by E. S. Bell
Ilior had set down a bowl of water and a clean cloth. Selena knelt beside the woman. Gently, she pulled her hands from her mouth and wiped the blood from her chin.
“Please,” Selena said. “I don’t think I can heal you unless you…show me your wound.”
The woman regarded her with dark blue eyes fringed with black lashes. The firelight caught her orange hair so that it looked aflame itself. She motioned with one gloved hand, miming holding a quill and scribbling.
“You can write?”
The woman nodded.
“But you must be in pain,” Selena said. “Please, let me heal you first.”
This was met with a silent stare.
Selena nodded to the desk and Ilior retrieved quill, ink and piece of parchment. He handed them to the woman who took them from the Vai’Ensai, watching him warily.
“What is your name?” Selena asked.
Quill scribbled on paper.
Cathryn. Cat.
“Very well, Cat. What happened?”
Her hand trembled as she wrote. Bad men. Bad crew. Tried to hide but they found out.
“You’re safe now,” Ilior said, but Cat didn’t appear much comforted.
“Let me see your wound,” Selena said. “I can ease the pain, at least.”
The woman shook her head. Her quill scratched. I am ugly. Uglier now. Tears filled her eyes but she swiped at them with a gloved hand.
Selena thought of her own hideous wound. “You’re not ugly, but…I understand.”
She moved closer to Cat and filled her palm with water from her ampulla, then cupped her hand under the woman’s jaw. With her other hand, she found the moon in the sky and murmured, “Illuria.” The orange glow—as orange as the woman’s hair—emanated along her jaw and throat. Cat slumped with relief and looked at Selena with eyes full of gratitude.
Selena smiled. “Are you hurt elsewhere?” She indicated the gloves. “Your hands?”
Cat shook her head again. Sailor. Pull rigging. Ugly hands too. She wrote faster, quill flying. Then she took the paper and pressed it into Selena’s hands, imploring.
Take me with you.
Merkind’s Wrath
On the dock, snow fluttered about like the white petals of a moth-wing tree. The rising sun was a dull white orb glowing behind a slate-gray sky, and the seas were just as dull. If this late summer morning was as white and cold as winter, Selena wondered, what must deep winter on Isle Nanokar be like?
Then, the sun offers no warmth at all, but merely serves to separate night from day.
Much of the populace came to see them off despite the cold and the early hour. Boris engulfed Selena in his bear-like arms and demanded that they pass through the Ice Isles on their return voyage. Selena smiled with a jaw stiffened with cold and said they’d try.
Captain Tunney declared he was sorry to see them go and Selena was sorry to leave the good man who had shared his island with them. She took her goodbye, embracing him but neglecting to pass any message to him for Byric about the Vai’Ensai translations. She had nothing for Tunney to pass on; she hadn’t asked Ilior about it and decided she never would.
From within the salt-and-wind scented embrace of Tunney, she watched Hilka give Julian a knowing look and a wink, both of which the captain ignored. Selena felt something in her chest tighten, and she quickly looked away from Julian.
Tunney released Selena and clasped Julian’s arm. “Calm seas and fast winds, my friend. And I’ll keep an eye out fer yer scallywags, though don’t know what we’d do iffen we found them, as you’ll be long gone.”
Julian’s gaze flickered to Selena and back. “A good enough reason not to trouble yourself.”
Goodbyes said, they boarded the Black Storm.
Selena, with Niven in tow, followed Julian to the quarterdeck. The captain surveyed his crew hurrying about, preparing for sail.
“Why do you rush?” Selena asked. “What about Cook and Helm?
“What about them?”
Selena stared at him, incredulous. “I’d appeal to your sense of decency but since it appears you’ve misplaced it, I’ll try for pragmatism. How can you sail this ship so short-handed?”
“According to her scribblings, Cat is a sailor,” Julian said, nodding to the flame-haired woman who scaled the main mast with graceful agility. “Seems she wasn’t lying. She claims experience at the helm too, and given that Helm has chosen not to join us, she’ll suit. For now. You insisted she join us, so there you have it. She’ll earn her passage like everyone else.”
