"Some are dead," whispered Wilemina. "This woman beside me grows cold. I poke her but can't rouse her."
"If she's dead," said the oft-callous Simone, "shove her off. We need the room."
"What of the others?" Adira cast about, but the world was thrashing darkness and spinning spume. She might have struck her skin alight, her favorite trick spell, but she was too addled and exhausted. And chilled. Early autumn in northern latitudes meant frosty nights. Adira was astonished they'd survived this long. Dawn would see their corpses sheathed in rime ice.
"Where's Virgil, and Murdoch, and Peregrine? And Heath? Surely he can't be gone!"
"Murdoch's nearby," said Simone. "We shouted until our voices gave out. Murdoch answered, but only he. Peregrine couldn't swim. Virgil sank. He was badly bashed by that tiller. It broke his ribs or guts. He claimed to be all right, but spit blood at every breath. He refused help when we jumped from the wreck."
"I see." Hot tears spilled down Adira's chapped cheeks, the only touch of warmth she'd ever felt in her life, it seemed. Cold gripped her like an iceberg.
"It's only hours till dawn," panted Wilemina through chattering teeth. "Maybe a fishing boat will see us."
"It's two hours still till the tide turns," countered Simone. "We'll be knee-deep in water soon and too stiff to stand."
"Where's the Conch?" asked Adira. "If it fetched on rocks we could climb aboard."
"Five fathoms deep," said Simone. "We only chucked loose a few hatches and lost those when we broached these rocks."
"I wish Lady Caleria would open the skies and pour sunshine upon us," whispered Sister Wilemina.
"Keep wishing," sniped Simone.
Screaming wind whipped away words, so silence fell. The sailors knew soon would come the silence of the grave, for their body heat ebbed even as the water sloshed around their legs and buttocks. People tried to scoot closer to the center but lacked room.
Adira croaked, "Jedit, shove off."
The tiger didn't answer.
In stubborn silence, with teeth chattering, Adira said, "Cub, you moor here only for our sake. You alone can survive this trap. Swim to shore and explore that cliff. Find a way up. Atop is forest. Build a fire or burrow in the mold. We can't, but you can. Go, swim. We need deck room. Go, damn your eyes!"
Rocking, stiff as a stone statue, Adira shoved with two hands and knocked Jedit off the rock. The tiger flopped with a great splash unheard above wind and surf. Exhausted and dizzy from her head wound, Adira crumpled again. People scooched together for warmth, none speaking.
Time passed. An eternity of cold. Simone, Wilemina, the tiny brownie Whistledove, Adira, and the bay sailors pondered death, and cold, and the unfairness of losing one's life on a windswept rock, their thoughts jumbled as the angry waves. No one spoke as water washed the rock.
From the wet darkness, a throaty purring call startled them. "Adira Strongheart!"
Dully Adira opened her eyes to surging blackness. Frozen, barely able to move her jaw, she gargled, "J-Jedit, I or-ordered you-"
"Leave, yes." Water gurgled and slopped, and suddenly they all felt the great tiger surface like a leviathan alongside the rock. With only clawed paws clutching the rock, Jedit spewed water like a fountain. Something in his voice suggested humor, and instantly buoyed their hopes.
"You ordered I go, and I did. But I fetched friends."
"F-Friends?" gibbered Adira. "Who?"
A gasp echoed around the group as lights flickered below the black water. Paired orbs glowed soft green like undersea fireflies. As the doomed mariners watched, the lights rose all around, and for a second some thought of a sea monster with a hundred glowing eyes and a gaping mouth. Narrow heads with seaweed hair broke the surface, illuminated by green eyes shining like bullseye lanterns.
"Merfolk!" chirped Wilemina.
"Do not re-mem-ber us, do you?" A woman with a hatchet face sported rippling gills at her neck. Her voice piped and squeaked like a dolphin's. "Not very friend-ly, we call that."
