by Chris Howard
His war-bard? The book tapped the glass impatiently. Go on...had the Kirkêlatides what?
"She made battle horns for the eight that hurt the living when blown by the dead. Their sound hurt the earth, the stones shuddered, the bones of the living came undone when it hit them. The eight were taller, more commanding, something new the king has created. Deadlier. Epandros—nothing left of him but a rotting rack of bones and hanging tendons—had fought honorably alongside Ochleros at one time—and since the king betrayed them all so thoroughly, Ochleros wanted to lay them to rest in a separate grave. Does that answer your question?"
It does, said the book thoughtfully.
As she turned to leave, the book spoke up again, using a condescending tone. Alkimides? Say hello to Alexandros for me.
She spun in the doorway. "Alexander Shoaler?" Kassandra threw a scowl at the aquarium. "Sure thing. How did you meet our dear friend, Mr. Shoaler?"
It is fortunate there is nothing more I want from you, and do not feel the least obliged to answer, Alkimides bitch.
Kassandra leaned over the counter in the kitchen's center to read the note her father had left, all of them including Nicole had gone into the Atlantic for a swim, back in an hour.
She twitched at something urgent in the air, turned toward the stairwell leading to the basement, then through a tunnel and more stairs to the grotto deep under the house. She raised her hand and snapped her fingers around a drop of water hovering in the air. It splattered into her palm, and she dipped her head forward, sticking out her tongue to taste it.
Then she was jumping the flight of stairs in one bound, racing corners and ducking packing boxes to get to the grotto. Just managed to toss away her phone before she flew into the water, navigating the dark tunnels underwater into open sea, releasing all the air in her lungs in one burst.
She blinked against the shudder of light. Nicole, Mr. Henderson and Gregor stood on a boulder, the sun coming through the surface in bright flashes high over their heads.
She pulled up next to Ochleros, blending in among the seaweed covered rocks. He emerged from the seafloor of black lumps of encrusted granite, one blurry hand up in greeting. Kassandra nodded back, scowling at the rumble of anger he gave off.
"What is it?"
He pointed south. "A machine, Lady Kassandra."
She stopped, swinging Nicole around behind her. "Machine? What kind of machine?" She looked around. "Where's Zypheria?"
"Above the waves, scouting the shoreline. It came from the east, from the depths. It is white, shiny white, a long tube near this long." He held his hands up with a four-foot gap between them.
Kassandra shook her head. "Like a submarine? That small? Where did it go?"
"I drove it that way." He pointed south, further down the coast. "It did not appear to be intelligent. I sent a current to deflect its path and it bounced off the rocks, curved away from the surface, and then angled into the sandy beach."
"I'll look into it." She nodded at Gregor, and then turned to Nicole. "Remain here with Ochleros."
Without looking back, Kassandra kicked into the gloom. She skimmed the boulders and then swung in where a point of rock jutted from the middle of North Hampton Beach.
Thirty feet down, a four-foot white tube shuddered and jerked, caught in the wiry embrace of a broken lobster trap. It had punched through one end and couldn't extract itself.
"What the hell is that?" She whispered to herself, approaching in a crawl over the boulders.
A voice in her head answered back. It looks extremely dangerous.
It was a plastic tube with dive planes that swiveled feebly and a little propeller that spun, stopped and reversed direction.
It's trying to back its way out.
"Smart for a machine." She moved closer. It didn't look like something Tharsaleos would send—although he had been interested in surface technology for years. Who knew what the old bastard was capable of? "Eupheron? Strates? Mother?" She spoke to the others in her head. "Anyone got answers?"
Do not touch it, said Andromache.
"Why not?" Kassandra reached out, held her fingers an inch away, feeling the machine's shudder in the water. It was trying to break free from the wire cage. She slid a hand under it and spun it clockwise, careful not to pull it from the trap. Seven letters stenciled in black came into view.
SHOALER
Kassandra tensed up and shoved her body backward, thrusting her arms out to get some momentum in the surge. "He's stalking me with little submarines?" She kicked in a circle, expecting Alex Shoaler to sneak up on her.
