Water & Storm Country

  “If you send Stew to the brig, we’ll all go hungry,” Barney says.

  I’m finally getting used to Barney’s awkward sense of humor, so I don’t bat an eye. “If I’m forced to send Stew to the brig, you’ll take his place as cook.” Although I say it with a light tongue, I’m not joking.

  “I’ll inform him immediately,” Barney says, scurrying off.

  As I watch him go, I feel the hairs prick up on the back of my neck. I glance at the bilge rat to see if it’s the strength of her glare that’s raising my hackles, but she’s no longer clinging to the mast, having slid to the deck in search of something else to clean. A presence looms behind me.

  Hobbs. “What do you find so interesting about the bilge rat girl?” he asks.

  Good morning to you too. I stand, look him in the eye, try to conceal the fear I still feel when he’s near with a steady gaze. “I’m concerned with everyone on my ship,” I say. “A watchful captain is a ready captain.” When my father taught me that expression he had just forced me to watch as a young boy was horse-whipped for stealing bread from the kitchen. I’m still not sure what watching a beating prepares anyone for, but the lesson stuck with me, so maybe that was the point.

  “It’s not your ship,” he says.

  “Is it Captain Montgomery’s?” I ask, motioning to the opposite end of the quarterdeck, where Jeb swings back and forth in his hammock.

  Even Hobbs, with his rules-are-rules mentality, doesn’t have an answer for that one. He frowns. Score one for me.

  “How’s the investigation going?” I say, changing the subject without ever really changing it.

  “None of the women saw anything,” he says. “And Lieutenant Cain is questioning the last of the men as we speak. We may never find your attacker.”

  I nod absently, watching as, right on cue, Cain crosses the mid deck. A handful of bilge rats do their best to get out of his way. In his wake, I see the girl, angry and brushless, her scrubber discarded on the deck, issuing what appear to be whispered rebukes. Is she berating them for having been in Cain’s way in the first place, or because they were so quick to move aside for him? In any case, even her own friends seem to be scared of her wrath. Strange.

  We meet Cain at the top of the steps. “Anything?” Hobbs asks.

  I try not to hold my breath, but I do anyway.

  Cain’s gaze flickers to me before settling on Hobbs and his question. He shakes his head and I push out my breath slowly. “Nothing. No one saw a bloody thing.”

  Hobbs curses, lifts a fist to his mouth where he bites on his knuckles. “The admiral will not be pleased,” he says through his hand. “I’ll tell him at first light when we drop anchor.” He stomps away so loudly that Captain Montgomery snorts out a throaty snore and rolls over, his eyes flashing open for a moment before fluttering closed once more.

  “Huck, we need to talk,” Cain says when Hobbs is out of earshot.

  “I know,” I say. Although on multiple occasions I’ve felt compelled to ask Cain to explain exactly what he meant when he said my secret’s safe with him, I haven’t broached the subject as of yet. Secrets are better kept if they’re left unspoken.

  “My cabin. One hour,” he says.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sadie

  The world flashes by in blurs and blustery whispers. There’s dark skin and pulled-on clothing, and I should be embarrassed by mine and Remy’s exposed nakedness, but I’m not, and we’re not even looking at each other anyway, because…

  There are so few Riders returning from the mission. My mother—his father: Are they among the survivors?

  I’m breathless and frantic, and I can tell Remy’s in a similar state because he keeps stumbling as we run side by side back to camp, hearts pounding.

  The Riders are already there when we scramble between the borders, past the circles of tents, and into the center. Dark horses stamp and snort, their hides crusted with dark-red dried blood. One of them falters, its legs giving way, crumbling beneath its weight. The young Rider atop the horse tumbles off, clutching her side, red staining her fingers. It’s not my mother, but familial bonds don’t matter now.

  I rush to her, help her put pressure on the wound, which is deep and gaping, her robe shredded to the skin. “Help!” I scream. Her name is Aria, but the Riders call her Demon Blade due to the quickness with which she wields the duel daggers that are her weapons of choice.

