Chapter 14 The Graveyard #2
“Just a stumble.” He ground the words out, looking at her in warning. “Like I said, nothing to worry about.”
Before the words were fully out of his mouth, the ship lurched again, more violently than last time, and Sable gripped onto the helm to hold herself upright. At their backs echoed the sound of something wet hitting the deck. The skin on Sable’s back crawled, because that sound–
Kittredge gasped at her side, clutching her chest as she stared at the middeck in horror.
Sable knew what she would see before she even looked, but she couldn’t help herself.
Right there in the middle of the deck, one of the rig monkeys had fallen.
Their skull cracked open, limbs sprawled at impossible angles, and blood splattered on the faces of the two pirates frozen nearby.
Sable tore her gaze away, dread settling over her.
She’d been wrong.
The Heart’s protection didn’t extend to the whole of the ship, and its silence in her head was mocking. Gleeful. It wasn’t done. It was teaching her a lesson.
Lucian still stood at his helm, and he’d barely bothered himself with a glance behind. He didn’t even care.
“Captain,” Sable spat out the word. “We need to turn back. Your ship will join the rest of these wrecks if you go ahead!”
“Sable, with all due respect, shut the fuck up. As long as I follow the path, there’s no danger here. We will make it through.”
Sable gaped. “No danger? One of your crew just died!”
The captain shrugged. “The sea requires her sacrifices. Crew knows that. Now keep your voice down and stay out of the fucking way.”
Sable ground her teeth, the fists at her sides shaking as she fought to keep herself from snapping his fucking neck.
She breathed hard, looking at the deckhands stepping over the bloody remains in their haste to secure cargo and tighten ropes, not daring to even stop to haul the body out of the way under their uncaring captain’s gaze.
She’d been under Calla for so many years she’d forgotten what it was like to need to tolerate the leadership of someone who clearly didn’t give a fuck about his own people.
You could take his place. You could keep these pirates safe. You only need to say the word.
“Shut the fuck up!” Sable snapped.
Slowly, the captain turned to stare at her. A vein pulsed on his forehead. “What did you say to me?”
Shit.
Sable took a step back, gritting her teeth.
Her fingers ached with the strain as she fought to unclench them, one by one.
She couldn’t make it look as if she were trying to pick a fight.
If Lucian willed it, these pirates would slit both of their throats without asking questions.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said slowly, pacifying.
“And pray tell, who were you talking to?”
Sable locked her jaw tight. There was no good answer to that.
The captain’s expression grew grave. Then he clicked his tongue, gesturing to some of the gunners nearby. “I believe this is the end of your travels with the Blight,” he said, then turned to his pirates, standing at attention. “Feed them to the plants.”
“You can’t do this,” Sable said, squaring her shoulders, unconcerned about his threat. “Your ship will sink if we step off.”
She knew it. In her gut, she knew it, just like she knew the Heart couldn’t let her die while she refused to use it.
Lucian laughed in her face, as if she’d said something funny.
“I don’t know what captain you’ve served under before, but they’ve clearly been too easy on you.
You’re funny, though, I’ll give you that.
” He waved to his pirates. “I’ve changed my mind.
Give them a boat, maybe they’ll remember the way back. Or we can just enjoy the show.”
With that, the gunners stepped forward, and Sable had no choice but to let herself and Kittredge get shepherded to one of the boats.
“You don’t have to let yourselves get treated like this,” she told the gunners under her voice as she stepped inside the boat. “He’s gonna get you all killed.”
They ignored her, well-trained and obedient.
And then she and Kittredge were drifting afloat in the Blight’s wake, surrounded on all sides by the broken, rotten corpses of long-wrecked ships.
Bits and splinters of wood littered every inch of water, knocking gently against the boat’s hull.
Sable stared at the Blight with her heart in her throat as it sailed on, and hoped with all she had that she was wrong about this.
“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Kittredge said.
Sable swallowed and handed Kittredge one of the oars.
“Forward?” Kittredge guessed.
“Yeah. We’ll follow them.”
They started rowing. Sable’s gaze was focused on the Blight as it grew smaller in the distance, and for a while, it looked like that prick of a captain was right.
Maybe there was a path, or the sea looked kindly upon his cold-blooded sacrifice.
Just as she thought that, the ship lurched to a stop, and Sable’s heart dropped to her stomach like a sunken boulder.
Kittredge must’ve seen it on her face, because she turned to stare.
Dark tendrils lashed out of the water and crept up the ship’s hull, up and over the deck in a deadly embrace.
They tightened, squeezing. The crack of the wood resounded on the open water between them, echoing in the space of the wrecked ships with a mournful sound.
Just then, Sable remembered Lucian mentioning plants, and she saw it.
They were vines, thick as tree trunks. One of them raised high in the air.
In the blink of an eye, its sharpened end skewered right through the Blight’s hull, sealing its fate.
The ship tilted. Screams carried in the wind.
Sable’s hair stood on end, her stomach lurching as she made herself watch.
Because she did this. It was her fault. Kittredge’s hand gripped her shoulder, but she shrugged it off because she did this.
The least she could do was to bear witness, and mourn as the vines drew the ship underwater.
Pirates flung themselves off the ship in a desperate attempt to save their own lives. Some made for their boat. The plants picked them off, one by one, right before their eyes. A choked sound escaped Sable’s throat, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She tore her gaze away, looking up at the sky.
She was granted only a moment before a tug on the boat made her look down instead. More vines, past the bits of floating wood. Their tips licked the surface, caressing the bottom of their longboat in passing. Almost in affection. They were granted passage.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t turn around?” Kittredge whispered, her voice hoarse.
Sable shook her head wordlessly. The damage was already done.
“We go forward,” she managed after a while.
She grieved for the lives lost, and she swallowed the Heart’s lesson in a bitter gulp. If she could’ve just kept her fucking mouth shut. But it was too late to change that. From now on, they would stay away from other people. She wouldn’t let this happen again.
You could’ve saved them.
All you had to do was wish it.
“Shut the fuck up, you blasted thing,” she ground out under her breath.
Kittredge startled. “Did you say something?”
Sable forced herself to take a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She couldn’t imagine how much harder this would’ve been if she’d thought these were her own thoughts.
It was a wonder Calla had held it together as well as she had.