Black Water #3
Jasper understood enough not to ask. They changed the rig. Not strength this time. Mechanical advantage. Jasper fed the line through a second overhead bracket while Oliver found a maintenance bar beneath the water and wedged it beneath the fallen frame. The tender groaned.
"Marin!" Oliver shouted.
"I'm here."
"When I tell you, pull him toward the passage."
She appeared at the engine-room entrance already wading into the water. Her eyes went once to Oliver's side. He knew that look. Later. She reached Elias and secured both hands beneath his shoulders. Oliver set his weight against the bar.
"Now."
Jasper hauled. Oliver pushed. The platform rose. Not dramatically. Three inches. Maybe four. Enough. Marin dragged Elias backward. His trapped leg came free. The iron frame slipped. Oliver jerked away. It struck the deck where his foot had been. The impact sent a wave across the compartment.
For a second everyone simply breathed. Elias made a broken sound that might have been laughter. Marin had him. Oliver looked toward the valve. Water still poured through the open maintenance inlet.
"We're not finished."
Jasper's expression suggested murder. Oliver climbed over the fallen platform. The valve fought him. Rust had not seized it. Someone had wired the wheel open. Deliberate. He cut the wire with his knife and turned. Nothing. He changed grip. Pain flared through his damaged right hand.
The wheel moved one fraction. Then another. Behind him, Jasper got Elias into the passage with Marin. Oliver turned the valve until his shoulders burned. The incoming stream narrowed. The ship rolled again. This time the water level did not rise as high.
"Oliver," Marin called from the passage. Her voice carried differently through the metal compartment, flattened by water and machinery.
"One minute." He put both hands on the valve wheel and felt his injured knuckles protest before the metal moved.
"Thirty seconds."
Oliver smiled despite himself. There was affection in being threatened with precise units, but the smile died when the wheel resisted again.
He changed his grip rather than waste breath answering.
The final turn came with a wet metallic groan.
Water entering the compartment narrowed from a forceful stream to a hard trickle.
By the time Oliver climbed back over the fallen platform, Marin and Jasper had Elias into the passage. They brought him to the upper deck together while the bow shifted another six inches across the submerged shelf. The launch crew threw lines and took his weight.
Marin knelt beside Elias immediately. She cut open the wet trouser leg, checked the color in his foot, pressed two fingers behind the ankle and only then allowed herself to look at Oliver's side. The look lasted less than a second. He knew exactly what it meant: you are next.
Oliver stood long enough to confirm the rescue no longer needed him. That should have been enough to keep him in place. Instead his attention drifted toward the stern where the water had stabilized and several unanswered compartments remained.
Marin did not look up from Elias. "No."
Oliver paused with one foot already angled toward the companionway. "I didn't say anything."
She tightened the temporary splint around Elias's lower leg. "You turned your head."
Oliver considered arguing that head movement did not constitute intent. The fact that he had already begun calculating how long a search would take weakened the case. "Apparently my face has become a hostile witness."
"It has always been unreliable." Marin finally glanced up. The dryness in the line did not hide the assessment moving through her eyes: ribs, hand, breathing, balance. Oliver let her see him breathe normally before looking back at Elias.
The injured man coughed and caught Oliver's sleeve. His grip was weak but deliberate. "Cargo."
Curiosity stopped being abstract. Oliver crouched so Elias would not have to lift his head. "What about it?"
"Not ours." Elias's eyes opened only halfway. The pain and cold were beginning to drag at his attention.
Oliver resisted the easy answer that he had already concluded as much. The man had spent hours trapped in rising water. Whatever he chose to say deserved more than wit. "Whose?"
Elias swallowed. Marin kept two fingers at his throat while listening. "Don't know. They came alongside after midnight."
Oliver glanced once at Marin. Her face had gone still in the particular way that meant every word was being stored. "Who came alongside?"
"Didn't see. Captain told us stay below."
"Your captain gave the order?" Oliver asked.
Elias nodded. Shame moved across his face before pain erased it. Marin noticed too. She adjusted the blanket over his shoulders rather than force the emotion into an answer.
"Did he say why?"
"No."
Oliver waited a beat. "Did he seem paid, threatened, frightened?"
