Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  “To lure me away from the school. They don’t want the Olethren there anymore than we do. I think they feel that Tharsaleos has double-crossed them. I met with them in their motel room, and they seemed to be honest with me. They told me they’d made a bargain with Tharsaleos. They told me about Mr. Fenhals, and that my father was still alive but imprisoned.”

  “They care only for their rivers.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” I nodded. “And trains.”

  “Trains?”

  “I met another one, Theupheides, who seemed to like trains more than rivers.”

  “Oddball. I know who Theupheides is. We have seaborn like that too. Fenhals likes the surface more than life under the waves.”

  “Theupheides said Fenhals was a strange Thalassogenês.”

  The silence lengthened uncomfortably, especially with Lady Kallixene’s eyes still pinned to mine.

  “So, you live at some strange surfacer boarding school, make regular visits to the abyss, consort with naiads, and picnic on the battlements overlooking the Olethren. Have everything planned out?”

  A spark of anger flashed and went out, smoldered enough to keep a firm hold on my defiance. “I want to rescue my father. I want that book my father put together from the scraps of Telkhines magic, at least to get it away from the king.” I looked up at Ephoros. “And I want to free Ochleros.”

  “We’ll come back to the first one. How do you propose to take the book?”

  “Ephoros will help me.”

  The Big Guy rumbled at my back. “It is certainly within the walls of the great city. I cannot enter the Nine-cities without being invited in. One of the seaborn must do it. The city is protected by more than walls.”

  “Can the Olethren go there?” I looked up at the ceiling, but didn’t stop to focus on anything. “Praxinos? Can the Olethren enter the Nine-cities?”

  No, Andromache answered just as Praxinos started to answer. They have shield spells. The King’s Protection it is called.

  And they always lock the door, added Praxinos. But you cannot run from the—

  Kallixene’s voice paralleled his. “—hide from them in the Nine-cities. The king has armies and assassins of his own that are not dead and they’ll—”

  —the Wreath—

  —with that glow—

  —coming a mile away.

  —bent on death!

  —why we were so angry at you for going so near the Nine-cities with Ephoros.

  I waited for them to stop giving me the same response. So, the answer’s no, but it wouldn’t work anyway because I glow like a freakin’ Christmas tree and the king would simply have me killed. Got it.

  I kicked a couple times, drifted in front of the window, frowning at the newly gathered crowd standing around Mr. Henderson in the courtyard.

  There had only been the old commander, Menophon. Now there were forty or more, some in armor, others in colorful tops and leggings. There were even a few small children snaking through the crowds three or four feet off the ground.

  Lady Kallixene rose from her seat and glided toward the window, looking past me at the gathering in her courtyard.

  “Maybe I can’t hide there,” I said. “But can I invite Ephoros into the Nine-cities?”

  I managed to catch most of Kallixene’s reply over Praxinos’ and Andromache’s shouting.

  “Even your mother wouldn’t have dared that.”

  “But she was trying to keep the king from knowing she possessed the Wreath. The king already knows I have it.”

  Kallixene appeared to be giving that some thought as I blinked and let my armor slip away, unfolding off my body, fading into the ocean.

  Then I cupped my hands to spin in the water. “The king has to pour his power into the Olethren to make them move, doesn’t he? That would be the time to go to the City to find my father. Tharsaleos will be busy with his dead army, too busy to look for me in his city. I could invite Ephoros inside the walls, and we both—”

  “Gregor isn’t in the Nine-cities,” said Kallixene, tapping a finger on the window, nodding at some connection she’d made. “I think he’s up at your school.”

  I couldn’t open my mouth, thoughts tumbling over each in my head, ended up giving my grandmother an inquiring wave of my hand.

  She continued. “That is why Fenhals was sent there. He brought my Gregor there somehow.”

  “And my father’s the one the Olethren are being sent to kill, him and everyone near him.”

  “Like you, Kassandra. He’s going to lure you back.” Her voice went sour, accusing. “Perhaps Tharsaleos has learned of the naiads trying to get you away from the school?”

