by Chris Howard
Aleximor's eyes dropped to the black foamy skin that stretched up his forearm, and then drifted to the blue Corina had used to paint her fingernails.
He was ignoring her.
To Aleximor, the woman's thoughts were strange and although she spoke English, she spoke a barbarous adaptation of it.
It had been more than two centuries since he had spoken any language. Evidently the language had changed a great deal. What else had changed?
He recalled strange tales of the surfacers’ abilities to travel over the waves. When he had been imprisoned, men of the surface used wind to push their ships, long, deep wedges of wood. And sails, vast squares of billowing white, as if they'd harnessed clouds to drive their vessels.
So much time had passed and with it, he imagined, the world had changed beyond his imagining.
Tired and still hungry, Corina sank back into the dark rocky hollow in her head. She steeped in her pool of sorrow, playing five minutes of memory over and over again, the last time she'd seen her mother and father alive.
They'd gone to the movies, and halfway home a red-light running drunk driver had killed her parents and left her alive.
Her mother's smile over the front seat, her father's grin in the rearview mirror, saying things like “What do you want to do when we get home, kiddo?” All followed by pain and sorrow stronger than anything she'd ever felt.
Corina didn't know her mind could shudder, but that's what it did. It halted over one thought, that she was weak, and it caught in her head, split into jagged pieces, and repeated in overlapping flashes, a movie caught in a loop, playing the scene over and over.
Corina screamed and it stopped. But she felt its shadow, heavy, draped over every new thought, dragging her down like the ocean's surge catching her feet, coming up her legs and around her waist.
I walked away from the car.
Corina's thoughts froze because she noticed that Aleximor had tensed up, holding his new body motionless, as if listening to her. He spoke directly to her—in her own concerned voice.
"I am saddened to hear of the death of your father and mother, Corina. Is there anything crueler than purposeless death? My mother died young ... at the hands of my father. I killed my father over it many years later."
Corina counted to ten slowly, arranging her thoughts in order. If this thing was going to speak to her in a meaningful way, she'd need every gram of her wits. You can hear me?
He answered at once. “There are times when your thoughts are unclear, almost as if your words are ... I cannot think of a more appropriate word than ... buried, but yes, I can hear you."
Her own voice talking to her was a strange experience. She tried to hold her thoughts still, but they moved around on their own—and unfortunately, the questions surfacing in her mind were not the ones she'd have liked to share with a centuries-old raiser of the dead who happened to be sitting in the captain's chair in her body.
The thoughts came anyway, several variations of “Can you see what I imagine?” and “Will you let me go?"
He smiled with her lips, a soft compassionate tightening at the corners of her mouth. “I hear the music you dream about, most of it is very beautiful to my ears.” My ears. “I see some of the things you imagine, but I do not understand them. It is very bright, scenes of the surface where you lived.” His use of the past tense sent a cold burn through her mind. “Let you go? I will consider it, Corina."
Consider it ... She repeated the words, mimicking his words using her voice. I will consider it.
He pointed up at the black heavens of ocean, and through her own eyes, she could just make out the blue of her fingernail polish at the edge of a field of luminescence he had created around her.
It was starting to chip.
She couldn't stop the machine in her head. I will consider it.
"Shhh. Do you hear that, Corina? That deep growling sound?"
Yes. A sourness crept into her thoughts. You have done something to my hearing. It's sensitive. I can hear something moving in the water below ... too.
She wanted desperately to say “below me” but the word ‘me’ didn't seem to fit anymore.
"That is a fish, some kind of shark. Do you hear that snap of water at the end of each tail stroke? That's a deepwater shark.” He felt her jolt of panic. “It will not bother us, Corina. Do not fear it."
I can hear ... There is a rushing noise, faint but it's always there. I can hear that. I can also hear that really fast thumping.
"The first is the tidal motion."
The tides?
"The pull of the moon...” He started to articulate what he understood of tidal forces. “The oceans swell in response—"
I know what tides are. You're telling me I can hear them?
"I said that, but do you not hear that new noise, lower, a rumbling rhythm?"
