by Anna Burke
The people standing in wait were human in shape, but the similarities between us ended there. Closest to us, a person stood with an octopus draped around their shoulders. It slithered down and crawled across the deck until it could drop into the water, where it then propelled itself toward us and observed our slack-jawed faces with palpable curiosity. The person it had left said something to the person beside them, and I noticed both their skins shifted color, much like the octopus now peering through the plex.
“What the actual fuck,” said Harper.
“Are those . . . gills?” said Nasrin.
“Not possible,” said Finn, but his words lacked conviction.
The sound of a distant knock on our hatch reminded me that, fascinating as all this was, we could be about to die.
“What do we do?” I asked Miranda.
The look she shot me said You’re the captain, but she answered anyway. “Lacking a choice, we meet with them and hope they don’t kill us on the spot.”
“You’re such a comfort,” said Harper through chattering teeth. Her fever must have been spiking. I turned in my chair to see the sheen of sweat on her forehead. An impossible hope struck me. If the sea wolves were everything I’d been told, perhaps they could save Harper.
“I should go first.” Right? I didn’t voice my last thought, but I sensed Miranda heard it anyway.
She nodded, though it looked like it pained her. “I’ll be right behind you.”
No point in coming up with a plan of defense. We were outnumbered and out-teched, and completely at the mercy of our captors. I wished I had access to the drug that cleared my head and restored north. I needed clarity. Miranda took a discreet sip from her flask. I glared at her. Now did not seem like the time to broach the subject of her drinking, but I needed one of us fully functional. She ignored me.
My heart beat hard enough I was convinced the people waiting for us could hear it through our hull as I fumbled with the hatch. My fingers, wet with sweat, slipped on the handle, and Miranda climbed up the ladder behind me to assist. Just before the final turn, she kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear.
“I love you. No matter what happens, know that.”
Her words gave me enough courage to push the lid of the hatch open.
Two people stood before me. Both had their heads shorn, which made the liquid amber of their eyes even more noticeable. I stared. I’d never seen eyes like mine in another face, and the hot gold of them burned into my skull. Abruptly, I understood why people occasionally recoiled from me. Eyes like that were unsettling as fuck.
The taller figure spoke a few words to their companion in a feminine voice. I didn’t recognize the language, but the way they both stared back at me in surprise suggested they were talking about me. I took note of the weapons strapped to their hips. Swords and smaller deadly looking things I thought might be pistols, though I’d never seen one before. What did one say when one’s ship had been swallowed? Miranda would have threatened them or offered a biting-yet-disarming remark. I wracked my brain for something neutral but also strong.
“Hello,” I said, because my brain was a traitor.
Weapons emerged from their holsters. Miranda pressed into my back, and I absorbed her strength.
The taller one signed something in a series of short, sharp motions, then called out to the deck in their unfamiliar tongue. One of the waiting members detached themselves from the group and hopped across the narrow strip of water onto our deck. She had short hair, though not shaven, and it was the brown of kelp in the blue light. Golden eyes met mine as she spoke.
“Your ship is now the property of the Moray. Your supplies and your lives are forfeit. We’ll give you five minutes to assemble your crew.”
“Wait,” I said, aware I sounded desperate. “We came looking for you.”
“That was not wise.” Her accent was strange, but her enunciation was clear, and the look she gave us was dismissive.
“We sailed with Ching Shih. You might know her as Amaryllis—”
“Stop.” The young woman frowned, then called something over her shoulder to her companions. An exchange followed, full of unfamiliar words and odd vowel pairings. After a minute of this, she turned back to me. “Is she on board?”
“Not . . . anymore.”
“Then there is nothing to discuss.”
“Tell her you’ve come to claim inheritance to Symbiont,” Miranda said in an urgent whisper.
“I’ve come to claim inheritance to Symbiont.” Parroting the words didn’t make them coalesce into meaning.
