Ice Massacre

by Tiana Warner

  My turn for a break came as the sun crept towards the horizon after dinner. Most of the other girls who’d been in the circle with me headed straight below deck to warm up.

  “Go check out the net they set up,” I said to Fern. “Try and figure out what it is. I’ll take the helm for a bit.”

  Ropes held the wheel in place over the calm waves. I left them there and faced the water, needing a minute alone.

  To Fern and Zarra, I was captain now. I knew Blacktail and Sage wouldn’t have a problem with it either. Despite them, I felt abandoned. I found myself wishing I could talk to Annith. I needed my best friend.

  Would anyone in Dani’s crew join me? Would Dani let them, even if they wanted to?

  My main concern was to keep everyone working together on a common goal: to massacre demons. We’d studied military command in training. Discord in a crew could be fatal. As much as I wanted to dismantle Dani’s crew, to take back the girls she’d stolen from the captains before me, my focus had to be on the Massacre and not on Dani. I had to remember who the real enemy was.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been leaning against the helm, but I must have fallen into a trance. When a hand appeared over the railing, mine were an alarming distance away from my crossbow.

  I started into alertness and grabbed for the weapon across my chest, twisting out of the mermaid’s line of fire so she couldn’t impale me.

  She poked her head up and made no move to attack. Her eyes weren’t even red. They were sapphire blue.

  “Lysi!” I said, struggling to keep my adrenaline-charged voice at a whisper. “You scared me half to death!”

  “Sorry,” she said, pursing her lips to hide a smile. “You sure looked like a maniac trying to get your crossbow in time.”

  I ducked behind the helm, trying to hide my own smirk as I strapped my weapon across my chest again. “Maybe I was just testing how fast I could ready my weapon.”

  She tilted her head. “Well, it would’ve made for a decent scrap, if I was going to attack you.”

  I poked my head around the helm to check on the girls. Nobody seemed to have seen my struggle. Fern must have felt my gaze; she looked straight at me and lifted a hand in a small wave. I returned it nonchalantly before pulling back.

  “I can leave if you want me to,” said Lysi, ducking a little.

  “No,” I said quickly. “It’s okay. Stay.”

  I didn’t know why I said it. I didn’t want to trust her, especially after what she’d said about my trusting too easily.

  Her eyes smiled, just as they had before I’d left her the last time.

  “I’ve been wanting to come see you again,” she said, propping her porcelain arms on the edge of the deck. “But . . . well . . .”

  Her eyes swept over me, fixing on each place I’d been beaten and cut open, and then her brow knitted as she stared at the last stripe of sunlight across the water.

  Her face still had the youthful glow I remembered, though it had grown leaner and more defined.

  The deck creaked as we rocked over the waves, and I glanced over my shoulder impulsively.

  “Don’t worry,” said Lysi. “I’ll be able to hear someone coming before you will.”

  She tucked a golden lock behind her ear as though to prove she was listening. I leaned against the helm. “All right.”

  “So you got sent to warrior training, too?” She was studying my crossbow.

  I nodded. “Five years of it. I never got to finish school. Neither did Annith.”

  “Annith! Your best friend, right? How’s she doing?”

  By her tone, I knew she wasn’t asking in the light, conversational sense.

  “Oh, you know,” I said, not sure if I should go into the whole situation with Dani. “Still boy-crazy. She’s pretty serious about a guy back home.”

  “Do you have anyone back home?” said Lysi.

  For some reason, I shook my head. Then I caught myself and sighed.

  “His name’s Tanuu.”

  She looked at me for a long time before the corner of her mouth twisted up. “Oh?”

  “Before I left, he told me he loves me and wants to marry me, and . . . I don’t even like kissing him, never mind having kids with him,” I blurted.

  Lysi burst out laughing, stifling it by ducking her head over the side of the deck. “Why are you going out with him, then?”

  I shrugged, flustered, but at the same time relieved by her reaction.

  “Wait—is this the boy who always tried to give you dandelions?”

  I groaned and put my head in my hands. Lysi burst with laughter all over again. It took her longer to surface this time.

  “He’s a good friend,” I said. “But I don’t love him like he does me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with going out with somebody for fun,” said Lysi. “Sometimes it’s nice to have some kind of . . . you know.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Some kind of what?”

  “Action,” she said.

  “Right.” I flushed, embarrassed and trying to suppress a fit of giggles. “Well, yes.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  At the back of my mind, a voice was yelling at me, telling me this conversation shouldn’t be happening, telling me to make Lysi leave.

  Instead, I grinned. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  She stalled and glanced sideways. “No . . .”

  “But you have in the past?”

  She nodded. I couldn’t suppress the giggle.

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” she said. “What happened with you and Tanuu before you left? Did you tell him you loved him, too, and . . .”

  “No!”

  “. . . share a sweet, teary goodbye, and . . .”

  “No, I—”

  “. . . blow him kisses and wave a handkerchief as you sailed into the sunset?”

  “No!” I said, but I laughed as she put on a romantic expression and batted her long eyelashes.

