11

The Lopen gained new respect for the Thaylen sailors as the ship breached the storm around Akinah.

He’d spent the last few weeks sitting with them at meals, climbing with them on the rigging, scrubbing the deck alongside them, or swapping stories as they swung in their hammocks at night. He’d even picked up a little Thaylen. He was living on a sailing ship, so he figured—sure—the best way to pass the time was to follow Huio’s example and try to become a sailor.

Lopen had heard them talk about the terrifying experience of facing down winds and rain while on the sea. You didn’t sail a storm, they’d explained. You hung on, tried to steer, and hoped to survive until the end. He’d felt the frightened tone in their voices, but Damnation, he felt something ten times worse as the Wandersail headed into the strange storm.

He’d flown about in storms, sure. He was a Windrunner. But this was different. Something primal inside him cringed as the wind made the water churn and froth. Something that trembled as the darkening sky painted the ocean with new ominous shadows. Something deep in his heart that said, “Hey, Lopen. This was a baaaaad idea, mancha.”

Rua, naturally, took it with a grin on his face, having adopted the shape of a skyeel with human features. He swam through the air around Lopen’s head as the ship began to sway like a child’s toy in the bath.

“Lopen!” Turlm called, rushing past with a rope. “You may want to get belowdecks. It’s about to get wet up here!”

“I won’t melt, hregos!” Lopen called back.

Turlm laughed and continued on. Good man, Turlm was. Had six daughters—six—back home in Thaylen City. Ate with his mouth open, but always shared his booze.

At his warning, Lopen took a solid hold on the railing. It was strange to see the ship stripped of most of its sails, like a skeleton without the flesh. But this ship, sure, was special. Fabrial pumps would supposedly keep it bailed, no matter how much water washed onto the deck. And there were stabilizers that used attractor fabrials. Those would shift weights around in the hull—crazy, that stuff was built inside the hull—and keep the ship from capsizing.

At the captain’s orders, the oars came out. They used those for fine maneuvering when trying to ram enemy ships, but here they could reposition the ship to take big waves the right way. When caught in bad weather, ships would try to “run” the storm. That meant going with the wind, only in a specific way that sounded extremely technical to Lopen. He’d nodded anyway, since the words had been quite interesting, particularly coming from the lips of mostly drunk men.

They couldn’t simply run the storm here though. They had to breach it, reach its core. So they’d follow the storm in a loop around Akinah, slowly edging inward, ever inching toward the center. And they had to keep ahead of the waves, which meant sometimes colliding with other ones in front. They’d need to “head” those waves: keep the ship going straight at them, breaking them across the bow. The oars would help keep them positioned for that.

It felt downright heroic to meet these winds with only one small stormsail maintained by a few valiant sailors. The rest were below, either at the oars or maintaining the fabrials. Lopen didn’t see how the sail wouldn’t just blow them all over the place, but they all said it would work. They’d also tied bags of oil over the side of the ship too, with punctures to leak—which they said would keep the water from spraying so much on the deck.

The captain stood firm and shouted her orders into the wind, sending them straight into the gullet of the beast. And by the Halls themselves, if the sailors didn’t take it with determination and grit.

The wind picked up further, blowing sprays of water across Lopen’s face. Huio hadn’t wanted to come up above, had said Lopen was crazy for insisting on being on deck. And yes, cold water began to seep through his unders to prickle his skin. But storms, it was an incredible view. The lightning made the water seem to spark, transparent, and huge froths of it surged into the air. A storm on land was a sight to behold, sure, but a storm on the waters . . . this was majestic. Also horrifying.

“This is amazing!” Lopen said, pulling himself along the railing so he was closer to Vlxim, the day’s helmsman. Three other men stood at the ready to help Vlxim wrestle the wheel to control the rudder. That was common on ordinary ships, but this one had some kind of mechanism to help the helmsman, and so it might not be needed.

“You haven’t seen anything!” Vlxim shouted. He was bald like Huio, which made his eyebrows look extra amusing to Lopen—particularly wet as they were. But he played a mean mouth harp. “We’ve trained to sail into highstorms on this ship if we have to! I’ve actually been through one! Waves as high as mountains, Lopen!”

