by K. Ferrin
“Brielle, the fools. Pretending something doesn’t exist because it makes you uncomfortable does not make something stop existing. Just makes you less capable of dealing with it when it comes to your door.”
Ling stole a glance in Drake’s direction, wondering if she were talking only about Brielle’s policies on magic or if the woman had a subtle additional message.
“The others, the stains on their chins…?”
Drake glanced over at her, a wrinkle between her brows. “You must not have spent much time outside Brielle,” she said. One of the boatsmyn climbed up the ladder to the wheelhouse, a heavy wooden tray balanced carefully in one hand as he climbed. He set it down, revealing several mugs and a thick carafe.
“Coffee?” Drake offered as she refilled her mug and then poured one for Ling.
Ling took a sip and a smoky, charred, chocolatey flavor hit her tongue in a very pleasurable burst. She’d never heard of coffee, but it was delicious.
“It’s their way,” Drake resumed their conversation after the boatsmyn had left. “They color their skin that way when they become full warlocks. You can’t wear the stain until you’ve passed through the full training and have the title.”
“What do the colors mean?”
Drake gave a low chuckle. “You’re curious for a sec.”
“A sec?”
Drake smiled. “That’s what we call people without any sort of magic about them. It means dry, like a dry well. The colors indicate their discipline. There are four. For the Toventuin, the stain is black, signifying the deep color of fertile earth. For the Tovensteen, it’s green, which makes no sense to me since their discipline is in rocks and dirt. For the Tovendieren, it’s a pale gold, and for the Tovenveran it’s purple.”
Ling rolled the strange words around on her tongue. She’d never heard anyone refer to anyone by those names. Nor had she heard anyone use the term sec. She was surprised to learn others viewed her and her people in such a way.
“So the Toventuin grow things, the Tovensteen are what, miners? What about the other two?”
“More or less, yes. The Tovendieren are mostly Brisian and can communicate with animals. The Tovenveran are something different altogether. They can force things to behave differently—to go against their nature.” Her tone tightened as she spoke, and her eyes narrowed.
So Grag was Tovenveran. Witch hadn’t mentioned what color his chin had been, but he had to be. They forced things to go against their very natures. Like forcing a young girl to sleep and creating a changeling that had her every thought, feeling, and memory. Besides, he’d had an amethyst, and purple was the color of the Tovenveran.
She glanced up and was reminded why she’d come up here to begin with.
“Captain Drake, have we turned back for some reason?”
The woman chuckled. “Oh, yes. We’ve traveled this route so many times, I didn’t really think about what it would be like for you on your first trip. It’s a bit of a puzzle, but you can only get to Marique by leaving it.”
“Only get there by leaving? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, truth be told. But it’s the way of it nevertheless. Watch.” She motioned ahead. Ling stared out over the sea, but could see nothing except the steady encroachment of night as the sun slowly sank from the sky.
“Sit, if you like. It’s great from up here.” Ling took the seat Captain Drake motioned to and sipped from her mug. Drake refilled her cup from the pot.
Ling felt it before she saw it. The ship picked up speed, though the wind remained unchanged. The ship cut faster and faster through the lengthening evening, wild sprays of water splashing as its bow sliced across waves. A few minutes later, Ling saw what Captain Drake had presumably pointed toward earlier—large stone spires jutting up out of the water. They had not been there on the way out from Middelhaern, Ling was absolutely certain of it. There were so many that Ling could see no way through. At their bases, the water churned and swirled violently as it crashed endlessly against the spires.
“Captain!” Ling cried, jumping to her feet, fear churning in her gut as they sped toward the rocks.
“It’s not quite as bad as it looks,” Drake said, her voice calm. “There is a way through.”
“We’re going in there? Are you mad?” Ling stared at the woman, wondering if she had lost her mind. The captain had a wild glint in her eyes, but they were clear and steady.
“I told you, on this run the warlocks are the least of it. Besides, I think we’re all a bit mad, don’t you? I’d retake that seat, if I were you, and hold on tight.”
