Page 49 of The Isles of the Gods
Then she draws a breath and turns away. “There should still be a couple of water barrels in the hold,” she says, her voice breaking. “Leander, try to get down there and bring out one of the smaller ones, and float it back to the boat. Without drinking water, we’re nowhere. Keegan, look for anything you can find to eat. There might be something we missed in the galley.”
We nod, and without another word she turns to run for the mast closest to the back of the boat—the one least on fire, but nearest to poor Kyri’s body—and scrambles up it with that quick ease of hers.
My eyes track her as she climbs, before I make myself turn for the stairs leading belowdecks. The oil has run down them and they’re on fire. Beside me, Wollesley makes a noise of dismay.
I hold up a hand, watching the spirits where they play. There’s no way to command fire spirits, or even to beguile them—you have to suggest they’ll get the better end of the deal if they try your idea. So I show them how fun it would be to concentrate their efforts on one side of the stairs, to burn all the more brightly.
A part of me is grateful to have an excuse to shove the sharp horror of the last few hours away into a corner and put on a grin for the spirits. A part of me burns with guilt that it’s even possible.
The fickle spirits shift their attention all too readily, and the flames gutter and go out down one side of the descent.
I take one careful step, Wollesley on my heels, and thenanother, the heat rapidly drying out my clothes. Then, abruptly, the burned-out wood buckles beneath us.
I leap to the next step, then the next, half running and half falling to the darkened corridor below, my old classmate landing in a tangle of limbs beside me.
“Good luck,” I call quietly as he turns for the galley, and I hurry along the hallway to where the captain pointed out the cargo hold the night I came aboard.
I hurry past the door to my cabin, and for a moment it’s like I can see through the wall, see myself inside it, sitting up in bed sleepily. See Selly stumbling back, her eyes wide at the sight of my bare chest. I can see myself grinning. I can see the look the other girl—Abri—gave me as I headed up on deck this morning. Clearly, Selly had told her about our encounter, and just as clearly, she—
The shock hits me like a punch to the gut.Abri’s dead.Her round-cheeked smile is gone. And there’s no anger in me for the moment she wavered, for the moment she thought she could save her own life if she gave up mine. How can I blame her for not wanting to die? She never would have if she hadn’t met me.
The light outside is fading quickly, and the cargo hold is almost dark, except for faint starlight coming in from the cannonball exit holes on the far side. The whole ship is listing badly toward me, and there’s water all down her right-hand side. There’s also a handful of small barrels that have rolled down the slope and are floating there.
I carefully slide toward them, splashing into the water. After the warmth of the stairs it’s a shock all over again, and my lungs contract, breath stuttering as I force myself to dragthe air in. Then I sling my arm around the smallest barrel. It’s about the size of my torso, and judging by the weight, full. It’s also about as heavy as I can lift, and I know I’m running out of time before weakness overtakes me completely.
I consider my options for getting it out and discard the idea of carrying it back up—the broken stairs would be impossible to navigate.
Instead, I scramble up the sloping floor, bracing myself against broken timbers and pushing the barrel ahead of me, until I reach the cannonball holes on the far side. A couple of quick kicks make one larger, and I shove the barrel through it, grabbing onto the smoothest part of the edge.
The little barrel scrapes and rolls along the wooden side of the boat, then splashes below, but when I stick my head out to see it bobbing in the water, my heart sinks. The underside of the ship is showing, and it’s crusted with greenish-white barnacles. If I slide after the barrel, they’ll shred me. I’ll have to do it the hard way.
I wriggle out through the hole, trying not to snag and tear the clothes I borrowed from Wollesley, and look down at the dark waters below. No point hesitating, or my body will get the better of me.
I jump, and hang in the air forever before I hit the water, plunging underneath the freezing waves, all the air driven from my lungs. I kick hard, pushing up toward the surface, and find myself right next to my barrel. Coughing, eyes stinging, I begin a long, slow lap of the sinking ship, pushing our water supply in front of me.
When I round the back of the ship, the others are already aboard theLittle Lizabettaand have gotten to work. Selly hasone oar lashed over the back of the boat to steer with, and Wollesley is following her instructions to jury-rig the other oar as a mast. Together they pull first my barrel and then me backin.
I start to shiver once I’m out of the water, and I busy myself stowing the barrel.
“Here,” Wollesley says softly, holding up a piece of sailcloth. “It’s more or less windproof, should warm you up.”
I nod my thanks, my limbs like lead as I wrap it around my shoulders and settle in the bottom of the little boat. Perhaps I should help them pin the rest of the sailcloth up to make our sail, but it’s beyond me. I’m faintly aware of the spirits swirling around the boat in the air, on the water, but I don’t have anything left in me to even try to reach out for them.
The sun’s nearly down in the west now, the last of the glow fading. The sky is very big and very black above us, and a silvery swath of stars stretches across it, both moons coming into view. The sail flaps quietly, not yet pulled taut, and we drift with the waves. TheLizabettais burning lower, mostly a red glow, and farther away than I’d have expected.
“We need to talk about what to do next,” Selly says, producing a bag of apples that must have been part of Wollesley’s haul. She passes one to each of us, and when I bite into the crisp, sweet fruit—the opposite of the salty water in my eyes and up my nose—it feels like I’ve barely eaten all day.
“We should sail for Kethos,” I mumble. “Make our way up to Alinor by land.”
Selly crunches into her apple and narrows one eye as she studies me. “New plan,” she says. “We should talk about howsailing boats work, andthenwe should talk about what to do next.”
“All right, teach us.”
Selly chews her lip, considering how to manage the task, and then holds up her left hand, still clad in a fingerless leather glove that’s slowly stiffening with salt. “Watch carefully,” shesays.
I lean in, and Wollesley twists so he can study her like there might be a test later. Though come to think of it, there will be. The only one we’ve ever taken that really matters.
“This is the continent.” She makes an upside-down U with her left hand, fingers and thumb pointing down. “The end of my thumb is Mellacea. Then, working our way up and across the top, we’ve got the principalities, Trallia halfway, the Barren Reaches, Beinhof, and Fontesque. About halfway down my finger, we’ve got Alinor, and below it, at the end of my finger, Kethos.” Next she stabs at the empty space in the middle of her U shape. “We’re in here, obviously, the Crescent Sea. And the prevailing wind and currents…” She draws a line from Alinor on her finger over to Mellacea on her thumb.
