by Elsa Jade
“What are you scheming, iriwyl?” Ignoring Dami’s annoyed glance at his proper Tritonan endearment, he focused on Marisol. “Tell me.”
She looked down, and for a moment he thought the Tritonesse’s condescension had finally broken her.
Foolish Tritonyri.
The water in the midst of their desperate little circle began to dance.
“An omen,” Nalavasque whispered hoarsely. “Has the Abyssa risen?”
In shock, they all watched as the shallow water gathered more of itself from outside their reach, swirling not with the anarchic energy of the Tritonesse’s sub-acoustic fury but with exquisite command.
Marisol’s dark eyes were half closed but ra insignia glimmered in the cutouts of her battle skin. “While Estar sewed our armor on the Ammil,” she said in a strained voice, “Lana read to us from the Atlantyri histories.”
“The witch reads?” Kadyn whispered to Gayo before Dami hissed them to silence.
Coriolis glared at all three. “What was in the histories?”
In their circle, the gathered water suddenly spiraled up—a whirlpool in the air. From the widening gyre at the peak, bioluminescent sparkles burst like Lana’s electrical discharge. But instead of bouncing away, the little embers—seemed to sprout wings?
Dami dropped to her knees on the carved stone where the water had vanished. “Vortex riders. I thought that was…”
“Legend,” Coriolis whispered.
“The old captain said the legends might be lies.” Marisol lifted shimmering eyes to him. “But what if we made them true?”
Slowly, he smiled at her. “As the long-lost half-mythical Tritonesse, you tell me.”
Dragging one finger through the whirlpool, Dami whooped with delight. “I don’t do legends, but I like this.” She jumped to her feet. “Where are my Tritonesse-na?”
“Estar is on the Bathyal with Lana,” Marisol reminded her. “Ariab…ran away.”
Dami grumbled. “What is the point of minions then?” She huffed out a breath. “We’ll just do it ourselves then. Let’s go.”
Slanting a sidelong glance at Coriolis, Marisol gave herself a shake and faced Dami. “Where are we going?”
The Tritonesse grinned. “To get our wings.”
***
The legends of the vortex riders were actually very simple, according to Damiara and the other Tritonesse. Even though they’d never mentioned this simplicity to the Tritonyri, Coriolis kept his skepticism to himself while Dami raided the armory where Estar engineered the battle skins and other apparatus.
He poked through the weapons locker and armed his Tritonyri to the gills.
Kadyn was almost tipping over from the extra weight. “My ballast…”
“Irrelevant,” Dami barked. “You’ll be flying.”
The answer didn’t seem to reassure the young Tritonyri, and he staggered when Gayo clapped him on the shoulder and handed him another pistol.
But when the citadel Tritonesse gathered their hopelessly small company around the map of the Sea to explain the ancient history, Coriolis found himself balking too.
“This isn’t a legend,” he objected. “It’s not even a lie. It’s just lethal.” And now they’d lost precious time hoping for a clear, resounding victory when he had always known the fight was never ending.
Marisol touched his arm. “Let me make sure I have this right. With the storms incoming, you know exactly where these water tornadoes are going to be?”
“Yes,” Dami said impatiently.
“Assuming they spawn,” Nalavasque clarified. At the furious glare aimed her way, she amended again, “But they form off the coast of Finimarwy where the storm winds hits the mountains beyond the spaceport.”
“But the spaceport is inland,” Marisol noted. “And waterspouts don’t go over land.”
“Hence the wings.” Dami shook out one rough triangle of battle skin. “The vortex dissolves at the shoreline, and we soar in—just a few more nothing bits of stormwrack.” She chortled. “The soil-suckers think they are sneaking in low under the electrical interference. But they have no idea what’ll be blown in above them on the mating storm winds.”
Compared to the skins Estar had made for Marisol and Lana, the wings were some eldritch horror with roughly stitched scars through the too-young material and AI threads barely lucid. But the Tritonesse had constructed three wings in almost no time once they’d found the passages Marisol remembered from the Atlantyri histories. When he’d glanced askance at Damiara commandeering one of the 3D printers to weave a section of skin, she snorted.
