Locate yourself within your body, not your emotions.
The planks were heaving and buckling beneath my knees – the ship was beginning to break apart, tossed back and forth between the battering waves. Rapidly frizzing hanks of hair were writhing around my face. My back throbbed with the heat of the fire, even as my skin pebbled with the icy cold wind and the needling spray of the ocean. My hand was clenched stiff around the brass rail. My hip and elbow and knees hurt from the impacts with the deck.
Now locate your mind within your body.
This was me. My mind. Myself. My thoughts were within my mind, under my control because they were mine. They were a still, calm pool across which only a single ripple moved. And the ripple said:
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I met his gaze squarely. “We’re going to have to swim.”
Uldar shook his head frantically as the ship’s next violent lurch sent him sliding toward the bulwark. As he collided with it I caught hold of his upper arm, trying to get him to focus on me, to look at me – but he was staring over my shoulder, transfixed. Against my will I looked back. The remnants of the central mast had begun to fall. Tangled, flaming sails and ropes broke free around it, lashing at the wind. A tiny form, silhouetted against the raging curls of orange flame, toppled from some place of desperate refuge near the top. The man disappeared before I could flinch. Into the water? Into the fire? I couldn’t even hear the scream that must have left his throat.
Uldar shook himself free of my grasp and heaved himself to his feet. “No – no. We’re too far from land, the water is too cold – the icebergs – we have to find a – a lifeboat – ”
I am not afraid.
“Your Highness – Uldar. Listen to me. We’re going in the water, so you have to take your robes off, do you understand? Or you’ll drown.”
It was no good; I could see his gaze going distant, his mind slipping away somewhere else, somewhere bleak and hopeless. “You don’t understand. I can’t swim.”
I felt my mouth fall open. “What?”
Blue black water was rising again, dwarfing the flaming, falling mast, dwarfing the whole of The Black Tern. An obsidian cliff thrusting up from the sea. Chunks of ice hung inside it, white-green, nearly as long as the ship itself. The wave hung in place, impossible, solid, motionless for an endless instant. How could water do that? How could water –
The sea swallowed the ship.
I lost my grip on the rail and was swept up, tossed head over heel. Something hard, sharp, bounced off my temple. Pain arrowed through my skull into my neck. My vision went blurry again, silver-black at the edges, and the deck was turning, the ship was turning, turning over. Capsizing. Triple Gods, the deck was above my head.
The ocean was beneath me.
I was overboard.
The sea tried to eat me whole. Its black maw was cold, so cold, colder than anything I had ever imagined. Within a single frenzied moment I could barely feel my limbs, let alone find the strength to move them. The light skirt of my shift tangled around me like iron chains, dragging me down. I was a good swimmer; I had learned on those happy afternoons with Aramin and my Father, when he was allowed to visit us, splashing and diving in the warm, turquoise bathing pools of the Palace. But no human could swim in this.
The waves plunged me down and dragged me up again, tumbled me round and round until my head broke the surface. I gasped and choked and coughed on the salt spray, eyes and throat burning. I couldn’t see Uldar. The ship – the ship was gone, either sunk or already miles away. The thunder of the storm and the waves deafened me and it was so dark that I could barely tell the churning sea from the rippling, wind-torn clouds. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet.
Uldar had been right. There was nothing to swim for. No land in sight. Only the storm and the icebergs. All I could do was fight the sea, kick and punch and thrash at the water, fight my own weakness and the ruthless tide trying to pull me toward the Numinast, battle the dangerous exhaustion and numbness that urged me to close my eyes and just give up.
No. No. I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I howled my denial into the storm. I will not die here, like this – in the cold – in the dark – miles from home. Not like this. No!
Then I saw it. The distinctive, narrow shape of The Ice Blade, its gleaming sides and serpent figurehead illuminated by a flash of lightning. Somehow still afloat.
5
I struck out toward The Ice Blade, forcing my leaden arms and legs to move, no matter how clumsily. The ship seemed to hang in the water ahead of me, never getting any closer.
Am I moving? Am I even moving at all?
A wave rushed over my head. I clamped my mouth and eyes shut, hands clawing desperately above me, searching for air. In the next instant I was propelled up again, sobbing wetly for breath – and the ship was there, right there, surging in my direction, tossed my way by the capricious sea.
I raised both heavy arms and with a desperate effort slapped my hands onto the edge of the low bulwark. Pain flared in my torso as I collided with the ship’s side, but I clamped my fists closed and didn’t let go. My face was out of the water, protected from the flying spray by the bulk of the ship. Dry air excoriated my lungs. I clung, flinging one arm right over the top of the bulwark, and breathed one full, frozen breath.
Then the narrow ship spun, describing a dizzy circle in the waves, like a leaf in a stream. I choked on a scream as the force of the movement nearly pried me off. The sea sucked at my legs greedily, trying to drag me under. I couldn’t pull myself up any higher, couldn’t shake off the weight of the water. The ship’s sides weren’t low enough. I was too tired. My body was too numb.
The sea might have stolen my strength, but not my stubbornness or my will to live. I hung on grimly as The Ice Blade bucked and whirled, then tipped toward me, dropping me inexorably back down into the water until the ocean threatened to close over my face again. The ship was going to capsize. I would be trapped beneath it and drown –
My head snapped forward as we abruptly heeled in the other direction. Suddenly I hung flat against the side of the ship, lying pressed against the bulwark. Only my feet were still in the water. My blood surged: I wouldn’t get such a chance again. I forced my straining shoulders to drag me a little higher, twisted, felt the ship begin to shift – no no no – and flung my legs up desperately.
My left heel found the top of the bulwark. I hooked my ankle over it with a bruising impact, curled my upper body in at an angle that sent agony tearing through my bruised ribs, and flung myself forward, head first. I tumbled heavily over the side, hit one of the rowing benches, and landed with a splash in the icy water at the bottom of the ship.
I latched shuddering hands onto the legs of the same rowing bench – bolted down in a neat row alongside its fellows – which I had hit as I fell. The hasty movement sent jagged pulls of pain up and down my battered body, but I didn’t care. I would snap each of my own fingers off one by one rather than go back into that vicious water. Resting my head wearily against my arm, I groped at my chest with my free hand. A heaving sigh of relief; the heavy silver chain and the large, round locket were still around my neck.
I will survive this.
“Help!”
The shout roused me, like pins and needles lighting up my brain. Blinking blearily, I peeled my salty face from my wet arm and struggled upright. The lethargy which had enveloped me was alarming.