The Drowning Eyes (2 page)

“Be casual,” she said with another one of those practiced cheerful grins. “It’s a beautiful day, after all!” She wasn’t entirely blowing smoke on that one. The wind hadn’t yet been shut down in this part of the Jihiri Islands, and rolls of puffy white clouds gave the people a nice break from the sun now and then.

Shina opened her mouth, but then it seemed to dawn on her that she’d loudly told a bar full of big, crusty people that she was carrying plenty of money. She clamped her lips shut and picked up her pace. Behind them, the crowd was too thick to tell if anybody had followed them out of the bar.

“So,” Tazir said. “Where are you from?”

“Nijia,” the girl replied.

“Isn’t that down east?”

“It’s more south than east of here,” the girl said with a casual shrug. “My parents have some sugar fields.”

That took care of Tazir’s next question. She steered the girl a little to the right, over onto one of the seven docks that extended into the Bay of Humma. The
Giggling Goat
was moored out there a few hundred yards.

“When did you leave home?” asked Kodin.

“Four days ago—no, five,” Shina said. “They said I was going to start losing track of time.”

“Who said?”

“The sailors on the ship I took from Nijia,” she said. “They were nice—merchants, from Haresh.”

“Yeah?” Tazir asked. She cocked her head to one side. “What was wrong with their ship?”

“Their master doesn’t want them north of here,” Shina said. “He—I didn’t want to spend too much time talking to someone who might know my parents.”

“Fair enough,” Chaqal said.

That part of the story was probably more or less true. In Tazir’s experience, rich people all tended to know each other intimately so that they could hate each other more completely.

The crowd was thinning out now, a couple hundred feet offshore. The dock was getting thinner, too, but that didn’t stop the net repairers and fruit ice hawkers from setting up little boats full of wares they could sell to the sailors who were too hung over to make it all the way to the hub.

“How much money do you want?” Shina asked, finally hushing her voice. “I don’t want to be rude, but—”

“Depends on how far you want us to go.” Tazir pulled her pipe from a fold in the sash she wore around her waist.

“How far will you take me for forty thousand qyda?” Shina asked.

Tazir’s hand stopped in the middle of loading the pipe with tobacco. “What?”

“I have forty thousand qyda,” Shina said. “How far will it get me?”

Chaqal looked at Tazir. Tazir looked at Kodin. Kodin was grinning from ear to ear. Now, Tazir wasn’t the world’s best with exchange rates, but she remembered that a qyda was worth somewhere between six and ten dakki. Forty thousand was—was more money than she was going to see in one place ever again.

“That’ll get you to the long banks,” Kodin said. “Hell, if I’m in a good mood, it might even get you back.”

“So you’ll do it?” Shina said. “You’ll take me north?” Her eyebrows shot up her forehead, an excited grin tugging on the corners of her lips.

“Sure.” Chaqal laughed. “But don’t you want to see the boat first?”

The
Giggling Goat
was a fifty-foot dhow that had been built some twenty or thirty years ago when shipbuilders had been in love with those deep, narrow hulls that could really power through rough water. It wasn’t a terrible design for a fishing boat, all things considered, but that
rudder—

Shina took in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.
Rich and stupid,
she repeated to herself.
I am rich, and I am stupid.
And rich.
I am very, very rich.

“—now, as you can see, we don’t insist on privacy amongst ourselves.” The quartermaster, a cheerful and ungainly girl who looked a few years older than her, was showing her the little nook they used as quarters. Everyone slept in one of the canvas hammocks that hung between the port hull and the center beam, so saturated with sweat and dirt and salt that they held the general shape of an ass.

“Oh,” Shina said, blinking rapidly at the little dormitory. It wasn’t much worse than the sleeping quarters at school, and it was far better than the cramped hold she’d huddled in while Dahas had burned behind her.
The last one,
she reminded herself.
I’m the last one.
She tried to ignore all the responsibility that entailed.

“Now, what I was thinking,” the quartermaster said, “was while the hold is empty, we can set up some sheets or something and make a little dressing room for you. I think we still got a spare comb lying around here, even.” She got on her hands and knees to crawl beneath the hammocks to the very back of the ship. “The Captain’s ex-wife left a bunch of pretty stuff when they fell out—”

Shina’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh—oh, you don’t have to,” she said, leaning down to watch the quartermaster rifling through sacks and trunks that had been tied to the rear of the hold. “I grew up with brothers.”

The quartermaster rolled back out from under the hammocks. “Eh?” she said.

“It’s all right,” Shina said with a smile. “I grew up with lots of brothers and sisters—I don’t mind close quarters.”

“Oh.” The quartermaster’s face fell a little bit—had she been looking forward to setting up something nice? “Well, the Captain will like that, I guess.”

Shina smiled. “I didn’t mean to offend—”

“Oh, no,” said the quartermaster. “Trust me, I do this to everybody.” She laughed and brushed her knees off. “The Captain says I should’ve been an innkeep, the way I go on.” She’d changed from the pretty blue-and-yellow tunic and trousers into a more practical outfit of red-and-brown linen. Her hair was long and straight, and she wore it in a thick braid down her muscular back. She was prettiest when she smiled, and Shina liked that she laughed loudly and often.