Her thoughts went still for a moment. Maybe it's a motor. That's what it sounds like. A boat's propeller? Maybe a ship? How deep am I?
"What do you mean by motor?"
An engine that turns the propellers on a ship.
"What is a propeller?” The way she used the word was strange to him.
A big metal thing with blades that spins and drives the ship. The motor turns it.
"A ship?” She heard the excitement in the words. “The sound is different, not what I have heard from any surface ship before.” With that, he kicked off into the night, straight up, pushing his legs until his muscles burned.
He made tiny course corrections every ten minutes. It took him an hour to reach the first hint of sunlight in the ocean. Corina noticed the water around her brightening like pale traces of dawn, and then broad blinding daylight landed on her.
Everything went dark. Aleximor closed his eyes to prepare for the deep punch of shock that always accompanied the breaking of a barrier, and there were few as shocking to the system as the interface between the sea and the air.
Aleximor shattered the surface. A blast of dry air hit his face, tightening around his skin in a swarm of tiny pinpricks, like the clinging legs and mandibles of crabs walking over him. The water stung his eyes, he coughed, and vomited the bile in his stomach across the ocean's surface. His lungs erupted, throwing a few liters of water over his tongue, pasting it to the floor of his mouth. His throat burned, the lining of his esophagus shriveled, his lungs complained nastily, shuddering and pretending they didn't know what was expected of them.
He choked out a question. “And creatures find it comfortable living up here?"
He balled his fists and rubbed the seawater from his eyes and lashes. When he opened them, trying to focus through the blinding sun's light, he saw ... it—a leviathan the surfacers had summoned from someplace inhabited by monsters the size of mountains.
Giant walls of orange and glistening red, streaks of rust a mile long like blood trailing along the flanks of a predator. Tiny white lettering, Maria Draughn, rolled along the top edge like the blazing symbols of pyromancy at the fire's finger tips.
Aleximor tilted his gaze to the sky. Rising out of the flames were battlements of gleaming white, hard metal edges, thousands of tiny oval windows, white structural works, bars and beams bound with cables, bent in submission to some god's will. They shivered and strained against the cables, creaking wildly, ready to unfold and throw off attackers like the long fingers and blocky knuckles of a giant's hands.
"It is a white city in a bowl of fire!” Aleximor shrieked the words, but couldn't make his body move out of its way. The wall of fire cut through the waves, shoveling the ocean aside, thundering toward him. His eyes fixed on the white lettering, thinking that they might be some key to defeating it or turning it aside. “What does it mean? Maria Draughn?"
That's the ship's name!
"That is a ship?"
Corina's thoughts piled up in her head, but she pushed them aside to get to the really important ones. Get out of its way. Now! Swim as fast as you can. Move, you idiot!
Aleximor kicked onto his
back, pumping his legs. High above him, a man in dark blue clothing leaned over the fire's edge and yelled at him, waving his arms madly. Others joined him, some turning to yell for more watchers.
Aleximor was certain they would wake the giant white claws to pluck him out of the sea. He curled backward and dove, but found that there was more of the ship under the water than he had expected.
A large bulb of orange metal preceded the rest of the walls through the waves, and he kicked it, trying to push his body out the way.
The force of the ship's hold on the sea seized his body. The monster had him in its grasp, bending him in half, spinning Aleximor like a wheel, folding him before snapping him open. He felt the thumping of the propellers in his bones. He reached for more water in the wrong direction, one hand banging against the ship's hull, a hard ceiling, rough with stony beds of barnacles.
He sucked in seawater, his lungs protesting.
The ocean slammed him against the hull. He slid headfirst, pinned between the cruel face of the sea and unyielding steel. Barnacles sliced through wetsuit material.
Corina's ponytail whipped him in the face, jolting his thoughts into motion. He threw out his hands against the force dragging him along the hull, squinting through it to get a good look at the dark sweep of churning water coming at him, the blur of the ocean caught in the blades of the propellers and thrown behind the ship.