Andromache's commanding voice rolled through her mind. The Telkhines are wicked. Be careful with him. Eupheron laughed wickedly.
She pulled in water, heavy in her mouth, gliding on her back into the shallows to see who was near the shoreline. She was in knee-deep water, her back pressed to the sand, half visible in the rippling surf when she saw him, standing at the foam's edge, barefoot, his eyes on the horizon, waiting...for his shiny machine.
She held down a needling urge to chat with him in his thoughts, and then opened it enough to ask, Alex, what are you looking for? Through the tidal surface distortion she saw him shudder, then jump an inch off the sand, startled at her intrusion, her question—almost a command—rolling roughly over his concentration. When he came back to earth, he folded his arms, annoyed, and looked up and down the beach for her.
Kassandra laughed and sunk her fingers into the sand, pulled her body out to sea, gliding over the bottom until she was sure no one would see through the murky surf as she rose and kicked away.
She came ashore at the rocky north edge of the beach, coughing quietly, squeezing the sea from her lungs. She spit and pulled a crab from her the top of her shirt. "Oh, that's really attractive."
She pulled her braids around and wrung the water from them, her gaze fixed to Alex Shoaler, forty meters away.
He stood tall and straight, his orangey-red hair bending like a field of reeds against the wind off the Atlantic. He wore a dull black wetsuit, but his hands and feet were bare.
He's cute, said Eupheron cheerily, looking through her eyes.
Kassandra nodded absently. "His mother, Elizabeth Shoaler's a surfacer. The collector of heart-shaped stones."
That was the code we used to signal the porthmeus, said her mother, Ampharete. She worked for House Rexenor, helping them, an underground path to the surface against the king.
"How did a surfacer who married one of the seaborn—a Telkhines—come to work against Tharsaleos?"
Against the royal line, all the Alkimides—and those who marry into the line, not just who happens to be king or queen. Elizabeth wouldn't tell us who the father was—only that he went to sea and never returned. We had a difficult time persuading her to accept you, an Alkimides with a Rexenor father—
"Oh, shit." Kassandra crouched lower and furiously shoved her fingers into a rhythm and whispered a song that made her blend into the surrounding rocks. "It's the Kirkêlatides—the mother—and she's watching Alex Shoaler."
King Tharsaleos' war-bard stood on the concrete walk above the beach, arms folded, her long coal-black hair falling most of the way down her back, unbraided, trying to fit in on the surface. She watched Alex with interest—a biology student about to dissect something.
Kassandra nearly lost her footing on the slimy boulders, sensing someone behind her. Her head jerked around. Zypheria crept up the rocks, coming out of the water crablike, the webbing between her finders wet and glinting red in the setting sun.
Zypheria took in the way Kassandra was balanced on the rocks and looked down the beach. "Who is he, milady?"
"Forget him." Kassandra jutted her chin toward the concrete walkway above the sand. "Dark haired woman up on the walk. The king's war-bard."
"Kirkêlatides," Zypheria said in an awed whisper.
"She's watching that guy in the wetsuit. He's seaborn."
Zypheria's gaze roamed over the twenty adults and children scattered
along the shore, combing, jogging, testing the cold surf, and finally stopped on the young man with the outlandish orange hair in the tight dull black suit. "Does not look like one."
Kassandra was nodding with a hint of a smile.
"Lady Nicole is guarding your father and Michael." Zypheria's eyebrows jumped. "She went in to get her sword. I think she welcomes the chance to slip into her new role."
"Of course." Kassandra looked over her shoulder, meeting Zypheria's eyes for a moment, but showed nothing on her face, and didn't respond to anything she picked up.
Zypheria looked to the ocean. "What is next, milady?"
Kassandra moved her feet for more balance on the weed-covered rocks and tilted her head to the Atlantic. "Go back. Don't wait for me. If something doesn't feel right in the house, take Michael, father and my sisters north, sleep aboard Stormwind tonight."
Zypheria nodded and backed off the rocks into the surf, disappearing without a word.
Nikasia's mother had not moved, arms folded obstinately, her eyes fixed on Alex.
