Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  A rumble shivers deep in the ground, followed by a second roll like thunder and then a third and fourth, as a force in the earth beneath us starts moving.

  Sun asks. “What did you release?”

  “The four undersea cargo trains. One runs to each major cargo depot in Argos. The trains terminate at this end at a junction beneath this pavilion. My family will think we took one of the trains because I can’t steal an aircar and the sea isn’t safe.”

  I call to Hestia, who stands at the controls of the other boat. “Stick close to me!”

  We nose out through the entrance. Water slops over the prow as we hit the mess of a windy bay. I power out, leaving Hestia to follow under her own steering. With a blink I trigger the screamers in the two boats carrying passengers. Then I send the other boats, in pairs, into a scatter pattern toward the ocean. We take a long curve that will make it look like we’re headed out to sea with the other boats but which will actually bring us to land on the outskirts of Argos at a park called Point Panic.

  “Three new aircars,” says Sun, peeking out from under the shade. “They’re making for the mainland. Looks like they took the bait.”

  “Princess! Get back under the shade.” Octavian yanks her back into concealment. He’s sweating, runnels streaming down his face. His complexion looks gray.

  I open the throttle gradually, skipping over the waves as I pick a route. The swells are bigger than I’d first realized, with the incoming wave patterns dictated by where and how high reefs and rocks lie under the surface. We Lee children grew up out here on the island, which meant we were in the water before we could walk. I can’t pilot an aircar, but I know the sea.

  “Why won’t they guess we’re on the boats?” Sun asks.

  “Holy fire, what’s that?” cries Candace. She’s kneeling, braced against the constant slamming bounce. For a bold young person with such great martial-arts moves she looks slack-jawed with fear now.

  A feathery gold crest breaches the water about one hundred meters away, the curl of a wave-swallowing charybdis coming close to the surface and then rolling back beneath without a glimpse of its head. The crest itself towers a good five meters over the water, a knife slicing through the swells. Its barnacle-streaked neck is wider than our boats.

  “That’s why they won’t guess we’re on the boats. Sea monsters. Wave swallowers aren’t carnivores, but their size threatens us. If you have a private comm-link to your Companions, Princess, now would be the right time to warn Hestia that she’s about to get hit with a cross swell.”

  The gold crest vanishes beneath the waves as the charybdis dives. The first side swells hit and now we’re pitching and yawing in all directions. Octavian groans like he’s nauseated, but there’s nothing I can do for seasickness.

  “Surely you’ve seen a charybdis before,” I say to Candace. “Didn’t you grow up here in Argos?”

  “No. I grew up on military ships.”

  A big swell rises ahead of us, the water growing into an intimidating gray wall. I run up it diagonally along the front and slide over to the back face, the boat slamming down and rolling side to side. James laughs with his face turned to catch the full force of the spray. Candace shrieks, and Sun says to her, “You’ve got this.”

  I glance back, convinced I’m going to see an overturned boat in our wake, but the second boat dances over the swell and into the trough between waves with more grace than I’d managed. Sun catches my eye, and even in the midst of all this she raises her brows challengingly as if to remind me there’s nothing I can do that any of her real Companions can’t do better.

  Ti is seated cross-legged on the deck of the other boat, wind and spray tearing apart her perfectly styled hair. Somehow she still looks as if she’s posing for a photo shoot.

  I catch Sun watching her with a strange intensity that bothers me, and I say, “Oi, Princess. Cee-cees are protected by their contracts. She’s off-limits to her employer, and that means you too.”

  That’s my second mistake, getting so distracted by my annoyance that I take too steep an angle on the next big swell. The boat pitches hard to port, way, way up, and everyone but me and James slide down, scrambling for purchase on the water-soaked decking. As annoying as James is I have to give him credit for having good sea legs.

  I shout, “Candace! Navah! Back to the other side for counterbalance.”

  Octavian loses his balance entirely and smacks flat onto the deck. He lies inert, which is a good thing as I steer a better path over the next two incoming swells and finally get out to deeper water. Hestia keeps pace, and now we can open up our throttles and steer toward Point Panic. We’ve drifted too close to the nearest pair of decoy boats. I study the water, an anxious flutter in my chest. Is there a shadow beneath? Is that huff of distant whitecap the first hint of a scylla’s venom?

