“You idiot!” The hag snapped at me, ignoring the dying man. “Why did you drink it?”
“He wouldn’t.” I croaked, and then coughed again. The arm shuddered; my captor fell backwards and dragged me with him. The cushions broke our fall, but the sudden drop made my stomach lurch. I dragged myself weakly away from him and vomited onto the carpet. There was blood in it. It was far darker than any blood I had seen before – almost purple. I stared at it in dizzy wonder. It grew darker, and hazier, and when my arms trembled I fell beside it and let my eyes close.
A hard, cold hand touched my shoulder, and when they dragged me onto my back the light burned my eyes. I felt something between my lips – another glass bottle. More poison, my mind screamed, and I fought them with kitten-weakness until my throat closed up.
“Damn it, Clay!” Dahra slapped me and shoved the bottle back against my lips. I spat at her, but she forced my mouth open and poured the sickly-sweet antidote down my throat. I twisted and choked until the crushing pressure on my throat suddenly let up, and I could breathe. Dahra shoved me out of her lap and rolled me onto my side. I opened my eyes and saw the man looking back at me, his lips black and his eyes milky and dilated and still moving. I screamed.
“Shut her up!” One of the servants hissed. Dahra clapped her hand over my mouth and pinched my nose. I could see the man over her shoulder. He twitched, and a black bubble drooled out of his nose and burst. I shuddered, closed my eyes, and stumbled backwards into the darkness.
I was back in the river. The water sucked at me, dashing me against tooth-like rocks and hurling me back ashore. Whenever I fought my way onto dry land the waters would rise and swallow me again. The river grew so deep and broad that it might have been the ocean, except that the clear fluid tasted of blood, not salt. The coppery reek of it made me gag, but it was better than the rotting stench of the caves which the current dragged me past. I could smell decay, but I knew it did not come from my river. My arms were covered in sores and oozing pus. I burned as if I had been bitten by a hundred vicious snakes. I stared at the sores in numb horror. Finally, unable to bear the foulness of my own flesh, I turned and dove back into the depths.
I slept, then, and I survived. Dahra wished it to be so, and I had finally learned how to obey. The river spat me out. I opened my eyes.
They said that the room I woke up in belonged to me. I had earned the airy, arching space, the soft carpet and the dainty furniture. The walls were painted a soft yellow, and the curtains were cornflower blue. I couldn’t stand the sight of it. It was obscene in its loveliness. We all were. The Siren who visited me wore shimmering summer silks and elaborate hair ornaments, but their pockets concealed enough drugs to make an apothecary recoil. My anger was normal, they whispered, but their eyes flickered to the doorway as if they were afraid to be overheard. None of my school friends were allowed to visit me, even if they had wanted to.
Every night, I dreamed of the man touching me and woke up retching. The maids blamed the poison that I had drunk. It had been horrible, they said. Their sympathy burned my ears.
One day, Sweetwater came to visit me. I refused to look at her. She grunted out something rude and sat down on the edge of my mattress. The bed sloped towards her, and I shoved myself further away.
“It’s traditional to start you girls off on the shipwrecks.” she explained, picking up a conch shell that one of the Siren had brought me from the beach. “You’d tend to the broken ones and comfort them as they die. What happened here was unacceptable. You are very young, and he died badly. I promise you that nothing like this will happen again until you are ready for it.”
“Or when you say I’m ready.” I corrected her, and then bitter anger made me snatch the shell from her hand and shatter it against the floor. “You said I just had to stay awake. You said he wouldn’t want more. You lied to me!”
“I lie to everyone. It needs to be done.” she shrugged and nudged a shard of shell around the floor with her toe. “We all find ways to cope. Believe me when I say that you will never kill anyone who does not deserve it, and none of them will suffer more than they need to. Very few people can hope for a death as peaceful as the one we offer them here.”
I turned my face to the wall and refused to answer. The old woman patted my shoulder, and I heard her groan a little as she stood up to walk away.
