She wasn’t the only one who regretted that fact—James knew nothing about sailing a ship like this. “Can we go wide?”
She shook her head. “This storm will blow us straight out into the open seas if we let it, and we don’t have any supplies. If we cut east, we’ll run afoul of the Harendellian navy. The Amaridians are going straight through it, so we will as well.”
“How…” He trailed off, catching sight of flickers of specks of lantern light in the distance. It should have been impossible to catch upto the three-masted ships, but somehow, Ahnna had done it. And from the fierce determination on her face, James knew she intended to attack them the moment they got close enough to do so.
“If we can catch them in the night, we can get aboard and kill the sailors,” she shouted, validating his thought. “Sink at least one of them.”
Or the storm will smash our tiny craft to pieces, and we’ll both drown.
James’s lips parted to tell her to ease off and get out of the path of the tempest, but he bit down on his words. She’d fought too hard to give up now, and James knew that was how she’d see it. Because if that vessel beat them to Ithicana by even half a day, people would die. Ithicana was too starved for grain to hold back on opening a sack or two, and so instead he tightened his grip on the rail.
The tempest worsened, waves washing over the deck and the single mast groaning from the strain of the vicious wind in the sails. He lost his footing over and over, only the ropes securing them to the helm keeping them both from going overboard, but Ahnna remained on the wake of the Amaridian ship.
Thunder crashed overhead, punctuated by waves swamping the deck, and James struggled to get a breath in the deluge of rain.
Ahnna had her shoulder wedged beneath a wheel spoke, face twisted with strain as she fought against the pull of the water.
How he heard it over the noise, James didn’t know, but the sound of ripping fabric filled his ears.
“The sail,” he screamed in her ear. “It’s tearing! We need to lower it now!”
Because if they lost the sail, they’d be lost at sea. Either to die from starvation or dehydration, or to be picked off by one of their endless enemies.
Ahnna didn’t react for what felt like a lifetime, and then she gave a wordless scream and turned the wheel. The ship turned, the sails flapping as they lost the full weight of the wind, and then she was forcing his hands onto the helm. “Keep it here.”
James did as she ordered as she scrambled forward, clinging to what she could when a wave rolled over the deck. For a nightmarish heartbeat, he was certain the seas had taken her. But the sails ceased their flapping as they were lowered, and in a brilliant flash of lightning he saw Ahnna’s silhouette as she tied them down.
She stumbled back and clung to him, shoulders shaking as she sobbed. James held her through it as the storm and the sea took them where they willed, the lights on the Amaridian ships fading into blackness.
57
Ahnna
As soon as the stormeased, Ahnna set to repairing the rip in the sail with a small kit of supplies. The ship was tiny, but whoever had stocked the pleasure craft had done so mindfully, which would save their lives.
Except there was nothing in the supplies that would turn back time, and as she corrected their course, Ahnna prayed that she wouldn’t be too late. Prayed that the tempests had sunk the Amaridian ships. Prayed that Ithicana’s sharks had consumed those who sought the deaths of all her people.
Yet as they moved into Ithicana’s waters, familiar islands filling the horizon, Ahnna’s eyes caught sight of sails in the distance.
It was one of the Amaridian ships, heading north, sitting high on the water.
“Do you know where they will have unloaded the cargo?” James asked, the first words they’d exchanged in hours.
Ahnna gave a stiff nod, fear choking her. There were only a few locations this far north suitable for unloading ships of that size that would be safely out of sight of patrols and with good access to the bridge.
None of which they could reach quickly, because the winds were against them.
Conversation felt impossible, her throat tight as her mind ran through scenarios. She suspected that Aren would have moved everyone he could farther south out of easy reach of Harendell, which meant it would be mostly active soldiers who were at risk. It would have taken time to unload the ship, time to move the product into the bridge, but if what Katarina said was true, her people had been months without bread. They’d have surely cracked open a sack to make pan bread, which meant at least some of those charged with unloading the cargo were not long for this world.
But worse was knowing that the poison didn’t act immediately. How many of those sacks were already on the move, heading to various outposts and islands to supply those defending against Harendell? How could she ever warn all those at risk before they ate any of the poison?
Ahnna knew the answer: She couldn’t. Worse still, there were two more grain ships laden with poison heading to other locations farther south.
The bridge came into view, mist curling around the gray snaking length, but it felt like no homecoming to her. Ahnna sailed the ship through a narrow gap between islands, then approached a small, heavily forested island that had a small beach suitable for taking up cargo. There was no one there, but deep marks in the sand suggested heavy traffic. Yet it was to a single empty burlap sack sitting on the beach that her eyes went, her stomach dropping. “They were here.”
“But no longer.” James turned, a hand lifted to his eyes as he scanned the horizon. “Where would they have taken it?”
Her bottom lip trembled, because this was her worst nightmare coming to pass, and a thought reared in her head.What if Aren was here?