The woman paused, searching my face with those liquid golden eyes. “And your crew?”
I didn’t know what to say. My head ached, dull from overstimulation, and words evaded me. I managed, “They’re with me.”
“I can see that. Do any of them claim inheritance?”
I didn’t know what inheritance was, let alone what it meant for me to claim it. Before I could come up with another painfully inadequate response, however, Miranda spoke low and fast.
“Rose, we’re out of options. Inheritance—I don’t have time to explain yet. It just means you express the genetic traits of a sea wolf. They’ll take you, but if they don’t take us, Harper dies. We need their help.”
“I know. But—”
“Amaryllis wanted to give them Harper. I said no. But she’s a valuable hostage, and she’s more valuable alive than dead. She gives them leverage over the Archipelago, which they want.”
I recalled a half-heard conversation through a closed door, and Miranda’s raised voice.
“We can’t,” I said, even as I pictured Harper’s fever-bright eyes. Why did all the choices given to me have to hurt so seas-damned much?
“Which way do you want to lose her?”
That wasn’t a choice at all.
“We have something else to offer in exchange for your help.”
“Help?” The woman crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head.
“One of our crew is sick with sepsis. If you can heal her, we can give you a valuable hostage.”
She smiled, and both her cheeks dimpled. I felt a strange pit form in my stomach. There was something oddly familiar about her face. “You should have led with that. Welcome aboard. What’s your name?”
“I’m . . . Compass Rose, the captain.” It felt like a lie.
“Lia. Ship translator and communications specialist.”
The sudden welcome surprised me into bluntness. “You’ll help us?”
Lia spoke to her companions. Not for the first time, I reflected that Admiral Comita had erred in selecting me to act as diplomat as well as navigator.
“Provided you cooperate, yes.”
“We will cooperate.” Relief flooded my words.
“Good. How many are in your crew?”
“Seven.”
“Then assemble, Compass Rose, and follow me.”
The shaved guards—I assumed they were guards of some sort, sent to remand us as we emerged—made room for us to clamber out of the trawler one by one, until we were all gathered on the Sea Cat’s small deck. Miranda and Kraken flanked me, and Orca supported Harper behind. Nasrin hulked beside Finn off to starboard. A ramp slid out from the landing deck and stopped when it touched our hull, almost as if it sensed it. I stepped onto the plank. Leaping still required more coordination than my brain could manage, and I needed every ounce of brainpower right now. Miranda’s hand on the small of my back kept me steady as I crossed the gap. My feet landed on the bay deck with an odd squish. I balked, necessitating a gentle shove from Miranda, and resisted the urge to kneel and touch the glowing ground.
“Moss,” said Lia.
“What?”
“It’s moss.” She pointed at the ground. “Have you not seen moss before?”
I had—but in the gardens on Polaris, where it grew on rocks and did not glow. “Not like this.”
“I think you will see many things that are new to you.” She turned and chatter
ed at the others. They did not all have mottled, shifting skin. Lia didn’t, for instance, though I noticed the light fell on her skin with an odd intensity. As she cast a reassuring smile at me over her shoulder, I realized this was because there was bioluminescence under her skin. It pulsed along her jaw and down the curve of her neck, disappearing into the collar of her shirt. Only her clothing was familiar: a simple hemp shirt and pants. The sleeves were cut higher than our styles and showed more skin than anything I’d ever wear, but hemp was hemp, and pants were pants. Hers ended in a cuff just above the ankle. She was also barefoot. I looked down at my own boots as they pressed into the moss and thought perhaps that was to preserve the living floor.
“Should we . . .” I gestured at my feet.
She nodded.
“We need to take off our shoes,” I told my crew.
“They say that now, but they haven’t smelled Kraken’s feet,” said Finn. I appreciated his effort at humor, though didn’t find it particularly appropriate. For all we knew, these people killed jokesters for sport. I kicked my boots off and held them awkwardly in one hand, then, for lack of a better option, crossed back over the plank and tossed them down the trawler hatch. The others did the same.
