She had a feeling that nothing in her collection was valuable, but she thought that perhaps when the outlanders came, they might see how diligently she’d been collecting and how cleverly she’d chosen what to gather and what to leave behind. The coins, for example, were meaningless. There were probably hundreds more down there, but tens of thousands more in the great cities she’d heard about in the elders’ stories. A few more taken from the wreck wouldn’t matter. The hairpins, though, or the sword, or the chopsticks in their ornate case, any of them might identify the bearer. Perhaps one of the passengers was important. Or perhaps the outlanders had search parties looking for survivors. If the brooch belonged to some noble lord, Kaida could present it to the outlanders and they would know their lord had been aboard after all.
So Kaida did not bother swimming down to collect the coins. She did not want the outlanders to think her stupid. She swam back up to the surface, filled her lungs again, and dived on a different part of the wreck.
She went on this way for some time, and each time she returned to the surface, she assessed the progress of the outlanders. By the time the sunlight reached down far enough into the bay to strike the beach, the outlanders had dropped long lines from the top of the cliff and several men had descended them. Other men readied large wooden boxes, which Kaida guessed they would lower to the men below. The ones up top had a huge creature with them, its body bigger than a dolphin’s, with four tall, spindly legs. Its head was strange too, its neck long and thick, and it had a long tail of seaweed hanging from the back, just like an old turtle. She wondered if this was one of the horses she’d heard about in tales. If so, it was much bigger than she’d imagined.
Kaida dived again, this time gliding down along the starboard side until she reached a rent in the hull. She couldn’t guess what had staved it in, but through the gash she could see more dead sailors. One wore a breastplate, and it took her several dives to cut all the cords that fastened it to the body. She used another corpse’s knife to do the cutting, which she thought was very resourceful of her, and she tucked the knife into her thin rope belt for future use. She wondered hopefully whether Miyoko would think twice about threatening to drown her now.
She dived again, found the soldier she’d been working on, and pinched the breastplate between her knees to get a good grip on it. With her new knife she cut the last cord free.
The listless corpse lolled to one side, floating out from under the armor. In the next instant the breastplate pulled her right into the dark hold of the carrack. Armor was heavier than she’d expected, much heavier, and now she was in the dark and alone and there were walls on all sides of her. She let the breastplate go. Something massive gave a loud thunk just below her, maybe a big shark trying to bash its way inside. No. It was just the breastplate. The noise gave her a start nonetheless. Her throat tightened; her heart flopped and shuddered like a netted fish drowning on air.
The jagged blue window overhead was the only thing she could see. Everything else was black. She swam toward the blue, but something pushed her away from it. The riptide, making crazy currents over the hollow of the hold. It bounced her into something solid. The wall. It was caving in on her. She screamed a torrent of bubbles and swam like mad.
Then she was bathed in blue light and then she was at the surface again. It took a long time for her to calm down, and when she was calm again she was surprised she still had the knife in hand. She’d have guessed she would have dropped it in her manic scramble out of the hold—which, she realized now, was never in danger of collapsing. She’d bumped into things she couldn’t see. That was all. And all too easy to rationalize too, now that she was safely on the open water.
To the best of her knowledge, her sisters didn’t know about her fear of tight spaces. Kaida was glad they weren’t with her now. If Miyoko ever found out, she’d bury Kaida alive just for fun.
23
Kaida had only her knife to show for this dive, but she swam back to shore anyway. The whole way in she tried to persuade herself that she was returning because she was tired, not because she was still scared. By the time her feet touched down she still wasn’t convinced.
She followed her new morning ritual, which was to skirt the village, keeping her catch bag out of sight, until she reached the big camphor tree. Its biggest root was gnarled and arched like a crone’s finger, pointing at the sea cliff. Following that root in a straight line, she found her treasure cache, which for the first time she unburied in its entirety. Except for this morning, she’d always returned with a full catch bag, satisfied with the fruits of her labors. But now that she looked at her entire collection, it seemed insignificant. The wreck was so vast, and everything she’d reclaimed she could gather in her own two arms. Why should anyone care about what little treasure a crippled girl could carry? She wondered whether it would be enough to buy the outlanders’ favor.
Kaida gathered it up anyway, trapping the bigger items against her belly with her stump, collecting the smaller things in her right hand. She followed the little sandy strip between the sea cliff and the tall grass that filled the back quarter of the cove. She stayed low as she circled around toward the outlanders, lest one of her sisters see her and call the other two.
She saw Sen before she saw the outlanders. He followed a few other men, and Kaida was surprised to see her father at their head. He rarely left his bedroom this early in the morning. His new wife seemed to have fishhooks in him, or else their bed did, because since they’d married a year ago he seemed unable to spend so long as an hour apart from her.
He was a big man, his forearms as broad as the blades of an oar. A lifetime of rowing and rope making tended to shape a man’s arms that way. All the men of Ama-machi had muscular arms, and all the women had lithe swimmer’s bodies.
“Good morning,” her father said, and Kaida peered over the high grass to see him approach one of the outlanders. Her father smiled amiably, not his lady-killer smile but his pacifying smile. The stranger did not smile at all.
“We came to welcome you to our village,” her father said, though Kaida could tell he was lying. He had three burly men behind him. That was no welcoming party. And he used the same overly friendly voice he’d used when he’d explained to Kaida that he’d be marrying Miyoko’s mother.
There were four of the outlanders, though only one had even recognized the villagers’ existence; the others were busy untying the long box that those up above had just lowered down the cliff. Kaida could tell the stranger’s silence put her father ill at ease. He did what he could to mask his apprehension. “We wondered if we could help you,” he said. “It promises to be a hot morning, and you look like you’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of you. May we ask what you’re doing here?”
“I’m going to break every joint in your arm,” said the stranger. His voice was soft and calm, eerily so. Kaida placed him at a little over forty, with a bald head and a neatly trimmed black beard. From the way his jacket flowed in the light breeze, Kaida could tell it was of finer cloth than any in Ama-machi.
“Excuse me?” said her father.
“Starting with the shoulder,” the stranger said, “and working my way down. You’ll find me to be a man of my word.”
“Now listen here—”
One of the other village fishermen took a step toward the stranger. It was a mistake. Suddenly the fisherman was on the ground clutching his knee. Kaida hadn’t even seen the stranger move. Her eyes were on her father, fixed with horror.
The outlander’s hands were swift and slippery, darting like eels. One shot under her father’s armpit, the other over the top. Her father took a swing at him, but the stranger spun away from it easily. Then her father was facedown in the sand. Kaida heard it when his shoulder popped apart.
The elbow came next, louder than the shoulder. The stranger was kneeling on the back of her father’s neck, his deadly hands free now, his face impassive. The other three outlanders hadn’t even bothered to look up.
The last of the fishermen ran for his life, or perhaps for help, but Sen’s mind was too slow to see the sense in that. He lunged for the bearded stranger, who responded with a series of quick two-fingered stabs. One to the inner thigh, one below the ribs, and when Sen bent double the last one took him behind the ear. Sen crumpled as if his bones had turned to sand.