“Maybe that’s why you’re the quartermaster,” Shina said.

“Nah, that’s because I’m a good kisser.” She grinned and stepped to the other side of the hold. “Anyway, here’s where we store luggage—if you’ve got someone bringing your bags, you can just have him leave them topside and we’ll stow them down here.”

“I don’t have any bags,” Shina said. “I mean I—I had to leave in a hurry.” She took a deep breath, tried to wall the memory out of her mind. She didn’t have time for it now—but still, she could feel the old fear starting to heat her blood.

“Fair enough,” said the quartermaster. She rapped on a board that had been strapped to the wall. “Now this,” she said, “is the kitchen—you let the table down and put your food in the dry box behind it. Obviously, we don’t do much in the way of fire down belowdecks, but once I get everything chopped and ready I can make a mean pulav on our stove up above. You like pulav?”

Shina’s stomach growled at the word, but she just smiled politely and said, “It’s all right.” She had the feeling that a real heiress would turn her nose up at something that good and that simple.

“We’re down to dried fish and lentils right now,” said the quartermaster, “but once we get into Jepjep I got a guy who gives me a bleeding deal on fruit and grains.”

“That would be nice,” Shina said. She wasn’t sure if she should offer to add to their eating money. It seemed polite—much too polite for a sugar farmer’s daughter among fishermen. “How long do you think we’ll be in Jepjep?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the quartermaster said. “Long enough to get some good food, maybe a good night’s sleep for the Captain. Couple days.”

Shina nodded. She kept her face calm, but that was
much
longer than she wanted to stay in port. The temple couldn’t be more than a few hours’ walk away from the port—and surely Aksa-auntie would understand the urgency of the situation enough to let her leave in a hurry once she had the compass.

“So, let’s see,” the quartermaster said, walking in a tight circle around the middle of the hold. “Fish crates, sleeping bunks, kitchen—you sure you’re all right sharing our accommodations?” She gave her a narrow-eyed half-smile. “It’s probably not what you’re used to.” The smile faded. “At all.”

Shina nodded. “I think I’m going to be fine.”

“Well, all right.” The quartermaster took a deep breath before swinging up onto the rope ladder that took them up from the hold. “Come on up, and I’ll show you the oh-shit gear.”

* * *

Topside, Captain Tazir was laughing with her first mate, a bearded mountain of a man with a booming voice and an easy confidence in his walk. Both of them grew silent when they caught sight of Shina. The Captain gave her a polite bow. Shina had no idea if she meant it.

“I hope you find the accommodations to your liking,” the Captain said. “We’re ready to go north any time you like.”

“The sooner the better.” Shina tried to mask her nervousness with a grin, but the Captain’s flat-mouthed, flat-eyed expression did not change.

“Very well,” she said. “Shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes or so.”

Shina felt her face flush as she trudged over to where the quartermaster was waiting to show her the emergency oars and the air bladders, none of which looked sturdy enough to do any good if they were needed. It wasn’t like she had the option to be polite back there—manners weren’t going to win back the icon, weren’t going to give her the compass. They certainly wouldn’t un-burn the school and un-raze the city and—

Shina took a deep breath as she willed that darkness out of her mind.
Not now,
she thought.
Not now.

“Are you all right?” the quartermaster asked, putting a hand on her arm.

Shina jerked away and snarled at her—and then came back to her senses. “Oh!” She blushed. “I’m sorry, I just—I just—” Her mouth hung open, unwilling or unable to form words that matched what she needed to say. “I’m tired,” she said.

“I’m not surprised.” The quartermaster smiled. “If you’re sure you’re happy with the bunking arrangement down below, go ahead and take a nap while we get under way.”

“Thank you,” Shina said. She bowed and went to the hatch that led belowdecks. From her time helping her father manage his little dhow, she knew that the crew needed her out of the way while they got ready to set out for Jepjep.

Quietly, she slipped off her silk shass set. She’d bought it off a harlot in a nice neighborhood, uphill from Humma’s docks where the breeze whispered cool on the verandahs and garden benches. She imagined that if she’d actually come from a place like that, she wouldn’t be so excited for the chance to cocoon herself in a well-worn hammock hanging in a hot, muggy hold that reeked of old fish. Or maybe she would. It had been two hellish days since she’d last slept.

* * *

Her body did not let her stay awake for long, but awful dreams kept her from resting. She was running, running across the sand, running until her lungs pounded but getting no closer to the ship as it pulled away. The flames were different—they spread from Sij Point all the way down to the corner of the island where the school was. They were even out on the water.

She ran, but could not reach the boat. She knew they were behind her—not the flames, but
them,
with their axes and hammers and cruel spears. She could feel hot, meaty breath on the back of her neck.

When she turned around, a man stood behind her with his mouth open too wide for his face. His teeth were sticky with gore. He raised his hammer—Shina tried to move, but her limbs were too thick, too heavy, too—

“Hey. Hey-ey-ey!”