“Stuck down here for years,” she’d reminded him. “Of course I knit.”
Was being stuck better than being dead? If the Cretarni overran the rearmed spaceport and continued their corruption, there would be no sanctuary left on Tritona. The only alternative left would be exile.
Watching this last company come together—Tritonesse, Tritonyri, and one-time Earther—what was left of his heart shattered. If he ordered them off-world now, they’d survive, probably. Flaude would willingly risk coming for them in the Bathyal. Marisol could go back to Earth, just as she’d wanted from the start…
Watching her unfurl one of the wings to measure against her body, he almost wished the exodus ship had stayed lost.
If Maelstrom and Ridley hadn’t followed the Cretarni’s clumsy but effective fraud to find and unlock the long-missing ship…
They would not have returned to Tritona with the treasured specimens, not have the Earthers aboard, no night with Marisol that changed him forever—however long forever lasted.
When Dami proclaimed the wings done—“Or as done as the legends say, which should be done enough, right?”—Coriolis took his stand. “Three wings,” he said, “to three Tritonyri.”
“No,” Dami said without even glancing at him. “You, me, that big Tritonyri over there who hasn’t said a word.”
The big Tritonyri—Orn by name—grinned and puffed out his chest.
“No,” Marisol said, instantly deflating Orn. “Coriolis, me, Damiara.”
After a moment, Dami inclined her head. “You do have that trick with the water, which could be good.”
“Not sure I can scale,” Marisol warned.
Dami shrugged. “Not sure mermaids can fly either.”
“I was commander of the western fleet once,” Coriolis muttered under his breath.
Marisol’s smile pierced him. “Fly with us, shah iriwyl.” Strong silverwing.
So much for standing against her wishes.
“So about that trick with the water,” he murmured to her as they strapped themselves into heavier harnesses to support the expanse of battle skin.
“Not a trick. I felt the Abyssa do it, just soundwaves to bounce the water.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Just.”
She set her hand between her breasts and pushed a soft ping his way. “You showed me how. Can’t you all do it?”
With a rueful shake of his head, he tightened down his straps to stop himself from reaching for her. “Not like you.” Nothing was like her.
Wings gently bound, they raced to the dry dock. Coriolis had sent most of his remaining Tritonyri with the Tritonesse who’d followed Damiara to secure the citadel as their last asylum, but he kept Gayo and Kadyn with him, flinging orders at them with every step.
As he retrieved three power fins—the multi-bladed propellers were low-profile and very fast—he stepped toward the edge of the dock. “And if you don’t hear from us—”
“No one will.”
At the cold, shuddering voice, as if someone had just emerged from the water in front of him, he froze. He’d sprung ambushes before—sometimes on purpose, sometimes not—but never in their own havens. He glanced over his shoulder.
“Stop! Or I will shoot the grak-cret where she stands.”
After years fighting with young Tritonyri, he believed the terrible panic in that voice. Still, he let another slow degree of pivot stop him in prof
ile to Ariab.
The Tritonesse-na had Marisol right in front of her, a water-to-air plasma launcher in her shaking hands. Though the three heavy power fins dragged at his arms, he held himself very still after that. He’d seen the weapon in the locker and decided to leave it there since plasma launchers were notoriously unreliable even under the best of circumstances, and water-to-air was never the best of circumstances.
Air-to-body was worse. Much worse.
He gave his Tritonyri a hard look to hold them in place, while Damiara eyed her underling with virulent disdain. “What are you doing, na?”
The fatal end of the launcher wavered toward Dami. “What we should have done long, long ago. Leave!”
Dami snorted. “You want to fly with us? Fine. Take the grak-cret’s wing and we’ll—”
“Leave with the Cretarni!”
Green eyes glittering, Dami said, “Never.”
“Never?” Ariab snarled back. “They are inbound right now! I saw them on the scanners.”
Coriolis stiffened. “You disabled the grid? You let the Cretarni in?” He meant to keep the question mild, but Marisol was too close.
Ariab ignored him. “Kadyn, I told you to meet me at comms.”
