Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  Our raft hit the shore with the moon high in the darkened sky. The prince looked up at the palm trees as our feet sank into the sand. “So where is this place exactly?”

  I shrugged. Huts rested near rocks farther up the shore. Murmured voices slipped through the trees. “It’s part of Solis. There’s a village. I see their boats out fishing sometimes.” And often their men became meals for my family. I didn’t know anything more than that. “They might help you . . . or sell you to some ship captain.”

  He laughed. “You think a ship captain would want me?” He flexed his thin arms. “Perhaps if I showed him the raft we built.”

  At least he was a boy. A captain might put him to work as a bonded oarsman, but they wouldn’t violate or kill him on sight. Someone might even help him home.

  I stepped away. Whatever happened, I had done my part.

  He caught my hand. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.” Where else would I go?

  His grip hardened on my wrist, and panic seeped into his tone. “You can’t mean back to that island! The water is dangerous, and you’ll be all alone. You could come with me. You could . . .” He tugged my arm and gestured across the sand with his free hand.

  My heart beat wild. This was it. I needed my weapon, my blade, but my hands flailed without coming close to where I stored it.

  He froze; his brown eyes searched mine. “You don’t have to be so afraid of people, Ari.”

  His touch became gentle, but I couldn’t allow it to linger. “You just want me to come with you, and when I refuse—”

  “I would what? You think I would force you?”

  I wished he would. Then I would kill him, and all my problems would be over.

  His voice neared a whisper. “Ari, you saved my life.”

  Only because I was part of the conspiracy that put his life in jeopardy in the first place. My free hand ran over my belt. Empty. Where was my knife? Did I still need it?

  “You saved me too,” I said. “From the monster.”

  “You saved me more.” He nudged me with his elbow as if it were a joke, our right hands still joined. His softness cut me more than my blade could ever wound him.

  “You’re the Sun Prince and—”

  He let go of my hand and put two fingers on my lips, stopping my words. “I’m Erys.”

  Erys. I stopped searching for my knife. My insides warmed. His face, his lips were a breath away. I could count all the light hairs on his chin, like fuzz on a peach. A man stood before me, and I wanted to tell him everything—all that he asked me and more. Who my mother really was. Naman’s betrayal before my family killed the whole crew. How and why I wanted to kill a prince before I saw his face or learned his name. That I thought he might be worth saving now, but my family would never understand and never agree.

  So many words, but none of them would leave my throat.

  He pulled out my knife. He had stolen it and carried it the whole time after using it to stab Charybdis.

  He gave it back to me now, hilt first. I had been defenseless with him for over an hour without realizing it. But the anger I wanted to feel toward him never surfaced. It had morphed into a desire I didn’t know I had—to feel so vulnerable and safe all at once. To have a man look at me so earnestly. He was strong. He was clever, and so unbelievably kind. He could have overpowered me so many times, but he protected me instead. I craved his protection more than breath, and I couldn’t take the blade—part of me afraid I would stab him, part of me afraid I wouldn’t.

  All of me hating that I had to make the choice at all.

  Though really, I had made my choice the moment I pulled him from the sea. I wouldn’t stab him, not even with the knife in my hand and him standing a breath away. He was either the dumbest man alive or the smartest; he made his murder impossible by making it so easy.

  I couldn’t stab him no matter what my family said or thought about it later.

  I was going to let him go, and if he kept trying to take me with him, I would . . .

  I would . . .

  He took my hand again, brushing it against his lips and bowing his head. “Thank you for helping me, Ari. You did not have to. I’d love to show you my city sometime, but I would never force you to go anywhere.” He let me go.

  I watched Erys walk away, leaving shallow footprints in the sand.

  The sand back on my island was unmarked, untouched. No man or anyone else to break its simple perfection. I wouldn’t have to think about the Sun Prince ever again.

  He had already disappeared among the distant huts and palms.

  My hand came to my chest, feeling the unsteady beats of my heart. I waited for relief to sweep over me. I should have felt relieved.

  I wanted to be relieved.

  I turned back to where the water silently lapped over the sand. It seemed so empty.

  Why did I think I had to return to my island? The sea never held anything for me. I put my knife away as my heart leapt forward with a new resolve. I would call back Erys, my grounded gull and my storybook prince. He would let me go with him. I would tell him everything, and then we would . . .

  A shadowed figure rose from the waves.

  Dark, damp hair shrouded Titera’s accusing gray eyes. “Arianna. What have you done?”

  7

  Titera pulled me from the waves onto the shore of my island. Sand scraped my legs before I found my feet. She stood in front of me on her human legs, wet hair draped over her chest. The veins on her neck and running near her tattooed arms seemed close to bursting. “I knew you were the wrong one to send. You couldn’t wring the neck of a fish.”

  I winced, my knees shaking. “He was kind to me.” The words were weak even in my own ears. Titera was the only one of my sisters who ever scared me.

  She laughed, something close to a cackle. “Of course he was. Haven’t you heard a word Mother has said? The people of the sun are clever. He must’ve seen that you were weak and exploited it to his own advantage.”

