Twelve

“We didn’t find the spring yet,” said Toinette, seating herself on a rock. “But there’s a stream up there that’ll do nicely. Means we can bathe too, so long as we do it downstream of where we get water.”

“Couldn’t you bathe in the ocean?” Erik stacked another piece of driftwood onto the fire.

Samuel, assisting him, shook his head. “Salt itches. Surprised you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve been trying not to feel too keenly.” Erik didn’t look at Toinette when he said it. He hadn’t meant lust when he spoke, but it was all of a piece, in a way: the damp sand for a bed, the dried salt on his skin, the restless urges that they hadn’t the solitude to satisfy. Best, he thought, to avoid dwelling on any of it.

“We’ll drink what we brought first,” Marcus said from the other side of the fire pit. “It’ll go stale, else. Should we cast off, we can refill our casks then.”

“Water and food,” said Franz. “Fortune is with us.”

John hastily knocked on the nearest piece of driftwood, glaring at his companion. While Erik didn’t bother with the glare, he was glad he’d been touching wood already, and his sympathy was with the Englishman. Call no man lucky until he’s dead, his mother’s people said. They meant it as philosophy, but given everything, speaking of their fortune did feel like tempting it.

“We can go back and set snares in the morning,” Toinette said, pulling off one of her boots. Accomplishing this task meant stretching out one long, muscular leg, and Erik couldn’t take his eyes from her tawny skin, nor the way her butchered skirt fell back above her knee. He bent forward quickly, glad of the excuse building the woodpile offered. He was no stripling, but he didn’t entirely trust his self-control where his body was concerned.

“Means I’ll be going out again,” Raoul said, “or should.”

“You can have two days down on the beach after. It’s not my fault you’ve got certain valuable skills,” Toinette said. Her other boot thumped onto the sand.

“Rewards of knowledge,” said Marcus cheerfully. “That’s why I’ve never tried to be an expert in anything.”

“Oh, is that why?” asked Samuel, to general laughter and a mock growl from Marcus.

Erik stepped back from the fire pit. “We can add more if you think it wise,” he said, addressing himself to Marcus and Toinette alike, “but I think my part of this is done—unless you’d like me to light the fire.”

“No,” Sence said straightaway.

The others—whether they’d seen the teasing lift of Erik’s eyebrows or simply were relieved that Sence had spoken and relieved them of the need—laughed again. Toinette’s voice was the last to join in, considerably behind the others, and her chuckle was brief and subdued.

Erik glanced over his shoulder. Toinette was sitting on the rock, slim, bare ankles crossed in front of her. Her eyes were unreadable as she watched him, but when she saw him looking, she shrugged and grinned. “Don’t start volunteering, or they’ll ask me to do it. Besides, we take up enough room as it is.”

Neither joke was very funny, and she looked more tired than amused. It had been a long few days, longer for her—perhaps that was all, but perhaps not. Erik might have asked, had they the privacy for such a conversation, but he wasn’t sure she’d have told him the truth even then.

* * *

The water closed over Erik’s head: darkness, salt, ice. He’d learned to swim as a child, by way of his father throwing him into a lake. The dragon-blooded didn’t drown easily, yet the mortal part of him had shrieked in terror at the time, until instinct had fired his limbs. That had been calm water, in summer, and nothing to the raging ocean in the storm.

He gathered himself for the change of shapes, a vague familiarity dancing in the back of his head. The change was second nature, literally, but he thought he’d been in just such circumstances before. Erik brushed the thought away, as a distraction at a time of need, and concentrated harder on the power in the center of his chest, calling it forth to sweep over his body.

It didn’t answer.

Always the shift had come at his call. The difficulty, in youth or at times of great strain, was control, not summoning. Yet now when Erik bent his will toward it, the power slipped away, draining into the ocean’s chill. He remained two-legged, wingless, fragile, and mortal. Waves slapped at his face as he paddled frantically, and the water forced itself into his nose and mouth with a persistence even the sea had never possessed before. He coughed frantically, the salt burning his tissues while the water scorched his lungs.

Inside his nostrils, the water had a smell beyond salt and seaweed, one he couldn’t place. Even as the thought struck him, sharp ridges closed around his calf.

Erik kicked instinctively, and with all his strength, but the grip was strong. He looked down, through water grown suddenly and horribly clear, and screamed without caring about either witnesses or waves.

All the dead waited below the water. Soldiers in rusting chain stood by priests black and disfigured with plague, rotting while they yet lived. Erik’s grandfather watched with dead white eyes in an age-withered face, white mustaches floating above his missing jaw.