  I kicked, untangling my feet and thrashing them up and back to get off the ground. “You mean, you just figured all that out from what we’ve talked about?”

  “I haven’t figured anything out. Gregor may be in the City. I’m just trying to see how much of these seemingly separate pieces of information fit together.” She wagged a finger like Mrs. Vilnious when a student wasn’t seeing the obvious. “Because you know they do.”

  This sounded like Mr. Henderson’s scientific method lecture, observe and gather information...make connections...form a theory.

  “Who’s doing what? And who wants what?” I asked abruptly. “The king wants to kill me right off. That’s clear. He’s killed my mother and grandmother already. He’ll do whatever it takes to see me dead. He has my father imprisoned somewhere. He has a book hidden in a city protected by magic. He’s sent one of his agents to my school.”

  “Fenhals is there to do something...to guard, to deliver someone. Not to spy. He’s too well known.”

  “Fenhals saw me in the hall this morning...and he seemed pleased about something. He didn’t stop me. He just smiled—sort of cruel, as if everything was going according to his plan.” I nodded. “My father’s up at Clement’s. He must be. And I have to go there to free him.”

  “He is there to lure you there and keep you there. You will be trapped when the Olethren invade the school. They will try to control the sources of flowing water in and out. Then they will kill you and Gregor.”

  “But if my father’s the key to the rest of the Telkhines magic in that book...”

  Both of us paused. That broke the connection. Kallixene’s conclusions seemed to fit together nicely but this broke up the elegant whole into its parts again.

  “Unless King Tharsaleos has tired of my father’s silence, or found another way to unlock the secrets of the book.”

  Kallixene nodded with me. “Perhaps he’s caught an actual Telkhines lord—as unlikely as that is. He wouldn’t need Gregor then—except as a lure.”

  “A way to trap me—the Wreath-wearer.”

  “If this is true, then the king has it all. The Wreath-wearer dies along with her troublesome father, and this asshole king has or will soon get the key to unlock the rest of the Telkhines book.”

  Fingers hooking into claws, I tried to hold onto empty water. My hand swung over my head, a clumsy move, slapping the window to keep my balance, and my bracelet rattled against the pane.

  I’m such an idiot.

  Somehow, I’d thought if I could save my father then he’d be able to help defeat the Olethren. We had been so close to getting him at the lithotombs. Or were we? Had the king planned that too? Breaking the chains and moving the entire prison cell hours before Ephoros and I arrived. Would the king be waiting for us in the Nine-cities?

  “Lady Kassandra?” Ephoros rolled one of his hands sideways, palm up. “Your father is either in the walls of the City or at your school. You must go to the school to find him. Give me your bracelet. That will be enough for me to get into the city without asking.”

  Chapter 25 - House Rexenor

  Ephoros looked down at me with his endless-cave-like eyes, his deep voice making the water shiver. “I will first find your father, if he is there, and then the book.”

  “And the key to release your brother, if you can,” I added and slipped
the bracelet off my wrist, dropping it into his wide nearly transparent palm. The links came together like a drop of gold. “Ochleros helped us. He is a slave to Tharsaleos through the mistakes my family made. We have to free him.”

  “Yes. I may seek the key that frees him first so that we can search the Nine-cities together.” Ephoros cut his rumble short and spun along the back wall, opposite the door, guarding me with one arm at the same time. Kallixene had just started to scowl at his sudden movement when someone knocked sharply. Menophon paused a few seconds, then pushed in the big elliptic door.

  “My lady, the teacher is awake.”

  Kallixene nodded and gestured me outside. The three of us floated into the courtyard, following Menophon, Ephoros straightening up to a monstrous size once he’d moved beyond the door.

  I felt the suspicion in him. He didn’t like the crowd of seaborn gathered in Kallixene’s courtyard. They made it too difficult to protect me.

  I looked up at him with the pale blue glow of courtyard lights and the sun from the distant surface, some of it haloing him and partly pouring through his transparent humanoid form.

  “What if the king has thought of this and has set a trap for you, or taken the book somewhere else?”

