Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  “The king has agents who work and live among the surfacers. Death—for me—would have meant release. As long as I remained alive, the king could get information from me. Use me. They threatened to imprison me in the—” Zypheria’s voice broke as if afraid to say the words. “—in the desert, a prison in Nevada where water is so scarce animals die of thirst.” She shuddered. “I agreed to go,” whispered Zypheria. Her eyes dropped to the floor, unable to hold mine. “I agreed to go to this prison in the desert...if only they would free my daughter.” Zypheria pulled in her tears and wiped her face with the back of one hand. “The king saw something in my words or mind, some seed of deception. I did not go to the desert, for he found another way to punish me, far worse than the waterless wastes.”

  “Who—What was Matrothy then?”

  “A construct, a prison in the form of a human’s shell, devised by the king to torture particularly rebellious seaborn.” She sighed. It sounded painful. “What is worse than death to a mother? It was always assumed that you were my child, even though that was just to trick the king. There are many things that can be done to hurt a mother through her child. What is most cruel? Torture her child before her eyes? What cuts deeper than that, more enduring?” She paused to see if anyone would answer. “Make the mother torture her own child. Make her see what she does to her own baby, and not be able to stop it. That is incomparably more devious and destructive.”

  “You!” I gasped. “I heard your voice. I’ve heard it since I was little. You spoke to me in Red Bear Lake. You spoke to me late in the night, and told me to be brave.”

  Zypheria nodded. “Yes. In the lake, Matrothy was particularly susceptible to subversion. I could get around the construct’s control when it was in the water, in the same water as you. I sang to you whenever I could find you in the water in school. Until the ancient one you summoned placed a spell of command on Matrothy, which went through her thoughts to affect me. I could not sing to you after that.”

  Holding Matrothy’s old clothes up with one hand, Zypheria swung the blanket over her shoulders with the other. I pulled the book snuggly up under my arm and helped her cover herself.

  “Kassandra! Lady Kallixene! Phaidra!” Jill raced by the administration offices, shoes squeaking to a halt, catching the crowd of seaborn out of the corner of her eye.

  “Kassandra?” Jill shouted, out of breath. “Your father. Gregor. He’s here. We found him. Me and Nicole, too. I mean, Mrs. Hipkin. We helped her. She found him. Those walking dead guys. Come on!” And Jill dashed off, back the way she’d come.

  I froze, unable to decide where to move, broke free and waved, smiling at Zypheria’s stunned face.

  Without looking back, I raced down the main hall toward the basement stairs, my arms and legs still a little heavy and tingling from going inside the Wreath.

  I reached the railing for the stairs just ahead of Phaidra who kept up wearing armor.

  Swinging the book under one arm, I ducked a ventilation shaft, and ran. The corridors were nearly black, only half the emergency lights working.

  A broken pile of bones, teeth and armor signaled a turn up ahead. Someone had smashed one of the Olethren to pieces.

  Well done.

  Jill turned left ahead, glancing back, her blond hair whipping around her head.

  She shouted something that may have been another, “C’mon!” but it was lost down the joining corridor. Phaidra was right behind me when we turned the corner.

  Jill and Nicole stood outside a room fifty feet down the pipe-lined tunnel. The emergency lighting was in order down here, blocks of bright light cutting across the floor and up the opposite wall.

  Lady Kallixene and the rest of the Rexenors were ten paces behind us. Phaidra stopped at the doorway, but I jumped right in, walking right over the broken pile of bones on the floor, six of the Olethren, pounded into splinters and shreds of old cloth and armor.

  A shield, crusty green with corrosion, had been kicked up against a gigantic stone box placed right in front of an even larger orange painted metal boiler tank. Fenhals had brought the entire lithotomb down here somehow. Sure, he could summon lightning, but he obviously had other powers.

  One of the Rexenor abyss mages stood to one side, having used his powers to lift the massive stone lid away from the tomb, freeing Lord Gregor.

  I gave the old mage a smile, and stopped about halfway across the room, then the crowd behind me pushed me forward.

  There was a man with black hair and beard, both threaded with gray, bright blue-green eyes like tropical shallows. He looked undernourished and he trembled with some sickness, but he grinned like a boy at a birthday party, and he was...hugging Mrs. Hipkin.

  My mouth dropped open. I knew it! Mrs. Hipkin was seaborn. She had ragged scar tissue between her fingers. One still gripped what looked like an axe-handle, the weapon she’d used against the Olethren that came after her—obviously to their loss.

  My father had the scars also—cutting along the insides of his fingers.

  Gregor turned to look at the crowd of Rexenors pouring into the boiler room, momentarily suspicious, maybe a little uncertain, then a slow smile grew on his face.

  “Phaidra!” He released the St. Clement’s laundry lady, stepping forward, his gaze skipping to the other faces in front of him, Kallixene and others from House Rexenor he recognized. “Mother?”

  He stopped when saw me, standing next to his sister, Phaidra.

  “Father?” I stepped closer.

  His face lit up. “Kassandra?” He came in low, arms out, picked me up, and squeezed me until I gasped, “Book...ouch.”

