by Jeff Wheeler
Lila-dian carefully pulled the blinders from Chellis’s face and scraped her eyelids to remove any dried or excess tears. Chellis opened her eyes slowly, wincing at the light, blinking away the blurry images twirling in her vision. They settled, too pale and too bright.
Lila-dian placed the blinders in a rectangular, waterproof case held out by the guard on Chellis’s left, who carried it from the collection room like a Hagori infant, newly born and weak-necked.
Chellis’s eyes adjusted. The collection room was small and round, a white-tiled cylinder with one exit, one bench, and one large vat that swallowed the center of the floor. Two stations, marked with large metals Ts, bordered the vat. These were where Merdans knelt to cry their tears if their dian expected a flood of them. For Temas, Chellis had given them a flood.
She glowered at Lila-dian, who met the expression with an empty face. May the cursed woman slip in Chellis’s tears and be swallowed by the ocean itself.
He was only a boy.
Chellis dropped her gaze as Lila-dian wrapped the leash around her own forearm. It had been such a horrid wound on Temas’s neck. If only Chellis could have dodged the guards. If only she could have reached Temas’s limp form, perhaps she could have wept enough to mend his severed windpipe and seal the split skin. Maybe she could have saved him.
But no Hagori boy was worth more than a soldier on the front. No. Her tears—tears shed for Temas—would be used to mend murderers and nourish the men and women who permitted the killing.
If only Chellis could die herself . . . but the warmongers kept too close a watch for that.
Lila-dian yanked the chain and tugged Chellis toward the door, the remaining guard trailing behind them. Each step grated her skin, which had gone dry from her long suspension over the vat. The fins stretching from Chellis’s ribs to her upper arms chafed as though coated with sand. The scales over her shoulders would surely flake free if she lifted her arms. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d lost scales. But the Hagori didn’t care. Merdan scales were worthless in their coffers.
Her bare feet padded down the marble hallway, just a step behind Lila-dian. Chellis stared at the back of the woman’s knees, clothed with the fine beige cotton of her uniform. Chellis sported only a short-skirted, shapeless dress, threadbare and patched in three places. She hated that dress. In the sea, she had worn nothing. No clothes, no chains.
Temas.
She didn’t want to go back to the room where Temas had died. To the empty bed devoid of his warmth, or the hot nights deprived of his delicate snores. Chellis bit her tongue. I will not cry. I will not. She wouldn’t go back to the vat, even if Lila-dian did something else horrendous to her.
Lila-dian tugged up on the chain, halting Chellis’s stride. The guard took a post a few feet from the door to Chellis’s chambers as Lila-dian’s stubby fingers selected a key from a small ring fished from her pocket. The bolt locking the door snapped back, and Lila-dian shoved Chellis through, pushed her head down, and unhooked the chain from Chellis’s collar.
The walls shaped the room into a perfect square, just large enough to fit a cot on one end and an oval tub on the other. Merdan bodies were not made for the desert, so they had to soak in saltwater—a Hagori potion that felt nothing like the sea—once a day. Over the vat, Chellis had been swabbed with the solution twice. In her room, only her dian could turn on the water.
That’s when Chellis saw it—the rusty, almost-brown stain on the thin, dingy carpet. Uneven circles of old blood, one as wide as her fist, some droplets barely more than mist.
Blood. Temas’s blood. It stained the carpet. No one had even bothered to clean it up.
“You’ll have a later meal because of the new rotation,” Lila-dian said as she wound the leash around her left hand. “Sit quietly until I return with it, and I’ll let you bathe before bed.”
The bloodstains formed shapes before Chellis’s eyes: abalones, stars, eyes, mouths. In them she saw Temas’s smile as he told a joke Chellis didn’t understand.
“Naki?”
Dead. They had killed him, and her dian had blinded her from the scene as soon as the tears began, face as smooth as the marble floors in the hallway.
“Naki, are you listening?”
Chellis straightened, ripping her gaze from the blood.
“Do you need to go back to the vat?”
Chellis met her dian’s dark eyes and did something only a Hagori did.
She lunged for them.
The attack surprised the dian and knocked her off balance. They both tumbled to the ground, Chellis on top.