Elias's brow furrowed. "Frightened. Maybe paid. I don't know." The uncertainty sounded genuine, which made it more useful than a confident guess.
"Where is he now?"
Elias looked toward the water beyond the rail. Oliver followed the glance and felt the question change shape. Captain missing. Cargo removed. Tender opened to the sea afterward.
Marin's hand rested lightly against Elias's shoulder. "The cargo came off before the flooding?"
"Before."
"Before they opened the valves?"
Elias nodded once. "Two men. Maybe three. Not crew."
Oliver saw Marin choose the next question from several. "Faces?"
"No."
"Uniforms? Marks? Anything repeated?"
Elias shook his head. The movement made his breathing roughen. Marin stopped the interview with one look toward Oliver before she said anything aloud.
He obeyed before she had to, and Jasper noticing became secondary. "Later," Oliver said. "You can disappoint us with details after someone gives you drugs."
Elias's eyes opened a fraction. "Don't think so."
Marin's voice cooled into professional certainty. "You are not dying from this injury." She checked his pulse again, then his pupils. "You may dislike the next several hours, but you are not dying."
Something in Elias's expression decided she was too difficult to argue with. Oliver recognized the surrender. He had made it himself more than once.
Marin tied off the splint and finally looked up at Oliver. The stern remained behind him, visibly intact enough to tempt him. She followed his gaze. "Ten minutes."
Oliver's eyebrows rose. "Generous."
"Eight if you make me repeat myself."
He considered how much affection could safely be expressed while standing on a half-sunk evidence vessel. "I'll take ten."
Marin's eyes narrowed. "Seven."
Oliver left before the negotiation became medically expensive.
Oliver descended again. The water had stabilized near his knees.
He searched the crew quarters first. Three bunks used.
One empty. A captain's coat hung from a peg.
The pockets held keys, a pipe, two copper coins and nothing explaining why a man would agree to meet an unregistered vessel outside Caldris in the middle of the night.
The chart room stood aft of the bunks. Its door had swollen in the damp. Oliver forced it open with his left shoulder. Pain reminded him he possessed another shoulder and that using it would occasionally be intelligent. He made a mental note that Marin would consider this obvious.
The room was small. One chart table. Two shelves.
A brass lamp gone dark. Water covered the floor in a shallow black sheet.
Broken glass lay beneath the far wall. A framed inspection mirror had fallen from its mounting and shattered against the deck.
Most of it remained in one piece, tilted against the wall with a crack running diagonally through the silver.
Oliver stopped in the doorway. The water reflected the ceiling. The table. His boots. The mirror reflected him. For one heartbeat, everything was ordinary. Then the man in the glass lifted his head. Oliver had not. He went still. So did the reflection. Dark hair.
Sapphire eyes. His face. Not his face. Older. That was the first wrongness his mind could name. Silver threaded the hair at the temples. Faint lines rested beside the eyes and mouth, not weakness exactly, but years. The beard was fuller and touched with grey.
Oliver stared. The reflection stared back.
There was something almost offensive about it.
He had never seriously imagined himself old.
Not because he expected to die young. Oliver had always considered dying an objectionable habit practiced by people with insufficient alternatives.
Age simply belonged to the same vague country as responsible retirement and owning furniture one could not move without servants.
The man in the mirror looked perhaps fifty. Perhaps older. And he looked like Oliver might have enjoyed becoming him. Then Oliver noticed the water. It streamed from the reflection's hair. Ran down its face. Darkened the collar of a shirt Oliver was not wearing.
A thin line escaped one corner of its mouth.
Not blood. Black water. Oliver's body understood before his mind did.
Every muscle along his spine tightened. The reflection smiled.
Oliver did not. There it was. His smile.
Not merely the shape of it. The particular slow curve he used when somebody across a table had just revealed more than intended.
The version Marin mistrusted on principle. The version Jasper associated with incoming expenses. It belonged to Oliver. Seeing it arrive on his own face without permission felt worse than seeing a stranger.
The reflection leaned closer. Oliver remained where he was. Curiosity came alive beneath the fear. Of course it did. He hated that almost as much as the reflection. He stepped left. The image moved right. Correct. He lifted his left hand.