The Hidden Icon

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  “One must be undone by want to understand it, spiritual or otherwise.” All of the strange heat I had felt while he told Charrum’s tale was gone, forgotten in my irritation.

  Instead of giving me the argument I wanted, Gannet said nothing, parting the curtain and leaving me. I’d never felt more alone. I deflated into myself, head and shoulders rolling forward in defeat. How was it that I had lost, or felt that I had, when he refused to engage me? There was a desire in me to make some impact on him, on everyone.

  In Cascar, I would have my opportunity.

  Chapter 9

  Not more than a wheel of the great barge rolled into Cascar before I could feel that these people weren’t anything like me, or anything like Morainn’s people, either. In the streets men and women mixed paints that changed color with the heat and temperament of the person upon whom they were applied, children bore torches as spindly as their forearms that gave off a green and gold light courtesy of the oils they burned, and strange fruits and spiced meats piled carts on every corner. I was hungry for things I had never known existed.

  They extended nothing more than the resigned welcome of the conquered when Morainn’s force entered their city, and it was Antares who negotiated our passage on two vessels. As it had happened in my home, so would a contingent of the guard remain here, as well. But I knew they weren’t needed. I did not sense the murderous drive for revenge among them, nothing like the high heat of the recently subdued, like my brother. Even if they had known, there was no spirit of rebellion here.

  I could not see the open water, not yet, for all I could hear it, a great humming, churning thing that nearly caused me to lose my feet for trembling. We walked to the harbor now, Gannet and a veiled Morainn and her handmaids, a number of soldiers enough to guard me and the others, too. In the faces of the Cascari I saw now a wary curiosity. Even in the children I saw it, an uncanny criticism that was not cold, but steady. They had the feeling there was need of it.

  A high wall surrounded the harbor, and here was for me the first of many miracles. Visitors who traveled by sea were welcomed by a lush garden, flowering trees and plants of such broad, waxy leaves I felt sure they must be something mocked from cloth. As we walked I brushed against them, and they felt as solid as if I had met with a body in passing. I shied from touching them directly, however, as though their spell might be broken.

  Look up, Han’dra Eiren.

  I stiffened at the increasingly familiar and yet still so unnatural feeling of being not quite alone in my own mind. Gannet’s presence, however slight, was like a shadow cast, but a shadow with such depth and dimension that it seemed a hole I might fall into.

  But I did as he asked, and was rewarded for it.

  I did not at first realize what it was that I was looking at. Here was an expanse that seemed at first glance to be like the sands at deep dusk, still and tinged with blue, but this color was so deep. As I looked it seemed to shift in depth and in shade. Such a vastness of water I had never before seen, not even when I had visited one of the great well caches beneath our capitol. It was as boundless as the sky, and I approached gravely, as though before me were some altar at which I was meant to pray.

  I let out a breath. I hadn’t even realized I was holding it.

  Some authority must have emptied the harbor, for when I tore my eyes away from the sea I didn’t note anyone at work or commerce but a few folks near two stout vessels where a man waited for us. His face split in a suspicious smile.

  “We expected you two days ago.” His measured gaze passed between us, narrowing further. “And I see the rumors are true. Is the princess your prisoner or should I treat her as a guest?”

  It did not surprise me that news of my curious departure from our capitol had reached this place, but I wasn’t sure how to manage this man’s candor. There was a pause so potent it almost stilled the splash of the waves against the dock, and Morainn was quick to fill the space given for someone to speak.

  “We won’t be needing chains, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I couldn’t see her face behind the veil, but I felt her agitation.

  “Of course, dresha,” the man insinuated, but there was nothing deferential about his address. Perhaps these people were not as resigned as I had thought.

  As he turned to ready what I now took to be the vessels that would carry us, I edged toward Gannet, hesitant.

  “It’s not what I expected,” I said. Gannet followed my gaze and we stood together, both looking out as though this edge of the world was beyond our scope of understanding. What Gannet’s life had been like, where he had traveled, and the idea that anything was as much a mystery to him as he was to me was an amusing one.

