The Deepest Blue

by Sarah Beth Durst

“He wants you to die?” That was worse than being expected to die. He could have helped Roe’s odds, but he’d chosen not to. What kind of monster is he? Mayara clenched her fists as a hot, sudden rage rose inside her—it was so swift and strong that it surprised her, but she didn’t try to stop it.

  Here was a place to funnel her feelings of anger at the unfairness of it all, toward the law, the queen, the Silent Ones, even toward Kelo who had insisted on his escape plan even though the odds were against them and who had told her to become a Silent One even though that was a fate worse than death. So much anger—she hadn’t known it was there; it had been smothered under the sadness.

  She had to let it out.

  Without waiting to think, Mayara marched across the ship to the helm.

  “Mayara, what are you doing?” Roe called after her.

  A sailor stepped in front of her.

  Clearly he was there to guard Lord Maarte, which was absurd. It was his ship, and he had Silent Ones who could control spirits at his beck and command. “Exactly what do you think I could do to hurt him with three Silent Ones on the ship?”

  “Lord Maarte is not to be disturbed.”

  Mayara judged the soldier was younger than she was, with barely shaveable scruff on his chin. He probably came from a village just like hers. She fixed him with the kind of look that Grandmama gave youngsters in the village, with one eyebrow raised and her lips pursed. “He’s just standing there holding a wheel steady, whereas I’m likely to die in a few days. I think he has more time to spare than I do. Let me by.”

  The soldier shifted nervously.

  “Let her by.” Lord Maarte’s voice drifted down. He sounded amused. She felt a fresh burst of anger—nothing about any of this was amusing, and how dare he think it was.

  The sailor shifted to the side, and Mayara marched up the stairs toward the ship’s wheel. “You could have helped Roe prepare, and you didn’t because of some political game?”

  “Quick to defend a stranger. How noble of you.” He flashed her a grin that she supposed was meant to be charming. She wondered if there was anyone on all the islands who could find a man who wielded so much power over people to be “charming.”

  “And how vile of you,” Mayara snapped. A part of her brain shrieked at her to stop—this was Lord Maarte! But another part reveled in letting her rage out. “She was under your protection, and you failed to do anything to protect her.”

  His grin dissolved into a scowl. “She is the one who insisted on flaunting her power.”

  “And she should have been praised for it! She wants to be an heir! You should have encouraged that, not sabotaged her like some petulant child who wasn’t getting what he wants.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You should watch your tone.”

  “Why? I’ve lost everything and am on my way to die.” She remembered Great-Aunt Hollena. “I think that entitles me to say whatever I want in whatever tone I want.” But then she thought of her parents and her village. He wouldn’t retaliate against them for her words, would he?

  “You could have everything again if you survive.”

  “Except my husband.”

  Lord Maarte shrugged, then squinted at the horizon. “Perhaps even him, if you still want him. You won’t know that unless you survive.”

  His words hit her so hard that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. “He’s dead. You told me they killed him.”

  “How would I know either way? I wasn’t there, and the Silent Ones aren’t exactly forthcoming about their activities.” He flashed her a smile. “Your beloved may yet live.”

  Mayara felt as if she’d been swallowed by a tsunami. She lost all sense of what was up and what was down. Staggering backward, she clutched at the ship’s railing. “You said . . . Why would you . . . ?”

  “Because you were about to make the wrong choice,” Lord Maarte said. “I was performing my duty, looking out for the interests of Belene. If our strongest women choose to become Silent Ones, their power is wasted. Silent Ones don’t receive the same level of training, and they don’t perform the same duties—controlling spirits already claimed by the queen is vastly different from fighting wild spirits that aren’t bonded to anyone. You stopped the spirit storm—that’s strength. And we need our strongest to become heirs, to defend our islands and protect our future!”

  Could it be true?

