And just like that, she almost told him.
Her mouth was open, the truth lying on her tongue. It frightened her how close it was to the surface, as if she’d just been waiting for this exact moment for him to pull them from her.
“We should get some sleep,” she said.
He didn’t move.
Beneath her seat within the crate was a cone-shaped sea anchor made of waxed cloth. She tossed it overboard so they didn’t drift. Then she lowered herself to the floor of the cockpit, where she’d spent countless nights in the Sacramento Bay, staring up at a black sky and dreaming of home.
“Marin?” he asked. “If you’re a pirate, how come you’re not with other pirates?”
Her eyes burned, either from the salty spray of the waves or the acid in the earlier rain, but definitely not from tears. She didn’t cry, not in front of anyone, not even alone.
She turned on her side away from him, feeling him watching her. She needed to get back to where she belonged, somewhere where dreams of stars, and schools, and boys who wanted to know her secrets didn’t exist.
Only right then, she didn’t know where that was. The docks were going up in flames, and her island … she didn’t even know if the captains would let her come back, even with all the money in the world.
“I’m better on my own,” she said.
A long beat passed.
“Goodnight, Marin,” he said.
“Goodnight, terreno.”
She closed her eyes and dreamed of a boat with sails like the feathers of a peacock, and when she woke, the sky was red as flames.
* * *
“I don’t understand why we’re sailing into a storm,” Ross yelled over the wind and surf.
Marin had just cut the wheel hard to the leeward side, attempting to beat a zigzag line south toward the clouds that gathered like a bruise on the southern horizon.
The wind was picking up, straining against her sails and making each turn more difficult. Had it been at their backs they would have flown to the outskirts of the gyre, but instead the clouds had regrouped, forcing her to sail into the wind in choppy, indirect strides back and forth.
“It’ll move faster than we can,” she shouted, using her teeth to secure a knot when her wrist sparked with pain. “We turn back, and it follows us. We make a drive now, we’ll pass through before it gets any worse.”
But it would throw off her navigation. Send her closer to the center of the gyre, to Careytown.
She couldn’t go there yet. She wasn’t ready.
She should have gotten the money first.
If they saw Ross, a descendant of the men who’d exiled them to the island, they wouldn’t waste their breath negotiating. They would kill him. They would kill both of them.
He clung to the mouth of the hatch beside the wheel, hair tossed in wild streaks around his angular face. He squinted against the spray of water, and even in the gray shadowed light she could see the rise in color on his cheeks and forehead.
“What do you mean, any worse?” he called, knuckles white where they gripped the boat.
A cold brick lodged beneath her breastbone. It was impossible to tell how bad this storm would be. Last night’s break could have been only a breath before the real show.
She didn’t answer him. Wind gusted, throwing them hard to the leeward side. She scrambled to the other side of the cockpit, using her weight as a counterbalance.
He muttered something she couldn’t hear. When she glanced over her shoulder at him, the pink tint of his skin had turned ashen.
The rain began suddenly, an angry chorus of wind-whipped drops sprayed against plastic and metal. It peppered her bare shoulders and face, harsh enough to make her shield her eyes. She was just about to go below to search for another pair of goggles when the low clouds drew back, a sudden reveal of the path that lay ahead.
Her mouth fell open, her heart stuttered. Before them, the sky darkened in shades of gray, blending with the churning, white-capped water. It looked as if they were sailing toward a giant hole, a direct route to night.
It was too late to turn back, even if she’d wanted to.
“Marin,” said Ross. “Do you see the jail?”
They were still at least fifty miles off from the edge of the gyre. It was hard to tell exactly, because her GPS was only registering the storm.
“You should sit down,” she said unsteadily.
“We need to turn around.”
“We can’t.” He didn’t hear her whisper.
Coming this way had been a bad call. She should have sailed farther north, hit the gyre from the top, and worked her way down the edge. Now the sea would get them before the pirates ever could. The rain pelted her nerves, reminding her of every wrong decision she’d made since she’d left the mainland.
They would not outrun this squall. It was going to tear them apart.
Unless they went to the one place that meant their own death.
Careytown.
Ross’s hand was on her face, turning her toward him. He’d been saying something, but she hadn’t heard him. Her fingers grasped his, shaking, or maybe he was shaking. Maybe the ocean itself was roaring up around them, ready to swallow them whole.
“What do we do?” He stared at her, eyes bright and sharp, holding her in place just as they had the first time she’d seen him in the riots. “I’m not some worthless terreno,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”
She saw him then, the real him. The whole of him, that she hadn’t allowed herself to see until fear had stripped away the last of her pride. He stood before her, leaning down so that they were on the same level, his gaze sharp with fear, his mouth set with determination. This boy, who she’d thought had everything, who she’d relied on having everything. Right now he had even less than her and was still strong enough to fight.
The fire in him shamed and ignited her.
She would not surrender to the sea. Her father had trained her to be smart, her mother, to be strong. If this storm wanted the Déchet, it would have to pry her from Marin’s cold, wet fists.
CHAPTER 20
MARIN NODDED.