  “It wasn’t enough for my father,” he said quietly, eyes behind the mask darting from the view to my face. The others had drifted away, leaving the pair of us relatively alone on the pier. “Nor will Aleyn be. Though I can’t fault his nature, not when it brought us to you.”

  The way he said it sounded almost as though he meant to say brought me to you, which surprised and alarmed me in the same instant.

  “I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so ready to welcome Theba into their home.”

  “I wouldn’t use the word ‘welcome,’ exactly,” Gannet mused. If he had been any other man, I would not have been surprised by the slight tugging of his lips into a smile. But with Gannet, I was sure I imagined it. “For your protection, it is best if you’re known only as Han’dra Eiren until we reach Jhosch.”

  He named their capitol and deflated my spirit in one breath. I looked down and could see the water churning underneath the warped planks.

  “Should I worry?” I was sure that if I could see them, Gannet would have quirked a brow.

  “You should exercise caution. If you must make yourself anxious to do so, then by all means, worry.”

  The response I felt his was owed died in my throat when Antares came striding down the dock, behind him the last of the soldiers who would be accompanying us and several Cascari servants. I couldn’t brood over Gannet’s words for they began to load our provisions onto the ship, and the soldiers urged us to follow. Nor could I keep my eyes on their spears when the blue unfolding before me demanded two, and both of them wide open. In the waters that lapped at the boat’s sides there was a delicacy and a play of light and foam that belied the great expanse beyond the capability of my eye to focus. I thought of the stories of sirens who lived in the deep, whose eyes bounded upon the waves to the shore and bewitched those foolish enough to gaze too longingly out to sea.

  “I should go with Han’dra Eiren.”

  “I won’t have an icon on my vessel.”

  “You won’t have a choice.”

  Gannet was arguing with the man who had greeted us, his passage to the deck where I now stood with Morainn and Triss blocked by the man’s bulk. The heat wavered over his dark clothing, but Gannet would not be dissuaded. Neither, it seemed, would the man be. If I’d felt Gannet’s will even moderately oppressive, it was nothing compared to the battle that was brewing before me.

  “I will go with Han’dra Eiren, if you are concerned for her safety.” Antares strode forward, dodging expertly between the two without seeming to slight either of them. An impressive feat, for an armored man. I could see in Gannet’s face that this would not satisfy him, but now it was Morainn who interceded.

  “We’ll be but one night and one day out, Gannet. We can manage without you.”

  Her words were cold, but I didn’t need to see her face to know that she didn’t mean them to be. Morainn’s station demanded such a response. Whatever Gannet had been about to say, he swallowed it, his face taking on the sour look of having eaten something spoilt. He turned his back on all of us and walked to the second craft to quarter with the greater portion of the soldiers. They were even less happy with this arrangement than he was, their discomfort a wave to rival those that pounded the far shore. I was surprised by the little anxiety I felt at the though
t of not seeing him for a night and a day, and told myself it was because as irritating as he could be, he was the only one like me.

  Even if I didn’t like who that was.

  The vessel that carried us settled low in the water, but not so low that I did not have to stretch to plunge a finger’s depth into the waves we created as we sped forward, the sail blown back like a belly fat with feasting. The water was cold, and a chill raced from my hand down the whole length of my body. I wondered why Aleynians kept to the dry vapors of the desert when there was so much shore to house us. Did we not have tales of fishermen? Had they come from the Cascari?

  “Would you like me to take you to your quarters now, dresha?”

  Antares hovered at Morainn’s elbow, and she waved him off, just as she had so many sand flies from her lounge on the barge.

  “Not yet. I want to see Aleyn behind us before I go below.”

  She caught my eyes when she said it, and I was sure I imagined the apology I saw there. Her mind was a tangle, or perhaps I was too distracted to see.