And they were in the maelstrom. Ling stole a glance back at the coxswain below and in front of them, standing with her legs splayed, hands gripping the wheel, a gleeful smile plastered across her face. She saw Ling looking and howled up at the stones as the ship swept through their midst.
Ling stared in terror as the ship was tossed violently by the wildly surging sea. Several times they came so close to the looming stone spires that she could have leaned out and touched them. Waves crashed over the decks, and she was soaked through in seconds. Lightning split the sky and thunder boomed all around them though not a cloud littered the sky. The ship sped through the maze at such a speed that Ling was certain it would be torn to pieces, and she wondered if she would once again find herself the sole unharmed survivor of a ruined ship.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ling had no idea how the coxswain steered them through, but steer them through she did. The violence stopped suddenly as the stone spires spit them out into a darkness so absolute she felt like she’d been dropped into a bowl of indigo paint. It had been dusk when they’d entered the maelstrom, and the journey through had taken only minutes, so the last light of the setting sun should still have been visible in the western sky. But the darkness surrounding them was absolute and impenetrable. The ship drifted in silence. No wind brushed the deck, and the sails hung limp and unmoving. She couldn’t even hear water slapping against the hull.
“You’ll love this next part. You’ll not see its like anywhere in the world.” The male voice was pitched normally, but it seemed to boom out of the silence. Ling jumped at the sudden noise, climbing to her feet and spinning toward the sound.
“Ah, Fariss. I figured you’d come out for this. I know how you love it so.” The captain’s previously warm tone seemed chillier as she spoke to the man.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, of course,” Fariss said.
His voice was smooth, low, but something about it made her shudder. He must be the passenger with the amethyst stones. The Tovenveran. He sounded like he was to her left, and she wondered if she could she find a way around him and off the wheelhouse in the darkness.
“Lights!” Captain Drake ordered, and the heavy silence broke with the sound of a dozen feet pounding across the deck in response to her command. A loud clang came from behind them, followed by a deep groan, and the deck beneath Ling’s chair began vibrating violently. A breath later, a gentle glow sprouted from small bowls clamped all along the perimeter of the ship and around the roof of the wheelhouse.
She gasped as one lit up beside her. She hadn’t noticed the bowls before. She leaned over to peer into the one near her, and as she did so, she caught a glimpse of what she would have sworn was a face looming up out of the thick darkness surrounding them. Not on the deck below, but out in the water itself. It was gone in a flash, and she saw the glint of light on scales as its tail flipped up out of the darkness. A fish, not a human. Ling laughed at her own paranoia.
She shifted her gaze back to the bowl of light. Inside, a liquid of some sort glowed a brilliant blue, and in the center of the bowl a small paddle spun, stirring the mixture slowly. She poked a finger into the bowl, curious about what kind of substance could light up that way. She’d never seen anything like it.
“No, no.” Fariss grabbed her wrist and held it fast. He was as solid as any person she’d ever met, despite the strange fading in and out that he did f
rom time to time. And he smelled...odd. Unpleasantly so. She shuddered and pulled her hand away quickly. “You do not want to touch it.”
“What is it?”
“The liquid itself is just water,” he said. “It’s what is in the water that’s interesting.”
“What do you mean?” Ling asked, peering more closely into the bowl. “Is it spelled or something? Magic?”
Fariss chuckled as he answered, “In a way, I suppose. We call it biolumesce. You can’t see it, but that bowl is filled with tiny animals that light up when disturbed.”
“Why can’t I touch it?”
“Oh...well...they have to feed, just like any other animal.”
Ling turned to study him in surprise. “They eat flesh, you mean,” she said. Fariss nodded, a neat smile curving his purple-stained lips. His expression seemed friendly enough, but something about him filled her with a deep disquiet. She couldn’t figure out what it was, but she didn’t like it. She resisted the urge to shrink away from his gaze. “Surely they would be of no risk to me. They are so small!”
