Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  I blinked a couple times. He wasn’t as old as he appeared, maybe not even in his forties. But how could I be certain that he was seaborn, one that had gone bad?

  It had to be there, some sign. I just had to look for it. A couple seconds was all it took.

  He walked strangely, fluidly, and his arms moved too much at each step, like the habit of swimming he’d acquired as a child, but couldn’t shake.

  I moved closer, wanting to get a good look at his face. His eyes were weird. I couldn’t tell what color they were. The irises nearly blended into the whites.

  His hands were calloused and scarred, could mean a lot of things, but I was betting on battle scars. A second glance at his face. He wasn’t very old at all, just a disturbing combination of old and young. He looked angry, as if anger was part of his physical body, embedded in his skin, part of every expression on his face, the shadows in the wrinkles in his forehead.

  Then Fenhals turned to look right at me, and his eyes stayed for a moment. They caught me and wouldn’t let me go. A rush of heat across my face, and then the rest of my body burning, felt like poison running through my veins. There was something cold and stained behind his eyes, but nothing I understood beyond the scorn and sour hatred.

  I couldn’t move, but Fenhals continued walking, his eyes fixed on me, no change in his expression, no sign that he recognized me. It was all in his eyes. There was a clear and sinister message in them that seemed to say, “So you’re the one, the girl that’s caused all this trouble.”

  Then, just like that, Fenhals moved on. I shivered, turned away. Okay, I was sure now, and the anger erupted, violent and deep inside me, leaking out in the shaking of my hands and what felt like my whole face scrunching into a knot.

  “Pale-eyed dung-eating canker-blossom!” I walked quickly to Mrs. Vilnious’ class, bumping into people, and ignoring the world while I explained to Praxinos and Andromache what had just happened.

  Chapter 22 - The House Bracelet

  I shifted anxiously in my seat all through my morning classes, hardly paying attention, glancing at the clock every five minutes. I gave Nicole a few knowing looks, and whispered to Jill, “Let’s talk at break” when she passed by to do some work up at the board.

  Then I plotted out the rest of the morning. I was going to tell them about Fenhals, and then run to the hall bathroom and try to talk to the naiads. I needed to tell Parresia and the others about the evil creep vibe I got from him. I also wanted more information about Mr. Henderson’s capture, where exactly to find him (The Gulf of Mexico’s big, right?), and as much warning as they could give me if the Olethren started marching. I considered calling Ephoros at break, but thought that it might be better if I went through the pipes by myself and called him from the Gulf.

  Mr. Henderson was still the biggest mystery.

  Why would the seaborn take my science teacher? They wouldn’t kill him would they? Matrothy had more than hinted that she might. Is Matrothy on their side? Was it the king? Some other seaborn group?

  A weird thought occurred to me. Whose side am I on?

  What am I waiting for?. I chewed my lip, tapping my pencil on my desk. I have to do something. I have everything I need. I have a sword and armor and a giant sea-monster for a protector. Not enough to save my father. Everything but time.

  I ticked off recent developments. The naiads are looking for my father, but I can do something until they find him, until they can get their spies to tell them where the king’s hidden him. Ephoros and I ought to be able to take back Mr. Henderson from an outpost in the Gulf. Right? Well, more Ephoros than me.

  At the break bell I got behind Jill and Nicole, and we pushed out the door with the rest of the class, claiming our usual place under the oak tree.

  I told them about Fenhals walking with Mr. Cutler. “Very creepy, and I think he knows about me. The look he gave me...”

  But Jill wasn’t listening. Something else was going on, and she was excited about it, nodding impatiently. She grabbed my arm, pulling me back toward the doorway, leading me inside.

  “Come on,” she kept saying, and Nicole walked ahead, leading the way through the school wing.

  “I need to do something.” I pulled away, but Jill wouldn’t let go of my arm.

  “I’m telling you, wherever you’re about to go it’s probably not as important as this. I want you to meet someone.”

  I tightened my fists, my hair prickling on the back of my neck.