“Tread carefully,” Miranda said under the small commotion caused by removing our shoes.
“Literally or figuratively?”
“Both. There could be toxins in the moss our systems can’t handle.”
Great. Poisonous moss. Still, it felt pleasantly cool and soft against my toes, and it cushioned my weight. As my feet settled in, my brain struggled to adjust to the boat’s movement. Something about it unsettled my compass, damaged though it was. I briefly closed my eyes. The memory of the ship’s undulations rose as I matched it to the sensations traveling up my calves. When I opened my eyes again, Lia was studying me.
Right. I was the captain. I had to look like I knew what I was doing. Questions would come later, if there was a later. I nodded, and Lia led the way through a curved doorway and into a hallway.
“What—” Orca broke off, but we were all thinking it. Above us, clear plex contained the water bubbling through a meter-wide tube. Curious octopuses clustered, staring down, and I thought one might have been the octopus that had inspected our ship. Other creatures flitted along the tube. Small, brightly colored fish. Glowing shelled things. Tiny jellyfish. But why? The walls glowed with the same moss as the floor—they didn’t need additional illumination. As we walked, minuscule moss fronds waved in our wake, and I reached out a hand to touch them. A dry powder came away on my fingers.
“Don’t touch anything,” Miranda said in a strained whisper from my side. I remembered her comment about toxins and hurriedly wiped the powder off on my pants.
Lia stopped at a door and placed her hand, fingers spread, on the plex. Or at least, I assumed the material was plex. It slid away, and we trailed her into an oddly shaped room. The walls curved organically, and the ceiling contained a pool where long spiny fish circled. Sunlight filtered through the water and cast rippling shadows on the ground.
An odd clicking assaulted my ears as I looked around. At first I couldn’t decipher the source. The room was bare, save for the fish above and the single low chair in its center. But the clicking could not have emanated from the slight man sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed. The sound wasn’t human. I covered my ears as it rose in pitch; it left abrasions on my nerves.
“This is our speaker, though I think you’d use the term captain,” said Lia. “Altan?”
The man opened his eyes. Even after Lia, seeing my eyes in the face of another sent currents of unease through me. Altan’s long hair was bound in a knot at the back of his skull, and it drew his skin tightly over his sharp cheekbones. When he spoke, there was an echo to his words, as if I could feel them jostling my atoms.
“Be welcome,” Lia translated. He spoke again, and her eyes speared mine. “He asks what happened to your head.”
“Excuse me?”
“There is damage.”
“How—”
The sound started again, more shrilly, and I clapped my hands back over my ears.
“He says something has damaged your magnetoreceptors.”
“I’m sorry, my what?”
“Your ability to navigate.” Lia spoke as if the statement was simple—and not part of an answer to a question I’d been asking since birth.
“You know I can navigate?”
“Of course,” said Lia, not bothering to translate my words. “It’s our most basic skill.”
Our most basic skill. Basic, and yet the thing for which I’d been alternately elevated and loathed for my entire life.
Altan spoke. Lia listened intently, a smile forming on her lips. “We should be able to fix you. With the right stimulation, the nerves can be regenerated.”
I glanced from Altan to Lia, then back to Altan. The confirmation of my genealogy felt hollow. I did not know these people who held us captive. I did not know what they would do to Harper when I was forced to make good on my word and turn her over, and I sure as Davy Jones’s locker did not know what they would do to me. Our most basic skill. And the only one I had. The genetic code they seemed to hold in such high esteem was diluted and weak within me. I’d found another place where I only partially belonged. Answers were not worth it. Harper, however, was; and right now her health was the only thing that mattered.
“I received a blow to the head,” I said.
Lia frowned, and a lengthy exchange passed between her and Altan before she spoke again. “You have our lineage. The magnetite in your body is only part of the proof; all our expressed genes are linked to lipochrome pigmentation.”
