Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

28

Four days after Joslyn and Tasia rebuked Linna in Tasia’s cabin, Joslyn passed by Akella at midship, the pirate’s nose in the air, sniffing the breeze like a dog.

“Storm’s coming,” Akella commented casually. “A big one.”

Joslyn stopped, looking in the same direction that Akella faced. She scanned the sky.

“There’s not even a wisp of cloud.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Akella turned to face Joslyn. She leaned back against the railing, propping her elbows on it like she was a patron at a tavern. “You’re Terintan. Have you spent much time in Negusto?”

“I’ve passed through. Why?”

“Ever watched a habul blow in from the Great Desert?”

“It’s pronounced ‘ha-bool,’” Joslyn corrected.

Akella shrugged.

“Yes. I’ve seen them,” Joslyn said.

“When they’re over land, a ha-bool is dry,” Akella said, exaggerating the pronunciation of the Terintan word. “No moisture, just hot wind and sand. When it reaches the sea, it picks up moisture. By the time it reaches us, it’ll be a full-blown hurricane.”

Joslyn glanced northward again. The Adessian Sea was as smooth as it ever got at this time of year; the sky remained a crystalline blue.

“The captain didn’t say anything about a storm,” Joslyn said. “He says we’ll make port in Negusto by late tomorrow.”

“I’m Adessian.” Akella tapped the side of her nose, grinning. “I can smell a storm coming three days away.”

“If you say so,” Joslyn said. She turned from Akella, prepared to get back to the task of finding the guard who’d missed his shift.

“I do say so. We won’t make it to Negusto,” Akella called as Joslyn walked away. “Your captain’s going to steer us straight into the storm, which’ll blow us off course by at least two days, maybe three. If the storm doesn’t sink us, that is.”

“I’ll tell the captain,” said Joslyn without turning around.

“You need to,” Akella said. “Tell him to turn now, head for the shipping lane to the south. We’ll miss Negusto, but at least you won’t risk your whole fleet by sailing straight into that habul.”

“Pro’lly she’s got some smuggler she owes coin to in Negusto,” the captain said when Joslyn reported Akella’s words to him later. “That, or she wants to steer us into the hands of her rizalt friends. Ye ever seen the shipping lane south o’here? Pirates roam like wolf packs, lookin’ t’pick off any ship too weak or too slow that falls behind its mates.”

“I’d guessed that, too,” Joslyn said. “But I wanted to tell you just in case.”

“Aye, Commander,” the captain said. “We’ll have you in Negusto this time tomorrow.”

Joslyn thanked him and headed back to Tasia and Linna, but she couldn’t get Akella’s warning out of her mind. She kept gazing northward the rest of the day. Somewhere far to their north, the Adessian Sea lapped against Terinto’s southern coast. Even further to the north lay the Great Desert.

And maybe, just maybe, a sandstorm brewed there, gusting across the dunes.

#

If the sun had still been up, if Tasia, Joslyn, and Linna had been on deck to see the horizon, even their untrained eyes would’ve seen the change in the sky. As it was, they’d all retired to Tasia’s cabin for the night, exhausted from their various tasks from the day – Tasia the most exhausted of all because her seasickness had kept her from eating very much over the past two days.

The water had grown noticeably choppier, but instead of remembering to think of Akella’s warning, Joslyn only thought of how the ship’s pitching and bobbing would affect Tasia’s stomach. The three of them went to sleep as the pitching grew worse – Tasia in the bed, Joslyn in her cot, and Linna in the hammock that had been secured in one corner.

Joslyn struggled to find full sleep; the ship’s rocking had grown too severe. Just as she would begin to nod off, the sensation of her cot falling away from underneath her, of floating an inch or two above it before crashing back down, would wake her again. And then the ship rolled so hard to the side that she was nearly dumped from her cot. Only through sheer reflex was she able to grab onto the cot’s far side to keep herself from falling out.

Out of habit, Joslyn looked towards Tasia’s bed, expecting to see that she had fallen out of it or was dangling off its edge.

Except that Tasia wasn’t in the bed. Or on the floor. Or anywhere within the cabin.

