Chapter Twenty-Six Into the Deep
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
INTO THE DEEP
Put the younger crew members below deck,” Kalúe said to her officers. “I want only seasoned sailors topside. The rest will man the cannons and tackle repairs, out of harm’s way.”
“Nowhere on this ship will be out of harm’s way,” Omira said under her breath.
Reya and Thance shot her a glare.
They’d been standing around the table in the navigation room, or as Reya liked to call it, the war room, for the better part of an hour, discussing strategy.
The captain ignored Omira, commanding their time and attention like she commanded her ship, quick and efficient with no room for argument.
“We have only a few days left until we reach the Deep. Protect the food and water above all else. They’re the only things we can’t replace.
The blood is nothing to us if we all die of dehydration on the return journey. ”
“And if the Kraken rips the ship apart faster than we can repair it? What then?” one man asked.
The captain was unflinching as she said, “Then Ria will take us all to the depths, sailor, and the sand and tide will claim our bones. But make no mistake. We will rage against death the whole way down.”
Kalúe would make a wonderful queen, Reya decided, if she ever took back the Kalterran throne. But all the leadership in the world wouldn’t save them from what they were about to face. By the time Kalúe had finished relaying their plan, the men were quieter than when they’d entered.
Not long after they’d set sail, the ship had taken on a bitter smell. And the closer they came to the Kasmore Deep, the more the smell soured. Reya had inflicted enough fear throughout her career to recognize its stench.
As her officers filed out of the study, Kalúe turned to Reya. “Why has Caelan not joined us?”
“Apparently, he’s not as infallible as we thought, thank the All-Gods,” Reya answered lightly. “He’s been seasick.”
Confusion flickered in Kalúe’s eyes, and though Thance and Omira gave no indication that they’d heard, Reya could feel the tension rolling off them.
Caelan hadn’t left their cabin in two days.
Now that the curse mark had risen up onto his neck, they didn’t want to risk anyone seeing it. His absence was noted.
“I don’t recall Caelan ever succumbing to seasickness,” Kalúe said.
“I’ve been making teas to help with the nausea, but he hates them. I’m sure it will pass.” Reya punctuated the lie with an actual truth—she was making Caelan teas, but the nausea wasn’t from seasickness, it was from his pain.
Reya respected Kalúe, but the captain was not her friend.
And she had not forgotten the dagger she’d thrown at Caelan’s face.
All of them were working toward a mutual end.
If Kalúe knew Caelan would not be fighting with them, there was a good chance she would end the journey here. And Reya wouldn’t risk that.
“Give him this,” Zantae said, unhooking the leather cuff on his wrist and handing it to her. A small, smooth stone was secured to the inside. “The stone goes on the underside of the wrist. The pressure helps.”
It was the first time Reya had heard Zantae speak more than a few words in the common language. Indeed, they all looked a little surprised to hear anything from Zantae. All except Kalúe, who smiled wryly.
“Zantae is of Idrias. I met him when my father was in port there when we were just children.” He gave his captain a sideways glance. “He speaks the common language, but only when it is particularly convenient for him.”
Zantae muttered something in his mother tongue, and Kalúe chuckled. It must have been nice to communicate in a way no one else could understand.
I speak that language actually, Thance said. It took Reya a moment to realize he was speaking into her mind and not aloud. She nearly jumped out of her skin. But don’t tell him. He would be rather mortified if he knew I understood that.
Reya’s reaction was so obvious, Kalúe and Zantae both stopped speaking to stare at her. Omira smirked.
Reya thought as loudly as she could. I told you to stay out of my head.
My apologies, Thance replied, though he didn’t look the least bit sorry.
“You look like someone just snuck up on you in a dark alley,” Kalúe said.
Reya quickly recovered. “If that were the case, someone would be bleeding.”
Only Kalúe laughed. Probably because she knew Reya wasn’t joking and liked her all the better for it. Reya wished they lived in a different world, where things like loyalty and friendship were not so unaffordable.
“A moment?” Kalúe asked Reya as everyone filed out of the navigation room.
She followed the captain, who pushed open the double doors of her study with a flourish and threw her jacket over her chair. The white blouse she wore fell loose off her shoulders, and her dark hair rolled down her back like a midnight ocean wave.
“Wait here,” Kalúe said before climbing the spiral staircase to her quarters above.
