Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  "Den de earth will see ya, water child. It will see you and de fishy-man," she said with a low, rolling laugh.

  "What does that mean?" I called after her, but she only laughed louder. "Mama Luz! What does that mean!?"

  Her crewmen dumped me into the lifeboat, one of them climbing in and grabbing the paddles while the other lowered the boat to the water. I saw Opal circling below. I heard her echoing to me, but I couldn’t echo back—that voice was gone.

  We hit the water with a splash, and Opal’s dorsal fin cut through the skim next to the boat until she swam wide and surfaced.

  "Cora!" she called. Her airborne voice pitched and sharp.

  "I’ll get Reed back, Opal! Mara set up the trap, but I’ll get him back!"

  "But where are you going?" she sang.

  "Ashore, to get what Mama Luz wants in exchange for Reed. Go back to The Shallows before my mother’s group gets too far! Catch up and go with them to the Southern Depths!"

  "When are you coming back? Cora!" she chirped one last time, then glanced at the sun just peeking over the horizon as it vanished beneath the skim. I didn’t have the chance to tell her not to be afraid, for it would not really turn her to stone.

  6

  We rowed into a thick fog that rose around the island, the reflecting sun forcing me to squint. It seemed like time stood still while we passed through it, but on the other side, nothing was the same.

  The island was gone. In place of the thick forest were huge, gray structures growing from the earth. There were only a few small trees, and several boats sitting in a row against the shore.

  The crewman who had been rowing us abruptly turned around and grabbed my arm.

  "Stop! Let me go!" I tried pulling from his grip, but he was too strong. He stood in the center of the boat and pulled me with him, then tossed me overboard. "Wait! This isn’t where I left the captain!" Without a word, he sat again and began to row away, watching me until he disappeared into the fog.

  It took me the better part of the morning to walk without falling. I walked along the shore looking out at the sky, the sparse trees, the endless stretch of stone towers that rose from the earth. Gulls flew overhead and dove at the water. Their calls wrenched my heart because they sounded like Opal’s airborne voice. She would be on her way to the Southern Deep now with the others. With my mother and the Royal Guard. With Mara, unless she somehow managed to stay behind, circling like a shark around Mama Luz’s barge.

  "You are unregistered," a man’s voice said, but there was no man to be seen. I looked again in the direction of the voice and saw only a silver cube with a bright light pointing at me. Another cube appeared at its side.

  "You are unregistered. State your census number," I heard again, and I finally realized the voices were coming from these cubes.

  "I’m looking for the captain," I said, but this only made the cubes approach me. "Do you know where I can find him?"

  "You are unregistered," the voice said again, but I couldn’t be sure which of the two cubes was talking. "State your census number."

  "I don’t know what that is… Wait!" I shouted as one of the cubes shone a light on me that encircled my waist, somehow pinning my arms to my sides. "What is this?" I tried to move, but I couldn’t.

  "You are unauthorized," the voice repeated as the cubes turned, the light lifting me off the ground.

  We moved quickly over the gray terrain until we stopped at one of the tall structures. The cubes took me through an opening, where inside, a woman glanced at me, then pushed a circle on the shelf in front of her. A cage made of glowing bars flickered for a second in the corner as the cubes steered me toward them, and the flickering stopped—the strong, orange glow of the electricity making my skin prickle as they set me down inside the bars.

  "All right, where you from, sister?" the woman asked. Her coverings were black, and her skin was dark like the crewmen’s on Mama Luz’s barge. Her eyes were bright and expressive, though, so I knew she couldn’t be one of Mama Luz’s minions.

  "Sister?" I asked.

  She raised a dark eyebrow at me and blew out a breath. "Not from The Grind, then," she said to the panel in front of her. "You can’t be from The Citadel or you’d be chipped. What’s that on your neck? You have your chip taken out?"

  "Chip?"

  "Your census chip—keeps track of how many years you owe, hello?"