  Octavian’s whole body heaves, shoulders jerking as he flails. Sun and Candace together aren’t strong enough to hold him down. With a roar of agony he throws back his head, and blood erupts from his mouth like a creature spitting poison. Red droplets spray over the white bulwark.

  He slumps forward. The red mark on his neck has turned into an ugly scabrous hole that starts pumping out blood like it’s a machine draining him.

  James hasn’t seen yet. He’s scanning the sky, one hand holding his cap onto his head as he leans out to get a better look toward the island receding behind us. “More aircars.”

  Candace looks up from beside Octavian. “Is there an aid kit?”

  I kick a latch to show where it is stored because I can’t pause. The aircars aren’t my biggest problem. I’m seeing whitecaps over by the decoy boats, more disturbance than the wind can be kicking up. We have to get out of here.

  Sun hooks up the cover and snatches the square kit with its red cross and crescent. She shifts over beside Candace, who has pressed a palm against the wound to stem the bleeding.

  “Hold your hand here to stop the blood flow. Let me see that…” Candace paws through the kit and pulls out an implement. “Yes! Hold him down. I’ve got to seal the wound.”

  “We must surrender!” cries Navah. She hasn’t shifted from the other side of the boat, even though we could use her help. “Blessed Heaven! We’ll all die if we don’t—”

  “Shut up.” Candace sounds scared as she looks at Sun. “This is dark tech. It’s called a late bloomer. This kind of weapon isn’t even allowed in the military.”

  Sun’s scowl is blistering as she twists the three brass rings on her left hand. Helplessness doesn’t agree with her.

  “Scylla!” James yells.

  It rises out of the sea like the huge cables of a giant suspension bridge have gotten loose and are lashing this way and that, cutting through wind and waves. Each cable is a living neck, bronze and glossy, and each neck ends in a vast horned head. Their jaws aren’t quite big enough to bite our boats in half, but if even one of the necks slams down full force onto our boat it will crush and sink us.

  I see only two heads. The other three are still underwater, listening for the yammer of the screamers or humming their own call. They sing in a tonality that tunes to our understanding of E-flat minor, for reasons no one knows. This is what Resh taught us; they’ll go after the other boats and leave ours alone because they hear our tuners as one of them. She got in terrible trouble once when a scylla caught a decoy boat. It wasn’t the risk to us children my mother minded. It was the cost of replacing the boat, which came out of her expense account.

  Every gaze, except that of the unconscious Octavian, shifts to stare at the hypnotic movements of the sea monster and its gleaming maws. So many teeth. Scyllas are the ocean gleaners, the razors that clean the dying organic debris from the ocean. They play no favorites. They just do what they are born to do.

  One of the visible necks twists to look toward the nearest decoy boats, but the other sways closer to us. The bulk of its body pours along like a monstrous cloud beneath the surface. I hold to my course, and Hestia stays on my tail, but
I’m watching the scene as it unfolds. One set of whirling gold eyes hooks its gaze on the wake our little boats leave and tracks it back to its source.

  To us.

  A third neck curls up out of the water to begin tracking us with its shining gaze. The huge body begins to shift course. Hestia moves her boat up alongside ours like we’re racing, and maybe we are. Maybe one of us can make Point Panic if the scylla attacks the other one.

  Sun says, “Can we outrace it?”

  “We’re loaded to capacity and can’t go as fast as the decoys.”

  Candace speaks in a flat, angry tone. “His heart’s stopped beating. They killed him.”

  “None of this would have happened if you’d obeyed orders and let them detain us briefly.” Navah twists her bracelets round and round her wrist. She’s breathless and keeps glancing at Octavian’s body.

  I give a curt laugh. “You don’t fire tech like that at people you only intend to detain briefly.”

  “We’ve got to surrender before worse happens,” Navah says.

  “Enough!” snaps Sun. “We’ve let this game go on for too long.”