I stayed in my room for nearly three weeks. I had no desire to eat, and would not visit the bathing house or walk down to the courtyard. Dahra refused to humour me, and after the second week I was left completely alone. I learned the four walls of my room like any other lesson. If I returned to my work, then this would be my home until the day I died. If I refused, then it would be given to another woman for exactly the same task. I wondered how many executioners had slept in my bed before I had claimed it. Who else had stared out of the bay window into the gently swaying willow trees? Who had stared at the wall that hid our naked faces from the world?
No men or apprentices were allowed here. The peace of the place was comforting. I could have been a thousand miles away from the island. If I did not allow someone into my room, then they had no right to enter it. For the first time in years I could be truly alone. For weeks that was all I wanted. I drifted in loneliness like deep water, letting it cool my temper and soothe my aching heart.
I started missing Dahra and my lessons. My quick mind quickly sank into a bored numbness. If I still had any doubts about my choice they were whispers, completely at odds to the screaming rages I had spat out in my fever. I did not want to leave my quiet sanctuary, but I fell asleep each night more convinced that I should go back to work.
Work was a pathetic word for it. What had they made me into? I thought I was to be a sorceress or a healer, not a monster.
No. I wasn’t a monster. My victim had been a monster. He had killed innocents. I had executed a murderer. We couldn’t have been more different. I had probably wept more over his brief pain than he had over all the hours of agony his poor children had suffered. If I was told to poison another man like that I would do it, and gladly.
I would have left my room and told Sweetwater that, but I didn’t trust her. The pier was always filled with hundreds of Mainlanders, each with their own Siren smiling and slipping opium into their wine. They couldn’t all be as foul as my victim, but the boats never seemed to carry any of them away. Their ships wrecked on the rocks, and they swam ashore, and if they were lucky the Siren would try to tease out their secrets before they slit their throats.
Was that true? I felt like it must be.
I sent a message to Mistress Herry, asking her to visit me. She cuddled me like a child for a long time, shushing me when I tried to speak, and then told the maid to bring us some brandy. I shook my head, and she sighed,
“It’s for me, my love. Every time I do this it gets harder.”
“What do you think I’m going to say?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“No,” I wiped my eyes, but the tears still choked me, “I want to go home.”
“That’s not what you called me here to ask. You’re not a child any more. You can’t undo this.” Mistress Herry took a long draught of the brandy and refilled her glass, “I thought you might ask for Dahra. I thought you were close.”
“She lied to me!” I growled.
“Nobody lied to you.”
“Well, she didn’t tell me anything!”
“What should she have said? That not all of the people who come here are good?”
I gave her a withering look. Mistress Herry took another swallow of brandy and set the glass down on the table.
“It’s hard to explain how weak the Mainland is. Altissi could raze it in a few weeks if they had safe passage through the rocks. Our sisters lure and wreck every ship that passes through the crescent channel. They had been doing it for centuries. We’re going to keep doing it. We’re here to defend our country, Clay, not to torture innocent men.”
“I didn’t say he was in
nocent!” I retorted, “He…”
“Oh, but you were thinking it. You had the nerve to Sweetwater what he had done. Are you really arrogant enough to think your opinion means more than hers? She knows about every ship and every titled Altissi idiot who ploughs them into the rocks.”
“And then she tells us to kill them?”
Mistress Herry scoffed and refilled her glass. Her cheeks were red, but her voice was cold. “I come from another island, about ten miles out to sea. We ate fish and mussels, and when there was a storm and we couldn’t reach the mainland we all starved together. That’s how poor we were. One day the Altissi attacked us with arrows from their ships. They burned our houses and stores, but they didn’t even come ashore until the third day. By then, we were cold and hungry and sick. My mother went to them. She wanted to feed her children. Afterwards, they ran her through and gave the food they had promised us to their dogs. They killed every adult on the island and then left the rest of us there to starve.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“They wanted our food.”
“So… they were bandits?”