The hand around Erik’s ankle led to the arm that had been the only part of Gervase left truly whole. The body beyond it was a shambling horror, meat sculpted into a rough man-shape with chunks of bone sticking out haphazardly. The gold earring shone beside the eyeless, mouthless oval where the face would have been.

Around him, a voice came sliding through the water, and he didn’t know whether it was from the dead or the sea. This, it slobbered. This waits.

Even after he opened his eyes, saw the dying fire in front of him, and felt the sand beneath his fingers, the voice lingered in his mind.

* * *

“Captain.” John’s face was pale above her, his hand heavier on her shoulder than he would ever have dared without fear behind the touch. “There’s somewhat happening, Captain. I can’t understand it.”

Toinette dragged herself up the long, steep tunnel to wakefulness, leaving an unpleasant stew of half-formed images. She never truly remembered her dreams, and she’d likely be glad of that. The impression of worms eating a human tongue lingered for a heartbeat before she shook it off, turning her attention to the waking world.

The fire in the cave burned low. Around it, sleeping men stirred fitfully. Peaceful nights were likely hard to come by all around, once exhaustion had given way to memory. Toinette knuckled sleep out of her eyes and got to her feet. “Show me,” she said, keeping her voice low.

Barefoot, sword in one hand, she followed him out of the cave. Outside, waves lapped against the shore, calm and steady, and the sky above was clear. Still, when John gestured and Toinette turned to face the cliffs, she could no longer see the stars above the trees.

Gray-green light flickered over the forest instead. Toinette watched as it curled upward into vague tendriled shapes, flickering and fading and vanishing only to rise anew from the treetops, branching into the sky as if it were lightning in reverse.

“By God and all the saints.” She didn’t have to remember to lower her voice. The breath to raise it had gone out of her, leaving her winded and dizzy as she stared upward. The sword hung from her hand, a motionless, alien weight.

Toinette had sailed for a long time, and wandered before that. She’d seen red tides on the beach and blue fire wreathing ships, men who walked barefoot over hot coals and beasts out of a drunkard’s legends. The light above the trees was nothing that she’d ever even heard of.

“There’s more,” said John, and gestured. “Watch the trees.”

When the next flash of light came, Toinette saw what he meant. The night was calm. A faint breeze stirred from time to time, but it wasn’t enough to lift a strand of her hair. Despite that, the trees on the cliff thrashed as if in a gale. Their tops stood out against the light, malformed fingers clawing up toward a goal Toinette could not know and did not want to imagine.

“Earthquake?” she asked, but doubtfully. The sand beneath her feet was as stable as any ground she’d ever trod, nor did it seem likely that the island could shake so violently not a mile from her while remaining solid where she stood.

“I looked to the cliffs before I woke you, Captain,” John said. “No stones are falling. Not even a pebble. I thought perhaps to climb the path and see what happened above, but—”

“No,” said Toinette.

The answer came more hastily to her lips than she could have explained. In all the scene before her, she could find no direct threat. Light and the motion of trees were nothing to harm a man. Yet, watching, she felt her hackles rise and her gut twist in an unease she’d never felt from storms or pirates.

From the relief on John’s face, he shared her sentiments. “It’s a foul night, Captain.”

“It is,” she said, and again could not have said why. Typically she used the term for storms, or at least the sort of rain that made everything stink of wet wool at best. The air was peaceful, dry, even warm. Toinette would almost have preferred sleet falling sideways. “Plenty of time to go up in the day. No sense breaking our necks on fallen logs, to start with.”

“Aye,” said John, and grimaced, but there was a hint of relief in it. Toinette had named a good solid reason for staying below. Now they could pretend that the other possibilities didn’t exist, or not speak of them, which would do almost as well. He sat back down on the wide rock outside the cave. “I’ll, ah, just wait out my watch, then. Sorry to wake you.”

“Don’t be,” said Toinette. “You did right. In fact”—she glanced up at the sky again—“I’ll wait with you, if you don’t mind.”

“I’d be glad of it. Best two of us are awake—in case the earth does shake or there is a storm coming up.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Toinette. “And, you know, it may be just that. The cliffs may simply keep the wind and the lightning off us, and the landscape can play funny tricks on a man.”

She didn’t know if either of them truly believed her, but she was glad to have said it. Nor did she particularly want to reveal her other reason for staying awake: that she didn’t much like the prospect of sleep just then.

Toinette settled herself down onto the rock by John. As with all of the men save Raoul and Sence, they’d spent nights enough just so in the past, when the horizon looked threatening or there was unrest in port. Trouble was nothing new. You stayed quiet, you stayed awake, and you kept a hand on the hilt of your sword.

If that hilt was less comfort than it ever had been, John didn’t speak of it. Therefore, Toinette thought, there was no reason for her to broach the subject.