Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  I stare at him. “This is fucked up.”

  He lifts his glass and signs with the other hand. “I’ll drink to that.”

  “So, you made a deal with Lily and Wolf to save the Murk?”

  “Not entirely.” His hands fall.

  “You going to tell me about it, or like, not?”

  “How about not?”

  My bubble of frustration pops, urging me toward the stairs. Prodding an out-of-sorts cartel leader for information that may do me no good sits very low on the list of things I want to be doing right now. Things like finding Thais and demanding to know why she abandoned me. I pluck the ignits up and slide toward the exit, signing a very muffled, “Then I’m out. Thanks for the shiny rocks.”

  Rubem leans to catch my attention. His braid beads gleam in the cabin’s low lantern light. “Wait, wait. That was sarcasm. Sit down.” He points to the floor across from him. “Or curl. Whatever boiuna do.”

  I flip the ignits between my fingers, looking from Rubem to the sliver of dark canopy visible through the stairs. It begs for me to slip up and out and forget all of this. But I might as well learn whatever Rubem knows before I leave. I flick my tongue, soaking in the dark hilarity and subtle determination oozing off him, and sink back down, leaning against his bed and setting the ignits into my lap. “Talk, then.”

  He holds up a finger. Lifting his bottle to his lips, he downs the rest of it in a series of expert swallows. His teeth come away purple. He fishes more wine from beneath a table and pops it open. “I have a place up on the river, right outside the northern edge of the Murk. I caught Lily and Wolf snooping around when they first arrived to the region—came from one of the northern isles beyond the siren seas, where, from what I’ve gathered, they have ancients, too, only Lily and Wolf can’t get to them, at least not without one of their own first.” He sips from his new bottle. “They liked the number of ignits and ancients the Murk holds, and they were so close to calling in their northern friends to launch an attack.”

  My muscles feel raw, my stomach turned inside out, as though the knives of these new colonizers already joined the fishers in their conquest. The boat humans alone were bad enough, but a force with more technology, one which doesn’t keep to the river, which doesn’t fear the Murk? Banishment means nothing if the place that evicted you no longer exists. “And that’s why you made the deal.”

  Rubem nods. “They wanted an ancient, and if not that, then ignits, and I knew how to get those, or thought I did, anyway. There are legends of Thais’s mother across the continent—in some, she’s a dashing thief, in others, a powerful hag, and in a few, she’s the incarnation of evil, a darkness that steals away light and power. But I met her, once.”

  “What happened?” I lift my brows in question.

  “I was fifteen or so when she came past my territory to get to the Murk—the only year she ever went through it instead of around, I think. For all that she craved the Murk’s ignits, she had a proper fear of the people who used them. I tried to stop her from going in, with a machete and a lot of growled threats. She would have killed me, I’m certain of it, except that I was still just young enough to look a bit like a child. The last time she knocked me down, she said, ‘I have a little girl, you know, four months old today. She’s keeping me too close to home.’ And then she laughed, ‘She’s made me soft.’ She put the safety back on her gun and left me there.”

  “So, you knew she had a child,” I conclude, “somewhere nearby, probably across Murk territory if she was willing to go into it to get back to her infant.”

  Rubem nods again. “I promised that if Lily put me into a position of power, I would find this mysterious daughter, and if she were anything like her mother, I would threaten or bribe her into handing over the hoard. I know the people of the river, and even of the Murk, more than she ever will. Having me find her an easy trove that wouldn’t require bringing in ships and crews and waging a small war against a swamp that might never reveal its ancients’ locations was appealing to her.”

  “Except you can’t get Thais to give up the hoard.”

  He tips his drink at me. “Precisely.”

  His skunk bird flaps its wings as a creature roars somewhere out in the darkness of the night.

  Rubem’s gaze follows the sound, but for the moment that I watch his eyes, they don’t find a focus. The full width of his wine-touched lips catches the light, affronted by the heavy droop of his black brow. A few silver hairs mix between his braids. For all his jewelry and poise, something about him refuses to fit the position Lily placed him in.

  “Why a cartel leader?” I ask.

