The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster Read Free Book Online Page A

figure out who was hoisting her up on their shoulders—was it Chaqal? The Captain?
    “Fuck!” The first mate’s voice came from somewhere below her. “This thing’s
hot
!”
    The Captain grunted as she handed her off; the quartermaster hauled Shina’s quaking body over the ship’s railing and set her down on the deck.
    Before Shina was aware of the faces leaning in over her, she was aware of the storm. It didn’t have any real cloud power yet—but that was building. In a way, it was like the storm got louder as it drew in the moisture from the sky around it, sucking the air dry for miles. The wind howled, sending stinging sand across the deck of the
Giggling Goat
and tugging at its sails.
    “Get out,” Shina croaked at the looming faces. “Get out of the harbor.”
    “We can’t,” Kodin said. “The tide isn’t in yet.”
    “Push the boat out,” Shina said. She let her eyes drift shut, let her mind drift out along the water with that whipping wind. It was running high and strong and heavy with moisture. She let her breath merge with the wind, found places where she could part it and twist it, grab hold of it with her brain and nudge its course a little bit one way or another.
    “Put the sail out, too,” said her mouth, somewhere else.
    There were voices over her body, she could tell. People who’d never seen someone call a storm before. Something stung part of her—her hand, she recalled. Something was burning her hand.
    When the sail of the
Giggling Goat
flapped open, it came as a hiccup in the very bottom of a wind. Shina focused on the boat, focused on stroking it gently with the wind, making a little almond-shaped eddy where the wind blew firmly and helpfully instead of wanton and wild.
    Somewhere far away, she felt something else—kind of a burning like the one on her hand, but more like an emotion than a physical sense. As she tried to figure out what it was, it grew more intense, more discernible. She still couldn’t identify it, but she was certain of two things.
    First, that second point of burning light was with the Dragon Ships at the north end of the harbor.
    Second, she had to get closer to it.
    Shina turned her attention back to the water that lapped around the keel of the boat. That alone wasn’t going to push it out into the harbor—but if she could create a storm surge, she might manage it.
    And then what are you going to do?
said a nagging voice in her head.
Fight off all those men by yourself? Plunder the hold?
Those ships were wide and shallow, she could tell, with holds fat and hollow as clay jugs—it was in the way they thrummed against the wind. Against the wind—
    She forced the words “Stay on the boat” out of her mouth, but she had no idea if anyone was there to hear them. Her thoughts were spread out over close to a square mile of ocean, and she had important work to do. That storm surge didn’t just need to be high enough to float the
Giggling Goat;
it had to drown the Dragon Ships while it was at it.
    It was pointless to try to move too much of a storm at the same time. You had to work in little filaments, no bigger than the breeze that Shina had hissed out of her belly one day at a time to get them this far. It was hard work; she could barely focus when that point of burning pain was drawing so much of her attention.
    If you had patience, though, then working slow was rewarding. Slowly but surely, howling all the way, the wind would twist in your grip and go where you wanted it to go.
    Shina angled a sharp, water-moving breeze around until it was facing the eddy where the
Giggling Goat
lay. She realized she was groaning with effort as she pushed the wind in and down, in and down, in and—
    “Hold fast!” the Captain yelled, somewhere far away. Shina felt something jerking on her body as the water rushed onto the beach. She slammed into the storm surge with every ounce of effort she had in her body—it was enough to send her into the warm, deep darkness that