When the Freedom drew close, however, the octopus enacted a plan of its own. With an abrupt heave, it shoved the submarine, driving it into the hull. The Freedom crashed through with a great snapping of wood, and the force hurled Tikaya sideways. Her fingers flew from the controls, and she barely kept from landing on the deck again.
Cursing, she lunged back to the viewport, glancing out as she wrapped a hand firmly around the rudder lever. They’d smashed all the way through the side of the wreck. The light played over algae- and barnacle-smothered wood—lots and lots of wood. It snapped and jabbed at the Freedom with every foot they covered.
“How’s it going up there?” Rias called, his voice even more muffled than before.
Tikaya imagined him crawling behind access panels, running or rewiring cables. “I’m, uhm, experimenting with different strategies.”
She fought with the wheel, trying to find the hole they’d just made, so they could escape the clutches of the wreck. But the octopus or currents or a combination of both were determined to push the submarine deeper. Seaweed grew up everywhere, blotting out the already limited view and dimming the exterior lamps’ influence. A school of startled fish burst out of the shadows and fled. More wood crunched, and Tikaya winced at each impact. No matter how sturdy Rias had made the submarine, surely it couldn’t hold up to this abuse forever.
A solid wooden post loomed out of the darkness. Cursing, Tikaya spun the wheel to the maximum point. This time, the octopus must have been distracted, for she was able to turn the submarine. The nose of the craft still glanced off the beam, but didn’t strike it head on.
Ahead, fish swam out through a hole. Hoping it represented the opposite side of the wreck, Tikaya angled toward it. It was too small, she realized too late, and they crunched through, enlarging the opening as they went. She groaned. They weren’t outside yet, but in another portion of the ship. That had been a bulkhead, not the hull. She glimpsed fish again in her light, and followed them, hoping they’d lead her out.
By now sweat bathed her face and burned as it dripped into her eyes, but she dared not lift her hands from the controls to wipe it away. “Any progress back there?” Tikaya called.
If Rias responded, she didn’t hear it.
Finally, she found another hole, one large enough to steer the craft through without destroying anything else. She eased out of it, with only a small bump—the octopus brushing the wood rather than the hull of the submarine striking it, and blew out a relieved breath when open water appeared around them.
Her relief was short-lived. Something huge and black appeared in the lamplight. The side of a Turgonian warship.
Rias’s warning of explosives flooded into her mind. Tikaya yanked at the rudder control so hard she feared she’d tear it from the console. Though the octopus didn’t seem to be fighting her, the extra weight still made the response slow. She grimaced as they floated closer. Engine, which lever had he said controlled engine thrust? That one. Yes. Hoping to slow them, Tikaya pulled it all the way back. They accelerated. She cursed again and thrust it in the opposite direction.
“Lessons, I definitely want lessons next time before being left alone up here!”
Again, Rias didn’t respond. Tikaya growled and checked the viewport. The Turgonian ship was too long, their momentum too great. They’d end up glancing off its side. The hull wouldn’t have explosives on it, would it?
“Up,” Tikaya whispered, realizing she had another option.
She grabbed the lever that controlled the dive planes. This time she tested it slowly, not wanting to bury their nose in the sand. Slowly, the view through the glass inched up the black side of the ship. Too slowly. Tikaya could see every barnacle and the corrugations of rust pockmarking the hull. She pressed her face to the viewport, hoping to spot the railing, hoping they’d clear it. A huge gun came into view instead. Tikaya gulped. The hull might not have explosives embedded into it, but there might be shells loaded in that gun. If one of those exploded... Even Rias’s sturdy engineering couldn’t hold up against that kind of power.
“Ready?” came a call from the rear.
“Blessed Akahe, yes!”
Maybe if they lost the octopus, the Freedom would rise more rapidly. Tikaya tried to turn the rudder so they’d veer away from the gun, but with the engine thrust halted, nothing responded quickly. A whole bank of the weapons came into view, lining the hull, less friendly than bristles on a porcupine. The submarine drifted toward those guns, their course inevitable. She couldn’t tear her gaze from the viewport.
