Chapter 17 #2
I hand Silas’s pendant back to him and he accepts it wordlessly. “Isn’t all of life like that, if you think about it?” I say with false lightness. “Especially at sea.”
He drops his hand, blinks down at me. “It doesn’t have to be.”
My chest feels tight, brittle. He’s a mess, unwashed, locked up, jeered at by the crew. But the way he’s looking at me, I feel like I’m the one who’s broken.
I can’t abide it. I turn my back. “Come on,” I tell him. “They’ll be waiting for us in the whaleboats.”
We split up once out of the hold—Silas heads to his cabin to get his lance, while I continue above alone.
The deck is a clamor as the Heralder crew shove past one another in an effort to be first into the boats.
The bell clangs are overloud, stabbing my eardrums. Men haul at pulleys to extend the davits, which creak laboriously as they swing the whaleboats—laden with tubs of rope, buckets, oars, hatchets—out over the sea.
Mance’s shouted commands rise over the din. “Stow line tubs! Check the grapnel!”
Something beyond the prow catches my eye. The spout. Close enough now to see with the naked eye.
It hangs on the air for a fleeting second before dissipating on the wind. A slope of gray and shining flesh crests the water, just for a moment, before rolling back down.
Livyatan.
I am not the only one to have seen it. Shouts and a tangible feeling of queasy excitement fill the air, marked by the sharp smiles across the faces of most of the crew.
Despite myself, I can feel it infect me too, a thrill beneath my skin, my senses sharpening with the instinct of the hunt.
Maybe it’s the heartbreak curse, the bloodthirstiness in me stirring to life.
Or maybe I just really am a whaler, and the sense memory of it lives in my blood despite my lack of experience.
Even at this distance, I swear I can see the vapor from the whale’s plume glitter.
I think I can smell its humid breath, warm and musty as it gusts from cave-sized lungs.
I halt by the mast as sailors rush by in every direction, their feet a fierce drumbeat on deck.
Harpoons and lances pass from hand to hand, both old-fashioned straight weapons and the new harpoon guns, cruel tips shining under the sun.
Most of the crew will strike out after the whale, with only ten or so sailors left back to man the Heralder—enough to send another boat if one of ours gets broken.
Kit and Lydia will be among these ten. My siblings stand by the port gunwale watching everything with wide eyes, Lydia’s arm looped over Kit’s chest protectively. They’ll be waiting here on deck. Just like Mama and I were when the storm came that brought the Volyar down.
My eyes snag on the place down the deck where August stands watching one of the whaleboats being lowered—the boat he will lead with the men he chose as his crew.
Despite the cold, he’s left off his blue coat, his crisp white shirtsleeves rolled up and his hair blowing in the wind.
He’s striking as ever, but the sight of him leaves me cold.
“Come on then, crewmate.” A low voice in my ear as Silas himself brushes past me, dressed again in his oilcloth jacket, Ezra on his other side.
Silas’s hair is combed back, face pale but determined.
I follow, heart pounding, as he cuts a path toward one of the whaleboats being lowered over the side.
The Heralder men draw out of his way when they see him.
Josephine, Teuila, and Zimri work the ropes to lower our whaleboat, while Kit and Lydia are at the gunwale, tugging at the knots to release the rope ladder. The sight of my siblings helping makes it sink in. This is really happening. The hunt is upon us.
I step up beside Kit and take his place at the ladder. “Go belowdecks,” I order him. “You need to stay out of the sailors’ way.”
It’s harsher than I’d usually speak to him, and I can see his face go scrunched and hurt at my tone.
Lydia casts me a reproachful look, but I don’t care.
I’m hyperaware of the swinging equipment and the ropes snapping taut all around us, the sharpened points of the harpoons and lances the sailors casually toss to one another.
We haven’t even shoved off yet and already the scene crawls with danger.
I fix Kit with a hard look; he ducks his head and turns for the staircase.
The boat hits the water below, and Lydia and I hold the ladder steady as the Whistler crew vault over the gunwale one by one and climb down to the boat, quick as spiders.
Ezra, Zimri, Teuila, Josephine. I catch Lydia’s eye, pulling her attention away from Josephine’s descending form.
“Look after Kit,” I say. “Don’t let him see the kill. ”
Her mouth is pressed tight, her eyes glinting unhappily. But she nods. Then Silas appears, jerking his chin for me to precede him down the ladder.
I dearly wish I had practiced this more than the once, when we rowed out to retrieve the whale carcass a few weeks ago.
The ladder feels less sturdy when I’m on it, the rope and wood straining under my weight.
The wind—what was a stiff breeze on deck feels like a gale with each step down—snaps at my face, tugs at my limbs.
This time at least I manage to get myself in the boat without nearly going overboard.
I drop into place next to Ezra, who hands me an oar.
Teuila is in the front testing the point of her harpoon with the pad of her thumb, face serious.