  “I will find it.”

  I stared into his wise old eyes for a second and then turned toward Mr. Henderson. My science teacher would undoubtedly need assistance after waking up underwater.

  At least fifty seaborn from House Rexenor had now gathered in the courtyard, some chatting with Mr. Henderson. He seemed unusually at ease in his new surroundings, although the excitement and curiosity made his voice go shrill. He hit them with a handful of questions as soon as he understood they weren’t going to hurt him. His voice kept rising over the murmuring and I heard him make exclamations like “Fascinating!” and “How peculiar.”

  But “the teacher from the surface” was only an added feature. Word had spread. The remnants of Rexenor had come to see me, the Wreath-wearer, wide-eyed and cautiously hopeful.

  They watched me warily, some bowing their heads when my eyes met theirs. Many just stared or turned to their neighbors in the crowd, remarking something about “the girl with her guardian.”

  As if I couldn’t hear them.

  Then I curled in my fingers and toes, very aware that everyone else in the sea except my science teacher and I had a fine web of skin between each. And I no longer had my bracelet that marked me as seaborn. They wore strange clothes, tight shirts that came down to their knees and leggings. Some even had webbed boots. I wore a tee shirt and denim shorts and was barefoot. I was supposed to be a princess, one of the royal house. Heir to the throne of all the seaborn.

  I looked like a beggar.

  I stopped and watched Mr. Henderson. The Rexenors called him “philosopher.”

  And he was a natural. He was spinning slowly, even faced me at one point, but didn’t look up, his eyes fixed intently on a really old man with long gray braided hair.

  Mr. Henderson didn’t seem terribly hurt—and in any wrong way—affected by waking up underwater with the ability to breathe. He answered the old man’s question casually and turned to another in the crowd.

  There was something else, something different about him. Then I noticed he’d lost his glasses. He also stood very tall in the water, the tips of his shoes on the tiled yard, half-ringed by the seaborn, one of whom, a woman with her auburn hair in three braids, was just finishing an answer to one of his questions.

  Amazingly, Mr. Henderson already seemed to be at home. I stuffed my guilt deep, shook my head, forced a smile, and turned back to my grandmother.

  Kallixene had pulled away, speaking quietly to a soldier in heavy-plated armor, similar to the armor worn by the guards at the gate, except this man’s had been dented and broken in places. Seaweed hung like thick mats of spider webs off his helmet and from his arms. Yellow mud caked the plates of armor, dissolving into sulfurous clouds at his feet. The man—he really wasn’t that much older than me—knelt on one knee with a bowed head, and then kicked straight up to lean in close, whispering to Lady Kallixene.

  Every Rexenor not speaking or listening to Mr. Henderson had their eyes on me, and I swung my gaze between my grandmother and Ephoros to make it appear as if I wasn’t trying to avoid meeting theirs.

  But I was.

  I saw something in them I recognized, a longing for home.

  It scared me. What did they want from me? I didn’t know anything about homes, families, cities, House Rexenor or Alkimides. The Rexenors my age and younger, stared at me with big lonely eyes, heavy with hope.

  I turned toward the window into Kallixene’s sitting room, pretending to face Ephoros but really watching the reflections of the Rexenors in the dark pane.

  Like the world spinning around me when I traveled through the pipes, a sudden idea struck me, made me dizzy. I staggered forward, threw out my hands to catch myself.

  Lady Kallixene is my grandmother. Lady Kallixene can take me away from Clement’s. There was something to hope for. My father may be trapped there, his death sealed in the false souls of the Olethren, but if I lived through this, I’d be free of St. Clement’s...forever.

  I turned to the courtyard full of Rexenors.

  Even the adults seemed afraid to draw near me. Mr. Henderson was certainly far more approachable—and smiling—and they ringed him in discussion. I looked past the open gate into the dim streets and houses and little shops, wondering what it would be like to grow up here.

  I can braid my hair in threes and wear long shirts and flat webby shoes. I can live here. I just need to free my father. Matrothy won’t hurt me ever again, or Deirdre Milhorn or Autumn. What about Jill and Nicole? Can I take them with me?