  But no amount of deft knife-work can save her now as I press my palm against her wound, my flesh the only thing keeping her insides from spilling out.

  Remy’s at my side, mouth agape, yelling for help, too, but his voice, like mine, is lost in a chorus of men and women with similar pleas.

  Aria’s eyes roll back as blood trickles from the corners of her lips. She stops breathing at what seems like the exact moment her horse does. I want to cry for them both, but I can’t because my mother might be out there, and because I’m a Rider and I have to be stronger than the common Stormer.

  Remy clutches at Aria’s robe and I remember that she was like a sister to him growing up, that when her mother and father died of the Plague, Remy’s family took her in as one of their own, clothing and feeding and training her.

  I grab his hand and pull him to his feet, slap him hard across the face. The time for mourning will come.

  He stares at me with blank eyes, but lets me pull him away from Aria, away from his pain, which, based on his expression, tries to cling to him like mud on a rainy afternoon.

  Through the chaos we move like skeletons, stiff and numb and searching. Dark-robed Riders stride here and there, some spattered with blood, some clean because they weren’t sent on the mission. All carrying the injured, trying to get them into the hands of the Healers, who are visible due to the white robes they wear.

  We force ourselves to look at the faces of everyone who passes.

  Eventually we see Gard, as upright and gregarious as ever, bellowing orders and pulling the wounded Riders from their horses, carrying two at a time to the area that’s been set aside for healing.

  “Father!” Remy shouts, but his voice is a whisper. He releases my hand and runs to Gard. The bubble of joy that bulges in my stomach is popped instantly by the dozens of needles of jealousy and fear that prick my skin and dart through my insides like tiny hunters.

  He’s found who he’s looking for and I’m alone again. I start to turn, anger and frustration and sadness burning in my chest, when I hear him say, “Have you seen Sadie’s mother?”

  I whirl around, shocked.

  Gard places two groaning Riders on the ground next to a line of five other groaning Riders. Two waiting white-clothed Healers immediately begin cutting their clothing off to inspect their wounds. He looks past his son, sees me, and I know—I know. His face is grim and he shakes his head, but then he says something that makes me gasp. “I brought her back myself—she’s in her tent,” he says, answering his son’s question but speaking directly to me.

  And I’m gone and leaping over the body of a dead horse, my bloody hands churning at my sides. Our tent is wide open and I dive inside, nearly colliding with the Healer who’s tending to my mother.

  Her head is up, held by my father, who’s squeezing drops of water from a wet cloth into her mouth, whispering words that sound eerily similar to ones spoken while he’s in his deepest meditation. The front of her robe is cut away and ragged on the ground next to her, revealing her wound.

  Her wound.

  It reminds me of Aria’s wound, a deep chasm spilling endless streams of blood and showing pink tube-like parts of her that were never meant to be seen.

  I choke and the tears are hot flashes of lightning in my eyes that burn and blind me. “Save her,” I croak out, as if it will empower the Healer to perform miracles that only Mother Earth is capable of.

  But my words don’t have power. And my tears are for nothing.

