The Poisoned Crown

by Amanda Hemingway

  He had to go up for air again, dive again, anchor himself to the bridge while he tugged and strained at her bonds. And then just as he released her wrist—one wrist, the other was still in its shackle—he saw the claws advancing from the far side, not just one pair but several, a phalanx of lobsters rising over the rocks, relentless and hungry. He fumbled for a weapon, lobbed a stone at them, but the water slowed its trajectory and it fell short. The pounding in his ears told him he had to breathe, though his fear of the water had vanished in other fears. Denaero clutched at him with a whimper of terror.

  And then something swooped in front of him, a gray shape shadow-spotted, part seal, part man. The saw-edged pincers drew blood—he saw the thread of it thinning to a mist in the water—but the foremost lobster was smashed against the bridge, and the corpse became a weapon to turn on the rest, knocking them off the rock.

  “You free—the fish-girl!” called Nokosha. “I’ll keep these—at bay!”

  Nathan surfaced, breathed, plunged. The second knot was harder, a tangle of thongs snarled together. He lost count of how often he had to go up for air. Nokosha said “Can’t you get a move on?” and came to look, but his fingers were thicker than Nathan’s and less agile, and after a brief attempt he returned to his fight with the marauding lobsters, still wielding his first victim like a club. Now he was having to dart from one end of the bridge to the other as more and more of the creatures swarmed up from the deep. He couldn’t maintain the defense on both flanks: they were too many for him. Nathan was forced to abandon the second knot, lunging out with a chunk of broken coral that cracked instantly between crushing pincers. He drew back, weaponless, tried another kick, and nearly lost a toe. Denaero gripped him with her free arm, gasped: “Don’t leave me!”

  Darkness rushed up from below—jaws champed—the attacking lobster was bisected in a single bite. Nathan glimpsed the sweep of a body as long as a barge, a reptilian maw lavishly trimmed with teeth, the flat glare of a fish. Giant flippers propelled it through the water; a whiplash tail flicked against the rock, dislodging more lobsters. Glancing down, he saw it was not alone. Beneath the bridge another similar shape was dive-bombing the march. He might have been relieved, but for the horror in Denaero’s voice.

  “Icthauryon!” she cried.

  The enormous head came around again—an alligator head, only several sizes larger, with eyes like dinner plates. Nokosha leapt in front of them, flourishing his lobster-club—there was a crunch, and most of the lobster was gone. Nathan realized he had to breathe and kicked up to the surface, hoping nothing took his legs off in transit.

  “What’s happening?” Ezroc demanded. “I thought I saw—”

  “Don’t ask.”

  Back down again. Nathan tried to focus on the snaggle of leather-wrack but it was impossible. The icthauryon dived under the bridge: he saw its hide, crusted with barnacles, ridged and pitted like old armor, discolored with parasitic growths. He thought, fleetingly: It doesn’t have any arrangement with cleaner fish—then its tail lashed the cliff, and the rocks shook. It made a U-turn, scooped up a lobster, spitting out shell fragments like bits of pottery, returning to Denaero out of curiosity, or irritation, or greed. Nokosha had drawn his knife and hacked off a branch of coral—most selkies go unarmed, since their whole-body change makes carrying weapons impractical, but he kept the knife in a sheath strapped beneath arm or flipper. As the alligator gape rushed toward him he rammed the branch down its throat. He may be a pain in the butt, but he’s brave, Nathan thought appreciatively. The head twisted from side to side—blood seeped from cuts in the tongue and palate. It appeared to be choking—but its bite was too strong, the branch crumbled, it returned to the attack. Nokosha was running out of ideas. Denaero wrenched at the remaining shackle as if trying to tear her own hand off.

  Then Nathan saw the shark. A great white, seven yards from nose to tail, speeding out of the blue like a torpedo. He could make out the saddle lashed to its back, the bit clamped in its jaws. Its rider was leaning forward, his tail looped over its flank, his torso covered in jointed plates, his face visored with scorpion shell. He held the reins in one hand, a javelin in the other. As the icthauryon veered toward him he threw; the blood-coral tip plunged deep into its eye. Almost before the shaft left his grip he had plucked another from behind the saddle and was ready to throw again. The shark swung aside even as the alligator head flinched—the fish’s mouth snapped like a gin trap, taking a piece from the monster’s flipper.

