Kova toyed with her frayed hemp bracelets and stared into the sea to starboard as the ship skimmed over the waves, her knees absorbing the rocking of the deck. The spray was pleasantly cool against her face. Fishbone, her hound, hid in a pile of blankets on the aft deck. Though Fish made herself useful snagging rats on the long journey south, the sea did not agree with her.
It was good to be headed south, out of the bloodless cold of the north. It was good to be back on a ship. It was good to feel useful.
“If you think you’ll be up for sailing with us when we leave Stormwatch, you’d be welcome,” the mate was saying to her. He had the stronger accent of those from the half-frozen northern seas. “You’ve been a fair hand on the journey. Fear’s Wake can always use someone who works as hard as you.”
It was meant to be a compliment. Kova had worked hard on the ship, rowing with the others to pay for her passage. It wasn’t the sailors she was trying to prove herself to, though.
Sayre Boarbane wobbled on unsteady legs over to the railing just in time to be sick.
Kova had thought it would be good to be in the company of the most renowned hunter in all of Ivercrest.
Kova had thought the great hunter would appreciate her, her strength and audacity, her willingness to do the hard work.
“How long until we reach this bloodless village?” Sayre moaned, scrubbing her mouth with the back of her hand.
The hunter was dressed only in her leather breeches and a woolen shirt she kept open at the collar, where a pale ribbon of scar shone through. Though she wore her leather bracers, her boar pelt cloak was belowdecks. Too hot, she’d said. When she caught one of the sailors having too close a look, though, one of her wicked skinning knives had cozied up real nice with the curve of his chin. “Just like butchering a deer, friend,” she’d growled, and no matter how green she turned, no one had touched anything of hers again, not even Kova.
“Couple days only,” the mate said with undisguised pity. Kova wasn’t the only one who had a new estimation of the Boarbane’s prowess. “Waves willing, anyway.”
We all have our strengths, Kova’s mother had taught her, and we all have our weaknesses. Some just have more of one than the other. Then she’d winked and kept drinking.
Being on the Fear’s Wake should have been good. They wanted her here.
If that was what she wanted.
Which it wasn’t.
Kova had thought she’d come home a named hunter, with a fortune to that name. She’d show up, sweep Ta’aliya in her arms, and wed her before the next moon’s cycle. Tal would braid her more bracelets and they’d be dressed in all the fine things Kova had found in her travels, things no one in Stormwatch had ever seen, let alone stolen from some trade vessel, and it would be better because she’d’ve bought them with her own deeds. There would be feasting for days and not just fish and shells and shark—which she would hunt herself, of course—but boar from inland, and venison, not gamey marsh rats and gulls. And her ma would be sober-eyed and see clearly for once who Kova really was.
But Kova had no name and no fortune, and the one person who could have helped her get there—
“Don’t look at me like that, kid. I don’t give a shit about your sweetheart.”
The boat gave a sudden lurch and the sailors on deck started shouting, readying ropes and nets and weapons. Kova ran for her own, an old fishing spear her mother and grandparents had kept in a corner but never got around to scrubbing up.
Sayre clutched desperately at the railing, going pale. “What was that?”
Another lurch, more like a nudge. Kova peeked over the edge as the deck pitched enough to send water slopping over the gunwale. A great shadow shimmered beneath the water’s surface. The shouting grew frantic as the sailors noticed, too.
“Ready, spears!” the mate shouted. The captain shouted instructions to the rowers from the tiller, but the creature was so large, there was no way to tell which way to turn. “Hold!”
“Do you know how to use that thing?” Sayre groaned.
“Of course I do,” Kova muttered. “I was born to it.”
Didn’t mean her hands weren’t slick on the wooden haft. Didn’t mean her mouth wasn’t dry. Then there was a moment—just a moment—when a great eye, large as a warrior’s shield in a flat, dark head, came close enough to the surface to peer up at Kova. Water sleeked off the eye like tears and the creature made a curious bugling sound. Kova felt Sayre’s regard heavy on her and adjusted her aim, steadied her footing. This was her last chance to show the hunter she was worth keeping.
“Hold, Captain!” the mate called. “It’s an adolescent!”
The captain swore and echoed the order, yelling for them to hold fire.
But a tentacle of the beast broke the surface right in front of Kova. Her last chance. The look in its eye almost playful. Kova let her spear fly. It hit beneath the blinking eye and a gout of red blood burst from the wound. Pained keening echoed across the waves and into Kova’s chest. Then a thrashing limb rose from the sea and knocked her into the oar benches on the other side of the deck.
With that final protest, the creature dove deep. Everyone on the Fear’s Wake hesitated, waiting for it—or worse, its parent—to return with vengeance in its heart. They held their breaths until the rowers had pulled them far from the site.
Kova disentangled herself as footsteps approached. Sayre and the mate both glowered down at her with disapproval.
“Double shift,” the mate said, jerking his head at the oar bench that had likely bruised her from toe to tip.
Kova bowed her head and took her place, gripping the thick wood with both of her callused palms. The first stroke told her exactly where those bruises would turn up. Her shoulder blades were already stiffening. When Sayre didn’t leave, Kova glared up at her.
The hunter broke off a bite-sized bit of ship’s biscuit.
“You disobeyed the captain’s order.”
“My aim was true.”
“You disobeyed the captain.” Sayre popped the bite of biscuit into her mouth and said around it, “That’s the kind of thing that gets real hunters killed. And if it’s not you who pays, it’s your hunt mates.”
“You said you don’t have hunt mates.”
“I don’t.”
Kova turned back to her oar.
She didn’t bother Sayre again on the journey, and as the mate promised, they reached Stormwatch two days later. She stepped off the Fear’s Wake with no more than she’d left with—less, now that her spear was stuck in a giant creature at the bottom of the sea, and failure an anchor around her neck.