The collar of Corina's wetsuit hooked a barnacle outcrop, wrenched his neck, and spun his body into the working end of the ship feet first. His skull hammered against metal. The ocean flashed white, and then pulled his mind into a cold motionless night.
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Chapter Thirteen
Plans
There are many ancient tales of rivalry between the Telkhines and the Heliadai (sons of Helios). The Telkhines created their own star, a bright crystal in the heavens that rivaled Helios itself, and incurred the envy of the Heliadai. The Telkhines sent their star aloft in the night and brought light to the shadows, and the Heliadai conspired with Zeus to overthrow the power of the Telkhines. The island of Rhodes was once called Telkhinis, the island of the Telkhines, and Zeus Cloud-gatherer drove them from their island on the surface to the depths of the ocean.
—Journal of Michael Augustus Henderson
* * * *
"Whoa! They're kissing."
Nicole joined Jill at the window to get a view. “About time."
"So sweet.” Jill nodded, one side of her mouth lifting into a smile.
Nicole looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Kass! Zyph and Henderson are finally getting it on!"
Kassandra took the stairs from the kitchen two at a time and went on tiptoes to see out of the window at the landing. She cleaned up what Eupheron said in her head. “After all the hand-holding, it's about time."
Across Ocean Boulevard, on a bench overlooking the Atlantic, Michael Henderson kissed Zypheria of the Alkimides, his long legs stretched out on the gravel—although one shoe was digging insistently into the ground. Zypheria's fingers played with the stubbly short hair at the back of his head, and he hooked one of his arms around her to tug on her braids, lifting her mouth to his.
Ampharete's voice glided by in Kassandra's thoughts. Zypheria deserves so much—more than I can ever repay her. She brought you back to me, my daughter. For her to find love ... it is something she gave up when we became sisters, when her mother took me in. It is something that only entered my life once ... and even then it was ... a necessity. You must tell me more about Michael Henderson. Is he handsome? Is he honorable? Does he truly love Zypheria? What are they doing at this moment?
Kassandra flinched at the word, “necessity” referring to the one love in her mother's life. Her eyes widened as Mr. Henderson tugged Zypheria's braids harder and kissed her throat. There was something less than honorable about it ... but in a good way.
"Yes, he does, Mother. He is tall with very short blond hair—we all think he had too much taken off. It used to be longer and it hung in his face. He wears glasses. He is a scientist and a teacher, and he's writing a history of the Seaborn. For a surfacer, he knows a great deal about life in the sea. And he has courage. Lady Kallixene gave him the curse and he stood with Rexenor at St. Clement's against the Olethren—and he remained until the end. It's a cool day. Autumn's here, and the waves are gentle but noisy on the rocks. The two of them are sitting on a bench on a small cliff above the Atlantic, and Mr. Henderson is pulling Zypheria's hair ... uh ... playfully."
Ampharete sighed loudly in her head. The rush of waves on the rocks, the wearing rhythm of a soft sea on the unyielding earth, the smell of salt in the air—these work deep triggers in the human soul. It is a combination stronger than a cool spring breeze carrying the scent of wild flowers.
"Wild flowers ... Wild. Flowers."
Jill looked over at Kass with a curious expression.
Gregor appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “What's up?"
Jill and Nicole spun and, at the same time, said, “Michael and Zypheria are finally getting to the good part."
"Really?” Gregor climbed up have a look. His smile was a little sad. “About time."
Kassandra watched a minute longer, then turned, climbed the next flight of stairs, and took a seat on the top step, resting her chin in her hands. “How do you know about wild flowers, mother? I thought you had never been above the waves."
I have never seen the surface with my own eyes.
"Then..."
Lady Kallixene told me stories and showed me things. House Rexenor has communicated and befriended surfacers from the beginning, from the day the Cloud-gatherer betrayed our ancestors and sent us to the abyss. It is why Kassander's father, Geryllos, chose a seabird, a creature of the air with wings that lives in or near the sea, as the new sign of his house. Without appearing to change the subject, Ampharete shocked the hell out her with: Do you know why Lady Kallixene arranged my marriage to Gregor?
