Our Bloody Pearl

by D. N. Bryn

  “Go away,” I mutter at the hallucination of Dejean, “I am alone.”

  He ignores me, creeping his way around the side of Kian’s driving machine, the storm obscuring his movements. With three great strides, he reaches Chauncey’s lifeless form. He yanks the man’s sword free of his flesh and the body rolls, face down.

  My breath leaves me. This Dejean is here. He’s here, and he’s alive. He came for me. His genuine presence fills a hollow deep in my chest, and I want to go limp all over again. The feeling lasts only a moment, though.

  If Dejean is here, then Kian can hurt him.

  Raising his stolen sword, he charges at Kian, stumbling through the sand. Her blade blurs as she draws it from her side. It meets with Dejean’s, the sound lost in the roaring of the wind. They fight as dancing fish, darting at each other once, twice, three times, then retreating. The rain turns each movement to a blur, all noise muted beyond recognition. Dejean attacks like an injured dolphin, lurching in and out with a vicious cleverness, while Kian becomes a shark, lurking with perfect strength and attacking with equal ferocity.

  One of the unfamiliar sailors stands awkwardly, her hand on a dagger at her hip. The other continues her work, shooting Kian and Dejean just as many nervous glances as she gives the storm raging in the waters beyond us. Theirn draws his pistol, aiming at Dejean. He wavers, wiping rain from his eyes, his dark braids whipping around him.

  No.

  With all my strength, I launch out of the boat and drive my metal cuffs into his face, tackling him to the sand. His pistol fires into the air. I go to bite him, but the cage around my mouth knocks against his neck. I rip my fingers into his shoulder, but my bound grip barely tears his clothing. In one giant heave, he tosses me off. He slams me into the sand, pressing his hands to my shoulders.

  I shriek at him, struggling against his weight, but he drives his knee into my hips, stilling most of my movement. Snarling, I meet his gaze with a glare. My muscles go still at the forlorn expression on his face, his thick brows low and his full lips in a tight line. His head shoots up as Kian shouts.

  “Prepare the boat!”

  I follow Theirn’s gaze to find her still locked in her fight with Dejean. He backs up more than he steps forward, each block slower than the last. I must reach him, help him somehow. With Theirn’s concentration torn between Kian and the dinghy, his grip on my shoulders loosens. I shove my hands into the center of his chest and twist out from under him.

  He grabs for me again, and I swing my hips, flinging my tail at his side. It falls like a solid weight, but the unresponsive flesh lacks the power of flexed muscle. It smacks against him sluggishly and he wraps his arms around it. I slam my cuffs into the center of his throat. Choking, he drops my tail and crumples to the side, supporting himself on his elbows.

  I roll. The sand gives way beneath me. Along the line of my hips, I feel the spray of the waves, drawn there by the gale. The ocean seems to pulse with energy and freedom, calling me to come. It’s so near. In a few short moments, I could vanish into it and be lost from Kian forever.

  But I glance toward Dejean, and the sea fades to the back of my mind. He stumbles as he backs away from Kian, his movements askew, wobbly, and contorted. His fall from the cliff impaired him. Like this, Kian will win. Kian will win. Then she’ll kill.

  Dejean’s feet slip out from under him, sprawling him onto the wet ground. Drawing a deep breath, I release a curdling shriek, my whole body quavering. I wait long enough to catch Kian’s gaze before twisting and scrambling toward the sea. The poles on my brace snag on the sand, but I let them. If I escape Kian, she’ll turn and attack Dejean out of fury. But once her hands are on me again, she’ll be too proud to let me go. I hope.

  I hope, and don’t look back.

  The screeching of the wind masks any footsteps. Hands latch around my neck, sudden and terrifying, sending a shock through my spine. I wilt into the half inch of water beneath me, pain numbing my senses. My vision falters, and suddenly Kian looms above me, lifting me up. I struggle against her with as much ferocity as I can manage, slipping out of her grasp. She prepares to hit me, or perhaps to tear into my gills again. But then her gaze flickers to Dejean, struggling to stand, Chauncey’s sword still in his hand.

  “Theirn!” She calls.

  Leave Dejean. Please.