His hand was still on her cheek. He hadn’t even thought of touching her that way, but the tremble in her lower lip when she’d seen the weather had taken him off guard. She’d been fearless as long as he’d known her, but her silence cut straight through him, and the decision to pull her back from wherever she’d gone had been automatic.
“All right,” she finally said.
Moving in the strong, deliberate way she always did, she showed him how to move the pole that secured the base of the sail across the cockpit by lengthening and shortening the ropes on either side. He was a quick study with knots this time, and when he met her approval, she rewarded him with a curt nod and a tight smile.
They worked their way into the storm, going against his every instinct to turn the opposite way. The clouds embraced them once again, dark and heavy, seeping a bitter moisture that burned his eyes and needled at his skin. Soon, they could see nothing, but Marin lowered her head, gripped the wheel, and drove them on.
The deck became so slick he fell, smashing his shoulder on the crates that lined the sides, knocking her pots free from their ties with his knees and feet. The black mud that filled them spilled across his pant legs. With one elbow hooked around the wheel, she helped him up, her hand small inside his, her grip firm and unyielding. His mind swam with old fears of rattling windows and white bolts across gray skies. Nights he’d shivered in bed, covering his ears against the raging weather. His father’s voice telling his mother not to coddle him or he’d never grow out of it.
He wasn’t here with his father, though. He was here with a pirate girl with a tattoo beneath her ear, and he needed her more than he had ever needed anything in his life.
The boat rocked drunkenly, each time making his heart trip and slam against his ribs. They kept their weight on the rising side of the Déchet as the waves and wind threatened to throw them over,
then switched as they turned the other way. The crates slid across the cockpit floor, bursting open, their contents lost to the sea. Marin lifted her arm straight up to the sky, seeming to measure the angle the mainsail bowed away, and when it went too far, she grabbed his shirt and pulled him toward the center ratchet.
“Reef the sail,” she yelled, her voice whipped away by the wind just as soon as the words had left her lips.
“There’s a reef?”
She shook her head, black hair sticking to her cheeks. “Lower the sail halfway!”
He followed where she pointed, then turned the crank until she grabbed his shoulder. The triangular sail was now a third of its previous size, but still filled with wind to the point of bursting. Their sudden decrease in speed launched him forward into her, chest to back. He could feel the tightness in her shoulders as she tried to pull the wheel and helped, hands beside hers, groaning as every muscle in both their bodies flexed as one.
It went on endlessly. A terrible, magnificent nightmare that spoke in roars and fought with whips of electricity. Ross was terrified, and it was within that cold, sharp terror that every other fear he’d ever had was finally realized. Fear of his father finding out he was weak and stupid. Fear of never mattering to anyone. Fear of losing the only friend he’d ever had.
Fear of letting Marin down and killing them both.
Lightning split the sky, shattering into a hundred branching roots that sizzled and crackled in the electric air. He knew the moment it struck the mast—sparks rained down around them, and his whole body vibrated like the pluck of a string that had been pulled too tight.
He searched for Marin. She was on her knees, still clinging to the wheel with one hand. Her feet were still bare, and one was bleeding, soaking the boards with red.
He made his way over and wrapped his arms around her, clinging to the wheel with both hands as the mast tilted, and tilted, and fell with a snap into the angry water beside them.
She looked back at him over her shoulder, eyes red with salt and tears.
“I’m sorry, terreno,” she said.
He held her as tightly as he could as the top of the sail was sucked into the churning sea, dragged down by some invisible hand. The Déchet groaned and cracked, like the hull of the Armament ship when the Shorelings had attacked. The opposite side of the boat lifted higher, higher, the leftover crates and pots sliding across the cockpit, cracking as they glanced off his side and back and splashed into the ocean.
Ross buried his face in Marin’s neck, accepting this final truth. Her boat would sink, and they would go with it.
Their feet slipped out from beneath them. And then there was only shadow, and water, and the last scream of the Déchet as the wind tore her to pieces.
* * *
They clung to a rounded piece of the hull, half submerged in warm water for what felt like hours. His legs turned to jelly, unable to kick even to stay afloat. Sharp plastic poked him in the ribs. A tired numbness took his arms and fingers, but every time his grip slid away, she was there to pull him back up.
“Don’t give up on me, Ross,” she said once, barely louder than a breath.
He didn’t.
The storm passed the way it had come, fading out in rain and wind, and finally giving way to the same thick clouds that had surrounded them before.
Through half-closed eyes he watched her rest, her cheek on her folded arm, a lock of her hair swishing in the puddle atop the wreckage. Fatigue pulled at him, but he knew if either of them fell asleep, they’d slip into the water and wouldn’t come back up. He reached for her, fingers fumbling over the back of her shirt and working to make a fist in her skintight top.
“Wha…” Her eyes barely opened.
He heaved her up, kicking hard with the last bit of energy he had. She crawled atop the hull and collapsed in a trembling mess, and he slid backward, head submerging beneath the water.
Her fingers, tangled in his hair, pulled him back. It took some time to get him aboard, but between the two of them, they managed. The piece was small enough they had to lie nearly on top of each other, and even then water lapped over their sides. But it was a welcome relief from swimming.
