17. Chapter Seventeen

"Every light should be extinguished," Rahmi ordered as he descended the steps from the stern to the quarterdeck at record pace, Alaric tightly behind him. "Every torch, every lantern, every dimly lit candle. No light should come from The Mark of Malice the moment we pass through the mist."

Rahmi had expertly navigated them away from the continent"s coast and kept a fair distance from Kalia in the process. He hadn"t even approached her in the five days since he had tossed Ralston overboard before stringing his nearly-dead corpse from the crow"s nest. It was there that he died, and it was there that Rahmi kept him for three days as a reminder to the rest of the crew.

He would be lying if he said he hadn"t felt shame in allowing his crew to run the lower decks. He wanted to be a just captain, allowing his crew to choose how they spent the remainder of their time healing from guilt. More than anything, he wanted them to make the right choice.

But Rahmi had known how uncomfortable Shirin and Elodie felt in the berth and knew enough that he had assigned the two of them—and Cora—a spare storage closet. But Cora had split off from them nearly a decade later, and adding three more women to the ship in recent years made Rahmi believe there were enough willing participants to satisfy the men in his crew.

He didn"t like to admit when he was wrong, but he knew he was wrong now. And he needed to make that apology up to Elodie, though he knew words alone would not be sufficient.

"How are you planning to sail us through, captain?" Alaric asked, his single eye widening as he clomped down the stairs after Rahmi. "The clouds covering the stars tonight are—"

"Then we go through the old-fashioned way," Rahmi interjected with a grin. He reached up to snuff out the nearest lantern with a quick pinch of his fingers. "And we use my memory of the path through the wreckage."

"And hope that is enough to get us through," Alaric grumbled.

Rahmi slid his gaze to his quartermaster, who had already pinned a longing stare on the newest crew member, Reshef. He was busy assisting Thomas in securing the sail"s rope to the mainmast, his lean muscles rippling through his tunic. Rahmi cleared his throat once, then again with no response before finally knocking Alaric in the ribs with a quick elbow tap.

Alaric started, turning a sheepish look to the deck. "The Eerie Isles are not a place we want to get stuck," he went on after a moment of recovery. "Are you sure there hasn"t been another ship to go down since last we"ve been here?"

Rahmi didn"t answer for a long minute, instead turning his attention toward the wall of seemingly impenetrable mist that loomed before them.

The Eerie Isles, though named as an archipelago, was a graveyard for ships set behind a dense wall of fog. Once within the barrier, Rahmi knew he could barely see the bow of the ship from his place at the stern, but he had enough experience sailing through the waters that he wasn"t worried about the sunken ships held aloft by the reefs. He hadn"t thought twice about the broken masts bobbing in the sea or the rigging waiting for the next ship to tangle in.

No, what set his teeth grinding and his nerves on edge were the creatures that lived within it.

"Extinguish the lights, Alaric," Rahmi finally commanded, retrieving the small piece of wood and the carving knife from his coat pocket. "My ship pierces the veil."

Alaric didn"t argue, though Rahmi knew what he was thinking from how his brow flashed to his hairline and his one eye dropped to look at the wood. Rahmi only whittled timber when he was nervous and needed to keep his hands busy. It didn"t happen often, but now…

Rahmi leveled him with a look of warning as he pocketed the wood and knife and crossed the deck to the next lantern, pinching the wick just in time for the front of The Mark of Malice to disappear within the fog. A shudder of anxiety rippled through the men as the mist hit their faces. It was a sensation that Rahmi never quite got used to himself, the clawing and the biting. The staring, the assessing. It was as though the fog were alive, that every molecule of water was sentient and turned toward him—a monster waiting in the shadows for any flicker of light to set it free.

And Rahmi knew precisely what that monster looked like.

Despite the creatures that lurked below, sailing to the prison was an obstacle in reading the map he could not afford to abandon. He needed his former crewmember to interpret the map and if he didn"t get him, the stakes Liddros had laid out for him were…fairly concerning. He didn"t want to know what a lifetime of serving an angry God of the Sea would look like.