Zimri behind her. The sea is the color of iron broken up by white-capped waves, choppier than the last time we rowed out.
August’s boat glides past us. He stands in the stern with his hands around the steering oar as his men row.
His face is tipped up into the wind, eyes fixed on the line between sea and sky, on the whale, which seems very far away, a gray bump on the horizon breathing out mist. Then, like he feels my eyes on him, he looks over at me where I sit.
His face breaks into his secret smile, the one he’s always saved just for me, wide and unguarded. A glimmer of desire in his eyes.
But I can’t return the smile. It leaves me feeling hollow as his boat slips past, then Mance’s. The closeness we shared that night in his cabin seems like years ago.
“Eyes forward, Annie.”
My face burns hot as I turn forward and Silas drops nimbly into the boat and takes up his own spot at the stern. His eyes, too, are fixed in the distance, on our quarry. The order comes low and cold. “Shove off.”
It’s eerie, how sudden and complete the shift is among the crew at those words.
I knew most of them were whalers before joining Silas’s crew, but suddenly there’s none of the smiles and laughter I’ve become accustomed to.
As we lurch away from the Heralder’s hull, Silas raises his voice just enough to be heard by the five of us.
“You’ve trained for this. You know what to do.
Participate just enough not to draw suspicion.
Be good, but not too good. And look after yourselves above all else. Understood?”
A soft chorus of ayes all around. I mumble it too, feeling like an impostor. For all the barbs about scavengers from August and Mance and even me, Silas looks as much a captain as any of them, towering over us. The wind blowing his hair back from his face makes him look older, severe.
“It’s okay if you don’t feel ready,” Ezra says quietly, surprising me. “No one’s ever ready. Just row hard and stay out of the way of anything pointy. The ropes too; those can take your head off if you’re in the way when they snap to.”
His unexpected consideration doesn’t quite ameliorate my fear. “Is that meant to be reassuring?” I whisper, trying to sound lighthearted despite the general mood of grim determination thickening the air.
“Apologies.” Ezra’s mouth twitches in a joyless smile. “I should have just said, Don’t screw this up.”
“I’ll try my best,” I say through gritted teeth. Sailing alongside the other boats as we are, I’ve left my gloves on, making it harder to keep a grip on the oar. When I lower it into the water, it feels like the waves are trying to tug it out of my hands.
I row, my mouth dry and my heart pounding.
It’s still unnerving to cut through the waves facing backward, straining at the oars without seeing where our efforts are taking us.
The Heralder shrinks in my vision and a living Livyatan waits somewhere behind me, out of sight.
In contrast to the cacophony on deck, now all three crews are silent, or at least as silent as possible—we can’t stop the rhythmic smack of our oars hitting the water.
But the quiet only lasts until we get closer, and then I can hear the whale breathing—great wet sighs, gusts of hurricane wind accompanied by the hiss of vapor.
“Quickly now.” Silas’s voice cuts under the great creature’s breath. “Catch up. If we can reach the whale and frighten it off before anyone lands a harpoon, so much the better.”
Everyone’s breath huffs out in rhythm. The Heralder looks like a toy ship, the kind Papa once built in bottles, and time passes strangely, fast and slow all at once.
We’re fighting the wind, and it’s not long before my arms and back and legs all start to ache.
But it’s a faint ache, muted by the adrenaline coursing through me. Then—
A strange, deep clicking sound, muffled, traveling upward through very deep water. It gets into my bones, radiating through my body. It sounds somehow like it’s coming from all around us. It makes me want to drop the oar and cover my ears, put my head between my knees,
Fear grips me. Suddenly it seems the worst kind of hubris to be out here with nothing but a few planks of wood and a bit of tar between us and the vast cold dark of the sea, and all the sharp-toothed and hungry things in it.
To row to the point of exhaustion toward a creature so much more vast and ancient than we are.
I try to calm myself by remembering my lessons.
Even though I’ve never done this before, I know how it goes, what will come next.
When struck with a harpoon, the Livyatan will either take off across the sea’s surface—pulling the now-attached whaleboat and its crew on a bloody, dangerous sleigh ride—or dive in an attempt to escape.
But whales have lungs like us; they breathe air; they have to come back up.
Silas’s face looks carved out of stone, set and expressionless even as every other part of him is in motion—his hands gripping the steering oar, straining with the effort of bracing it against the wind, his hair and jacket swaying.
The waves slap our boat like they’re trying to climb our sides.
White froth springs up, outlining Silas in glittering spray.
Traces of fog cling to his ankles, and the smell of petrichor hangs around him, a faint metallic edge in the air.
He drops his eyes to fix on me for just a moment, and there’s no emotion there that I can find, no fear, no compassion, nothing at all.
“Row, Annie,” he commands. Then he raises his voice to address everyone else. “Faster!”