The Teeth in the Tide

by Rebecca F. Kenney

  He’d chosen Shale as his model because their tails were a similar length and width, and because Shale’s combination of shell vest, green tail, and pale hair was recognizable. When Rake pulled on the tail and tied its fastenings, slipped on the vest, and tried the makeshift wig, he felt a twinge of guilt. If anyone saw him lurking around the treasury, the disguise would be convincing enough to throw suspicion onto Shale, as long as the observer wasn’t too close. And as a result, Shale might be brutally punished or killed for a crime he never committed.

  Rake tried to salve his conscience by promising himself that he wouldn’t be seen. He’d be quiet and careful. He would time the theft perfectly. But if he was spotted, and another breeder died, it was a price he was willing to pay to save himself and his spawn. An acceptable sacrifice.

  Rake made one final preparation—but he did it alone, and when he brought back the viper eel he’d caught, he wouldn’t let Jewel anywhere near it.

  “Too dangerous,” he told his spawn. “See how I hold it? Your hands are not large enough to keep it under control, and it would bite you.” He tucked the creature into a narrow wooden box. “Not everything pretty is worth touching, Jewel. Some beautiful things mean death.”

  The next day, he was practicing with his lockpicks again when a cry outside the cave snared his attention.

  Quickly Rake stowed the lockpicks under a rock and swam to the cave entrance. Scythe and two other mermidons swept past, shouting, “Be glad, breeders, for your purpose is fulfilled! The Queens are spawning! Celebrate and prepare! The Queens are spawning!”

  His heart jolting, Rake raised his voice with the others as they cheered. Spawning days meant extra rations, and permission for gatherings of more than a few males at a time.

  As soon as the mermidons’ tailfins were out of sight, Rake darted back into his cave. “I must go,” he told Jewel, stuffing his disguise, lockpicks, and a few other items into a woven bag. “If anyone asks for me, tell them I went to wait outside the Court for news of the spawning.”

  “Is this the day?” asked Jewel.

  “What day?”

  “The day we escape.” The gold-flecked eyes widened with hope.

  Rake kissed the boy’s forehead. “Not yet, but we’re getting closer. Now hush. Don’t speak of it again.”

  He left by way of the opening in the top of the cave, streaking through the upper layers of the water, where restless currents pushed and buffeted him. The area was more difficult to swim through, but less crowded than the lower regions would be on spawning day.

  As he neared the Court, he dipped lower, tucking himself into a dark crevice where he could put on the tail covering, the vest, and the wig. He had difficulty tying the wig in place, but he managed it, more or less. If any mermaids swam close enough to realize it was crooked, they’d also be close enough to see that he was in disguise.

  The outfit made him slower and clumsier, but it felt like armor—a layer between him and the consequences of what he was about to do. He skirted the outer columns of the Court, avoiding the throngs of curious mermaids and mermidons who clustered between the pillars, eager for a sight or sound of the spawning.

  He wondered why they still cared. It wasn’t as though spawnings were unusual; they happened every three months without fail. But as there were no other festivals or celebrations under the sea, he supposed that his kind had to take their joy where they could find it. They would praise the best-looking fingerlings and applaud the Queens’ fertility. Then, after the sorting, they’d swim in a great school to the edge of the merlow feeding grounds, to watch as the tiny outcast spawn were sent spinning into that dark miasma of gaping mouths and crooked talons. Very diverting for everyone.

  How many of Rake’s other spawn had been cast out? Males with blue curls and wide eyes, golden-tailed females considered too weak to serve the Court? Hate twisted his gut at the thought of it.

  And the hate drove him on, to the sludgy areas behind the Court where bones and refuse and scraps lodged in befouled, discolored sand. Rake had explored the area years ago on an excursion that, other than his first foray to the Bone Trench, was the most productive of his explorations, because he had discovered a back tunnel leading to the caverns under the Court. He’d been found by mermidon guards as he wriggled about through forbidden halls, and he never revealed to anyone how he got in, not even when Bruta pinned his tailfin with one rock and beat him with another. Calla had almost let Bruta kill him that time. But he’d smiled at the golden-eyed queen through the blood haze floating from his mouth, and she’d ordered Bruta to let him go.