  “Raagu!” Denaero said. “Uraki on Raagu!”

  Nathan had never thought he’d be happy to see a great white.

  Nokosha—he suspected—had never thought he’d be happy to see a merman. He shot upward for air—selkies need to breathe roughly every twenty minutes—while Nathan yanked at the leatherwrack with renewed energy, breaking off only to glance at the conflict beyond the bridge. Maddened by its injuries, the icthauryon arced and writhed, teeth clashing on nothing, just missing the flick of Raagu’s tail, the outstretched arm of the warrior. A second javelin was embedded in its neck, but it seemed to have done little damage. Then its mate surged up from below, abandoning the lobster hunt, coming in for the kill. The sharkrider darted aside at the last moment, almost trapped against the cliff—the two monsters thudded into the rocks again and again, shaking the bridge to its foundations. Nathan finally felt the knot begin to give, but he was nearly out of breath and time. He couldn’t hang on any longer—he would have to go up again—

  The selkie was back, a gray seal-streak diving straight down onto the injured icthauryon. Somehow, he latched on behind the head, jerking the javelin free. Then he thrust it deep into the neck at the base of the skull, sawing the shaft from side to side, working it inward—severing the spinal cord, shutting down its nervous system, blanking out its brain … A red cloud billowed upward, obscuring the selkie from view. The thrashing body grew still, drifting into the abyss. The other icthauryon turned aside from its prey to follow; nature allows little loyalty to the dead, and this was an easier meal. The lobsters, Nathan guessed, would take their share. He went up for a mouthful of air, returned to his task.

  Nokosha had emerged from the blood-cloud and crouched close to Denaero; the sharkrider hovered beyond the bridge.

  “You saved my life,” Uraki said. “When we meet in the battle, I will remember it.”

  “Ditto and ditto,” said the selkie.

  They ought to have a beer, and bond, Nathan thought wryly. But Widewater was a beer-free zone.

  “The king ordered me to kill her,” Uraki went on, with a jerk of his head at Denaero.

  “My father ordered you—? He can’t have—”

  “He asked me to make it quick and painless. He didn’t want you to suffer.”

  “I’m not suffering!” raged Denaero. “I just want to get out of this—” She tugged at the manacle. “Why didn’t he order you to set me free? Why do people have to be so tragic about everything?”

  “What will you tell him?” Nokosha had moved between Uraki and the mermaid, as if prepared to protect her. Nathan wondered if the gesture was instinctive.

  “I will tell him … she didn’t suffer. Take her north with you. See to it she eats fireflowers to warm her blood or the cold will kill her.”

  “Is that what you did on the raid?”

  How Uraki might have responded Nathan never knew. That was the point when the knot unraveled, and he and Denaero headed for the surface. And now at last he could breathe again—breathe at leisure in the bliss of his own element—gulping the air like wine, hanging on to the albatross for support. Ezroc had seen most of the battle, but the action had taken place too far down for him to help. Denaero hugged him, then hugged Nathan, her small naked breasts squeezed against his chest. Nathan felt a flicker of relief—slightly tinged with regret—that he had worn his T-shirt: at least they weren’t skin to skin.

  Then Nokosha emerged, without Uraki.

  “Where did he go?” Denaero asked.

 
“He went,” the selkie said curtly. “Back to his people. His war. I’m stuck with you. A spoiled child who’s betrayed her kin and her kind— oh, and the legwalker, who’s no use to anyone.”

  “He freed Denaero,” Ezroc snapped. “His fingers are nimbler than yours.”

  “Very well,” Nokosha said with what might have been a shrug if it had been above the water. “But now they’re both just baggage. This whole expedition has been a waste of time. I need to get home. I, too, have a war to fight.”

  “Wrong,” said Nathan.

  “What?”

  “You’re not going to fight the war, you’re going to stop it.”

