A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire, Book Two)

by Jessica Cluess

  Blackwood took Maria by the waist and floated them both toward the boat. I followed, growing more unsteady the closer I drew to the water. I narrowly made it onto the deck before falling. My corseted ribs ached as I tried to get up. Maria, however, looked perfectly comfortable as she helped unfurl the canvas sails. Magnus frowned at her. “Should you really come with us?”

  “Think I can’t handle myself?” She spit into the sea.

  “My dear, you can handle yourself better than most men. But this is magical war.”

  Maria gave me a pointed look.

  “We can’t leave her behind,” I said. Her abilities weren’t my secret to tell.

  As Magnus steered us out of the cove, I peered over the ship’s side and noticed its name: La Bella Donna.

  Take the belladonna, Lambe had said. I bit my lip. Bloody psychics. Hopefully, he had foreseen our victory as well.

  —

  AN HOUR LATER, MARIA AND I were leaning against the railing, listening to the taut snap of the sails and the slap of water against the hull. Blackwood provided wind to keep the vessel moving. Dee sat beside him, and Magnus continued to steer. I would relieve Blackwood of his position soon, but for now there was nothing to do except sit and prepare.

  “How much do you think’ll be gone?” Maria asked.

  “God knows.” My eyes tracked the faint coastline, and I imagined that rolling green replaced by a vision of my father atop Buckingham Palace’s steps, surveying London’s carnage with pleasure.

  My father. The shock and horror of his discovery had worn off, and a cancerous sort of admiration had wormed its way into my heart. What orphan child doesn’t dream that her parent is a long lost monarch? William Howel, humble solicitor, had metamorphosed into a king of nightmares. He did not cower or bow. He did not lie.

  When I met him in the flesh, would I find any remnants of goodness? Or had his greatness burned that humanity away?

  As the sun neared the horizon, we entered Southend-on-Sea, the gateway to the Thames and to London. Land appeared on both sides of us, far enough away that it was difficult to pick out details. Large, round rocks and boulders dotted the shoreline.

  Blackwood stepped up beside me. The wind had a bite to it, and I shivered. Without saying anything, Blackwood took off his coat and draped it across my shoulders. When I tried to return it, he stopped me. “I’m all right.”

  I buried myself in the coat, still warm from his body. It smelled of the dark earth of Faerie, twined with his own particular scent of clean soap and linen.

  “I’m afraid to see London,” he said, a quiet admission. He looked down into the sea. “Whitechurch is dead.” His voice sounded so small with realization.

  “Who will be the new Imperator?” If there would ever be a new one. If the Order, and the queen, and London, and a free England still existed tomorrow.

  “In times like these, the monarch appoints one until the Order can hold a proper vote.” A wave stretched up over the side. With a quick, graceful sweep of his stave, Blackwood sent it back down into the sea. My shivering had stopped.

  “Here,” I murmured, slipping out of the coat.

  He took it, staring at it as if he’d never seen one before. Then, “I’m sorry.” The words were so soft the wind nearly carried them away. “I should never have shut you out.”

  “You’ve no reason to apologize,” I said.

  “But I do. I wanted you to yearn for me.” He put on the coat, his movements slow and mechanical. “But I realized that you don’t need me as badly as I need you.”

  “I need you,” I said, and meant it. But Blackwood seemed resigned.

  “It can’t be the same. You grew up in the open air, with Rook.” He gripped the railing. “I was raised in a dark place. The only two people who knew my secrets disliked me.” His voice quavered. “You are the first and only person who saw me and still cared. How could I not love you? How could I hope you would understand what need is in that kind of love?”

  He choked on the last word. I felt that I’d unlocked a door hidden at the back of a dark house to find the most essential part of him: a lonely little boy watching out the window for visitors who would not come. Gently, I laid my hand on top of his own, feeling the strain in his fingers.

  The boat came to a sudden, jerking halt. We all fell forward, Blackwood nearly tipping over the side. The wind still filled the sails, making them taut, but the boat rested.

