Once there, all bets were off on who would survive.
Until then, Lesya turned on the charm.
Lesya smiled sweetly and crossed her legs, angling to cover the water with her boots. “You startled me. I spilled my water.”
“Right.” He circled the crate and picked up the urn, dumping the rest of the water on the floor. “Something wrong with the mug I gave you? Or do you just like the taste of dead guy in your water?”
Rivka giggled, the sound borderline hysterical.
Lesya shot her a look to silence her. “I broke it.”
“The mug or the dead man?” He dropped the urn to the floor and leveled a glare on Lesya. “The mug is metal and sitting right behind you, so I'd consider your next statement wisely.”
“Fine! Fuck. We were scrying.”
“Oh, you don't say?” he said with false surprise. “For a means to escape, I presume?”
Rivka slapped her forehead. “We should have done that.”
“You wouldn't stop obsessing over the stone and us being the chosen ones or some shit,” Lesya muttered.
The pirate sighed. “Ladies, could we focus here?”
“We weren't scrying to escape. Though, okay, we should have been and that was really dumb on my part,” Lesya said.
“You're telling me you did magic but not to free yourselves? What the hell were you doing?”
“That's a really long and dumb story that has no bearing whatsoever on our situation.”
“Until we escape at the next port,” Rivka pointed out.
“Not helpful,” Lesya said through her teeth.
The pirate stared at them both for a beat, and then dragged a third crate closer to them. He sat down and leaned forward, flashing them a charming smile that rivaled Lesya’s acting. “I have a proposal.”
Lesya consulted Rivka, who seemed just as intrigued as she was. “Okay. Let's hear it.”
“First, I guess I should introduce myself.” He held out his hand. “Viktor Drakkar.”
Lesya shook his hand. “I'm Lesya Markova. And this is Rivka.”
“Rivka Petrovna,” Rivka added.
Viktor shook the siren’s hand. “Nice to meet you both. Look, I know this is a pirate ship and all, but our captain is nuts. I've wanted to overthrow him for some time now, but he's a big dude.”
“You're not exactly small,” Rivka said.
“Thanks. But he's a monster, and I'm not. In a few different ways, I might add.”
“Like… he kidnaps and sells sirens into slavery, but you wouldn't do such a thing?” Lesya offered.
He chuckled. “To be fair, I've never spoken to any of our captives at length. It's easier to turn a blind eye to injustice when you make yourself scarce from it.”
“I don't know if that makes you less of a monster than your captain or more,” Lesya said.
He held up both palms as if to ward off her words. “Hey. I never said I was perfect. A pirate's life is a tough life. You gotta be strong to survive.”
“But not stronger than the captain?” Rivka asked.
He pointed at her. “Bingo. He's stronger than me and smarter than most of the crew. We need something to turn the tide in our favor.”
“Does the rest of the crew want him out, too?” Lesya asked.
“Mostly. The only guys on his side are the first mate and the captain's son.”
“If we help you, are they going to kill us?”
“If you help me overthrow the cap, I'll protect you. I'll let you off at the next port, and you'll never see us again.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“A spell of some kind. Maybe a curse to trip him up? Turn his insides outside?”
Lesya waved her hands wildly. “Oh no. You don't want me to attempt a curse. See, I'm really bad at magic. If I tried to curse your captain, I'd probably end up cursing the entire ship. We'd all end up dead under the ocean.”
“Do you have a better idea?” he asked.
Rivka cut in. “What about a good luck spell? That would be simple, right? And a little bit of luck never hurt anyone.”
“Clearly, you've never met my brand of luck,” Lesya said drily. She glanced at Viktor ready to tell him no, absolutely not, only to be completely wooed by his big, pleading blue eyes. “Alright. I'll help you. But only because if I don't, the siren will drive me nuts for ruining our chances to escape and save the world.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What now?”
“Never mind,” Lesya assured him. “I'll need some time to work. And do you have any herbs?”