  “Who is it?”

  “Can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.”

  Had Fenhals gotten to them? I tried to read Nicole’s face, but she seemed just as determined as Jill. They just weren’t going to listen to me until they’d shown me their surprise.

  The three of us marched down the length of the school wing, Jill holding my elbow firmly, pushing me toward the administrative offices, not far from where I’d seen Fenhals. Nicole stepped through an open doorway and Jill steered me after her.

  “Where?”

  “Just through here,” Nicole said over her shoulder.

  I hadn’t been in the admin offices in a while. I’d always tried to avoid it. The ladies who worked there always watched everyone with the same don’t-bother-me look, and so I usually didn’t.

  The three of us passed the reception office. It had a high counter that ran the length of the room like battlements of wood, and gave anyone entering the office the feeling that they were invaders, and the ladies who worked behind it, besieged soldiers, glaring back, vats of boiling oil at their disposal.

  Behind the counter, a gnarled old woman seated at a desk looked up at us through her glasses, annoyed at first, then relieved when we went by in a hurry.

  Without knocking, Nicole pushed open an office door at the end of the reception area and stepped into a dimly lit room. The space was conspicuously empty, as if someone had forgotten to furnish it, or they’d made room for a lot of people to stand around without being able to put anything down. There was a single light on the ceiling, covered with an opaque white glass bowl. The far wall had a wide rectangular opening with a built-in counter. A kindly looking woman with thick, gray-streaked black hair leaned over it.

  Jill pointed at her. “Ta-da! It’s Mrs. Lindsey.”

  I stared from Jill and Nicole to the woman behind the counter, bewildered.

  “I think you’re old enough now, dear, to receive the things you came into St. Clement’s with,” said Mrs. Lindsey, nodding at Jill like a fellow conspirator.

  “What, like clothes? Baby clothes?”

  “Oh no. You came in with some kind of jewelry, a bracelet I think.”

  Mrs. Lindsey turned through a doorway behind the counter. I went on tiptoes, leaning over the counter to see into the room. There were boxes piled to the ceiling, stacks of papers three feet high, and rows of file cabinets with some of the drawers overflowing.

  Mrs. Lindsey rummaged around in the file room for five minutes. She talked to herself while searching, things like, “I know it’s here somewhere” and “No. That can’t be right,” and at last she said in a bright voice, “Here we are. Porthmeus.”

  She came through the doorway sneezing and covered in dust, some of which had been boxed up for years, waiting patiently to irritate someone’s nose in the future.

  Mrs. Lindsey bent open the metal tabs and unsealed a large manila envelope. She slid the contents onto the counter.

  “You had a gold bracelet on your tiny wrist when they brought you in.”

  Three pieces of my past slid over the polished wood of the records room counter, a small hair pin shaped like a dolphin that looked like it was made of bone, a bonnet with an embroidered seaweed pattern in pale green thread against a background of faded yellow, probably white when I had been delivered, and finally, a small gold chain with a flat name plate.

  “I’m afraid it’ll be much too small for you.”

  She frowned even as she came to the end of her statement because when I opened up the bracelet, it looked just
large enough to fit my fifteen-year-old wrist, with far too many links for a baby’s tiny limbs.

  I picked it up and with the tip of my finger, spread the chain across my palm to look at it. It was beautiful. I’d never had jewelry before. Of course, when I was five I had made rings of yellow pipe-cleaners and pretended they were gold, but that didn’t count.

  I barely heard Mrs. Lindsey’s astonished remark, “Now, how can that be? Looks like it’ll fit you.”

  I drew all the fingers on my left hand into a point and slipped the gold over my knuckles to my wrist. I heard Jill and Nicole’s voices faintly, telling me how bright the links looked against my skin.

  I flipped over the tiny nameplate and stared at the letters for a minute.

  “What does it say?” Nicole asked as she tried to read the capital letters stamped into the gold. Some of them would be familiar to the others in the room, A, K, M, I and H, but then there were others not shared by the English alphabet.