“And Cook?”
“Niven can run the galley.”
The adherent gave a start. “I can?”
“Aye,” Julian said. “I was going to appoint Spit but I don’t think he’s the right man for the job.”
Spit, tying down lines at the foremast, spat a wad of brownish spittle onto the planking.
“For obvious reasons.” Julian put two fingers to his mouth and let loose a shrill whistle. Spit turned. The captain made sign with his bruised and swollen fingers. The crewman looked sheepish and went to fetch a mop.
“I’ve tended over a kitchen or two during my service on the Forgotten Isles,” Niven said, “but never at sea.”
“It’s not all that different,” Julian said. “Go to the galley and familiarize yourself with the oven. Specifically the water barrels. My one rule for the cook is that the oven is cold at the first sign of bad weather or trouble. The first sign. Also, I don’t tolerate rats or pests aboard. You’ll find smoke pellets in one of the sideboards. I want them used every time we leave port. Now, for instance.”
“Yes, well…” Niven gave Selena a pleading glance and then obeyed with a soft, “Aye, Captain,” and left Selena alone on deck with Julian.
She shivered in her coat but did her best to quell it. “They were your men,” she said quietly.
“And now they’re not.” He glanced down at her, his gray-green eyes flat and cold. “You want me to stay at port, looking for corpses or defectors, or would you prefer we get the bloody Deeps out of the Ice Isles?” His lips curled slightly. “I think I can guess.”
Selena turned on her heel, disgusted and went to the aft rail. She offered a prayer to the Two-Faced God that Helm and Cook were safe…and her own silent apology because Julian was right. As soon as the ship drew away from the dock she turned her back on Isle Nanokar and looked through the towering teeth of the Ice Isles, to the southern horizon that glowed like a hearth’s warm fire.
They sailed from Nanokar on a sluggish sea, and a limp wind. The sails sagged more than they billowed and the ship fought a head sea that flowed toward the township. Julian took the helm, muttering curses between bellowed orders, and guided the Black Storm through the narrow ice passage with agonizing slowness. Despite the disquiet between them, Selena had to admire Julian’s skill; the Storm never came close to the sheer ice walls on either side. Even with the loss of two able crewmen.
As they breached the channel, another whaler passed them on the way in. Selena watched the schooner sail by from the main deck. The captain gave them a hearty greeting but Julian kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes straight ahead.
He’s gotten all he wants out of Nanokar, she thought, with strange bitterness. She raised her hand to the whaler captain. The two boys on the quarterdeck waved back with great enthusiasm.
When Nanokar was a gray smudge on a grayer horizon, Selena summoned Svoz. The sirrak appeared on deck in his hulking red form. He picked his teeth with deer antlers that trailed a strip of hide and gristle, and surveyed the ship with black eyes.
The crew stared back, Cat the longest.
“New meat,” Svoz said, pointing the antlers at her. He smiled, showing a mouth full of black teeth. “Welcome aboard, flesh tart.”
“To work, Svoz,” Selena said.
The sirrak heaved a sigh and tossed the antlers overboard. “Yes, Master.”
The Storm crawled over the Crystal Sea. A weak breeze puffed the sails now and then,
but the water was calm and flat. For three days, Selena prayed to the Two-Faced God to take them out of these northern waters, her hands clasped over a mug of hot tea in Niven’s galley instead of on the crossbar of her sword. She waited to feel the Black Storm glide across the sea beneath her feet. Instead, she felt only the gentlest of swaying and heard the slow creak of timbers, as if the ship ached from the cold too.
On the fourth day, Selena was in the galley with Ilior, warming her hands at the oven when Whistle came in. He wore a ratty coat and cap, and despite the cold his feet were still bare. He grinned at her, his hands behind his back.
Selena forced a smile through stiffened lips. “What is it, sweeting?”