  As though hypnotized by my plea, she shouts again. “Theirn! Help me carry this damn fish or you’ll be swimming to the ship.”

  Her first mate appears by her side faster than the ominous boom of far-off thunder. Together, they take hold of my tail, lugging me toward the dinghy. My chest drags, sand rubbing into my gills. I try to scream at them, but the sound comes out as a grating whimper. Dejean follows us, tottering but pulling himself forward.

  “Stay—be safe,” I sign to him, making the motions as best I can, upside down with my wrists chained together. Because I don’t think he’ll listen otherwise, I add a hasty, “Find me.”

  For a moment, I worry he didn’t understand, that my signs were too muddled. But then he nods, mouthing something I can’t make out in the rain. Something we must not have a sign for.

  Theirn and Kian heave me into the dinghy, and Kian presses me down, throwing a net over my body. I toss it off twice before she manages to wrap me up, half of the netting falling overboard. Before Kian can retrieve it, one of the women fires up the machine and we burst into the sky with a rumble and a clatter.

  The dinghy tips as something tugs on the net wrapped around me, pulling it taut over the side of the boat. Theirn throws his weight against the other edge, and it almost flies straight for a moment, before the wind tosses it into disarray. We’re like a flower petal riding an ocean current, thrown to the whims of the storm.

  At first, I hope for the chaos to win, to fling us to the mercy of the water below. But a creeping fear sinks into me, weighed down by the metal around my wrists. The waves rise like solid mountains of water, and the speed of our rickety boat as we skid through the air just above them feels as though any crash would cause instant death. Theirn holds the side of the dinghy in a death grip, while Kian pins me to the wood below. The woman manning the machine presses flush against the side of it. The last crewmate holds to the mast.

  “Distance?” Kian shouts.

  “About a hundred sherlots, captain!” the mast woman cries back.

  As she speaks, the boat takes a sudden dip, twisting in the wind. Her grip on the mast comes loose, and the wind yanks her up. She spirals through the air, over the side of the dinghy, and vanishes into the darkness. No one speaks. The woman at the back hunkers herself down further, gritting her teeth as her face goes white. She doesn’t turn the boat to attempt a rescue, and Kian doesn’t order her to. In this way, maybe humans truly are very similar to sirens.

  My stomach turns the longer we churn through the storm. I hold in my nausea, ignoring Theirn as he chucks up a mess of browns, which disappear into the wind as soon as they leave his mouth. My raw scales grind against the wood. Misery sweeps through the scrapes and I almost wish for the release of unconsciousness when the woman at the machine finally calls to Kian.

  “We’re approaching! How should I bring us in?”

  “I want a clean landing, on the deck,” Kian replies.

  The woman’s face pales further. “Captain?”

  “A clean landing.”

  I arch my back, trying in vain to see over the edge of the boat. Landing on the deck, in these winds? I don’t know how the humans direct their boats so precisely, but even leaping from sea to ship in a storm like this would become a trial of luck. Landing a dinghy can’t be any easier.

  My chest catches as we dip down. I want to close my eyes, but they refuse, as though my life will flash away if I blink. My lungs stall. The dark sky flies over my head, rain pounding in torrents. Theirn leaps toward the mast, letting out one of the sails. It billows and catches, and the dinghy shudders, yanked backward by the sudden drag. Gale winds rip at the sail, drawing it off the mast. A
s it tears away, the boat slams down onto the ship’s deck.

  It ricochets. Kian grabs me out of the netting and jumps from the dinghy. We tumble across the slippery wood, skidding to a halt. The little boat grates along the length of the deck. As it knocks through the railing on the other side, Theirn launches himself out. It vanishes into the sea, the last crew-mate still huddled beside its grinding steam machine.

  Kian lets me go. She stalks toward Theirn in a series of predatory steps that make my blood run cold, barely staggering even as the ship heaves over a massive swell. Theirn bows before her, letting her knock him across the side of his head with a fist. His braids fly about, torn by the wind, and he shakes, trying to hold himself in place as the deck moves beneath him. But he doesn’t look up.

  You could have had everything you wanted, Kian’s words echo in my mind. We could have both won. But this is what obedience to Kian looks like. Pain.