  I didn’t see anything foreign about them and read it right away, “Alkimides.”

  “What does it mean?” Jill asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “It’s my family name.”

  Mrs. Lindsey looked uncertain for a second, flipped up the envelope to double check. “No, dear. Your last name’s Porthmeus. It says right here. I’d never forget an unusual name like that.”

  I fingered the gold. My first name was scratched in tiny letters below my house name. This is mine. I stared at the bracelet for a few more seconds, and then lifted my eyes slowly, forcefully to Mrs. Lindsey’s, showed her a hint of the rage inside me. “No. That is the name they gave me. My real name is Alkimides.”

  Mrs. Lindsey’s friendly look faded.

  The name “porthmeus” was a hot handful of letters scrolling across the inside of my head, stamped on seaborn slaves of the king who act on the surface, between two worlds, on the king’s behalf. I shook off the shame and anger. “I’m sorry. That was very rude of me. Thank you for saving this.” I pressed my hand against the metal, and then I took Mrs. Lindsey’s soft wrinkled hand with the other, pushing my fingers into her palm.

  Mrs. Lindsey’s smile returned, but it was slow and she seemed startled.

  “That’s all right, dear. It’s always difficult to see something from your birth mother or father. It’s hard on all of you.”

  Kassandra? Praxinos’ voice cut into my thoughts. Who are you speaking to? You should not tell anyone at that school your real name unless you have secured their loyalty.

  I ignored him and left the offices with Jill and Nicole just as the break bell sounded.

  “How did you know I had something in my file?” I asked once we entered the hall, joining the students and teachers heading back to class.

  “After breakfast we went up to see if you were done with the laundry,” said Jill. “You weren’t there. The laundry lady was filling the cart and she overheard us talking about you.”

  I stopped in the middle of the hallway, shocked by two questions at the same time. How did that little old lady get that cart upstairs so fast? I pondered the first and asked the second.

  “Mrs. Hipkin told you to get my bracelet from Mrs. Lindsey?”

  Nicole, threatening a couple of eighth-grade boys blundering by us, nudged me back into the flow of students, some of whom were glaring at us for slowing things up.

  “Not exactly. She told us to ask Mrs. Lindsey if we had any saved items from our deliveries. She said they keep the valuables you came into Clement’s with until you’re old enough to care for them. And that we ought to be old enough.”

  I kept my mouth shut, staring ahead without focusing. What is going on? I shook my head. Fenhals. Now Mrs. Hipkin. Who else here is working for...or against me? Why would Mrs. Hipkin want me to wear the bracelet? So that Fenhals can identify me? Do they all work for King Tharsaleos? If not, then who are they spying for? Rexenor was defeated, practically wiped off the map by the Olethren, my father’s in the king’s prison.

  A jolt of pain shot through me, a tight pull of sorrow in my stomach. My mother has passed away, into the Wreath... I’d been so intent on finding my father and freeing him, that the thought of never again seeing my mother hit me like a landslide of mud, filling the space around me, pinning me down and threatening to choke off my breath. Is there anyone on my side? Besides Ephoros and the nutjobs in my head?

  Nicole’s stride faltered and I ran into her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The three of us huddled in the hallway, letting other students flow around us like a stream—and we were an island in the middle of it.

  Jill squeezed my arm. “We didn’t have much stored in Lindsey’s files.”

  “Nothing?”

  Jill, the sleepover survivor, shook her head. Seven years old, she’d gone off to her best friend’s for a sleepover and returned the next morning to find her house a broken pile of black timbers and roof shingles—and no one got out alive.

  “A clip from a newspaper.” Nicole pulled a folded gray square from her pocket and stared at it. “My mother and father—Catherine and Javier Garcia—were journalists. They died in a car accident in Arizona. No one knows how I ended up here.”

  I closed my eyes for a second. “Oh.” I held out the tiny dolphin comb and bonnet.

  “I can have it?” Jill grabbed the embroidered bonnet. Nicole picked up the comb and, folding the newspaper around it, closed her hand over both.