  The gap he’d found was still there, but it was narrower than he remembered, or perhaps he’d grown since then. Digging his claws under a chunk of broken rock, he pried it loose and tumbled it aside, waving away the rising cloud of sand. His broad shoulders barely fit through the crevice, so he backed up, pointed both hands in front of him, and shot straight toward it, pumping his tail. He slid in—jammed for a second—and then, with a wrench and a twist, slipped all the way through.

  As he’d hoped, there were no mermidons guarding the dim passage beyond the crack. A few glowfish, pinioned to the walls in brackets, exuded a faint orange light. He pinched them out, crushing their bodies one at a time, until the passage was pitch-black. He kept one fish alive, clutched in his fist so that its light slivered through his fingers.

  If he remembered correctly, a right turn up ahead would bring him to another tunnel, and at the end of it lay the doors to the treasury—great wooden doors, green with slime, salvaged from the hold of a broken ship. The doors would be guarded, of course. Last time there had been three mermidons floating outside the treasury. He’d been in trouble the second he’d rounded the corner.

  This time would be different. This time, he came prepared.

  Reaching into his bag, he took out a leather pouch filled with grailfish caviar, a protectant, and smeared some on his hands. Then he opened the slim box and gripped the viper eel by the top of its head. It wriggled, exposing four clear fangs full of liquid venom. Its sparkling skin caught a ray of orange light from the glowfish and threw a dazzling rainbow of pinprick colors onto the stone walls.

  Rake sidled up to the corner of the passage. Then, holding his hand out, he released the viper eel.

  It doubled back to bite him, as he’d known it would, and he smacked it with his open palm, trusting the protectant to defend him. Even the viper eel’s skin packed enough poison to knock him senseless for half a day. A direct bite would paralyze his entire body, including his heart and gills.

  He batted the creature again, directing it around the corner, to the right. It wriggled away, out of sight.

  Rake pressed himself into a shallow indentation of the rocky wall and waited.

  A murmur first. Then louder voices, alarmed. A cry pulsed through the water, and then another, fading to a bubbling groan. Rake smiled. The viper eel venom worked fast, and it wouldn’t be traceable to him; the mermidons would guess that the eel had wandered in on its own.

  No traces, no consequences.

  Cautiously he peered around the corner. Two guards floated unconscious before the treasury doors—a third was twitching and jerking in the water, with the viper eel latched onto her throat. She’d be dead in moments, but the viper eel would stay in place, pumping in venom to liquefy the mermidon until she was nothing but a skin bag of goo for it to slurp.

  Rake edged around the bodies, careful not to dislodge the creature. He sank to his knees on the sandy floor, tucked the glowfish’s fin between his teeth, and took out his lockpicks.

  Thank the tides he’d experimented with several kinds of locks. This one was nearly identical to one of his practice pieces, and he unlatched it within minutes. Pushing an insensible guard out of the way, he tugged at one of the massive doors. It was heavy, old, and obstinate, but he jerked at it with all the power he could muster, his muscles surging, tail thrashing for extra leverage. As the door opened, its groan reverberated along the passageway.r />
  Maybe the sound would be mistaken for a roar from the crowd above.

  Maybe he’d be lucky and no one would come to investigate.

  Snatching his glowfish, Rake slithered through the crack into the treasury.

  The soft light from the squirming fish in his hand showed him the room in patches—a tumble of small wooden chests; a basket with the glint of jewels sparking between the frayed strands of the woven lid; a tall, sightless figurehead of a toothy mermaid, her tail etched with carved scales. An inaccurate statue, to be sure—he’d never seen breasts like those on any real mermaid. He resisted the urge to palm them and turned away, eyes raking the dark nooks and crevices of the cave for any signs of ancient artifacts.

  He swam deeper, behind another teetering stack of chests gleaned from foundered shipwrecks. Here there were weapons, taller and more ornate than any the mermidons used—large tridents with serrated teeth, spears inset with gems as big as his eye, axes with curved blades and a myriad of swords in all shapes and lengths.

