the cabin as I pushed inside. Koy, Auster, and Hamish were still asleep in their hammocks. The snore dragging in Hamish’s throat was interrupted by the sound of the door slamming against the wall. I took Koy’s belt from where it was hung on the bulkhead and dropped it into his hammock.
He jerked awake, half-sitting up as he sucked in a breath. “What the—”
“Storm,” I said. “Get up.”
He groaned, rolling from the swinging canvas, and his feet hit the ground behind me.
Willa was grumbling to herself as I came back up to the main deck. She climbed the mainmast with a cord of rope draped over her shoulders, ready to reinforce the lines.
Koy pulled his hair into a knot, looking up at the sky.
“Scared, dredger?” Willa taunted from above.
“I’ve dredged in storms that would eat this ship alive.” Koy smiled wickedly.
We’d finished twelve of the reefs, with twenty-two left to go, and the progress would be slow going in the churn of the water. It would definitely put us behind schedule, and I wasn’t sure how we’d make it up.
A bleary-eyed Auster appeared at the top of the steps a moment later, scanning the deck.
“Tender,” Paj directed him.
He obeyed without question, jogging with heavy feet up to the quarterdeck to help West drop the small boat into the water. It drifted in the wind, pulling against the line as I balanced on the railing. I could feel every one of my muscles tightening, dreading the jump. After a full day of diving and very little rest, there wasn’t an inch of my body that wasn’t sore, and hours in the tossing water of a storm would be the worst of it.
Before I could think better of it, I pressed both hands to my tools to hold them to my body and jumped. I sucked in a breath as I fell, crashing into the sea as the first of the waves rolled into the ship.
I kicked hard to draw the blood into the muscles of my stiff legs and pulled in my first breath as soon as I surfaced. West and Koy dropped in behind me, and above the crew stood at the railing, their wary eyes on the clouds in the distance. They were worried.
We climbed into the tender and West took up the oars, setting the paddles into the rings and pulling them to his chest. The wind was getting stronger by the minute and he strained against the tow of the water as I steered the rudder.
When we were in place I jumped back in, not wasting any time. The anchor fell into the water and I pressed my hands to my sore ribs as I started to fill my lungs.
“Stay on the west side of the ridge so the current doesn’t throw you into the reef,” I said between breaths. “And watch the eddies. They’ll get stronger.” I tipped my chin up to the right angle of water in the distance, where the sea was already starting to pucker. By the time the storm hit us, the eddy would be a maelstrom, pulling anything that touched it into a whirlpool.
Koy and West both nodded, working their breaths almost in tandem. My chest stung as I sucked in the last of the cold air, and I plunged below the surface.
My arms drifted up over my head as I let myself sink, reserving my strength for the current. It touched my feet first, and my hair whipped away from my face as it swept around me. The reef ran beneath us as we floated over the ridge, the pink silk flags fluttering. But the sand was already clouding the water, casting everything in a green haze that would make it difficult to see. Koy caught the edge of a rock when he reached the place he’d left off the day before, and he sank into the thick sediment, barely visible as we pulled away. West was next, kicking from the current when he spotted the next mark.
He was swallowed by the haze and when I reached the last flag I swam down, letting myself fall to the reef. The sounds of the sea had already changed, deepening with the roar of the storm that was still miles away.
I took the mallet from my belt and chose the largest chisel, tapping in swift strikes to chip the crust of coral. As soon as the rock beneath it was exposed I pressed a thumb to its edge, watching it crumble. The