Whoever wanted Izar dead wanted it badly enough to be willing to kill the entire crew. As such, whoever it was, he was not on the drillship. That left only two men: Zaurak and Serpens. It could not be Zaurak, and so, by elimination, it had to be Serpens. But why? Why would Serpens want him dead? He hardly even knew Serpens.
A judder sounded underfoot, and the drillship fell by several inches. Losing their footing, men tumbled and rolled about the platform.
“We’re all going to die!” a motorman yelled.
“I knew we shouldn’t have left without Zaurak and Serpens!” Deneb said to Izar. He came to imitate Izar’s position, such that he also lay sprawled on his belly, peering down through the borehole at the cape of blackness below. He squeezed his cap in both hands until it was as shapeless as a rag. “What should we do?”
Izar alone knew the drillship inside and out, the whole in addition to the parts. But there was nothing that could be done. Trying to save the drillship would be like trying to save an airplane whose engine was dead.
But he had to try. They would all die otherwise. The only way to save the drillship and the men aboard it would be to detach the rig from the ship. With the rupture of the annular blowout preventer, most of the rig was already detached, but it would be essential to detach it fully. The rig was like a limb that had torn off unevenly instead of being cleanly severed; its gangrenous tissue would infect and kill the whole. Izar would have to dislocate the ram blowout preventer and plug the borehole, otherwise oil would lap onto the platform soon, and Dominion Drill I would sink under the weight of the very oil it was supposed to have collected. But to remove the preventer was a job that would take at least an hour, not minutes—yet minutes were all Izar had.
“Do exactly as I’m doing,” he directed Deneb.
He wrapped both hands around the ram blowout preventer. Deneb placed his hands next to Izar’s. They tried to turn the preventer, to rotate it clockwise, and then counterclockwise, but the valve didn’t budge. Meanwhile, the ocean continued to darken below, the oil like a sticky, thickening cake of tar. The drillship continued to lower, several sudden inches at a time; Izar felt each lurch in his belly. A gush of grease washed onto the platform through the borehole. Gooey, stinky, it rolled underneath Izar on the platform, through his shirt and pants, and Izar thought of himself as a cutlet in a frying pan. And then another wave of oil hijacked the ship. The drillship fell again; this time, the fall was by more than a foot, and Izar felt as though a string connected to his navel had jerked him down.
Time was almost out.
A sweat broke out on his brow. Deneb was also sweating, so profusely that the mermaid across his arm seemed to be weeping, her tears falling into the ocean through the borehole. Izar shifted in position slightly, such that his left hand, with the platinum chip, bore most of the pressure of the attempted rotation. He clenched his teeth so tightly that he thought the two rows might shatter against each other. But then it happened: The preventer started to loosen.
A froth of oil splashed his face and Deneb’s; they managed to shut their eyes just in time. They continued to rotate the valve together, their eyes opening cautiously. The blowout preventer came off, their hands released it, and it fell into the oil, where it disappeared instantly, like a clove in a stew. Their hands working in unison, Izar and Deneb slid the stopper out from just underneath the platform and rotated it upward through a handle in its center. It was like a bathtub drain plug, except with a diameter of four feet rather than four centimeters. They rotated it repeatedly until it was on level with the platform and could be tightened no further, like the lid of a jar.
Oil could no longer get onto Dominion Drill I—which, now, without the rig, was no longer a drillship, but just a ship. The thought made Izar feel both safe and sad as he laid his cheek against the stopper. The stopper was greasy, filthy, but it did not matter—he would live; they would all live.
Through oil-smeared eyelashes he saw rows of steel-toed boots; he had not realized it, but the men had gathered around him and Deneb while the two of them had been working. Now they tugged Deneb up to his feet, lifted him onto their shoulders, and tossed him up and down, cheering raucously. They knew better than to be so informal with Izar—he would view it as an infraction. As the men celebrated their survival, Izar continued to lie there on the platform, in the midst of others but pleasantly alone.
Something rolled over to his cheek, coming to a stop along his scar. Narrow and cylindrical, it was blackened with oil, such that he could identify nothing beyond its shape. It must have gotten lodged in the stopper, otherwise he would have noticed it before. He picked it up and dabbed the oil off with his thumb.
It was Zaurak’s engraved pen, he saw with a start.
Its location all but stated that Zaurak had been at the borehole and that he’d been there after having placed his checklist on Izar’s desk, for he’d have used the same pen to complete the checklist.
But why would Zaurak have visited the borehole specifically? Izar tried desperately, but he could think of no reason Zaurak would have for visiting the borehole other than to switch out the annular blowout preventer. But Zaurak had a crippled leg; he could not plunge into the water through the borehole himself. The thought did not bring Izar the relief he expected, though, for Zaurak could have done it with his right-hand man, Serpens. Relatedly, Serpens would have been the one to lean out over the rails and slash all the lifeboats. Was that why they were missing together—because they were working together to try to kill Izar?
It could not be, yet it had to be . . . the pen in his hand told him so. It must have slipped out of Zaurak’s shirt pocket and gotten lodged in the stopper by accident.
Yesterday, Zaurak had whispered in Serpens’s ear during the drillship check—he must have been telling Serpens to loosen the foothold of the derrick and make it fall upon Izar. When that ploy had failed—Deneb had rescued Izar—Zaurak and Serpens must have started hatching this second plan, to sink the ship.
Izar wrapped his arms around himself, feeling as though invisible feet were kicking him in the ribs. Three years ago, when Antares had wanted to fire Zaurak upon promoting Izar, he had fought fiercely for his friend and mentor, even threatening to leave Ocean Dominion for him. He would give his life for Zaurak; why would Zaurak want to take his life?
He shook the pen in his hand, as though he were shaking Zaurak by the shoulders. Answer me! he implored the pen. But it remained silent. His neck hot and red, Izar dragged himself to his feet and lumbered over to the rails. With all the strength of his arm, he flung the pen as far away as he could and watched it fall and disappear in the flood of blackness below.
8
Black Poison
"I caught you!” Coralline cried.
Ecklon whirled around.
His companion was very much not Rosette, Coralline saw. It was a grim, diminutive merman with an enormous nose, fossil-gray eyebrows, and deep lines through his forehead: Sinistrum Scomber—his boss. Sinistrum grimaced at her, then swam past her out the window with such haste that his tailfin practically knocked her decanter of parasol wine off the windowsill.