Kassandra's eyes landed on her father, who still wore his serenely sad smile as he took the stairs back down to the kitchen.
"I didn't even know it was arranged. I just thought ... you were in love."
It worked out that way, but it would never have happened without Kallixene's proposal and my pursuit. It certainly did not begin with love. I did not even like him when we met the first time—although ... Her voice changed, shortening the spaces between each word. He did have a seadragon, Barenis, the only one I have ever seen.
Kassandra's scowl deepened. It was suddenly a girl's discussion about a guy's suitability based on the vehicle he drove—Did you see what he pulled into the parking lot driving?
Ampharete sighed. Barenis was beautiful, purple as squid's ink, a dangerous slice of the abyss with wings, and she spoke to me. I think she liked me. She was very old. Barenis, she said the name, reminiscing. Dragons are something out of Telkhines stories, and very few survived the Alkimides purge. Gregor even let me ride her. He ... intrigued me, but he was too shy and spent too much time in the library or traveling with his teacher, Agathonumos.
"The abyss mage, the student of Strates Unwinder.” Kassandra's voice went high. “Dad had his own seadragon?” And then even higher. “You pursued him? What happened? How did you two, you know, hook up?"
She felt her mother frown over her words. Kallixene told me something.
Kassandra let a few seconds slip by. “You're going to tell me or do I have to guess?"
Gregor had the bleed of magic off Lord Nausikrates, and that the Rexenor nobility bled wide and fast, and that her son nearly had all of it off his father.
Kassandra folded her arms when she felt a course change. The conversation turned directly into uncomfortable territory.
"I know this now,” she said irritably.
Kallixene told me that her power was still secure, that neither of her children had been chosen to take it from her ... and that a granddaughter most certainly would. Kallixene spent years above the waves when she was in her
twenties, going to school, learning everything she could about the surface, their machines and their science.
"What are you talking about, science, like genetics? Lady Kallixene knew that if you and Dad had me that I would get her bleed?"
And Gregor's bleed. You would have both, something extremely rare among the Seaborn.
"So, you and Dad—"
Do not use that phrase, “hooked up.” It sounds like you are catching fish.
Kassandra's body tightened with rage, and she held as much of it in as possible. “Funny, I don't see the difference.” Her voice turned bitter. “Trolling for Rexenors instead? What did you use for a lure? Something shiny?"
How dare—
"Don't tell me what I will or will not dare."
And do not tell me that you are not plotting something grander than I could ever imagine. I feel it in your thoughts, Kassandra. You hide it well. Making plans for years—and in the end, you will use every friend and enemy in your path to secure them. I know. I have floated in the same space. Tharsaleos—my own father—killed my mother. I spent every day of my life hiding from him. I was not fated to have the bleed from anyone. Not one drop! I had nothing but the Wreath of Poseidon. And I will tell you what you may dare when we speak of the decisions I had to make. I made them because I was forced to. I did not go to Rexenor seeking a husband—or have a child. I went seeking allies. Rexenor, the hated, the outcasts, the exiled great house. But plans change. I had to change with them. I understood. Zypheria understood. Lady Kallixene understood.
"Did you even ask Father? Did he understand?"
Yes! He loved me—enough to help me win back my throne, enough to seek something that even the great Strates Unwinder thought a fool's errand.
"That damn Telkhines book? You sent him into defeat—on that fool's errand."
Kassandra felt her own heart racing along with the leaden weight fall of her mother's shame. There was a long painful silence.
I know. Ampharete sobbed. I am so sorry. It was never your father's fault. It was mine. I drove him off when our love grew strong. It scared me, and I hurt him, and to win me back, he left me ... on that fool's errand. His love competed with the Wreath. Anything else on earth or in the sea is ultimately going to lose against the gift of Poseidon. I felt guilty at having it while I denied everything to Zypheria. She had no life outside of protecting me. The few who were bold enough to approach her, soon learned how high the price would be for loving my friend, my protector, my sister. She swore to protect me with her life. I accepted her vow, and held her to it. She would die in place of me ... and I would have let her. I would have ordered it—I did order it!
