Ah. So this was a bit more interesting after all. "Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't. But you're correct. It's not the meat which sustains us. Not our target."
"Then what is?"
Mara smiled. "Why, the souls, of course."
“The... souls?” Amista blinked, taking a startled step backward out of the surf.
Mara wanted to cry out at the loss of the contact with the water, but Amista returned just as quickly, even taking another step forward as though trying to read the answers in Mara’s features.
The little human may as well have just spoken the rest of her thoughts aloud out loud for how plainly her thoughts were writ upon her face. Surely, she was thinking, surely she had misheard Mara. She had to have said something else. Or perhaps she'd meant the soles of their feet. Yes, that had to be it.
Mara waited patiently for her to realize that wasn’t it.
Amista schooled her features into an expression of scholarly curiosity. "Souls," she repeated flatly.
Mara nodded. "Souls."
It was this nonchalance, this uncaring attitude that finally caused Amista to falter. "But... why? Aren't your own souls enough for you? Must you take more from the rest of us? We each only have one, without any to spare."
Mara met Amista's eyes. "You only have one," she said softly. "We have none."
The wind blew between them while Amista struggled to find words.
"You don't have souls?" she whispered. She shuddered, clutching at her forearms as goosebumps pebbled her flesh. "How could the gods make a creature and then utterly forsake it they way they have left you?"
There was an aching note to her voice. Pity. It made Mara bristle, made the thirst on her tongue turn sour as she straightened. "I have lived decades without the pains of a conscience or guilt causing me indecision. Perhaps it is better to be forsaken by your gods. They forget about us—but that means they take no trouble in meddling with our lives either. I think I prefer it that way, to be quite honest."
Amista’s mouth opened, but Mara cut her off. “You've asked your question. It's my turn to ask mine.” Mara's eyes narrowed. “Did your sire really just fall overboard?”
8
Amista
Amista stared at the soulless creature before her.
Had her father really fallen overboard?
A simple question. Or it should have been. But Amista remembered her feet making contact with his body. When he’d stumbled backwards and toward the railing she hadn’t tried to help. Well… at least... she hadn’t tried to help him remain on board.
She’d happily assisted him in getting off the ship.
So did he just “fall” overboard? The truth was... no. No, he hadn’t.
The truth was, Amista wondered if her own soul was intact these days.
And the truth was, Amista wasn't sure how Mara had seen it when no one else had.
Perhaps without the weight of a soul to hold her down, to make her see what she expected to see, it was easier for Mara to have clarity. All Amista knew was that no one else had voiced any sort of accusation about her father's death. Not even those who knew her best, like her grandmother.
She closed her eyes, remembering that day on the ship.
Her father had strode toward her the way he had so many times before. Ham-fisted, face purple and mottled with rage. What had caused his ire, she couldn't say. She never understood what made him so angry so constantly. She thought perhaps there was a fire burning deep within him; sometimes, the flames were banked, but the embers were never fully doused.
The deck had been vacant. It was still early in the morning and the air had that misty quality, the sun yet to burn the vapors of night off.
He'd come toward her. Amista had scrambled backwards, clutching her skirt in her hands, stumbling over planks and barrels strewn over the deck and landing flat on her rounded bottom.
She'd looked up in fear as her father had drawn his arm back—
And she’d snapped, something in her reaching its breaking point. Her legs had lashed out, striking him right in his nether region.
Time almost seemed to slow in that moment. Amista remembered every detail.
His fist had lost its tension, fingers splaying wide like a sunburst. His muddy brown eyes jolted open, straining their lids beneath their bushy eyebrows.
He'd crumbled, falling in on himself and clutching his nether regions, letting out a strangled and stifled cry. He took a stumbling step backward, grasping a railing for support.
Panic clawed its way up Amista's throat. When he got up, he'd be angrier than ever. Angrier even than when she was seven and she'd spilled his tea across a new cape.
She'd been in the infirmary for weeks that time, her stomach blackened, blued, and bruised. The doctor hadn't been able to meet her eyes when he'd asked her what happened and she blandly told him that she'd fallen against the railing on the stairs.
The pain then had made her see stars and the doctors had told her the extent of her bruising meant that she'd been bleeding into her belly. If it had been much worse, she could have died.
Amista had never struck her father intentionally before now. Never had the courage to. His fury would know no bounds when he got up.
If he got up.
Something cold clutched at Amista's insides as she gathered her skirts and stood decisively.
