by Heidi Heilig
“Aye, Captain.”
I followed her off the Dark Horse and onto the pier, then up the gangplank to the deck of her ship. Nix dropped the logbook in the captain’s cabin and met me at the rail. To the east, dawn was breaking red—a sailor’s warning. Still, I was more at ease off the yacht. Together, we gazed into the mirror of the water, wreathed in the silvery mist of her breath. “What are you afraid of?” she said at last.
“Oblivion.” The ghost of the word hung in the air.
“Dying?”
“Doubly dying.” I grimaced. “Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. You know the poem.”
She shifted on her feet and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “You think I would forget you?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” I shook my head. “But it’s not about you. Not truly.”
“What then?”
“Amira . . .” How to explain? I took a deep breath. The night air filled me, cold as indifference. “All my life, I’ve never dared to call anything mine. It was too permanent an idea, in a world where nothing lasted. All I had were the thoughts in my head. The feelings in my heart. But now I don’t know if those are mine either.”
“What do you mean, Kash?”
I tapped my hands on the brass—would she ever understand? “Haven’t you ever wondered why you love me?”
She looked at me, surprise on her face. “No.”
The answer brought me up short. “Really?”
“There are a million things I wonder, but never that.”
I opened my mouth . . . closed it. “Why not?”
“Because . . . well.” She bit her lip. “Because it’s so obvious. The answer always comes to me before I have the chance to ask myself the question. Why? Don’t you know why you love me?”
“I know that I’m happiest at your side,” I said fervently. “I know that when we’re apart, my heart is with you, when we disagree I still want you near. It’s like I was made for you, amira, but I don’t know why.”
“Kashmir . . .” She laughed a little in disbelief. “That’s . . . that’s what love looks like.”
“But is it only a trick of Navigation?” I asked, nearly pleading. “And if so, what is truly mine?”
“I am.”
Her words took me by surprise. She said it so simply—so quiet, so true. Only two words, three letters, one breath, but never had a promise held more meaning. She turned to me then, and in her eyes, I saw not oblivion, but infinity, and the stars were not as bright as her smile.
“Nix,” I said, and her name was a poem. She tilted her face up to the dawn; my lips met hers. She pressed close to me, and then there was no past, no future—only now. No her, no me. Only us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As I woke in Kashmir’s arms, I was half afraid it had been a dream.
But the memories came back slowly, teasingly. Kissing on the deck—pulling him toward the ladder. Sliding down after him, into his arms, my back pressed against the rungs for another breathless kiss. Letting him lead me toward his cabin as though it were a dance—a two-step where he retreated and I advanced, our hands and eyes locked, and the music was the pounding of my heart.
He’d spun me through the door, stepping in behind me. His lips brushed my shoulders, my neck, the soft skin behind my ear. He murmured sweet words in half a dozen languages, and though I didn’t know them, I understood them all. His fingers were deft on the pearl buttons of my dress; he undid them one by one, down to the small of my back. Then his hands on my skin, and tangled in my hair.
He had shrugged off his jacket. My hands slid up under his white shirt, along the rippled muscles of his stomach, and then—and then—
“Good morning, amira.”
I froze at the sound of his voice, then melted again at the look in his eyes. His hair was tousled, his smile was warm and sleepy. Bright daylight streamed through the porthole and shone on his golden skin. “Barely,” I said, my voice husky.
“Barely good?” His eyebrows shot up.
“Barely morning, I meant.”
“Ah, that’s a relief!” He propped himself up on one elbow among the silk pillows, and the blanket slipped dangerously low around his waist. I averted my eyes, then reverted them surreptitiously. I could hear the wicked grin in his voice. “It could get barer, if you like.”
I slung a pillow at him. He batted it aside, then wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into a kiss that stopped time. I had seen countless worlds and boundless horizons, but nothing as wondrous as the space within the circle of his arms. It was only the ringing of the bells that brought me back to Ker-Ys.
