Daughters of the Deep: a Dark Depths Companion Novella

by Lani Lenore

  “No, no. You must be punished in some way,” the Mistress corrected. “And with all of my greatest warriors present, I can’t possibly let this pass. I suppose now is only the choice of what it will be.”

  Innominata held her breath as she looked on, staring at the slave, avoiding the eyes of the Mistress.

  “I think I will let you choose,” the Mistress said, and Innominata turned to look, thinking she was addressing the escapee herself, but was frozen with horror to see that the Mistress’s harsh eyes were turned on her.

  “Me, Mistress?” the golden one asked, her heart racing.

  “Based on what you have seen in the past, how would you expect I should handle this situation?”

  Innominata did not want this. No, she did not want this at all. She wanted nothing to do with this evil. She wondered that if she simply ceased to talk, she would be relieved of it.

  “Speak, child,” the Mistress hissed after her silence had gone on too long. Her face had changed, her expression harder. She was ceasing to be amused.

  “I do not believe I am in any position to—”

  “You are because I have placed you there, and you will. So grace us with your judgement. Do you think it would be fitting to chain her backward in the current so that she will slowly drown? Or should we hand her over to the priestesses so that they might take her to the Pleasure Chamber? What do you think? A punishment, or a reward?”

  Innominata did not think of the Pleasure Chamber as a reward. She saw through that, and knew that the options here were only leading to death for either one. Could she send the slave to an obvious death and please the Mistress, or show mercy and have her partake in something worse.

  “Send me with the priestesses!” The slave appealed to her. “Do not punish me. I will never stray again. Never.”

  The girl listened, but she did not know how to take this request into account. Which was the lesser evil? Neither would save her life, she feared. Could she choose a sure thing over something unknown? A hunch or something worse?

  “We are waiting, little one,” the Mistress coaxed. “Make your decision.”

  She tried to escape. Who could blame her?

  She has spied on her sisters. Turned against us.

  The words were swelling in her throat, and when they finally emerged, it was a small echo, filled with doubt.

  “Drown her,” she said, her voice thin, shaken by her own words.

  “What was that?” the Mistress asked. “Louder, so we can hear you.”

  “You should drown her in the currents,” the Innominata said, turning her eyes toward the Mistress with as much bravery as she could muster. “The price for fleeing should be death.”

  The disbelieving, hateful glare in the slave’s eyes was not something that the girl could bear to look at. She had not done a good thing, but she felt it had been her only choice.

  “I suppose we have our answer then,” the Mistress said, turning to the guards, and that was all that needed to be said. They took the slave away, screaming and fighting, but her fate was sealed. Innominata believed she had done the better thing—for herself, as well as for the slave who could not be saved. It would not soothe her guilt, but there was another small grain tormenting her: doubt. She did not really know what was in the Pleasure Chamber, only had assumptions and rumors. If she was wrong, she may have sent the other to doom when she could have been delivered.

  “I think you’ve had enough excitement for today,” the Mistress said to her, taking up her chains. “Why don’t you go have a rest?”

  She instructed others to take Innominata back to her prison, but the girl’s mind was crippled.

  There is a price, as with all things.

  “Did you see what happened?” the girl asked inside her mind, tears welling in her eyes. “Did you see what she made me do?”

  Bliss remained silent.

  The guards took her back to the cell, but she was feeling as close to hysterics as she ever had. The time that had passed, the promises unachieved, and she’d had enough.

  There was a board in the floor of the brig that was warped more than the rest. She had noticed it before, but had left it alone. Now, it was drew her attention. She pried on the board until her fingers ached and her nails began to rip. She wrestled with it until it gave way—until she could see the water beyond.

  She could not take this life anymore. Come what may, she had to get out. The little mermaid fled.

  2

  The surface world was in darkness when she rose. There may have been no chance that she could get away without her captors finding her, but she did not think about that now. She swam near the surface for a long while, slipping beyond nets placed by humans—which she knew that she knew her captors would avoid—guiding herself safely into the heart of the bay. The closer she was to a human city, the safer she would be.

  She swam in the shadows of ships, taking care to remain unseen. Pulling herself into the shallows beneath a wooden pier, she finally stopped her long trek. She held onto one of the pilings to rest herself. Her muscles ached. She had come a long way.

  What she had done came rushing back to her, and her breath quickened with panic. She thought of the other nymph being drowned, and now she had done the very thing that the other had been punished for.

  Dere is no love lost; dere is no loyalty or sympathy between us.

  She had run away, and unlike some nameless slaves, she knew she would be missed. The Mistress would know immediately—likely already did—and she would be chased. If they caught her, perhaps she would be eaten alive by a dangerous sea creature, or worse. She had disobeyed at a perilous time. This did not feel like the harmless excursions that she had taken in the past. This felt as though the repercussions would resound forever.

