Page 14 of Prima
“I see you do not appreciate mercy,” he says at last. “I’m beginning to believe it’ll be better for me to report what you were doing in truth.”
“No, no, please don’t, sir,” begs the defeated ringleader. “Please don’t. We are extremely grateful. We really are.”
A chorus of murmured agreement rises among the men.
“Well, then, paddle fast,” orders the boy.
The men paddle with even more frantic energy than they did during their pursuit of the girl and it takes the ringleader a deal of shouting before they settle into a proper rhythm. The boy, before he follows them, rounds to the girl’s side and frowns down at her in the water. He’s in a Dawani Coast Watch uniform and she sees why a canoe full of men in their prime dare not contradict his authority—he holds a nerve blaster that could easily incapacitate the whole lot of them and leave them in excruciating pain for the rest of their lives.
She smiles at him.
Without any expression on his face, he points the nerve blaster at her and strides off.
Be still her pounding heart.
* * *
Before his patrol boat is on its way, she’s already thirty meters underwater. She keeps diving until she reaches the ocean floor—not too deep here, only about seventy-five meters or so—and harvests a few sea cucumbers. Back at her raft, she drops the sea cucumbers into a bucket, then goes under again and bags two red snappers.
She cleans the sea cucumbers, cuts them into bite-sized pieces, and sets them to braise on her camping stove. She also scales and cleans the snappers, dividing them into palm-sized fillets for grilling. When she’s done with most of the food prep, she washes with some desalinated water, covers herself with a flame-colored sarong, and sits down to comb out her shoulder-length hair.
About twenty klicks north-northeast of where they last laid eyes on each other, shortly after she finishes putting up a makeshift canopy using a woven straw mat,The Arrow of Timestreaks into view, the boy’s hair flying behind him. He turns his vessel hard into the wind and then, when it has come nearly to a stop, backs the jib to port and pulls up alongside her raft.
She, sitting at the edge of the raft, her feet in the water, smiles and waves.
The boy, who has taken off his uniform jacket and wears only an olive-green t-shirt with the Dawani Coast Watch’s emblem printed on the chest pocket, does not smile or wave back. “Why aren’t you farther away?”
His voice is as implacable as when he dressed down her would-be kidnappers. But does she hear a note of anticipation as well?
“You intervened on my behalf this morning. It doesn’t feel right to leave before I’ve expressed my gratitude. Will you come for lunch?”
He is silent for a long time. She’s not used to seeing him under a bright sun. The light overhead casts his eyes into shadows and emphasizes the sharply delineated edges of his lips.
“Are you set loose in these parts,” he asks slowly, “not to entrap mobs of civilians, but to catch patrols who aren’t doing their jobs?”
She laughs out loud—she isn’tthatprone to laughter, but he does manage to tickle her funny bone. “Too late for you if I am: I’ve already witnessed you granting too much leniency to a passel of unauthorized wife hunters.”
He glances behind his shoulder at the empty sea—the islands have thinned out—before he brings his attention back to her, a swift look that nevertheless makes her heart thump. “In that case, I might as well come for lunch.”
She grins and throws him a line to moor his boat to her raft.
“I hope you have a good knife to cut the line loose in case you need to flee,” he says, tying the knot.
“I do—several, in fact,” she says.
He disappears for a minute and returns having changed into a white tunic. Then he lowers his sails, takes a running leap, and lands lightly at the stern of her raft. She admires his lithe and athletic form. On the other hand, she’ll have a fair bit of trouble should they end up in hand-to-hand combat.
He straightens and offers her a small stoneware jar. “Thank you for the lunch invitation.”
The jar, light green and almost vitreous in appearance, is sealed with beeswax. “This looks like expensive liquor. Are you allowed to carry such contraband aboard while on duty?”
“Of course not. Which is why it is now found aboard your vessel, not mine.”
She chortles. Is this what it feels like to be infatuated, to find everything a boy says and does fascinating and amusing? She places the jar on the low folding table she set up at the center of the raft and indicates a folding stool. “Please, take a seat. Some tea?”
“Why not? Thank you.”
She breaks out the good tea for him, Jasperdew, more costly than its weight in gold. As the tea steeps, he studies the cups she lays out for them, in particular her heavy silver cup.