“Ha!” Lopen said. “You haven’t seen anything. I was once in a place where Everstorm and highstorm met, and in that, the rock flowed like water and—sure—entire chunks broke like waves against one another. I had to run up one side, then slide down the other. Ruined my storming trousers!”

“Enough!” the captain yelled over the wind. “I don’t have time for you two to compare sizes. Vlxim, one point to port!”

The captain eyed Lopen, and he gave her a salute—because they were on her ship, and here she outranked even the people who outranked her. But he got the feeling that the captain was the kind of person who had been born an officer, coming right on out of her mom with a hat on and everything. People like that didn’t understand; bragging wasn’t about making yourself look good, but about convincing the other guy you weren’t afraid, which was completely different.

A wave surged over the deck, and Lopen lost his footing, but clung onto the ship’s aft rail and grinned—sopping wet—at Vlxim when he glanced over. Lopen righted himself with effort, and thought about Vlxim’s words. How could waves get bigger than these? They sailed up the side of one that Lopen could have sworn was too steep to ride. Then they went crashing through the top, like Punio through a crowd on his way to the privy after a night of drinking.

Lopen whooped as they teetered, then came rushing down the wave’s other side. Rua swirled about him as a ribbon of light, excited, dancing with the wavespren—who went splashing high into the air as different waves met. This was the best time they’d had in ages.

Then Turlm—the fellow who had passed Lopen with the rope earlier—got caught in an unexpected wave and washed clean off the deck. Into the drink, the dark abyss, to be claimed by the seas and strangled with water.

Well, couldn’t have that.

Lopen burst alight and leaped over the rail, Lashing himself toward the water. He hit with his own crash, pulling in so much Stormlight he glowed brightly in the dark water—revealing a struggling figure being swept away in the currents. Well, Lopen had spent a few days practicing this while out on the ocean, doing scouting runs. Lashings worked fine underwater. And hey, who needed to breathe when you had Stormlight?

He Lashed himself toward the dark figure—Rua guiding the way—and blasted through the ocean like some kind of underwater creature built to move through it easily and swiftly. Or, well, like a fish. They called those fish, didn’t they?

Lopen grabbed hold of the struggling form by his clothing, then Lashed both of them upward. Rua pointed the way—it could be surprisingly difficult to tell directions in the darkness underwater. Lopen exploded from the ocean a moment later, carrying a sputtering Turlm.

Rua darted ahead, leading him toward the ship—which was good, because in the dark tempest, details were about as easy for Lopen to make out as his own backside. Lopen hauled Turlm over the rail and hit the deck with a thump, then Lashed the man in place so he wouldn’t go sliding off again.

“Storms!” Fimkn said, stumbling over to help the other sailor. Fimkn had a medic background, and he and Lopen had bonded over the fact that both had been told too many storming times to boil bandages. “How did you . . . Lopen, you saved him!”

“It’s kind of our thing,” Lopen said.

Turlm sputtered, then started laughing uncontrollably. Joyspren like little blue leaves spun around him, then swirled into the air. He gripped Lopen’s hand in thanks. The old one. His Bridge Four hand, not his Knight Radiant hand. Fimkn sent Turlm belowdecks—a replacement had already come up to take his post—so Lopen un-Lashed him. Storms, that replacement had shown up quickly. They were expecting to lose people. Or at least they were prepared for it.

Well, not on Lopen’s watch. You didn’t let your friends drown in nameless oceans during a frigid storm. That was, sure, basic friendship rules right there.

He marched back up onto the quarterdeck. The captain and the others here had ropes to hold them in place, but those had to be short, and didn’t generally work for the other sailors, who needed a lot of freedom of movement. A long rope on a man who got swept overboard in this kind of storm broke necks and smashed sailors into the hull. The chances were better, though still slim, without ropes.

Lopen figured he should be extra careful with the captain anyway. With her permission, he stuck one of her feet to the deck, so she could move a little—but had one really steady foot to rely upon.

“You could have done that all along?” the captain asked. “I saw you struggling to keep upright earlier! You were sliding about with the waves. Why didn’t you stick yourself down?”

