Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  The high had lasted longer than it ever had before after that day. There had been an entire soul for each of them to eat. More, if they were quicker ones, like Mara. She had had two entire humans to herself. She made quick work of the first, then spirited the other one away before another of her kind could steal it away.

  It was a day worthy of an homage.

  Her hair gradually darkened, bit by bit until it held all of her favorite shades of fire and blood within its strands.

  No one, she was sure, was like this.

  4

  Amista

  Amista gritted her teeth as she waved to her people from a parade along the canals of the Tigrid capital.

  "Do us all a favor, Your Majesty, and make it look a bit more realistic, would you?" Lady Prellae waved beside her without breaking the serene smile she wore. She’d barely spoken to Amista since their encounter on the dock, but for her sessions advising the new queen with the other councilors. They all had insisted that these parades were necessary to buoy the mood of the people.

  And it looked as though they’d judged correctly. Amista smiled her first genuine grin of the day as she caught sight of a young mother and her baby. The mother waved the baby’s chubby wrist toward them and the fat-faced child grinned without teeth.

  “That’s better,” her grandmother sang out with satisfaction. She turned her neatly coiffed head to the side so she could acknowledge more of the people.

  The young woman and her child were hardly the only people out and about in the city that day. Crowds of people had lined the sidewalks and streets along the canal to see her. The palace guards had cleared the parade route earlier, ensuring that the large royal vessels wouldn’t run over the smaller gondolas that belonged to other people. They were neatly tied to docks in front of their homes, many of them piled into them to see their new queen.

  Amista’s smile faded as she caught sight of a black banner streaming from a window. A reminder that she was only here because her tormentor was not.

  “That doesn’t look like trying,” Lady Prellae trilled.

  “Whatever it looks like, I am trying,” she ground out through her bared teeth. “But my heels are aching and my arm is tired. No one told me I'd need physical training to smile and wave prettily to the people.”

  From the shores, her people lined the canals, shouting their devotion to her and the rest of the royal family. Amista almost felt bad that she had no joy to return to them. She’d thought she’d felt a flicker of something for a moment there, but it had vanished when she remembered her father. Even in death, he leeched the happiness from her very bones.

  Her grandmother pursed her lips. "I will make a note to confer with the royal physician and see if he cannot develop a regiment for your arm strength."

  “That wasn’t what I meant.” Amista sighed and bit off the rest of her retort. Her grandmother had no patience for sarcasm. What was the point?

  A band played merrily at the helm of the royal rowboat, the sounds of the music heralding their arrival as they moved throughout the city's canal system. It made it easy to speak with her grandmother without being overheard.

  Her grandmother arched a brow. "No clever comeback? Moving on then. We must discuss your marital prospects."

  A spike of alarm shot through Amista. "Marital?" she choked out.

  "Why, yes. You will need a consort at some point in time. I should have thought you'd realize that."

  “‘Some point’ is not today,” Amista pointed out. “Why must we—”

  “The royal advisers will want to know what your plans are. Many of them are discomfited by the idea of a young girl ruling alone. You will go a great deal toward assuaging their fears should you begin entertaining proposals.”

  Amista felt light-headed, as though all the blood had just drained from her face. “Entertaining is one thing. But they better do a damned sight better than the royal jester if I'm to consider tying my life to them.”

  "Smile, Amista," her grandmother snapped.

  Obediently, Amista slapped a forced grin back onto her face.

  "Wave."

  Mechanically, her arm kept moving.

  Gracefully, the Queen Grandmother moved to Amista's other side at the ship's rail and kept speaking. “This is no laughing matter. You laugh, you make jokes, but your ability to rule depends in part upon the council. If you want to be an effective ruler, you must start as you mean to go on: with compromises. They will put forth their suggestions for your consort. You may choose whether that man will be King or Prince Consort. You may pick from their candidates, or find your own. But make no mistake: you must choose. You cannot waffle with indecision forever. Because doing otherwise will leave you embroiled in conflict with the council for years to come. It will breed bad blood between you. The people of the city won't understand why nothing is being done to better their situation. Only that nothing is. And they too, will resent you for your inaction.”

  Amista chewed her tongue between her teeth. “I choose,” she warned. “Whoever it is, I will be the one to pick them.”

  “Of course!” her grandmother said, her perfect facade warbling with surprise for a moment before she glued it neatly back into place. “You are the queen. Of course you shall choose who will stand at your side.”

  Amista nodded, relief leaving her weak-kneed. She gripped the railing to steady herself. At least her grandmother wouldn’t try to force her together with some horrible jerk. "Very well, then. You may arrange some meetings and introductions. And I don't want to hear one word about the Prince of Glouckenshire." She shuddered as she remembered the man's sticky fingers and odious leering.

  * * *

  Her grandmother's brow furrowed. “Glouckenshire has been an ally in the past and that would be an advantageous match—” She cut her words short at Amista's glare. “But of course, it is but one advantageous option. One of many. I'll see that invitations to your coronation are issued to some contenders. Should there be anyone in particular you'd wish to vet or meet with, have a messenger send me that list as well. I know that your coronation will be a hectic affair, but we should have time for brief meetings before then. Perhaps a dinner or a luncheon where you can entertain several of the men at once.” Lady Prellae mulled over the option with a finger to her chin.