Shina burst through the surface of sleep with a ragged shout. “What!”

Someone—a woman—the quartermaster of the
Giggling Goat
was gripping her shoulder. It was dark. She was fine. She took a sharp, deep breath.

“You were screaming,” she whispered. “It’s two in the morning.”

Shina panted in the dark for a few moments. Her heart was thumping in her chest like a caged animal. “I need to get topside,” she muttered, rolling out of the hammock and onto the floor. She was going to start sobbing again. She could
not
afford to start sobbing again.

It was better when she was out of the hold. She lay on the deck, naked save for the short skirt she wore beneath the shass set, and let the breeze run up her body from her toes to the top of her head. She relaxed into it, let her mind trace the currents and soft spots in the air around her. It was a north wind, coaxed into existence weeks ago by the beautiful Tu’ua sisters down in Chut and guided past Humma by Vindi-uncle. It had that rough, sour edge that all the winds had shown since the icon had been stolen—but this was gentle, a shy breeze designed to swirl back into a calm rather than puff up into a storm. It needed no Windspeakers to control it, and this one might last for a week or two before dying on its own.

Shina breathed it in, breathed it out, made that love and that serenity a part of her as best she could. There was sadness in that wind, too. It ran deep and cold, but it was—it was different, somehow, much calmer than the raw grief that had been tearing at her chest only a few minutes ago. Older, maybe, or maybe just more detached from the carnage at Tash.

As her heartbeat slowed down, closer to a meditation rhythm, she started to realize the strange silence at the edge of the breeze. Usually, you could hear whispers where one Windspeaker’s work ran into another’s—but not tonight. Tonight, perhaps, the Windspeakers were in mourning. Or, perhaps they weren’t, and things were worse than Shina thought.

* * *

As the
Giggling Goat
sailed closer to Jepjep, the Captain seemed determined to ignore Shina. She greeted her seldom, and then only with grunts. Shina wondered whether it was genuine dislike, or whether the Captain was just trying to keep a safe distance between herself and a passenger who could be anybody under the sun. In any case, Shina decided she ought to deal with the situation by staying out of everybody’s way—especially the first mate’s. He had the same black skin, broad nose, and lilting accent that marked Shina and her kin as coming from Mayun. The more time she spent around him, the more she worried that he’d recognize the family tattoos on her right arm or the way she said “weather.” It might not turn out to be a big deal, or he might remember the skinny kid from Dos Mejara who made clouds form over puddles in the road.

The second possibility would not be good for Shina. There was a reason that frightened parents put their children on midnight boats to Tash when they turned out to be Windspeakers. There was a reason they were hidden from the world until made safe by surgery. There was a reason the ancient Windspeakers had begged Herself for the icon. A Windspeaker with her powers unchecked caused mayhem, and folks were
intent
on making every wet-eyes Windspeaker pay the full price for it.

Shina slept topside the next night, wrapped in a blanket that the quartermaster had brought up from belowdecks. This time, the dream began with a familiar scene: she was on the operating table, going into deep meditation while the novices swung their opium censers around her face. Matha-auntie and Sura-auntie stood to the side, scrubbing their hands. Somehow, Shina could see it all—could see Hasin-uncle coming down the hallway in the procession of assistants, bearing her new eyes on one silken pillow and the surgery tools on another.

She could hear the noise outside, too. She could hear the shouts of the raiders from the Dragon Ships. She could hear the screams of the students as they were cut down, hear them begging for mercy, even if only for the little children. She could hear the howls, the
laughter,
the sound of breaking glass, of metal being dragged across rock—and still, the operation was proceeding.

Shina tried to rouse herself from her trance, tried to bring conscious thought streaming back into her mind like daylight through a window.
Wake up!
she screamed to herself. The noise outside grew louder. The assistants surrounded her motionless body; Hasin-uncle arranged the eyes and tools around her head.

He opened his mouth, as he always did in these dreams, to direct Sura-auntie to make the first cut—but instead of words, blood poured from his mouth. Shina was trapped in her body again, locked in her trance but still able to look up and see the surgeons, Hasin-uncle, all the young assistants as they had fallen. Monat with his face cleaved in half. Jeppa, her throat cut, trying frantically to form words with her bloody lips.

The last one,
she was saying.
You’re the last one.

Those words repeated from every mouth, even Tiga, who was missing the top half of her head when Shina found her.
You’re the last one,
they said.
You’re the last one. You’re the—

“What is
wrong
with you?” The Captain was shaking her by the shoulders. “Wake up!”

“Ahh!” Shina blinked, shook her head. “Oh, no—oh—what?”

“You were screaming again,” the Captain said. “You kept telling us, ‘They’re coming, they’re coming,’ and I been trying to wake you up for damn near a minute.”

Shina realized her chest was heaving. “I was having a nightmare,” she said.

“I’ll say.” The Captain stood up and looked at her with the corners of her mouth turned down. “Take some rum—it’ll quiet you down some.”

“I—I don’t drink,” said Shina.

The Captain clicked her tongue. “Well, I don’t know your life,” she said, “but that might be part of your greater overall problem.”