  “How?” asked Denaero.

  “I’m not exactly sure—”

  “That’s a surprise,” said Nokosha. “If you want to stop the war, don’t talk to me. It’s the merfolk who are attacking us. You’re the one who brought news of it—and I’ve no intention of calling off the defense.”

  “Why did you bring him?” Denaero asked Ezroc. “He’s not as nice as Keerye. Or as handsome.”

  Nathan gave her hair a yank in the hope she would take the hint and shut up.

  “Nefanu is the one starting the war,” he reminded them. “Without her shamans to stir things up, the king would never have made a move. So it’s Nefanu we have to target.”

  “You want to challenge the Queen of the Sea?” For once, Nokosha was taken aback. “You can’t even swim properly.”

  “He’s doing fine,” Ezroc said. “Go on, Nathan. What’s your plan?”

  “I haven’t got one yet,” Nathan conceded. “But I need to get the Iron Crown—the Crown of Death—from the caverns of air. Suppose we could unblock the entrance somehow? Then the air would rush out, and the sea would sink, and the islands would return.”

  “How would that stop the war?” Nokosha said.

  “It would create one hell of a diversion. Nefanu would have a lot more to worry about than destroying the northfolk, and the upheaval would throw everyone off their stride. I know it’s a long shot, but have you got a better idea?”

  “Fight!” the selkie snarled.

  “Only if we have to,” Ezroc said. “If there’s another way—”

  “You’re psychotic,” Nathan told Nokosha. “You and Uraki both. Two of a bloodthirsty kind. You could have been friends back there—you nearly were—but you’ll grab any excuse to butcher each other, because that’s the way you are. It’s the human in you—seals and fish manage to exist side by side. Only people kill.”

  “We’re going north,” the selkie said, as if concluding the debate. “You can come, or vanish back to your own world—I really don’t care. With any luck you’ll drown here and we’ll be rid of you.”

  “I can’t carry three,” Ezroc pointed out.

  “I’m not going,” said Denaero. “It’s too cold up on the Great Ice. There are places here I can hide. Anyway, Nathan will need me to find the caverns of air.”

  “Do you know how to get in?” Nathan asked her.

  “Of course. It’s meant to be a secret, but it’s the sort of secret that everyone knows. Only it’ll be far too deep for you.”

  “Drown him,” Nokosha repeated grimly, swinging himself onto the albatross’s back. Insofar as a bird can assume a facial expression, Ezroc looked annoyed. “We’re going home. I have a battle to plan.”

  “Any fool can start a war,” Nathan said with contempt. “It takes brains to stop one.”

  “I’m not starting it. Drown him!” He kicked Ezroc, who twisted his head and clipped his beak within an inch of the selkie’s face.

  “I’ll be back,” said the albatross, beating his wings against the water. “This one’s no help to us. Keerye would’ve tried …”

  “Don’t talk about Keerye!”

  They took off in mid-argument, describing a wide circle around Nathan and the mermaid. “I’ll—be back!” Ezroc called.

  “Be careful!” cried Denaero, who was evidently learning caution from recent disaster. “I’ll send you a message by smallfish!”

  “Don’t thank me for saving your skin!” said Nokosha.

  “I won’t!” Denaero retorted.

  Then the bird swung northward, racing away on a single wingbeat, darkening to a silhouette that dwindled and vanished into the huge blue of the sky. Nathan was left treading water beside the mermaid, wondering what to do next.

  “I’m getting awfully tired,” he said.

  “I’ll hold you up,” Denaero promised, swimming closer.

  Nathan experienced a brief panic at the proximity of her nakedness, but the twinge was lost in his general exhaustion. All the diving down, and holding his breath, and fighting his fear of being underwater—a fear now gone forever—had worn him out. He felt sleep washing over him, drawing him down into the sea. He tried to say, I’ll be back as Ezroc had, but he never knew if he managed it. The dark took him, bearing him back to his own world, leaving Denaero alone on the borders of the reef.