“I've got some basic kitchen herbs. Dried, mostly.”
“Great. Sage?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Time alone?” Lesya pressed.
“No problem. There's a storm brewing on the horizon, so the crew will be preoccupied for a while.”
“Perfect. Bring me the sage and some salt water. Oh, and a candle.”
After Viktor disappeared to the kitchen, Lesya started rummaging through trunks. “I need a feather,” she called out to Rivka as she ripped a piece of fabric from a green satin dress.
“I'll check over here,” Rivka said before burying her head in one of the many crates.
By the time Viktor returned with the sage and saltwater, Rivka had found a peacock feather tucked into the band of a ladies’ hat and was waving the floppy straw helmet around. “Do human women actually wear monstrosities like this?”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in that,” Lesya said, making a face.
“Women who are not Lesya do wear monstrosities like that,” Viktor told the siren. He passed Lesya a jar of loose, dried herbs, plunked down a bucket of ocean water on the floor, then brandished a candle and a book of matches.
Rivka looked at the hat and shuddered. “I’d rather fight a sea bear.”
“Hey, we know how to kill it now,” Lesya pointed out. “So we would have that going for us.”
Viktor looked between the two of them, his face equal parts confused and amused. “You are the strangest girls I’ve ever met.”
Lesya grinned, heaving the bucket of seawater onto a crate for easy access. “One of a kind.”
“I have to be on deck for the storm,” Viktor went on, still smiling. “You have everything you need?”
“I think so. Can you leave the door unlocked in case I set the hold on fire?”
Viktor laughed. “You're funny. No. Until I usurp the cap, you're still prisoners.”
Lesya saluted him with her middle finger. “Then leave, pretty boy.”
With their supplies laid out over the crate, and the growing storm outside lending power to Lesya, she finally had to stop putting it off. She pulled a small box over to operate as a seat so she could see the crate clearly.
“What do you need me to do?” Rivka asked, kneeling on the floor on the other side of the crate.
“Um, just moral support, I think.” Lesya struck a match and lit the candle. She hadn’t even noticed how dark the hold had become as storm clouds passed overhead. The candle damn near illuminated the entire room, casting light into its shadowy corners.
“I’m full of morals and full of support,” Rivka said happily, crossing her arms on the surface of the crate.
Lesya couldn’t help but chuckle. “That you are, siren.” She paused, then spoke again. “When I was scrying, something weird happened.”
“What?”
“You know how we could see the stone in the nest?” Lesya bit her lip. She was going to sound like a total idiot. “I think something connected us. Me and the stone, I mean. I saw it, and then something tightened in me, and I can still see the stone in my mind’s eye.”
Rivka sat back on her heels. “Wow.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what to make of it,” Lesya agreed. “I was thinking after we do this spell, maybe we could try to scry again and see what happens? We can probably convince Viktor to bring us more water. Ocean water would probably be best.”
Rivka nodded. �
��I think that’s a great idea.”
Now that she’d gotten the weirdness off her chest, Lesya centered herself. She closed her eyes and took three steadying breaths, reaching for the power that lived deep inside her solar plexus. Once she connected to her magic, she opened her eyes and held her hands over the items on the crate.
She intoned the archaic words, an ancient form of Slavic she’d learned under her father’s tutelage as a girl. Her power pulsed in response. She felt tendrils of the magic reach for the raw energy of the strengthening storm, drawing from the electricity.
For the first time in a long time, she thought her magic might actually work.
Before she lost her grip on the power, she spread the piece of green satin out on the surface of the crate. She held the tip of the peacock feather to the candle’s flame until it caught fire. Then she gently blew the fire out, leaving the edge of the feather charred and the smell of burning in the air. She placed the feather on top of the satin.
A splash of salt water, a dash of sage. She wrapped the feather in the satin and tied it shut with the twine Rivka had pulled from the stack of letters earlier that day.
She set the sachet back down and lifted her arms to the ceiling, repeating the spell with slow, sure words.