The study was covered in art Reya hadn’t had time to appreciate before, and she took the opportunity to look around.
Barely a speck of the oak paneling was unadorned.
Ornate box frames held artifacts from all over the world.
There were ancient jewels melded with coral, coins from every continent, even an Etellinian steel dagger.
Reya marveled at the craftsmanship, wondering how old it was and whether the captain had uncovered it at the bottom of a shipwreck somewhere.
One small brass plaque beneath a frame that appeared to hold a large butterfly read, Ianessian Pix.
With a double take, Reya realized the insect was in fact a tiny Pix, a distant cousin of the Fae, impeccably preserved behind glass.
Wings splayed, her spindly limbs were pinned to the linen behind her, and her open, beady black eyes were unnervingly empty.
Reya shuddered, moving on to a curio cabinet in which countless books had been carefully stowed.
She noticed with a shiver one ancient tome titled Monsters of the Abyss, and made a mental note to ask Kalúe if she could borrow it.
Alongside the artifacts bolted to the walls were portraits, still lifes, watercolors.
The largest painting hung opposite the desk.
In it, ships with sails of every color raged against a white-sailed fleet on a flaming sea, so vivid and detailed Reya thought if she touched it her hand might come away wet.
Reya knew the ship at the head of the rainbow navy by its red sails and the sea serpent roaring on its prow.
In the far upper corner of the painting, beyond the cannon fire and smoke, stood a proud cluster of islands.
“The battle for Kalterra,” Kalúe said as she descended the stairs with a bundle of cloth in her hands.
“My father had that commissioned and hung there so every time he looked up from this desk, he would be reminded of what was stolen from us.” With the conviction of someone who was indeed born to rule, she added, “And what we will one day reclaim.”
The Kalterran sails were red, Reya knew, but she wondered where all the other ships were from. Reya pointed to the ship at the head of the fleet, careful not to actually touch the canvas. “This ship is older than I thought.”
Kalúe crossed to a cupboard that was bolted to the portside wall, unlocked the glass case inside, and retrieved a bottle of brown liquor and two glasses. Reya instantly recognized the scent.
Rum.
The captain poured them each a drink and took the space beside her. “That’s not the Acadia. It’s the Argus.”
“It bears a stunning resemblance. Where is the Argus now?”
“Rotting away at the bottom of the Salt Sea alongside the bones of my forebears.”
At Reya’s apologetic “Oh,” Kalúe gave a devilish grin.
“When the Rhiterrans attacked Kalterra, my ancestor, the last Kalterran king, refused to retreat, even after our allies had fallen back. Witnesses say that the Argus took down seven Rhiterran vessels before she finally sank into Ethereal Bay, and he howled the whole way down, calling for more fire. I love that story.”
“To him,” Reya said, raising the rum Kalúe handed her. The two women clinked their glasses and drank. It was her first proper drink since she’d left Port Talluah, nothing like what the men were having down in the mess hall. There was a hint of nutmeg beneath the burn.
That’s when she noticed it: the signature in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, tucked into the crest of a wave, so small it could have been mistaken for seafoam.
P. Connery
Reya nearly dropped the glass, taking on a stillness that did not go unnoticed by the captain.
It took all her strength not to run her fingers over the raised white grooves of the letters, as if that might bring her closer to the little brother she’d loved with every fiber of her being, and had not seen in ten years.
“The artist?” Reya managed around the tightness in her throat.
“He works out of Evalis,” Kalúe said. “Are you familiar with his work?”
Pretending it was just the alcohol, Reya coughed, careful not to let Kalúe see her emerald irises glistening like so many of the treasures in this room.
While she’d been carving a bloody path through the Heap, Paxton had become the painter he’d always wanted to be.
And he was living in Delthia, a known magic-born sanctuary.
The idea of her little brother searching for her nearly made her knees buckle.
“No,” Reya said, sensing the truth in her own words even as her chest swelled with pride.
There was nothing of the boy she’d known in the paint strokes.
She saw the person he had become. Someone well on their way to mastering their craft.
A man she didn’t know. A life he’d lived that she hadn’t been part of.
“Years after the war ended,” Kalúe went on as if Reya’s world hadn’t just tilted, “a new ship was commissioned in my ancestor’s honor named, quite appropriately, Kalterra’s Revenge.”
“Naturally,” Reya said with a laugh.