“Listen to the man, Ling. We had a boatsmyn who didn’t believe it once. He’s not sailing anymore,” Captain Drake said, her normally laughing eyes quite serious. “From this point forward things will be a bit...interesting...for you, I suspect.” She turned to Fariss. “Shall we?”
He grinned, and Ling saw that the skin around the amethyst orb in his chin was perfectly healed, as if the stone had been part of him since birth. “Oh, let’s!” he replied. “Watch,” he said to Ling, gesturing out toward the blackness.
Ling noticed that the other passengers were lined up along the deck again. They were quiet, staring out at the water. Ling saw the scaled woman up on the bow of the ship, talking earnestly to the woman with the black stones in her ears. Treantos stood below Ling and the captain, staring intently out into the darkness.
She turned to where Fariss had pointed. “Watch what? It’s far too dark to see anything.”
“It is called Mare Tenebrarum by the Mari. In your language, that means the Darkling Sea,” Fariss said, answering a question she hadn’t asked. He stood peering out into the darkness.
She’d never heard of the Darkling Sea or the Mare Tenebrarum. Or the Mari, for that matter. Her father sailed the river route between Meuse and Middelhaern, but she’d known boatsmyn who’d traveled from the White Mountains of Vosh far to the north clear down to the tip of Brisia in the south. None of them had mentioned the Mare Tenebrarum or a people called the Mari.
At a signal from the captain, bright lights flashed into being all along the length of the port side of the ship. Ling staggered at what she saw, grasping the rail to keep her feet beneath her as her head spun in shock. Faces stared up at her. Dozens and dozens of them. Faces large and round, with skin so pale they seemed to glow in the bright light. They had eyes as big as dinner plates and mouths lined with more teeth than the tiger fish they occasionally caught in nets in the Lisse and Arnhem rivers. The faces vanished as the light hit them, and Ling saw tails where she’d expected legs. Long, tapering tails, scaled like a fish, with massive fins that flashed as the creatures dove beneath the surface. This is what she had caught a glimpse of earlier. Not a fish after all.
“They fear the light. If we were to lose our lights, this ship would be torn to bits,” Fariss said quietly. He had shifted closer to her and was now so near that Ling felt the brush of his breath against her ear. She shuddered at its touch. His voice had a reverence in it that made her stomach squirm. He spoke almost lovingly of their destruction at the hands of whatever those things were.
“Not true, Fariss. No need to terrify the poor girl. The glyphs protect us, too,” Captain Drake chided.
“True. Though they’re largely untested.”
“Ships sailed these waters for centuries before your biolumesce came along.”
“Yes. But how many of them simply never made it?” Fariss bared his teeth, picking at something apparently lodged there. Ling took a couple of steps down the railing, putting some space between herself and the repugnant man.
Captain Drake scowled. “Fariss doesn’t like the runes because they weren’t his idea and don’t come from his discipline.”
“You’ve no idea how many we lost in the early days, ’til we figured out they couldn’t abide light,” he said, his voice going soft again.
“Your fascination with them is offensive, Fariss.” Captain Drake’s tone was laced with disgust.
Ling silently agreed with her. “What are they?” she asked aloud.
“Sirené,” Fariss said. “They are terrible, but they are magnificent. You must admit as much, Captain.”
“I’ve seen what those things do to an unprotected ship, Fariss. Magnificent is the last word I’d use to describe it. I’d love to kill every last one of them.”
“I’d love to capture them. At least one, anyway. To study it. It’s impossible, you know. Many have tried, but none have succeeded.”
“Sirené,” Ling breathed. “Are they flesh and blood? Or are they magic?”
“Flesh and blood enough to rip this ship apart and drag every one of us into the murky depths,” Captain Drake said.
“All magic is real enough in that respect, Captain,” Fariss chided her. “We don’t really know if they are more like us or more like them, but I’d love to find out.”
“More like us or more like them?” The question was out of her mouth before her mind had a chance to warn her to silence.
