Chapter 8
Eight
The ground tilted to my right, and my head felt like it was filled with swarming bees, and then I remembered that I’d been in grave danger only moments before.
My eyes shot open, and my heart beat twice before I realized some time must have passed, and whatever fear I’d felt before was nothing in comparison to what I now faced.
The wood beneath me creaked and tilted.
The sea beneath the wood gurgled and slurped.
I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, weak from wearing my goldkeeper’s gown for so long and from how I’d been lying while unconscious.
I was painfully cold as well. The boat beneath me rocked as I stood and, in my panic, I shuffled away from the dark, roiling sea.
The weight of my dress tilted the boat further, and I spun, sensing the shift through my slippers, finding just as many hungry waves behind me.
My head swirled. Every way I looked, there were only black ravenous waves.
My breaths grew quick and ragged. None of the air I sucked in was able to soothe me.
I’m going to drown, I thought. I’m going to drown. I’m going to drown.
The boat itself was small—perhaps four paces by nine paces, with eight rowers packed along its sides, though they were quickly rising and shouting as I was very close to tipping the whole thing over in my panicked roving.
They near-surrounded me, and since I took a step back to match each of their steps forward, they were herding me into the middle of the boat, where the large beam that held the sail sat.
My back pressed against the smooth wood.
I recognized the pink-bearded one even though much of the blood in his beard had been washed out since I’d seen him last. He held my gaze, his hands out in front of him as he made gentle, shushing sounds, sprinkled with “Nidr. Nidr.” He crouched, nodding to me, and somehow, I knew he was urging me to crouch, too.
“Please,” I said, my voice hoarse with terror. “I can’t swim. My dress is too heavy. I’m going to drown.”
“Nidr.” His voice was soft, like someone speaking to a spooked horse.
I nearly vomited, but, not knowing what else to do, I obeyed his gestures, slowly sinking to my knees, my hands resting on the boat’s boards. The boat didn’t stop tilting, but the angle at which it leaned grew less severe and easier to manage.
“Ah,” said Pinkbeard with a small grin. “Ah, betri—” He continued talking, but I couldn’t distinguish anything he was saying into individual sounds.
He had to have known this, though he kept speaking to me, and there was something in his tone that was maybe the slightest bit soothing.
There is a lot a person can understand from the flow of words, from the tension or ease with which they’re said, even if the person doesn’t understand the words themselves.
He pulled a skin from beneath one of the rowing benches and crawled forward hesitantly, setting it on the boards before me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a gesture with great meaning.
In his country, the most powerful among them are not handed objects.
Everything is placed on a table or floor, as no one would dare try to absorb some of their power by contact without express invitation.
Yes, he’d slapped my hand when we were back in the carriage, but that was a matter of self-preservation on his part, something entirely different among his people.
He was being deeply humble and respectful of me, promising not to absorb any of my strength.
This was particularly kind and symbolic, seeing as I was a woman alone among what I thought were enemies.
Of course, I didn’t understand it. I thought of being eaten uncooked by them when they grew hungry.
I thought of rape. Of course I did. I thought of screaming when they finally realized what was inside my gown, and one of them lunged at me.
I thought of slipping into the sea and sinking, sinking, sinking.
I reached for Pinkbeard’s offering on shaky limbs, not at all comfortable with the way the boat seemed to sway beneath my every shift.
When I raised the skin and opened the stopper, the strong scent of alcohol rose to meet me.
I shook my head. Was he hoping to get me drunk?
Because that would make whatever they had planned next easier?
I set the drink back down without having brought it to my lips, all too aware of how thirsty I’d become.
How hungry and sore I was, from the weight of my gown, which I’d been wearing for days, and from however I’d been moved onto the boat while unconscious.
I had no idea how long I’d been asleep for, only that the Speartoothed one had cursed me somehow with a sorcerer’s cloth.
For all I knew, I could still be under the spell, falling asleep again without notice.
I had no idea—other than moving to the boat—what had happened while I’d been unconscious.
My lungs heaved with anxious breaths as the sea dogs made their way back to their oars.
How ferocious they looked with blue marks staining their skin and their mismatched furs with leather straps on their wrists and chests, with choke-like words coming out of their thick throats, their lids painted the same colour as the dark waves around us.
How vile Speartooth’s pointy smile was. How groggy and cold I was.
The sea wind seemed to cut right through me.
The metal around me felt frigid as it dug into my joints.
“Please,” I said again, tears threatening to push their way out of my eyes, my focus mainly on Pinkbeard as I felt him—for reasons I couldn’t explain—I felt him to be the most inclined to pity. “Please.”
He said a few soft words with his mouth and a thousand with his eyes.
Keeping low to the deck, he shifted to one side of the boat and dug through a leather sack.
He produced a lyre—my lyre, the very one I’d had in the carriage with me—and crawled forward, setting it on the deck before me, looking up to meet my eyes once more.
