18. Chapter Eighteen

The Mark of Malice had gone quiet, hauntingly so. For the first time since Kalia was brought aboard the ship, she could have heard a coin drop against the deck. The flicker of light, the one Rahmi had sprinted toward, had gone out, but a chilling fear still trickled into the crevices of her chest. It froze her in place long enough that she didn"t know when her fingers had begun to tremble.

The fog had become a prison, pressing on her from all directions. It caressed the exposed areas of her throat as though whispering promises of what it was readying to unleash. But she was alone on the stern deck, alone as the wheel creaked an unearthly song that only heightened the stillness around her. A stillness that was steadily broken by the whisper of wet flesh against wood slopping behind her.

With a cold, oily dread, Kalia slowly turned toward the ship"s side, where rotting fingers had curled around the gunnel. The creature hauling itself aboard wasn"t anything she could have imagined, even in her wildest nightmares. She got a better look at it as it slopped onto the deck, spilling into a pile of seawater that washed over the toes of her boots.

The nasnas was half a man, but not in the way of sirens or satyrs like she had heard in the bedtime stories from her childhood. No, the creature was vertically half a man, shaped as though someone had severed him from the crown of his head to the meeting of his thighs. The nasnas pushed itself to stand, and it was terrifyingly agile, having only one leg and one arm. It swayed with the ship"s rocking, which scraped against the unknown obstacles to the left now that Rahmi was away from the wheel.

Kalia took a step back, her mouth drying despite the sea breeze and fog, as the nasnas locked its single eye onto her, cocking its head to the right. The half brain and guts sloshed inside the exposed cavity, nothing but unseen magic keeping everything from tumbling onto the deck.

She quickly realized she had no weapon as the shouts of men and the preternatural roars of the creatures rose from the mist beyond her. She took another step back as the nasnas hopped toward her, its arm stretched in front of it, a hungry glint etched onto the half-face. She did the one thing she could think of doing and prayed to the gods that it would work.

Building that tendrilled bridge Kalia had come accustomed to connecting, she pushed into the mind of the nasnas, hoping she could convince the creature to hobble over the side of the ship. Or confuse it enough with her placement on the stern deck that it fell over the edge anyway. She closed her eyes, tearing through the layers of consciousness to find something she could latch onto.

But Kalia fell into an impenetrable darkness. From somewhere above the surface she had slipped under, someone was screaming. Pins and needles pierced her flesh as though she had been plunged into a frozen lake. It was pain, unimaginable pain, and it was never-ending torture. There was nothing; the creature was an abyss of mindlessness she couldn"t escape. She lost the bridge in the depths, scrambling and clawing as she was dragged deeper.

She was thrown back onto the stern deck, snapping back into her own body like a band. She was flat on her back, skirts and stays soaked from the pool of salt water the creature had dragged upward.

"Wh—what?" Kalia managed to gasp, the words sawing against the soreness in her throat. Shit. It was she who had screamed. She glanced around, frantic to lay eyes on the creature, to keep it from coming any closer to her, but her stare landed on Rahmi instead.

His chest heaved as he dropped his cutlass to his side. The ship rocked, a sickening screech coming from the keel below. Bile rose to the back of her mouth when movement drew her gaze away from the captain, and she twisted to vomit as the head of the nasnas rolled toward the staircase, thumping down each step.

"Don"t let them touch you," Rahmi growled as he grabbed the wheel, desperately turning it to the right. "We"re weighing anchor until we can get them off the ship. In the meantime—" He paused to wrap a hand around her bicep and haul her to her feet before taking a dagger from his hip and pressing it into her palm. "The only way to kill them is to remove their heads."

Kalia glanced down at the dagger, the leather hilt smooth against the skin of her palm. "This won"t take the head off of that."

"No, but it"ll buy you time to get away. Nasnas know nothing except for what is directly in front of them." The ship lurched, and Kalia stumbled as a heavy splash echoed through the fog. "The flame is out. We shouldn"t worry about attracting more of them, but we have to get the ones off the ship."

Skirting around the gray, rotten body of the nasnas Rahmi had beheaded, Kalia followed him down the stairs and into the chaos of the quarterdeck. Shrieks and screams split the night, slicing through the mist and bounding off the shipwrecks just out of sight. She looked down at the dagger once more before lifting her eyes toward Rahmi, startled when she saw that his brown ones were boring into her own.

"I gave that to you out of faith that you won"t bury it in my back," he hissed, taking a step forward. "Can I trust that you"ll give me that much decency?"

Kalia lifted her chin, tempering back the fear and anger his darkened glare provoked. "Fair is fair, I suppose." He had saved her, after all. It was the least she could do.

"Good." Rahmi wrapped the crook of his arm around her neck, dragging her into him as he slashed the cutlass through the air. Her cheek pressed against his tunic, and she could feel the thrum of his heartbeat on her temple. He smelled like used gunpowder and briny sweat, a faint hint of spiced cinnamon underneath it all. Behind her, something heavy fell to the deck with a thud. "If your plan is still to kill me, dare to do it while I"m facing you." His voice ghosted against the shell of her ear.