The young man hesitated a moment longer and then held out his hands. In them was an engraved whale tooth with Selena’s own likeness scratched into the bone with dark ink. Her features were somewhat lopsided but he’d rendered a kind, somewhat melancholy smile very well, revealing his burgeoning skill. Selena took the scrimshaw and cradled it in her hands.
“Did you buy this tooth on Nanokar?” She had seen the whale teeth on sale at the market while they restocked the ship. They weren’t cheap.
A gift for you. Try not to laugh when you get it.
Julian’s words, and she was disgusted by them all over again.
Selena took Whistle in her arms and held him close. His wool coat was damp with cold mist and he smelled of salt and oakum.
“Thank you,” she said. “I will cherish it always.”
The boy embraced her and then scampered out of the galley as if it were on fire.
“You’ve made a friend,” Ilior said. His skin was pale and he hunched his huge frame under a blanket that hardly covered one shoulder.
“Aye, and it worries me. Saliz is dangerous,” Selena said. “More dangerous than we’ve considered. The waters themselves around the island are fraught with it, to say nothing of the merkind. I’ve been thinking of my quest and not of the others I endanger.”
“Can’t be avoided,” Ilior said, “unless you petition the Alliance for aid.”
“I won’t. They didn’t offer when I departed; there’s no reason they’d do so now. If we need help against the Bazira, there’s only one place I can think to ask for it.”
Ilior raised a brow ridge. “The Isle of Lords?”
“Their armada rivals that of the Alliance.”
“An armada they’ve never launched,” Ilior said bitterly. “The Zak’reth war could have ended before you—”
“Don’t,” Selena said. “A course can’t be altered after its sailed. And now we’re on course for Isle Saliz. Perhaps better to keep to the mission.” She ran her fingertips over the rough engraving that had been painstakingly carved into the whalebone. “Despite the danger.”
“Aye,” Ilior said dryly, “if we can make it there at all.”
Selena bit her lip and hunched closer to Niven’s fire.
The following morning Selena climbed to the main deck to watch the sun haul itself over the horizon, offering light but no heat that she could sense. The wind had died. The ship sat on flat water, as still as a painting.
Selena made her way with agonizing slowness up to the quarterdeck where Julian stood close with Grunt, their heads bent.
“Where are we?” she asked through clenched teeth.
Grunt took a quick step back and tipped his cap to her.
“I believe we’re eighty leagues from the Isle of Lords,” Julian replied. “A two-day venture with a full wind, and then we’ll leave this cold behind.”
Selena shuddered. “Full wind? It’s as if we’ve dropped anchor.”
“The doldrums won’t last but a day or two.”
Selena took in the seas all around them. It stretched out for leagues, like a pane of glass.
Julian muttered an oath. “What do you want me to do about it? We’re bloody becalmed, but it won’t last. It never does in these waters.”
“I didn’t say—” Selena stopped as her stomach roiled. Julian’s face paled and Grunt went green beneath his beard.
“Bloody bones and spit,” Julian whispered, his hands finding his scimitars.
Selena wrapped her stiffened fingers around the hilt of her own sword and unsheathed it just as Whistle loosed a piercing blast. They all turned to where the boy, perched on the masthead, pointed to port.
Selena watched as two arms, bone-thin and the color of old bruises, scrabbled for a hold of the gunwale on the port side of the ship. Everyone onboard stared, unmoving, as a mermaid struggled over the rail of the main deck. She gripped the wood with trembling fingers, and an awful whistling groan pushed out of her as her abdomen crashed onto the rail. Her hair was blackish green, stringy, and falling out in clumps. Selena watched with a pitying horror as some of it caught on the gunwale as she came over. It tore from her scalp with a ripping sound that could be heard from up on the quarterdeck.
The mermaid flopped onto to the deck, her dolphin-like tail slapping the wood. Spit and Cur approached her with drawn cutlasses. Niven and Ilior emerged from below decks.
“Take the wheel,” Julian told Grunt, and started down to the main deck. “Get back! Watch for others!”
“Svoz, to me,” Selena said as she joined the rest of the crew on the main deck.