  I shook my head, still not sure what she meant. "Hello," I replied, though the greeting seemed a little late if you asked me.

  "Funny. Did you get some hack to remove your chip or not?"

  "I don’t know…what that is," I stammered.

  The woman closed her eyes in a long blink. "The chip that keeps track of your debt. You pay with time from your life, hours, minutes, days, months, years, you understand? What kind of accent is that? You from overseas or something?"

  "The Sea? Yes, I’m from the sea!" Finally, something that made sense.

  "Greaaaat," the woman said. "What country you from?" she asked.

  "Country?"

  "You’re killing me, honey. Come on."

  "No! No, I won’t hurt you!" I insisted, self-conscious now that Mama Luz must have marked me somehow.

  The woman’s eyes widened. "Uh, OK, princess, Why don't you just get comfy in there."

  Princess? "You know me?" I asked, confused.

  The woman narrowed her dark eyes at me and shook her head, equally confused. "If I knew you, I wouldn't have all these screens to fill out, now would I?"

  I watched her hand gesture to the panel in front of her. "Screens…" I repeated, but this only made the woman’s face pinch like she’d bitten into a pufferfish.

  "Right… OK, sweetheart, do you know your name?"

  "My name, yes! My name is Cora."

  "And hallelujah, now we're getting somewhere. Is that Cora with a K or a C?"

  I didn't know how to reply, afraid that whatever I might say would pinch her face again. "Just… Cora, of the sea."

  "With a C, excellent," the woman said, poking again at the…screen in front of her.

  "Do you know where I can find the captain?" I asked.

  The woman laughed. "Yeah, he’ll be here any minute now."

  I was all at once nervous and excited at the prospect of seeing him again. I moved toward the humming bars in front of me without thinking, only to feel a current run through me when I got close. The bars crackled and flared until I took several steps backward.

  "He will know me," I said, though I didn’t know what I would say when I saw him…when he saw me, no longer as an Undine.

  "Is that so?" the woman asked, then stopped poking at her screen. "Good, that will save us the trouble of shipping you to the Weigh Station," she finished.

  "What’s the…Weigh Station?"

  "Where they determine if somebody dug that chip out of your neck or you never had one."

  "Why?" I asked.

  The woman blew out a long breath. "If you took out the chip, you go to Scrapper Island Penal Colony. If you never had one, the medics give you one," she finished, pointing to the place on her neck where gills would be if she were an Undine. She pointed to my neck, and I touched the still-burning sections of skin just below my ears. "Hey…" the woman said, her face pinching again. She got up from her seat and crossed to me, tilting her head to the side. "Swish those goldilocks back again, princess."

  I looked at her, puzzled by the request, but I followed the motion of her hands and moved my hair off my shoulders.

  "This is swish?"

  "Yeah. That’s swish. Why do you have two tamper marks instead of one? You go to some hack Grind medic who didn’t know which side they put chips in?"

  I shook my head, confused. "There are marks?" I asked, feeling the rough lines on either side of my throat.

  "Why do I always get the hack jobs?" she asked, but it seemed she wasn’t talking to me since she turned away and started poking at her screen again. “So, what are those swirly tattoos you’ve got there?�
� she asked, this time, giving me a quick look. Even if I had known how to answer her, I didn’t have the chance.

  "Morning, Bev, anything interest—" a tall, silver-haired man dressed in black coverings like the woman came into the room, stopping in the middle of his sentence as he looked at me. His thick, black eyebrows crashed together. "And who’s this?"

  "Morning, Captain," the woman answered, but this was not the captain I’d seen. "Says her name is Cora. The Sweeper droids brought her in a little while ago without a census chip," the woman explained. "They picked her up by The Grind docks."

  "He’s not the captain I’m looking for. Is there another?" I said, startling both of them.

  The man looked back over his shoulder at the woman. "Bev, what the hell is this about?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine, sir. She said you’d know her."

  "Me?"

  "No! Not him. The captain of the guard," I clarified, but this only seemed to make both their faces pinch.