  My blood ran cold at the thought. I let her drag me another step toward the rocks, thinking of the desperate sailor I might have pitied and saved from Serena before I saw his knife. Could Erys do that? Put on a mask of pleasantness, just to spare his life?

  Was I really such a fool?

  “Just wait until Mother hears,” Titera said.

  She had called Mother. Of course she had.

  We stood on the same cliff where I had summoned Mother for Naman. My other sisters broke through the surf, never raising more than their eyes above the water. Then Mother appeared in a great whirlpool. Thunder and lightning cracked in her anger as she positioned herself on the same rock spire she had used before.

  “Mother, I found her.” Titera pushed me to the rocks in front of her. “We were walking those rocks, searching for the prince, and the minute I went to the waves to refresh myself, the blood of Charybdis cried to me of her treachery. I went to the fishing village and I see . . .” She shook her head like the words wouldn’t form past the disgust on her tongue. “She was with the Sun Prince. She could have killed our greatest enemy and she just let him walk away.”

  Mother stayed as still as a statue, a pillar reigning over the storm. “Explain yourself.”

  Part of me wanted to add my own voice to the raging storm. How could Mother have not prepared me better? How could Erys be nothing like she told me he would be?

  If he had been a beast, I could have killed him without question!

  But my mother’s hard eyes silenced any thought of such a response. Was there any answer she would accept? Naman’s betrayal wasn’t strong enough, but there had to be something.

  “I-I just thought that it would be more to our advantage to leave Erys alive. The Sun Prince, I mean.” He couldn’t be Erys. He couldn’t be mine.

  Titera spun her head. Her grip became painful. “Don’t you dare lie. This deceitful girl has fallen in love with our sworn enemy.”

  Vi rose from the water enough for me to see her hand point
back to the twins, her eyes dull. “They keep men all the time. They take legs for them and soon they will be fat by them.”

  Catra shrugged, unrepentant. “It’s no fun to kill them so quickly.”

  “You should see how they flatter and serve when they know the kill is coming.” Corva’s eyes became wistful. “They make such nice little pets . . . for a few days, at least. Then it’s all whining and begging, and they really start to smell. We’ve never kept one more than a week.” She flicked the water dismissively.

  Mother’s gaze stayed fixed on me, never blinking through my sisters’ confession.

  And why should she? Mother had produced my sisters and me in a host of similar liaisons. Only Vi was dogmatic enough not to see it.

  “To use a man for our own pleasure and to create daughters for ourselves is one thing,” Mother said. “Forming an attachment and allowing him to dominate is another. Is that what happened, Ari? Have you allowed a man to claim your heart?”

  A lifeline. Perhaps my only one. I had to say something. “No. Of course, I didn’t. I just thought . . . that if he was in love with me, then per-perhaps we could use him instead.”

  A breath of air, near a growl, escaped my mother’s lips. “He is the son of Solis and his death would strike a blow to their whole providence. What better use could he be?”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  I watched even Titera’s expression go slack, her arm loosening on mine as if afraid to be caught in the crossfire of my mother’s temper. Water struck against rock in a death toll.

  But an eerie calm filled my breast. My words became firm. I was already in the worst trouble I could imagine. Nothing I could say could possibly make it any worse.

  I had this one chance, and I was going to use it no matter how much I stumbled.

  “You killed the prince before, and nothing changed,” I said. “You had to flee, and a different prince was crowned in his place. Erymanthus, the Sun Prince now, thinks you were a mad woman. He thinks you raced into that storm and killed yourself out of grief when your prince died.”

  Mother jerked her head back as if I had slapped her.

  I had to keep going, press the only advantage I had. “If I killed this prince, as you did, nothing changes. But now that I have left him alive, he will carry my name back to his city. They will know—they will all—”

  “She will say anything to save herself.” Titera spoke with a hiss, exposing the points of her canines.

  Save myself? The words sank into me with a new level of severity. I hated my family’s displeasure, but was I bartering for something more? Would they kill me, let me bleed on the altar in the prince’s place?

  The silence seemed to confirm my planned demise. Perhaps Erys had understood the way of things better than I. I should have followed him into whatever city he offered.

  I should have begged him for the opportunity.

  Mother sank into the water and stepped onto the sand, her back straight, her legs sure. Wind swept through her raven hair. My heart beat faster with each step until she reached my side, and Titera dropped me fully at her feet.

  “Arianna is right,” Mother said. “A victor does not hide under the moon and waves while they have the sun. They should know our names. They should all be made to tremble, while we reclaim our rightful place as the rulers of the moon and sun.”

  She took my arm, grip just as tight as Titera’s had been, and lifted me upward to face her. “And if this prince truly could be made to love you, you could be his queen.”

  8

  Mother dragged me across the island where the grass and sand gave way to dark rocks and crafted columns. To the one place I never wished to linger, the shrine of our god.

  I said “our” god, but no one could own Valadern. Worshiping him was like bowing to a wolf, hoping that, as the most beloved of his sheep, we would be the last to be eaten.