A crash of thunder punctuated the end of the spell—not part of the magic, Lesya thought, heart pounding from the way it had shook her to her core. Just good timing.
“Did it work?” Rivka asked, looking around the room. “Nothing is on fire. Other than the candle, of course.”
“I don't know. I don't think so. I must have fucked it up.” Lesya sat back against the wall with a sigh. “Just one spell. I can't do one freaking spell right.”
The ship pitched sideways and dipped in a dizzying fall. Lesya tumbled head over heels, coming to a stop as she bashed into a crate with her back. The candle rolled to a stop beside her, the flame extinguishing.
The room turned black as true night.
Rivka rushed across the room and offered her a hand up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just bruised. The storm must really be heating up out there.” Lesya rubbed her back as she crossed to the porthole window and wiped condensation off the glass. But the outside was dark with black clouds, and rain pelted the tiny window, giving her zero visibility.
“Lesya. Do you hear that?” Rivka's voice shook.
“What? The men yelling above?” The shouts were distant, but they'd been ongoing while they did the spell. Lesya had managed to drown them out with her own thoughts.
“No. The roar. Listen.”
Lesya waited, one hand on the windowpane. She could feel the wall shudder beneath the clawing of the churning waves. The walls groaned around them. The constant swaying made her sick to her stomach.
But then she pinpointed the sound Rivka had heard. A dull, steady roar. Like a train on tracks, coming straight towards them.
“Is that…” Rivka trailed off, her face white.
Lesya nodded, clutching the windowpane tighter as her knees grew weak. “That is a cyclone.”
11
Rivka
“We’re all going to die!” Rivka screamed. “I saw what that cyclone did to your house, and it had the ground to help it stay upright. All we have is a flimsy wooden boat to protect us. We’re just sitting ducks, waiting for this cyclone to hit us and smash us into the waves!”
“Now, just—” But Lesya didn’t get to finish her thought. The ship listed dangerously to one side and both of them went sliding. The crates—as if not wanting to be left out—slid along with them. The scrape of wood against wood, along with the rain and wind outside, was deafening.
Rivka grabbed ahold of the top of the door frame. She hoisted herself up the wall before the cavalry of crates could do her in. They smashed into the wall so violently, the corner of one trunk put a hole in the wood paneling.
The ship evened out and dipped furiously, taking Rivka’s stomach with it. She let go of the door frame as they headed back up a wave.
“Whoop! We made it!” Rivka cried out in triumph. “It’s a bit like surfing the currents under the water!”
But she got no reply from Lesya. In fact, she didn’t spot the mage anywhere. The boat righted itself again, then slowly shifted the opposite direction. The junk around the room moved this way and that as the water tossed the vessel about as if it were nothing but a toy.
“Lesya?” No answer. “Lesya!”
There were too many boxes in the way for Rivka to find Lesya easily, not with them careening around. And Lesya usually wasn’t the quiet type unless she was brooding. Something was wrong.
“Where are you?” Tossing trunks, boxes, and crates aside, she waded through the clutter.
A hand shot up from beneath a pile of capsized trunks spilling their insides all over the floor, and all over Lesya.
“Lesya!” Rivka couldn’t hear if the mage answered her call over the noise level, but she managed to make her way to the hand. Crates be damned, she was getting to her friend. She shifted her weight on her feet as the boat tilted the other way and kept her balance, quickly digging Lesya free.
“It’s about damn time you got here,” Lesya grunted, but there was no bite to her words. Her face had turned an ashen green. She grabbed her thigh and squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth a thin line.
Rivka’s gaze swept down to Lesya’s leg. Her calf and foot laid at an odd angle
“Oh my goodness. Lesya, your leg!” Crouching down, Rivka took a closer look. “It’s broken!”
“No shit, siren,” Lesya gritted her teeth. “It’s not just broken. It feels like it’s shattered. Those damn crates hit me at just the right angle and then exploded on the wall around me. I thought the ship had caved in.”