“Bandits in Altissi ships, with Altissi steel in their hands!” She snapped. I flinched and looked away. People were raided in the Mainland, too. It didn’t mean every Mainlander was a thief.
I rubbed my aching head and wished that my stomach didn’t hurt so much. It made it hard to concentrate. “The man I killed wasn’t an Altissi. He was sent from the Mainland.”
“Did somebody want him to confess?” My teacher asked, and when I nodded she shrugged, “You should be flattered. Some Siren wave their hands over wounds and mutter nonsense for money. Some sell trinkets and potions to the idiot merchants. It doesn’t take any skill to do that. The best Siren can make a man spill every secret in his heart.”
“Did I do well?” I asked sarcastically. Mistress Herry smiled at me as if I hadn’t been joking, and the words fell flat.
Perversely, I really was flattered. I had done a Siren’s work without knowing the first thing about it. No matter that I had stumbled through it like a clumsy ox; I had done it.
I knew I would not have any more nightmares.
I dreamed that I was back in the orchard. The man’s face was flat and featureless. I could not remember his eyes, or his lips, or even his voice. He simply became male – the nameless creature I had day-dreamed about for years. I was captivated by him. I could feel the implacable hardness of solid muscles and stubborn words. We were speaking, and I enjoyed the challenge of it – trying to predict what he would say next, and how I should reply. I read his body language as easily as a book, understanding his gestures and quickly turning the conversation around at the slightest tremble.
As I studied his body my mind drifted and my eyes moved, and I drew his faceless body over my own and raised my hips until he slipped inside me. I heard myself moaning, and felt my hands draw into fists and press against my sleeping body as in the dream we sped up, thrusting wildly against each other over and over again until shudders ran through my body, and I woke up. My body was twisted and dewed with sweat, and I wanted to be taken so desperately that my eyes filled with tears.
That morning, I made my way to the bathhouse and washed weeks of dirt from my skin. I combed heavy oil into my hair and then rinsed it with icy water so that when it dried it would shine. I dressed myself in the grey dress I had worn when I became a murderess, and I painted my face with kohl and powders until the thin cheekbones and dark shadows of my fever were erased.
I made myself look like a Siren. That was what I had chosen to be.
CHAPTER 17
In the Mainlanders’ stories we cling bare-breasted to the rocks and sing. Our dresses, ruined with salt and water, whip around like silken tails. I don’t know how anyone could believe something so idiotic. How would a sailor hear a woman bellowing her lungs out against the roar of the waves? Would they come to a beckoning damsel whose breasts have turned pasty and wrinkly in the icy water?
Sometimes the tinctures we fed to the visitors brought on such visions, but we usually turned their minds from screaming fish towards long legs and soft voices.
There was a lighthouse on the top of our mountain. The fire was fed by the seaweed which washed up on the shore. The smoke stank, and if you were sent to work on the mountain you had to wear a silk scarf around your nose and mouth so you could breathe.
The lighthouse was oddly short and narrow, so that it looked like it was much further away. The boatmen saw the light and knew that they had to move their ship aside from the rocks, but they told themselves that they could wait. The light was so far away, after all. They were so pleased with themselves that they did not think to look for closer rocks until their hulls were already splintered.
The old women did the messy business of binding their wounds and resetting broken bones. They would feed the men rum laced with poppy seeds. When the men woke up their eyes were dilated and soft, and they found themselves lying in the arms of beautiful women.
“Oh!” we would say, shedding a few joyful tears, “I was afraid you would never wake up! I saw you swimming ashore and… you were so brave! What’s your name?” ...and so on until we knew enough about them to choose. The captains, passengers and – for selfish reasons – the handsome ones would stay in the healing house until they were well enough to sample the Siren’ wonders. The ones who knew nothing would drink more rum and fall into oblivion happily nestled against their rescuer’s motherly breast. She would sing softly and stroke his hair until his heart stilled, and then she would move to the next room and the next man.
