She craned her neck to the right, her vision clearing enough to see Wen through the rain in another flash of lightning. He shouted something, but the wind tore his words away. He pulled something out of his pocket and Talia squinted to make out what it was: a knife, to cut themselves free from the mast if the ship capsized. She nodded, to show she understood. It would only buy them a little time, but it would be better than drowning in the dark, unable to even move.
Wen yelled into the storm, and she caught snatches of his Words tangling up with the rain; she could feel their power encircling her.
But nothing else happened. The wind didn’t lessen, the waves didn’t recede. The Words weren’t enough.
Water poured into the ship, seething over the sides. Talia glanced at Wen, and he was the one who nodded this time. He started sawing at the ropes while she grabbed a bucket and began fruitlessly bailing water, straining against the cords around her chest.
Hail stung her cheeks. Above them and around them and beneath them the storm wheeled. The sea tossed the ship about like a child tossing a stone.
Beside her, Wen was working frantically with the knife. He was only about halfway through.
Another wave rammed into them and the ship tilted sideways, almost capsizing.
“Wen!”
One cord snapped, then another. He dropped the knife and she grabbed the blade as it slid by, ignoring the sudden bite of pain. She grasped the handle, furiously sawing at the rope.
He was nearly free.
She was so intent on her task she didn’t feel the ship tilting beneath her.
And then dark water closed over her head.
For a moment she wasn’t afraid, her hand steady on the knife, sawing through the last rope binding Wen. She felt the cord break, felt him kicking with his legs and propelling himself upward.
And then, numbing panic.
Her eyes were open, but she saw only blackness. She felt the rope beneath her fingers, but she couldn’t get the knife at the right angle to keep cutting. She couldn’t breathe. The water pressed over her head, heavy and dark, killing her slowly.
She jerked her body against the rope, but it wouldn’t give way and the knife slid from her palm. She found the knot, fumbling with it uselessly. She could distinguish the dark shape of the ship in the water now, but it didn’t matter.
And then Wen was beside her, tugging at the rope. She saw the flash of his white face, felt the pressure of his hand on her shoulder.
The rope broke free.
Talia fought upward, bursting above the surface of the water, choking and gasping for air. She spotted Wen, but he was too far away from her. She tried to cry out but another wave hit, and her mouth filled up with seawater.
She clawed through the waves, breaking the surface again, gulping another desperate breath of air. Somehow she managed to grab hold of a splintered piece of wood that had broken off the ship, and she clung to it as the sea tossed her about and hail burned her skin. She couldn’t see Wen anymore—there was nothing but the rain and the sea, swirling and dark. The knapsack was still hanging from her shoulder, the Star-light and Tree-sliver safe inside. But she didn’t know how to use their power to save them.
She screamed into the storm, a single Word, over and over and over—her failsafe, one last plan she hadn’t told Wen.
But no one answered.
Nothing came.
A wave slammed over her head, and she lost her grip on the piece of wood. The sea pulled her under, her fingers grasping at nothing.
Her lungs screamed for air, but she had no strength left. Water crept into her nose and her mouth and dragged her down, down, down, away from the storm and the ship and Wen.
In another moment she would be lost. She would sleep as the sea creatures slept, and perhaps she would come to the Hall of the Dead after all, caught in the Billow Maidens’ terrible nets.
Her consciousness blurred. She had one fleeting thought of deep sorrow: Wen shouldn’t have followed her out here. He belonged with the artisans and craftsmen on Od, filling the world with his beautiful music. Now he was lost forever.
Despair and darkness closed around her, and she could feel herself slipping away.
In another moment, she would be gone.
Chapter Forty-Three
A VOICE ECHOED INSIDE OF HER, ALL STONE and storm and boundless power. She thought the strength of it would kill her—if she’d had breath, she would have screamed.
The sea heard too. It shivered around her and let her go.
Suddenly she was hurtling up, up, up beyond the grasping fingers of the waves, back into the storm and the rain and the life-giving air. She gulped for breath, coughing up the water in her lungs. She scrubbed the salt from her stinging eyes.
Something moved beneath her, vast and dark. Something alive. It lifted her partially from the water and gleamed in the white flashes of lightning: a huge rippling shape, more than twice as long as her shattered ship. Waves washed over it—over her—but the thing didn’t heed them.
“Endain’s daughter.” That voice again—as strong as the earth, searing through her whole body.
She did scream then, and leapt back into the ocean. She glimpsed the fan of a wide, flat tail, the curve of a broad back. Waves clawed at her hair and pulled at her heels, trying to drag her down into the darkness. She struggled to stay above the surface of the water.
“The sea means you harm.”
Lightning ripped across the sky and for an instant she saw all of it—a massive creature, with long, powerful flippers and a huge mouth and the gleam of a great black eye. It propelled itself easily through the angry sea, like it didn’t even notice the storm.
“The sea will destroy you.”
Terror writhed cold in her mind, of the creature or the waves—she didn’t know.
Another spear of lightning slashed the sky, illuminating all at once the wreckage of her ship and the ragged figure clinging to the fractured mast. Gods above, he was still alive. Joy warred with her fear.
“Wen!”
She tried to swim toward him but the sea wouldn’t let her. Waves slammed over her head and choked her breath away. He was alive, and she couldn’t reach him. She clawed her way back to the surface.
His voice cut through the wind, Words of power spilling out of him like music and twisting into the storm. But then he was screaming, screaming and screaming, as if he endured unimaginable pain. In a flash of lightning she saw his body twisting, writhing. Changing.
“Wen!”
She wasn’t close enough. The sea was toying with her, keeping them apart. And somewhere behind her the creature waited.
“Wen!”
White-hot light, the crackle of electricity in her ears. His arms spreading out, shivering and shifting until they were wings, wide and white. His head jerking back, feathers crawling up his neck. Claws curling out where his legs should have been, clothes shedding off of him like so many torn shadows.
And then he wasn’t Wen anymore, but a huge, white seabird. He spread his wings and flew toward her.
But the storm wasn’t finished. The wind caught him, wheeled him about in the rain, and slammed him hard against the broken mast.
She heard the snap of bone and the bird’s sharp cry. Waves crashed over her, water creeping into her nose and mouth. She’d found him and lost him in the same moment, and now both of them would die.