Trying to catch my breath, I drank in the scent of his skin, clove and copper, as the rumble of the gates reverberated through the hull. He kissed my cheek, my jaw, my throat. “If the tide’s going out, it’s nearly noon,” I whispered as the ship rocked on the swells. “We should probably get back to the castle.”
He brushed my hair back with a feather-light touch, and I never wanted to move again. “We probably should,” he murmured in my ear, though I’d already forgotten what it was we should do. I kissed him again, deep and languid at first, but he slid one hand around my waist and the other around the back of my neck and pulled me close. A warm current flooded through me, and a feeling in my stomach like bubbles. I arched my back, pressing my body against his, like the sea reaching for the setting sun.
“Hello?”
Kash and I both blinked. The voice was familiar, and it came from outside the ship. For a long moment, neither he nor I responded, though I was certain the pounding of my heart was loud enough for anyone to hear. Then came the sound of footsteps on the gangplank, and Kashmir called out, “Just give us a minute, Dahut!”
“What do you think she wants?” I whispered.
“I have a guess,” was all he said. He stood and went to his closet, letting the coverlet fall away completely. I couldn’t help but stare. Kash had always been shameless, and I was no prude; last night had not been the first time I’d seen him—what did he call it? Dishabille. But the way he stood now—his back to me, one hip cocked, his left hand on the back of his neck . . . it made my heart thunder and my fingertips tingle, as though my blood had turned to seafoam.
But from above came the sound of small feet pacing, so I turned toward my trunk and dug my hands through my clothes, and even the roughest material felt like silk against my skin. As I dressed, I stole glances at Kashmir out of the corner of my eye—the way his thigh flexed as he stepped into his trousers. The taut muscles of his back as he pulled his shirt over his head. The tilt of his head as he pinned his cuffs. And on his belt, the lock he’d taken from the Brooklyn Bridge that day. As he buckled it on, he looked up through his lashes. “If I had time and music, I could do it better in reverse.”
My face went red, but he only grinned.
“Are you coming?” Dahut’s voice drifted down the hatch.
“Patience!” Kashmir called, but I remembered then what she’d wanted, and I dug the vial of mercury out from the bottom of my trunk. “What is that?” he said, holding the door.
“A cure-all from Qin’s tomb. It might help her memory.”
Abovedecks, the wintery air cooled my cheeks. Dahut was waiting there in her enormous skirts, her expression half impatient and half afraid. As we climbed through the hatch, she held up her diary. “You told me we were friends,” she said to Kashmir. “Was that true?”
He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”
“Good. I need to escape. Here I am.”
Kash sighed and gave me a look that was almost apologetic. “I told you she’d want to come with us.”
I considered it, tilting the bottle of mercury back and forth in my hands. At first blush, it seemed so wrong to take her from Crowhurst, to a place where he could not follow. After all, I’d had my own difficulties with my father, but I’d never actually cut him from my life. Then again, Slate and Crowhurst were not the same man. “Why?” I said at last. “Why do you want to go
?”
“This place gives me nightmares,” she said darkly. “I don’t like it here.”
“You’re running away because you get bad dreams?” I gave her a dubious look, but Kash put his hand on my arm.
“What are your nightmares about, Dahut?”
“Drowning,” she said, and something squirmed like an eel in my belly. Was it only coincidence that she dreamed of the way the myth ended? “Will you help me or not?”
Kash looked at me, a plea in his eyes, but I was already nodding. Hope broke like dawn on Dahut’s face, and seeing it steeled something in me. “All right,” I said firmly. “Bring whatever you need to the dock. We’ll gather the crew and leave tonight.”
“Tonight? No.” Her smile fell away. “It has to be now, before my father wakes up.”
I stared at her, at a loss. “Even if I wanted to leave them behind, this ship can’t sail without a crew.”
“If he finds out I took his keys, he’ll stop me!”
A chill skittered up my spine as another piece of the legend fell into place. “You took his keys?”
“So he can’t follow me on the yacht.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “We will get you somewhere safe, Dahut, I promise. Just . . . just give me an hour.”