  At the very back of the cavern, half-sunk in drifting sand, gleamed a metal box that looked vaguely familiar. He didn’t know what type of metal it was—some unique alloy untouched by scores of years in the sea. When he pried it loose, he discovered that it was long as his arm, half as wide, and heavy. Its lid was sealed with a dark rectangle rimmed in the same silvery metal, and when he experimentally stroked the rectangle with his finger, it turned blue and shimmery. He prodded and pried at it. Useless.

  He had to hurry. He’d already been in here too long, and even if no one heard the groan of the treasury doors opening, someone was bound to pass by eventually and notice the immobilized guards.

  Rake pondered taking the entire box, but its weight would slow him down. And what if the artifacts weren’t inside? He’d have wasted his chance.

  The shimmering blue rectangle seemed to react to his fingers, turning white wherever he touched it—so he tapped randomly at it with his claws, then with the pads of his fingers. Then he gave up, did a tight flip, and slapped the box with his tail as hard as he could.

  The lid popped open with a hiss, and Rake caught it before it could click shut again.

  Inside the box, notched safely into molds that suited their shape, lay two breathing devices and two belts.

  Excitement rushed through Rake, a thrill from top to tail. He reached in and gently freed one of the belts from its mold.

  “Stop!” A voice, sharp and accusing, rippled to his ears. “Surrender to your shameful death!”

  -9-

  Kestra

  Kestra stood at the bow of the Wind’s Favor, hands splayed on the weathered wood of the railing. The water below looked like marble. Dark green marble, laced with white veins of foam, undulating along the sides of the ship. If she dove from the railing, the surface might let her in, or she might smash against it, fractured into a thousand pieces. It didn’t seem possible that another world existed beneath that glossy dark expanse.

  Flay’s voice rang out over the deck behind her, calling orders which were echoed in Jazadri’s smooth bass. She glanced over her shoulder at them, admiring the way they worked like partners in a dance, familiar with the song and the steps and the cadence of each other’s movements.

  The Wind’s Favor was well under way, after many reassurances to the villagers that Flay wasn’t leaving ahead of schedule.

  “Just going for a merry jaunt,” Flay had told them, grinning. “We’ll be back before sunset, or sooner.” And he ran across the plank to the ship, waving his hat to the cluster of anxious townspeople.

  His escape from them was simpler than Kestra’s escape from her mother. Lumina had caught Kestra by the belt as she slipped out the kitchen door early that morning.

  “Where are you going, Kestra? And why are you wearing pants? You know Cawl prefers dresses for the serving girls, especially when the sailors are here. Dresses are more traditional, and more refined.” She surveyed Kestra’s outfit disapprovingly. “You look like a sailor.”

  No use lying about it—her mother would learn the truth from the villagers anyway. “I’m going out on Flay’s ship with him.”

  “No, you are not.”

  “I am.”

  “You’ve been neglecting your work, Kestra. Leaving Enree and Lilu and I to do most of the labor. And where’s Mai? Is she off at Umi’s again? Our busiest week and no one is around to help with the extra work. What of your garden? I suppose the radishes are wilting and the herbs are choked with coilvine. How are we to feed ourselves and our guests if you won’t tend to your responsibilities?”

  “Mama!” Kestra cut in. “You’re overreacting. I did plenty of work yesterday, and I’ll do more when I get back. The garden is fine. Mai says it will rain soon, so I don’t need to water it, and the weeds are under control. Enree and Lilu can step up and earn their coin, for once. I deserve the chance to go out on a ship—to do something new.”

  “Something new.” Her mother scoffed. “New means dangerous.”

  “I’ll be with Flay, Mama. We’ll be careful.”

  Her mother reached forward, tugging the neckline of Kestra’s blouse up a little higher. “Don’t expect the captain to look out for you,” she said shortly. “Watch out for yourself. And keep the visit short. We’re serving the Captain’s Treasure Stew tonight, and you know how long that dish takes to prepare—all six types of seafood—and I haven’t purchased the sea cucumbers or prawns from Takajo yet. I was going to send you for those, if he even has any. Unlikely, with the scarcity of seafood. I suppose we’ll have to substitute hedge-weasel livers and dernfruit again. Not how the Treasure Stew should be done, at all.” She shook her head. “Go on then, but hurry back. And be careful. A ship can be a dangerous place, even when docked.”