Between one blink and the next, blackness blotted out the view. Her first thought was that the lamp had been extinguished, but a faint tremor ran through the submarine. Ink, Tikaya realized. The octopus had released the ink in its sac. Had it fled as well? She couldn’t see anything through the blackened viewport.
Footsteps pounded on the metal deck. “Did it work?” Rias burst into the navigation room. “It felt like it let go.”
“I think so, but we have another problem.” Tikaya pointed at the viewport, but the black ink hadn’t fully dissipated. “We’re on course to run into—”
Rias leaped to a control panel on the wall next to her seat and threw four switches.
“—the side of a Turgonian warship,” Tikaya finished. “What’s that do?”
“Fill the ballast tanks with air so we’ll rise, but it might not be fast enough.” Rias squinted through the porthole.
Beyond the fading ink, the rusted railing of the warship came into view. Tikaya stood, fingers pressed against the console. They’d risen past the guns. Maybe they’d clear the entire ship. A smokestack loomed, though, canted toward them on the wreck’s tilted deck.
Rias slid into the navigation seat, and Tikaya was more than happy to let him take the job back. He fired up the engines again and steered them toward the gap between the smokestack and a second one with its side torn open. They bumped against the first stack, but Rias didn’t flinch. Tikaya heaved a sigh and sagged against the wall.
“I was afraid to touch anything on that ship,” she admitted when he glanced at her, “after your mention of unexploded munitions.”
“Ah. They shouldn’t be dangling from the smokestacks.”
“You wouldn’t think so, but with Turgonians, one never knows.” Tikaya bent down and wrapped a hug around Rias from behind, pressing her cheek to his. She decided not to admit that she’d nearly scared herself to death a couple of times when piloting his creation—he always seemed to think her above that sort of thing—but she let her relief show in the tight embrace.
Rias was adjusting the controls to take them to the surface, but he paused to grip her arm and lean his temple against hers. “It’s true that there have been instances of defeated Turgonian captains booby-trapping their ships to ensure enemy parties would, ah, blow up, as it were, when attempting to board.”
“Blow up? Wouldn’t that have caused some of the crew to blow up as well?”
“All of them, yes. And usually the ship as well, but that kept the enemy from acquiring secret orders or taking the vessel as a war prize.”
Though Tikaya didn’t break the hug, she did pull her head back, watching Rias out of the corners of her eyes. “They didn’t do such things under orders from their admirals, did they?”
“There was no need to give such orders, the idea having long since been instilled in them during their academy days.” Rias pointed at the viewport. Rivulets of water ran down the outside. Now on the surface, the submarine bobbed and swayed with the waves.
After that crazy adventure, Tikaya almost expected it to be dawn, but darkness still hugged the sea. A chronometer on the wall behind Rias’s chair informed her that it’d only been an hour since they’d left the dock. The rum was probably still flowing. Odd to think that all that chaos had gone on beneath the surface and the people above probably had no idea about it. Most of the people anyway. Someone had been controlling that octopus.
Brought back to the reality that
they’d only survived one attack and that the war might just be beginning, Tikaya released Rias from her hug and stood up, though she left her hands on his shoulders. “Did you ever booby trap one of your ships?” she asked. After all, he’d gone to that academy as well, and at a younger—and perhaps more impressionable age—than normal. “Or were you too gifted to ever find yourself in that predicament?”
“Oh, I found myself in that predicament more often than you’d think, since I had a stubborn determination not to simply equal but to exceed the expectations set forth in my orders. I tended to poke my nose into a lot of burning buildings. But I was always convinced that I could trick or scheme my way out of the situation without blowing up my ship or surrendering my crew.”
“Since you’re here with me, nearly being eaten by an octopus, it must have worked most of the time.”