“Oh!” She would say, “I was afraid you would never wake up!”
Of course, most of our victims did not come from shipwrecks, or else we would have starved to death long ago. Perhaps there used to be enough ships to support us, and enough treasure in the wreckage to buy us seeds and silk. I am sure we did not invent wonderful potions just to sell watered down flasks to Mainland quacks and tinkers. We would have survived comfortably on those industries, but survival was not the point.
If the noblemen of the Mainland wished to know someone’s secrets, they came to us. We took in murderers, traitors, upstarts and liars… for a price. The only people we refused were too young, or too old, or female. I did not find out the fate of women until I returned to the Mainland and saw for myself. Their interrogations were carried out in public, and were viciously cruel.
Our oarsmen made a fine living transporting unconscious prisoners to the working side of the island. We would drug them and drag them through the rocks as if they too had swum ashore. In the opium haze they readily believed that the prison ship had foundered. We interrogated them with the softest touches and harshest rewards.
So. We were the wondrous Siren: a glorified torture chamber. Interrogators for hire. We twisted men’s minds and their sanity long before their bodies gave out, and we executed them without pity.
They say that death hurts the living more than those it claims.
Men slipped through my fingers like grains of sand. As the years passed I learned to recognise their types, knowing instinctively which would turn to me and which would recoil. The ones who resisted were the most interesting to me. Most of the Siren singled out the men who were eager to be seduced. Those women did not have to work for more than two or three days before they were allowed to kiss their victims goodbye. When they did not have men to tend to, they could relax. They slept until noon and when they joined us on the pier they were either fiercely sober or happily drunk.
I told myself that I was better than them. When I was bored or frustrated I would willingly adopt an easy prize, but I did not feel any pride in their surrender. I took great satisfaction in the moment when a stubborn mind finally weakened. A man who shared my bed for a month only brought me real happiness for those few seconds. He whispered the words which were keeping him alive. I gave him wine to drink.
I earned a reputation for sleeping with every man who fell into my arms. T
he other women may have played the temptress, but I was unashamedly a harlot. Some of the Siren shrouded themselves in mystery and went through scores of men without needing to straighten their dresses. People went to them on bended knee. I’m afraid that when I worked it was usually the other way around.
The Mistresses recognised my overt sensuality and used it to their advantage. I was assigned the men whose lives had already been full of hedonistic indulgence. They were used to being drunk. They had already been seduced by beautiful women. If I flattered them they would sink into the same lecherous boredom that had brought them to the island. Instead, I challenged them to win their own game. I embodied hedonism, and let them know that I could not be conquered. If they eventually pleased me with their gifts and the darkest secrets of their hearts, I let them prove how devoted they were to their hot-blooded goddess. I enjoyed the game immensely.
I was scolded for keeping those men alive for an extra day or so. I reasoned that the ones whose crimes were less severe might as well share one more night with me before they died. I wouldn’t be punished unless my sisters’ whispering turned into outright accusations. As long as I got my answers, nobody dared to criticise me.
And I never failed.
I refused to pass my difficult charges on to another Siren to see if she could do better. Instead, I learned my sisters’ methods. I copied them shamelessly until I could play any role. The trick lost me many friends, as the women realized that I was using their methods. I was always working, unlike some of the Siren whose niche techniques forced them to wait for weeks for the right kinds of men. I did not imitate them to shame them, but some of them saw it that way. Between their dislike and my promiscuity I settled into a life of enthusiastic work and soothing loneliness.
Many of the men were dangerous. Was I afraid to be alone? It’s hard to explain. When you grow up surrounded by zealots you absorb their beliefs the same way that dry soil drinks in water. The Siren had a peculiar way of looking at their victims. The second a man set foot onto the island, he was condemned. Whoever he had been was completely irrelevant. The women would have felt more threatened by a raincloud or a gust of wind. They were so used to erasing the Mainlanders from their minds and hearts that most of them were in the habit of forgetting them as soon as they appeared.
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