  “What—?” Magnus went to the back, puzzled. Then, “Everyone, come here.” His voice held an edge. Just below the surface of the water was a shimmering mass that clung to the bottom of the boat. At first I thought it a kind of weed, but when I touched it, it stuck to my fingers like a web.

  A spiderweb. I yanked myself away, stifling a scream.

  “Don’t pull on it,” Blackwood hissed, grabbing my hand.

  Maria whistled. “It may be too late for all that.”

  In the distance, by the eastern shore, one of those large boulders I’d noticed earlier stirred. It shifted and began to move toward the boat. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the boulder rose higher, revealing itself to be no rock at all but an abdomen.

  Her fifty-foot-long body glistened in the weak light. Mottled brown in color, with violent green and purple decorating the pulsing sides, the enormous abdomen belonged to a creature with eight legs as long as trees. Three round eyes, each large as the window of a house, eased out of the sea to study us. Dripping pincers emerged.

  Nemneris the Water Spider perched on her web, front two legs moving rhythmically up and down, a silent monstrosity.

  She was beautiful in her hideousness, a totemic god. Such a massive thing should not be so deathly quiet, but she was—it was a moment born from the most feverish nightmare. With that jerking crawl peculiar to arachnids, she made her way toward us. The boat shook with each pull of the web.

  We were frozen, until Maria shattered the hypnotic peace with a short, piercing scream. As if a spell had been broken, we acted.

  This couldn’t be the end. We still had to get to London; I still needed to fight R’hlem. Dimly, I recalled something of that prophecy tapestry in Agrippa’s home, something about a drowning poison. After all, shadow had burned above the city when Korozoth was destroyed. Perhaps this was meant to be. Perhaps the great Water Spider would die today.

  Or at the very least, perhaps we would not. Hope flooded my veins, spurring me.

  We considered abandoning ship, but it wouldn’t work. The western shore was too far away, and it would be impossible to reach on one gust of wind alone. We’d fall into the water and into her web.

  As Nemneris crawled forward, we lined up on the starboard side with our staves and the new weapons. Maria kept behind me, squeezing my shoulder. I’d never seen her so afraid before.

  “I don’t like spiders,” she muttered.

  Dee pulled out the flute and began to play. Nemneris stopped in her tracks and rose up. Her scream was more horrifying than her silence, the sound insectile and shrill. Webbing shot out of her pincered mouth, aimed directly at our boat. I launched my flame high into the air, and the boys guided the fire to snap the webbing. It plopped uselessly into the sea on either side of us.

  “Keep playing,” Blackwood shouted to Dee.

  The bone whistle. I reached for it…and found it wasn’t about my neck. Of course, the faeries snatched it underground. Like a fool, I’d left it behind.

  The Spider dove off her web and into the deep water. We each took a corner of the boat to watch. Dee paused playing to catch his breath. I guarded the stern, hearing only the slop of the waves.

  “Is she…?” Maria stopped herself from asking the question.

  The Spider exploded from the sea, toppling me back onto the deck. Her eight legs clung to the sides of the ship as she rose above us. Maria hacked at a limb with her ax, screaming bloody murder all the while. Dee played again but was knocked off-balance and slammed against the edge of the boat. The flute tumbled out of his hands and into the water.


  I nearly threw myself overboard working a spell with Porridge to bring the damned flute back, but it didn’t resurface. My arms ached from the fruitless maneuver. Magnus and Blackwood tried stabbing Nemneris as her eager fangs tore into the sails, shredding them to useless rags. The mast splintered and fell. I launched another torrent of flame at the creature, screaming in frustration. She hissed as my fire licked her face, but she did not release us. It wasn’t enough.

  “Come on, then!” Magnus roared, using his sword to hack at the monster. He thrust upward, getting her beneath the jaw. Black blood coated him as Nemneris’s high-pitched squealing shattered my ears. She rose onto her legs again and spewed a jet of white foam.

  Dee shoved Magnus away and fell beneath the liquid. He shrieked, trying furiously to wipe it away. There was a hissing sound like acid, and then the smoke of burning flesh.

  I ran to help Dee as the Spider released the ship and slid back beneath the waves.

  “Maria!” Magnus bellowed, ripping off his coat to wipe at the foaming venom that still covered Dee. The boy lay unnaturally still. Please, no.