  "She has tamper marks on both sides of her neck, sir."

  "Both sides?" He turned to me. "Did you try to have your census chip taken out, Cora?"

  I shook my head, still not knowing what that meant. The man raised both his dark eyebrows at me and ran a hand over his thinning silver hair as he looked more closely at where my gills used to be.

  "Do you have another captain?" I asked, desperate to get out of this cage so I could find the captain and get this whole thing over with. The man took a deep breath and shook his head before blowing it out.

  "Transfer her to the weigh station, Bev. Ericson can figure this one out," he said. "Call for a live patrol, but walk her to the car, and for God’s sake, get her some more clothes."

  7

  The woman named Bev gave me different coverings, a very tight, red covering she called a tank top, and loose, black leg coverings she called sweatpants. She also gave me an over covering called a jacket and coverings for my feet called shoes, but these made walking even more difficult because they were a little too big.

  "Let’s go, princess. The car won’t wait all day," Bev said, waving for me to come through the flickering bars. "They’re neutralized. Come on." I walked toward her, and she led me outside where a big, black box stretched out in front of us. She opened the side of it and motioned for me to get inside.

  "Just the one?" a man inside the box said.

  "Just her. Put her on the outgoing weigh station barge. Give a head-up to Ericson. She’s from overseas," Bev told the man.

  "Ericson is back already? I thought he was on psych leave?"

  "He passed the screening, I guess," Bev told him.

  The man shrugged, then nodded to me. "OK. Hop in."

  I looked at Bev, unsure of what the man meant. She motioned for me to move into the box. One of the cubes floated in next to me. It shot another small light at my wrists, making it impossible for me to move my arms.

  "What—?" I started to ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

  "Don’t they have Sweepers in France…or wherever?" the man said, glancing back at me as an afterthought.

  "Just move it. That barge leaves in thirty, and I don’t want to keep her here until next week," Bev said.

  The man nodded to her just before a black wall rose in front of me, blocking him from view. Bev closed the opening, and we started moving.

  We were moving for some time before the sea came into view again. It looked just like the shoreline I’d seen earlier, but most of the small boats were gone. In their place, a large ship like the one Mama Luz had sunk rested against the docks. People were lined up, escorted by more Sweepers, as the man called them, and were one by one going aboard.

  "This is your stop," he said as he opened the side of the box. The Sweeper moved first, making me follow because it hadn’t released me from the light bonds.

  We moved through the line of people until we made our way up to another man in black, this one wearing a black head covering and holding a panel that was made of lights. He held it up to each person, then poked at it like Bev had poked at her screen before motioning for each person to board the boat.

  He held the panel up to me, then repositioned it and did it again.

  He lowered it then and looked at my throat. "No chip?"

  "Cens…Census?" I said, trying to remember what Bev and the captain had called it.

  The man nodded. "That’s right. Where’s yours?"

  I shook my head. He poked at the Sweeper and scanned his panel again. "All right. Weigh Station it is. Section D2," he said, and the Sweeper led me onto the boat.

  We walked past several people who looked very tired, some of them with bandages on their throats where gills would be if they were Undine. The Sweeper positioned me in front of one of the sectioned seats, each of them separated by a small raised half-wall on either side.

  "Please sit and place your hands on your knees, palms down," the Sweeper said.

  "Final call!" a dark-haired man said. He was facing away from me, but he was dressed in white rather than black like the other men.

  "Who’s that?" I asked the Sweeper.

  "Please sit and place your hands on your knees, palms down," the Sweeper repeated.

  I turned to sit where it directed me and tried to remember what knees were, but once seated, there was really only one place for my hands to go. As soon as my hands were in position, bars of light like the ones from the cage shot over them. I could feel the prickling they caused on my skin if I tried to raise them at all and started to panic a little. What if I got an itch? I thought. And of course, that was when it started.