  There were men and women crawling over the deck, tugging at ropes and turning great gears that I could only assume contributed to the speed we gathered as we moved into deeper waters. The man who had greeted us, who must have been the captain, gestured for Morainn to come forward, and as though I were another one of her shadows, I followed Triss and Imke. But my eyes were fixed on the water, at least until he started to speak.

  “Beautiful but mighty,” he shouted over the sound of the spray, grinning. His next he aimed at me. “No sandstorm can rival the fury of the sea, not even in the deepest desert.”

  His tone irritated me, as though he were speaking to a child shying from a strange animal.

  “When you have lived to see the deepest desert, then I’ll believe you,” I shouted over the crash of the waves. “And only then.”

  Morainn laughed, clearly enjoying our banter, and she hooked her arm in mine before leading us both to lean against the strong ribs of the boat. I let her. There was an ease and a swell to this sort of travel that I could prefer easily to traveling by foot or barge. It was almost as though I didn’t know how far or how fast I traveled, as though we were steered by powers far greater than could be contained in the captain’s limited guidance. I could see the ship that carried Gannet and the soldiers at a distance from us, but I didn’t waste thoughts on Gannet. It was exhilarating to lean into the growing wind and I tossed my head back, feeling that more than my hair was buoyed on the air that rushed off of the sea. I wanted it to be fuller, faster, and I felt an answering wish, echoed from the depths beneath us.

  A little gasp, part in fear and part in excitement, issued from Morainn’s lips, and she grinned at me.

  “It’s almost as though it’s alive,” she trilled, her giddy expression turned on the captain now, who was looking straight at me. In his face there was the Cascari distrust, an ugly mark upon otherwise handsome features. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t think I liked him, either.

  I inhaled deeply, spray and salt filling my lungs, and when I exhaled the boat rocked. I was surprised: did this power come from the waters or me? It didn’t feel as it had in Re’Kether, that I was the tool and some distant force the master. I was in control. I knew that what I did was dangerous, if I was indeed doing anything, but when I saw the weak look on Triss’ face, pale and tinged with green, there was in me such an absence of compassion that I was divided from the self that I knew. Eiren would have a care for Triss, selfish though she was, and Eiren wouldn’t have gone on to do what I did then.

  But I wasn’t Eiren, not completely.

  I breathed again as though my body housed a great well that I couldn’t fill. The sky darkened and the wind spun like a song, pitching the vessel this way and that. I plunged myself into the middle of my power as one might whisk a raw egg, feeling with every sense the brewing storm, the sea. Morainn’s voice came to me faintly, and when I felt the captain’s rough hands in restraint on my bare shoulders, I brushed him aside as easily as one might a little stone. He was to me even smaller still, nothing but a grain of sand.

  I thrilled, I thrilled, my hands like cresting waves themselves as my mind dipped beneath the water’s surface. I was more than diving, I was within the sea and I would possess it. The boat rocked violently and I could feel the beams splitting beneath my feet, but all of these things were so distant from the desire that consumed me, the desire so much bigger than my body that it must expand and consume the ship, too. I knew that what happened was my doing, but I was powerless to stop it. I didn’t know how. I didn’t even want to.

  My struggle was a tempest, flooding first my heart and then the rest of me, the ship. The cold water shocked me, and though I had raged but a moment before with alien strength I was driven now back to my body. My ankles swam in the sinking ship, needling rain and the screams of my companions pounded against my face and ears. Too swiftly the power fled me, all of my want replaced with horror as Antares and Morainn came suddenly into focus, Morainn dragging Triss to the bow and Antares firing off a crude explosive that flared and stank of minerals. The captain and Imke were lost among the tangle of struggling crew.

  I deserved to be abandoned for what I had done, but Morainn was not as cruel as I was, as I had so briefly become. While Antares lashed himself to Triss, Morainn flew to me, her eyes blazing.

