Daughter of the Sea

by Mira Zamin

The view before her quickly faded to black and grew oddly airy as if she were looking at the world through a bubble. Avaritus stood on the sandy embankment directly above them with his slave Panos, her father’s killer. Her breathing came in rapid gasps. She had known a confrontation was inevitable but always in her mind she had visualized surprising him. Her fingers and legs were numb. She could not move.

  “Run,” she mouthed to Hadrian but stolidly he refused to leave her. “No, run. Run, run, run,” she whispered but he stood as Panos leapt down before them, and helped Avaritus down.

  He was ever the same. His short, grey hair was lighter than before and the same lines ran through his face, hidden partially by the closely-trimmed snowy beard he kept. With an icy smile, he approached and cupped her face. “I always knew you would return to me,” he whispered.

  A repulsed shiver ran through Calista and Hadrian’s grip on her arm tightened to the point of pain. Unexpectedly, he flew towards Avaritus, knocking him into the ground but in a moment, Panos was on Hadrian, knife bared and at his throat.

  “Don’t!” Calista shrieked.

  Avaritus flicked his two foremost fingers downward and dismissively and Panos lessened the pressure on the knife although the little man’s vise-like grip on Hadrian slackened not a bit.

  All right. I have Hadrian and myself. Panos has his knife and Avaritus is too decrepit to be much help. If I can knock Panos away before anyone can notice…we can do something. With that resolution, she lurched towards Panos but the sand slowed her movement, giving Avaritus time to spy her intention. “Panos!"

  Suddenly, Hadrian was gasping for breath again and Calista was frozen, as still as a statue, crouching with one leg stretched forward and her fingers gingerly spread out on the ground for balance.

  “If you move, I will have Panos slice through your lover’s neck. I do love red on the grey of stone. It reminds me of your father.” He smiled slowly and Calista growled like a great cat on the attack. But she remained still.

  “Ah, we are in a pretty conundrum. Panos needs me to watch you and I need Panos to watch your lover; neither of us can leave to retrieve the soldiers necessary for your escort. You wouldn’t oblige me by coming of your own volition.” A pause. “I thought not. Well, Panos, cut the man’s throat. The greater prize is here,” he added courteously.

  “No!” Calista shrieked. “I shall come! Don’t harm him.”

  Avaritus smiled. “Cooperation. Perhaps I should have sent you away myself. You have come back much more…flexible.”

  Calista bared her teeth at Avaritus’ back as Panos needled Calista and Hadrian with the point of his blade to clamber onto the wedge of earth that stood like a small cliff above the beach. Together, they stumbled to the top. Calista vaguely considered tackling Avaritus to the ground but rejected the idea. She had no weapon with which to hold Avaritus hostage and to prevent Panos from murdering Hadrian on the spot. So she quietly trailed after Avaritus, taking note of everything they passed. Avaritus led them through a winding way which kept the town hidden from her view, and, more importantly, kept her hidden from town view.

  As they approached her home, she thought her heart would halt at the spot. The warm white façade of the walls were still the same, the gardens as lovely as ever, and, as she entered it, it smelled of memory.

  “Take him below,” Avaritus instructed. “And do not let anyone see him and fetch some soldiers once you bind him to watch him. As for my betrothed, let us return you to your old room.” Avaritus’ rough hands grabbed her arm, his brittle skin biting as he tugged her up the steps.

  “Milord? Are you sure you should be left alone with the girl?” Panos inquired.

  Avaritus gave him a derisive look. “I am confident I can handle a girl. Now, scurry.” And Panos, with a twist of Hadrian’s arm, pushed him along the corridor.

  “You and I, my dear, have a long overdue wedding night,” Avaritus chuckled amiably. Calista’s blood ran cold at the thought, her memories of his previous attempts rushing to the forefront of her mind. He pulled her up the time-smoothed steps.

  When they approached the top, Calista, thinking quickly, did not struggle but instead fastened her hand tightly around his wrist and fell limp, leaning backwards. She toppled and Avaritus slipped with her. In a tumult of colors and thudding, she landed on the floor, with her head tucked into her knees. Her back and elbows ached but she was fine. Holding her breath, she looked over to see Avaritus: he did not move although his chest rose and fell.

  I could kill him now. He was strewn on the ground, utterly vulnerable and Calista knew that by striking his throat properly she could kill him. She could shove the bone of his nose into his brain and kill him. She could bash his brains against the stone floor. She could end the months of struggle here, by murdering a defenseless man, an evil man, but defenseless nonetheless, in cold blood. She could. She gripped his head, poised to hit it against the floor when she stopped. I cannot. Weak and foolish but I cannot. She stared at Avaritus for a few more moments and then stood up.

  She slinked through the stone halls. After what felt like agonizing hours of winding, she found herself before the door. She opened it slowly and it creaked loudly in protest. For a few frozen moments, she stood still and alert but no one came and she silently padded down the steps.

  “Hadrian?” she whispered through the darkness. “Hadrian?”

  “Calista!”

  She followed the voice and found Hadrian with his hands and feet tied.

  “How did you escape?” he asked, amazed.

  “Later,” she muttered as she worked on pulling the ropes past Hadrian’s hands. She could hear his teeth grinding at the pain of her tugging but she did not waste her breath apologizing. “Ah!” she gasped, as the bonds came free. “Work on your feet and I’ll dig around for a knife or something sharp.”

  Feeling around with her hands, she rummaged until she found a sliver of sharp metal. Meanwhile, Hadrian had managed to wriggle his feet out of the ropes and he tapped Calista’s shoulder. She started at the touch but said, “We have to hurry. Follow me.”

