Deep Blue Sea: Heartstone Thief 1.5

by DaCosta, Pippa

  Deep Blue Sea

  Heartstone Thief 1.5

  Pippa DaCosta

  Contents

  Preface

  Praise for The Heartstone Thief

  1. Deep Blue Sea

  Heartstone Thief snippet

  Also by Pippa DaCosta

  What to read next by Pippa DaCosta

  Preface

  Please note, Deep Blue Sea takes place AFTER the full length novel, The Heartstone Thief. While Deep Blue Sea can be read as a stand-alone, you’ll get more from the story if you read The Heartstone Thief first.

  Praise for The Heartstone Thief

  DragonCon 2017 Award Finalist (Paranormal)

  “Pippa DaCosta has done it again! A new world, a fabulously delicious anti-hero, an homicidal and slightly insane heroine and it all adds up to another book that you'll just want to get lost in!”

  “(The Heartstone Thief) is a typical Pippa book - you can't make assumptions (okay you can but you'll likely be wrong!) about anything. Not the characters and their motivation nor where the story is headed. It's probably what I love most about Pippa's books. After reading so many UF/Fantasy novels new and surprising things happen rarely so I cherish each book that has twists I didn't foresee.”

  “A wonderful piece of modern High Fantasy.”

  “A great, heart-wrenching novel with tension, romance, awesome dialogue, and drama.”

  “I just don't have the words to describe how much I enjoyed this story.”

  “5 Fantastic Stars! Ms DaCosta has outdone herself with her latest book, The Heartstone Thief. From the secrets hidden in the ancient tombs, to the supposed myth of a long forgotten war that destroyed a civilization, to the truth behind the forbidden magic of the Inner Circle and to the mysterious sorceress who is keeping dark secrets, I became immersed in this incredible fantasy world from start to finish. It is heart-breaking, gripping and unpredictable and totally addictive.”

  Deep Blue Sea

  A HEARTSTONE THIEF

  Short Story (#1.5)

  Blue

  Mother Ocean can be cruel, tearing lives asunder, devouring ships, leaving not a trace behind. She can be kind, her gentle swells urging travelers on and gifting bounties upon the shores. On the Night of Bleeding Hearts, to the man I was destined to kill, she was both.

  A living, snarling beast of a storm fell upon our archipelago that night. Its fury swept across the ocean, churning enormous swells to foam and unleashing its wrath upon any who dared to sail near its fringes. At its center, an eye as dark as the men’s hearts my sisters and I would soon feast on saw all. With that single eye, the storm watched as the crew of a stricken ship tried to pull in the rigging and stow the sails. And together with Mother Ocean, the storm consumed them all.

  From below, I watched debris sink into the depths. Broken barrels, splintered timbers, guns and men. The land-fleshlings thrashed their finless arms, and down they sank to where we waited in the dark, eyes bright and teeth sharp. But we did not kill these men, for the Night of Bleeding Hearts was a day away and this gift from Mother was surely meant for then, when we would sing to them songs of their doomed kin, lure these men into our arms, and snip their mortal strings. So, we took these drowning men and their broken ship and delivered them to the shallows where Mother’s waves rolled them safely to shore.

  As we saved them, my sisters told the sailors of how the storm had come and fled again in moments, and they twittered about how the storm had been a union between Mother Ocean and Father Sky, just like the storm that had long ago spawned my sisters and me. This time, however, as quiet fell and Mother calmed, it was not sirens the union produced, but a feast of souls.

  When daybreak came and my sisters withdrew to the depths, I rose to the surface. Men stirred awake on the debris-strewn beach, their voices carrying on the light breeze. A miracle, they called it, as there, among them on the sand, sat their enormous vessel, listing heavily to one side like a beached whale.

  A smile crawled across my lips.

  These men proclaimed their survival a miracle now, but they did not know we had gifted them this day, and it would be their last.