Chellis didn’t have nails, but she pressed the tips of her thumbs into Lila-dian’s eyes. The Hagori woman cried out, signaling the guard at the door.
“I hate you!” Chellis screamed in Hagori, slapping her dian’s face one way, then the other. “I hate you, I hate you!”
Lila-dian screamed. The guard’s rough hands seized Chellis’s shoulders and jerked her back, but not before Chellis grabbed two fistfuls of Lila-dian’s dark hair. The guard heaved Chellis up and away, and the hair tore free from the dian’s scalp.
Chellis flailed in the guard’s grip, still clutching the hair in her webbed fingers.
“I hate you!” she shouted, tearless. “The Moray devour you in pieces! He was only a boy!”
Two more guards scrambled into the room as Lila-dian blubbered and scrambled to her feet. One of them drew a leather-wrapped club and whipped it across Chellis’s crown. The room spun. Her limbs died. The guard holding her dropped her to the ground, and Lila-dian spat onto her cheek.
At least, Chellis thought as her heavy eyelids closed, at least I didn’t cry.
* * *
Chellis lay on the floor of her room just three feet from her cot. The Hagori had manacled her wrists, binding her arms behind her back. Metal cuffs hugged her ankles as well, crushing the fins there, and a rough, taut rope bound her knees to her collar, forcing her to remain in a curled position. She could throw her weight enough to roll from one side to the other and relieve her shoulders, but nothing could soothe the painful arch of her back, nor the hunger that had become almost sentient in her stomach, rolling and growling, futilely struggling to claw its way into the dark, dry world.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when the chamber doors opened—the room bore no windows, and blinders covered her eyes, though she had withheld her tears, save a few.
She listened as carpet-muted footsteps filled the room. Three . . . no, four pairs, followed by voices softly mumbling Hagori. Two pairs of feet moved toward her, and deft hands removed the blinders from her eyes. Chellis blinked. A Hagori man stepped out of the room to bottle what little she had wept.
A key pushed into the chains binding her wrists, and an unfamiliar voice—a man’s voice carrying a Hagori accent—said, “Move slowly when these come off. You’ll be sore.”
Chellis strained to see who spoke behind her, but the rope binding her neck to her knees wouldn’t allow it. Heavy steps—a guard—neared, but the voice stopped them.
“It’s all right,” he said.
The guard replied, “She’s gone wild. I think it’s best if—”
“I said it’s all right,” the voice repeated. Chellis saw the man’s tan arms as he leaned over her to loosen the rope. He had a small, straight scar on the knuckle of his right index finger. “You can go; I’ll handle her from here.”
“But, sir—”
“Stand outside the door if you must,” he said, reaching for Chellis’s feet. She held very still as he unlocked the manacles there. “But I’ll not have you scaring her.”
Though free from her binds, Chellis waited for the guards to retreat and shut the door before extending her aching legs and rolling over to see the stranger.
“Careful now,” he said. His hands posed to help, but he didn’t touch her. Chellis’s back cracked as she sat up. She winced and rubbed her wrists.
The man scooted away from her. He was young—younger than Li
la-dian, but older than Chellis’s usual guards—and unlike most Hagori, he wore his hair short. But like all Hagori, he had dark brown eyes and tan skin. A bronze loop pierced his left ear halfway down the cartilage. His full lips didn’t sneer.
“My name is Ahad,” he said. “I’ll be your new dian.”
Still massaging her wrists, Chellis eyed him, silent.
“Lila-dian has been reassigned,” he explained. “Are you hurt?”
How could she not be?
Ahad stood up without an answer and moved to the door, where a tray of food sat on the floor. It held the usual bowl of mixed-seafood slop—whatever the citadel chefs didn’t use in their delicacies—and a wooden cup of true seawater. Ahad . . . dian . . . placed it before Chellis and moved to the tub on the other side of the room.
He measured tall for a Hagori, very tall, and had a narrow build. He wore the dian’s uniform of a gray wrap-like shirt and loose beige pants that bound tightly to the calf.
He inserted his key into the wall by the tub spout and turned on the water.
