Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  Erys would let Jonas die, all for a game. Jonas would die because some impulsive prince had dragged him into a new world he might not be ready to face.

  He would die because Erys fetched him for me.

  “I trained with him. I found others to help—I promise I did all I could.” The prince’s words rose and broke like the tide. His arms fell around me.

  I clung to him, but he held me just as hard. Either of us would collapse without the other. He kissed the top of my head again, but I barely felt it. I closed my eyes as I buried my head near his shoulder. The tears fell as I pictured a hundred deaths I never wanted to see and could never prevent. All the faceless sailors of my past now had a scar on their neck and Jonas’s joy in their eyes before my sisters snuffed it out.

  Would I ever find a place where all the killing would stop?

  Would I ever be strong enough to stop it myself?

  The sounds of the crowd changed. Something had happened. I turned and Erys climbed back up the stairs to a higher point on the stands. He exhaled. “It’s all right. You can look.”

  I took Erys’s hand, my knees still trembling.

  Jonas’s opponent was on the dirt. Jonas held the spear above the man’s head, only putting the weapon away after the emperor’s signal. A wave of a thumb had stopped a man’s death.

  Erys smiled and his hand brushed my shoulder. “Will you congratulate him, or shall I?”

  Congratulate him? My feet were frozen, and I couldn’t stop my silent tears.

  Erys nodded. “Perhaps next time.”

  He climbed down the rest of the stairs and ran out into the arena for me, raising Jonas’s hand to the roar of the crowd.

  Jonas had won. He was safe. Erys pushed into Jonas with a yell. Jonas pushed back, now the playful, laughter-filled wrestling of two cubs. Heat and energy circulated from the men in the audience.

  Erys was their prince, accepting a strong guard with the full approval of all those on the field. Earning a trust and camaraderie that I had to accept, but I was glad to be a woman in this world of men and never have to participate in an arena like this.

  Next time I wouldn’t even watch.

  19

  I left the colosseum, but I didn’t want to go back to the palace. The smell of blood and sweat haunted my steps as I fled past the old temples, past all the empty artesian stands and shops.

  The cobblestone morphed into dirt and sand under my feet. I was out of the city.

  I reached the beach I had seen from the palace balcony and watched the sea, how it rose and fell. So long it had seemed repressive. Now I craved it. A weariness came through me, like I finally didn’t have to be so on guard. I could surrender and be protected by the power of the sea.

  Salt cleared out all my other senses. I welcomed the water on my toes. Holding onto my shell necklace, I willed it to send my essence through the foam and waves of the sea.

  I didn’t have to wait long before the water parted for a figure with green-tinted skin, dark tattoos, and light hair. Serena held up her arm in greeting. “Ari! You have been too long. We worried. Catra, Corva, and I—we all kept checking the beach hoping to see you.”

  So maybe I had seen one of them the other night. Serena wouldn’t understand signing, but she already knew the secret of my stolen voice. I reached for my necklace, and instantly the imp formed the words I wanted to respond with. “I’ve been with Erys—the Sun Prince, I mean.”

  “Yes, I know, but . . .” Serena stood with her hair over her chest and the water still covering her bottom half. “You were so eager when Mother sent you here. And after you left, I found this in your garden.” She threw a sack at my feet.

  I opened it to find my secret book, the vellum protected from the water by sealskin.

  My heart sank. There was nothing in the world that could explain that.

  In the silence of my rising guilt, my sister’s smile faded. Her gray eyes became cold and dark. “You’ve been staring at princes for years, have you? You want him. You love him.”

  “I never meant to!” Even though I could speak through Lilthe, my hands itched to make the signs and give the words new depth. “It is just, I always thought they would be beastly. That I would be able to kill one just so we could be a family again. But Erys . . .”

  I shook my head. I had a tumble of emotions when I thought of Erys now. Affection. Excitement. Resentment. Fear. All jumbled up into one person who now seemed as much a part of me as my left hand. I could never do anything to hurt or betray him.

  Even if we fought, I wanted to be with him more than I wanted an empty sea.

  Serena looked through me with a stare that could pierce through stone. Serena wasn’t like Julia or any other human woman. She was my sister, but she seemed different now after I spent so long on land with other humans. I saw things that I hadn’t noticed before. How still she was. How often she stared. So much like a predator watching for prey. Though Serena was the most mothering of my sisters, there was a hardness that made my insides shake. She was a being who couldn’t accept any kind of weakness even in her sister.

  My head held other images of her being full of warmth and laughter, but that was before she changed. Becoming a siren had changed so much more than her legs.

  Even if she wanted to support me as her sister, she would never understand.

  “Why did I have to meet him?” I cried out in defeat. “The twins didn’t have to do this.” Their men were brought to them and killed at the altar without discussion. They never spoke a word to them. They never heard them laugh or stared into their eyes and felt so safe and wanted that it seemed the world had gone still. They never fought or cried together. They never even knew their names.

  The answer didn’t come at once. “Mother . . . she didn’t want to risk anything with the twins. She worried about them. Because of me.” Serena ducked her head like admitting some deep shame. “I loved a boy named Aides.”

  She did?

