Chapter 62: Trapped on Deck

Rayén

"I signed it."

Three words. He said them like a man setting down something he had carried up a mountain.

The paper shook in my hand. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to put my face in his chest and scream. Mostly I wanted him to say something else, anything, a lie even, so that I could stop feeling the floor tilt under me in a way that had nothing to do with the ship.

"Not for the reason that says," Lautaro said, low and fast. "Your father put the pen in my hand, Rayén. I was twenty-three, and he was dying, and I thought I was..."

The alarm went off.

It was a siren, a flat, howling shriek that came up through the deck plates and rattled my teeth. Red light flooded the cabin in slow pulses. Mateo yelped and slid off the cot.

"They know we're out," he gasped. "The shaft. Somebody found the open grate."

"Later." Lautaro grabbed my wrist. "Tell me you'll hear all of it later. Please."

"I don't know if I will."

"Then hate me from the water. Move."

I didn't have time to decide. I stuffed the ledger inside my jacket and zipped it to my chin, and Lautaro shoved the loose manifests down his shirt, and we ran. Out the cabin door. Along a catwalk slick with fog. The ship was already clear of the dock, gliding out over black water, and the whole deck below us exploded into light.

Floodlights. Dozens of them, bolted to the masts, swinging down in white blazes that turned the fog to glittering smoke. Men shouted in the glare. A rifle bolt snapped.

"Down!" Lautaro dragged me flat behind a winch.

The first burst hit the steel above my head. Bright sparks rained into my hair. I curled into the metal, and a second later his whole body came over mine, a wall of heat and muscle, one hand cradling the back of my skull.

"Stay down," he breathed into my ear. "Stay with me."

"You're on top of me."

"Yes."

"You're going to get shot."

"Probably." His voice was shaking, and I realized, with a lurch, that it was laughter. Half-mad, helpless laughter. "Rayén. I've spent six years being afraid of the day you'd look at me like that. And now that you do, I don't care."

Another burst chewed the rail. Mateo screamed from somewhere behind us.

I turned my head. He was crouched at the cabin door, his torn shirt flapping, holding the hatch handle with both hands.

"Go!" he shouted. "The rail! There's nothing but water on the port side. I'll hold them!"

"Mateo, no..."

"Elías bled for you!" His face was wet. "Let me do one thing!"

He threw his weight against the door, and a man came crashing into it from the other side, and Mateo grunted and kept pushing. I will carry the look on his face to the end of my life. Not courage. Just a boy who'd finally found something to hold on to.

"On three," Lautaro said, pulling me up into a crouch. "We go over the rail. It's cold. It's going to be worse than you think."

"I can swim."

"Not in that."

"One," I said.

"Two."

We ran.

The rail was cold under my hands, and then it was gone, and there was only air, and the black sea rushing up to meet us.

The cold hit like a slap from God.

It drove the breath from my lungs in a single silent scream. Every nerve in my body lit white. I went down and down, my jacket dragging, boots like stones, my chest locked and burning, and I couldn't tell which way was up. Bubbles streamed past my face. Somewhere above, muffled and far, a gun was still firing, and the bullets stitched little white lines through the water that died before they reached me.

Then an arm closed around my waist.

Lautaro's face swam out of the dark, eyes wide, hair streaming, mouth set in a snarl of effort. He kicked hard. We broke the surface together, and I dragged in a breath so violent it hurt, coughing seawater, flailing.

"I've got you." He had both arms around me now, pressing my back to his chest, his legs moving beneath us. "Breathe. In. Out. Don't fight it."

"I can't feel my hands."

"I know."

"Lautaro, I can't..."

"Look at the pylons." He turned my chin with a shaking hand. "There. Under the dock. Forty meters. We're going to make it there, and you're going to hate me properly, on dry ground, with a blanket."

A laugh tore out of me, ragged and wet. The ship was already shrinking into the fog behind us, its lights smeared and golden, the floodlights sweeping the water in long white blades. One passed over us. I felt it like a hand on my skin. He dragged me under, and we held our breath until it moved on.

When we came up again, the ship had turned. Its engines howled. They were coming back.

We reached the pilings with nothing left. Black iron legs rose out of the water, furred with weed and barnacles, and Lautaro wedged us in among them and hauled my arms over a crossbeam. My teeth were clacking. My whole body shook in huge, helpless waves.

He pressed himself against my back and wrapped both arms around me, and he held me that way, heart to heart, without a word. I could feel his pulse through two soaked layers of wool. It was fast. It was alive.

"Rayén." His lips were against my wet hair. "When your father signed that order..."

"Not now."

"I have to say it now. In case..."

"In case what?"

He didn't answer. His arms tightened. Then something warm slid down my wrist, and I looked down, and the water around my hand was turning dark.

"Lautaro."

"It's nothing."

"You're bleeding."

"It's a graze." His breath hitched. "Left shoulder. I think. It doesn't hurt."

That was how I knew it was bad.

I twisted in his arms, half-drowning, and found the hole in the back of his jacket, a ragged black mouth leaking steadily into the harbor. His face was gray in the dim. His lashes fluttered.

"Hey." I caught his jaw. "Hey. Look at me. Stay awake."

"Always." A ghost of a smile. "You're... bossy. In the water."

"Lautaro."

"The promise." His eyes were sliding shut. "Your father said... he said you were not..."

His head dropped against my shoulder, heavy as stone.

Above us, the dock boards creaked. A boat engine growled low in the fog and went quiet. A lantern swung down over the edge of the pier, and in its yellow glow I saw a man's boots, a man's knees, a man's hand extended toward me through the dark.

Osvaldo Quiroga looked down, cigar in his teeth, wet tracks running down his broad cheeks. Behind him stood three more shapes, their rifles raised.

"Niña," he said softly. "I'm sorry about Ismael. Truly. But come up now, please." He swallowed. "Your mother is waiting."