Song of Ashes

22: Nightfall

Sarka was no sailor, but there was plenty of plain hard work to be done: swabbing the decks, scouring pots, hauling things from here to there. She knew there would be mending to occupy her if she ran out of other things to do, judging from the state of some of the Annari sailors' clothes.

It was hard to get used to the motion of the ship underneath her. At first, she could not escape the feeling that she was about to fall down; her legs learned to compensate for the ship's gentle sway, but it was disorienting for a woman who had never been on a boat before.

Even after her body had adjusted, each time she looked out at the ocean her mind spun in place for a moment before making the incredible connection: she was leaving Kogoren. By late morning, the shore was a distant blur. She could no longer make out the details of the dock, the buildings, the people.

The sky out here was blue. Ro had been right. She wondered if he would stay in Horn Harbor until his foot had healed. She hadn't asked him.

She hadn't thought to ask. She was a selfish woman.

But she was a selfish woman who had what she wanted: freedom. As she worked, following the orders of the sailors without question to prove to Etza that her word had been good, she had little time to worry about the certainty of her death. The fact that no one else had succeeded in what she proposed to do was easy to forget when she focused on work.

And then night fell on Sarka's first day at sea. She noticed that some of the sailors had disappeared; she assumed they had retired for the night. Unsure of what she should do with herself, Sarka found a place to sit on the deck and looked up at the sky. For the first time in her entire life, she could see its magnificent milky blackness without the veil of ashes that cloaked her homeland. It was endless. To look at it was to be swallowed whole, to drown in an ocean of brilliant stars.

"You'll be useless come morning if you stay up all night."

It was the captain; she stood with her hands on her hips and, judging by the look of flat disapproval on her face, the wonder of the stars had no impact on her.

Sarka pulled herself to her feet. "No. I just wasn't sure..."

"Ah. Where to sleep. Well, I do not share my cabin, Sarka. You'll sleep belowdecks with the crew." Etza made to turn away, then paused, as if recalling something. "None of my men will give you trouble. They treat women with respect. To violate a woman is a sin akin to murder to the Annari."

Sarka was not completely reassured. The thought of sharing sleeping quarters with a couple dozen men wasn't appealing; she had only recently grown accustomed to the company of one, and Ro had been kicked in the ribs or the face more than once during the course of their uneasy nights huddled in that tent.

"Go, girl. You're safe on this ship. Safe, at least, from human hands."

Belowdecks, most of the crew slept in hammocks slung from the ceiling in staggered rows. Sarka found a corner somewhat removed from the crew and lay down atop some folded canvas. There, with the sounds of the creaking ship and snoring sailors around her, she faced the wall, curled up with her arms around her precious satchel of sewing things, and closed her eyes.

...

When she woke later that night, Sarka had no sense of time; she barely had a sense of place.

Her breath came thinly and rapidly in her chest, as if her body had awoken in a panic before her mind had stirred. Through her slitted eye, she could hardly see anything-only that it was dark, and that she still had her face turned toward the grimy wall of the ship.

She could not move. She knew it even before she tried. Every part of her body was rigid. Paralyzed.

With mounting panic, Sarka realized there was something else there with her. Something watching her.

Sailors, she told herself, trying to slow the panicked work of her lungs. Sailors are here with me they are here belowdecks sleeping like I am sleeping and this is just a dream-

A sensation began to build behind Sarka's eyes, a pressure deep inside her skull. The muscles of her jaw moved without her consent, tightening until her teeth clenched, then gritted together. As her jaw clenched as if forced by an enormous weight and she felt the metallic pressure of her teeth being forced together, Sarka was certain her teeth would crack. The feeling was so intense that it felt like the very bones of her skull would break, that she would die.

She tried to move, to loosen her jaws and release that terrible tension, but she could not move so much as a finger as the hours crept by.