Chellis’s skin ached as she saw the crystal liquid pour into the tub, but her nose drew her eyes to the bowl of food. No amount of defiance could subdue her hunger. She clasped the bowl with both hands and lifted it to her mouth, swallowing whole chunks of fish hearts and shrimp heads. She coughed, almost choking, and ate more.
Lila-dian would have scolded her for “manners.” Ahad-dian said nothing.
She guzzled down the seawater, relishing the briny taste on her tongue.
Her stomach churned.
The cup toppled from her webbed fingers and smacked against the tray. She pressed one hand to her stomach and the other to her mouth. She swallowed as the slop sloshed in her belly.
Poison? Lila-dian had poisoned her food twice before, leaving her retching for a full day. Just to harvest tears.
Chellis glowered at Ahad-dian, who held a small sack of salt in his hands.
He merely smiled at her.
“Eating so much on an empty stomach will make anyone sick,” he said.
She stared, palm pressed to her lips, willing her stomach still. Not poisoned?
Ahad-dian poured salt into the bath and shut off the water. “Do you understand me?”
Chellis’s stomach settled somewhat, and she dropped her hand from her mouth. Of course she understood. The Merdans all learned Landwalker languages, Hagori and Nakanese and Trinnish, in addition to their own dialect and signed speech. Did the slave trainers know so little about her dwindling people?
She merely nodded.
Ahad-dian stepped away from the tub, but gestured to it with his hand. “If you want it. You look . . . uncomfortable. You scared the others. Fear leads them to neglect; you’ll have to forgive them.”
Chellis eyed him, mulling over his words. No Hagori spoke so politely. Even Temas hadn’t. Was it a new dian tactic? What more could they possibly do to her?
“What’s this?” Ahad-dian asked, moving toward her. She backed up into the cot, but he stopped halfway across the room, crouching down on the carpet.
Her eyes followed his, and her ribs involuntarily contracted around her heart.
The bloodstains. Temas.
Ahad-dian lifted a five-inch switchblade from his belt, identical to the knife Lila-dian carried. The knife that had left long, thin scars down Chellis’s back and breasts. Chellis held her breath.
“Not Merdan blood,” Ahad-dian commented, almost more to himself than to her. Merdan blood flowed blue and left gray stains—stains that blended well with the dingy carpet. “And too old for Lila.”
He glanced at her, his eyes curious. She saw a dark sort of light in their depths. Sympathy? But no Hagori knew that emotion, especially dians.
He stabbed the tip of the blade into the carpet and dragged it around the stains, cutting a square piece that revealed stone underneath. He stood, returned the knife to his belt, and stuck the carpet under his arm.
“What on earth did she do to you?” he asked, though he looked ahead at nothing in particular. When his dark gaze shifted to Chellis, he said, “You’re welcome to the tub, Naki. I can’t leave the room, but it’s there.”
Chellis’s skin itched. She stood, wincing again at the stiffness of her joints, and padded toward the tub. She discarded her rough dress and slid into the water, sighing as its coolness climbed up her skin, soothing away chafes and flakes.
“No one will expect harvesting from you today,” Ahad-dian said. “And hopefully not tomorrow. Your health might be forfeit, but even the overlords won’t risk your life. And they won’t question my judgment. They haven’t in the past, at least.”
Chellis smoothed back her thin hair and studied the dian with wide eyes. Ahad-dian seemed sincere. Had the great Moray finally heard her pleas and granted her a fraction of relief?
“I recommend you rest after you bathe, Naki,” Ahad-dian said. “You’ll need it.”
“My name is Chellis,” she dared to say.
Ahad-dian straightened, his eyebrows raised. “So you do speak.”
Chellis sank deeper into the water.
Ahad-dian offered a small smile. “A strange name,” he said, “but if you prefer it, I will use it.”
She had that option? “I do.”
“Chellis, then,” he replied. “I recommend you rest after you bathe, Chellis.”
How strange to hear someone else say her name. Her true name.
Even Temas hadn’t done that.
* * *
For two and a half days, Chellis had peace.
She did not leave her room, she did not see Lila-dian, and she did not cry, save for a short time the night after Ahad-dian’s arrival, when she wept once more for Temas. She hid her tears in the seams of her dress and over her own scrapes and bruises. Though Lila-dian didn’t know it, she had taught Chellis how to weep in complete silence.
