Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(58)

So she simply enjoyed their nights up talking and watching the stars and listening to the sea, knowing it would end soon enough.

And now, with a storm coming in looking like a shipkiller, they all might have a little less time to enjoy one another’s company.

“We’ll have to dump some of the weight,” she told Callo, once Serapio had returned to his room and she and her first mate were giving orders to the men to prepare.

“Lord Balam won’t like it,” he said.

“Lord Balam will truly not give a fuck if it means we survive.”

Callo eyed her skeptically, as if to say a rich man always cared about losing his wealth, but she remembered what he’d said to her on the dock in Cuecola. Serapio was the only treasure on this ship that mattered.

“Dump the heavier stuff,” she said, pointing to the wooden crates. “There, and there. And it will make more room for the crew under the awning when they rest.”

“And the bladders?” He meant the flotation bladders that they would tie to the bow and stern to keep the ship from sinking.

“Fill them now so they are ready,” she said. “And the paddle ones, too.” They had more bladders to tie to the paddles. They would secure those to the sides of the boat and stretch them out over the water to make the canoe wider and more stable. “After the bladders are in place, set four men on bailing duty, and as soon as the rain starts, they start bailing.”

Callo nodded. “Anything else?”

“Everyone works in threes. Men tied together, too, and hitched to something immovable on the ship.” Tying men together gave them a fighting chance of being rescued if they went overboard, but it also meant that if the ship went down, the men tied to it went down with it. Of course, on the open sea, it didn’t matter. They all understood that if the ship sank today, there was no rescue.

“I’ll have Patu walk the seams again,” Callo offered. “There’s resin left enough to seal any leaks.”

“Do it,” she said, eyes on the horizon. “And hurry. We don’t have much time.” She chewed at her lip, thinking. Hoping to all seven hells that she hadn’t forgotten anything and trusting Callo to remind her if she had.

All morning, Xiala kept the men at paddles, moving forward at double time, doing their best to angle away from the beast that they could not outrun. She watched the sky grow dense and heavy with water, her eyes cast westward watching the far-off lightning that inched closer by the hour.

Callo came to her after high sun. “The men are asking why we’re preparing for the storm when you said you’d Sing us safe to shore.” His voice held a note of accusation, and she was surprised it had taken him so long to ask.

“And not you?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Maybe you can Sing down a spring squall, but this one’s big as a mountain range. More.” He gestured toward the horizon. “What’s a Teek to that monster?”

He was right, but she bristled nonetheless. She liked it better when he’d had faith in her.

“A Teek is always something,” she said, her pride smarting. “Let me do what I can.”

“What you can, then.” One sharp nod, and he was lumbering away, and Xiala was left wondering why she’d said that. He was right. There was nothing she could do. But she could try, couldn’t she?

She looked over at her crew. They were bent to their tasks, most working furiously, with the occasional furtive glance her way. Tension thickened the air, bad as any pressure leading the storm, and she knew how she could help.

She took a few deep breaths to clear her own nerves and thought of the first thunderstorm she’d lived through as a child. The whole village had gathered under one roof, better to be together in case mudslides hit or flooding took a house. And the grandmothers of the village had Sung for them all, sweet soothing Songs of better days and kinder seas. Songs of soft beds and no worries and waiting arms, and it had worked. Everyone had calmed and made it through that storm together. The next morning they’d come out to find palm trees torn apart as if by the hands of giants and roofs blown clear away, fields flooded to ruin, and strange creatures washed up on the shore. But no one had died, and that was what mattered; the rest could be rebuilt.

She Sang that Song now, a Song of comfort and ease, and even as the men bent to their tasks, their shoulders loosened. They exchanged smiles more often and encouraged one another with generous words. Thunder cracked, still far away, and someone, Atan, shouted defiance. The rest laughed, and Loob patted him on his broad shoulders.

She caught Callo’s eye and nodded. He nodded back.

And it was something after all.

The storm struck full in the late afternoon, clouds black with thunder rolling overhead punctuated by sharp crackling lightning that streaked across the sky in blinding flashes. The direction of the wind shifted with a fury forcing the ship off course like a child flicking a bug across a pond. Xiala marked the change and which way was north-northwest in hopes that they’d be able to find it again, and the rain came in great horizontal sheets that stung like spine needles against skin. And then the real fight began.

“Bailmen!” she shouted from her place at the stern. She hunched in her cowl, trying to keep the painful downpour off her face as best she could. Every article of clothing had been immediately soaked, toes to head, and it clung wet and cold to her body, as if the summer of a few days ago was a memory so distant it was as improbable as one of Serapio’s tales.