  I shiver as violently as Theirn. My gaze falls to the sea and a fierce yearning tugs me toward it. Using the wetness of the wood beneath me, I slide along the deck. The water looms up before me, nearer and nearer, but then the ship keels and my destination rises instead, tossing my weight back. Kian catches hold of my tail, yanking me in the direction of the hatchway to the lower decks.

  With a shriek, I seize the sides of the door frame, digging my nails into the wood. Kian pulls harder and my fingers skid feebly. My arms drop to my sides. The streaks of silver lightning that run across the sky fade as the doorway gets smaller, the flickers of swaying yellow lanterns replacing them. My tiny sliver of hope dissolves in an instant. I couldn’t escape Kian before. How will I manage it now?

  Dejean. Dejean will come. Someday. After this storm works itself out, and he returns to the Tsunami, he’ll hunt Kian down and together we’ll be rid of her once and for all. I just have to stay alive until then.

  The ship creaks and thunders as the sea bites at it, but from the inside, tossed about in a dark container, the raging storm is a distant, unknowable thing. Kian drags me to the next set of stairs, bits of wood driving into my flesh. She wrenches me over her shoulder and lugs me the rest of the way. I go limp. Protesting will do me no good.

  Her cabin looks the same as ever, though her trinkets and papers slide about with the roll of the ship. Waves crash against her large windows, engulfing them before letting go with such force that the dark expanse of the sky covers the entire space, cracks of lightning shooting through it at random. Kian rips my focus away as she tosses me onto the ground in the little side room.

  The water at the bottom of my old tub forms a shifting puddle the size of my palm. The weight lays off to the side, a terrible, ugly block. I refuse to look at it. Instead, I glance at Kian. Trying to appear as small and weak as I can, I dangle one of my arms over the side of the tub and motion to the water. I force out a whimper that stings my gills, and hold back my cringe.

  Kian looks from me to the tub and snorts. She strikes her heel carelessly into my tail. Whirling, she slams the door closed, locking me within. I feel nothing from her kick, but the effect must be there, like the pounding in my head and the sting in my gills and the shooting pains from my ribs. Everything hurts, unrelenting and consuming.

  I hate Kian.

  My nails grate into my palms and I release my grip with a yelp. I refuse to do her work for her. Draping my torso over the side of the tub, I scoop out the bit of stale water from the bottom, dripping it across my face, my eyes closed. When I finish, I slump there, filling my chest with slow lungfuls of scorching air. I won’t let Kian win. And I won’t wait around for Dejean to arrive in a week. I can free myself.

  Kian already made a mistake; she left me here without chaining me to the tub. There must be some way I can use this to my benefit.

  I jump at a loud thud from the port window. My breath catches painfully as I squeak in shock. Dejean hangs outside the little circular piece of glass, holding himself up by his better arm. Around his waist hangs the net Kian wrapped me in, swirling in the wind. He looks alive, but his face pinches in pain, his eyes listless.

  “Dejean!”

  I throw myself over the tub and grab the corners of the port window. My fingers slide against a little latch. I fumble with it. The boat tips, Dejean’s face rising toward the sky. The window flings open just as the ship keels the other way. I grab Dejean’s restricted arm and the front of his shirt, pulling him forward. Only his head and one shoulder will fit into the tiny circle.

  “Perle—”

  A wall of water slams into his back. It shoots through the cracks around his body, rushing into the little side room as though fired from a gun. As the ship tips away, it vanishes, leaving us both drenched and gasping, water a hand’s-length deep sloshing beneath me.

  The thin coat of the sea dripping down my scales brings me new life. I strengthen my grip on Dejean. He can’t take many more of these waves, but I won’t let him go until I know he’ll be safe.

  “Perle,” he repeats himself, his voice tired and weak with relief. “You’re not hurt?”

  “Not badly,” I say, shifting my hold in order to sign the word no with one hand, ignoring the pain in my ribs. I follow it with a simple, “But you are. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’ll be all right,” He brushes away the question, just as I did. “There’s a knife in the sheath on my arm. Take it.”

  “But—” I have to stop my signing and hold him with both hands as another massive swell knocks into our side of the ship, adding to the water on the floor.