“Yes. My amazing knack for getting myself into trouble was surpassed only by my supreme luck when it came to getting out again, often with results that impressed my superiors. Fortunately, I’ve grown more sedate of late.” Rias leaned his head back and smiled at Tikaya.
“Are you truly telling me that the Rias I know today is a sedate version of the old one?” Tikaya remembered the way he’d led her through a Nurian warship, determined not simply to escape it but to destroy it in the process and, oh, the one sailing alongside as well. “Are you sure you didn’t simply drive your superiors crazy? Maybe they promoted you through the ranks so quickly so they wouldn’t have to deal with you as a subordinate any longer.”
Rias blinked a few times, then let out a round of laughter that rang from the metal walls. Tikaya thought it might be his way of expressing his relief that they’d survived the octopus—sturdy submarine or not, he had to have been worried too—but she hadn’t heard such amusement from him since they’d arrived in Kyatt, so she savored it. He even wiped tears from his eyes.
“I haven’t had anyone suggest that notion to me,” he said when the laughs stilled, “but if I get an opportunity to return to the empire someday, I’ll be certain to run the idea past a few of my former superiors.”
His expression grew wistful, and Tikaya’s pleasure faded. He must be thinking about how much he missed his home and his old colleagues. Her recent thoughts—that she was asking too much to keep him here—returned and filled her with sadness. She cleared her throat and attempted to tamp down the melancholy feelings. “We’d best get back to the party before all the rum is gone.”
Rias chuckled. “Indeed. I was abstaining before, but I could use a swig now.”
“Me too,” Tikaya murmured.
CHAPTER 15
By the time the Freedom floated into its berth, most of the revelers had drifted away. Or, Tikaya thought as she glimpsed a familiar scowling figure, maybe they’d been driven away. She’d thought High Minister Jikaymar might be waiting, but it was someone worse. Her father.
He stood, fists against his hips, wearing what had become a permanent sneer of late. He turned his scowl on Rias, as if he were some juvenile delinquent who’d taken Tikaya out to roam the countryside until all hours, alternating between necking and bashing in old ladies’ mailboxes.
“Good evening, sir,” Rias said before hopping onto the dock to secure his craft.
Though they’d reattached to the upper portion of the ship, Tikaya gave the Freedom an uneasy look fore and aft, almost expecting to find an octopus arm dangling from a corner or some other sign that would prove they’d been beneath the water’s surface. Not that it mattered. Despite Rias’s camouflage, someone had known the craft had the ability to submerge—and had been ready for it to do so. If, on their next run, they tried to explore the inaccurately mapped waters near the cliffs, what further troubles would they find?
“It’s late and you didn’t tell your mother where you were going.” Father’s scowl wasn’t much softer when it landed on Tikaya.
She wished she could think of something to say to lighten his mood, to bring back the father she remembered. He’d always been a quiet man, one to spend long days out in the fields or in the distillery, always preferring work to the emotional chaos of being in the house with so many family members, but he’d always been fair as well as stern. He’d usually had a smile for his only daughter. Since she’d returned with Rias, Tikaya hadn’t once seen him without his shoulders hunched to his ears and his eyebrows drawn down in a V.
“I know, Father.” She joined him on the dock. “You didn’t need to come all the way down here. I would have returned.”
Squeaks sounded as the men who had been manning the portable grill wheeled it toward the boardwalk. “To the peace after the war,” one called to Rias in Turgonian. It was a common before-drinks salutation in the empire, and Tikaya didn’t miss the significance of it being used in this context. Rias lifted a hand and offered only a wry, “Indeed” in response.
“It’s late. Finish up quickly and go back to your hotel,” Father told Rias, apparently not finding anything odd about ordering around someone who’d once held the rank of fleet admiral. You—” he stabbed a finger at Tikaya, “—come.” He stalked toward the boardwalk.
Tikaya knew her father wouldn’t approve, but she gave Rias a goodnight hug, lingering long enough to say, “Be careful.”