  I would be coming home. That made me kick higher in the water. The feeling of strength and invulnerability—that feeling that had settled inside me right after I’d met Ephoros—seemed pale and so long ago compared to what I felt now.

  I made fists and it felt as if I could crush the bones of the Olethren with them. All of them. I’m going to come live here with my grandmother, and I’m going to get my father back, and that book, and release Ochleros so we can all fight King Tharsaleos. And I’m bringing my friends with me.

  Like Odysseus reaching the shores of Ithaca after ten years of war and ten long years of being manipulated by others, I’m home.

  Something touched my thoughts. I felt someone looking at me, not one of the Rexenors from the gathering, but someone who could put some force behind her gaze. I circled and Lady Kallixene beckoned.

  My hands cupped and I kicked and pulled the water behind me, Ephoros following. I looked from my grandmother to the muddy soldier, who bowed to me, and although he tried not to stare, I felt the effort it took him to keep his eyes moving, from me to Kallixene. He wasn’t much older than me, maybe sixteen, but he was a Rexenor soldier. He had the same haunted lonely eyes—and he knew who I was without an introduction.

  He bowed... He bowed to me again.

  “The Olethren are nearing the mouth of the Mississippi River, my lady.”

  “That fast?” A rough edge of panic in my voice. I whirled to Ephoros. “But my father.”

  Ephoros bent forward, understanding. “I will go now,” he said, sending shivers through the water. “And seek him in the Nine-cities. If he is there, I will find him and return. I will find the Telkhines book and free my brother from the slavery set on him by the king.”

  I reached out and touched the top of his hand—half as big as my whole body. “Please be careful, Ephoros.”

  He nodded, turned and drifted toward the arched courtyard entrance. The Rexenors kicked out of his way, frightened. He glided through the gate and then down into the village.

  I watched him vanish in the shadow of a sheer cliff face. Then I looked up. So did the young soldier.

  “Why didn’t he just swim up?”

  “There are protections in place against such movement,” said Kallixene with a sligh
t rise in her eyebrows as if she had been wondering the same thing. “No doubt, something of his power could break it.” She pointed up. “Our shield is weak compared to the force that protected the fortress in the North, and King Tharsaleos or his war-bard managed to break that.”

  I locked eyes with Kallixene, there was a moment of tension, and then a slow genuine smile rose to my grandmother’s lips. She understood something about my uncomfortable situation, a lone Alkimides, dressed like a thinling, a pauper among thinlings even. But heir to the throne of all the seaborn.

  “Come. I will introduce you to your paternal House, and you will introduce me to your teacher. Then we will plan for the Olethren.”

  She led me past the door to her sitting room so that the two of us floated in front of the wide dark window.

  “House Rexenor!” She called over the murmuring of the crowd, and they spun in the water toward her.

  “The word has reached your ears or you would not be here. My granddaughter, Lady Kassandra, the daughter of Lord Gregor and Lady Ampharete of the Alkimides has been a prisoner of King Tharsaleos all of her life. The king sent her above the waves, into the heart of the land, far from the nurturing ocean.”

  Every face turned to me and every eye studied me. A few of the old soldiers only had one.

  I clamped my mouth shut and tucked my hands in. I was red enough. Nothing about my hands. Not the hands or feet.

  And my own name stood out glaringly. The original mythical Kassandra was gifted with the ability to tell the future but cursed to have no one believe her. She prophesied the death of King Agamemnon but he didn’t listen to her warnings. No one did. And when the king arrived home after ten years’ war against Troy, sure enough, the queen killed him. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

  I felt the blood heavy in my hands. I hoped they didn’t know the story and the origin of my name as well as I did.

  My grandmother continued the introduction for ten minutes, telling the gathered seaborn and Mr. Henderson about Ampharete’s struggles, the murder of Pythias, her son’s journey’s to the seas in the East, seeking to build up the defenses of the Rexenor fortress, of his capture and enslavement by King Tharsaleos.