“Didn’t seem sporting!” Lopen called over the increasingly loud sounds of the storm. “You keep us going straight, Captain. I’ll watch the crew!”

She nodded, and turned to her task. Running with the winds, but—best they could—on their own terms. He had to trust she was keeping the ship on its spiral heading, moving steadily inward. Because he couldn’t make any sense of this. The sea seemed to be Damnation itself, incarnate as furious waves.

Lopen kept an eye on the sailors, but he had Rua watching something else. Eventually—after splashing through wave after wave—the little honorspren came zipping up to Lopen in the shape of a skyeel with an extremely long tail.

“What is it, naco?” Lopen asked.

Rua pointed at the water nearby, and Lopen saw a shape in the depths—or at least a dark shadow. Size was difficult to judge because he didn’t know how deep the thing was, but Rua was insistent. It was one of them. The things that had feasted on Stormlight, draining the Windrunners who had tried to investigate the storm before.

“It’s swimming?” Lopen asked, wiping rainwater from his eyes. “How can you be certain that’s one of them, naco?”

Rua simply was. And Lopen trusted him. He figured, sure, Rua would know about this sort of thing, same as Lopen knew about one-armed Herdazian jokes.

Leyten and the others hadn’t been able to report much about the things. They thought they were alive, not spren, but couldn’t be certain. The things had needed to get close to them though, so it probably couldn’t affect Lopen up here on the deck. Leyten said they’d hovered out in the clouds, indistinct, until he turned—then they’d come in from behind and drained him.

But were they the same type of creature as what Rysn kept as a pet? This one in the water seemed far larger. And more blobby somehow? Lopen would need to be careful when rescuing other members of the crew—if that thing drained him while he was in the drink, it would be catastrophic. He’d have to learn some dead Herdazian jokes to tell in the afterlife.

The sailing continued a long, terrible time. Lopen kept a vigilant watch through it all, and so was ready when Wvlan lost his footing. Lopen was on him before he was swept overboard, and pulled them both up against the rail and stuck them there, water cascading over them. He gave Wvlan a pat and a laugh, but when Lopen got to his knees to let the water stream off him, he noticed the dark shadow in the water right over the side of the ship. Keeping pace with them.

He wished he could get Cord out here to see if any strange spren were nearby. But he didn’t dare bring her into this storm. It would be—

The ship crashed through one final wave, and the wind abruptly stopped. Amazed, Lopen stumbled to his feet, then wiped his eyes again. Nearby sailors relaxed, loosening their grips on the ropes they’d been using to do . . . well, some sailor things with the stormsail.

“We made it!” Klisn said. “Storms, it’s like the centerbeat!” An awespren burst around him, and Lopen agreed with the sentiment. The rough waves and wind blew in a circular pattern right behind them. Dark clouds still blocked the sky, but the ship cut through choppy smaller waves, settling into a peaceful rest here—where even the waters seemed less dark, more sapphire than they had on the way in.

“Hey, Klisn?” Lopen said. “Would you go fetch Cord for me? I told her I’d get her as soon as it was safe, but I should go unstick your captain from the deck. I suspect she is liking it about as much as Punio did during the weeks I had a spren and he did not.”

“Sure thing, Lopen,” Klisn said, running off. He was a great fellow. Skilled partner at cards, plus he had an excellent sense of humor. And not only because he thought Lopen’s jokes were funny. He also thought Huio’s were terrible.

Lopen hastened up the stairs to the quarterdeck, then slowed as he stepped up beside the captain and helmsman. They were staring out across the ocean, toward something emerging from distant fog. An island.

It was surrounded by big stone spikes rising out of the ocean like a wall somehow built in the sea itself. But there was a huge gap where a dozen or more had either been removed or never placed. As the ship drifted farther, the waters stilled in an eerie way. The gap revealed a shallow island, small enough that Lopen could probably walk around the perimeter in an hour or so. Near the center, he spotted what he thought must be city walls, and maybe some structures near them.

“Well, hie me off to Damnation,” the captain muttered. “It’s actually real.”