  Her knees felt weak. She wanted to collapse. I can’t collapse. I have to get off this ship! Back to Kelo! They’d already sailed several miles from the island, but she was a strong swimmer, and it was a clear day—

  A spirit shaped like a pale-blue human rose out of the water and bared its shark teeth. A wave curled around it, in defiance of the current.

  She pivoted and met the eyes of a Silent One. “You’re doing that?”

  The Silent One did not respond, but she didn’t have to.

  Mayara spun back to face Lord Maarte again. “If he lives, I must change my choice. I made a promise!” She was aware that her voice was spiraling higher. She felt as if her thoughts and feelings were caught in a whirlpool.

  “You did make a promise—to your country and its people. Your choice cannot be changed. It was made, witnessed, and recorded.” Shaking his head, he clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “Come now, second thoughts don’t become a woman on her way to transforming into a hero of the islands. I am disappointed.”

  “I only chose the test because I believed my husband was dead! Murdered by the Silent Ones. If he wasn’t, then I need to do what I meant to do and become a Silent One. Please, my lord, if there’s any mercy in you . . .” She dropped to her knees. She’d beg if she had to. Whatever it took to get back to Kelo.

  He raised his eyebrows. “As much as you talk, you’d have made a poor Silent One. As for your artist husband . . . all you need to do is survive the test, and then you can find out for yourself whether he lives. If he does, you’ll be reunited. Unlike Silent Ones, heirs are allowed private lives, so long as they perform their duty when needed.” Lord Maarte flashed his “charming” smile once more. “Of course, if you survive the test, you may decide to do better than a common craftsman. I’d be honored if you would allow me to get to know you better.”

  She stared at him.

  She wasn’t often struck wordless, but Lord Maarte had succeeded.

  “There’s no point in that now, of course, because there’s no guarantee you won’t die.” He dismissed his offer with a wave of his jeweled hand. “I try not to form attachments to anyone with a potentially short life span. But I predict I will be seeing you again, spirit sister.” He then glanced over her head and nodded.

  Mayara felt a hand on her elbow, drawing her away—it was the young sailor. She looked back at Lord Maarte. “You are vile.”

  “I do what I must for the good of Belene. With power comes the responsibility of making difficult choices. You will learn that someday.” He flashed her another smile that she wanted to claw off his face before he added, “If you don’t die first.”

  She didn’t resist as the sailor pulled her away, and he released her as soon as she was across the deck from the ruler of Olaku Island. Numbly, she stumbled over to where Roe was leaning against the railing.

  “He likes you,” Roe observed when Mayara had reached her. “Creepy.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. It was worse than “creepy.” It was disgusting.

  I don’t want him to like me. I want him to let me go home!

  But she knew that was impossible, not without Lord Maarte defying the law, which he was clearly not willing to do. In fact, he seemed to take a weird satisfaction in transporting them to their probable deaths—there was absolutely no reason he needed to be helming this ship himself. But here he was, and in his eyes and the eyes of the law, she’d made her choice, and now she was bound to it, whether she wanted to be or not. And whether or not I was tricked into that choice. She would have broken that law, though, if she could, just as she had when they’d run. I’d swim out of h
ere, if the Silent Ones with their pet sea monsters would let me.

  Mayara squeezed her eyes closed. If Kelo is alive . . .

  She tried not to think about how hurt he must have been when he found out about her choice. It would break me, he’d said.

  “What did he say?” Roe asked.

  For an instant, Mayara thought she was talking about her beloved. But no, she meant Lord Maarte. “He doesn’t know whether or not my husband lives.”

  “That’s good news!” Roe said encouragingly. “Possibly alive is better than definitely dead, right? Um, right? You don’t look happy.”

  “I have to live,” Mayara said.

  “Again, good news, right?”

  “I don’t know how to fight spirits.”

  “That’s why we’re going to be trained! You’ll see. The queen wants us to survive. The more heirs Belene has, the safer the islands will be.”

  Mayara thought of the cove where she’d left Kelo. If she’d been trained, if she’d known more about how to control the spirits . . . If she’d been able to wrest them away from the Silent Ones . . .