  His hug trapped the Telkhines book under my arm, pinning one corner against my ribs.

  “It was me!” he cried.

  “What was?”

  “I was the porthmeus. I tried to bring you ashore, but they took you away from me. I didn’t know who you were then. Not until later, when I had time—in prison—to step through every event, and my mind and memories came back to me.”

  I held him tighter, about to ask him more, but it was too late. The rest of his family swarmed around us, crushing me like a vise. I managed to work my way to his side, sliding the book forward, so that he held me with one arm while he kissed Kallixene and Phaidra and hugged most of the others with his other arm.

  He kept asking how it had all happened. “How did I get here?” He looked up at the web of pipes and valves in the boiler room. “What are all of you doing here?”

  “It is your daughter’s work,” they kept telling him. “She wears the Wreath.”

  “The Olethren?”

  “The entire army is ruined.”

  His gaze moved among the faces in front of him, looking for someone, and then back to Lady Kallixene’s.

  “Where—?”

  I stumbled, and my father’s full weight landed on my shoulders. Almost dropped the book. One of Kallixene’s guards pushed forward to catch Gregor before he collapsed. Phaidra grabbed him under the arm on my side.

  “Where is Ampharete?” His voice came out soft, tortured.

  Lady Kallixene shook her head slightly, grimly. He knew. We all saw it in his face.

  Gregor’s head swung forward, chin hitting his chest, tears splattering the concrete before all the strength left his body.

  Chapter 32 - Late Arrival

  I looked up as Zypheria danced over the boulders along the top edge of North Hampton Beach, her sandy brown braids flying in the wind, her arms out for balance. She slowed as she made her way across the sand, slipping her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt to hide the webbing, something she’d gotten used to doing over the last month.

  I stood at the water’s edge, the sea rolling cold over my toes.

  Zypheria had spent an hour that morning braiding my hair with gold thread and auger shells, tears rolling down her face the whole time, and I became the ears and eyes of my mother, repeating Zypheria’s questions and repeating Ampharete’s replies. It was like being a translator for
two old friends from another country. Half the time I had no idea what they were talking about. And it was weird calling my mother “My lady,” but Zypheria insisted.

  I turned in the sand, waiting for her, leaning right to feel my braids roll along my neck and shoulders, spiky and hard like ropes down my back.

  I am seaborn.

  I also spent a lot of time talking with my mother and the others in the Wreath, when I could find some time alone. My favorite place in our new house—my father recently bought it—was a tall square tower that stuck up from the roof and overlooked the Atlantic.

  “My lady?” Zypheria bowed to me. “Your father’s just coming down from the house. Have you seen the girls?”

  I lifted my chin toward the slim spine of boulders that, at low tide, formed a blackened slime covered bridge out to a diamond shaped mound of rock three hundred feet from shore. The island was a taller hill, never fully submerged except with the highest tides.

  Right now, it rose out of the blue surf, bristling with seabirds.

  “Jill’s in the water next to the rocks looking for lobsters.” I pointed down the beach, toward Hampton. “Nicole’s listening to something Mr. Henderson’s written.”

  My only friends from school were now my sisters. And the woman who used to beat the crap out of me was now my maid and bodyguard. It’s going to take some getting used to.

  Zypheria sped off without another word. She had regained much of her strength in the last month. She lived with us—Gregor Rexenor’s new family, or my court in exile—in our giant old Victorian house that stooped over the ocean on a low cliff where the curve of the New Hampshire coast sharpened and headed toward Maine. Michael Henderson lived with us, too, and I think there’s something going on with the two of them—Zypheria and Henderson. Yeah, my ex-science teacher’s going out with my body guard.

  Wait, it gets weirder.

  We got some news from St. Clement’s yesterday, passed along by Mrs. Vilnious. Hipkin had been spying for Tharsaleos, but she didn’t like Fenhals coming into the school and taking over, and she switched sides completely when Fenhals let the Olethren into the basement and left her without a way out. When Nicole, Jill and their Rexenor escort—which included that old abyss mage—came upon the laundry lady fighting for her life, swinging her axe handle at the dead warriors, and shrieking like a maniac, she had already made up her mind whose side she was on. Mrs. Hipkin remained at St. Clement’s and had taken over Matrothy’s position as girls’ director.

  We also learned that Fenhals, that pale-eyed scut, had escaped through a brass trilithon on a drinking fountain and vanished in the flow of water. But he was bleeding on the floor when he fled, so not an entirely clean escape.

  Mrs. Vilnious had come to visit “her three students” at the house yesterday. She had just moved back to the east coast and had taken over the governance of the Merrimack River. To think, the whole time, the Scourge was a river witch.

  Maybe that makes sense.

  Apparently while her younger sisters were out front working the weather, Vilnious spent her time luring every student and teacher from Clement’s into the school wing for a “very important assembly.” She put them all in a deep, memory-cleansing sleep. They awoke the middle of the next morning, some in their classrooms at their desks, some in the cafeteria, and most of the teachers sprawled in the comfy chairs in their lounge. There were many sore backs and necks, and quite a few who complained of nightmares.