  * * *

  Curtis Vance

  If I hadn’t sworn off the swill the crew had been drinking, I’d have dismissed last night as a drunken dream. But sitting in the wet sand, soaked through, crusted salt itching in places salt should never be, I couldn’t deny the nightmare had been real. We were alive, so not all was lost. I had a knack for surviving the impossible, it seemed.

  “Well, shit.” Captain Darius Tassen’s drawl lifted above the men’s murmuring and the sound of lapping surf. Miraculously, he’d found his wide-brimmed hat, or maybe he’d clung to that hat as the Lady Jane went down the way the rest of us had clung to our lives. He thrashed the hat against his thigh, smacking it back into shape, ran a hand through his jaw-length dark hair, dislodging sand, and put the hat back on. If only his ship were that easy to fix.

  He scanned the shore, lips pinched. His crew was busy gathering supplies strewn for a mile down the beach. Shielding my eyes, I spotted an outcropping jutting out into the bay like jagged shark’s teeth. More debris was likely scattered among those rocks. Tassen’s livelihood. With nothing left to lose, I’d traveled light. Everything I owned I’d left back in Brea. Well, almost everything.

  Digging deep into my coat pocket, my fingertips brushed cool metal. The dagger was still with me. The memories too. No ungodly storm could take those from me.

  “Vance, you goin’ to sit there all day?” Tassen stomped over, boots sinking in the sand. “All the men are accounted for. Lady Jane might take some patching up, but her hull is intact. With any luck, we should have her afloat and be back on our way to Lanskewly on the high tide.”

  All the men had survived? Luck really was on our side. “Molly?”

  Tassen offered his hand and hauled me to my feet. My wet clothes chafed against my smattering of bruises and cuts.

  The captain smirked crookedly. I’d threatened to punch that smile off his face more times than I cared to count. “You didn’t think a little storm would best Molly, did yah? She’s fine. Spitting mad, but fine. Reckon she’s threatening to dismember half the crew if they don’t find all her galley silverware.”

  That sounded like Molly.

  “You call what happened a little storm?” I’d been on deck when the wall of water hit. A white squall, Tassen had hollered, and then the ocean had turned itself upside down, dumping me and the crew into a maelstrom. That anyone had survived was a damn miracle. After everything I’d witnessed in Brea—monsters, mages, dragons and magic—he couldn’t tell me that storm had been little or normal. And then, in the water… the things I’d dreamed as the ocean took me. Trying to recall how I’d gotten on the beach produced nothing more tangible than mist.

  Tassen arched an eyebrow. “I wonder if you might not be cursed, Vance.”

  Him and me both. Death had once followed me like a shadow, but I’d left all that behind.

  I smiled. “If I were cursed, you’d all be dead.”

  He scratched his whiskered cheek. “That don’t ease my concerns none.” Turning, he regarded the line of leaning palms and the jungle beyond. The hat’s brim cast a shadow over his eyes. “It’s a long few hours till nightfall. Plenty a time for good men to die if this island ain’t kind.”

  “What about the bad ones?”

  He chuckled. “Ain’t no bad men on my crew, Vance.” With that, he whacked me on the back so hard I almost swallowed my tongue, and then he set off down the beach toward the Lady Jane. “How about you make yourself useful and go scour those rocks for the rest of my cargo?” he called. “I’ll have a perimeter an
d camp set up by the time you get back.” I was glaring at those sharp-looking rocks when he yelled for the benefit of all who listened, “Ain’t no freeloaders on my crew either! Get to it!”

  * * *

  Blue

  Little trinkets lay scattered among the rocks and trapped in tidal pools. Strange contraptions. I picked them up, examined each, and tossed them away again. The swell lifted me, funneling a path between steep rock walls, and delivered me to more pools with more strange human detritus. Much of it was not meant for Mother Ocean, so it had wilted, fallen to pieces, shattered, or merely come undone. I imagined what these things might do or what purpose they might serve on the fleshlings’ land.

