She squatted and pulled the table down over her, Prince and Iraji and rope and casks and curtain rods and all. Breathing smoothly, setting her legs wide, drawing the mass of the table down onto her calves and thighs, Baru held Tau-indi and Iraji and waited for the sea to rise.

O Wydd, she thought, let my breath last.

Cheetah tilted to port and did not stop, could not stop, she just kept tilting and tilting and tilting. She was capsizing, she was turning over—

The door holding back the flood snapped off its hinges. The weight of the sea rolled down to crush Baru. The weight of the sea.

20. Glass Pierces Cheek

20

GLASS PIERCES CHEEK

A FIST of water slammed Baru down against the sunroom windows. She struck face-first.

The dining table with its passengers crashed down on her back.

A sliver of broken glass went in through her mouth and out her cheek. She could feel it with her tongue: she tasted the puff of blood, sweet in the brine—

But she remained

calm.

With her left hand she reached up to the frame she was pinned against and clicked the latch open.

With her right hand she unlatched the window frame to her right.

The windows swung open beneath her. She let herself fall out of Cheetah.

Silence and bottomless dark bubbled up around her.

She drew the table down with her. Tau-indi’s khanga fluttered in the current. Their cheeks were comically puffed, their eyes squeezed shut. Iraji clutched at their hand.

The quiet of everything. High above, rain stippled the surface of the sea. Helbride was silhouetted by her own whale lanterns. Crew overboard from Cheetah thrashed in the waves.

Baru thought, I am a daughter of Taranoke. I am born from the navel of the world. My home was made from the fire of the earth and the deep of the sea. I will not drown here. I will not drown your hopes, kuye lam.

She was bleeding, bleeding, the blood made her hungry, the hunger fed her soul. She whirled and caught the falling table on her body: it crashed into her across her stomach, drove the breath from her, but she roared a silent drowning roar, her blood so thick and fast it felt it would erupt from her eyes, and she kicked and kicked and pushed Tau-indi and Iraji away from their falling ship. Trim will save us and trim is only other people.

Something impossible followed her. It was the fucking moon! The moon was after her again! Baru stared at it in fury and kicked harder.

The moon pursued her. Out of the dark came a white-black torpedo shape, bigger than a horse, bigger than a whaleboat—Baru saw carnivore teeth, an eye bright with intelligence, a scythelike blade that she had taken for the moon, gleaming alien letters—a surface gnarled as brain coral, and deep within it, staring, the hollow eyes of a skull—