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“Are they a threat?” the Elder murmured, never taking his eyes off them.
Corayne shook her head once.
“You know their crew,” Andry breathed, close enough to feel his heat. She glanced out from under her hood, meeting his wide, dark eyes like pools of still water.
“As well as I know myself. TheTempestbornis here,” she whispered.
And so is my mother.
If I get up now, they won’t notice. I can cross the square, hunt the docks. It will only take a moment.She imagined her boots, each step faster than the one before, until they pounded over the planks and up the gangway, into her mother’s waiting arms. There would be yelling, arguments, perhaps the locked door of the captain’s cabin. But Meliz an-Amarat was here.Hell Melwas here.We could be gone with the tide. To whatever horizon we choose. Toward danger, or away from it.
Corayne knew which her mother would choose for them.
And it would be the world’s ending.
It took everything to stay in her seat, gripping the edge of the bench lest she bolt away.
“Should we get out of here?” Andry said, his hand on her shoulder again.
Corayne didn’t answer, her focus on the Jydi’s broad back. Swallowing hard, she brought a finger to her lips, gesturing for quiet.
“I’ve never known you to be a tea drinker, Ehj,” Kireem said, his voice musical, the Paramount accented by his native Gheran. He shrugged out of her salt-worn coat.
Ehjer laughed heartily on his stool. “The storm rang my head like Volka’s bell. I don’t think I could touch Mother’s mead, let alone stomach whateveryssthey serve up in the Adira taverns,” he said, hissing out the Jydi curse.Piss,it meant. One of the first words Corayne had ever learned in his language. “Many thanks, friend,” he added, raising his fresh cup to the tea keeper. “So, will the ship live?”
“Lost a mast, barely salvaged the hull.” Kireem crushed flowers into his own pot, stirring idly. “What do you think?”
Lost a mast and nearly the hull.Corayne’s heartbeat quickened. She tried to picture the proud and fierceTempestbornlimping into the port like a wounded animal.Nearly broken in two,Charlon had said, describing some poor ship Corayne had barely pitied. Now she knew better. Now she knew fear for that galley and its crew. Under the table, her knuckles went white.
Until there was not the bench beneath her fingers, but skin, darker than her own, warm where her flesh went numb. She squeezed Andry’s hand gratefully.
“You know better than I,” Ehjer blustered, in his booming version of a whisper. “The Captain tells you things.”
“A few weeks, if the supplies can get in. But with the Sea the way it is...”
“Never seen the Sarim like that.” Ehjer slurped his tea. “Whirlpools, waterspouts, thunder... it was furious. The gods themselves warring in the water.”
Kireem didn’t touch his cup, his single eye fixed on the steam rising from the liquid. He traced it, transfixed or dazed. “I’ve never seen anything like thatthing,” he hissed. The navigator had been with Hell Mel for as long as Corayne lived, and nothing had ever unsettled him so.
“Where did it come from?” The big Jydi was just as agitated.
Kireem shrugged. “You’re the godly one between us, Ehj.”
“That doesn’t mean I understand why the goddess of the waters sent a monster to devour us.”
Corayne ripped her eyes from her mother’s crewmates, looking to Dom with lightning speed. He was already glaring back, his mouth set into a thin line.A monster. The goddess of the waters.Her stomach churned like the angry ocean.
Kireem dropped his voice again. “Did you see what the captain cut out of its belly?”
“I was busy chopping a tentacle off Bruto. The beast was still choking him even while it bled to death.”
The other patrons of the shop were clearly listening, as was the tea keeper. Everyone froze, dropping all pretense of pretending not to eavesdrop. Corayne felt as if she might forget to breathe.
Tentacle.
“Three Ibalets, sailors of the Golden Fleet,” Kireem hissed. His fingers wound around Ehjer’s wrist, nails like claws. “In full sail armor and dyed silk, half eaten. All there out on the deck with the creature’s rotten guts.”
Ehjer gingerly nudged his tea away. “Meira of the Waters is ravenous.”