  Across the gap Sun and Hestia exchange a look. I don’t know if they have a private comm-link or if they just understand each other that well, but Hestia nods.

  Sun raises her pistol.

  And shoots Navah twice in the chest, pops I barely hear over the E-flat minor thrum of the engine, the slap of waves, and the ceaseless rumble of the wind.

  James catches Navah’s falling body. Nothing can disguise her look of shock as blood spreads a stain down the silk of her blouse.

  “You think we haven’t known all along you were attached to Hetty in order to spy on me?” Sun asks in a calm voice. “Do you think we weren’t feeding you false information to pass on to whoever your masters are? That I don’t suspect you killed Percy and Duke, thinking you were going to kill me and yourself in the bargain?”

  Navah’s lips open. No sound comes out.

  “Who hired you? Who do you owe that much loyalty to?”

  “No,” she croaks. “I say nothing.”

  “Throw her overboard, into our wake.”

  James dumps her over the side. She flails because she’s not dead yet. As soon as the scylla scents her blood in the water it will come after her. And the instinctive scylla ritual of circling before it snaps up its prey will give us the extra minutes of time we so desperately need.

  I’d feel sick, but I don’t have time to think.

  We race on, bouncing over the swells. I can finally turn into the arc of our curve to put the wind at our backs so we rock less.

  Sun kneels beside Octavian’s body, thumb and forefinger framing the suppurating wound, a hole into glistening tissue, a glimpse of bone beneath. “I’ll start CPR.”

  Candace stops her with an arm on her shoulder. “Your Highness, don’t put your mouth on his. If that was a late bloomer, and I don’t know what else it could have been, his lungs and heart have been pulverized and infected. So it could propagate into you if enough of it gets into your bloodstream.”

  Sun glares at Octavian’s body like her will alone should be able to bring him back to life.

  “You just can’t take the chance,” Candace adds. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do we throw him overboard for the scylla too?” I ask. “Blood or singing are the only things that draw them off.”

  “No. I will never allow Lee House to know they killed him. We take him with us. Do you have a plan, Persephone Lee, or do I need to take it from here?”

  Her gaze drills into mine. It irks me to have to look away as we reach the long surf break offshore of Point Panic, but I can’t play at a stare-down. The shoreline is a hive of channels amid stretches of reef. It’s a twisty route in to where surfers can paddle out to a break along the back reef, where it’s safe to surf because it’s too shallow for both the swallowing charybdis and the carnivorous scyllas.

  “I plan to avoid getting shot and discarded, whether by you or by my family. To that end, I’m taking this escape in stages. And … Hold on. This will be rough.”

  We slam-slam-slam across a choppy set of waves, skipping through the troughs as spray soaks us and the windshield streaks with streaming water. Then we’re inside and skimming too fast across smoother water. My skills are rusty as I cut our speed abruptly, throwing the boat into a fishtail stop. In the other boat Hestia slows gracefully to a halt.

  The sandy seafloor glimmers as the sun comes out. A rocky beach awaits us, but I can only nose in so far.

  “If you extend the back platform it’s easier to get into the water. Swim in.” As they start disembarking, hauling the body, I call over to the other boat, “Alika. Let it revert to the default frequency.”

  He’s staring at the water in horror, clutching his precious ukulele that will no doubt be ruined in the swim.

  For some reason I start laughing. Maybe it’s just pure adrenaline, but he looks so lost and, as they say, at sea that I take pity on him. “There should be a waterproof dry bag in one of the lockers. The dry bags all are flotation-enabled, so they won’t sink. Grab the first aid kit too. And the emergency gear. Hurry. I can’t disembark until everyone’s off.”

  I hand my boat’s emergency gear bag to Candace and stuff Tiana’s duffel into a dry bag. The crew of the other boat figures out how to use the life ring to float the unconscious Gatoi toward the beach. Last off, Ti strips off her beautiful yellow gauze overdress and wraps it around the shift she’s wearing beneath. She waves to me before she makes a perfect dive and starts stroking like a competitive swimmer. When she reaches my boat she pulls herself up.

  “Why did your tutor bring our duffels?” she asks. “Not that I’m complaining!”

