Free The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) by Marian Perera

prepared for anything except what he actually saw swimming alongside. “It’s not very large, is it?”
    “She’s fifteen feet long from tail to snout.” Seawatch operatives always spoke with the same control and courtesy, but there was a definite undertone of We can’t all have a great white in Kovir’s voice. Or maybe Go over the rail and say that again .
    Alyster hoped it made up in ferocity what it lacked in size. No way could he expect that mackerel to ram a Turean galley and do more than bloody its snout. On the other hand, his greatest fear—other than losing the race—was that the Tureans would seize Checkmate without anyone off the ship knowing what had happened. Checkmate would simply disappear and his family would never know whether he was alive or dead. He would have done anything rather than put his parents through that. But at least Kovir had an escape route, and he could bring the Admiralty news of any disaster.
    “I’ll make sure the men know about her,” he said. Not that they would go swimming, given the steamship’s speed, but Seawatch forbade throwing food of any kind to the sharks.
    “Thank you, Captain.”
    Alyster nodded. The shark was smaller than he’d expected, but it was another set of eyes and ears that could range far from his ship—and a much better sense of smell than anyone on board. The Kraken wasn’t likely to pass unnoticed for long.
    Once it was safely dark—according to timeglasses filled with fine-grained sand—Kaig climbed up to the hatch to see if there was anything special to add to their night meal.
    Standing on the rungs, he opened the tightly fitting hatch cover. Water dribbled down the side of the iron-and-lead alloy wall, but a double handful of blue-black shapes that had been placed on the hatch cover tumbled down into the central cabin. Kaig’s spirits, even if they didn’t lift, at least stirred a little at the sight. Oysters .
    He set them on the table bolted to the center of the cabin, then laid out flatbread and dried fruit. A pitcher of strained seawater was on the table too, and he rang the bell to summon the others. One of his rules was that all meals were eaten together, even if no one spoke during that time.
    He shared Nautilex with its pilot, an engineer and a picked crew of Jash’s most trusted troops, none of whom spoke to him unless it was necessary. They ate together twice a day in the central cabin, but silence filled the submersible.
    They had talked briefly during the first few weeks, when Nautilex had traveled at the surface. Even the tropical storms common to the south of the Turean Archipelago seemed to have spared them, so the hatch was open to the light and air. The sky god smiled on their mission, and the sea goddess gave them favorable tides. Despite the cramped quarters, everything was new and interesting and the only complaint was the lack of hot food.
    But when Kaig put a scope to his eye and saw the tip of Cape Claw, the southernmost point of the southernmost Denalait island, he ordered secrecy, and that was the end of the light.
    Larl Icris, the engineer, had field-tested the air-exchange mechanism, but until then no one had trusted twelve lives to it. Thirteen, if the Denalait girl in the pilot’s cabin was counted. No one had suffocated—yet—but Larl was less able to deal with the enforced confinement, and spent much of her time in her own sleeping cellule, reading by the light of glowcoral. Since she wasn’t under Ralcilos Phane’s direct command, he didn’t try to make her join them.
    Ralcilos kept the other nine in order and their discipline held fast. That was good, because if anyone had given way under the long strain, Kaig would have had no choice but to toss them out. He could understand their reaction to the unending non-passage of time deep beneath the sea, where hours and days and years might pass unnoticed, but he couldn’t let that affect everyone else. Besides, if an eleven-year-old could stay sane under