  “It was easiest for Lily and Wolf. They were in good with the fishers after they caught a boiuna nearly large enough to be an elder on the Murk’s outskirts, and the Fang Cartel’s second-in-command—my second-in-command now—didn’t much like the current leader anyway. And I admit, I was hoping . . .” He runs a fingertip over the top of his wine bottle before raising his hands again. “The cartel are scoundrels, but they’re not picky on who they take in, so long as you can do your job. Since the Murk wouldn’t have me, maybe this was my chance.”

  I could ask him about it: ask him why the Murk won’t take him, or when and how he tried. I could commiserate with him. I could make him less alone.

  But my heart catches on this: they caught a boiuna nearly large enough to be an elder.

  “The Warmth of Summer Twilight. That was who they killed.” The words spill out of me, unbidden and unstoppable. “I’d smelt her—she’d always been nice to me, nicer than the others, and I had to be sure.”

  I can almost taste her soft scent name sticking dark and hot in my mouth, along with something bitter, fouler: death. But I hadn’t quite believed it, not until I saw her body stretched across the deck of the fishers’ dark-wood ship, her severed head propped beside the wheel. Lily and Wolf, with their blazing hair, stood over her, their chests rattling. Laughter, I think.

  A shudder drives through my spine, tearing into my skull and growing thorns along the back of my neck at the recollection of their eyes on me, their nets and guns raised, Summer’s blood sprinkled across their faces. My body had frozen, as if my fear had grown hooks and latched me in place, until a gunshot on the other side of the boat had startled us all, drawing the fishers’ attention long enough for me to flee.

  Rubem’s hands yank me out of the memory. “I thought it was you I saw that day, in the water.” The statement barely makes sense. “I shot into the air. Told them I was scaring you off. For a moment, I was pretty sure they would kill me for it.”

  It feels all levels of wrong and all kinds of right that it was Rubem there, Rubem who might have saved me. I could thank him, but the words would be useless. They change nothing now. The past is the past, both the good and the bad. My thoughts spring forward to what matters: the future. Thais’s future. A future I may or may not be a part of anymore, even for the short half-day’s boat ride between us and the coast. A future that Rubem’s conjoins with, whether we like it or not.

  “Lily and Wolf can’t have Thais’s hoard.” I toss one of my ignits into the air, catching it and plopping it back down with a grin. “So, we’ll just have to get them an ancient.”

  “You’ll help?” Rubem’s eyes flash to mine so fast I barely have time to look away.

  “Yeah.” I bounce my shoulders. “Lily will go north if we get them one, right? She won’t just try to take the Murk anyway?”

  “I believe so. This is what she’s wanted from the start. Besides, her brother is hanging on, but his wounds could turn infectious any day. She’s already antsy to leave.”

  “And if they go north, then the fishers will back down too? Leave the Murk alone and return to their whole riverside murdering?”

  “They won’t have the courage or the tech to invade the Murk if the northerners don’t provide it.”

  “Then, how I see it, Lily will either take Thais’s ignits—which I can’t allow, not just because they’re mine n
ow too—or she’ll rip apart the Murk for whatever she can get a hold of, probably churning up some ancients in the process. If throwing one at her will really make her and her brother run back home, then that’s the best way to get rid of her.” Run back home and leave the route to the hoard open for Thais, and the route to Thais open for me. So I can reach the hoard too. And just a little, so I can reach Thais.

  Rubem’s scent name turns into a chaos of emotions so heavy I can’t pick one from another, bright and acidic, sweet and dark all at once. “We’d still be giving up an ancient, a part of the Murk, something the people respect and rely upon.”

  “You were the one who suggested this,” I remind him.

  He points his bottle at me, nearly sloshing some of the wine out. “Yes, and that doesn’t mean I don’t hate the idea.”

  “The Murk sucks. They kicked us out, didn’t they?” Despite my best efforts, I flinch at my own signs, and from the gloomy smell that clouds Rubem’s former turmoil, I think they must hurt him too. “Besides, we’re only taking one ancient. The Murk will still have eight more. They’ll survive.”

