Fallen Princeborn: Chosen

by Jean Lee

  And they leap onto the stones of the fallen wall. They looked smaller from their bubble, but up close each rock has to be a good five feet tall, and they’ve got to clamber up with Captain’s spear slicing at their feet. They pull themselves on top at last, and look down into the hole. The pool’s water is night-time muddy with a thousand trapped fireflies swimming in sync and more bubbling up from the center.

  A merman drops from the water above them, somersaulting in swirling light to land on his feet at the hole’s edge next to Charlotte and Liam, who both drop in huddle-heaps just before he releases a star-mouth-scream that rattles their teeth as it flies over their crouching forms. Several deafening CRACKS behind them—two of the levels on the far side of the Library shatter and now float in the water.

  The distraction lasts only a heartbeat, but it’s enough. The Stellaqui launch a green net large enough to encompass both Liam and Charlotte, dragging them off the wall and along the floor toward the enclosure. All is grit and light and clenching teeth as Charlotte forces her eyes to go past the sparks to see Liam cutting at the net, cutting at the net. Yet the net merely sends its power through the dagger into his arm, scoring more welts, turning his flesh a putrefying yellow. “S-stop, Liam, you’ll die!”

  The spear stops him instead. Captain Blinkey cuts through the net, along the top of his biceps, and tings the floor.

  Violet and crimson pool outward as Liam cries, his fingers losing their grip on the blood dagger.

  Captain presses her foot onto the wound. “Maybe I will be so honored as to assist with your study, Princeborn, after the Queen is through with you.”

  No. You won’t. The Voice inside unleashes such a white-hot rage that Charlotte is sure her blood could scald the fish tails above her. No spark, no spear, no scream could keep her hand from thrusting through the emerald cords to touch him, Liam, and his blood dagger one more time, one more bloody time before they become some fish ghoul’s fucking science project.

  And it’s warm. The blood dagger is warm with him, with her, with… with life. She knows she sees its golden embers within the metal. Charlotte grips it tight and drags it across the net binding them. The flaming wing that saved Charlotte in the Pits rips the net in two, sending all its little tendrils shriveling back, hissing and frayed. Its fire is the most beautiful thing Charlotte has seen since she first caught sight of Liam’s eyes.

  Captain Blinkey staggers back. “That’s impossible!”

  Green luminescence rains down, but Charlotte throws her arm open, her own battle scream a fright as the fire mounts a wave strong enough to burn every net cord and move through the water, driving all swimming merfolk to the far side of the Library in a nervous panic.

  The merman from the hole’s edge leaps down off the wall to Charlotte, star-mouth poised to scream, but Charlotte slashes the air between them, and the wing of fire melts the lower half of his face and turns it obsidian. His mouth can no longer open—he runs his flippers over it, whining, now squeaking madly at Captain Blinkey and at the remaining two merfolk still on the atrium floor.

  For a moment, all anyone can hear is Liam’s labored breathing, the obsidian merman’s muffled whines, and the bubbling water of the hole in the atrium floor.

  A mermaid points with her fin at the bubbling water and clicks, eyes darting from Charlotte to dagger to hole and back. Captain Blinkey lets out what Charlotte can only guess are some nasty curses in dolphin-talk followed by a, “The Queen’s on her way NOW?”

  Charlotte slides over until her foot nudges Liam’s—oh sure, now I touch his ass, with death spearing us everywhere. “Liam?”

  “I’m here.” The way he sounds… barely.

  “Don’t you go anywhere.” She sneaks a quick side-look at his arm. Blood and veli trickle out. Dammit.

  The hole’s water has bubbled itself into a tall tower, the fireflies floating in a waltzing rhythm round and round. The Library’s edges are overrun with thousands of spinning little circles of light. Charlotte catches the panic on Captain Blinkey’s face, and grins. “Aw, I didn’t know your Queenie’s a disco fan.”

  Captain Blinkey chucks the spear at Charlotte and runs after it. She transforms mid-air from legs to tail, from fins to strong arms and hands that catch the spear, ready to drive it into Charlotte’s chest with all possible force.

  Charlotte dodges, unleashes another fire-wing as she sings, “Burn baby burn, duh duh duh duuuuuh duh!” The wing burns through the spear’s shaft, sending the blade down with a final impotent ting! into the floor.

