The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) Read Online Free

brought there almost a week earlier.
    Looking almost as uneasy as the prisoner did, he heaved himself out of the chair. He was taller than Jash and strong enough that the crew submitted meekly to surgery rather than risk being wrestled onto a table, but when he saw what was in the pot, his face paled. “Brain coral? Captain, I can’t—”
    “Do it.”
    Jash spoke quietly and without moving her lips, but the prisoner heard. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” he cried out.
    “I won’t.” Jash placed the pot in Arvius’s arms and he took it as he would have handled a nest of scorpions. “I’m just going to change your mind. Keneer, take our prisoner to the surgery. Oh, and give him poppy juice, Arvius. I did promise he wouldn’t be in pain.”
    After they had gone, she sat before her desk with a cup of nettle tea, looking over a detailed map of Lastland. She wasn’t sure how brain coral could help in that regard, but then again, no one knew what brain coral was capable of once it was in a suitable host, and she wouldn’t lose anything by experimentation.
    Keneer knocked at the door again. “Captain, the taileye’s returned.”
    Jash didn’t particularly like their single Denalait ally, and she could never trust anyone who was not a Turean, but she vastly preferred to have him where she could see him. It would also be interesting to see what he made of the message her spy had sent. She finished her tea and climbed the stairs to Dreadnaught ’s upper deck.
    The first thing she saw, as always, was the east coast of Lastland. Beyond it the ocean stretched vast and unbroken, and sometimes Jash dreamed of taking a small swift vessel and sailing away, to search for the water’s end.
    Once the war was done, when the circle banner no longer flew over the fortress. A circle was just one link in a chain, and the eight galleys surrounding Lastland all flew a broken chain on a blue field.
    Eight galleys were half of her flotilla, but for once they almost matched the number of Denalait vessels. After the galleys had reached Lastland, a spy sent word that an armada of twenty warships, led by Hawk Royal , had sailed into the south, heading for the Archipelago.
    Fear had tightened around Jash’s heart. The Turean strength was spread over five dozen islands, but the largest was the southern isle of Scorpitale, where she had been born. The Denalaits would burn the villages on Scorpitale after taking enough supplies to sail on to Lastland.
    Merely praying for a miracle had seemed inadequate. So she had turned two captives over to Nion Vates, and whatever he did with them pleased the gods. A freak storm struck, smashing eighteen warships, and wreckage washed up on the shores of Crypthouse for days. Hawk Royal and Tramontane limped back to the mainland, but Jash knew her people would never be left in peace.
    What bit like acid into her was that the Denalaits had so many advantages. They had all the mainland’s resources and traded for what they didn’t have, while Dagre and Bleakhaven refused to aid the Tureans because of a pact to take no hostile actions against other lands of Eden. And Arvius complains about coral , Jash thought. When the dice were so heavily weighted against her, what else could she do?
    Now her spy—thankfully there were no obvious physical differences between Tureans and mainlanders yet—had sent word of the Denalaits’ next tactic. Jash slid her hands into the pockets of her sealskin vest and crossed the deck of Dreadnaught to her ally.
    He was bent over a rain cask. Her crew collected that water for bathing, but Quenlin Fench cupped his hands in it and drank—further evidence, if any was needed, that it was the Tureans who belonged to the sea. Mainlanders couldn’t stomach its waters and had to drink what came from the sky or the land instead.
    Quenlin dragged a sleeve across his mouth and leaned against the rail, elbows braced on it as he looked out over the water at Lastland. Five days ago,