Before two and a half days could become three, Ahad-dian came to the small chamber with a kelp-green card in his hand—a Merdan summons. Or, rather, an irrefutable command for more tears.
Chellis eyed the card, her throat tightening. But Ahad-dian said nothing of it, merely set it on the tub rim. He sat beside it. Chellis, on the cot, picked knots from her hair with her fingertips.
“What is the ocean like?” Ahad-dian asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Your ocean, not ours.”
Chellis blinked. She searched the question for tricks, but she found none. Then again, Ahad-dian had proved himself—so far—a dian who didn’t employ tricks, unlike Lila-dian.
She answered, “It is all the same ocean.”
“Is it?” Ahad-dian countered, his voice sounding like feathers on a morning breeze. “On a map, maybe. But my ocean is the surface, the layer of water that parts before the bow and reflects the sky. The water that breaks when I cast a line, that ripples around the string. Your ocean is all the layers beneath, where the ripples don’t touch. It’s the sand and the coral and all the dark miles I don’t see. Please, tell me. What is that ocean like?”
Chellis’s hands dropped from her hair, and she studied the Hagori man. Perhaps for too long, but he didn’t chide her for it. He met her gaze, his expression unwrinkled.
“You are not a dian,” she said.
He laughed. “Then what am I?”
“Not a dian.”
His back straightened. He rubbed one hand over his shaved chin. “Not always a dian, but dians are made, not born. I’ve been a dian these past three years.”
Chellis inched forward on her cot. Only Temas had ever spoken so many words to her. She nearly forgot the summoning card on the tub rim. “Why?”
Ahad-dian smiled, but it was a sad smile that didn’t move his cheeks. “Because I cannot fight. I have Widow’s Blood—I bleed until there’s nothing left.”
Chellis narrowed her eyes. “But our tears would heal the wound.”
“A waste of tears. Too many for one man,” he replied, and shrugged. “And so I became a dian.�
��
“I would heal you,” Chellis said, glancing to the card. “But I don’t choose who receives my tears. Not anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Ahad-dian offered. “But why do you say I am not a dian?”
“Because you say ‘please.’ And because you apologize. Because, so far, your words are too soft for a dian.”
He chuckled.
Chellis lowered herself to the floor and folded her legs under her, careful not to pinch the fins leafing from them. “The ocean is vast, with no walls. No up and down, silent save for song. It is light and free and peaceful, like swimming in sleep itself. It is cool and comforting, filled with life. There are no cages, no locks. No wars. It is a holy space.”
Now Ahad-dian studied her. She wondered what he saw. He said, “You must miss it terribly.”
“It sings to me through the desert, through the citadel,” she said, glancing to the walls around her. “It ails me more than Hagori hands.”
“They do wrong to hurt you.”
The words shocked her, yet dared Chellis to embolden her speech. “They do wrong to keep me at all.”
Ahad-dian did not respond. He picked up the green card and held it in his hands. “I’ve tried guntha weed—the liquid in its leaves burns the eyes and makes them tear. I’ve tried salt and lemon and onion, but the tears that fall are just that. Tears. They can’t heal. They’re not the right kind of tears, the ones that form from deep within. Only those have the power to heal men.”
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Chellis’s eyes remained on the card. When she lifted them, she saw that Ahad-dian watched it too.
“Let me try,” she pleaded, curling her webbed fingers into fists. “Let me try it on my own, no whips or words, no incentives. Let me cry my own tears.”
Ahad-dian gazed at her. “Can you?”
She nodded, already feeling the sting in her eyes. “I have enough in my heart to give you what you need.”
She looked to the missing square of carpet where Temas’s blood had spilled.
“All right,” Ahad-dian conceded, pulling blinders from his belt. “I will let you try.”
He hooked the fine chain leash to the back of the iron ring that had encircled Chellis’s neck since the Hagori slavers pulled her from the sea. He did not jerk the chain or keep it taut, merely held its end as he guided Chellis into the marble hallway, past the two bulky men who still guarded her door.