  Everything went back to normal at St. Clement’s a week after the defeat of the Olethren, except for a few glaring differences. Some of the teachers and staff members had resigned—or simply vanished. Most of the windows in the front of the school had to be replaced. Two parentless girls—wards of the state, Nicolette Garcia and Jillian Crosse, had been adopted from the nine-to-sixteen’s department. Mrs. Vilnious had told us—laughing—that the administration staff had scratched their heads, wondering how the arrangements for the family placements had been made without their absolute control and authority. The old gardener also spent a lot of time scratching his head in bewilderment. He spread stories, something about mutant locusts, and placed an order for eight hundred pounds of grass seed to replace the wide swath of dirt that now stretched from the steps of St. Clement’s all the way out to the river.

  I looked up, sensing someone watching me. Gregor Lord Rexenor, my father, smiled as he approached.

  “Here he is now,” I said to my mother, and she rattled off advice in my head.

  Make sure he’s enrolled you in a good school. I like the one called North Hampton Lyceum. I do not care how much it costs. Don’t let him get away with his miserly Rexenor ways. You may be named after his great-grandfather but you are an Alkimides princess. The throne of all the seaborn is yours.

  “Who am I named after?”

  Kassander, the greatest of the Rexenor lords. Who did you think you were named after?

  I smiled—couldn’t help smiling. “No one. I just...I didn’t know.” So I’m not named after the cursed prophetess no one believed.

  A Rexenor lord. I like that.

  “Sorry.” My father scooped me into a hug. He had recovered most of his health over the last month. “Had to clear up some banking details. The three of you are officially enrolled in classes. I had no idea attending school would cost so much. I don’t have any of the credit cards from my porthmeus days but I remembered the numbers to some of the offshore accounts kept by Tharsaleos.” He sighed. “Two more of them are empty now.” He exhaled, half furious, half amused. “We will need it. Those blasted naiads sent me their motel bill. Three thousand four hundred dollars for water. What the hell were they doing with it all, pouring it down the damn drain?”

  I shook my head and laughed, and let it continue when the sound of my own voice mixed with the mournful piping of the seagulls and the rhythmic rush of surf against the sand. I liked the sound.

  Then I turned away from my dad, toward the Atlantic, and felt the weight of the loss of something inside me—a sense that even with everything I’d gained—the return, in some form, of my mother and father, I still had a long way to go. Almost as if there’s an emptiness I can only fill when I am in the water.

  I bowed my head, just a nod to the Ocean, a signal to let the tides, the rolling waves, every single drop in the one and a third billion cubic kilometers of seawater on our world, that I would go for a swim later. I couldn’t tell you how—something in the way the surf flattened for a moment, a calm pause in the continuous roar, but I knew that an entire ocean just bowed back to me.

  My father took my arm, strolled with me down the beach toward Hampton.

  His fingers tightened, and we both turned toward a woman in a black jacket walking cautiously in our direction. I couldn’t see her face because she was bent down, her eyes—behind thin purple-framed glasses, scanning the rocky ground three feet in front her.

  She stopped, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and crouched to select a particular mottled stone from a pile of them. The stone was flat with a wedge-shaped notch carved out of it by some random motion of the waves. She straightened as my father and I passed her, holding up the stone for us see.

  “I collect the heart-shaped ones.”

  My father froze. “What did you say?”

  “Took your time delivering her, didn’t you?”

  Who the hell was this?

  I took a couple steps closer to get a look at the stone in her hand—it did sort of look like a heart. A glance at my father to catch his reaction. He looked stunned, but in a way that made it clear he knew who she was.

  But she’s not seaborn. No scar tissue between her fingers.

  She handed the heart-shaped stone to me—I took it. Then she faced my father, pointing at him, her tone accusing. “Been waiting a long time, Porthmeus. You were supposed to fetch her off the unfixed rock and have her here fourteen years ago.”

  Table of Contents

  1 - Kassandra

  2 - The Girl who was Afraid
of Water

  3 - The Guardian

  4 - Ephoros

  5 - The Three Spies

  6 - The Math King

  7 - Gregor Remembers

  8 - Storm Brewing

  9 - Dream of the Deep

  10 - Princess

  11 - Beautiful Water

  12 - Too Much Water

  13 - Another Wreath-wearer

  14 - Matrothy’s Warning

  15 - Andromache’s Sword

  16 - Jill and Nicole to the Rescue

  17 - The Naiads’ Bargain

  18 - Saltwater

  19 - The Lithotombs

  20 - Wake the Olethren

  21 - The New Science Teacher

  22 - The House Bracelet

  23 - Lady Kallixene

  24 - The King’s Trap

  25 - House Rexenor

  26 - You Can Only Lose Once

  27 - The Agent of King Tharsaleos

  28 - The Storm

  29 - The Dead Army

  30 - The Wreath of Poseidon

  31 - The Maid of Ampharete

  32 - Late Arrival