  Kestra hadn’t told her mother that they were taking the ship out into the sea. If she had, Lumina might have tied her to a chair to keep her at home.

  The ship didn’t feel dangerous, though. Its broad deck was well-swept and neatly ordered, its railings reinforced and heightened with sturdy planks. When Kestra descended to the main deck, she could barely see over the side. If she looked outward, at the glittering horizon, or upward, at the blue sky thick with creamy clouds, it was almost as if the mermaids didn’t exist.

  Mai approached, eyeing the reinforced railing. “They come prepared for trouble, don’t they? It’s a little excessive.” She kicked a board lightly. “The mermaids can’t climb up the side of a ship.”

  “Who really knows what they can do?” Kestra closed her eyes and sucked in a fresh draft of ocean air. She breathed the sea breeze every day in the village, but somehow, out here, it tasted different. Wilder. More dangerous. Enticing, in a way she hadn’t expected.

  She tamped down the joy of it. Things that were exciting were usually risky. They led to the forgetting of important rules, to missteps. To death.

  “I wonder how far out he’ll take us before we try the trap.” Mai bounced on her heels.

  “Don’t be so excited about this,” Kestra warned. “Jazadri has to go down there, near the water. Within their reach.”

  “I know. But he wants to do it.”

  “He doesn’t want to. He needs to.” Kestra’s gaze followed the burly sailor as he strode the deck, slapping one man on the back and helping another tug on a stubborn rope.

  Mai touched her arm, her dark eyes softening. “You didn’t have to come. We could have handled it without you.”

  “No,” said Kestra. “I need to be here, too.”

  They fell silent, listening to the creaking of the ship’s timbers, the whistle of wind through the rigging, and the slap of waves against the spiked sides of the vessel. Under those sounds crawled another sound—a low, incessant moaning, punctuated by thread-thin whines of desperate need.

  Kestra fought the impulse to cover her ears. The crew had quieted—the ship was running smoothly and there was no further need for orders; but she wished someone would speak, or sing, or shout—anything to rid her
brain of that hideous soft chorus in the surf.

  “We’ll be clear of this swarm soon.” Flay’s voice was a lifeline, and Kestra whirled, tempted to step into his arms. He met her gaze and nodded. “It’s hard, hearing it all the time. I’d say you get used to it, but that wouldn’t be true.”

  “So they gather in swarms?” Mai’s eyes brightened as she scrabbled in her satchel, searching for her notebook and writing stick. “How large are the swarms, would you say?”

  “The biggest swarm is right along the coast, near town,” he replied. “Once you’re far enough out, there’s an area where the little hungry ones are fewer and farther between. But you see more of the mid-level ones, the hunters, in that open space.”

  “Have you seen any of the others? The more human-looking ones?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe? Who can say? A flash of tailfin here, a bit of skin there, a swish of hair—hard to tell.”

  “I saw them once,” piped up a nearby sailor, a boy a few years younger than Flay. He looked to his captain for permission, and when Flay nodded, he approached. “Was at night, when I was keepin’ watch. There’s a strip o’rocks yonder—we avoid ‘em, but I’d swung the spyglass over that way, and I saw a couple mermaids sittin’ on the rocks. Just sittin’. Their eyes was as big as fish barrels, and when they looked over at the ship, they unhooked their lower jaws, like this—” he illustrated with his fingers— “and they screamed. They sat there, screamin’ at me, until I ducked down behind the railing.”

  “Were they male or female?” Mai asked.

  “Female, I think. Though not much in the way of—um, bosoms, if ye ask me.” The boy’s freckled face turned scarlet. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen a male.”

  “None of us have,” Flay said. “But they must have some, yes? They breed like rabbits. Worse than rabbits.”

  “On Kiken Island, we are grateful for rabbits and their rapid breeding,” Kestra said. “Without them, and the pigs, and the hedge-weasels, we’d have little meat available.”