  “I guess he figured we’d need them. Do you need help getting to land?”

  “I’m a superb swimmer,” she says with an unflustered smile that reminds me how much I don’t know about her, that we just met today. She slides into the water and, dragging the big dry bag after her, heads for shore with the others.

  Once the second boat is also abandoned I chain the two boats together and give them a course, oceanward, through the reef. Then I toss my duffel over the side and leap off after it. The water closes over my head, and for three seconds I relish the seawater’s welcoming embrace. Then I kick up to the surface and swim for shore, hauling my duffel behind. CeDCA thinks of everything; our duffels are sealed and waterproof and—like the dry bags—have auto-activated flotation bulbs.

  In the distance aircars whine like angry bugs. The fierce keening of a feeding scylla slices through the air with painful intensity. As I splash up onto the rocky beach I’m glad of my boots. The others have assembled beneath the shade of a tile-roofed shelter built over a sightseeing bench. Even though they are all bedraggled and wet there is still something stirring and even sensational in the way the princess and her loyal companions have arranged themselves around the bench, with the dead man flat on his back, arms crossed respectfully on his chest, and the shirtless prisoner on his stomach, bare back gleaming. Ti’s sitting with a bare right foot propped up on her left knee, blood dripping from her foot.

  “You’re hurt!” As I take a step toward Ti, Sun raises her pistol. And aims it at me.

  18

  Sun Is Forced to Admit She Hadn’t Seen This Coming

  Somehow it always came down to blood in the water.

  Sun stared down at the Lee girl as she emerged like a soaking-wet and thoroughly disgruntled sea goddess. Strands of black hair were plastered to her face, and she clawed them aside impatiently. Only when the significantly more perceptive Tiana gave a sideways nod to warn her did the Lee girl see the pistol.

  “How do I know you’re not in on it?” Sun was too angry to shout, what with Octavian dead at her feet and Navah’s blood on her hands.

  “In on what?” That reply wasn’t innocence. It was a challenge.

  “The attack that killed Percy. The plot to discredit me at the banquet.”

&n
bsp; “Whatever’s between your mother and you is not on me.”

  “I knew you would make excuses,” said Sun, crossing her arms so she didn’t lunge forward and fasten her hands around the Lee girl’s throat. Keep your temper in check.

  The Lee girl moved in under the shelter’s roof to get out of sight of visual surveillance. She set down her duffel with a thump.

  “Listen, Princess, maybe the queen-marshal is already sorry she got angry and wishes you would come home, all insults forgiven, poor misunderstood Sun. Maybe my family is even now convincing her you deliberately plotted an attempt on Manea’s life at the feast using a Gatoi soldier. Or maybe there’s another faction at work. Hiring Navah to assassinate you doesn’t feel like Lee House’s mode of operation. Lots of people hate Chaonia generally and Eirene specifically.”

  “Then who was Navah working for? Why try to kill me and not my mother?”

  “Besides your humble charm? It’s true this could all be a complicated scheme to completely discredit you and elevate Manea’s future child to heir. In which case I am playing my role as reluctant but helpful Companion only to betray you in the end. So fine. Go it alone. However, I can get us out of Argos. I’m betting no one else here can. Not even you.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “I don’t care if you trust me.”

  “You’d care if you were dead.”

  “Actually, if I were actually dead, I wouldn’t care because I’d be dead.”

  James snorted, tipping his cap toward the Lee girl with his irritating inability to take anything seriously. He should have been weeping for Octavian. They all should have been, except there wasn’t time. They had to escape first, and if Persephone Lee had a workable plan, then Sun had to figure out if she could trust her.

  “How did you know about the research into engineered hallucination?” she asked.

  “That’s an unexpected change of subject.” The Lee girl glanced nervously at the prone banner soldier as she touched her bruised throat. “There was a researcher who showed up at a weapons conference six months ago. A speculative conference, nothing top secret. There were only seven of us in the room for his talk because the higher-ups thought it was pie-in-the-sky twitch diving. He received such a cold reception he didn’t bother to attend the final banquet, which I know because I looked for him.”