She pushed away from him, a sneer curling her upper lip, "I haven"t forgotten." A gunshot fired, the sharp ring rattling her eardrums.

Whipping around as Rahmi reached for her again, Kalia watched with horror as the closest nasnas swiped a mottled hand in her direction, the hefty claws missing her by a hair"s width. It let out a strangled roar, hobbling toward them on one unsteady leg. Another blade cut through the smoke and fog, the metal glinting against the moonlight that slivered through a break in the clouds.

The blade sliced clean through the neck of the nasnas, sending the head rolling toward the deck. Kalia glanced up to send a grateful look toward the person who had leaped in, but the man"s eyes were wide and shocked. The body of the nasnas had fallen back onto him, the corpse colliding with his chest. Kalia stepped forward, unsure how to help, but Rahmi pulled her back. All she could do was watch as the man"s face contorted into a silent scream. Dust trailed from his fingers, wrist, and forearm before his entire body disappeared in a hazy cloud. Only his clothes remained, crumpled into a pile on the ashy sand.

"Don"t let them touch you," Rahmi repeated, his voice low and gruff.

Kalia"s gaze darted around, and it registered for the first time that the remaining men fighting on the deck were layered in the white dust, piles of clothes haphazardly strewn about the deck.

"Kalia!"

She didn"t have time to respond. In the span of a heartbeat, two hands shoved her back, and she was sent stumbling across the deck. Hands scrambling to catch anything that would keep her from falling, she twisted as her boots caught in the ropes coiled against the bulwark. But the push had been too hard, and she stumbled too fast.

Someone screamed her name again as she tumbled over the gunnel, pitching headfirst into the fog surrounding the ship.

Time ticked as Kalia fell. It could have been a hundred minutes; it could have been a hundred seconds. It wasn"t until she breached the icy waves below that she knew the mindlessness of the nasnas did feel like drowning.

She was being stabbed, she could have sworn it, and the coldness of it sank into her chest. The sudden rush of freezing water made her brain momentarily stall. Her woolen skirts, made to keep her warm in the harsh sea winds, only dragged her further into the depths. Cracking her eyes open and ignoring the burning from the salt that followed, she couldn"t even see how far the surface was.

If Kalia was even facing the surface.

There was no indication of which way was up or down. She thrashed, kicking her legs to gain momentum over the current, but the coiled rope had fallen with her. It wrapped around her ankles and calves, tangling in her sodden skirts. Panic flashed through her, and her racing heart did nothing to lessen the burn that built in her chest.

She needed to breathe. Oh gods, her lungs were on fire. There was a final gasp playing at the back of her throat, one that she knew would be her doom if she couldn"t…if she didn"t… She might not have the choice. Her mind was numb, her chest was screaming out, and there was no way to stop the heaving gulp that would only flood her lungs with seawater.

Something heavy plunged into the water behind her, and an arm wrapped around her waist. Kalia"s mind went fuzzy, the corners of her thoughts beginning to blacken and wither. She was being pulled to her left, but it was too slow, and it would be too late.

They stopped, and Kalia lay suspended in the sea. Her skirts were torn off, quickly followed by her stays, and the rope around her feet was tugged at. It must have been too knotted and tangled because the person abandoned it a moment later. She moved easier through the water without the heavy wool layers weighing her down, but it still wasn"t fast enough.

Kalia sucked in a breath, one that filled her mouth and chest with sea foam and water, just as her head broke through the surface. She coughed and gagged as the air— had anything been so precious to her before? — graced her cheeks. The briny water burned her throat as she vomited, but that arm around her waist remained steady and unyielding.

The waves washed over her, plastering her hair further to her head, and Kalia didn"t know where her tears ended and the sea began. She finally turned her head toward the heavy breathing that echoed into her ear, the weight of her body making her feel muddled.

"I"ve got you, ruehi," Rahmi said, tightening his grip around her as they bobbed in the sea. "I"ve got you."

Her teeth clacked together, and her entire body shuddered, but Rahmi"s grasp on her never faltered. He lifted a hand, swiping the locks that clung to her lips and temples. Did he always have a dimple on his right cheek when he frowned? She knew about the left one. She hadn"t noticed the right one before. Nor had she spotted the freckle that had taken up residence just on the outside of his nostril until that moment.

A rope fell from above, hitting the waves with a loud splat. "Captain! Grab ahold! We"ll pull you up!" The voice came from impossibly far away, and when Kalia squinted, she could barely make out the gunnel of the ship through the thick, rolling fog.

"You— you came after me," Kalia started, the cold threatening to strangle whatever she had left in her chest. From the worrying look Rahmi tore over her face, she wondered if her lips had already tinged a dangerous color of blue.

Rahmi loosened one hand from her waist to grab the rope, pulling it over to Kalia. He deftly tied it around her, looping it behind the back of her thighs so the knot he created would act as a cradle. His brown eyes sank into hers, and Kalia felt like she was again falling into the sea depths. "Yes." It was a complete sentence, and he didn"t elaborate further.