  “Things were weird between us when I left. I feel terrible about it in case I never see him again.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Lysi, abruptly serious. “You’ll go home alive. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “That’s a big promise to keep.”

  “I’m not losing you again.”

  My heart swelled at her words, and all I could do was stare. Did she really mean that? Was I stupid to think she wanted things to go back to the way they used to be?

  Was I stupid for letting myself want that, too?

  She broke our gaze to trace her finger over a crack in the deck.

  “Tell me about your boyfriend,” I said.

  Her mouth twisted but she kept looking down. “We went out for almost two years.”

  “Then?”

  “Then I broke it off.”

  “Why?”

  She said nothing, still tracing her finger along the deck.

  “Come on,” I said. “You wouldn’t shut up a second ago! What’s his story?”

  “His name’s Kayton.”

  “Whoa, don’t reveal too much,” I said sarcastically.

  Lysi laughed. “Well—he was a human once.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You changed him?”

  “No,” she said quickly, “it wasn’t me. Another mermaid did it. But she did it without thinking. She didn’t really love him.”

  “Bummer for him,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s all right with it, if you know what I mean. He’s gone out with a lot more mermaids than just me and the one who turned him.”

  I inclined my head. Maybe this Kayton guy saw the mishap as one enormous blessing. The thought made me smirk.

  “Are there a lot of mermen turned from humans?”

  “Not too many, but I know a few.”

  The idea of fishermen transforming into sea demons both thrilled and terrified me.

  She went quiet again, so I said, “And? Why did you dump him?”

  “I found out I w
asn’t the only mermaid he was going out with.”

  I stared at her. The words took a minute to sink in.

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t make that big-eyed seal face,” she said. “I’m fine. I wasn’t really into him anyway.”

  She smiled, but I couldn’t return it. How could anyone cheat on Lysi?

  “Lysi, I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have pressed—”

  “Oh, Mee,” she said, flicking a spray of water at my face. “Stop it. I’m fine.”

  Her honest smile made me believe her, but I still wanted to throw my arms around her in a hug.

  “Maybe I’m the one who trusts too easily,” she said.

  I opened my mouth, but Lysi looked over my shoulder and her eyes widened. A pink tinge bled through her eyes, and then I blinked, and she was gone.

  I stared at the place where she’d been, and a second later heard footsteps behind me.

  “Your turn,” said a voice. I turned to see Annith’s feet.

  “I’m going to get a warmer jacket,” I said, standing. A chill crept over me as the sky blackened.

  I couldn’t meet Annith’s eyes as I strode past her, afraid of what I’d see.

  “You can have that spot for helm watch, or whatever,” I said.

  I’d been trying not to let it bother me, but I could tell Annith wasn’t always comfortable with the duties Dani gave her. She was wary of heights, yet the night before, I’d seen her scaling the main mast. I tried to remind her she was a free person who didn’t have to follow Dani’s orders. Annith argued that being a part of Dani’s crew was what she wanted, and she was willing to overcome her fears if it meant staying on the crew.

  I pulled my arms from my sleeves as I descended into the cabin, trying to push the issue from my mind. There was nothing I could do about it.

  At the bottom, Holly and Shaena were in whispered conversation. They fell into abrupt silence when I entered. I ignored them and pulled my trunk from under the beds.

  “So she wakes up and there’s blood on her pillow and sheets, right,” whispered Holly.

  “You think she was hurt and didn’t tell anyone?” whispered Shaena.

  “No, I think she scratches herself in her sleep. I see her doing it sometimes.”

  She pointed across the way to her own bed. They both looked at it, and then down at Dani’s bed as though a dying person lay under the mussed up sheets.

  “She’s putting herself under too much stress,” said Holly.

  “I know.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Nothing we can do. Just don’t put any more strain on her.”

  “She’s being so weird. Have you talked to her lately?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “No. She said she didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “It’s been, like, four days.”

  I pulled out my jacket and snapped my trunk closed, and the two of them paused again as I crossed in front of them to check on Linoya.

  She still wouldn’t wake, even when I shook her lightly. Her chest barely rose and fell.

  Shaena and Holly couldn’t have been the only other girls to think Dani wasn’t doing so well. There was a wild desperation in the girl’s eyes that’d never been there before.

  Maybe I couldn’t control what the other girls did, and maybe it wasn’t a good idea to openly oppose Dani, but I could at least keep a close watch on her.

  After all, the main responsibility of captain of the Bloodhound was the safety of the crew. Dani’s crew was still my crew—and I had the nagging feeling safety wasn’t Dani’s top priority.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Unknown Plan

  By the middle of May, the Bloodhound was in a sorry state.

  Fern squinted up at the torn sails and sighed. “How’s this thing still moving?”

  “I think she’s just bobbing with the waves, at this point,” I said grimly, jabbing a needle through the canvas with aching fingers.

  I’d been stitching for close to an hour, and still the mainsail was a gigantic piece of Swiss cheese.