  IT TOOK some time for Hazel to be satisfied with the potion; she knew she could not afford to get it wrong. According to her phantom instructor, the final result should be clear, with a slight greenish tinge, and her first two attempts were both cloudy and murky, one of them a sinister tint of purple. She tipped them down the loo, hoping there was nothing living in the sewers that would be affected by drinking them, murmuring a deactivating spell as she tugged the handle to flush. Then, back in her room, she started again. It would have been simpler to work in the attic, as Effie Carlow had—there was more space—but she was slightly superstitious about it. Effie had told her she had inherited the Gift, the witchcraft gene, her words malevolent as a curse, as if she were ill-wishing her own great-grandchild, condemning her to a future of solitude and madness. Working in what had been Effie’s spellroom would, Hazel felt, somehow compound the curse, turning her into everything she feared to become. In her bedroom, whatever magic she did was hers, and hers alone.

  Besides, it was in the attic she had once seen Nenufar’s head emerge from a basin of river water, and the horror of that moment had stayed with her, so she could not even enter there without a chill in her heart.

  She mixed the ingredients of the potion in a glass bowl she had borrowed from the kitchen, murmuring the spellwords, thinking it would have been better, or at least more dramatic, if she’d had a cauldron. Fortunately, the mixture didn’t require heating, though she knew when she got it right the bowl would grow warm toward the end. She had raided Bartlemy’s garden for a couple of the less well-known herbs, waiting till he was busy elsewhere, not wanting to tell him what she was up to. When the charm was completed—when she knew it had worked—then she would tell him. If she was going to fail, she preferred to keep it to herself.

  This time she concentrated harder, making sure she spoke the incantation at the appropriate moment, watching for color changes as each new ingredient was added. At one point the contents of the bowl turned black and smelled like a whole harbor full of dead fish; then it went bright green, and there was a far-off ripple of music, very fluid in tone, as if the instrument was playing underwater. And then at the last the liquid changed to a sparkling clarity, and she knew this was it.

  As the spell climaxed, Hazel did not see the pipe-cleaner doll charring and crumbling into a few flakes of ash—did not notice, while she turned to retrieve the crystal vial, how those flakes drifted into the bowl, swirling around in the potion, congealing at the bottom. But when she looked again, there was the pearl. She poured the liquid through a funnel into the bottle and it rolled out, caught in her palm, a tiny, perfect sphere of rainbow gray, its sheen like oil pollution on a puddle. Hazel had never really liked pearls. She associated them with middle-aged dowdiness, with women in cashmere twinsets and country accents, running fetes for charity and talking about hunting. But this pearl was different. Not just because it was gray—the color of smoke and shadows—but because it looked, somehow, magical. Never trust anything that looks magical, Bartlemy had told her, b
ecause it probably is. But finding a magical object in a magic potion was to be expected, even if it hadn’t featured in the original specification. Finding an unmagical object there—that would have been weird.

  “What do I do with it?” Hazel wondered aloud, glaring at the sheet of paper from which her latest instructions had already faded.

  After a moment’s thought, she repeated the question in Atlantean.

  Place the pearl in the bottle, the writing told her, rippling its way across the page. Without the pearl, the potion will not be viable. The bottle with the pearl must be carried at all times. It is a talisman.

  And then, when the page had cleared, two more words wrote themselves emphatically across it.

  Tell Nathan.

  The words stayed there for a long time before they began to dissipate.

  Something about that final edict made Hazel uncomfortable. She put the pearl in the bottle, corked it, sealed the cork with a magical Command. Then she sent Nathan a text telling him to come and see her as soon as possible, it was important, she had a surprise for him—but all the while there was a niggle at the back of her mind, a dim consciousness that something was not quite right. She went over what she had done from her own notes—Check, Bartlemy always said. Check, double-check, triple-check. The precise wording of a spell may vary, but the elements never do. A tiny error can be catastrophic—but she didn’t think she’d made any mistakes this time. She failed to register the absence of the Nenufar doll from the clutter in her room. After all, it was leftovers from a charm long worn out; she had no more use for it.

  Some spell-debris is like radioactive waste, Bartlemy had said, tipping the contents of his brass basin down the sink. Be very careful how you dispose of it.