Kassandra ran her fingers over the stones at her feet, and selected a smooth round one that felt good in her hand. She stood, brought her arm back, and hurled it in the war-bard's direction, whispering a command to direct it. Then she stepped into the air, one hand above her head like a conductor guiding an orchestra, steering the stone to its target.
The oblong piece of rounded granite went straight for the woman's head. She flinched at the last second, her left arm raising defensively, her mouth open with a single note of a song that deflected the stone an inch from her cheekbone.
It smacked the windshield of the car parked right behind her with a splintery crunch, setting off the alarm.
Squinting against pain, she held her hands over her ears, jogging in a very uncoordinated way.
Kassandra was halfway down the beach. She stepped out of the air right behind Alex Shoaler, touching his shoulder.
"Hey."
He jumped, spinning toward her. Kassandra grabbed his arm to help him remain on his feet, and he shook his head, smiling at his own clumsiness.
"Sneaking up on me?"
She looked straight into his eyes. "I hear you want to know what I dream about, Alex?"
He looked away when she said his name, curling his lips in to hide a guilty grin. He nodded, and then looked down at her fingers digging into the spongy wetsuit material on his forearm.
Eupheron made some lewd noises in her head. He is quite the catch.
Kassandra released Alex, and she felt the need to take a step back, but the war-bard wouldn't be able to get a good look at her with Alex facing her, and so Kassandra remained standing in the uncomfortably close zone. "Sorry," she whispered.
"No, I..." He stared at the marks her fingers had made in his suit. "It sounds stupid."
She shook her head. You're a Telkhinos, Alexander Shoaler. Alexandros. She rolled the "r" in his name, liking it. You're an exile and you don't even know it. Who was your father?
Something deep in her mind shuddered—something inside her moved from some resting place, breaking free, raising dust, spiraling dizzily through her head. Eupheron laughed. I hope you do not mind one more voice—and a lot of singing—inside your head. Queen Anaxareta is awake.
"Look forward to meeting her," said Kassandra absently, and then mentally tested several lines to ask him out, get to know him better. Hi, Alex. My ancestors dethroned yours, and then hunted them right to the edge of extinction. You want to get some coffee and chat?
I say you get him into bed first, then grill him for answers. Eupheron's laugh bordered on sinister. It's not about what you could do—what wouldn't you do with a Telkhinos, Lady Kassandra?
"Are you okay?"
She focused on him. "Yes, I am. What about my dreams?"
"Not yours... I dream." He shook his head, obviously embarrassed, but in the honest casual way of someone who normally doesn't find many things embarrassing. "It sounds so stupid. I dream of a book in an aquarium. For the last couple nights." His eyebrows jumped to show that even he didn't take it seriously. "And I dream of you. I'm sorry. It sounds completely crazy."
Kassandra nodded, watching his hazel eyes change color, going from greenish brown to gray with a hint of blue. "What do I do in your dream?"
Alex started to laugh. "It's not like that. I knock on the door to your house in the middle of the night, and you let me in."
She watched his mouth as he spoke, her scowl taking its time to drop into place. "Doesn't that pretty much amount to the same thing?"
His ears went pink. "Oh...yeah, but I don't think...I mean I wake up before anything happens."
She did something unexpected—surprising herself. She punched him in the arm playfully. It was something Jill would have done. Then she gave him back his smile. "It's not me you're after, but my book."
Alex's mouth opened, waiting for words. It took a few seconds for them to show up. In a whisper, he asked, "So there is a book?"
"It's a tricky bastard, too." She lifted her gaze to her house on the edge of the Atlantic and then to the war-bard, still standing on the concrete walk at the far end of the beach. "Don't turn. There's a woman up on the sidewalk, that's Nikasia's mother, the actual war-bard. Don't turn around. I distracted her with...the car alarm. We have to go."
"We?" He jutted his chin to the surf. "But—"
"The white machine? Like a little submarine?"
"My AUV?" He pulled away from her. "How do you know?"
"I know where your..." Ei-you-vee? AUV? "...it is."
He watched her puzzle over the abbreviation. "Autonomous Underwater Vehicle."