  She shook herself. What am I thinking? Overpower the Silent Ones? There were three of them! All trained to control the island’s spirits! And all focused on one task: subduing her.

  “Once we’re at the training site, we’ll have a real heir to teach us,” Roe was saying. “Don’t worry. It’s not like everyone else will be an expert. You’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Mayara said. In fact, she was sure of the opposite. Elorna had this special training, and she still died. How am I going to do what she couldn’t?

  I chose this, knowing it meant my death. How can I now expect to live?

  “You’ll catch up,” Roe said. “If you’re willing to try. So are you? You, me, and Palia—we could be a team. Help each other out on the island. Keep each other from dying. What do you think?”

  This was her actual choice, she realized: Accept that she was doomed . . . Or fight fate.

  And maybe win back the future she’d wanted.

  Mayara looked out across the sparkling waves. A flock of pelicans soared low over the water, toward the island that looked like a fist raised to the sky. She filled her lungs, then emptied them, the way she did when she was preparing for a difficult dive, and she imagined Kelo, alive and waiting for her.

  “Let’s chase death,” Mayara said.

  Chapter Eight

  Kelo drifted in and out of consciousness in a haze of pain. Sometimes he woke certain the spirits were still gnawing on his leg and he thrashed, fighting them, until he felt his father’s hand on his forehead.

  Other times he woke with the taste of soup on his tongue, salty and sweet, and to the sound of his father singing, an off-key crooning sea song, like he used to sing when Kelo was a small child and had trouble sleeping.

  He wasn’t sure which was the dream: the spirits or his father.

  Or maybe both were, and he was somewhere else entirely, wherever souls went after their life ended. At last, though, he clawed his way back to awareness.

  He was in his parents’ home, in a cot, tucked in with quilts that he remembered from his childhood. His pillow was mostly flat and smelled of seaweed. Turning his head, he saw the walls had been patched with sail fabric that fluttered in the wind. I should help them fix that, he thought vaguely. His thoughts felt like they were fluttering too.

  And then he tried to sit up.

  Pain shot through him, and he clutched his chest, easing himself back down. His torso was wrapped in bandages. Craning his neck, he managed a glance at the rest of him—bandages swaddled his leg as well. And his left wrist was bound. He’d broken it, he remembered.

  I’m alive, he thought. How? The last thing he remembered were the spirits in the cove. . . . He’d been certain they were going to kill him. He didn’t know why he’d been spared or how he’d gotten home.

  “Mayara?” he croaked.

  “She’s alive.” His father was in a rocking chair by the window. The window looked oddly empty—no charms, no mobiles, no shutters. All of it had blown away in the storm. Kelo noticed other things missing as well: dishes and bowls, everything made of glass. There was a stack of coconut shells, cut in half and dried out, that were stacked beside the sink.

  As he cataloged each difference, he tried to wrap his mind around those simple words: She’s alive. She’d chosen life. And he wouldn’t see her again. Or if he did, he wouldn’t know it was her. She’d be behind a mask, swathed in robes. She’d have renounced her family, her name, herself. . . . And it’s my fault. I told her to choose that life.

  That non-life.

  I shouldn’t have done it.

  It had seemed like such a beautiful solution at the time: He’d leave her coded messages in his art, and he’d know that somewhere she still existed. Their love would survive so long as they both did. But now that plan felt empty. And foolish.

  “So she is to be a Silent One.” He was surprised at how calm his voice sounded, when what he wanted to do was scream and rage against the universe for taking her from him. He’d never felt this rush of anger before. Usually, he went through life as calm as the sea on a windless day. He took pride in being even-keeled.

  “Kelo, my boy . . .”

  He heard the note in his father’s voice and knew he wasn’t going to like what came next. He wanted to clap his hands over his ears like a child and not hear whatever it was his father was about to say.

  His father’s voice was as soft as a lullaby. But the words burrowed into Kelo’s heart: “She chose the island.”