  “I met him before I changed. He was thrown from the deck in a squall and ended up on our island. I helped him get home.”

  I smiled at the new but familiar story. “So, you do understand.”

  “Yes, but Mother is right, you know.” Her chin rose and her words lost all feeling. “Aides didn’t love me at all. Prince Erymanthus is probably the same.”

  “But Erys does love me! I know he does.”

  Serena raised one eyebrow. “Then why is he marrying another woman?”

  The words hit me like a sharp slap across my cheek. “It isn’t his fault. His father arranged it. But now that he loves me, he’ll-he’ll . . .” I still had no idea what he would do.

  “All you ever needed to do was kill one boy, but you had to make Mother hungry for the throne. You made a mess for yourself, but you shouldn’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to marry him to give us access to the palace. We don’t need to enter the palace at all. Just lure that boy and a few of their other leaders to the sea, and we’ll be done with this.”

  The finality of her words made my blood freeze. I had nearly reached the prince’s wedding and my mother’s deadline. I couldn’t stand for this to go on forever, but how could it possibly end?

  “Ari!”

  I turned. The prince and some of his guard had left the city gates after me. They scrambled around the beach searching, but I stood frozen with dread. There was no time to hide or avoid some kind of conflict. A guard threw a spear when they saw Serena. It landed yards off its mark.

  Her eyes narrowed into glowing slits. “Lure them out, Ari. You know you can.”

  She fanned out her tail and dove into the water.

  Erys kicked up the waves as he ran ankle-deep into the sea, holding a javelin like he hoped to fish my sister out, even though she was sure to be long gone.

  I reached for him, stilling his hand.

  His arm went down, but his eyes raked over me as if looking for some injury. He pulled beeswax from his ears. “What were you doing? She is one of the creatures
who attacked our ship. She is a monster.”

  She was my sister, but I supposed that didn’t exclude her from being a monster. Was she? She cared for me, and I cared for her, but I had seen her kill men for no more crime than their existence. Even the last man I saw her kill, the one with the knife, was really only trying to defend himself from the inevitable.

  But killing was what sirens did. They had a different form, different appetites.

  I couldn’t blame my family for killing men any more than I could blame a shark for chasing a fish or myself for eating an animal. Perhaps the desire of a human to become a siren was the crime, more than anything else. Had Serena wanted to become a siren? Valadern demanded an offering of our own choice, but when the images of the twins’ sacrifice came into my memory again, even that became less clear. They had been taught their whole life to hate and fear men. Their first victims were taken with my whole family watching. Refusing would not have been easy.

  I doubted I would have refused if my choice had been exactly the same, if I hadn’t had some space to save Erys without the eyes of my family watching. If I had not walked among other men. I gave in the moment my mother asked me to offer my own blood.

  If my sisters were monsters, so was I. The men still had the right to hunt them to defend themselves, but I couldn’t. I turned and signed to Erys. “Are you angry with me?”

  “Yes, I’m angry!” He hefted the javelin, looking at once like a true prince. The commanding, idolized statues and pictures I had seen. “Ari, I don’t care how mad you are at me; you’re not allowed to run away like that. You still have to come home.”

  Home? I looked at him and then back at the shore. Being here had changed my thoughts so drastically. Whatever happened, I would never have the home I once did.

  I had been chasing the prince for so long, but I couldn’t imagine a scenario where I could actually win. If I gained his love, I would lose it when my mother came. He knew what they were now, and once he learned our full connection, he would never be happy with just some small token or a few lives saved. I wouldn’t like it either. I couldn’t stand the colosseum, and I never liked seeing my mother or sisters kill their victims, even when I didn’t know their names.

  If I didn’t gain his love . . . the prince and my family would still be at war. Always.

  There would be no easy ending. Someday soon, I would have to make a real choice.

  I couldn’t have one without losing the other.

  His spear lowered and his voice softened. “You could have been hurt. You could have been killed. I was worried. Now come home.” He held out his hand, more feeling and heart in that one movement than Serena or the rest of my family ever achieved.

  And while most of the guards seemed sternly indifferent, I quickly found Jonas in the same pack. Still bare-chested from the arena, all his tense muscles echoed the prince’s same look of love and fear. I loved my sister, but I knew what she was and what the men had risked by being here. They wanted so desperately to protect me from a creature who could kill them with one breath.

  For now at least my choice was made.

  I grabbed my book from the ground and followed them home.

  20

  The next day was the prince’s sixteenth birthday, and visitors filled the palace. Another feast had been prepared that rivaled the first. Dancers and mimes performed under the mosaic painting while everyone around me ate with smiles on their faces. My stomach soured with dread. I couldn’t eat.

  The three months I had been given had ended, and I was out of time.

  I had told my concerns to Lilthe in private, but all she said was that Naman had arranged everything, and I didn’t need to worry. Not worry? Erys would be married tomorrow!

  If I was going to do anything to stop the wedding, I had to do it now.

  Erys looked almost as desperate as he spoke to Helene. She had refused all his games, and didn’t care for the players or any of the wilder form of entertainment that the men in Solis enjoyed. They couldn’t seem to find any common ground at all. “So, what do you like to do in Cypari?”