  A man appeared, stumbling over limpet-scarred rocks and skidding on seaweed. Slowly, carefully, I sank below the surface, leaving only my eyes above the waterline. He would not see me. Men did not know to look for my kind among the pools. Their limited minds were blind to creatures they could not fathom. Until it was too late.

  He seemed to be searching for something, this lost one, and when he crested a rock wall and disappeared over, I rode the swell through gullies until I was back among the pools farther down the bay. He was crouched on an outcropping, scowling as he watched floating debris drift and bump in the water. Dark hair, the color of wood that had soaked too long in the ocean, and keen, searching eyes. There was something else about him too, a sense of yearning for something he had let slip away like the tide steals things from the shore. I sensed in him something akin to myself. His song, a bright, strong pull, told me he was a thief, a taker of things… but that was only the surface. Deeper, where the melody hinted at something more, his notes entwined, luring me in. This one had a powerful song in him, one of darkness and death, but of life and survival too. He had experienced much, and recently. I had never sensed a song like his. The thought of having his heart in my hands, my teeth in his neck, with his life bleeding into me so I might own his song forever…

  My sisters could not have him. This one was mine.

  * * *

  Curtis Vance

  Tassen’s broken crates and damaged cargo made up much of the campfire. It burned well enough, drying clothes and belongings that hadn’t yet baked in the sun.

  Hammering and clanging rang from inside the Lady Jane. Tassen seemed convinced the ship would sail again once the tide lifted her off the sand, but what nobody had mentioned was how the ocean was as far away now as it had been that morning. As I could count my ocean-faring knowledge on the fingers of one hand, I kept my observations to myself and stuck with what I knew—lookout duty.

  Below my rocky perch, the entire half-moon bay stretched for several miles, forming a natural harbor that kept the waters calm, though the darkness a few hundred yards offshore indicated a steep drop-off. I stood watch for a few hours as the sun arced through the sky and saw no sign of any other vessels.

  Returning to the camp, I spotted Tassen climbing down a rope-ladder dangling from the ship’s deck. He waved me over.

  “Follow me into the tree line.” He nodded over my shoulder to where Molly had gathered the crew and was serving soup she’d likely rustled up from leftover supplies. She returned Tassen’s firm nod with understanding, her mop of red hair matted from dried sea salt. Slim as a reed, she didn’t look like much, and while I’d never gotten on her wrong side, my gut told me she knew how to turn her cutlery into weapons. She knew enough to holler at Tassen’s brutes and get them moving.

  “What is it?” I asked Tassen, his face growing grimmer with every step toward the trees.

  “A crewman found something. Don’t wanna spook ‘em all, so you’ve just volunteered to scout the jungle with me.”

  “Found what, exactly?”

  Tassen strode on, ignoring my question, and asked, “What did you see from the rocks?”

  “A whole lot of ocean and jungle with us in between. Do you know where we are?”

  His lips twisted as though he’d tasted something bitter. “The storm turned us around. We shouldn’t be far from where we left off near Wreckers Coast, sou’west Brea.”

  All right. Then why did he sound as though that wasn’t the worst of the news? “But…?”

  “But… this is all wrong.” He gestured at the leaning palms. The fronds hissed in the breeze, rippling like fingers. “When have you ever seen palm trees in Brea?”

  I laughed. He had to be joking. “I’ve only seen trees like these in the books Molly took from Fullford’s library. This place is too hot and green to be anywhere near Brea.”

  Tassen’s face hardened.

  He had no idea where we were.

  “Can’t you look at the stars or something?” I asked. “Isn’t that what you seafaring people do?”

  “Do you see any stars, Vance?” the captain grumbled.

  “Not now, but last night? Tonight even? Isn’t that how you navigate?”

  Tassen’s right eye twitched. I got the impression there was more wrong here than a small navigation issue we could resolve in a few hours.