  I scrunched up my face desperate to make the feeling at the end of my nose stop, but it only seemed to make it worse. I turned into my shoulder to see if I could rub the itch out, but I couldn’t quite reach the spot. I stuck out my bottom lip and tried to blow air upward as hard as I could, but all that did was cause a strand of my hair to fall into my face, the ends catching in the light bars. They crackled, and I panicked. I jerked forward, shocking my arms, which made me yell out.

  "Sit back!" the man next to me shouted, but the shock didn’t stop even when my arms moved away from the bars.

  "I am! I am!"

  "Turn it off!" a man yelled. Almost in the same breath the bars of light disappeared, though random shocks still came from nowhere. I bit my lip to keep from making any noise when I saw dark gashes, red and angry, crisscrossing over my forearms. "Be still—it’s all right. Stop struggling. The jacket will stop the current, please." The man was suddenly in front of me, taking off his…jacket and wrapping it around my wounds. "Gibbons, finish the walkthrough and take us out if I’m not back."

  "But, Captain—"

  "Now! And send Peabody to sickbay."

  "You’re him. You’re the…captain." I whispered to myself, but he heard me anyway.

  "Yes, don’t worry, we’ll get this—" He looked up at me, his sea-blue eyes widening as his voice nearly disappeared. "You…"

  I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t have a chance to speak anyway when he blinked repeatedly and shook his head just before marshaling me below deck. I nearly tripped over my feet a few times because we were moving so quickly, but each time, he caught me around the waist and steadied me.

  We went into a small area with shiny seats, one of them long and flat with a big, round light hanging above like a little sun. The pain in my arms was getting worse, but whenever I closed my eyes to brace against the pain, all I could see was my tail burning away and the two legs appearing.

  "Captain? You sent for me?" A short, stout man rushed into the room out of breath, and his brown, thinning hair had been blown in all directions.

  "Burns…." the captain started. He slowly unwrapped the jacket from my arms, and the pain intensified. I winced. "I’m sorry," he said. "This is Dr. Peabody. You’ll be all right."

  "The restraints again?" Dr. Peabody asked the captain.

  "I’m going to rip them out of the seats myself if they don’t get a quali
fied programmer in here once and for all," he said, not looking up from the jacket he was slowly trying to remove from my arms. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from wincing again or even crying out, which was what I was all too close to doing.

  "Let’s have a look then," Dr. Peabody said, waving his hands under a blue light against the wall, then moving toward me with his hands extended. He took my wrists and laid my palms over my knees, and I saw my hands shaking from the pain.

  "Don’t you have anything to numb it?" the captain asked, his jaw tight and his dark eyebrows drawn together.

  "Just give me a second." Dr. Peabody raised one hand, which contained a small, white cube with a blue line running down the side. He pressed the top of it and a mist fell over the burns on my arms, cooling them until I didn’t feel any pain at all. I let out a big breath, which came out ragged.

  The captain took several steps backward while Dr. Peabody applied another spray which turned blue and puffed into a thin foam over each burn. He wound a white wrap around my forearms and I was suddenly, uncontrollably tired.

  "What’s wrong with her?" the captain asked.

  "The anesthesia is just hitting her bloodstream," the doctor answered, then met my eyes. "You’ll sleep right through the repair, don’t worry."

  "Repair?" I managed to ask, my voice feeling like it was floating away from me.

  "Good as new in the morning when we make landfall. Help her to the bunk, Nicholas? Careful with the wraps. They’re still curing."

  The captain—Nicholas?—moved toward me, but I couldn’t keep him in focus as my vision blurred and it got harder and harder to keep my eyes open. His arm moved around my waist, and I fell against him when he helped me down, my feet feeling like they were just melting into the floor.

  "Whoa…whoa," I heard him say just before the room was swallowed in a whirlpool of black. "How are you here?" he whispered, his other arm moving under my legs and lifting me off the ground. I thought he was talking to me, but it was soon clear he was talking to himself. "It’s not her, fool. They don’t exist. They don’t exist…" he trailed off.