  Dashing up the steps, she halted at the door, and after peeking around, proceeded through the route from which she had come. She could hear Hadrian behind her. Finally, they arrived back where Avaritus had fallen but he was there no longer. “Hurry,” she murmured.

  They were almost at the door, when Panos appeared before them. “I have found them!” he exclaimed to Avaritus who stood a few steps behind him, leaning heavily against the wall.

  Cold flowed through her blood, followed in rapid succession by a brilliant heat and without even knowing what she was doing, she slashed the metal at Panos’ throat.

  As she sprinted away, she thought she saw the man fall, clutching his throat, attempting to staunch the ruby red flow.

  She ran, following the hidden paths of her childhood, until her sides ached and her lungs heaved. Tears of exertion bubbled from her eyes and she could hear Hadrian breathing heavily behind her. She ran until they finally came into the sight of Portus Tarrus’ woods. She slowed only enough to turn around to ascertain that they were not being followed and then she dashed again into the cover of the forest. Now, she slowed to pick her way through the trails without leaving too much of a mark of her progress. Once she felt they were safe enough and that her legs could hold her no more, she tumbled onto the grass, taking in giant gasps of burning air. Her feet throbbed and she could see red blood seeping from the reopened wounds.

  Wiping her eyes and coughing painfully she turned the bloodied metal over in her hand. “Do you think I killed him?” She could feel the echo of Panos’ tearing cartilage and skin still reverberate through the bones of her hands.

  Hadrian, prostrate on the ground, raised his head. “Don’t worry about it. You injured hundreds in Atlantis—what’s one more, right? The real question is what do we do now.”

  Calista’s eyes widened at Hadrian’s cavalier assessment of the situation. Cavalier but true, she knew t
hat. More honest than the delusions she had foisted upon herself in the intervening weeks. “I owe the world an incredible debt of life, even for that evil Panos.” And the green-eyed man from the battle so long ago.

  “Cheer up. Maybe he’s alive.”

  Calista felt a lurch of fright. “Maybe it would be better if he were dead…”

  “Then what are you whining about?” he said equably.

  Calista glowered at him, firmly deciding to keep any further morose thoughts to herself.

  “What do you plan to do now?” Hadrian asked, returning to his original question.

  Puffing her cheeks and blowing the air out, she answered, “I…I really don’t know what to do. That…Avaritus…that…unexpected. But we can’t go back to Claudius before nightfall at the very least and he knows we’re here.” She shuddered, wiping the blood on the grass.

  Hadrian closed his eyes in thought. “We could go to the tavern.”

  “What?”

  “We could go to the tavern and with any luck, Claudius will have the gumption to meet us there.”

  “Excellent plan, Hadrian, except you never told him the name of the place. And what if Claudius is discovered? Should we not warn him?”

  Hadrian considered that. “Damn. Let’s hope that Avaritus does not suspect that there is another and well, we’ll still go there but we should wait until dusk. And then, I can go and find Claudius while you wait.”

  “While I wait? Thank you, but I am quite able to find Claudius on my own. But what then? We cannot wait long before we make our next move. As long as we stay in Portus Tarrus and Avaritus knows we are here we put everyone in danger.” Calista frowned in thought. “I don’t know what to do. I have, for so long, dreamed of winning Portus Tarrus back but now it appears as if it will never happen—the middle was never planned out really well. I had thought everything would fall into place and now as the impossibility looms even greater before me, suddenly, my existence seems unimportant, my purpose absent.”

  Abruptly, Hadrian said, “I think you should leave Portus Tarrus and your mad fixation on killing Avaritus.”

  An image flashed before Calista’s eyes: her hand bearing down on Avaritus, attempting to crush his head against the floor and faltering. But Hadrian did not know what Avaritus had done to her, he could not feel the pain she had when her father had been murdered. He could not hope to understand. “I can hold Portus Tarrus until the Senate sort things out once I manage the rest of it; that’s the least of it really.”

  “And how do you plan on doing this?”

  Calista shrugged. “Do you not think me capable of doing this? I have gotten this far, you know.” I have killed to get here. Am I any better than Avaritus? Killing to meet my ends?

  Hadrian groaned loudly. “Calista. Do you not think you are swimming against the impossible at this point? How will you do whatever you plan to do? How do you plan on taking back Portus Tarrus, especially now? It cannot be done. Or if done, then only at a very steep cost to lives. If I thought it were something that were safely possibly, I would carry your banner with my own hands. I doubt your mother, your brother, even your father, wish you to kill yourself in a mad quest for revenge.”

  Calista’s eyes narrowed to blue slits. “What do you propose I do then?” she asked frustratedly.

  “We need to escape from here. With your family. And Claudius,” he added grudgingly. He looked very much like he would have liked to suggest something else, but seeing the dangerous glint in her eye, he kept silent.

  “But how? We do not have enough horses for all of us and then where do we go from there? Rome? We do not have enough money to do anything. I…do not know what to do.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, and the momentary black was overcome with bright flashes of aquamarine, magenta and gold. It was all crumbling around her and she did not know if she had the strength within herself to rebuild everything once more. Things kept on breaking, no matter how hard she tried to reforge them, and she was tired of fighting, almost too tired to go on...

  “We do what we must and we will see what can be done when we get there. Look, I still have the money from selling the horse.” He jingled the money in front of her. “We can ask the innkeeper to buy the horse back and then we will have three. And then we can double up on horses. See? Everything will be fine.”

  “Perhaps. But you sure are placing a great deal of faith in the hope that the innkeeper is hiding Pyp and Mother and that they will be willing to help us when we tell them of our dilemma.”

  “You can believe what you will but I would like to believe that everything will fall into place.”

  Calista shot him a scornful look. “Your faith is charmingly naïve. Perhaps it is because you have never had all of your hope stolen from you.”

  CHAPTER XXVII