“Crowhurst won’t stop you,” Kash added. “Even if he wakes up, trust me, we can sneak you out.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her mouth twisting. “If he finds me, he’ll make me forget I wanted to leave.”
I blinked at her. “What do you mean by that?”
But Dahut had run out of patience. “Never mind,” she muttered, striding down the gangplank and toward the Dark Horse.
Kash rushed to the rail as she scrambled aboard the yacht. “What do you mean, he’ll make you forget?”
Her only response was to fit the keys to the ignition.
“Dahut, wait!”
The motor purred as she pressed the throttle, and I had half a mind to let her go. After all, if she fled, she still couldn’t open the sea gates. But that wouldn’t guarantee her safety. And I needed to know what she meant about forgetting. Kashmir was one step ahead of me—as she pulled away from the pier, he vaulted over the rail of the Temptation and onto the deck of the Dark Horse.
Swearing, I followed. The yacht was accelerating, and I only barely made the leap. Instead of landing gracefully on my feet like Kash had, I stumbled forward and fell to my knees and one hand, clutching the bottle of mercury to my chest. He helped me up as we motored through the sea gates. Dahut set her jaw in a grim smile. “Change your mind?”
“No.” I put the vial in my pocket and straightened my shirt, raising my voice over the roar of the motor. “But you weren’t born in this timeline, and you aren’t a Navigator. If you go into the mist all alone, you’ll never find your way out!”
“Good thing you’re coming along,” she said.
“So we can arrive in the past on a twenty-first-century powerboat? We’ll run out of gas, or someone will accuse us of witchcraft—”
“They already do,” she muttered. “And I’d rather burn than drown.”
“They drown witches too,” I shot back. “And hang them. Sometimes both. And sometimes they draw and quarter—”
“Amira.”
“What?”
“Not helpful.”
“Sorry.”
Dahut only laughed, and the wind took her hair. The Dark Horse bounced on the chop when we hit the open water. Before us, fishing boats lay scattered across the surface of the Iroise, their oarsmen pulling hard against the current as harpooners crouched in the bows. Guivres were circling above as chummers scattered ropy chunks of offal from red-stained buckets. As Dahut wove between the boats, the men clenched their scarlet fists in the sign of the fig. “Benir la chassé!” one called in a jeering voice. “Bless the hunt, princess!”
But the Dark Horse was as sleek as a sea snake, and far faster than the Temptation. Soon enough, we were past them, skimming the surface of the dark rollers. How far could we go before we slipped into the Margins? If need be, Kash and I could take the helm by force—I still had the gun in my cloak—but mutiny didn’t sit well with me. Better to try to convince her. Still, I wasn’t the one she trusted. I gave Kashmir a pleading look and he nodded.
He made his way to stand beside Dahut at the helm, putting his hand over hers on the throttle. I clenched my jaw at an irrational stab of jealousy. Then I breathed it out; Kashmir wasn’t like that.
“Dahut.” He said her name so softly it was hard to hear—but perhaps that was his intention. “What does he do? How does he make you forget?”
Dahut’s eyes cut to him, still suspicious, but then she opened her mouth, closed it. “I . . . think . . .” She eased back on the throttle, slipping the boat into neutral, and the sudden silence was startling. “I think there’s something in the flask.”
I felt my brow furrow. “What?”
“The copper flask! The one he wears on that chain.” Her voice was urgent now; she clutched Kashmir’s fingers. “Last night, I took a closer look at the page you noticed, the page my father wrote—”
“In your diary?”
“There are indentations on the paper, from what I’d written before. Something he tore out! Something about the flask—when you drink from it, you forget.”
Kashmir turned to me, a question in his eyes. I held up one hand, trying to think. Lin had mentioned it too, hadn’t she? Drinking something, and time disappearing. What sort of potion could erase memories? And where would Crowhurst have found such a thing?
The boat hummed beneath my feet; the guivres cried out as they dove toward the sea. I pulled the pearl pendant of my necklace back and forth on its chain. Then my hand stilled as a thought burst like a firework in my skull. “Boeotia.”
