Chapter 15: Open Water

Nico

Flat blue water stretches in every direction. Seravalle is a pale smudge, then nothing at all behind the stern. The Sans Souci moves with an easy, rolling lift, her white sails full and silent. On the deck, the daily machinery of the boat runs without my help. At dawn, a steward brings coffee and warm bread to the rail, the butter soft from the morning heat. Below, the cook is already grilling mackerel over the galley coals, the smell of woodsmoke and charred skin drifting up through the hatch. Another steward is down on his knees, scrubbing the teak with salt water and polishing the brass cleats until they catch the sun.

Forward, Théo has turned the foredeck cushions into a nest. He is sprawled on his back with his two girls from the Circle. A bottle of Vermentino is already open, sitting in a bucket of melting ice. Théo claps his hands along with the mandolin, his linen shirt unbuttoned to his waist. The two of them are still in their casino silks, bright peach and teal, looking ridiculous and beautiful against the white canvas of the sails. One is plucking the strings, a loose, simple tune that drifts over the water. They have the lazy stillness of people who have forgotten the shore exists.

I remain forward of the helm, letting Sandro take the wheel. The stern is clear, and I dive clean into the deep water. The cold hits my skin, washing away the grease of the Seravalle hotels and the stale air of the upper town. The Mediterranean is warm today, but the depth is cold. I float on my back, watching the masts of the Sans Souci trace slow arcs against the open sky. The hull looks massive from down here, a clean white wall rising from the sea. When I dive under, the sound of the deck party disappears, replaced by the deep, hollow hum of the water.

Climbing back up the stern ladder, I let the sun go to work on my bare back. A grilled mackerel is breakfast, eaten with my fingers. The skin is hot and salty, the white flesh sliding off the bone. I do not bother to wash my hands.

Mostly, I watch Kahina. She has spent three years carrying her pride as a shield. Today, she has set it down. She goes into the water off the stern, letting the sea hold her weight. The tight wariness in her shoulders has dissolved. Long, easy strokes carry her out, her warm brown skin dark against the swell. Her cotton shift billows around her in the current, the white fabric turning transparent. On her back, eyes shut, she turns her face to the sun.

Later, Théo's girls pull her into their camp on the foredeck. They are braiding her hair with cheap ribbons and laughing over some nonsense about a merchant in the upper town. Kahina does not measure her laugh before it comes. She simply laughs. The sound is real and clear, carrying across the deck.

I have spent my entire life making ease look effortless. Out here, her laugh keeps landing in my chest and staying there. The Duke's letter sits below deck with its seal already broken, where it has sat since Seravalle. The anchor mark rides on my wrist, kohl over old ink. We have only the salt and the sun on a good boat. Forward, my friend plays the fool on the bowsprit.

By the afternoon, the sun and the saltwater have washed the kohl V on my wrist to a pale shadow. I sit on the deck beside Kahina. Her hand reaches for mine. She pulls the small clay pot of kohl from her shift. Her fingers are cool and steady as she holds my wrist. Using a thin bone stylus, she draws the dark lines over the old tattoo, dragging the wet pigment along the faded ink of the V. The tip of the stylus is a light, cold touch against my skin. We do not speak while she works. The mark is her mark, redrawn for the voyage.

She recaps the small clay pot and slides it back into her pocket. The black lines on my wrist are dark and clean again, matching the kohl around her own eyes.

"We will reach the western route by tomorrow night," she says, her voice level.

"Then we will find Jafar," I say.

She nods once. Her gaze turns back to the open water, her wet hair curling against her neck.

I look at the horizon. The line is sharp and clean, dividing the sea from the sky, and for once I do not want to disappear into it. I want to see what is on the other side.

Kahina

The sun is lower now, and the deck is hot under my feet. I sit at the stern with a book open in my lap, ignoring the pages. Nico stands at the tiller, shirtless. His back is a map of muscle and old sun, his shoulders moving as he holds the boat steady.

"Why did you take me from Eclaire's?" I ask.

My voice is level. The question stands on its own.

"Paying what you paid was not only to irritate your father," I say.

He abandons his usual theater. He keeps his eyes on the sails for a second before he answers.

"I was bored," he says. His voice is quiet. "Everything in Seravalle was a rehearsal for a play I did not want to be in. Then I saw you at the rail of the transport ship. You looked ready to burn the world down for a better view. I wanted to know what that was like."

"And now?" I ask.

"Now I know," he says, turning his head to look at me. "And I think I am still interested in the view."

I look at the dark water sliding past the hull.

"I want the names," I say, stating it flat. "Captain Malik is the first. I need the ones who know where they carried my sisters."

Nico meets my gaze without flinching. His nod is his only answer.

"Then we will find them," he says.

Théo is sitting on the cushions forward. He glances once at the stern, then stands and grabs his two girls. He herds them below to the salon without a word, leaving us alone.

We eat dinner topside with the crew as the light dies. Afterward, the boat settles for the night. The stewards finish their work in the galley. Théo and his girls remain below. Sandro stays aft as the single helmsman, his eyes fixed on the bow, his back to us. Everything goes dark and quiet under a sky thick with stars, the only light the binnacle lamp and the white wash of the Milky Way.

I pull a blanket and cushions onto the warm deck boards near the bow. Nico follows me. The open air is cool, but the teak is warm against my bare legs. Overhead, the sail is a pale wall against the stars. The black sea stretches endless on every side.

Lifting the linen dress over my head in one slow motion, I let the night air hit my bare skin. My gaze stays on his. Nico pulls his shirt off, his movements urgent. I push him back onto the cushions and straddle his hips, discarding the chemise. Low on his ribs, I find a thin white knife scar, new to my fingers. I run my thumb along the pale mark.