  But Captain Blinkey, shaft still in hand, rolls to ram the broken spear into Charlotte’s ribs.

  Charlotte deflects with the blood dagger’s blade.

  Captain Blinkey whips her shaft around for another strike and meets the dagger’s blade, again.

  Charlotte’s grip is sure. Rock-hard. Golden flames begin to lick the bone shaft. Her eyes glow with an army’s campfires in an emerald land. “Burn, baby burn—”

  “SHUT UP!” Captain Blinkey barks. Her star-mouth-scream is fast—

  —but so is Charlotte. She rips the dagger free of the shaft and sets a fire wing loose, and the fire and scream crash together—

  Magics collide.

  The scream never reaches Charlotte’s face. The fire-wing never touches Captain Blinkey. The magics meld and fall as paper-thin, silvery ash.

  Disco lights fade. A voice from above fills the spaces left by silence: “Well. I can see you have the situation well in hand, Captain.”

  5

  Royal Accusations

  A hint of salt floats upward through the air. A dozen guards, half of them mermaids in chainmail and the other half mermen in helmets spikey like sea urchins, flank a mermaid in chainmail long as a dress, a circlet of silvery kelp braided into her hair. An amulet of pearl glows with angler light upon her chest.

  A few guards ready their rope-nets, pale Liam in their sights.

  “Don’t you dare touch him!” Charlotte points the blood dagger at all of them as she runs, slips on Liam’s blood. She crashes to the floor but still clutches the dagger and crawls, crawls until her free hand feels his clammy arm. She smells despair so strong she’s ready to cry herself, but by god, she ain’t showing these water-freaks shit. “I will burn all of you, I swear!”

  A torrent of clicks and squeaks flow from Captain Blinkey. The guards blink at her spear, the bone flakes, the Obsidian Mouthed merman.

  Charlotte risks looking down. Between the nets and the fighting, Liam’s tunic’s all but scrapped shreds around his arm. Yellow pus bubbles where violet and crimson flow. “I gotta

  stop this bleeding,” she says, her breaths shallow, panicked. Will this work? I don’t, I don’t know what else to do, and Liam’s closed his eyes, and his lips look blue, please, not like this, don’t, you promised to stay with me.

  The Voice fills Charlotte’s heart and guides her fingers around the blood dagger. It will work, if you put your heart into it.

  Charlotte counts her breaths. One, two. Positions the blood dagger’s blade over the wound. Three, four. Takes Liam’s hand and presses it between the blood dagger and her own. Five, six. Closes her eyes. Remembers:

  To skip a stone, to paint a glass, to climb, to run, to hurt, to hold, to hope—

  The engraved feathers shiver along the metal. Embers flare, just once, from hilt to tip. Then all is cold.

  Charlotte takes a deep breath. She doesn’t notice how every pair of water-folk eyes is just as fixed as her own on the blade and what lies beneath.

  The yellow pus is gone. The wound remains but is now cauterized, at least.

  “Liam?” She cups his cheek and leans close. “Liam?” she says again, her nose hovering over him, smelling for hope, eyes searching for a single twitch of muscle. “Liam, please.”

  Coughing, but from behind. “I beg your—"

  “Get back!” Charlotte whirls on her haunches, blood dagger out, and falls down with a soft thud on Liam’s chest, facing the merfolk. Liam’s body
buckles upward on either side of her. His mouth hacks a little blood, but air moves in and he breathes, oh please YES he’s breathing… only to change into curses when his head smacks back onto the floor.

  “Heart’s Fire, what—Char…” Liam’s eyes open to see a tangled mess of dirty yellow hair surrounding a grimy face, snot-encrusted nose, chapped lips… and bottomless green eyes filled with flecks of a rainbow’s light. “Are you… sitting on me?”

  “Maybe,” Charlotte says, blushing despite herself.

  “One of the best battle-wakings I’ve ever had…”

  “Hush, you.”

  The Queen stands quite still for being only a foot or two from the dagger’s point. Her fins are folded politely by her hips. “Did you really do all this?”

