Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 22 of 28

The code was signed and the fleet was whole, but Anne could not enjoy it. Grimjack lay burning in the cabin above the cove. His fever had climbed all night. He was the old navigator who first found the way through the Shattered Shelf, the man who had guided her whole fleet to safety. Now he shook under two blankets and did not know her name. If he died, the fleet lost its second keeper of the water. Emily held the route, but two minds were safer than one. Anne found Dr. Sarah Caldwell already at his side. The ship's cook and surgeon had traced bad pork to three dead men once; she trusted no fever to run its own course. Her glasses had slid down her nose. Her apron was wet at the knees where she knelt. "Talk to me," Anne said. "His chest is filling." Sarah pressed an ear to Grimjack's ribs. "I hear water in it. I've got no medicine for this. I need bark from the fever tree. It grows behind the Shelf, on the locals' shore." "Then we send for it." "A boat takes two days there and back. He has one." Sarah did not soften it. "Maybe less." Anne went to the door and called down the slope. Claire Redfield was mending line on the dock. She was the sharpest eye in the fleet, the lookout who saw trouble before it reached the deck. She came at a run. "You know the local shore," Anne said. "You marked their landing when we made the deal." "I did." "Take the fastest boat. Get fever bark from the locals. Sarah will tell you the leaf." Anne gripped her arm. "Cut the two days to one." Claire looked at the boat, then at the wind. "The cut runs a fair current at dark. I ride it out, sail back on the morning tide." She did not promise more. She turned and went. Sarah drew the bark's shape in ash on the floor for her before she left. Then the waiting began. Anne stayed in the cabin. She wiped Grimjack's face and listened to him breathe. Each breath dragged like a rope over stone. Claire came back before the second dusk, soaked and gray in the face. She held a wet sack. "Their healer had it dried," she said. "I gave her a knife for it. Didn't haggle." Sarah boiled the bark black and forced it past Grimjack's teeth, a spoon at a time. By morning his breathing pulled easier. By night he opened his eyes and swore at the light. "You're not dead," Anne told him. "Not today," Grimjack said. His voice was a scrape. "Get me charts. I'll teach the girl the last of it. Both should hold every mark before I try dying again." Anne rose. He would live, and now she meant to lock the route in two minds for good, before any fever or Crown could take it from her.