Forty more feet.
My arms slowed, the resistance of the water heavier each time my heart beat in my chest.
Thirty feet.
A sharp jerk stopped me, throwing my arms and legs forward, and my mouth opened, letting the cold water pour down my throat.
The rope. It was still tied around my waist. Anchored to the reef below.
I screamed, panicked. The last of my air rippled up in strands of bubbles as my hands raced to the knot, pulling weakly at the tight fibers. When it wouldn’t budge, I reached around my back for my knife. But it was gone. My belt was at the foot of the ridge.
Inky darkness flooded my mind as my chest caved in, my stomach turning. I tried to shift the rope over my hips, but it was no use. Below, a dark head of hair peeked up over the reef, and Koy’s black eyes looked up at me.
Blood trailed up before me in ribbons, floating like threads of smoke, and I suddenly felt lighter. Empty. The ache in my chest disappeared, leaving my insides hollow.
There was only the heartbeat pounding in my ears as I looked down at my leg, cut in a single bloody stripe. The shadow wrapped itself around me, folding my mind within it, and when it came, I let it swallow me whole.
EIGHT
“Breathe!”
The roaring voice tore me from the deep. A sting lit on my cheek and a sound rattled in my throat.
“Breathe!”
My eyes cracked open just enough to see a man’s face before me, darkened in the shadow of the ship’s hull beside us. A face that only pulled the faintest recognition. A deckhand. His gray eyes ran over me, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t draw a breath.
His hand rose up out of the water, lifting into the air, and came down again. He slapped me across the face and my chest exploded in pain as I gasped, swallowing the air and choking on the warm seawater in my mouth. The blurry edges of my vision came together, and the world around me focused, filling me with panic. I leapt for the rope beside me, hooking my arm around it to keep me above the water.
“Get her up!” The deckhand’s voice rang painfully in my ears.
And then I was moving. The crank on the deck of the Luna screeched and clicked, pulling me up with it, and the weight of my body made me slip down the wet rope until I wrapped my legs around its length.
When I looked up, Clove was watching from the quarterdeck, and I blinked when he wavered, the world turning on its side. I coughed until my lungs ached and he came down the steps two at a time, landing on the deck beside me.
“What happened?”
But I couldn’t speak. I fell to my knees, retching the saltwater from my belly until there was nothing left. A pool of warm red crept over the wood slats, touching my hand, and I looked down to my leg, remembering the blood in the water. The gash from the coral was still bleeding.
I sat back heavily, opening the torn skin with my fingers to inspect it. It wasn’t deep enough to see bone, but it needed to be closed. Another wave of nausea washed over me and I fell back onto the hot deck, running my hands through my hair and trying to remember what had just happened.
The crew of the Luna stood around me, staring, but Ryland was nowhere to be seen, probably still cowering on the reef and waiting to find out if I was going to snitch.
Koy came over the railing a moment later, landing with two heavy feet beside the foremast.
“What happened?” Clove said again, taking a step toward him.
But Koy was looking at me, and I put together the question in his eyes. He was playing by the rules of Jeval, waiting to see what I’d say first before he answered.
“I ran out of air,” I said hoarsely. My throat was on fire. “Lost my belt and couldn’t cut myself from the line I anchored to the reef.” I glanced back to Koy.
Clove followed my gaze to him, his mustache twitching. “Who saw it?” He turned in a circle, watching the faces of the other dredgers on the deck. But no one answered.
“What do you care?” I snapped, getting back to my feet. I steadied myself against the mizzen, breathing through the urge to retch again.
The knotted rope was still heavy on my hips, the length of it trailing over the side and disappearing into the water. I pulled, winding it up until the end fell onto the deck, and I crouched to pick it up. The fibers were sliced cleanly, not frayed.
It was the work of a blade.
I stood, the rope clutched in my hand as I looked to the bow. Koy’s eyes dropped to the deck and he turned, fitting his belt back around him. The last thing I’d seen before I blacked out was his face, peering up over the reef. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that he’d cut me loose.
I snatched a knife from the belt of a dredger standing next to me and sawed at the rope around my waist. One of the strykers came up the steps from belowdecks with a tin box of needle and thread in one hand, a bottle of rye in the other.
He reached out to steady me, but I tore my arm away. “Don’t touch me,” I snarled, snatching them from his hands and pushing past him to the archway.
I could feel the stares of the crew pinned to my back as I limped down the stairs, leaning into the wall to stay on my feet. I took a lantern from the hook and moved down the passage until I made it to the cargo hold, the tears lighting in my eyes as soon as I was cloaked in the darkness. I sniffed, willing the pain in my chest to stay put. I wasn’t going to let them hear me cry.
My leg stung, but it was nothing a few stitches couldn’t fix, and more importantly, it wouldn’t keep me from diving. I’d seen worse.
I closed the door and sat on an empty crate, moving the lantern close to me before I uncorked the rye. I pulled a deep breath in and let it go before I poured it over the wound. A growl erupted in my throat as I clenched my teeth. The burn shot up my leg, finding my belly, and the urge to vomit returned, making me feel dizzy.
I brought the bottle to my lips and drank, welcoming the warmth in my chest. Another second or two under water, and I wouldn’t have taken another breath. I wouldn’t have woken.
The passageway outside the door was silent and dark. I stared at the ground, trying to remember what I’d seen. The only two people on that reef were Koy and Ryland. And the look in Ryland’s eyes when he wrapped his hand around my throat had been clear. He’d wanted me dead.
That meant that Koy had cut the rope. That he’d saved my life. But that couldn’t be true.
I threaded the needle with trembling hands and pinched the deepest part of the cut together. The needle went through my skin without so much as a prick, and I was grateful that I was still so cold I could barely feel it.
“Through and over. Through again.” I found my lips moving around the words silently, the tears falling from the tip of my nose as I worked.
Clove had taught me to stitch a wound when I was a girl. He’d cut himself on a grappling hook and when he caught me spying on him on the quarterdeck, he demanded that I sit and learn.
“Through again.” I whispered.
The wide cargo hold seemed to close in, making me feel small in the darkness as one crystal clear memory surfaced after the other. My father at his desk. My mother lining up the gemstones on the table before me.
Which are the fakes?
The first time I got it right, she took me to the top of the mainmast and we screamed into the wind.
I stared into the dark, watching the image of her twist in the shadows. The shape of her moved with a bend of light coming from the deck, flickering like a lantern’s flame. She was a ghost. And for a moment, I thought that maybe I was too. That I was existing in some in-between space where Isolde had been waiting for me. That maybe I hadn’t made it out of the water. That I’d died with the cold sea in my lungs.