Gayo swung around to glare at the younger male. “You’re a shriveling spy?” he said incredulously. “For a na?”
Kadyn still had the last pistol Gayo had given him in his hand. He seemed to waver—and then lashed out with the weapon, striking the older Tritonyri to the dock. Gayo went down without a sound, blood spreading in a viridian pool.
Ariab’s glazed stare was so wide her eye shields flickered and retracted in a frenzy. Her vision would be compromised. But the plasma launcher didn’t require any particular accuracy at this range.
But Coriolis didn’t mind when the muzzle drifted toward him, off Marisol and Dami.
“You,” she hissed. “If you’d just let them win, we could have left, been gone to some other world where the water doesn’t burn us—”
“Not necessarily,” Marisol reminded her. “I almost died from the water on one of those other worlds.”
“But you didn’t!” Ariab cried. “Not like my sisters…” She caught her breath on a sob.
Dami’s snort was unsympathetic. “So you let your eel-boy there kill another? That thinking is why you never manifested ra insignia.”
Ariab’s gaze drifted uncertainly to the downed Tritonyri, and Coriolis pressed her hesitation. “Let me stop his bleeding,” he said softly. “You can still leave—”
“He can die,” Kadyn snapped. “He never shut up about the war and how he was a true Tritonyri.” He glowered but took a step away from the creeping gore dripping toward the edge of the dock. “Well, now he’s shut up.”
“And now what?” Coriolis said. “You really think the Cretarni will lift you up to some other world?”
“No,” Kadyn admitted. “But the council rep will. If the Cretarni control the spaceport, the rep will have to send an evac ship to get the rest of us.” His stare, almost as wide as Ariab’s, cut to Marisol. “You don’t know how good you had it far away from here.”
She was looking at Coriolis when she answered. “It wasn’t perfect.”
Not perfect, but better than this, no doubt. Though that truth gutted him, he held her gaze, trying to send her calm without unnerving the addled young Tritonans with an obvious ping.
“And the worst part?” Her voice dropped with existential dread. “We have…the fire-witch!”
Her unexpected shriek jolted him, but it was the enormous tentacle wider than his chest unfurling from the icy waters of the Sea that made him shout in return. “Marisol! Get away—!”
The ghastly green tentacle whirled toward Ariab. With a shriek of her own, the Tritonesse-na fired at the monstrous extremity.
The plasma blazed, and the tentacle turned to…steam?
Spinning on one heel, Coriolis launched all three power fins at Kadyn, although he managed to turn on only one. Still, that roaring blade coming at his head made the younger male duck. And before he could straighten, he was feasting on enraged Tritonyri commander fist, adding his own blood to the pool from which Marisol had surreptitiously built a nul’ah-wys’ tentacle.
Damiara had the launcher cradled in her arms and her foot on the sobbing Ariab’s shoulder when Coriolis finished binding and disarming Kadyn. Gagged him too, because he couldn’t stand the sniveling.
He stared down at the youth who gazed back at him, eyes white with terror. Letting out a harsh breath—what was there to say?—he strode over to Marisol who was binding Gayo, more gently, around his bleeding head with med supplies she was retrieving from yet another pocket on her battle skin.
He narrowed his eyes. It seemed Estar had given her more pockets than the Tritonyri…
The groggy fighter groaned. “That was shameful.”
“They are both young,” Marisol said, “and afraid and probably suffering from chronic traumatic stress. I can tell you about instituting a restorative justice system—”
“I meant me,” Gayo said, “getting shriveled by a spawnling.”
As Marisol patted his shoulder, checked the Tritonyri’s skull under the bandage. “Shriveled but not shattered,” he said. “The Tritonesse-ra has summoned her security chief, trusted, I hope”—he glanced at her and she growled—“to question them. But can you hold them here? If the Cretarni are inbound as Ariab said, we may already be too late.”
“Give me the plasma launcher and go.” Gayo winked at Marisol. “Just watch out for monsters.”
One of the power fins was bent, but Coriolis wasn’t letting her out of his arms again.
Dami grabbed the other fin and dove. Coriolis did the same and then bobbed up to wait for Marisol. She glanced back, just for a heartbeat, but he imagined he could read the thoughts on her troubled face before she tumbled backward into the water.