“Not again,” Svoz bellowed when he saw the creature. “I’ll not be chewed on by the likes of one of these foul fish-things a second time.”
“Just kill it,” Julian said, “before it pollutes my ship.”
“She’s dying,” Niven murmured. “She can hardly move, poor thing.”
Svoz brightened. “Well, in that case…” Today, the weapon he wore between his wings was a spiked staff. He glanced at Selena. “Master?”
“Wait.”
Selena moved forward on stiff limbs, and knelt as close to the mermaid as she dared. Her stomach churned, either from nearness to the mermaid or from the overpowering stench of rot and illness that emanated from the creature like a vapor. Selena peered under the mermaid’s veil of matted hair. It was tangled with bits of flotsam. From between the filthy strands, the mermaid stared with eyes that were at once empty and also filled with a frantic need. They were yellowed and oozed pus, as did her mouth. Blood mingled with the ichor; the mermaid was missing several teeth.
“What happened to you?” Selena whispered.
The mermaid hissed and lunged with a bony hand that scraped on the deck. Selena jumped out of reach and the mermaid’s head thumped back down. It did not rise again. Her tail flapped once and then she was still but for a gurgling sigh. The stench permeated the entire deck, riding on a current of watery effluence that leaked from the mermaid’s mouth and from under her tail.
“A glorious perfume, admittedly,” Svoz commented.
Selena covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Let’s turn her over.”
“Let’s bloody not,” Julian said. “I want it off my ship. Now.”
“This is our best chance at trying to determine what happened to the merkind,” Selena told him. “We have to know what we face.”
He hesitated; Selena could see the thoughts clouding his gray-green eyes. “Just be quick about it,” he said, and peered up at the masthead. “Whistle! You keep your eyes on the water, boy, and nowhere else.”
Svoz rolled the dead mermaid onto her back with his staff, and Niven made another pitying sound. She was emaciated; Selena could count her ribs. Her small breasts seemed deflated and every inch of her skin was the same blue-green color. Not the lively viridian of the seas, but a sickly, rotted green, and blue-tinged with cold.
“This water is too cold for her,” Selena said. “She wouldn’t be here unless compelled. Whatever has made her ill has stolen her will too.”
Niven wrung his hands. “Who or what could do such a thing?”
“Perhaps the Bazira have worked some sort of dark magic on the merkind,” Selena said, “and this is the result.”
Niven frowned. “Their magic is ice. Pain. They
can’t sicken anyone.” He looked up at her. “Can they?”
“I don’t know,” Selena said. “Perhaps another god’s magic? Or even the merkind’s own? I don’t know enough of their magic—certainly not its source—but this could be the result of something gone horribly awry among their own kind.” She rose to her feet from her kneeling crouch. “I don’t know what else it could be. There are no bites on her. No wounds. If it’s poison, it was ingested.”
“I believe I stated earlier my certainty that powerful elements have been at work on the fish people,” Svoz remarked. “It is the product of industry. Foul, black, insidious magic. And I, for one, look forward to meeting the creators of such perfidy, congratulating them on their achievements, and then killing them.”
“Get it off my ship,” Julian said, his tone flat and unamused.
Selena nodded. “Svoz.”
The sirrak poked the mermaid with his foot to ensure her demise. He then whipped his spear point down, and impaled her through her abdomen.
“Svoz!” Selena cried, but the sirrak paid her no mind.
He hefted the mermaid up in an arc, raining fouled blood and ichor over the deck, and tossed the corpse overboard. It hit the water with a dull smack and began to sink.
Svoz turned around, and his triumphant grin faded as he took in the stricken expressions around him. “You’re welcome,” he sniffed.
Julian glanced at the mess and then rubbed his face with both hands. Vigorously. He ordered the crew to swab the deck until he could see his “godsdamn reflection in it” and then turned to Selena.
“If it’s the Bazira—your Bazira—who are capable of capturing and corrupting hundreds of merkind, you realize this changes the game.”
“Are you worried about your fee, Captain?” Selena asked. “I can increase your pay contingent on the danger, if that would please you.”