  My stomach growled noisily, and I tried to ignore the pains shooting up my chest like fireworks. While Annith and Nora made dinner, I mended the ship with Texas, Fern, and Shaena—patching holes with tar, sewing up the sails, cleaning debris, taking a mop to the blood-sodden deck. I’d offered to repair the sails because I had a hard time keeping myself from lingering hopefully near the railings when I tried to do anything else.

  I was torn between wanting Lysi to come back and wanting her to stay away. What if one of the girls saw her? Could I live with myself if she got hurt again because of me?

  Footsteps approached and stopped behind me. I finished my row of stitches before turning.

  “I need to talk to you,” said Holly shortly.

  She jerked her head, motioning that we should step away from everyone.

  I glanced around; nobody was listening to us, anyway. Fern had gone back to fixing the galley door, which a mermaid had ripped off its hinges the last time we were attacked. Everyone had been too preoccupied with the other mermaids to see her sneak over, and then the entire door had flown across the deck at us.

  I humoured Holly and stepped aside.

  “You told Dani,” she said with a less-than-friendly expression.

  I sighed and looked past her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You told her what I said the other night, about her scratching herself and being weird. You were the only other person in the room besides Shaena, and Linoya was asleep.”

  I blinked. I’d all but forgotten about their conversation. “You think I tattled?”

  “How else would Dani know what I said? I trusted you’d mind your own business!”

  “Maybe you need to talk to Shaena, because I tend not to share all the random conversations I hear.”

  “Shaena would never do that to me.”

  “Do you honestly think,” I said stiffly, “I care enough about Dani to go telling her the stuff I overhear about her?”

  Holly said nothing.

  “Exactly,” I said. “So go talk to Shaena if you’re concerned. It sounds to me like your problem is coming from within your cult.”

  She stared at me passively for a moment before saying, “I heard you’re captain now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you were trying to make me leave Dani’s crew.”

  Her tone had become much less hostile.

  “If anyone wants to leave Dani’s crew,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “they can make that decision on their own.”

  A shout from Dani cut across the deck, and Holly jumped.

  “Look what I caught!”

  Whatever it was, it emitted an ear-splitting shriek before Dani had finished talking. I squinted at it, some kind of fish she held away from her body at arm’s length.

  My jaw dropped. She was holding the tail of a tiny mermaid. The toddler wailed and thrashed in Dani’s grip, trying to claw at her arm, but she didn’t have the strength to pull her body around and grab Dani’s wrist.

  Dani laughed, watching the little body struggle at the end of her bony arm.

  “Throw it back in—make it shut up,” yelled Texas, turning back to her blood-soaked mop.

  Dani ignored her and rummaged in her tool belt, still keeping the toddler carefully away from her body.

  I stepped closer. “What are you looking for? Just throw it back in.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “This thing is going to grow up to kill your own kids one day. You want me to release it?”

  “It’s just a baby! It doesn’t even have red eyes or fangs yet!”

  Her bloodshot eyes gleamed. “It’s not a baby, it’s a sea rat, and it’s going to eat my arm if I don’t get rid of it soon.”

  I reached out. “Give it to me. I’ll get rid of it.”

  Dani pulled away, and the baby mermaid’s head cracked against the railing. She screamed even loud
er.

  “Oops.”

  I clenched my teeth. “Dani, give me the mermaid.”

  She stepped back, sneering at me. Sweat shone on her pale face from the effort of holding up the flailing toddler.

  Her hand closed around something in her tool belt. She pulled out her iron dagger.

  I lunged forwards. “Dani, no!”

  She was too quick. The knife sliced across the child’s throat and the bright red blood poured freely from her upside-down body, flooding onto the deck like a waterfall.

  “NO!”

  I grabbed for the toddler, but Dani blocked me with her hand, still clutching the dagger.

  “One less demon contaminating our waters.”

  She shoved her other fist into my chest, and the tiny mermaid slapped against my front. Blood poured down my legs.

  “Now,” said Dani, “you can get rid of it.”

  I stared into her empty eyes, reflecting nothing but a callousness that turned her irises a dead shade of beige. The way she looked at me, I could have sworn she’d left her soul back on Eriana Kwai. There was no human left in this girl.

  “Your morals may have sunk to the bottom of the ocean,” I said, taking hold of the baby’s tail, “but someday, your sense of remorse will find you, and you’ll realise you’ve failed to honour humanity.”

  Annith stepped through the doorway to the galley.

  “Dinner!”

  She balked when she saw Dani and me standing nose-to-nose with the dripping corpse hanging between us.

  “Great,” said Dani, sliding the bloody dagger into her tool belt. “I’m starved!”

  Without looking at it, I threw the light, cold body over the side of the ship. The deed was done and I couldn’t stand to hold it any longer.

  Feeling everyone gawking, I turned and strode down to the cabin, peeling off my soaked clothes. My hands were shaking. I could smell the blood.

  “Disgusting,” I said, throwing my shirt and pants on the floor and digging through my trunk.

  None of the other girls had tried to stop her. Was a mermaid nothing but a target to them, even if only an innocent child?

  I scrubbed the blood from my hands—though I swore they hadn’t come truly clean in two weeks—then stomped back up the stairs and across to the galley, avoiding the eyes of the girls still on duty.