The Drowning Eyes Read Online Free

she could. There was sadness in that wind, too. It ran deep and cold, but it was—it was different, somehow, much calmer than the raw grief that had been tearing at her chest only a few minutes ago. Older, maybe, or maybe just more detached from the carnage at Tash.
    As her heartbeat slowed down, closer to a meditation rhythm, she started to realize the strange silence at the edge of the breeze. Usually, you could hear whispers where one Windspeaker’s work ran into another’s—but not tonight. Tonight, perhaps, the Windspeakers were in mourning. Or, perhaps they weren’t, and things were worse than Shina thought.
    * * *
    As the
Giggling Goat
sailed closer to Jepjep, the Captain seemed determined to ignore Shina. She greeted her seldom, and then only with grunts. Shina wondered whether it was genuine dislike, or whether the Captain was just trying to keep a safe distance between herself and a passenger who could be anybody under the sun. In any case, Shina decided she ought to deal with the situation by staying out of everybody’s way—especially the first mate’s. He had the same black skin, broad nose, and lilting accent that marked Shina and her kin as coming from Mayun. The more time she spent around him, the more she worried that he’d recognize the family tattoos on her right arm or the way she said “weather.” It might not turn out to be a big deal, or he might remember the skinny kid from Dos Mejara who made clouds form over puddles in the road.
    The second possibility would not be good for Shina. There was a reason that frightened parents put their children on midnight boats to Tash when they turned out to be Windspeakers. There was a reason they were hidden from the world until made safe by surgery. There was a reason the ancient Windspeakers had begged Herself for the icon. A Windspeaker with her powers unchecked caused mayhem, and folks were
intent
on making every wet-eyes Windspeaker pay the full price for it.
    Shina slept topside the next night, wrapped in a blanket that the quartermaster had brought up from belowdecks. This time, the dream began with a familiar scene: she was on the operating table, going into deep meditation while the novices swung their opium censers around her face. Matha-auntie and Sura-auntie stood to the side, scrubbing their hands. Somehow, Shina could see it all—could see Hasin-uncle coming down the hallway in the procession of assistants, bearing her new eyes on one silken pillow and the surgery tools on another.
    She could hear the noise outside, too. She could hear the shouts of the raiders from the Dragon Ships. She could hear the screams of the students as they were cut down, hear them begging for mercy, even if only for the little children. She could hear the howls, the
laughter,
the sound of breaking glass, of metal being dragged across rock—and still, the operation was proceeding.
    Shina tried to rouse herself from her trance, tried to bring conscious thought streaming back into her mind like daylight through a window.
Wake up!
she screamed to herself. The noise outside grew louder. The assistants surrounded her motionless body; Hasin-uncle arranged the eyes and tools around her head.
    He opened his mouth, as he always did in these dreams, to direct Sura-auntie to make the first cut—but instead of words, blood poured from his mouth. Shina was trapped in her body again, locked in her trance but still able to look up and see the surgeons, Hasin-uncle, all the young assistants as they had fallen. Monat with his face cleaved in half. Jeppa, her throat cut, trying frantically to form words with her bloody lips.
    The last one,
she was saying.
You’re the last one.
    Those words repeated from every mouth, even Tiga, who was missing the top half of her head when Shina found her.
You’re the last one,
they said.
You’re the last one. You’re the—
    “What is
wrong
with you?” The Captain was shaking her by the shoulders. “Wake up!”
    “Ahh!” Shina blinked,