Chapter 67: Survivors
Mara looked behind them. The pale light surrounding her body had faded, but the creatures continued following the path it had left. Some remained distant shapes beneath the water. Others travelled close enough for their fins and limbs to disturb the surface.
The boundary of the current twisted ahead.
The ferryman turned the boat toward it, risking the weaker water along the route’s edge. Their speed increased as the vessel crossed into the darker flow. One of the pursuing mermaids reached the stern, caught the wood, and began pulling herself upward.
Rook stepped toward it, but Mara moved first and caught the creature’s wrist.
He seized the back of her coat and pulled her hand away before the Death Imprint could open.
"No."
"It was climbing aboard."
"And your arm is barely moving."
Mara tried closing her fingers. They responded slowly.
The mermaid raised its head above the rail. Rook struck it across the face with the sole of his boot, breaking the outer jaw before kicking both hands from the boat. The creature disappeared into their wake.
"Save it," he said. "You don’t know what it costs yet."
Mara pressed her numb hand against her chest.
"There is a cost?" she asked.
"Not that I can explain, I can’t cull if you remember."
Mara closed her hand with difficulty. No wonder not many reapers use their abilities too much. From all the ones she saw, they barely used it once or twice, granted Rook made sure they couldn’t do much.
But she felt that they were holding back all the time. Where they could have used more.
The ferryman guided them through a narrow gap between two fleeing vessels. One carried only three of the nine souls who had boarded it. The other had lost its ferryman and drifted without direction, slowly turning toward the purple water beyond the current.
Nobody aboard called for help.
Their faces followed Mara’s vessel with the exhausted understanding that no boat could stop for another without risking everyone upon it.
The fog thickened behind them, and one by one, the pursuing shapes disappeared.
The worm-shark was the last to abandon the chase. Its pale head surfaced at the edge of the current, its circular mouth opening as it attempted to follow. Repelling powder clung to part of its skin, leaving grey burns across the flesh.
It remained there until the distance became too great.
Then it sank.
The sea ahead grew quiet.
Broken pieces of wood travelled beside them. A torn sail floated across the current, followed by a lantern whose blue flame continued burning beneath the surface. Nothing else remained of the vessel that had carried it.
Mara watched the lantern pass and tried to remember the one inside their room at the Last Anchorage.
The blue light remained.
The room did not.
She could remember entering it, touching the fragment, and waking upon the floor. She remembered Rook breaking through the door. Everything surrounding those moments had become indistinct, as though the memories belonged to someone describing a place she had never seen.
"The sea took something," she said.
Rook lowered his one-handed scythe. "How much?"
"The meal. Parts of the inn. The room."
"Anything older?"
Mara searched.
The attempt frightened her. She moved carefully through the memories she still possessed, checking her name, her first sight of the Eleventh Bastion, the field where Rook had found her, and the worlds she remembered from before her death.
Something was missing.
She could feel the absence without understanding what had once occupied it.
"I don’t know."
Rook looked toward the water. "Then don’t search while we’re still above it. Memories loosen when you pull at the empty places."
Mara stopped.
The ferryman returned them toward the center of the third current. His movements gradually became less urgent, though he kept the pole ready and watched every disturbance ahead.
"You don’t have to worry much," the ferryman said, "They’ll return once you’re on shore, besides the one that were directly eaten."
"What does that mean?" Mara asked.
"You’re not missing any limbs?" Rook asked.
"No."
"Then it should be fine."
"Should be fine isn’t assuring."
"Nothing ever is."
No one spoke after that for several minutes.
The battle behind them faded until even the distant flashes of abilities vanished within the fog. The remaining boats travelled in scattered groups now. Some had lost sails, weapons, or passengers. Others bore deep marks along their hulls where claws and teeth had nearly torn them open.
The fleet that had left the Last Anchorage no longer existed.
Only survivors remained.
Mara stared at her hand once more. She remembered the blade entering her heart and the cold that followed.
For the first time since awakening in the Underworld, she knew how she had died.
She still did not know who had killed her. Or why they had done so.
Rook sat beside the coffin and began checking his wounds. "You made a bad decision."
Mara looked at him. "Again with this? You’re alive."
"That doesn’t make it good."
"It makes it successful."
"That is how people justify every terrible idea that fails to kill them."
"You entered the Eighty-Sixth Bastion alone."
"I had a plan."
"You were poisoned, buried a chased by a third Rank, almost died to a fourth rank and fled from Voss without getting the answer you wanted."
"Parts of the plan changed."
Mara almost smiled, but another stab of cold passed through her chest and forced her to lean against the side of the boat.
Rook watched her until the pain eased.
Then he looked away.
"Next time," he said, "stay in the boat."
Mara rested her numb hand in her lap. "Next time, don’t fall out."
The ferryman released a long breath through his nose. Neither of them could tell whether it came from amusement or exhaustion.
He guided the damaged vessel deeper into the current.
Behind them, the Silent Sea continued feeding.
And ahead, hopeful shores waited. If they could only make it there