I felt… struck.
Flung.
Falling.
Stung.
Awakened.
Spun.
Witnessed.
Like the full force of a vault was buzzing through me. Like my eyes were made of lightning, and my skin was the crackle sound that a hearth makes.
So the man was a thief after all. He’d stolen my lyre. But he’d also given it back, and with his gaze he’d made me a promise. I knew, with the utmost certainty, that he meant me no harm.
As we pushed through salty waves and fog as thick as cloud cover, I learned to sit imperfectly still, leaning one way and then the other to keep a sense of steadiness in my bones.
I learned to press my back against the mast of the boat so no one could sneak up from behind me.
I learned to watch people as I had never watched them before, suspicious and wary and noticing the most intimate details. I gave them names in my mind.
Pinkbeard. Speartooth. Wolfhead. Twobraids.
Blueears. Farwatcher. Loudlaugher. Maybewoman.
The air grew colder and Pinkbeard and the others laid furs before me which were much appreciated even if they did smell of the sea.
Each new layer around me felt like it was staving off death itself.
They left seaweed and raw fish near me which made me gag as another torrid spell of fear spiralled through me, and I thought again of being eaten alive.
Finally, Pinkbeard thought of water. I made a mess of drinking without touching my mouth to the skin for fear of touching something too intimately which had been touched by a sea dog in the same way.
I fought my fatigue, my eyes burning, my stomach churning the longer I was at sea. Sleep felt unsafe to me, but finally, I learned exhaustion was stronger than fear.
I woke because I was rolling, because the whole boat was rolling, because the sea had grown furious while I’d slept. The clouds were the colour of charcoal. The air thick with the promise of storm.
Storms were important for goldkeepers—they infused the vaults with more sting in a single day than we could make in months using sting stones. I was attuned to the rumble.
The rain came, stealing the little warmth I’d managed to hold in my body.
And then the waves swelled.
I gripped the mast with arms so tense they hurt as the ship reared like a wild stallion, and the sea dogs around me transformed.
They were no longer men and maybe women rowing a boat; they pulled all their oars in apart from two and tied the unused ones to the vessel before becoming feral creatures howling at the storm in ecstatic revelry.
Hooting. Cheering. Encouraging. Standing dangerously close to the edge of the boat, letting the spray drench them.
Foamy water surged onboard, burning all the raw skin beneath my clothes—the prolonged wearing of my gown had worn sores into my flesh, especially around my shoulders and hips.
I grimaced and held firm to the mast, as the rain came down with the force of a whip.
I retched, and it was washed away by the sea.
I retched again, and it was washed away again.
I dry heaved and heaved. Even the sea dogs began to scramble, tucking things, pulling things, releasing two more oars, and using them to veer the boat toward the oncoming waves.
The water struck again, and I lost my hold, sliding toward the tail of the boat as its nose rose into the sky.
I screamed, certain a plunge into the sea was moments away, my arms reaching, my fingers grasping for something. Anything.
I caught an arm, and hands grasped me. I can only imagine how much I weighed in a waterlogged goldkeeper’s dress.
I saw gritted teeth as Pinkbeard hoisted me back to the centre of the boat, pressing me against the mast, his chest against mine, his stance wide and sturdy.
He released his hold on me with his arms, his body’s weight keeping me in place as he removed a leather belt from his own body and reached around the mast. I think he intended to use the belt to fasten me in place.
All my knowledge of pickpocketing and decent behaviour was forgotten.
I wove my arms around him and clenched his tunic tightly in my fists.
I chose life over drowning. He felt like the only steady thing in the world.
And then everything was swallowed in white.
The wild shake of the vault’s sting coursed through me.
I screamed, knowing that the lemure bark in my slippers could only protect me from so much before it wore out.
I felt Pinkbeard’s body harden as the lightning pulled his muscles tight.
Lightning struck us twice more, and, miraculously, once it was done, I was still breathing.
I opened my eyes to find Pinkbeard’s face close to mine.
He was still holding me to the mast, but his gaze was much changed.
He was no longer a man concentrating on doing the next task.
He wore an expression I recognized because I’d worn it myself a little earlier when he’d returned my lyre.
He was now the struck one. The flung one.
The falling, stung, awakened one. I wanted him to look away because his gaze was so intense it was uncomfortable, but I also couldn’t bear the idea of him looking away.
He whispered words I couldn’t hear over the wind and rain, and we spent the remainder of the storm like that, looking at each other as he held the mast and I held him.
Now is maybe a good time to tell you that my captors worshipped a god of sea and storms. This god was responsible for one of their most desirable afterlife possibilities; he was also a god responsible for lightning.
You can imagine they thought me a special thing, for not only had I seemingly absorbed the strikes, but a man I held had felt the full power of lightning rush through him and survived to tell the tale.