It was a toss-up which notion stunned the humans more: that someone familiar rose from the sea, or that they teased as if meeting over beer. Reckoner, shaman of the Bom of the Beck tribe of the Lulurian Clan, had never been known to joke.
"Impossible!" stammered Adira. Scores of doubly glowing heads popped from the water smiling. To the merfolk, the autumn storm was as gentle as a summer breeze. "You can't… How did… I don't…"
"Adira," rumbled Jedit, just as sopping as the scaly water-dwellers. "Please accept their aid. The merfolk can swim us ashore. I'll go ahead to build that fire."
Shocked speechless, Adira nodded numbly. Beckoner caught the pirate queen's arm. "Tell your peo-ple we mean no harm. Some may think we drown them."
"Oh, y-yes. Sail me 'round to the others."
Beckoner nodded. Two merfolk latched onto Adira and gently drew her into the surf. It was near freezing, but Adira was too numb to feel. Keeping her chin above water, the swimmers deftly maneuvered her from one tiny rock to another. Murdoch she found alone, shivering, as terrified of drowning as of the ominous green lights. Breathless, Adira explained he'd be towed ashore by friends. Towed on, she passed word to more of Edsen's sailors, Heath, some corsairs, and Jasmine.
Hands like coral branches bore Adira toward the beach through the chop. Waves smacked her face. A flicker of yellow light beckoned. Before Adira realized her danger, she was plunged headlong into pounding breakers that sucked and tugged and tried to drown her, then she was yanked free of the water's clutch by the agile merfolk. Propped on a rock festooned with seaweed, the quaking pirate discovered the light was fire. Though the cliffs were sheer as a castle wall, portions had fractured and tumbled. Here a deep cleft formed a shelf jammed with driftwood. Grass and seagrapes and other bracken hung down from the forest floor above. Jedit had cleared a spot and kindled a fire. Adira had never seen so blessed a sight in her life.
With his keen vision, Jedit spotted the pirate queen and jumped to her aid. As frigid hands propped her from below, Jedit snagged her arms and hauled. Adira tried to crawl toward the fire, but collapsed, too stiff to move. Gently, Jedit persisted. Within minutes Adira was naked as a baby bird, propped against dry bracken and warm stone, with her wet clothes hung as a screen against the wind. Soaking in the wondrous warmth of the campfire, Adira cried unashamedly, grateful to be alive. Jedit bounded back and forth, fetching people and feeding the flames. Soon Adira's reduced bodyguard and fourteen Buzzard's Baymen were huddled around a fire so close they risked scorching bare feet.
Once more Jedit returned with his arms full, this time with a huge tail-flapping tuna. The tiger broke its neck, sliced flesh with his black claws, and speared white steaks on spits to sizzle.
That done, Jedit loomed over Adira, amber-green eyes glowing. "Beckoner lingers to speak with you, Captain. She can't approach the flames."
"Oh, y-yes." Shuddering to quit the fire for frosty air, Adira nonetheless borrowed Heath's drying shirt and minced on swollen feet to the edge of the stone shelf.
Beckoner and her court perched on icy rocks, calm as cormorants. Adira could see them now, skinny as pikes, the women flat-chested, all naked but for scales wrapping their torsos almost to the armpits. With dead-white skin tinged green and gills fanning at their necks, they looked like drowned corpses returned to haunt whoever slashed their throats. As shaman, Beckoner wore the tribe's treasure, necklaces and bangles of coral beads, bronze trinkets, and wire-wrapped rubies and sapphires.
"Thank you for saving our skins," stammered Adira. "Again. After you banished the river at Palmyra, Johan's army was beached, and we defeated them in the desert. Barely."
"Is no-thing." Reckoner waved a lank hand, a gesture adopted from humans. "A pact struck with our clan lasts as long as the sea, and car-ries to our child-ren's child-ren's spawn. Glad we could save you. Merfolk have no friends a-mong land-walk'ers."