  Amista's lip twitched, a joke on the tip of her tongue about how she never imagined that her grandmother would be pleased to hear talk of her entertaining multiple men simultaneously. But she kept it to herself.

  Someone she doubted the Queen Grandmother would appreciate Amista's very cutting sense of humor.

  5

  Mara

  The other monsters greeted Mara with languid flips of their tails as they lounged along the beach of the island they called home. The Isle of the Mordgris. It was always like this. The one piece of land that was theirs. They could sprout legs and vanish among the leaves, or keep their fins and relax along the shore. It was not a place of camaraderie and laughter—but it was not fueled by the same rage and bloodlust that took them in the water, either.

  Some did a double-take, laughing as she flipped her new scarlet tresses and flounced out of the water, tail splitting in half to form two legs.

  The others cackled at the sight of her hair, transforming their own locks to match, but none of them got it quite right. Some were too brassy; others, too brown. None took the painstaking care that Mara had developing the shade in her transformation.

  One of them sidled up to her. Her dam. "You haven't feasted with us."

  “I ate earlier,” Mara replied airily as she kept walking.

  The other monster kept pace with her. “You think we don't notice, but we do. You didn't eat the human.”

  “You were all crowded around it. Too much effort for too little opportunity.”

  "Yes," the other one drawled. "But then I saw you move to the other side of the humans’ ship. You had a chance to lure the little human down. You failed to do so."

  Mara arched a brow. She�
��d ignored her dam at first, not deeming it worth her effort to let her get under her skin. But now, annoyance was beginning to niggle at her. "Can one fail if one does not even try?" she wondered, her tone caustic.

  "Semantics," the other hissed. "You play games like one of them too. And your hair—the hair all of us have—is no longer good enough for you?"

  "No one is good enough for me," Mara replied archly. "No human or monster."

  The other hissed. "Arrogance, spawn. Remember where you come from. You're no better or worse than the rest of us. All of us need a soul to keep going. Without it, we're just...." She circled a hand around searching for the right words. Her black claws clenched together and flew apart as she let out a soft exhalation, a puff of air. "We're nothing. Just dust on the wind. Foam upon the waves."

  Mara leaned back, reclining against the sands and stretching her torso across the beach. She crossed her legs and allowed it to transform back into a tail, flipping into the water as she watched and pondered. "You can be foam if you like. Soul or not… I’m more."

  Her dam watched Mara's tail too. "Perhaps… you are afraid," she purred.

  Mara stiffened, the languid nature of her pose straightening with indignation. Enough was enough now. She’d tolerated her dam’s teasing, but to accuse Mara, of all the Mordgris, of cowardice? “I am afraid of nothing. And what would I have to fear? A human is no match for me. For any of us.”

  “You’re afraid you’ll find a soul you don’t want to lose. One which—once consumed—will be too delicious to part with. One which will have you wishing for no life without it.”

  Mara snarled. Her arm darted out to clasp around the throat of the monster who birthed her. One set of her black talons pressed against her dam's windpipe as the other squeezed the gills at her hip closed. The other monster choked as Mara drew its face into her own.

  Mara’s breath wafted over her features as she breathed out a dangerous whisper. "The afflictions of human age must plague you, dam. I said that I fear nothing. But you would do well to fear me."

  The old fool. Mara had twice as many kills in a given tidal season than any of them. She had better remember that.

  Mara turns her tail back into legs and rose upon them. Coolly, she tossed her dam aside, the other's scales caked in sand as she struggled to regain her breath.

  She glared up at Mara once she recovered. "Prove it," her dam wheezed.

  Mara froze.

  Her dam looked up and her black eyes met Mara's.

  "If you do not fear the souls... then prove it."

  A haze of red and black consumed Mara's vision as she blazed a trail through the sea.

  Prove it. Her dam had challenged her. Well, fine then. She would prove it and settle the matter once and for all. She'd recognized the ship where the little human—Amista—had been. It belonged to shores not far from here.

  Ordinarily, Mara did not tread into these shallow waters. While immune to a great deal, a well-fired harpoon could still pierce her skin if it hit her at the right angle. And if the humans chose to man the docks with such weapons, stable land greatly increased the odds that they’d strike true, rather than their uncertain vessels upon the sea. And it was daylight now; they'd have no problems spotting her seaweed hair and gray skin if Mara rose above the surface.

  Of course, she’d be sure to don a human face if she did that.

  She was not afraid. But she was not stupid either. Courage did not mean one suddenly abandoned caution.

  She recognized the underbelly of Amista's ship as she reached the docks and found an anchor tethering it to the shallow sea floor. Her lips curved.

  Were it not for the danger of the human's sharpened steel, she would rather like this kingdom. The seas flowed into channels and canals throughout the city and provided plenty of opportunities for sea monsters large and small to peek into the lives of their prey.

  It was the most Mara supposed she could get. She could not tread upon their lands without invitation. And no one would be foolish enough to give her one of those.