  But that didn’t seem to matter anymore. I couldn’t be scared of Valadern or anything else after hearing my mother’s words. “You want me to marry Prince Erymanthus? Like a princess?” My head filled with images, not from Mother’s story, but from my secret storybook. Could she arrange something like that? If she could, I would proclaim her name to everyone! They might tremble, but I would cheer and dance in the glorious sun.

  “Foolish girl. You’ve always been a princess; you will just have to be human for a time. This will take work.” She let me go at the entrance to the cavern so she and my sisters could don the embroidered hoods and robes marking them as priestesses to Valadern. The long cloth draped over their arms and faces like shrouds over the dead.

  “I am human,” I said. But my mother’s voice had such authority, I glanced downward.

  Yes. Human legs, just where I left them. Trembling and as useless as reeds.

  “Physically, yes. But you must be able to live among the surface dwellers.” She pulled me deeper into the shadows until I walked on my own. There was no more need to drag me through such a narrow tunnel—Mother at my front and my sisters trailing behind. The jagged stalagmites made a wall of stony teeth until it opened up into a wider cavern. Water dripped from a small opening in the celling, letting in the soft glow of moonlight.

  The rest of the cave was so dark, I stepped into a puddle of water before stopping.

  One of my sisters ignited an oil lamp, exposing the underground stream that kept the cavern musty and cold. We stopped at the bloodstained altar. The same altar claimed the lives of Mother’s three male children along with all my sisters’ first victims.

  The same altar that should have also taken the prince.

  Mother had carved an icon of our god into a central rock spire, and above it, a stone shelf held a line of dark urns, a line of hearts. My sisters knelt below them in a solemn procession.

  Titera smiled as if she still expected my blood to stain the stone.

  Mother covered her hair with the hood of her robe, kneeling in front of the altar. “Great One.”

  Blood. I need blood. The words vibrated through the rocks.

  I shrank away, but my eyes still found the icon of a bare-chested man covered in hair and tentacles and holding a trident. My mother’s god and patron—a voice of nightmares that made my blood run colder than the sea.

  “In a moment, Your Greatness,” my mother said in a purr my sisters might use with their song, soothing their victims. “My daughter has come to ask a boon of you.” She pulled me down at her side so I was kneeling too. “Arianna is to enter Solis, help us to reclaim our place as rulers of the moon and the sun.”

  Mother explained my newfound connection with the prince to the unseen voice. I saw nothing except shadows, but it seemed the cave had eyes that could see me at every angle. The unseen god was sizing me up, and I was sure to be found wanting.

  You know I have longed for such an opportunity. The Sun Dwellers have accepted a new god and do not fear and serve me as they once did, but this plan is dangerous. Your daughter is still immature and would not be the first we have lost to them.

  “It is a risk,” Titera agreed—slow and careful as not to trigger our mother’s wrath. “I understand if you wish to reclaim the throne of the Sun Dwellers. It is your right to rule all the providences, but why trust this to Ari? We don’t need anyone to pretend to be human if we took the palace by force.” Even under their hoods, both her and Vi looked eager for a direct fight.

  “Perhaps, but our powers are weaker on land.” Mother turned her head, speaking again to the unseen voice of our god. “The prince is to be married in three months, three cycles of the moon. Give my daughter that time to win his heart, and we stand to gain an insider foothold to reclaim the empire in your name. If not, we can still go as Titera says. There will be no risk to anyone.” No risk to anyone that would matter to my mother at least.

  The risk would be for the humans and for myself if I failed.

  The voice retreated, sounding at a distance. Your daughter is immature. I cannot help her until she has made a pact with
me.

  “Well, go on.” Mother forced my knife into my hand and pushed me toward the altar.

  They all waited for me to rip open my own flesh.

  “I have to give him my blood?” My voice trembled and fell.

  “The blood is just a symbol.”

  A symbol. Did that make it more or less dangerous? Would giving my blood “symbolically” drain my soul, just as when my family took blood from their male victims?

  I turned my head as Titera sighed. “Come on, Arianna,” she said. “We’ve all done it. You can’t expect to receive power for nothing.”

  I held the knife over one hand. There might not be any getting out of it, but the blade shook in my grasp. “Will it hurt?”

  Of course not. There was a hint of laughter in the voice that did not reassure me.

  “Will I still be . . . human?”

  “I have told you,” Mother said. “In order to become one with me and your sisters you must present the heart of a human sacrifice. You will remain human. You must if you expect to blend in with the Sun Dwellers.”

  I stared past the blade, watching a snail slime its way up the base of the altar, unable to think of another reason to delay things. This wasn’t like Erys or even a fish. I could give my own blood if it would please Mother.

  The sharp edge glittered in the lamplight. My blood splattered on the altar.

  The voice had lied. It hurt a lot. More than a normal cut would, and I was certain each drop carried a piece of my soul. My breath hitched. It seemed something had caught hold of my neck, squeezing the lifeforce out of me. Black spots appeared.

  I coughed and stumbled until my mother slapped me on the back. “Ari, are you all right?”

  I opened my mouth. Nothing. I coughed and tried again. My voice! What happened to my voice? I put my hands around my throat, eyes so wide my mother started to nod.

  “That’s the price, then. Not to worry. Whatever you get in return will be far greater.”