What if the faithless Tritonans weren’t wrong?
Chapter 17
As the small, powerful propellers hurtled them through the dark, turbulent water, Marisol hoped the two Tritonans could see where they were going.
Or maybe it didn’t matter—irrelevant, as Damiara had said—considering just how well this mission was going so far.
Even with the compression and protection of her battle skin, she was shaking in the aftermath of the attack and betrayal. Even Coriolis’s unyielding arms couldn’t squeeze the tremors out of her, not entirely.
She’d used the Tritonans fear of the nul’ah-wys against them, but what about her own very real fears writhing in her belly like more twisty tentacles?
She’d thought she wanted a place where she belonged, a fight she could believe in. But she hadn’t realized that would mean the world at war. She didn’t have anything to give to this fight that others didn’t already have in greater abundance: Coriolis with his leadership, Damiara with her boldness, even Lana with her apparently wildly effective scare factor. While she… She could make fake tentacle monsters.
She’d never had a real job, but as ‘skills and experiences’ bullet points went, she was fairly certain no one would be impressed.
And yet Coriolis had given himself to her in a way that terrified her more than anything else that happened today. The Abyssa’s attempt to basically shine an explanation into her skull was having the same sort of effect as a plasma beam on a spurt of blood-tinged water: some freaking out, a momentary burst of light, and then the faint stench of ozone.
And now they were going to ride a vortex thousands of times larger than her little “trick with the water” in an attempt to—uh, checking notes here—challenge an unspecified number of spaceships. And that had been her idea. So, see, she was contributing something to the war effort.
A terrible idea!.
She’d be very, very lucky if someone didn’t vaporize her for this endeavor.
But unless she wanted to just let go and be left adrift in the vast and empty ocean, she was stuck. Coriolis had retrieved her externa
l gill from the grotto when she’d almost drowned. He’d told her the speeds they were traveling with the propellers were too fast for her to safely breathe through the tender filaments of her untested gills. And in the rough water, she couldn’t rely on the simple seal around her nose and mouth, so she had to bite down hard on the regulator, tuck her head under Coriolis’s chin, hold on tight, and speed toward her questionable fate.
Although her sense of echolocation was still not honed enough to precisely identify objects in the murk around them, it was obvious the water was getting more turbulent and more charcoal gray than the nothingness it had been before. She’d seen the map in the citadel war room and had a general sense of how weather patterns could be predicted based on climate, temperature, geography, and whatnot, but now it seemed ill advised to base their strategy on a phenomena as ephemeral as waterspouts even though the Atlantyri histories and her own metaphysical experience with the omen made the legend seem perfect. She pictured Coriolis and his Tritonyri warriors swooping in. Admittedly, she hadn’t pictured herself there until Damiara snatched one of the wings.
Snorkeling, Pilates, and the occasional half marathon for charity wasn’t really sufficient preparation for bronc busting a whirlpool in the sky.
No doubt Coriolis would be relieved if she chickened out. But she didn’t think Tritona had chickens, and she wasn’t going to be the first.
When she squinted ahead of them, her eyes tearing in the salty water, a column of pearly white stood out like a beacon of peace against the roiling gray. But as the propellers towed them inevitably closer, she realized that the white zone was actually worse than the surrounding tumult, the water whipped to a frenzy of white bubbles and flecks of sparkling mica.
And they were heading right for it.
Air sawed in her lungs, the external gill struggling to keep up with her rattling breath, and her throat ached with the urge to flare her gills. Now she wished she’d ignored Coriolis about her gills so she’d at least have an excuse besides panic why she couldn’t catch her breath.
He kept his head down next to hers, his cheek pressed against her forehead, protecting her from the ferocious wrench of this water streaming past them. She thought he would try to speak, since he had the vocal apparatus to do so in the water. But instead, a soft pulse pinged against her sternum and spread in sweet, delicate tendrils following her veins. The sensation didn’t eliminate her nerves entirely—that would be stupid since she was right to be afraid—but it took the chattering edge off her anxiety