Plans rolled into place in her mind, a dozen of them, some with goals twenty years out. "What does an AUV do?"
"Right now, it's programmed to cruise at the surface for sixty miles and then dive deep. The threshold's set at three hundred meters."
"Your goal?"
"The bottom is my goal. This is my second pressure hull test."
"So, you go to MIT, make weird robots, and you want to go to the bottom of the sea." She didn't really ask him. "Let's get your AUV. Follow me."
She took his hand, her fingers feeling for webbing and found none. His hands were rough, calloused, and they started to curl around hers. She tightened her grip and pulled him into the water.
He looked down at her bare legs, shaking his head. "You'll freeze."
"I was a polar bear in another life," she said and pulled harder. "Come on. We have to get away from the Kirkêlatides. Let's pick up your AUV, and then..." They splashed into the water, up to their knees. "Trust me."
Theoxena of the Kirkêlatides watched them running through the surf, casually raised a hand, and sang a note. Kassandra heard the force of her spell coming, shoved her feet into the sand, kicked, and danced into the air, tucking her knees up as far as she could. The water hit Alex behind the legs like a log rolling in the surf, flipping his feet out from under him, ripping his hand from Kassandra's.
He went under in an explosion of foam. His arms went wide for balance. He managed to shove his face above the surface to suck in a short breath. Kassandra came down, her legs straight, toes pointed, her arms over her head, and her body arched. She slid into the water with a faint ripple, catching Alex by one ankle as she went by. The air burst from her lungs and she pulled the ocean inside her. Her braids spiraled her throat and face, muffling some of her commands to the water around her.
Then she felt the Atlantic's cold grip on her body, pulling her deeper into its embrace. She glanced down at her own feet, and spun off one thread of water to the rocky headland to grab Alex's autonomous...thing.
Alex dug into the sand, panicking. Rows of silt bloomed in his wake. His fingers clawed at a slimy lump of granite sticking out of the sand and came away with mangled stems of rockweed. Air bubbled from his lips, whipping past his face. The water darkened and the floor of the beach drifted away below him. He rocketed out to sea feet first. He tried to kick, but somet
hing had his ankles locked together.
His body rolled and he stared up at the fading blue light of the surface. He tried to guess his depth, and then gave up. He wouldn't be able to make it to the surface with the breath that remained. The lock on his ankles loosened, and at the same moment, Kassandra came into view.
She swam into his arms, her braids like an octopus' tentacles around her head. There was fear in her face, but nothing like the terror in his. She grabbed his wrists and shoved them wide.
"Let it go! Breathe!"
He shook his head, the words "help me" erupting from his mouth in floppy bubbles. His eyes bulged and he released the last of his air. A pleading look darkened his face.
"Breathe, damn you!"
Kassandra's hands slipped over his cheeks, fingers digging through his spiky hair. She bent forward and kissed him hard on the mouth. His eyelashes rasped against her cheek—his eyes, already wide, going wider.
"Will he remember any of this?" Kassandra threw a look over her shoulder to Ochleros in his stealthy form as a twelve-foot tall wall of seawater with arms and huge claws.
Alex lay on his side in the sand, his arms tangled in front of him, his chest rising and falling with his breath. The face of his watch was gray, blank, and dribbled seawater from its cracked housing.
A pale moon sent knife-blade flickers across the water behind Kassandra, and gave Hampton Beach a blue glow. She didn't want to return him to North Hampton because the war-bard may be waiting there, and this was closer to Alex's house.
She dragged the four-foot AUV up the sand, letting it roll against his back, its propeller dead, the stenciled SHOALER standing straight up.
"That is unlikely, Lady Kassandra. I am very careful with manipulating memory. He will remember the war-bard—and properly fear her."
"Good."
"I shifted everything back to that point. He is, however, a Telkhinos, and knowing many of them in my years, it would not astonish me if, with time, he recalls the evening's events."
She gave him a sharp look. "Do not ever say that again. Not aloud. About what he is. This is not the time to tell him—or anyone else. Good night, Ochleros. I'll wait in the shallows for him to wake, and then I'll see you at home."