Her head found a resting place on his chest. Their legs tangled together. The water lifted them up and down, up and down, and with her fingers spread across his chest, and her soft whispered prayers, “Hail Mary, full of grace…,” he fell asleep.
* * *
Ross didn’t know how long he slept, but he woke with a start to a loud clunk in the water nearby. When he pushed up to his elbows, Marin jerked up, nearly falling backward into the ocean. He caught her forearm and heaved her close, so that they were nose to nose.
She was breathing hard, and in that moment he saw nothing but her dark lashes and her round, brown eyes.
“We made it,” he rasped, voice raw from seawater and thirst.
She laughed. And cried. And he held her, because he didn’t know what else to do.
After a while, she steadied herself on her knees and turned to survey the scene around them, one hand anchored on his shoulder. Pieces of debris bobbed in the water in all directions. Hunks of plastic and shards of siding. It looked like the ship had been blown apart, with barely any recognizable pieces remaining.
Her lips parted, brows drawing together, and she didn’t need to say anything for him to know how she felt.
He held her again, not just because of the boat, but because they had survived, and if he looked too long at the pieces of the Déchet he would realize that their survival didn’t matter, because now they had even less than they’d started with. They were floating in the ocean on a hunk of plastic with no sail, no motor, and no sign of land.
She squeezed him back.
“If only we had a whale,” he said, and she laughed weakly.
It felt like the kind of thing you said before you died.
Another loud thunk drew them apart, and they both strained their eyes into the gloom over her right shoulder, where a sleek silver shape appeared through the clouds.
His mouth dropped open. He rubbed his eyes. It was a whale.
But as it drew closer, he saw that it wasn’t an animal, but a speedboat, manned by two sailors—men in tattered clothes. Ross’s chest constricted. He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. His pulse pounded harder and harder, and soon he was waving the boat closer.
They were going to make it out of this.
The man at the front had sun-browned skin and thin hair that stood on end. When he smiled, it became obvious dental hygiene wasn’t high on his list of priorities. Marin’s grip tightened on Ross’s shoulder, hard enough to pause his relief.
“Don’t say a word,” she said. “Leave this to me.”
He nodded.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the man called as he pulled closer. “Look what the sea spat out.”
“Picker,” she said, grinning like the pirate she was. “What took you so long?”
CHAPTER 21
SHE DIDN’T like speedboats and never had. She especially didn’t like speedboats where she had to sit an arm’s length away from a guy who used to fill her boots with roaches and now ogled her like he’d never seen a girl before.
“Keep looking and I’ll toss you over,” she said, hunching forward.
He laughed, and this time made a real show of staring.
“Someone grew up,” he said. “How long’s it been, Marin?”
“Long enough for you to lose half your teeth and most of your hair,” she answered.
He howled. “Still got that fire.”
Right now it was all she did have.
Marin glanced over her shoulder to find Ross watching them beneath furrowed brows. He sat on the back bench beside an old man they called Japan, who’d gunned down more than twenty Oil Nation ships in his day, despite the fact that the radiation from his home nation had left him with a missing arm and one eye sealed closed. He worked the motor, shuttling them toward the island.
The Déchet had foundered less than a mile away. Had the sky been clear they could have kicked ashore and snuck somewhere where she could hide Ross from the others until she figured out a plan. She didn’t want to face the captains this way, dragged in by Picker, who’d only been born with half a brain and fried out the rest on the tar he got from Luc. She was supposed to have money, enough to tithe and earn her father’s spot at the table. Enough to help Gloria with the supply train. Instead she had no boat, no credits, and a terreno she didn’t have a clue how to save.
Guilt coated her insides, like the thin, white layer of salt that covered her skin. She was a Carey, born to fight and scrap and sail, but right now all she could think about was Ross.
The dock peeked through the heavy clouds, half a dozen ships coming into view. Most of them were locked down for the weather, their masts dropped, sails tied. Others looked a little worse for wear. She spotted one skiff near the end of the pier that was already half sunk, the cockpit knee-deep in water. It reminded her of the Déchet, which made her stomach clench.
Japan reduced their speed, directing them into the cove. Another glance at Ross revealed wide eyes and high brows. Her neck heated as she realized this wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He’d probably thought her island looked more like the Pacifica ads she’d seen on the mainland.
“Who’s head of the table?” she asked, because that’s undoubtedly who he would bring her to first. Panic whispered across her every nerve as she considered the options she knew.
“Who do you think?” Picker asked.
Luc. She’d known it would be. Even before she’d left, Luc had captained the second biggest boat, and had the second largest crew, a feat topped only by her father. He’d started young. At fifteen, he’d been trading favors for loyalty. By eighteen he was coveted for the drug he called tar that he cooked up in the trash pits. By twenty, he’d surrounded himself with a bunch of meatheads, Picker among them, who’d do anything he asked so long as he gave them a fix of the stuff.
When she’d left, he’d been twenty-one, and well on his way to the head of the table.
Picker leaned closer. “He’s going to rip those brass balls you think you have right off, you know that.” He laughed, a high, unstable kind of giggle that made her think he’d already taken a dip in Luc’s tar supply today. His fingertips hovered a breath above her exposed shoulder.