I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked round to see Navare behind me. “Step down, Damasco,” he said, calm but firm.
I shook him off roughly. It wasn’t that he was ordering me around; it was the pity in his voice as he did it. I could feel the emotion welling in me, the frustration and disappointment, and I knew it was myself I was angry with as much as Estrada — perhaps more so. What kind of fool had I been to believe, actually to let myself believe, that the universe could have some role in mind for me beyond a brief, pathetic life of petty thievery?
Just for a moment I considered telling Navare what I thought of him, too. But four guardsmen were already watching our altercation with a little too much interest. Instead, I stormed away — as far as I could, anyway, which was to the other end of the boat.
On the fourth day, the wind changed, and in no uncertain terms. The crew barely had time to get our sails up before we were caught by its breath and dragged forward, the already considerable speed we’d been keeping almost redoubling.
It did nothing to make me feel any better. In fact, I was close to the point of throwing myself overboard by then. Perhaps the palace soldiers would pick me up; maybe if I gave back Panchetto’s bath ointments they would forget the whole stupid business. Even if they didn’t, even if they left me to drown or put me to torture, it couldn’t be worse than what I was currently enduring.
Since I couldn’t quite work up the final degree of desperation needed to take the plunge, however, that day passed much as the others had — uneventful unless you considered the crew’s incessant struggles to keep our craft on course as events, which I didn’t.
Late in the afternoon, I overheard Navare comment that we were passing the northern edge of Pasaeda and so, if the wind kept up, less than a day from our destination. By that point, even the prospect of a relief from my nautical torments could do nothing to lift my spirit. It had long since occurred to me that if the northerners were anything like their reputation, if Moaradrid had been any representation of their national character, we’d be lucky to live long enough even to explain our presence. On the other hand, death might not be such a terrible alternative to sitting in a stinking tent for days while Estrada played diplomat.
As it turned out, however, Navare’s optimism was ill-founded — and I had more immediate worries than foul-tempered northerners or their inadequate hygiene.
Our first intimation of trouble came when the boat behind us changed its course. Until then, they’d held close to our wake, trailing us like a guilty hound at its master’s heel. Now, for the first time, they’d set a line significantly different to ours — drifting further out to sea, until soon they were almost out of view.
“What are they up to?” I asked the nearest person, who turned out to be one of the buccaneers, a man whose shaven head was tanned to the colour and consistency of old leather.
He turned deep-set eyes on me, and I thought he wouldn’t answer, or perhaps would stab me for wasting precious seconds of his life. Then he said, in a voice every bit as weathered as his face, “Maybe they know something we don’t.”
I didn’t have the courage to press further. In any case, vague though his answer had been, I thought I’d followed his implication. I’d already grasped from overheard conversations that no one in our crew had sailed this course before, that our navigation had been based on a combination of tavern gossip and a few tattered charts Mounteban have given to Navare. The fact that our pursuers had tailed us so closely had suggested they were no more familiar with these waters than we were.
As I gazed towards the other craft, settled now into a course that placed them roughly parallel to us, though far behind, I realised there was another, equally valid explanation. I’d assumed they were trailing us; I’d accepted that they had no means to attack us. So far as I knew, no one on board had reached a different conclusion.
But there was another possibility, and my sun-scarred friend had summed it up perfectly. What if they knew something we didn’t? What if they’d simply been waiting?
I looked to starboard. We were passing a long tract of gravel beach, its rocky line slipping uneasily into the sea, so that even quite far out I could see the black tips of rocks, and beyond that swirls of white water. I looked again to port, and to the other boat there, now just a brooding smudge between the ocean and the late afternoon sky. And as I glanced from one to the other, a pressure began to build inside my head and chest — a sense of purest dread.
I was about to shout out, though even as I opened my mouth I wasn’t quite sure what I’d say — when the world fell apart. The angle of the boat shifted entirely, taking my feet and everything else with it, spinning the sky around my head. The roar of the waves transformed into a crash like a fist crunching kindling, though amplified a thousand times — and what made it more awful was that it was coming from directly beneath us.
Now I understood why the other boat had pulled away, and what it was they knew that we didn’t.
If I hadn’t, the spur of rock gouging through the bottom of our hull would surely have answered any remaining questions.
CHAPTER SIX
It was impossible to tell when I left the boat; impossible, as the sea flooded in, to say what was inside and what was out. For a moment, I couldn’t even tell sky from sea — but the flood of icy brine into my throat answered that one quickly enough.
I floundered, clutched for where I thought the boat’s shattered timbers must be, realised they weren’t and went under — was sucked under, as if the water below were hollow and I was being dragged into the gaping void.
I didn’t get far. My ankle dashed against what could only be a rock, and as the impact rocked me over, my head glanced off another. I felt the skin tear and a deep chill, as though the salt water were trying to drain into me. Searching with my good ankle, I made contact with something hard and jagged, kicked off.
I broke the surface, gasping. Through blood-slick hair and stinging salt, I saw the boat, sheared almost in two, flopping on the rocks like a gutted fish. There were men swimming, a couple just floating, one clutching to the mast. I couldn’t see Estrada; I couldn’t even see Saltlick, and that seemed so absurd that I tried to sway myself around to look for him.
All I succeeded in doing was slapping the breath from my lungs, as a wave tossed me against a jut of broken timber. I recoiled, disorientated, and found there was nowhere to go but down. The waves closed back over me, and somehow my feet were facing up towards the surface now. The more I flailed, the deeper I seemed to carry myself. My head stung, where the cold had settled. My ankle, by contrast, was on fire.
I was dragging myself down and down. Every time I thought I’d righted myself, the dimming light of the surface only faded further. I was sure I’d hit more rocks, and the prospect terrified me; it only came to me far too late that the alternative was drowning a little deeper. By then, the chill and fire both had moved into my lungs, working to push out whatever air was left there, leaving my head and foot merely numb.
I wanted urgently to breathe; air or water, I didn’t care which. Only some small instinct kept me from trying, and I knew I couldn’t listen to it for much longer. The darkness was descending, or else I still was. Either way, I might never have time for that last breath if I didn’t take it then. I knew how good it would feel — as good as anything ever had. Whatever came after, it would be worth it…