  She would wait for night to properly prowl the shore, she thought. Even in a human disguise, it would be safer then to rise above the surface beneath a canopy of stars. Despite the light of the orb in the sky, the light that waxed and waned with the tides, and the soft glow of the fiery torches from the human's homes, they'd have a hard time telling her from the splashes of fish in the canals. Her ripples would be indiscernible from theirs.

  A mile out from the shoreline, she stared at the human's castle. Towers like the whorls in a conch's shell, in the pinkish hue of a coral reed of some humans' skins. It was a stark contrast against the blue sky. It was a shade of blue never quite found in the ocean, no matter how the water tried to reflect its heavenly opposite.

  The sun was still high in the sky, casting lightness and cheer upon the kingdom before her.

  It didn't seem right for the little human she'd met. The one who had glowered and spit into the sea. She was not a creature of lightness and cheer. She was angry. Scowling.

  It made her interesting.

  Mara scowled, thinking of it. Amista had been interesting. But her soul would be interesting too. A palate of unexpected flavors, no doubt. One that would take a palate as skilled as Mara's to decipher and glean each rich and combination of flavors from the next.

  She would have the girl's soul. And she'd quiet all those who doubted that she could not. They would tremble before her once again.

  So Mara stared. And she waited as the night crept closer.

  6

  Amista

  Amista drummed her fingers on her chair’s arm, nodding in absent agreement as her grandmother approved yet another arrangement for the coronation.

  "Your Majesty," the High Priest gave her a cursory bow. "I trust you are well. I wish to discuss the arrangements of your coronation and appointment to the head of the Order of the Ancient Ones."

  Amista swallowed, trying not to betray how nervous she felt about this particular aspect of attaining the throne. The head of the Tigrid state was also head of their religious state.

  “Yes,” Amista said. “I am well aware. I’ve studied the vows that I must take, your holiness. There shall be no embarrassing instances wherein I stumble over the Word of the Ancient Ones. I know my lines and my faith well.”

  It wasn’t the ceremony that concerned her. She could recite the Word backwards and forwards. Her father had done one thing right: she’d had a fine education. But Amista had a black spot on her soul. Was she really worthy to lead her people as an example of piety?

  His Holiness coughed into his hand. "Yes, well... be that as it may. There are other duties we must discuss. The Tigrid lineage depends upon your choosing a consort who will uphold the faith as well."

  Amista flipped a wave toward Lady Prellae. “My Lady Grandmother will see to those matters. Arrangements are being made to find a suitor who fits Tigrid’s needs.”

  “Very good, Your Majesty.” The High Priest’s eyes gleamed with approval. “I will leave the Order's suggestions with your esteemed grandmother then. I do hope that you will trust in my council enough to select one of them.”

  Amista hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “I’ll certainly be sure to meet with some of them.” This was all she would commit to now. It was a delicate balance she held between the head of church and head of state. And she took issue with the Order in certain respects. Their vows—the vows Amista would recite during her coronation—were devoted to goodness. And they clearly hadn’t meant a thing; her father had said the exact same vows that she was to take in less than a month’s time.

  If the gods had ever punished him at all, that punishment took too long to make a difference for all she had suffered at his hands.

  A couple of days later, Amista found herself seated at the same table once again. And again, she tapped out a rhythm with her fingers. This time, it was against the dark mahogany of the table where she and her grandmother had gathered to confer with her advis
ors and sighed.

  Fitting, she thought, that this used to be the war room. Sabers and halberds crossed the walls, framed and signed treaties displayed with the aplomb. The room’s atmosphere felt weighty. It had a heft to it; an intimidating presence. Matters discussed in here would be taken seriously. The room demanded it.

  And in a way, this compromise she was to strike with her advisors, with her grandmother, finding an appropriate candidate to marry, felt like a treaty. It would form an alliance with another country and strengthen her hold on the throne.

  She trailed a finger through the dust on the table and made a mental note to have the servants get in here more often. Whether the room sat in disuse or not, that wasn’t an excuse for a lack of cleanliness.

  Her grandmother straightened and sniffed, looking down her patrician nose at her granddaughter. Amista felt her own spine reaching for the sky in response.

  Despite their disagreements of late, the Queen Grandmother just had a way about her. Amista had cringed away from her father, made herself smaller, for fear he would take notice of her. For years, she’d lessened herself so as not to draw his attention.

  But her grandmother had a different effect on her. She seemed to expect more from Amista. Even before her father, the King had died—before the Mordgris had consumed him, she corrected herself automatically.

  Yes, he’d died, but specificity was important. It meant that nothing would be left to chance, no questions would be left unanswered.

  Even before the Mordgris had consumed the King, whenever Amista’s grandmother had given her that look, Amista had wanted to rise to meet it. To sit up, to actually be noticed, and to gain the woman’s approval.

  The glint in her grandmother’s eyes let her know that she was pleased now. The wall between them was slowly crumbling. Amista hesitantly smiled back and fought to keep a posture that would prevent the diadem resting upon her head from falling over her brow.