  He pushed into dense undergrowth where the sand gave way to leaf litter and soft soil. “We may not have that long.”

  Had I heard him right? “What do you mean?”

  The thick brush fell away, and Tassen halted at the edge of a ditch. He removed his hat, dragged a hand down his chin, and crouched to sweep aside a layer of dried palm fronds, exposing something smooth and white. He flicked more leaves away. The smooth white thing was curved and hollow, large enough to fit in a hand.

  “Is that…” An eye socket?

  I scanned the edges of the ditch. Other bone-white objects protruded from the earth. The more I noticed, the more appeared, sprouting from the soil like mushrooms. The entire ground was scattered with bone.

  This wasn’t a ditch. It was a mass grave.

  “They’re old?” It seemed like a reasonable question. The bones had been picked clean. Old bones meant whatever had killed these people was long gone. “Maybe they were stranded here…” And dug themselves a mass grave?

  Tassen straightened. “Maybe.” He sounded as convinced as I was.

  “We’re leaving on the high tide, right?”

  He turned and hesitated, unspoken words holding him back. “This island ain’t on my map.”

  That look in his eyes, I’d seen it when I told him magic was real and I was neck deep in it. We’d both seen nightmares come to life and watched magic twist its victims into monsters.

  I sank my hand into my pocket and touched the blade. I might not be well traveled—this was the farthest I’d been from Brea in my entire life—but I knew not to ignore the icy shiver running through my veins. “We need to get the Lady Jane afloat before nightfall.”

  * * *

  Blue

  The sisters observed my return to the Deep. The tips of their luminescent fins glowed as bright as their sharp eyes, lighting up the dark. Farther into the Deep, I tasted the dance of power and felt the excitement flow through my veins like an electric current. We all felt the lure pulling us tight, pulling us together, driving our hearts to race and teeth to grit. The Night of Bleeding Hearts would soon be upon us, and like all those who observed as I passed them, I’d rise from the dusk-blushed waves, at the mercy of the yearly song, and those men would fall as surely as all the men before them had fallen. Their songs would join ours below the waves for eternity.

  “Luine?” The cave I’d entered glowed around me. Multicolored polyps, their hundreds of fingers reaching, waved and then darted inside their tubes as my passing stirred the water. “Luine…” I called. “I must speak with you.”

  “Here.”

  I turned a bend, and Luine’s glow bloomed ahead. My heart seized at the sight of her, as it always did this close to one so blessed by Mother Ocean. Luine’s scales shimmered from gold to blue to green, and clasped in her hand, the coral trident glowed too. Hair, so green, fanned out in braided strands. Pearls glittered through her locks.

  “Ah, Blue, you have come at the ri
ght time… This one…” She lowered her hand and stroked the chin of my sister, Syriene before her. The siren’s scales had dulled, her fins lay in tatters, limp and useless against her tail.

  “Luine, what is this?” I asked.

  Luine smiled, showing her viciously pointed teeth. “Syriene here… poor, misguided Syriene…” She gripped my sister’s chin and lifted her face. “Her spirit is weak, for she believes we need not kill to glean the songs of men.”

  The thought alone had me recoiling in alarm. I circled around to drift beside Luine. Syriene’s eyes flicked over me, full of strength and defiance.

  “Remind her for me, Blue,” Luine suggested, “why mother Ocean has gifted us this Night.”

  “Syriene…” I said. “You know, stop this madness. The Night is almost upon us.”

  “She was overheard doubting Mother’s way. I cannot allow such indiscretions on this Night, of all nights.”

  “Their songs are their own!” Syriene shrieked.

  Syriene—my most trusted sister—looked at me as though she did not know me. But that could not be. For decades, we had hunted together as one. Fearless and ruthless, Syriene was the sister I always chose to take deeper into Mother’s embrace, where the ocean was wild and free, where we lured and sang their crews into our arms. Together, we had collected the songs of a thousand men. Why was she speaking these words?