Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(60)

She opened her mouth and let the water rush in. At first it choked her, dizzying and terrible. But she forced herself to think of her Song, of the way it came from deep inside her, more than simply air and pressure and vocal cords. She screamed, a desperate prayer to her mother not to kill her, to let her live and this man, too, and please, please, please.

And then she was surging upward. Cutting through the water as easily as if she was sunlight through kelp and born to it. She searched for the hull of the canoe, a disturbingly small speck on the endless surface, and angled toward it. Kick, reach, sing, pray. Again and again, until she bumped up against the ship. Her ship.

She thrust an arm up, slamming her palm against the wood as hard as she could. She heard muffled shouts and knew she had been spotted. Seconds later, she was being heaved up and over the side of the ship. She opened her mouth to suck in the precious air but found that she didn’t need it. It didn’t make sense, but she dismissed the moment as shock.

Arms were laying her on the deck and someone untangling the rope from her chest, and she could see them dragging Loob up behind her, still a dead weight. They were hitting his back and trying to force the water from his lungs, but he was still, his face slack and gray. She closed her eyes. She had taken too long; he was dead.

She shivered, frozen through. Asked through chattering teeth for a blanket. She was too tired to lift her head, but she pried her eyes open again to see where her crew was, where those gentle hands had gone. But all she saw was Callo, standing a dozen paces away, eyes steady on her.

“Callo,” she whispered. “Cold.”

But her first mate didn’t move. No one helped her.

She tried to push herself to sitting, tried to pull her legs up under her, but they wouldn’t move. Why wouldn’t her legs move? Something crashed against the benches, heavy and wet, and she glimpsed scales, black and shimmering iridescent in the rain. Her mind tried to make sense of it, but she couldn’t.

She managed to rise up on her elbows. Her crew stood around her, frozen, staring. Accusing. She could almost smell the fear in the air, acrid and animal. And directed at her.

Her chest tightened. Her eyes met Callo’s.

“Teek,” he said. A curse, this. An abomination.

Something struck her hard across the back of her head, and her world went black, darker than the depths of the sea.





CHAPTER 21




THE CRESCENT SEA

YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

(11 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

There is a boy here, a son of one of the matron’s own Shields. I will not call him by name but know that he is mean and bullies the smaller children when no adults are there to see. Tana once told me he even bullied the crows. Today he fell from the cliffs and is dead. Mother told the boy’s parents that it was an accident, but Akel whispered to me that he saw the crows harry the boy off the ledge. I suspect it was no accident and nothing but the crow’s own justice.

—From Observations on Crows, by Saaya, age thirteen



Xiala woke, still in darkness and stretched out on the floor. She was still on the ship, that she knew immediately from the soft rocking of the waves.

Soft rocking of the waves. Which meant the storm had passed. Which meant they had survived.

She opened her eyes, cringing at the pain in her head, and looked around. She was inside, which was why it was dark. Light filtered through the wood pole walls and reed roof, which meant it was daylight. Thoughts came slowly, but she determined that she was in the shed she had come to think of as Serapio’s room.

Serapio. There he was, sitting so close she could touch the edge of his robe if she stretched out her hand. His back was against the wall and his neck tilted. He looked to be sleeping, but his body held a tension that belied rest, arms locked at his sides and body jerking in small convulsions as she watched. If she had to describe him, she would say that he was caught in a nightmare.

Around his neck hung a leather pouch, tiny shards of glimmering powder caught in the drawstring at the narrow opening. They looked like shattered light.

His face was illuminated by the slanting daylight. Jaw slack, mouth slightly open, and eyes uncovered. From here he looked like he had simply closed his eyes in sleep, lashes resting across high-boned cheeks. Smooth skin. Full lips. Hair in a soft curl that cascaded to his shoulders.

I guess I fall for the pretty ones after all, she thought to herself.

She wondered if she should wake him. He didn’t look comfortable, but she didn’t know if he would welcome her intrusion. Why was she in his room, anyway?

She tried to remember what had happened during the storm. She remembered Loob and Baat overboard. And Loob dead, gray-faced, with eyes staring at nothing. And Callo’s face, the revulsion evident in the curve of his lip, the narrowing of his eyes. And the smell of fear, and… fish scales. Black and iridescent. Beautiful but wrong.

She shook her head, trying to make sense of the jumble of memories, but all it did was make her head ache worse. She rubbed a hand over the back of her skull, sure she’d find a bump under her mass of salt-soaked hair.

She pushed herself to her feet, her legs wobbly like she’d been swimming all day and forgotten how to walk. The room was small, she hadn’t realized how small. She walked to the door, careful not to wake Serapio, and tugged on the rope pull. It didn’t budge. She yanked again, harder. Nothing, and she had a flashback to being in the jail cell in Kuharan, and a half dozen other jail cells before that.