  After another swig, Rubem drops his forehead onto the lip of his bottle. With one hand he signs. “All right.” His chest rises and falls, the motion heavy, as though he’s breathing in an entire fog bank and letting it out as a condensed sea. He plops the bottle between his folded legs and claps his hands together once. “Which ancient do we give Lily? Preferably one along our current trajectory and nearby, since that band of Murklings is still somewhere behind us. And it must be guarded by something we can handle alone—you, me, and my Sheila.” He signs a variation of an affectionate feminine term for that final name, and I assume he must mean his crocodilian because that’s the only fight-worthy creature—feminine or otherwise—who seems particularly fond of him around here. “And, it shouldn’t be an ancient known for producing anything too dangerous. Nothing that’s ever spit out a green ignit, at least.”

  I feel another cringe coming. The darkness of the night seems to twist itself through the window and smother me. Is Thais out there somewhere, wrapped in the fog, thinking of me? Is she nearer to her hoard than I, whisked through secret rivulets by Fern and Xera, or is she struggling somewhere behind Rubem’s ship, hiding from the encroaching Murklings and heaving, Xera there to hold her hair instead of me?

  The weight of the poison-finding compass I stole from Rubem sits heavy against my collarbone, like a well-worn promise. One I fully intend to fulfill. “Most of them are clustered farther inland, but there’s a notoriously basic ancient—creates blues and reds, mostly—pretty near to the coast. How’s that sound?”

  “Like a plan.” Rubem raises his bottle and drinks to our decision. “After this, you can stay with me or leave, or I can take you anywhere you want, the hoard or another village or—or the moon, if you’d prefer. I’ll owe you that much.”

  “The moon?” I sign it without emotion, staring at the center of his chest, until the little crisscross of strings near his collar begin to rattle the back of my skull, and I have to strum my ignits to make the feeling fade.

  Rubem shrugs, his lips turning up. “I’m not certain how we’d get you there, I admit. But, if I could, I might form a moon rock cartel.” He winks at me, his scent relaxed in a brittle sort of way, like an ember waiting to flake apart. “Do you think people would go for that?”

  I roll my eyes. “I think not even those damn fancy ships your people sail on the sea can fly high enough to get to the moon, so it’s a dumb question.”

  His chest vibrates in something far more recognizable as a laugh than what I felt from him earlier, and he stands.

  After consulting and reconsulting me on the best way to reach this ancient, he saunters to the deck to signal our new directions. I settle across his floor, playing with the ignits as I doze in and out of a dreamless sleep. Every time I wake, I look first for Thais. The lack of her presence sprouts an ache in my chest that grows with every hour, just as Rubem’s wine bottle empties.

  Dawn stalks the horizon by the time one of the crew calls down. Rubem swirls the final residue of the wine bottle around. He lifts it like he plans to chug the rest. I snatch it out of his hands and down the contents in one go. It burns along the back of my nose, a shudder running through me when I take the final swallow, but as the worst of the alcohol fades, it leaves a subtle fruity smell. “Fuck it all, let’s get on with this.”

  Rubem grabs limply for the empty bottle, his brow somehow both raised and scrunched at the same time. I drop the thing on his bed. Finding a fresh glass tucked against the leg of his rocking chair, I fill it with the clean water from a jug he keeps near the door and shove that into his hands instead.

  He stares at me pathetically.

  “Last time you caught us both on fire,” I add.

  “I did, didn’t I? That was never my intention, you know.”

  Now it’s my turn to stare at him.

  With a sigh, he downs the water and discards the glass. We ascend to the deck.

  I catch only glimpses of the crew through the night fog: a blur of the bearded human near the helm and a shadow passing in front of the smaller boat’s light. What did they say about me to the fishers? Did they know I was here and held some last bit of loyalty to Rubem after all, or was Rubem right, and Lily only cares about me because of my connection to Thais? She was never a fisher by trade anyway, just a murderer taking advantage of a guild who wanted the things of the Murk just as much as she wanted its ancients?