  AS SOON AS HE WAS WELL ENOUGH TO MOVE, KELO BOOKED PASSAGE to Yena on a slender ship, a breed of seafaring vessels that were built to cut through the water with speed and stealth—their captains advertised swift passage between the five major and myriad minor islands of Belene with little to no interference from spirits. You paid handsomely for that, but Kelo didn’t need to offer gold: he had his skills. Even with one broken wrist and flares of pain from his other wounds, he could still carve.

  As the ship sped away from his home island, he unrolled a leather carrying case that held his wood-carving tools, and with his uninjured hand, he set to work on the mast, carving runes that would repel spirits.

  Runes weren’t effective against all spirits. Neither were charms. Certainly our village is proof of that. Kelo had carved charms on many of the houses himself, and he’d supplied the majority of the charms that had hung in the windows and doorways, yet still homes had been destroyed and lives lost. But runes and charms would make most spirits hesitate—and sometimes those precious seconds gave you just enough time to escape. If the heirs had come, it might have been enough.

  The sea breeze was steady in his face, and as he chipped away at the mast, he kept having to pause to push his hair back behind his ears. If Mayara were here, she would have handed him a hair tie the second she saw him distracted. But she wasn’t, and with his injured wrist, he couldn’t knot the ribbon. It was only by the tenth time his hair flopped in his eyes, breaking his focus, that it occurred to him he could simply ask someone else.

  He missed Mayara so abruptly and deeply that it felt as if a knife had stabbed him in the gut.

  She always made sure he tied his hair back, and he always treated her cuts when she scraped herself on rocks and coral. He cooked her favorite spiced pineapple mash, and she reminded him to eat, even when he was in the midst of an all-absorbing project. . . . We were a team.

  We are a team.

  That was why it had been such a simple choice for them to marry. It wasn’t because of the shrimp buffet, as Mayara had liked to tell people. And it wasn’t because he’d wanted to see her in that nacre dress, though he had. She looked like art. Exactly as I’d imagined. No, the reason he wanted to marry her was because he wanted his life to be by her side.

  It was, he thought, the best reason of all to marry: Because we want to be together.

  Just that one reason, true and
beautiful. Like Mayara herself.

  And it was the reason it had been a mistake to tell her to become a Silent One, and why he had to see her again and tell her how sorry he was for asking that of her. They were meant to be together, no compromises.

  That’s what he planned to tell Queen Asana: she had to stop the test and release Mayara, because if she didn’t, then she would destroy something rare and precious. Yes, heirs were needed for protection—but this, the kind of love that he and Mayara had, was what the heirs fought to protect.

  He just hoped she didn’t think it was all bullshit.

  “Hey, charm-maker.” The captain of the slender ship poked his shoulder. “Done yet?”

  Kelo frowned at the rune he’d carved. It was intricate, with the right patterns to appeal to fire, water, and air spirits—it should work, buying the sailors at least a few seconds. But it should be brighter. He wasn’t sure why he felt so certain, but he trusted his instincts. “Do you have any resin?”

  “Pitch? Got that.”

  “Yellow resin.”

  “Might. Why?”

  “It’ll make the rune more effective.”

  The captain grunted. “Never heard of that. Runes are supposed to be bare wood. That’s how they’ve always been done. Yellow resin is not traditional.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Massacre of Yellowfin?”

  The captain scratched his beard. Kelo noted that it seemed to be the captain’s favorite pastime. Every conversation he’d had with the man, the captain had had his fingers stuffed into the straggly tangles of his beard. Kelo wondered if the man thought it made him look wise. It makes him look like he has fleas. “Can’t say I have.”

  “That’s because there was no massacre when there could have been. Spirit storm, but everyone sheltered inside a single house that had been covered in runes highlighted with yellow resin. They came out after the heirs had beaten back the storm, and every building was flattened except for the one they’d taken shelter in.”

  The captain’s eyes bugged. “I’ll get you the resin.”

  “And a cooking can, to melt it.”