“What?”
“One of his first trips, he told me.” There was fear in my voice, and wonder too. “Come.”
I led them both downstairs, into the cabin where the clocks whispered of the past. Heading straight to Crowhurst’s desk, I flicked on the lamp and lifted the slab of marble to the light.
The map was the size of a half sheet of paper, and chipped around the edges, but the image was still clear. I ran a finger over the cuts and ridges of the pale stone. “The oracle of Trophonius. Here. And above the cave, the twin pools of Mnemosyne and Lethe. Memory, and oblivion.”
“Oblivion?” Kashmir’s voice was soft.
“It’s an old myth. Greek.” I held the stone in reverent hands. “The oracle is described in a guide by the geographer Pausanias. There’s the Herkyna River—here, you see? The temple is built on her banks. At the mouth of the river, there’s a hole in the ground where Trophonius lives. He was swallowed by the earth after he killed his brother. Petitioners looking for answers would be thrown into the cave and return with terrifying visions.”
“And the pools?”
“They’re fed directly from the rivers in Hades. One helps people remember what the god had told them, and one helps them forget.” The slab of marble was colder than a tombstone. Crowhurst had clearly dipped from the waters of the Lethe—that was how he got Dahut to forget the old king, to change the myth with her maps. Had he also drunk from the Mnemosyne? Or had he learned the secrets of the universe at the feet of the oracle?
“So there is a cure?” Dahut’s words brought me back to the present; she looked at me, her eyes full of hope.
“Yes,” I said simply. “Come with us on the Temptation, and I will take you there.”
She wrapped her arms around me, so tight I couldn’t breathe; over her shoulder, Kashmir’s smile was even more breathtaking. But then the sound of shouting came from outside—fairly close by. Had we been drifting?
Swearing, I ran back above, but once on deck, I didn’t see any sign of rocks or reefs. Still, we’d gotten close to a cluster of fishing boats—the men in them were the ones I’d heard. By the time Dahut and Kashmir joined me, I saw the reason for the din.<
br />
In one of the boats, two fishermen hauled on a rope, struggling with a heavy weight on the other end. A third man crouched on the bow with his harpoon cocked. The line zigzagged through the water, cutting right, then left, turning on a dime. Above, a guivre circled, waiting.
Kash came to my side. “What’s happening, amira?”
“They caught something.”
We watched, wordless, as white foam boiled on the surface. A dark shape thrashed below the waves, then dove back down. But the hook was already set, and the fishermen dragged their catch ever closer while their fellows cheered them on from nearby skiffs. All eyes were fixed on the point where the rope met the water—all but Kashmir, who turned away.
Then the mermaid broke the surface, trailing spray.
Long silver hair whipped around in an arc; the muscular tail twisted and flailed. But she was smaller than I’d expected, about Dahut’s size, and the fishermen were stronger. They whooped and hollered as they hauled her toward the boat: a creature only vaguely human, but for her cries. Her toothy mouth opened and closed around the rope; in the silvery skin of her throat, the steel hook gleamed.
The harpooner stood, taking aim, and the chummer caught sight of us. “La bénédiction!” he cried. “La bénédiction de la princesse!”
At his words, the harpoon flew, piercing the mermaid clean through the shoulder. As the fishermen hauled her into their boat, Dahut ran to the helm and dropped her hand to the throttle. The yacht roared to life; I stumbled back against the gunwale. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What the hell does it look like?”
The men left off their bloody work to stare with wide eyes as the Dark Horse bore down on their boat. Frantically, they took the oars, but I shouldered Dahut aside, grabbing the wheel and turning us hard to starboard. The yacht veered, throwing up a wall of icy water. It swamped the fishing boat—the men cried out, and the harpooner tumbled into the sea.
My hands shook on the wheel as my fortune played over in my head: lost, lost. But Kashmir was safe, thank all the gods. Not so the fishermen. Their boat listed, half in and half out of the water, and the mermaid thrashed on their boards, churning the water red in the belly of the boat. She lashed out with tooth and tail.