  “Are you Eiren?” She shouted, but before I could consider what she meant, she clapped a hand around my wrist and pulled me to the vessel’s highest point. The waters churned at my thighs, and the panic that rose within me was like a sickness. Would I die for what I had done? This was my fault. Whether it was with another mind or an alien purpose, it didn’t matter. I was like a woman possessed, but I could not excuse my animal heart, the dread goddess that dwelled within. Are you Eiren? I wasn’t sure.

  The captain appeared before us, shouting something we couldn’t hear, but before Morainn and I could reach him a wave struck against the vessel like a fist and she was parted in two. I plunged into the water before I could get a breath, thrashing. Morainn was torn away from me, or me from her.

  Of course I couldn’t swim; I had never been submerged in water before. The roar of my fear filled my ears where the storm had, and my eyes began to burn in the black of the waves. I could see nothing, and though I had the sense at least to shut my lips tight against my last breath, my flailing limbs were useless. I was sinking and too selfish to want anything but to survive, even if it meant living with what parts of me had so recently proved themselves unworthy.

  It grew so quiet that I was sure, so sure, that I would become light enough to rise to the surface again. I saw a glow like a lantern perceived through a colored screen, and a sense of disbelief flared in me, perhaps the last of my senses. The glow dispersed into many focused points of blue-green light, shimmering as they drew near. Only when one of them blinked did my last breath escape me in a bubble of surprise, and when the siren put her scaled hands upon my face, covering my mouth, when her children put forward their hands as though to pluck out my eyes, my hair, but lifted me instead on all sides, what I felt more than anything was fear. By my own power I could drown and die. In their hands I felt the power to drown the whole world, but the will to deny it.

  I knew they would allow me to live. I didn’t know if I deserved to.

  Chapter 10

  Water and sand clotted my lungs, thicker than the blood that pumped sluggish from my heart to my hands and feet. I coughed and sputtered and rolled from the wave that retreated from the shore, dragging the hem of my dress and scrap from the hull of the ship with it. Tangled hair and seawater made it difficult to see, and I scraped both from my eyes. I thought perhaps my sight had been damaged, for though it had been midmorning when we had sailed out, the light now was twilight, purple as a bruise. Tongues of tide licked at my legs and feet, greedy, and I crawled forward until my nails dragged in dry sand. The time that I’d spent in the womb of the sea, her rollicking, wet belly, had seemed no
more than a few minutes. Perhaps there was no such thing as time in the depths where the sirens dwelled.

  I was alive. Their light hands, like the touch of waves, had preserved me and carried me here. The desolation of the beach was a meager comfort, though how far I was from Cascar I didn’t know. A world or years away, no amount of time or distance could be enough for me to accept what I had done and seen. When I had touched the sea and raged at the resistance I met, I had known then that what Gannet claimed was true: I was Theba. The shadowy encounter in Re’Kether had not convinced me, but the delicate brush of the siren’s finned hands had painted me with the certainty of it. I had been my whole life a girl whose heart raced at treachery in stories and shied from it in all worldly encounters, but it seemed I was becoming a woman that yearned for it. Some creature that craved it, at least, if not a woman.

  The waves crashed and withdrew, and I was reminded of my eldest sister, Anise, taking a brush to my hair, the smooth, thick sound as she combed to the roots, the crackle of static when she reached the ends. There was nothing for me but that sound and the sound of my breathing for a few moments, the one sure as the world had made it, the other a ragged interruption. I heard shouting, and figures emerged over the crest of a scrubby hill nearby. I didn’t move as they quickened their pace at the sight of me but stared dumbly, their faces less real even than the siren’s had been.

  It was Antares and Imke, with several soldiers hustling after. Gannet wasn’t with them.

  “Han’dra Eiren!” Antares’ exclamation was followed by hands upon me, pulling me to my feet, and then he simply lifted me bodily from the ground.

  “She will need tending to,” he said calmly, his tone in direct contrast with the wild surprise, the fear, on the faces of his men. “She doesn’t appear harmed, but –”

  “But where has she been?”