  I reached them as the bottom of the boat ruptured. Below us, three hollow black eyes stared up as the boards tore apart like thin paper. I stumbled for the railing, flinging myself over and twisting before plunging into the cold waves.

  She’s supposed to die! Dammit, the prophecy said, “You shall know her when Poison drowns beneath the dark Waters of—”

  Wait. Poison drowns beneath the dark waters.

  Our ship’s name was the Bella Donna. Belladonna was a type of poison.

  Nemneris wasn’t fated to drown. God, perhaps our ship was fated to sink.

  I pulled my head up just enough to break the water’s surface and take a breath. There were no more screams. The ship had vanished completely. Chunks of debris and canvas bobbed around me, ensnared in her webbing. The silence was more awful than the fighting.

  Her webbing. My arms and my back were practically welded to the web. Despite my thrashing, I couldn’t break free. Porridge was still in my hand, at least. But I was a fly awaiting certain death. I let out a frustrated cry.

  Magnus and Blackwood both shouted, but I couldn’t see them. Thank God, they were alive.

  “Who else is there?” I yelled.

  “We’re bloody stuck!” Magnus cried. The web jostled beneath us at his attempts to break free.

  “Dee’s beside me.” Blackwood sounded stunned. “He’s not moving.”

  “Maria?” I waited for her response. There was none. No. I called for her again, tears in my eyes as I yanked my head away from the webbing. It took probably half my hair to do it, but I was able to crane my neck and look about more. The broken bits of ship, the boys, the lowering sun on the coast. I could see it all except Maria.

  Once more the web jerked. My breath lodged in my throat as Nemneris clambered out of the sea to stand over us, lifting her dripping body high. She regarded us with those bulbous eyes.

  She was relishing this kill.

  Blackwood ordered us to try freezing the web, to light her on fire. But if we couldn’t move, we could not do any sorcerer spells. When I attempted burning, the water extinguished my flame. Swallowed by the sea, I was worse than useless.

  The boys’ thrashes and screams ceased as we realized the truth. I lay before the monster, helpless; the only bitter triumph was the fact that R’hlem would lose me to the jaws of one of his own beasts. Let that haunt him.

  Her Majesty commended you. Whitechurch had died for nothing. His message had been for nothing, and rage boiled inside me to see that creature deciding which of us to devour first, like dainties in a shop window.

  Her Majesty commended you.

  “God save the queen!” I yelled into the hideous thing’s face. “God save the queen!”

  “God save the queen!” Magnus took up the cry, and so did Blackwood. We shouted in unison, our voices rising as Nemneris opened her jaws.

  And then the world exploded.

  The sea went wild; white-capped waves shot ten, twenty feet in the air, as though an underwater volcano were erupting. Nemneris squealed in surprise as Maria rose up atop that column, red hair streaming behind her like fire. She’d her arms out, palms turned to the sky.

  With her whipping hair, her bared teeth, her outstretched arms, she resembled some great and terrible god. She sized the Water Spider up…and attacked.

  With one sweep of Maria’s arm, the wind rose into a frenzied gale, battering us like toys. Waves peaked and sloshed over me, water flooding my nose. I strained for air. She pointed one hand to the sky, and clouds brewed with a violent storm. Nemneris backed away as Maria put another hand toward us.

  The web beneath me froze into ice. At Maria’s gesture, the ice shattered, plunging all of us into the sea. My skirt, petticoats, and boots filled with water, dragging me below the surface. But a current caught me, and as one the boys and I were raised up on a steady column of water.

  When we were safe, Maria turned again to the gargantuan spider. Nemneris had got over the shock and spewed more of that venomous foam. Maria was too quick: a barrier of water enveloped the girl, and the foam was harmlessly absorbed. Nemneris gave a thin, nervous chittering.

  Maria brought her hands together over her head and then swung them down. Lightning forked out of the sky, striking the Ancient. She fell backward, eight legs flailing as three more bolts shot through her. The smell of something burned and rotten wafted over me, and I gagged.

  With Nemneris down, Maria stretched one hand back into the sky and made a fist.