  Even through the mist, I clearly make out the massive mangrove this ancient lives within. It looms over us, a shadow of gnarled bark and twisting branches rising high into the canopy. The trunk itself stretches farther around than Rubem’s entire boat, three times over. A few of its leaves twinkle on the surface of the water, silver and black. One of them floats through the twisted caverns formed by the ancient’s elaborate root system, vanishing into the shadows.

  Somewhere in there lies the creature who turned this mangrove from a simple old tree into a great energy-producing amalgamation.

  I slip off the boat, tailfirst. The moment I touch the water, Rubem’s crocodilian charges me. I tense, but Rubem puts his hand out, signing a simple word for friend. The beast slows. She comes up beside me, cautiously.

  Rubem signs the word again. To me, he adds, “You can pet her.”

  I don’t exactly want to, but I stretch out a clumsy hand anyway, rubbing her nose. Her thick boxy scales make my own crawl, and I pull my fingers back quickly, clutching the ignit on my necklace instead. She snorts at me.

  “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry I ruined your eye. You were trying to eat me.” I don’t think she understands most signs, especially my one-handed ones, but I make the motions anyway.

  She must accept my apology, because she bumps her head against my side and slips below the surface. One less enemy I have to worry about, and one more ally. Potential ally, anyway.

  “I can trust you, right?” The lingering tang of wine accompanies Rubem’s question.

  Trust. Trust is the thing I have with Thais. The thing I have, at least, when I’m near her, when ignits and ancients aren’t stealing my attention. Is it still trust if it’s not consistent? And do I have even a little bit of that with Rubem? I don’t know, so I tell him the part of the truth he needs to hear. “I’ve got this. We’ll send those damn northerners frolicking back home in no time.”

  I start to sink into the water when a thick green blur launches at Rubem from the canopy. Fern’s musty scent tickles my nose just as she barrels into him. Her tail wraps around him, pinning his arms to his body before he can reach for his pistol. She works her way toward his neck.

  My heart stumbles over itself. I scramble back onto the boat, awkwardly wiggling to keep my bandaged gashes from rubbing against the railing, and lunge at Fern. She balks and loosens enough for Rubem to spring free of her. I hold her back, stopping her from leaping at him again as he shouts something consoling to his crewmates through the fog.
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  She whacks her hip into me. “Let me save you, dammit!”

  I elbow her in the shoulder. “You’re a little too late for that.”

  The scent of fresh blood hits me in full force, and I find Fern’s bullet wound leaking through a half-fallen wrap of what looks like part of Thais’s clothing. I grab Fern’s arm and lift it, trying to get a better look. She shies away, but some of the fight leaves her.

  As if on cue, a ruffled Rubem appears at her side, somehow lugging along his medical kit despite never seeming to have dipped back into his cabin. He props it open. “May I?”

  Fern bares her teeth at him. “You shot me! You destroyed my house and you shot me.”

  I wrap my tail around her waist once, holding her back as she flings forth the words.

  Rubem doesn’t even flinch. “I shot you after you tried to eat me. The treehouse was an accident, for which I’m very sorry. Now, you’re bleeding.”

  Fern replies with nothing but silence and the stiff smell of mistrust. Her fingers bunch, but as Rubem leans in to tend to her wound, she merely looks away, her jaw stiff. She lets him work.

  “Why are you here—did Thais come?” I pay close attention to my head ridges, searching for any sign of a boat human trudging through the trees. A monkey hollers in the distance, and some small predator pounces on a bird a little ways above me. No Thais. “And what took you so long? Were you guys planning to come rescue me someday, or were you just waiting around to see how Rubem would dispose of my corpse?”

  I don’t know what makes me say it, but I know the pain in my words comes straight from the center of my chest. It hurt being left behind, no matter how civilized Rubem turned out to be. It hurt that Thais had apparently given up on me. Thais, the fucking hero.

  Thais, my friend.

  “Thais had a bad spasm.” Fern’s expression remains unreadable and her scent name empty, but her hands shake just the slightest bit. “Someone had to watch her and steer the canoe and someone else track Rubem’s boats. Now that he’s stopped, it’s the first time Xera or I could be spared.”