  She touched her face as she felt it twist, knowing that she would burst out with sobs at any second. Was she strong enough for this? Could she go back now, beg for forgiveness, give more of her blood to the Mistress in exchange for her life? How would that solve anything? Innominata cringed and leaned her head against the piling.

  What are you willing to do? She didn’t know. She feared she had already done it.

  Above her head, there was a disturbance—footfalls against the boards. Startled, the girl held her breath and sunk down in the water a bit more in case she needed to retreat, but it was dark; she did not think she would be seen. Someone was walking above her, a human, and she was much too curious to slink away.

  She saw a flicker of him as he passed over her head—a male—pacing heatedly to the end of the dock. He let out a long yell into the distance, which then collapsed into laughter. She found it strange. She moved closer.

  He sat down on the pier, his legs dangling off, unthinking that anything below might snare him. He was wearing boots and dark pants, but she admired those legs. He was so close—closer than she had ever been to a human, and her heart was pounding. She could barely see him through the cracks in the boards, but she heard his anguished breath.

  “What am I to do now?” he muttered. “I can’t go back there. I don’t want to.”

  She tried to get a clearer glimpse of him from her position, maneuvering her head until finally, through a gap in the boards, she saw his face.

  He was young, barely an adult of his kind. He had dark wavy hair and deep eyes, but hardly any stubble on his face. He was looking out toward the sea, resolute, and yet torn. He was indecisive about something, or perhaps he did not know what he sought at all.

  “This is what I’ve been wanting, isn’t it?” he asked himself. “So: act.”

  He sat there another moment before he moved, then stood from the edge and turned, his feet hitting against the planks above. She followed him below, quietly, moving to keep up, somehow desperate to cling to him. He stayed along the docks, making her wish possible. If he’d stalked back inland, she would have lost him forever.

  Dawn would be breaking soon. The docks were mostly deserted, but she could hear voices. There were
some humans about, starting work, and this boy was heading toward them.

  “Need another hand?” he called out.

  He seemed to have caught the attention of the others there. Another man who she could barely see—this one larger with long stringy hair—appraised him.

  “You know anything about boats, boy?”

  “Course I do. Been on them damn near my whole life.” It sounded like a lie to her. This young man was a liar.

  “Don’t look like it,” the seaman decided.

  “I’m able and I’m a quick learner,” the young man said then, amending his words. “Let me aboard and I’ll prove myself. I need to get out of here and I need work.”

  The men were silent for a few moments, and Innominata caught a glimpse of the young man once again through a hole in the planks. He was more handsome when he was determined.

  “Give us them gold cufflinks you got and I’ll let you haul all the fish you want.”

  “Deal.”

  Was that a fair trade? It wasn’t any of her business.

  “Where are jou?” The voice in her head, absent for so long, was asking after her.

  Innominata was startled, and for a split second, didn’t answer. She wondered if she should until she remembered that Bliss could read her mind—and as she claimed, had always been able.

  “Come back, or perhaps I will tell dem where to find jou.”

  “You would do that?” Innominata responded. She didn’t quite believe it, and yet supposed it was possible. Bliss had said to trust her, but she never knew if that was true.

  “Jou are my means to an end. We are close. Come back.”

  The girl lifted her eyes again. The boy she’d found was talking to the others, and finally he got onto the boat with them. Could she watch him sail away? She wanted to know more about him—who he was, what he was about. She needed to hold onto him for as long as she could. There was something about him—a secret to be discovered—and she could not let that go.

  “Not yet,” she responded, and followed after the ship.

  Chapter Seven

  True Desire

  1

  The mermaid had followed him for many hours into the daylight, until she had familiarized herself with the ship and the men aboard, until it came to rest and began casting nets to draw in fish. At that, she worried that they would snare her, and was content to leave for a time. The boat would go back to the city docks for the night, and she would find it again.

  With that knowledge, she decided to return to her cell and hope for the best. Perhaps she had not been gone for as long as she’d thought, and she might sneak back in, unnoticed. She went carefully back to her cell and slipped in past the loose board.

  Somehow, she had not been missed. That was an encouragement.

  Her life of captivity went on as it had been, between the sour, rotting walls of her prison to her place at the Mistress’s throne, but it was different for her. There was something she looked forward to now, and she went back to it at every moment that she could steal away.

  Him… I want to see him.

  She could not see the stars in her own eyes, for all she saw was him. He had become such a fixture to her that he seemed the only thing keeping her in balance. Watching his life kept her going. She cared about him more than watching the Mistress—more than Bliss’s promises. When she was chained to the throne, she thought about being with him on land and of how he might smile at her and gaze into her eyes.

  Her time of watching him from afar turned into years.

  She had not changed, but he had grown older. He had jumped ship a couple of times, but she had followed him. She had discovered that his name was Nathaniel Thomas, but most called him Nathan. He was strong and young and handsome, with deep brown eyes. She had gotten as close as she dared, often clinging to the boat in order to watch him. He had a smile like the sun and a voice that rolled over her like the waves. She loved everything about him—except what he did to himself.