  “Take it,” he insists. “I’m climbing to the top deck. I’ll find you. Get out of here and meet me at the stairs.”

  “I don’t like this.” He fell once already. In his weakened state, he looks at me as though he can’t quite distinguish my face from the wall at my back. I’m not even sure he remembers what he just said. But I can’t hold him here until the end of the storm. If he’s going to climb, he should do it now, while he has some strength remaining.

  The sea calls to me in violent, yearning bellows as I yank Dejean’s knife loose. If I remove my brace, I might squeeze through the port window, vanishing into the storm. Then what? Lay on the ocean floor, chains too heavy to swim in, doomed to die there knowing I’m free, while Dejean is trapped on Kian’s ship, or worse, dead? My sea will wait for me.

  The knife feels odd in my hands, a strange human contraption made to kill faster and stealthier than tooth and nail. I think of the fishing spear and pretend it’s the same. It’s not for Kian anyway.

  “Perle?” The confusion in Dejean’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “Let me go.”

  “I don’t want to.” I shake my head fiercely. I don’t want to let him go. I want to keep him close, to sing to him until he smiles and the twinkle returns to his eyes, to tell him my fears and hear him say that he’ll stand by me while I face them. My chest tightens, my fingers responding in a like motion.

  Dejean flinches, but he gives me a soft smile. “It’s just for a moment. I’ll be with you again soon.”

  It’s all I can do to nod. I wait for the next swell to end, the room filling a fraction further. Carefully, I let Dejean go. He pulls his head out of the window, his restricted arm hanging awkwardly at his side. And he climbs.

  My stomach ties itself into knots as he moves up the side of the ship, much too slow and much too fast all at once. When his foot vanishes out of my view, I shove my head through the window. As he reaches for the main deck, a wave knocks me back, filling my nose and mouth. Fighting to bar it from my lungs, I slam the window closed.

  “Be safe,” I whisper the words over the sound of the simple lock clicking shut once more. With shaking hands, I cut the leather tying the cage over my mouth. I consider opening the window again just to toss the cursed thing out. But Dejean will be here soon.

  I try the knife on the chains around my wrists, but the thick metal refuses to break. Turning my attention to the door, I glance over the lock. Murielle would know how to pick this. Or one better, s
he’d know how to take the door off its post. I narrow my eyes at the thing. Maybe that’s it…

  Moving to the side of the door, I drive the knife around one of the metal spikes holding the hinges together. I force it upward until it springs off. The door creaks. I set onto the other hinges. As the last one comes apart, I throw myself back, the door collapsing inward. Scrambling around it, I shove the knife’s hilt in my mouth and crawl toward the front of Kian’s cabin.

  Her trinkets fly at me as the ship keels, but I shove them off. A stray song blocker clatters across the wood, toward the bed. A shudder pinches my gut. This ship must sink, carrying whatever store Kian has of the blockers to the sea floor, her and her crew with it. If we can’t manage that tonight, we may never have another chance.

  Soft footsteps echo from the stairs beyond, too light and precise to be from a fatigued Dejean. Panic tenses every muscle in me, and I throw myself into a roll. I tumble across the room, the tipping of the ship carrying my momentum. Diving behind the huge desk bolted to the center of the cabin, I grab my tail and yank it close to my body.

  Through the crack beneath the desk, I can just make out the bottom of the cabin door, and the gap that marks the side room. With the door fallen in, it creates an empty hollow, a scar in the wall.

  The little light on the underside of my tides catches my gaze, a beacon in the night. A beacon for Kian. I cover them with a palm, but one rattles from within. Ripping off its back panel, I press my finger to a loose metal bit, just beneath two colorful wires attached to a little square of bright, boxy designs. Murielle mentioned something about these. Something dangerous.

  My soul seems to rip from my body as the door to Kian’s cabin swings open. I hold my breath. Her boots pound like a hurricane, the chaos outside a mild breeze in comparison. Forcing my eyes away from Kian, I turn to the giant windows at the back of the cabin.

  The waves pound against the glass, the world obscured by water. But something catches my eye; a flash of teal. A murky brown streak follows it, then a glimmer of gray. The world goes quiet as death.