  Because there, in our tent, my mother’s eyes find me, her lips part, and she says, “Listen to yo
ur father, for he is wise,” and then she dies.

  ~~~

  The clouds will forever be darker, the rains harder, the lightning brighter, and the thunder louder. For my anger is in the sky, in the air that we breathe, in my every act and my every word. It washes the sadness away to a place where no one will ever find it.

  “You knew!” I scream at my father. “You knew and you didn’t try to stop her!”

  The heavy rain pounds our tent, but I can feel every drop on my skin, as if I’m one of the dead lying in the center of town, awaiting the passing of the storm before they can be burned atop the funeral pyre. Like my dead mother.

  He says something, but I can’t understand him because he mumbles into his hands and the anger-infused thunder booms at just that moment, drowning him out.

  “Why?” I scream. “Why did you let her go?”

  I’m standing and Father’s cowering. His cheeks are wet with tears and mine are dry. I allowed myself the weakness of tears for half a day, my head buried in my pillow like a child, until I could take it no more. When I wiped away the wet and salt, the anger swallowed me in red and black and questions. I won’t cry ever again.

  Not ever again.

  “It wasn’t my choice,” my father says, and I think he’s repeating what he said a moment ago, when the thunder overwhelmed his grief-stricken voice.

  I shudder as a burst of cold finds its way through our tent. “She knew?” I ask, my voice losing a small measure of its sharpness.

  He nods, buries his face in both hands.

  I look away, at the wall of the tent, which is dancing with shadows. Our shadows: anger and grief.

  “Tell me everything,” I say to the tent.

  My father’s shoulders are shaking, convulsing, his tears spilling between his fingers like rivers through cracks in the rocks. Like blood through flaps of torn skin.

  “Tell me,” I say more firmly.

  His shaking stops, but the tears keep dripping off his hands. I should go to him, comfort him.

  I don’t.

  A few minutes pass, and when he finally looks up his face is shiny black and puffy. “Sadie, I—”

  “You owe me the truth,” I say through my teeth. “Tell me what you should have told me from the beginning.”

  He tries to speak, but his voice falters. He stops, takes a deep breath, starts again, his voice clearer this time. “I had a vision, Sadie.”

  “Of a battle,” I say, not trying to hide the frustration in my voice. “That much you told me.”

  He shakes his head. “There was more. Another battle.”

  What a novel idea! Of course, why didn’t I think of that? I close my eyes, count to ten, try to breathe. “What other battle,” I say, eyes still closed.

  A pause. And then: “One you were fighting in.”

  My eyes flash open, meeting my father’s, which are red and swollen, his tears drying around them in white circles. “Me?” I say, finally feeling like I’m talking to a human and not a Man-of-Wisdom parrot.

  He nods. Then shakes his head. “I’m not saying this right. Before the battle that you were fighting in, was the battle with the Icers. Their king had gone mad, was taking children and selling them to the Soakers. This much we knew. It was—”

  “Our duty to stop them,” I interject quickly. “Did the Riders kill him?”

  “I haven’t been able to confirm with Gard yet, but if my vision was correct, then yes, the Icer King is dead.” The way he says it leaves me wondering whether it was a Rider that killed him. But that doesn’t matter. Not when my mother is dead.

  “And in your vision you saw Mother die?” I surprise even myself with how steady the words come out, like I’m asking about the weather, or what’s for the evening meal. I wince when I realize I don’t feel sad anymore. Everything is hot.

  Father closes his eyes, dips his chin, nods. “And you sent her anyway,” I say disgustedly.

  His eyes open and his face contorts into an agonized crunch of skin and expression and fresh tears. But he doesn’t deny it.

  He doesn’t.

  But even in my anger I know the truth: He couldn’t have stopped her if he wanted to. Because my mother is like me—she doesn’t fear pain or death. Not is—was. Not doesn’t—didn’t.

  I move on, still hating him for his weakness. “The other battle?” I say.

  He sniffs, wipes away the tears with the back of his hand. “My second vision was more muddled,” he says. “I didn’t understand everything. There were many Soakers, hundreds—fighting the Riders.”

  “And I was a Rider?” I ask. “Like a real one—with a horse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then your vision must be of events further into the future. There are still months before my training is complete.”

  “Maybe,” he says. “But I cannot be sure.”

