to leave Seawatch. A nice breach for you to step into.”

Darok glared at her. “And I suppose you’ve never been envious of me.”

“What would I have to be envious of? Your habit of jumping into danger without thinking?”

“A family, friends, a crew, a home of my own—hell, even money. Compared to that, what have you got except a guild which put scars on your back?”

It felt as though he’d struck her. Her face was numb, her chest tight and painful. The only thing in her life that had hurt more was being whipped in Whetstone, and worst of all, she thought she was going to cry. No, not in front of him. She would never be vulnerable in front of him again.

Blinking hard, she swallowed tears and anger alike and spoke calmly. “Then why are you even here? If I’m so deprived, what do I have that you want?”

“Yourself.”

Before she could say anything else, he grasped her shoulders and pulled her against him. She gasped. Her hands went up to splay against his chest, but Darok didn’t release her or kiss her. Instead his hand dipped to her waist and came up with her knife.

Yerena glanced at it out of the corner of her eye, wondering what on Eden he was going to do. He could be so very unpredictable. It occurred to her a moment later, though, that she felt no fear at all, because something deeper than thought told her Darok would never have hurt her. He tossed her knife up, caught the blade in his fingertips and slid the hilt past her fingers, pressing it into her palm. She curled her hand around it, feeling his heartbeat against her knuckles, against the cold double-edged steel.

“There,” he said. “Now I can be certain you want this.”

He bent his head and covered her mouth with his in a kiss so thirsty and possessive that it made her sway against him, trembling with need as her body caught fire from his. Her free hand clenched in his shirt. His tongue slid over hers, and she softly sucked on it until he moaned, low in his throat.

He tasted of rum and limes, strong and bitter and intoxicating at once. The knife hit the floorboards. She buried her fingers in his hair, holding tight, and his arm went around her shoulders in a tighter grip. When he lifted his head, she caught her breath, only to release it in a whimper as his teeth found her ear.