He took a breath, then another, as the ship glided through the veil. Turning on the heels of his boots, Rahmi clambered up the stairs, reaching for the wheel"s spokes to steady their entry. There was a broken mast a few meters to their left, and an overturned keel to their right. He needed to thread the ship just enough that— yes, that would do it. Turning the ship was damn near impossible, even at their crawling speed, but keeping them on course was going to be necessary.

Rahmi spun the wheel to his right just as Alaric shouted an order from the bottom of the stairs. There was another ship they would need to avoid about a hundred meters along, but that would give him enough time to navigate past it. The Mark of Malice shuddered as the rudder scrapped along the side of something he hadn"t anticipated, and Rahmi gripped the wheel tighter to keep it in place.

"Alaric, check the keel!" Rahmi shouted to the quartermaster, who had thrown out a hand to steady himself on the railing of the stairs. "From the feeling, it could be one of the storage rooms." He let go of the wheel, allowing it to center, before removing the wood and carving knife. He began to whittle, swallowing back the nerves that sat like a rock in his stomach.

"Aye, captain," Alaric replied, curtly nodding his head. He took off at a brisk pace, nearly avoiding colliding with someone as he went deeper into the dense fog.

Another figure emerged from the gray a moment later. A set of wool skirts had replaced the familiar red dress, though Kalia had pinned the hem to expose her legs. Rahmi let out another breath, but this one had nothing to do with creatures in the sea.

Rahmi watched as she sidled up to the gunnel, resting her forearms on the wood"s edge. "You should get below deck with the other women," he called over to her, delighting when she jumped in surprise. "There isn"t much to see now that we"re in the mist."

Kalia straightened, strolling to the bottom of the steps. She rested one foot on the step above and paused, assessing him with a gaze that pierced him just as deeply as the surrounding fog. "We were surrounded by water. There wasn"t much to see before the mist," she responded, tracing the wood pattern of the railing with a finger.

Rahmi couldn"t argue that.

"And anyways," she went on, taking another step upward, "I felt the ship shake and came to see what that was all about. But this fog is…" She glanced around, her eyes skimming along the tendrils and curls of gray.

Rahmi scraped the carving knife against the corner of the block, and a ribbon of wood fluttered to the deck. "Hiding things that, I promise, you want no part of."

Kalia finished climbing the stairs and edged to the gunnel near the wheel, peering over the ship"s side. "Is that why all of the lanterns have been extinguished?" she asked, crossing her arms as she stared into the abyss of the water below. For the things that lurk in the watery grave?" Her words had a spin of sarcasm on them, but Rahmi had seen those things firsthand, and he had no interest in seeing them again.

He let another ribbon of wood fall to the deck. "I don"t want to take any chances." He looked up, momentarily taken aback to see that her green eyes were now locked on him. "I"ve made that mistake before."

"Like the mistake you made with Ralston?"

"Yes." Rahmi"s blunt answer made Kalia blink, but he went on before she could respond. "But not in the way you think." Another curled ribbon fell to his feet. "I should have stepped in long ago when the women asked for a separate room. You were right to challenge me on it. And I was right to punish Ralston the way that I did."

Where Rahmi had expected a smug, shit-eating, I-told-you-so grin to appear, Kalia only turned away. She rhythmically rapped her knuckles against the gunnel, brow furrowed in thought. "I"ve been expecting you to toss me overboard. String me up on the mast next to him," she said in a surprisingly light tone.

"Is that why you"ve been avoiding me?" Rahmi asked after a barked laugh. He hadn"t expected to have a decent and friendly conversation with the djinn, but he would take what she would give.

"I haven"t been avoiding you," Kalia retorted, her shoulders stiffening as though she had been caught sneaking a bag of treats before dinner. "I"ve just been aware of where you are at all times and have made an effort to be elsewhere."

"Call it what you want then." Rahmi reached over to grasp the wheel again, steadying it to the left. Shouts echoed from the quarterdeck, the sole indication that they weren"t the only ones on board the ship. A gust blew from the east, swirling the fog in a dance of briny, water-logged scents. "I still need you. There will be no tossing you over…at least, for now."