  “Now!” she screamed. I swore I heard two voices come from her mouth, her own and that honeyed, deeper, womanly voice. The waves swelled up and covered Nemneris’s stunned figure, rolling her. Maria clapped her hands together, and the webbing on either side of the shore ripped up, twining itself about Nemneris. The waves rolled her again, entangling the Spider in her own web. The monster screamed but didn’t free herself. Her bulk vanished beneath the waves.

  Was she dead? If finding out meant staying here, I’d rather not.

  Maria’s water column began to lower us back to the sea. Even with her level of power, she couldn’t keep this up forever.

  “Summon the wind,” Magnus called. He caught Dee, whose face and body were scarred.

  Blackwood and I hooked a current of air, while Maria created a platform of ice beneath our feet and we rode a wave in toward shore.

  Her strength finally gave out about fifty feet from land, and we plunged back into the water. I coughed as I paddled forward. Just when I thought I was about to sink, my feet scraped the rocky shore. I dragged myself out, dripping and ragged. My sodden skirts weighed me down even further, and my legs were rubber. My head stung from where I’d ripped out my hair. When I touched my scalp, I found blood on my fingers.

  Magnus had already got ashore and laid Dee on the ground. I groaned in horror as I beheld the damage: his right leg below the knee was splintered, bone poking out of his shin. His left arm below the elbow was gone, a few strips of torn flesh all that remained. Lines of scarring crisscrossed his face. One eye had been shut forever. His flesh was white with shock.

  “Move!” Maria shoved me and got to work. “Make me a tourniquet. Now!”

  I tore at my skirt, hands shaking. We tied off the bleeding at his arm, and she rotated his leg so that his pain wasn’t as intense. Maria laid Dee’s head in her lap. Still, he didn’t wake.

  “Too much blood loss,” she muttered, wincing. “That leg may have to come off.”

  Dear God. Blackwood and Magnus stalked about in a circle, looking painfully helpless. When Maria bid me set my hand on fire and cauterize Dee’s wound, I did, even though I tasted bile while he screamed.

  Still, after rechecking his pulse and breath, Maria nodded. “He could still die of the shock. But he may live. He may.”

  The immediate emergency began to dissipate. Now we had time to consider our escape from Nemneris.

  “How t
he hell did you do that?” Magnus cried, crouching beside Maria. She became mute. While Blackwood questioned her as well, I held Dee’s hand. And then, slowly, I recalled those prophesied words I’d hung on to earlier:

  You shall know her when Poison drowns beneath the dark Waters.

  And Lambe’s words: Take the belladonna and you’ll finally know the truth.

  My entire body went cold.

  Maria was Agrippa’s daughter, a girl of sorcerer parentage who had seen her mother burned: A girl-child of sorcerer stock rises from the ashes of a life.

  How had it taken me this bloody long to realize? I stopped the interrogation, making a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh. When I had the boys’ attention, I said, “She’s the chosen one.”

  The three of them regarded me as though I’d lost my mind.

  “I’m what?” Maria asked.

  I practically crawled to reach her. She looked frightened as I said, “You were foretold by the Speakers. You’re meant to save us.” Should I kiss her hand? Throw my arms about her ankles? How did one embrace a savior?

  Maria paled.

  “But she is not a sorcerer!” Blackwood found his voice at last. I couldn’t tear my gaze from Maria as I answered him.

  “She’s Master Agrippa’s daughter. That makes her more of a sorcerer than I ever could be.” The boys gaped. Recalling the tapestry’s image of the white hand with Agrippa’s seal burned into the palm, I smiled in realization. “The prophecy must have meant the chosen one would come from Agrippa’s bloodline, not that he’d find the girl.” So simple. I’d been so close, thinking it was Gwendolyn.

  My trance dissolved when Maria pulled away from me.

  “No.” Despite her exhaustion, she looked furious. “I don’t want it.”

  “Howel, you could be right.” Blackwood ignored Maria’s words, lost in his own thoughts. “I’ve never seen such power.”

  “I don’t want to be your anything!” Her anger fed the wind, which picked up sharply. “Why should I risk myself to save murderers?”