“The hold!” I shouted over the noise. “The hold is flooding!”
I crawled toward the stairs, struggling to descend them only to find that there were multiple hull breaches, all of them spraying water. Cathal charged into the main passage with a hammer in his hand, his clothes soaked through. He slid to a stop when he saw us and immediately registered the water pouring into the room. When we entered and got a better look, all three of us noticed the areas of damage were confined to the walls of Lyla’s cell.
Mullins shoved back through the door while Cathal and I rushed to the gate.
“Small leaks, but they’ll get bigger,” he said. “They need to be patched.”
We were both thinking the same thing when we glimpsed Lyla sitting in the corner, unbothered as the water wept down the walls.
I turned, searching for something, anything, to secure her with. When all I could find was rope, I was little hesitant, but with no time to be picky, I moved toward Lyla and pulled her arms behind her back through the bars. Her fists tightened, but she didn’t fight me when I began wrapping the ropes around her.
Mullins returned with a ring of keys and as soon as he noticed me knotting the ropes, he shoved one of the keys into the lock and opened the cell gate.
The ship slammed into another rock, throwing all three of us off our feet and piling us against the opposite wall. The water began to rush in with more force, transforming the hold into a rainstorm. Mullins picked up a plank of wood and hauled it toward the wall, slamming it against the leaks. All the while, the goat was bleating loudly like a screaming child.
“Hold it!” Cathal said, pulling iron nails out of the pockets of his trousers and hammering them quickly into the wood.
It all happened quickly. I’d never seen two men work with so much haste and before long, the wall had been managed, but wewere wading in ankle-deep water while the rest of the ship was in questionable condition.
“Galley!” someone shouted. Cathal quickly took his hammer and ran out into the passageway again. “Flooding in the galley!”
“These rocks are going to rip this ship apart,” Mullins said.
“He’ll get us through,” I said with unyielding faith.
We stumbled out of the cell, closing the gate behind us. I tossed Lyla one last glance just as the jostling of the ship began to quell. Mullins rushed topside while I stayed behind, listening to the movement of the ocean around us. The Weaver moaned like a giant animal in agony as she leveled out on a calmer tide. A smothering silence enveloped us. I still had a grip on the bars, bracing for another impact, but it never came. Slowly, I began to approach the door again, my feet squelching in the water. Just as I was about to step through, a resounding bang reverberated through the patched-up hull behind me. I spun as if I would be able to see something through the wood. Lyla and I locked eyes and a moment of understanding passed between us. Understanding that it was no rock that had grazed the hull that time.
I dashed out of the hold, squeezing past men trying to move planks from one place to another, and climbed the steps to the deck to find us drifting through a narrow passage between tall, jagged cliffs. A thin blanket of fog returned as if to make navigating the rocks more difficult, but at least the wind had begun to quiet down. I peered over the edge of the ship into the undulating waves below, looking for movement, but I saw nothing. Turning toward the sound of boots, I saw Vidar descending the steps with his cutlass drawn.
“They’re beneath us,” I warned.
“Aye, I would expect nothing less.”
“There was a leak in the hold.” He fixed his eyes on me, concerned. “It’s under control. For now. I can only hope your men can get the rest in hand.”
“They’re no strangers to foul weather. They’ll keep her afloat, but that’s not the worry I have.” His gaze darted upward and I followed, staring at the main mast and the strange way the rocks arched sharply over us. “If we lose the mast, we’re fucked, and this passage doesn’t look any more forgiving than the storm we endured to get here.”
“What can we do?”
“We can pray. For now,” he sighed. “I think it’s obvious at this point that the water here will do with us what it wants. We’ve made it this far, though. If Theloch didn’t want us here, we’d be dead already.”
He started to walk away, shrugging off his coat the way he always did when he was getting ready to do strenuous work.
For the next hour or so, the crew worked tirelessly to repair damage and siphon water from below deck. I kept my eyes on the mast, watching every cliff and rock pass us by, sometimes within inches of the sails like the rocky canyon was taunting us. Eventually, Meridan reemerged from below, her clothes just as wet as everyone else’s. She seemed a bit out of breath as if she’d been helping fix the damage. She surveyed our surroundings and then looked at me as if to tell me she was alright. Behind her, Cathal and Nazario hiked up the steps like they were climbing a steep mountain, both clearly fatigued. Nazario headed toward Vidar, but Cathal stayed behind, hanging his hands on his hips as he caught his breath.
“Things are in order,” he said. “The ship’s holding, even if it’s barely.”
Aeris was next to emerge, but her wide, green eyes were perhaps the least at ease out of all of us. She quickly walked in my direction clutching the small, bronze blade Addison had gifted her as if she knew how to wield it.
“It’s not safe,” she said.
“We know.”
“No, I mean, it’s not safe. They’re everywhere.”
My brows pinched together. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I can feel them.Everywhere.”