Kalia rolled her eyes at the wink he sent her, but her gaze quickly snapped to the waves below. "I just— I just saw—" Her cheeks paled, the rosy coloring from the wind bright against the sudden paling shift under her skin.

Rahmi allowed the wheel to center again before walking over to the gunnel. He knew what she saw and didn"t need to glance into the waves below to confirm it, but he did anyway. There was a flash of graying skin, water sluicing from the limb as it surfaced, and a sickening thwack as the body slammed into the keel of the ship.

Keeping a steady hand on the carving knife, Rahmi sliced off another ribbon of wood from the block, allowing it to drift down, down, down until it settled on the rolling waves below. They watched it silently for a series of heartbeats before a single hand, rotten and clawed, emerged from the depths. The creature captured it with one swipe, dragging it into the sea.

Kalia continued to gape at the scene that had unfolded before them, her wide eyes still fixed on the waves.

"Nasnas," Rahmi murmured, answering a question she hadn"t asked. "They were once human, prisoners in the realm we"re sailing toward. The ones who died while held captive there turn into—" He trailed off to gesture below. "They usually stick to themselves, preferring to stay beneath the surface. But they"re attracted to light."

"Hence the lanterns. " Kalia"s skin had turned clammy, a sheen appearing on her brow that Rahmi knew wasn"t a layer of mist from the fog. She inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. "And was this a shortcut to the prison, or do you have a horror kink that we should know about?"

Rahmi chuckled again, resting a hand on the gunnel beside Kalia"s forearm. "It"s the only way to the prison." He could feel her heat on the long edge of his pinky, and when he glanced down, he was made aware that his hand had prickled her flesh. Silence stole the space between them, and a long minute later, Kalia finally cleared her throat.

"What are you making?" she asked, moving her arm away to wave a dismissive hand toward the timber.

A rush of cool replaced her warmth, and Rahmi ignored the sinking feeling in his chest as he lifted the half-carved block into the air. "A carving of my cock for you to go fuck yourself with."

Kalia laughed as she reached over to pluck the wood from his hand, planting her elbow on the gunnel to keep it between them. She scrutinized it with narrowed eyes, but Rahmi still saw her nervous swallow when another nasnas surfaced below them. "It truly is that small. I didn"t get a good enough look, but—"

It was Rahmi"s turn to pluck the carving from her hand. It was the beginning of a horse"s head, one that he had carved from memory before. One that was stark in his mind when he reflected on his childhood. The horse that had hauled his family"s things around as they moved from dune to dune on the outskirts of Sha"Hadra.

"Do you want to see it again?" he countered instead, sliding a side-long gaze toward her. "Wouldn"t want you to feel like you were missing out."

Kalia shook her head, the ghost of a smile still on her lips. She opened her mouth to retort, and Rahmi had begun to lean in to better hear her over the shouts of the men on the deck, but a particular chorus of yells caught his attention.

"No! No, no, no!"

Rahmi"s gut hardened into lead, and bile burned the back of his throat as he launched himself down the stairs of the stern deck, landing with a heavy thump against the wooden planks. A flicker of light, the tiniest flame from a struck match, illuminated the deepest recesses of the fog. It was barely seen, barely glowed against the thick gray that surrounded them, but it was enough.

"Blow it out!" Alaric cried out from an unseen position. Rahmi heard his thundering footsteps, too. "Blow it out!"

It was too late.

Rahmi tore his cutlass from the sheath at his hip as Searles emerged from the fog, his dagger drawn and held tightly in his fist.

"How fucked are we, captain?"

Rahmi ran a hand over the top of his head, his fingertips catching in the wind-swept tangles that escaped his bun. From his periphery, there was movement on the side of the ship, and he briefly closed his eyes long enough to let a sigh escape his nose. Opening them, he turned his head to look toward the gunnel, where a wet, gray hand had planted on the flat surface of the wood.

"Fucked, Searles. If I do say so myself."

But it wasn"t himself that Rahmi thought of as the hand pushed itself further onto the ship, where it became a wrist, elbow, and shoulder. No, it was where he had left Kalia in his desperation to snuff out the flame. And as Rahmi turned to look toward the staircase, unseen against the thick wall of fog, the nasnas lurched into a ferocious attack.