Joslyn leaped from the cot, only to lose her footing and crash down against the moving floor, rolling like an apple in an empty barrel back into the legs of her own narrow bed. With effort, she got to her feet again, bracing one hand against the curved wall and setting her feet in the wide stance of bending reed to keep the sea from tipping her over.

Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the room long enough for Joslyn to see Linna silhouetted, the girl’s face pressed against the starboard side porthole while she clung to the headboard of Tasia’s bed to keep herself from being thrown across the cabin.

“Where’s the Empress?” Joslyn shouted above the noise of the storm.

“She left a couple hours ago, when the storm first started!” Linna yelled back.

“Hours?” Joslyn repeated incredulously. “And you said nothing?”

“She said she needed to be sick again!” Linna shouted. “I-I thought she’d be back by now!”

“Stay here! I will find her!”

Joslyn pulled Ku-sai’s sword out from beneath the mattress of the cot and strapped it to her back. Like a drunk struggling to stay upright, she stumbled towards the cabin door, pausing every few steps so as not to lose her footing a second time.

Despite Joslyn’s command, Linna staggered after her.

“I said stay here!”

“But I can help you!”

Joslyn slipped into Terintan, hurling a curse at Linna that involved the backside of an apa-apa. “Uncle Q’Util’s dirty beard, girl! Learn to follow the orders you’re given – stay here!”

She didn’t wait for Linna’s response. Joslyn threw open the cabin door, only to be greeted by a spray of stinging saltwater.

“Latch the door behind me!” she shouted over her shoulder.

Joslyn pushed out onto the water-slick deck. The night was black as pitch. Somewhere above was a half-moon, but its weak light did not penetrate the storm clouds all around them. Only when lightning flashed – which it did every few seconds – was Joslyn able to see anything at all.

And the sight it revealed was horrifying.

From her higher position on the quarterdeck, Joslyn could see sailors below half-running, half-tumbling towards masts and ropes as fast as the bucking and rolling ship would allow. Lightning flashed again, and for a brief moment Joslyn glimpsed the ocean. It was an angry, liquid mountain range, towering above them in all directions. To port, one of smaller vessels in the fleet balanced precariously on a white-capped crest. Against the backdrop of the roiling ocean, the ship looked like a child’s toy. As Joslyn watched, the other ship leaned dangerously to one side. The sky went black again before she could see if it capsized.

That was the moment when Joslyn realized that not every ship in the fleet would survive this storm. Maybe not even most of the fleet.

She needed to find Tasia.

Joslyn turned towards the stairs leading to the main deck when she heard the sound of shouting from behind her. The storm was too loud to make out most of the words, but she could hear enough to know it wasn’t the same kind of frantic shouting being exchanged by the sailors below; this shouting belonged to people who were very angry with each other.

“– drown us all!” one of the voices yelled.

Akella.

Joslyn turned around, heading to stern instead down the stairs. She moved as swiftly as she could without losing her footing, clinging hard to the railing at one point when the ship rolled so hard to one side that she felt sure the sea would dump them all into its waiting jaws.

The ship righted itself at the last moment, and Joslyn pressed on. Gathered at the ship’s wheel were Akella, the Captain, two sailors, and the ship’s female sailing master. The sailing master stood with her hands on the giant wheel itself, face grim. A rope around her waist tied her to the nearest mast. Akella and the Captain stood on either side of the sailing master, hurling full-throated screams at one another. The sailors stood behind their Captain, faces decidedly uneasy.

The storm’s fury prevented Joslyn from hearing most of the argument. The gist was that the Captain wanted all the sails down; Akella, who kept slipping into Adessian in her anger, wanted him to leave up the head sail.

“ – shredded, and then what?” the Captain yelled.

The pirate captain, both fists balled in frustration, shot back something that sounded like it had to do with the size of certain parts of the Captain’s anatomy.

“What’s happening?” Joslyn asked, but only the sailing master, who was too focused on her task to respond, heard the question. The woman’s eyes darted towards Joslyn for the briefest of moments before returning to the mountainous waves ahead of them.

Joslyn put her hand on Akella’s shoulder, shaking the rizalt.