The whole yacht blew apart. Flaming debris arced high through the air, hurled violently across the water, came flying down in a lethal rain.
“Breathe!” Howan Fai shouted.
She gulped air-and her husband dragged her under. He swam frantically down, as frantically as they’d just swum up. The water lit up, bright as daylight, and saltwater burned her barely slitted eyes even as she tried to make out the dark shapes sharing the cold waters.
A shockwave tumbled them through the water. Something massive slammed down past her, plunging its way toward the bottom, and the water blazed above them.
Great sheets of flame spread far and wide overhead, and Howan Fai swam hard sideways, towing her frantically toward the darkness. She started to kick that same direction, and for the first time in her life, Andrin was grateful she was large and strong, with more power in her body than grace. She swam with a single-minded determination toward the dark water beyond the flames, and when she reached it, she swam madly up, lungs nearly bursting yet again.
When her head broke water a second time, she sucked down air in gasping, painful shudders. Oh, Triad, help us, please…She searched wildly, trying to find Howan Fai again. Then he was beside her, gulping down air, as well, treading water at her side. She gripped his hand, gripped hard, trembling and crying as the emotional and physical shocks hit her.
Beyond them, the sea was an inferno. The fuel gushing from Peregrine’s ruptured hull spilled across the surface of the water, turning the waves into a raging sheet of flame. The yacht was nothing but wreckage. She’d broken in half and the two halves were sinking, still fiercely ablaze. Andrin heard people screaming in the flames, heard the engine-throb of the destroyer closest to them.
She was opening her mouth to scream for help when Howan Fai covered her lips with his hand and shook his head urgently. He nodded with his head and she saw another boat-one with a haze above it, visible only when it rose on the very crest of a wave and instantly gone again when it slid into a trough. A smaller craft than Peregrin, it sat rocking in the waves less than thirty feet from them.
It was a pleasure boat, one of the new power cruisers rich men liked to speed in, racing across harbors and bays, kicking up spray behind them in gleeful abandon.
This boat wasn’t kicking up spray. It sat silent and dark, ominous in the black water. Then she heard the voices. Men’s voices. Low, rapid, speaking in a language she recognized as the Othmaliz dialect of Shurkhali. What they said riveted her entire attention.
“-no one could’ve lived through that,” an angry voice snarled. “Gods damn it! How could those fools have bungled the job so badly? It was a cinch! Board in the darkness, snatch that cutcha, and dump her over the rail. Aruncas knows the fishes are hungry, and I Masked this job, neat as anything. We should’ve been halfway across the Straits before the bomb blew. But no, they botched it! That was a godsdamned gun battle, raging up there, before it blew apart!”
Another voice, no less appalled, said, “The Seneschal will be furious. His Eminence wanted that-what was your word, cutcha? — to vanish. Swallowed by the waves and never recovered!”
“Dead is dead,” the Masker chuckled nastily, “and that frigging explosion won’t leave much in the way of identifiable bodies! But if they can’t trot out every tall fisher girl up and down the Ylani as the missing heiress for the next decade, that’s the Seneschal’s problem, not ours. We did our part. Let’s finish this.”
A large form blocked Andrin’s view of the boat for a moment and then slid on by.
“Good enough,” said one of the Bergahldians.
“Fine,” replied the Masker. “Get us out of here before those fucking destroyers decide to strafe every boat within a thousand yards.”
“I thought they couldn’t see us,” said a third voice showing a little more fear.
“They’ll see us just fine if you let a stray bullet hit me. Finish Calling your hungry little friends, and we can get out of here,” said the Masker.
“I’d really rather we got to shore first.”
“Do it!” snarled the Bergahldian.
The boat didn’t race away. That would have attracted too much attention. Instead, it chuffed slowly away under low power while the destroyers raked the flaming wreckage with searchlights, looking for survivors. Andrin realized quite abruptly that she was nearly naked in freezing cold water. She’d begun to shiver while listening to those murderous ghouls and those shivers were rapidly turning into shudders.
“Swim, Andrin,” Howan Fai said grimly beside her. “It will help keep us warm until we’re close enough for someone to hear us or see us.”
She nodded. Then she reached across the dark water and touched his face. “You saved my life. Again and again, tonight.” There was more salt in her eyes than the sea could account for. “Oh, Triad! Howan, Daddy and Mama and the girls…” She was crying, fighting desperately for control, but the pain was tearing her in half. “I’m not ready to be Empress! Not like this!” she cried.
Howan Fai hooked one arm around her and churned the water with his legs to hold them both up. The strength of his arms and his ease in the water calmed her even before he started speaking, and Finena, circling in the air above, invisible in the darkness, cried out her fury. Andrin had almost forgotten her falcon.
“Sister of White Fire,” her husband said in a stern voice, “you’re strong enough to do anything. To endure anything. You’re Talented enough to protect your life and my life and this whole world we love. If not for your Glimpse, we would both be dead. Your warning gave me time to act. To throw you over the rail before those murderers could reach you. If you can save us from a plot this well orchestrated, Andrin, you can do anything you must!”
His voice was fierce. His eyes, lit by the fires raging across the water, were as hot as the flames that had nearly killed them both, and that fierceness steadied her. She was still shaking, but the hysterics were draining away and what was left was merely the shudders of icy water and reaction.
“I’m c-cold, Howan,” she chattered. “Let’s s-swim.”
This time, it was his grin that was fierce.
“That’s the woman I love. Swim with me, Andrin. We have but a little way to go.” He pointed to the closer of the two destroyers, which had left the deep channel in the center of the Straits to search for survivors. She heard shouts as sailors from both ships lowered lifeboats and she saw searchlights sweeping across the flaming ruin of her beautiful yacht. She wouldn’t think, yet, about the people who’d died aboard that yacht. Her servants, her security men, her crew…
She started to swim.
It seemed such a short distance, but it was a long, brutal swim in the cold water, with her body shuddering and her teeth chattering. They swam five yards beyond the edge of the burning fuel, having to skirt debris floating in the dark water. Some of that debris had been human and she closed her eyes and kept swimming, trying to blot out the numb horror of what she was seeing.
She swam slowly, exhausted as the adrenalin rush wore off, and Howan Fai matched her pace stroke for stroke.
“Keep going,” he encouraged her. “Almost there.”
They watched another lifeboat hit the water and push off. Its crew had lit rescue torches, looking frantically for survivors. The flames were so fierce the lifeboats couldn’t even get close to the sinking wreckage and she heard them, faintly, calling out across the wreckage and the crackling of the flames.
“Hello! Hello! Can anyone hear me?”
She and Howan Fai were too far away, yet, to be heard above the secondary explosions that ripped periodically through the yacht’s broken hull. Mixed in with those hopeful shouts were curses, raging and frantic as men swore in savage tones. She could even hear what sounded like weeping. She’d never heard grown men cry, before. They’re crying for me, she realized through her numb weariness. Her lungs hurt from the gasping breaths she pulled down, trying to force her flagging body forward.