“Indeed,” Rias murmured again, returning the hug with one arm since he was holding a mooring line in the other. “I’ll send word when I’ve finished repairs and... additions.”
Tikaya imagined him adding all manner of weapons to deal with wayward sea creatures that might attack them. She hoped the government would let him. Now that someone knew that he’d gone against their agreement, Rias might find the roadblocks in his path had turned into flaming tar and caltrops. She snorted to herself. She was thinking in terms of Turgonian metaphors now. She hoped no telepaths were about, sniffing at her thoughts.
“Love you,” she whispered and kissed him—because her father was scowling from the head of the dock—on the cheek.
She refused to hurry to catch up. She didn’t want to anger Father, but she wanted him to have time to think of how unreasonable he was being. Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t any of them?
“Night, Ms. Komitopis,” one of the Turgonians said with a wave for her as she passed.
She lifted a hand to acknowledge him, but would have preferred people let her pass in silence. Especially Turgonian people. Her father continued on without further glares or comments.
“Where’s Ell?” she wondered when she caught up with him. She would have thought he’d be one of the last to leave. Maybe his lady had dragged him away. Or maybe he’d had something to do with the incident. He certainly came and went at inopportune times.
Actually... when Tikaya took another look at the last of those gathered, she realized that only Turgonians remained. They were cleaning up discarded cups and tossing garbage into bins. During the event, there’d been a mix of people. Not many Kyattese natives, true, but lots of other foreigners. She wondered what had happened to dampen the party and cause it to end early. Wrathful octopuses or not, she and Rias hadn’t been gone that long.
“Sent him home,” Father said, drawing her eye from the docks.
“And he listened?” Tikaya asked. Even when Ell had been a boy, he hadn’t been very good at listening to her parents or his own.
Father didn’t answer. He picked up his pace. Tikaya wondered if Mother had promised him she’d clear the house of youngsters for the evening if he hurried home quickly.
As they left the boardwalk and headed toward a beachfront street with runabouts parked on the sides, Tikaya resolved to come back down and help Rias in the morning. Dean Teailat could let her have a day off.
“Get in.” Father was holding open the passenger door to the runabout, and he jerked his chin for her to hurry.
“I—”
A boom sounded behind them, louder than a cannon being fired.
Tikaya spun back toward the quay, her jaw plummeting. Orange flames roared into the night, leaping
as high as the hilltops behind them, the brilliant intensity brightening the harbor for hundreds of meters in every direction. Shouts of surprise and cries of pain rose over the rumble of the ocean.
From the hill overlooking the waterfront, Tikaya was too far away to read the dock numbers, but she knew where the explosion had originated. Nobody else would have been a target.
Her legs seemed to have rooted to the earth, but she forced them to move. He could be injured. He could be—
No, no thinking like that, she told herself.
Tikaya started to run toward the quay, but an iron grip caught her by the elbow. Father.
“You’re not going down there,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”
There was no surprise in his voice. No horror. He’d known, she realized numbly. He’d known it was coming. That was why he’d been hurrying her away. That was why he’d sent Ell home. Had he warned all the other Kyattese to leave as well? Was he the one who’d been keeping an eye on her at home too? The one who’d locked away the secrets in the attic?
Later. It was something to worry about later.
Tikaya yanked on her arm, but his fingers, strong and calloused from years in the fields, had the tenacity of iron.
“It’s gone, girl,” Father said. “It’s for the best. One day, you’ll understand.”
“Understand?” Tikaya cried. “If I ever understand why someone would blow up a good, honorable man whose only crime was being born on the other side of an ocean, I’ll shoot myself.”
She stomped her foot onto her father’s instep. Her sandal lacked the bone-crunching heft of Turgonian combat boots, but her anger lent it power. Her father gasped and his fingers loosened. This time, Tikaya succeeded in yanking free of his grip. She sprinted down the street, pausing only long enough to tear off her sandals so they wouldn’t slow her down.