  Helene frowned, like she really hadn’t thought of it before. “We sing.”

  “You do?” Erys looked surprised, but I wasn’t. I had heard Helene hum when she was nervous and singing had always been Mother’s gift, the gift of the Cypari royal family. A voice so sweet and powerful the elements eagerly answered her call. And while Cypari might have grown to shun the supernatural side of that power, it seemed some of that tradition had remained.

  I wondered then, if I had my voice, if I could use that to prove my heritage. Lilthe said my voice had promise, but I never trained as a Cypari princess. Helene might still best me.

  She bested me in everything. Erys seemed completely content to listen to her tells of concerts and group sings at the Cypari palace and offer her the chance to organize one here.

  Something I wouldn’t even be able to participated in now.

  A guard stepped up from behind me. Jonas signed with his hands. “I know how you lost your voice. You were so sad you sang in the rain and caught a cold that couldn’t be cured.”

  I tried to smile at his joke, but it wasn’t enough this time.

  I was miserable and I might never sing again.

  “No?” he signed. “I’ll try again, but I’m sure you must have been a singer. An artist. I can see it in your eyes, how intensely you look at the world.”

  My parents were singers and poets. Maybe Jonas was getting closer, but I didn’t know how he would ever guess the truth.

  “Why are you so serious?” he asked next. “You’re letting your food get cold.”

  I finally looked at the plate, filled with new delicacies I had never seen before. I pointed at a piece of meat. “What is that?” I signed.

  He stuck out his tongue then flapped his arms.

  It was a tongue? A bird’s tongue? I wasn’t eating it. “Do you want it?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll eat after you’re done.”

  “I am done.” I was past done. It was a bird’s tongue.

  I threw it toward him, and he caught it in his mouth.

  My smile came more easily and my heart lightened. Jonas was a better show than the players in front of us.

  “Do it again,” I signed. I picked up an olive, and he caught that too.

  Erys turned from the princess, finally catching sight of the movement behind him. He grinned and picked out another olive from his bowl. “You’re making it too easy for him.” He waved Jonas away from the table and threw the olive like a discus.

  The olive went wide. It flew past Jonas and kept rolling down the tile into the hall.

  Erys laughed. “Oops.”

  I didn’t smile, becoming as sour as the princess. Erys was playing as he always did, but I still didn’t like it. I was sure Jonas was too loyal to his prince to protest a game made at his expense.

  But Jonas rolled his eyes at both of us and never made a move toward the olive.

  I laughed then. Looking between the two of them, I had a sudden picture of a large boarhound tolerating the hyper movements of an anxious lapdog.

  No matter their rank, Jonas was the one in control.

  “I’ll get it,” Erys said.

  Then everyone’s eyes would be on us. Erys was still the prince and people noticed whenever he moved. I shook my head and stood up before he did, slipping past the open door and the other guards. I reached down to grab the olive when something seized my wrist.

  I sucked in air but couldn’t scream. Lilthe wouldn’t even scream for me.

  I felt Naman’s breath and heard his voice. “We’ll use this to test your blood. I had it blessed by a priestess of Hera and it will glow for royalty.” He showed me my old knife.

  Test the blood? Naman was going to cut me open. I didn’t trust that man with a blade, no matter how he chose to wield it. My wordless, soundless cry shouldn’t have alerted anyone, but a spear blade ripped through Naman’s shoulder, and the man yelled
for me.

  All the motion around me blurred and came in fragmented pieces. I was free. The knife was on the ground. Naman was bleeding from his shoulder. Several people streamed into the hall, looking from my attacker to my defender.

  Erys was the first to speak. “Jonas? What did you do?”

  Jonas had followed me. Jonas had stabbed Naman. The blood trickled down his chest and dribbled over the knife. The blade glowed, proclaiming Naman to be of royalty as it should have done for me.

  Jonas moved his spear under his armpit so he could answer Erys, hands moving so fast I barely caught the words. “I knew him. He’s a murderer. I should have told you, but I couldn’t be sure it was the same man until he grabbed Ari. It has been nearly ten years.”

  The emperor blinked at the blade, like he already knew what the glowing meant. “How?”

  Naman, on the floor, grimaced and gave his steady answer. “I am Cypari and Solian. My mother was handmaiden of the princess Miranda. She caught the eye of the Sun Prince.”

  He was conceived the night Mother killed her prince and left the palace over sixty years ago. He was the right age, only strengthened by his recent bond with the sea.

  The emperor nodded at him coolly. “You’re her son. His son.”

  “No one knew,” Naman said. “No one wanted to know.”

  But how did Jonas know? I looked at his scar again and slowly the pieces came together.

  Naman said he made the bond after selling the hearts of his whole crew. His plans had become more elaborate and cruel, but he had always been a wild, murderous man who compelled others to follow him in his dark deeds. Ten years ago, he had killed Jonas’s father and that would have been enough to make him a proper candidate to bond with the God of the Deep.

  The emperor smiled at Jonas. “Well, boy. You caught him. His blood is yours unless you would rather I throw him to the lions.”

  Jonas put down his spear and walked away.