  I stare at him for a moment and then motion for him to continue.

  “There were others at the battle, too, some with brown skin.”

  “Heaters?”

  He nods. “I believe so. And two with pale white skin and beards. Young men from ice country.”

  I rub my hands together, for once appreciating one of my father’s visions. A chance to not only fight the Soakers, but to avenge my mother’s death. Revenge must gleam in my eyes, because my father says, “Bloodlust can destroy a person.”

  “So can weakness,” I say.

  I’m surprised when his gaze holds mine, steady and tear-free. Normally a comment like that would send his eyes to his hands.

  A memory tumbles through my mind. “When you told me of your vision before,” I say, “you said I would have a choice to make. What did you mean by that?”

  He sighs heavily, as if a deep shot of hot air might be just the thing to change the future. “In my vision there was a boy…no, a young man.”

  “One of the Icers?” I ask hopefully.

  “No. A Soaker, clad in officer’s blue.”

  My thoughts immediately pull up images of the officer boy atop the hill, his contemplative expression, my attempt to kill him—stopped by Remy. “What about this boy?” I ask.

  “He was in the fight, but he seemed unsure of himself.”

  “Weak and pathetic,” I say.

  “No. Not like that. More like he was deciding whether to fight, and who to fight.”

  “And I’m there?”

  He nods. “And you have to decide.”

  “Decide what? Whether to kill a Soaker officer? Like that’s even a decision.” Heat courses through my veins just thinking about seeing the Soaker boy. Why did Remy have to stop me? If I had killed him then, before my father’s vision had come to pass, would that have changed the future? Would it have changed his first vision, which ended in my mother’s death?

  Remy’s face joins my father’s in my mind, surrounded by Icers and Soakers—the officer boy. My mother’s assassins.

  “First Paw, and now Mother,” I say, choosing my words like you choose a knife—the sharper and longer the better. The pain that flashes across my father’s face proves the strength of my choices. A tear drips from one eye, then the other.

  He extends his arms, beckoning. “Mourn with me,” he sputters.

  There’s no kindness left in me, no forgiveness. My scoff is my response.

  I push through the flap and into the storm.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Huck

  The man in Cain’s cabin is Webb. The same Webb who I sent to the brig for insubordination. Yellow-toothed and crooked-smiled and chewing a thick wad of black tobacco that mixes with his spit and dribbles down his chin, getting stuck in his brown stubble.

  “What’s he doing here?” I ask, glancing at Cain, who seems very tired all of a sudden.

  Cain remains silent while Webb says, “I’m a witness, sir.” The last word is spoken with a mockery that contradicts the very essence of the word.

  “A witness to what?” I ask, but then my eyes widen when it dawns on me. Inadvertently, my ey
es close. He saw.

  Webb spits on the floor and Cain kicks him hard in the back of the legs. Rubbing himself, Webb says, “I mighta saw a certain brown rat chuck a filthy ol’ brush at the admiral’s son. How embarrassing.” He spits again and this time Cain doesn’t kick him, although I can tell he wants to.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  He smiles wickedly, the corner of his lip upturned into a sneer. “Just my due,” he says. “A bigger cabin—like this one.” He motions with a hand around Cain’s temporary living space. “Oh, and a small promotion. Lieutenant should do just fine.”

  My jaw drops. Either request is impossible, would raise too many questions, would call into question my ability to lead, to make wise choices. But if I don’t…

  “You’re bluffing,” I say.

  “Try me.” And I know I can’t try him. After I sent him to the brig, he’ll spill the beans without giving it another thought, maybe directly to my father. And then he’ll kill the girl. The only thing keeping Webb from shouting the crime from the tops of the masts is the dream of promotion.

  Cain says, “You’ve been kicked off of every ship you’ve been on, Webb. I’ve asked around about you. The rumors aren’t good. They said you’ve killed people—bilge rats.”

  “Bilge rats ain’t people,” Webb says, spitting again. I bite back a retort, wait for Cain to continue the questioning.

  “There’s talk of a little girl, too. Found raped and murdered.” I stop breathing, for just a second. I knew Webb was bad, but has he really done all this?

  Webb wipes a bit of black drool from his lips. “No one can prove anything,” he says.

  “So you’re saying you’re not scared of the other men—the ones who think you did it?” Cain asks, staring at Webb.