“Them,” Fariss said, gesturing toward the bow of the ship, his voice filled with bile. “The Mari.”
The yellow-scaled woman stood there still, alone now, gazing out at the dark water around them. So she wasn’t a warlock; she was Mari. Fariss had mentioned the name earlier, but Ling hadn’t known who they were. A group Fariss had no affection for, it seemed. Are these the monsters from the boatsmyn’s tales?
“They are neither—at least not any more. As well you know, Fariss.” The new voice was rich and deep and smooth, with a sharp edge of bitter sorrow poking out of it. Ling and her two companions looked down at Treantos.
“How should I know such a thing, Treantos?” Fariss asked.
Treantos stared back at Fariss for a single breath before turning back out toward the water and returning to silence.
There had been a hard edge to Fariss’s question, and Ling glanced toward him. She’d expected anger, but the same tight smile curled the corners of his lips, and his eyes glinted in a way that suggested laughter rather than anger.
Beside her, Drake shifted in her seat, lips flattened and arms crossed tightly. Ling burned with curiosity at Treantos’s words. What did he mean when he said the sirené were neither human nor Mari “anymore”? She wanted to ask, but Drake’s taut frame was a caution. Ling was clearly out of her depth. There were strong currents, about which she knew nothing, running beneath the surface of this conversation. Dangerous currents, it seemed. A tight silence settled among them.
“It’s pink!” Ling exclaimed after a moment, suddenly realizing the unusual color of the water. The tension broke, and the other two chuckled at her surprise.
“Like I said, ‘interesting,’” Captain Drake said, her smile reasserting itself on her features, though clearly still forced. “Start her up, boatsmyn! We’ve got somewhere to be!”
The bright lights along the port side of the ship went dark, and the inky blackness descended once again over the water. The biolumesce lingered, the Courser becoming a small bubble of light in a vast expanse of darkness, and Ling couldn’t help but imagine the glowing white faces of the sirené no doubt gathering again just beyond the reach of that paltry light. She felt tiny. And lost. The world was so big, and she just one girl in all that vastness. “But, won’t they come back?” she asked, despising the smallness of her voice.
Fariss smiled at her, studying her in a manner that left her quite uncomfortable, but Captain Drake placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“They know this
ship is well protected. They’ll not bother us now, Ling. You’ve got nothing to worry about from them. More coffee?”
“Oh, I’ll have some, Captain, if you’re so disposed,” said Fariss.
The warmth of the captain’s hand on Ling’s shoulder vanished as she turned toward the coffee pot. The vibration under Ling’s feet grew in violence as the metal contraption she’d seen when boarding belched into life. They had looked like paddles, she’d thought at the time, and she’d been right. They spun along the entire length of the Courser, plunging into the water and back out again as they pushed the large ship forward. Ling watched in complete surprise as the ship leapt forward, moving easily as fast as while under sail. Perhaps even faster.
“Still, it’s a wonder you let her on your ship, Captain,” Fariss was saying.
Ling stood in silence, barely listening as Captain Drake and Fariss chatted beside her. Middelhaern was the biggest river port in this part of the world—how had she not heard of a ship like this? Or, for that matter, of the Mari or the Darkling Sea? Just how much of the world did Brielle pretend didn’t even exist?
“You know we take no sides, Fariss. This ship is off limits to your petty squabbles.”
“I don’t think a person can reasonably call a centuries-long war a petty squabble, Captain.”
“If you like, you can find your own way to and from that cursed island you call home.”
Was the Courser the only ship in the world with a rowing contraption like that strapped to it? She wondered at how it worked and who had built it. She vowed to ask Captain Drake to show her before they got to Dreggs. Marique. Whatever they called it. The metal paddling system didn’t seem like it was magic—at least, it wasn’t like any magic she had heard of. But then again, she hadn’t encountered much magic in her life.
Still, it didn’t seem to align with any of the warlock disciplines Captain Drake had told her about. Except maybe Tovenveran. Had Fariss built this entire thing, in addition to the biolumesce?