“Lipochrome?” My head spun at the onslaught of unfamiliar words.
“Your eyes.” She waved away my confusion. “The speaker wishes to know why you have come looking for us.”
“We hoped for your aid.”
Lia’s face twisted in surprise. She relayed my words to the speaker. He rose from his chair and approached me, and only Miranda’s hand on my back kept me from retreating. Altan took my measure with eyes I saw every day in the mirror. The lives of my crew hung in the balance of his gaze.
“Aid?” he said in my language.
I blinked and looked at Lia. Her attention, however, was on him.
“And answers. I wish—” I broke off and tried again, telling myself my next words were a calculated response to our situation and not a deeply revealing and pathetic truth. “I wish to know who I am.”
Altan held my eyes. “You are a foundling, and now you’ve been found.”
“What—”
He spoke rapidly to Lia, drowning out my question. She addressed me when he finished. “You will be provided with berths, and your injured will be cared for until we get to Symbiont, where your situation will be evaluated. Come.”
Altan settled back on his chair and closed his eyes. The strange chittering started again, and, while I was not satisfied with the exchange, I was grateful for an excuse to leave his presence.
“Well done,” Miranda said in my ear.
“How? We—”
“We’re alive.”
••••
The ship curved in patterns that made little sense to my Archipelago-trained eye. The whole thing seemed almost alive, and the subtle undulations acted as a reminder even behind closed eyes. Sea wolves studied us as we filed past. Some, but not all, had shifting skin colors. One very unsettling room contained a tank with children, who parted the water with webbed fingers and breathed through slits in their necks that were undeniably gills. And everywhere, curious octopuses and a few small squid-like creatures peered out at us through the ubiquitous water.
“Here.” Lia splayed her fingers on another door, which opened into what I assumed was a medical bay, judging by the beds and antiseptic smell, but that was where the resemblance ended. The beds were not beds so much as shallow tanks. Most were empty, but a nearby tank contained an old man
laboring to breathe. Like the children, he had gills, though his seemed . . . vestigial, somehow. His skin flickered from gray to green.
“If you think, for a second, that I am getting into one of those . . .” Harper’s voice rasped off into silence.
“Your friend is welcome to abstain, but she will be dead if she does.” Lia didn’t seem bothered by this prospect. “This is Vi. She will care for her.”
A person appeared from behind a curtained tank and swept her eyes over us, settling on Harper. Orca put a protective arm around Harper in response.
“Do as she says,” I said. Lia’s words sat coldly on my chest. It wasn’t a threat. All anyone had to do was look at Harper’s haggard face, stripped of its usual roundness by days of fever, to know she spoke the truth.
“I’ll stay with her,” said Orca.
Lia shook her head. “She will not.”
“Like hell—”
“Orca.” I snapped at her with all the command I could muster. If Orca didn’t realize how tenuous our position was on this ship, then it was up to me to protect her from herself. To Lia, I said, “Will you tell us what will happen to her?”
“It is simple. She will be placed in a nutrient bath and dosed with agents to counter the infection and remove the dead flesh. She’ll be asleep, of course. There won’t be any pain.”
“That’s . . . good. But she doesn’t speak your language.”
“She won’t need to speak in the bath.”
Harper sagged against Orca, and beneath her bravado I saw she had reached the end of her strength.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said, going to her and taking her good hand.
“Just tell them to keep those away from me.”
I followed her gaze and recoiled. A bath I hadn’t noticed contained a small girl. Curled up on her chest, matching her mottled skin tones, rested an octopus.
“It is her companion. You are not so lucky. We will use flesh fish.” Lia beckoned Vi to come and take Harper away.
“Rose—” Orca said.
“What choice do you think we have?” I matched glares with my first mate until she released Harper as reluctantly as I’d ever seen her do anything. Vi placed gentle hands on Harper’s shoulders and led her toward the curtain.