  “I don’t see my name on them.” I hooked my arm through Nicole’s, and the three of us walked back to class, taking almost the entire width of the hallway. “We’re like sisters, and I’m supposedly a princess. So aren’t we all?”

  Nicole raised an eyebrow. “Princesses?”

  Jill elbowed me. “Damn right we are.”

  Back in Vilnious’ class, I sat at my desk, dreaming of my mother, staring at the book in front of me, turning pages with the rest of the class, but not really seeing the words. I slid my arm over the open book, couldn’t get my eyes to focus on anything but my family name stamped into the gold at my wrist.

  My mother was an Alkimides of the royal line. I am too. I need to find out more. When will you wake up, mother? I’ve lost your song. I need to hear your voice.

  I need to get out of here.

  Just before the lunch bell, I told Mrs. Vilnious I felt sick, and after a quick study, she nodded, said “you look pale,” and told me to get some rest.

  Fumbling with my books, dropping pencils, I power-walked to the end of the school wing, and took a left toward the girls departments at the far end.

  The halls weren’t empty, but I didn’t care anymore. “Tell me the last things that happened to my mother.”

  Both Praxinos and Andromache were silent. I walked a dozen more steps, waiting for an answer. What the fuck? Usually they wouldn’t shut up.

  “Was she alone?”

  She was not, said Praxinos in about the smallest voice he could produce and still be heard, and then very quickly, She had her maid with her.

  Zypheria, said Andromache to be helpful. Zypheria was her most trusted maid and bodyguard.

  “Where was Ephoros? Why didn’t he protect my mother when she needed him? He told me he wasn’t there.”

  Silence.

  “Where was he?”

  I waited again, a few seconds, but could only hold my anger back so long.

  “If he could’ve protected her from the Olethren then why didn’t he? Answer me!”

  I killed your mother, Praxinos said and his voice broke discordantly. The fault is mine. I am to blame for the death of Ampharete.

  I choked and slipped, skidding across the floor. Book went flying, but I got my hands up in time to save my face. Took a few minutes to get any clear thoughts in order, and spent them staring stupidly at the patterns in the floor tiles. Then I got unsteadily to my feet, rubbed my hands, brushing the dust off them, even smiled at a guy with glasses who stopped to pick up my books and ask if I was okay. I said somethin
g that probably made no sense, and wandered off without catching his reply.

  “How?”

  I convinced Ampharete that our only hope was to strengthen our defenses using the Telkhines magic of the earth and fire, and she sent Ephoros to speak to the old ones who dwell in the shallows and caves near the isle of Rhodes. They will not speak to one of the Alkimides, who defeated them. That was my mistake. A day later, the Olethren marched over the Rexenor fortress walls. Ephoros could not get there in time to save her.

  “Telkhines magic? But why would she do it?”

  She agreed with me that our only hope was to use that dangerous knowledge against the Olethren. She knew the Telkhines would never give it to her. Gregor—who had worked to discover the old magic his entire life—had vanished. Ephoros was our only hope. And I convinced her that we had the one thing we did not.

  “Time?” I stopped at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor, waiting for the answer.

  Time.

  It wouldn’t be the last time I wished I could cry—I mean really cry. Nothing came, not even Ephoros, although I squinted at the pull in the corner of my right eye, almost as if something was inside with the urge to come out. Nothing did.

  Really didn’t need to know that about my mother, Praxinos.

  Couldn’t make myself say those words aloud.

  I tripped twice going up the stairs, feeling stupid from the lack of sleep. I pushed my legs as quickly as I could across the landing and slammed the hall door behind me.

  Had the place to myself, for now.

  “How much time do you think I have...before the Olethren get here?”

  Praxinos didn’t answer—or didn’t want to answer.

  Certainly longer than we had in the North Atlantic, said Andromache, trying to coax something out of her argument partner. No fun without someone to yell at and throttle. I don’t think the Olethren have ever fought above the waves before. Praxinos?