  He was helpful and friendly in nature; she saw that when he interacted with his shipmates. They were often smiling and making jokes together. When one was in a bind, he would rush in to offer aid. But then there was the frown. After some time had passed, he would turn away from the ship at night and disappear into buildings for long amounts of time, and then he would stumble back to the boat, weaving drunkenly. Sometimes he would not return until morning. She was able to witness this herself a few times. She could smell him when he got close, even in the daytime. He smelled like poison.

  “Why did you come out here, boy?” a shipmate asked him one night while they were standing near the railing. Innominata had been hiding just below, as near to him as she could be without being seen.

  “I wanted to find myself—to know who I really am,” Nathan told him, and yet there was a tinge of anger in his voice.

  “And you think this is it, do you?”

  “I just want to be free,” Nathan said. “From everything. I don’t want to think; I don’t want to feel. I just want to live.”

  To be free? She understood that, but she was not sure she thought of it as he did. Her idea of freedom was to be unbound by chains and to make her own choices. He already had that life, so what was he seeking? His idea of freedom must have been very different from hers, and she did not understand it.

  The vessel he was on usually docked in a vast city she had learned to call Ilsa, but occasionally it moved beyond there, to other, smaller places. Often, she would lose him for days at a time, but if she remained diligent, she would find him again.

  Sometimes she came very close to him if he was near the edge of the ship. She could have reached up to touch him. She wanted him to touch her, but he did not even know she was there. His disappointment seemed to show more frequently, and she could not say what was eating at his heart. She wanted to hold him; comfort him. It was so odd how she felt when she looked at him. Bliss would have said she was a fool, but the girl did not care. The feeling that overcame her when she looked at Nathan was the most of anything good that she had felt in a long time, and she wanted to hold onto it.

  She continued on her own destructive path as she watched his, and then one night when she emerged to find him, the town where he’d docked—a smaller place—was engulfed in flames.

  She had never been so panicked or frightened, even for fear of her own torture. A ship was there that she had not seen before. It was massive and with a carving of a woman on the mast, her body displayed and her wings spread wide across the front of the ship. Her eyes were removed purposefully, and stains on the wood of her face represented blood. Innominata didn’t like it. It reminded her of something else.

  That night, there had been nothing for her to do but to watch and wait, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, fearing that he was gone. Finally, she saw Nathan come out from the buildings and head to the dock. When he left that port, he had left on that ship.

  The girl didn’t quite understand what she was seeing, but there was pain in her heart. She feared the worst for him. He had chosen the wrong thing and gone down a dark path.

  After that, there was a large tattoo on Nathan’s back that matched the image on the front of the ship. She’d caught a glimpse of it one day when he was walking shirtless across the ship’s deck. He was still fine as ever, but the image of the woman with the bleeding eyes frightened her.

  Seeing what had happened to him, her heart did not know what to feel. She felt sad for him as much as she was sad for herself. Maybe, if they were together, he would not feel the need for this spiral. But was that possible?

  The Mistress, the blood, Bliss, Nathan, her choice… She was not sure anymore.

  2

  Innominata was careful as ever on her way back. She slipped through the forest of weeds to get to her cell, where she would move back in through the loose board, unnoticed. Going out with Bliss had given her confidence, and though much time had passed, she could not grow careless. This time had to be as delicate as the last if she would av
oid being spotted—for she planned to do it again, and soon.

  She could see the guards on patrol, spaced out along the perimeter, but she saw an opening. She maneuvered herself back into the brig just as a guard from the palace passed by, glancing into the space. Her heart was still racing, but she had secured herself. She hoped she did not look suspicious.

  The guard, her face flat and lined with gills, looked at her a moment, almost as if she did not recognize her. Innominata felt a bit uncertain in the face of that, but kept her calm.

  “She’s here,” the guard called out, and Innominata’s heart sped to a hammering pace that might have rivaled the birds of the air.

  Another guard appeared in her view, and it was only a moment before the door of her cell had been flung open and the guards seized her. They wasted no time on words and she could not find her own. They brought her into the fortress and carried her before the throne, where a very impatient and irritated Mistress was waiting.

  “Where did you find her?” the demanded. The young slave trembled.

  “She was back in her cell,” one guard said. “She came back.”

  “Did she?”

  Innominata could barely lift her head. Her panic for herself had never been so strong. She had been caught, and there was no knowing what the Mistress would do with her. If the things she had seen were to serve as an example, she feared for her life.

  “How did you get out?” the Mistress demanded coldly.

  Innominata struggled, but finally found her voice—her lie.

  “The door was left unlatched,” she claimed. “I was able to push it open—but I didn’t go far, I swear. I just wanted to stretch a bit.”

  “You remember the rules, don’t you? How many times do I have to make an example for you? Perhaps I should just make an example of you.”

  “No, please. I would never cross you, Mistress,” Innominata proclaimed with intensity. “I serve you only; it’s my life. I love to be in your presence.”