TWENTY
ZORIC
The morning passes in organized chaos.
Aviora restructures our dive schedule based on her revisions—extending bottom times, adjusting depths, flagging wrecks I’d written off as stripped. She knows things about salvage that I never learned. Reading currents. Identifying promising debris. Calculating where cargo shifts during storms versus where it gets picked clean by scavengers.
The others drift in and out as duties allow. Brek stations himself at her elbow, asking questions with the enthusiasm of someone who’s found a new obsession. Margit adds decades of coastal knowledge, correcting details about specific wrecks I’d charted from distance rather than direct experience. Even Ven contributes, his practical mind finding equipment solutions I hadn’t considered.
Only Henek stays apart. He watches from the far side of the hall, his silence more hostile than words. I keep track of him without looking directly—old habit, the instinct that’s kept me alive through mutinies and betrayals.
Late morning, Thorne pulls me aside.
“We have a problem.” Her voice is low, pitched not to carry. “The diving equipment. Half of it was in the lower storage.”
My stomach drops. “The flooded section.”
“Lines rotted through. Gear scattered. We don’t have enough functional equipment for more than three divers.” She pauses. “Maybe four if we’re creative.”
Three divers instead of five. That cuts our salvage capacity nearly in half. A few days becomes six at minimum. We don’t have six days.
“What about repairs?”
“Possible. But we’d need someone who knows line work, rigging, the technical side of diving equipment.” Her eyes cut toward the table where Aviora is still bent over the charts. “Someone like her.”
I find Aviora in the corridor outside the Great Hall, taking a moment away from the maps and the planning and the hostile stares. She’s leaning against the cold stone wall, her eyes closed, exhaustion written in every line of her body.
“Problem.” I keep my voice low.
Her eyes open. “Equipment?”
“Thorne told you?”
“I heard her mention lower storage.” Aviora straightens, pushing off the wall. “Show me.”
We descend to the third level—the edge of the flooding, where water laps against stone in the darkness below. The storage room is half-submerged, its contents scattered by the surge that claimed the lower levels. Diving lines coiled in rotting piles. Gear rusted and scattered. The careful organization of years destroyed in a single night.
Aviora wades in without hesitation, the water reaching her thighs as she examines what’s left. Her hands move with practiced efficiency, sorting salvageable from destroyed.
“Most of the lines are gone. But these—” She holds up a coil that looks ruined to my eyes. “The core is still good. The outer layer’s rotted, but I can strip it down, splice in new sections.”She drops the coil, reaches for another piece of equipment. “The metal fittings are fine. Just need cleaning. It’s the lines that matter.”
“How long?”
“Give me the rest of today.” She meets my gaze through the dim light. “I’ll have enough working equipment for five divers by morning.”
I should go back upstairs. Should continue planning, coordinating, preparing for the operation that starts in hours. Instead, I stay. Work alongside her in the cold water, following her directions, learning things about diving equipment I never knew despite years of coastal work.
We don’t talk much. Don’t need to. The work creates its own rhythm—her hands moving, mine following, the quiet splash of water and creak of damaged rope filling the silence.
When we finally emerge, soaked and shivering in the late afternoon light, I recognize what’s shifted between us.
“You’re good at this.” I don’t mean just the equipment work. I mean all of it—the planning, the leadership, the way she takes command without demanding it.
“Finn was a good teacher.” She wrings water from her hair, her fingers deft despite the cold. “He used to say salvage was just problem-solving with a time limit. Find the treasure.” Her mouth curves.
“What happened wasn’t bad calculations.”
“No.” She looks at me directly. “It was a storm, and a bad route, and a choice I made because I was too impatient to wait for safer weather.” Her voice stays level now—not the raw confession it would have been days ago. “I’ve stopped running from it. Doesn’t mean I’ve stopped carrying it.”