"Knife," he says.

"I know the shape of a blade," I say.

Then we do not need to translate. Our bodies are familiar and certain. His mouth finds my neck, his lips warm against my breasts in the starlight. Down between my thighs, his thumb and two fingers work the wet of me. Shifting my weight, I rise over his face to ride his mouth. His tongue strokes my clitoris with long, firm pressure. Flat on my hips, his hands hold me over him until my orgasm breaks against his mouth under the open sky.

I move down, guiding him. Sinking onto his cock in one slow, heavy stroke brings the cool night air to my back and his heat deep inside me. I ride him. His hands grip under my buttocks, tilting my hips so his shaft rubs my clitoris on every plunge. The wet slap of our skin is the only sound against the wash of the water. My second climax breaks on his name, and only then does he let go. He grips my waist, spilling into me, my name low in his throat.

Afterward, we lie tangled on the deck under the blanket. The salt and sweat cool on our skin. The mast circles slow against the stars as the boat rolls. Neither of us speaks. On the horizon, the lights of Valderre are a faint scatter of gold against the black. His hand is over mine. The truth I told him sits between us with no weight at all. I leave my hand where it is.

My breathing has slowed to match his. I have not wanted to be anywhere else in years, and that is the most dangerous thing the night has handed me. I let the silence keep it.

Nico

The tiller is warm under my palm, polished smooth by salt and hands. Sandro is forward by the mast, securing the halyard. His skin is dark from the season, and his movements are slow in the midday heat. Near the bow, Théo and his two girls are asleep under the shadow of the mainsail. They lie tangled on the canvas cushions, surrounded by empty plates and a drained bottle of Vermentino. The wind is steady off our quarter, pushing the hull through the low swells with a clean, sliding hiss.

Kahina sits on the bench at the stern, a few feet from where I stand. A leather-bound volume lies open in her lap, its edges curled and yellowed by the salt air. She has not turned a page since Sandro went forward. Her chin rests in her hand as she looks out over the wake. The dark linen dress clings to her shoulders, the fabric damp from the spray. Her eyes follow the green trail we leave behind us, tracking the foam as it dissolves into the blue. The black ink on her fingers is dry.

The space between us is quiet. The theater of Seravalle is behind us, and the old charming lines stay behind my teeth where they belong. The silence is easy now, and neither of us works to fill it. She does not look up to see if I am looking, and I do not perform for her benefit. The wind fills the canvas above us with a low, steady push. The sea is the only thing moving between the hull and the sky.

Below the deck, on the teak chart table, the letter from my father sits under a brass paperweight. The red wax seal with the Valderre lion is still unbroken, the edges of the stamp sharp in the dim light of the cabin. I know the smell of the paper. It smells of dust and the cold stone of the estate walls. It smells of Genevieve practicing her polite, disappointed face in her mother's salon. My father wants me back in Valderre. He wants the family name betrothed to a woman who will spend forty years pretending she does not mind my absences, keeping the accounts in order while I sail.

I could turn the tiller. The Sans Souci is mine, paid for with the inheritance my mother left in Genoa. My voice is the only one the crew obeys. With the gold in the locker and this wind off the quarter, we could reach the Spanish coast or the islands further south. My father's name would become a collection of empty syllables, meaning nothing to a harbor master in Seville. We could disappear into the western route, and no one would look for us beyond the cliffs of Seravalle.

I am not a beggar. The funds my father's auditors never found have kept the crew paid for five years. In the yards at Saverno, the same money is framing a blue-water merchantman with a clean keel and a deep hold. The shipwright is waiting for my word to step the masts. No father's signature or Armand's manifests can stop me. I could run south tomorrow, clear the Italian coast, and head for the open sea. The horizon would belong to us.

I do not move the rudder. The bow stays pointed east, toward the land I have spent ten years escaping. Valderre is the wrong world, a cage of gravel paths and family ledgers. But the ledger contains the only thing Kahina came to find. The manifests are there, showing the ports and the names of the captains who bought her family. She needs those records, and my name is the key to the vault. I am steering into the cage because she has a war to fight, and I am going with her.

My right wrist aches under my cuff. The skin is still tender where she dragged the kohl yesterday, tracing the flukes of the anchor and pressing the crossbar deep into my skin. It is her mark. The Duke and Armand have no claim to it. The dry, crusty texture of the pigment rubs against my linen sleeve. When I run my thumb along the lines, a tiny flake of black powder drifts down onto the deck. I do not wash it off. I keep it under the gold cuff links my father gave me, a secret beneath his metal.

The wood holds steady against my palm. The horizon is wide and empty, offering a dozen ways to disappear, but I hold the bow on the course she needs. The trap is ahead, and I steer into it with both hands on the helm.

Kahina rises from the bench, leaving the book open on the teak. Her dark linen dress snaps against her ankles as the wind catches the hem. When she reaches the helm, she leans her shoulder against mine. She smells of salt and the almond oil she uses for her hair. The sun catches the gold thread of her earrings, throwing a tiny glint of light across my chest.

"You are quiet," she says. Her eyes stay on the horizon, tracing the grey outline of the coast as it takes shape.

I keep my eyes on the sail. "I am a man of deep, unspoken thoughts."

"You are a liar," she says. She does not laugh, but the corners of her mouth soften. "The silence does not suit you."

I turn my head and give her one of the old cheap grins, the ones I used to save for the salons in Seravalle. "You prefer the theater?"

"It is easier to ignore," she says. She leans her weight against the rail, her shoulder pressing against mine. "Two days."

"Two days," I say.

I turn my eyes back to the horizon. The wind is cool now, but her warmth remains against my shoulder. I hold the bow east toward the wrong world, and for the first time in my life, I do not want to be anywhere else.