  Charlotte takes a quick look around. The cracked enclosure’s buried in broken chunks of floor from above. Librarians are rescuing display cases on the bits along the edges. Obsidian Mouth is surrounded by some guards who can’t stop slapping at his literal rockface while a few others corner Captain Blinkey, flipping her cheek and chin with their fins. Her nose doesn’t seem to work as well in a watery world, but Charlotte can tell by the fallen look on Captain Blinkey’s face that these “comrades” are keener to insult than to comfort. “Your people broke the Library. And if your people don’t stop being dicks I’ll melt their gills shut.”

  Not that Charlotte knows if she could swing it, but Obsidian Mouth sure looks terrified at the prospect. He squeaks himself into a run and doesn’t stop until he’s climbed the rubble to enter the water-filled upper levels of the Library.

  “Hail, Monarch of Stellaqui,” Liam says with halted breath and a limp motion of the hand, still stuck under Charlotte’s backside. “We are, but travelers, seeking safe passage, through your element.”

  The Queen gives a slight curtsy, touched with a sneer. “Hail, Princeborn and Thief. No,” she raises a fin, “please, do not stand on my account.”

  “Oh he ain’t standing, and neither am I.” Charlotte says, slowly patting the blood dagger against the palm of her hand. “You’ll slice him open the first chance you get.”

  Stone-eyes rolling look scarier than one would think. “Quite true.”

  A loud grinding—one of the leviathan spines is moving up. Water falls upward around the vertebrae, flowing into the ceiling, keeping the first floor dry.

  A merman arrives and lands hands first, giving his tail time to change. He flips forward onto legs, cries, “The child!” and devolves into a flood of dolphin-speak that causes even the Queen to go agape for a moment.

  One guard tries to click the messenger into silence, but the Queen shushes the guard instead. “No. I made a promise. I will see for myself. Besides, I cannot study the accused before the High Sage bears his testimony. If he confirms the weapon in their possession is that which has killed our people,” she bows forward until all Charlotte can see are her slender, trident-shaped teeth, “then we will most assuredly observe their inner workings as they lie awake, feeling every needle that pins their flesh.” With four clicks and a defiant gaze, the Queen shifts herself upright and orders, “The High Sage will need water here. Take the prisoners to the largest study room and seal it in air. Provide a small dose of nourishment. They must be well enough for questions, but not escape.” Her gaze falls on the blood dagger one more time. “Maintain a respectful distance.”

  6

  Memory’s Door Splinters

  “Still thinking there are worse ways to wake up?”

  The two sit in a theater built inside a rib cage. If Charlotte doesn’t focus her eyes, it’s just a whitewashed room with curved beams running from one side of the room and up, over, down to the other. But she knows what those beams really are. The walls must be made of skin, having that feel of a tight drumhead. The theater’s not huge—more the size of a school science lab. Three round levels lined with benches step downwards towards a low center, where a long, grooved table stands, the center of attention. Beneath the table are shelves of tools, all carved with ornate detail.

  Before they sealed the doors, Captain Blinkey had arrived with a small cup of veli— “from the last study”—a corked bottle, and a pile of seaweed paired with a hunk of raw meat, webbed foot attached. “They don’t keep much here,” Captain Blinkey spoke quietly, eyes shifty with the bully-guards just outside. “I diluted the starlight as much as I could. Should be safe. It has been before.”

  “Starlight. Like, starlight starlight? You drink starlight?” Charlotte could feel the incredulity dripping in her own voice.

  Captain Blinkey’s mouth swam in and out of a sneer before she said, “Why do you think we’re called the Stellaqui?”

  Charlotte didn’t know what to say except, “Oh.”

  Liam uncorked the bottle and sniffed. “I never thought the Celestine so generous.”

  “More a fair trade. They feed on the knowledge we give them of this world they can never see. They cast their light, and it gathers like your land’s snow upon the water’s surface. We harvest. We distill. And we imbibe. Although some harvests are easier to reap than others.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lakes are dangerous. Too near humanity.” Now it was Captain Blinkey’s turn to be incredulous. “And Velidevour. Now I must go.”

  “Thanks, Captain Bl—” Charlotte bit the name back. “Captain.”

  Captain paused at this. “You defended yourself well, and…thank you, for what you said to the others. As they say in the Guard, ‘No Stellaqui worth respecting fails in battle.’ Disdain is a traditional Stellaqui gift for the loser.”