“Not yet, at least,” Rivka said. “But the storm is only just getting started.
The ship fell several feet, sending Lesya and Rivka both flying into the air. As the boat collided with the water on its downswing, a cacophonous crunch ripped through the air, and then Lesya and Rivka hit the floor.
Rivka landed on her butt, pain shooting up her backbone. She rolled away from a shifting trunk and scrambled to protect Lesya from the junk headed straight for her head.
Lesya punched a small hatbox away and groaned. “This is fucking terrible! If the storm doesn’t kill us, this room will.”
“The storm isn’t going to kill us,” Rivka assured the mage as she shoved a huge crate away with her boots.
As if to wholeheartedly disagree with her, a stream of water skirted around Rivka’s feet. “What on earth? Did you spill something?”
Lesya lifted her head wearily. “What? No.”
The water turned from a small ribbon into a thick sheet, soaking Rivka’s legs. “Oh!”
“Shit.” Lesya tried to push herself up using only one leg. “It’s coming through the wall! There’s a hole in the hull!”
“Don’t move!” Rivka didn’t need Lesya hurting her leg even more. She grasped the mage under both arms and lifted her onto a nearby trunk.
If the room filled up with water, then Lesya was as good as dead. Rivka didn’t fear for her own life because she was a siren. She could breathe underwater.
“Stay right here,” Rivka instructed, “and I’ll try to find a way out.”
Lesya knocked on the trunk with her knuckles. “Stay here? On the trunk that’s going to slide all over the damn place with the boat?”
“I mean, can you fly, Lesya? Otherwise, stay here.” Rivka huffed and stormed away. This situation was stressful enough without Lesya making it worse.
Rivka dodged or jumped over whatever obstacle came her way as she crossed to the porthole window. What if she could knock out the glass? It was thick, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t breakable.
She rushed to the outside wall of the ship and started banging on the round window, listening for any thin points in the glass. She grabbed one of the wooden lids from a crate and rammed the corner into the porthole over and over again.
She found the urn tumbling around in the steadily rising water, and with a silent apology to the dead guy, threw his urn at the window. The window dented the urn rather than the other way around.
The glass proved to be thicker than she imagined.
There had to be a way out. She wouldn’t let her friend die in vain. The only reason Lesya was here was because of Rivka. She’d brought her to the seaport and booked her passage. She didn’t have to do that. Her being stuck here was all Rivka’s fault.
Maybe she could widen the hole where the water was coming in! If she could get it big enough for their bodies to pass through, Rivka could swim Lesya away. She stalked the outside wall of the ship for the breach in the wood.
“Rivka! The water. It’s getting pretty deep!”
The cool liquid rushed around Rivka’s knees. She felt her scales contract to keep her body warm. Lesya wouldn’t be so lucky.
“I’m coming!” It wasn’t easy sludging through the water instead of swimming, but Rivka had to get Lesya on higher ground. “We need to get you on one of the taller crates.”
Lesya visibly swallowed and nodded. “Okay.”
“Wrap your arms around my neck.” Lesya listened to the siren for once. “Okay, good. Now I’m going to put one arm under your legs and lift you up.”
Lesya forced a smile. “Got it.”
Rivka worked her arm underneath both of Lesya’s legs, cringing as the mage sucked in a pained breath. She slid her other arm behind Lesya’s back and lifted her up.
Lifting someone in water was easy, but once out of the water, Lesya wasn’t light. Her soaked clothes weighed her down even more.
“Damn, you’re heavy.” Rivka grunted and lifted with all her might, setting Lesya on a different, higher crate.
Lesya glared but made no comment. She must have been hurting if she didn’t have a comeback to Rivka’s remark.
“There.”
“Now what?” Lesya asked.
“We know the door is locked. The glass in that window isn’t breaking. But I had another thought. I could probably break through where the water is coming in and swim us both out.”
Sordid Depths (The Cursed Seas Collection) Page 7