  Flashbacks of an orange-lit, slush-littered parking lot, of Charlotte spitting on the bruised face of another senior athlete, laughing as her saliva trickled down his forehead…how often did Charlotte taunt those losers?

  Charlotte shuffled a little. “Ditto.”

  A long and low squeak tumbled inside Captain’s throat. “I almost wish they didn’t have to study you.” She exited the bubble’s membrane, visible just past the door. The guards threw some taunting squeaks at her back as they barred the door shut.

  Liam set the bottle down. “I do not think I was included in that ‘you.’”

  Charlotte noticed random clusters of carved lines on the ribs cresting the floor like water waves. More higgledy-piggledy carvings down there…and a broken claw…and a fingernail.

  “Y-yeah, pretty sure that ‘almost’ is stronger than the ‘hope.’” She backed into Liam, unblinking. He followed her gaze, swallowed, said nothing. He led them to sit on the bench farthest from the lines.

  A pause.

  “Still thinking there are worse ways to wake up?”

  Liam shrugs.

  Another pause. Both stare at the table. Its surface is smooth, without blemish.

  The burnt orange of the webbed foot keeps drawing Charlotte’s eyes more than anything. “That’s gonna be my foot pretty soon,” she says, voice empty.

  Liam and The Voice speak together in such a firm strength from inside Charlotte, from outside Charlotte:

  “No”-No- “It’s”-It’s- “Not”-Not.

  The macabre reverie is broken. Charlotte breathes deep, looks away from that damn table towards Liam. The yellow welts sprout gross yellow veins beneath Liam’s skin. If he’s not yellow he’s bruised, bloody, with bits of sand and god-knows-what-else caught in the spaces where his body wants to heal.

  Yet she smells no despair. No fear or anger, either. Under all the sticky grit he smells of a lightness Charlotte’s all but forgotten:

  Hope.

  It even fills his eyes, so rich with silver and…wow. Screw it. If I’m gonna die, at least I can like what I look at before I die.

  “They can’t hurt you. They won’t dare. Even if I,” he holds up his blistered, pus-lined hands, “can’t defend you, a piece of me always will.” He winces in silence as he unbuckles his harness. A small tttth as leather and linen are torn from congealing welts and wounds. What’s left of his tun
ic falls lifelessly off his body.

  Charlotte’s breath halts.

  Liam’s cursed mark is but one stroke of paint. The welts run amuck, connected with synapses of misery from one end of his body to the other. Beneath the yellow bloom bruises rich in royal hues. Crimson cuts from fighting The Lady Orna are stubborn in their scarring.

  He separates the scraps of his shirt from the harness. Holds it out. “Put this on.”

  Charlotte shakes her head.

  “Please.”

  Her eyes scrunch to restrain welling tears. Charlotte still sees the definition of muscle, the steadiness of his hands, the power in his stature.

  She shakes her head again. “We need to do something about your injuries. Then you talk to me about harnesses.”

  “But what’s the point—”

  “Because there’s more, that’s why.” Charlotte holds up the dagger. “If you aren’t gonna let me give up, then I’m not gonna let you give up, either.” Slams it on the bench. “So we’re underwater surrounded by talking fish people who want to peel us apart like biology frogs. La-di-freakin’-da. I’ve been through—” No, Charlie, don’t crack that door open, Charlie “—I’ve been through enough hell not to be stuck meeting Pinnochio here inside Monstro’s carcass. You haven’t lived through a thousand years of shit to give up now. No scream, no claws, nothing can put your heart’s fire out,” she pokes his chest with an unbroken finger, “unless you let it.”

  His hand envelopes hers before she can blink.

  He wants to kiss her.

  To blazes with where they are or who could enter. Liam’s inner wings could take them through oceans of fire and water and out to the cosmos and back. Even…no, perhaps not where her selfish whelp of a sister whines. Anywhere else, Charlotte has but to ask.

  Yet when he gazes into Charlotte for some sign of permission—no more “take the girl,” Father, never again am I some mere “boy”—he senses a splintering. The door that holds back the leather strap, the shadow, the cackles—it is cracking, somehow, by her own words to him. Why?