Her father sneered. "What are you doing, girl?"
Amista stared back. She wanted him to see her. Not the weak-willed mouse of a princess he had beaten into submission for years. But finally see her and fear her the way she feared him. She wanted it to be the last thing he ever felt.
But she couldn’t wait too long for respect and caution to seep into his eyes. He hadn’t regained his sea legs yet, so she rushed at him with the greatest force she could muster.
“This,” she said as he fell overboard into the frothing sea. And as the waves swallowed him whole, she repeated it. “I am doing this.”
A moment later and the deed was done.
Time sped up again. Cries of "man overboard!" "The King! The King is overboard! The King is drowning!" crowded her ears.
And then. Another bloodcurdling, wordless scream. The terrible sound that came from her grandmother when she saw her son in the water.
And the shout from a lookout: "MORDGRIS, AHOY!"
More shouting. Amista was jostled in the chaos. Her hair had come loose from its bun, snagged on her wet lips; on her panting breath. A ring buoy sailed through the air to the ocean below.
It was strange the things she remembered now. Unable to look away, she was held spellbound by the events in the water below. She was afraid that her father would be able to grab hold of the ring and they'd hoist him back on board, saving him.
If they succeeded, her sudden burst of courage would all be for nothing. He'd enjoyed using her for a punching bag, but if he thought that she'd be an adversary, that she may be able to actually kill him... he would end her. Have her executed for treason, for attempted murder of the King.
She didn't breathe until his blood dyed the water red. Only then did she cross the deck and clutch the railing. Gratitude to the Mordgris and relief washed through her; made her weak-kneed. She closed her eyes, marveling at the change in her circumstances.
Free.
She was free.
The morning was beautiful in its way, she thought. Gray. But calm. Staring into the horizon, without a sign of land, where flat ocean and sky met, it was almost peaceful. Amista drank it in.
No one imagined that the King's daughter had given him a push. No, it was far more likely that he had simply tripped and fallen. No one would suspect her; no one would think her capable.
No one until Mara.
"Amista." The Mordgris sang now. "Did. Your. Sire. Fall?"
Amista swallowed.
"No," she confessed in a whisper. She stepped closer to Mara so she’d be able to hear her soft words. "You are not the only one without a soul."
Mara's mouth fell open at that decl
aration and she wet her lips, about to speak.
“YOUR MAJESTY! AMISTA!” Amista's head whipped around to see her grandmother sprinting down the beach with a full contingent of guards, skirts hoisted into her fists. Her wrinkled face was pinched with horror as she beheld her granddaughter standing near a woman—whose tail betrayed her as a Mordgris.
"To arms! Protect your queen!" Her grandmother shouted.
In the water, Mara hissed as the guards raised their harpoons. Amista turned to see the Mordgris girl's teeth sharpening, narrowing, and lengthening. Her eyes darkened, like a slow oil spill in the corner of her eyes until black swallowed them whole.
"Belay that order!" Amista shouted. Her hand shot out toward the guards. Her voice was hoarse and shook more than she would have liked, but it held as much command as she could have hoped for.
Too late. Three of the guards fired, the spears of their harpoons shooting toward the water. Two splashed ineffectually into the waves. The third, Mara's tail reached up to swat from the sky.
She smiled, meeting Amista's eyes and giving her a little wave.
"Until next time, little human."
With a swish and a chorus of cackles, she dove back into the shallows.
Amista's grandmother reached her and patted her down frantically, pressing her fingertips to her cheeks and poring over every inch of her skin. "Are you all right? Did that monster hurt you?" She asked frantically. Her hands held Amista’s cheeks between her and her eyes inspected Amista’s for clues to her well-being.
"I'm fine." Irritated that she’d scared Mara off, Amista brushed her hands aside and retreated from the water lapping at her toes. It was no longer as soothing as it had been before she'd began to speak with Mara. Then, it had been a sweet comfort, a cool relief. Now, she feared that it would eat away at her skin, revealing her to be exactly the monster her grandmother thought Mara to be.
“Amista.” Her grandmother seized her skirts between her hands and marched after her granddaughter. The expression of naked fear on her grandmother's face was enough to stop Amista in her tracks as the older woman reached her and cupped Amista's cheeks between her palms. “I cannot lose another child. Not so soon after your father.” She smiled tremulously. “Please, Your Majesty. It is just the two of us now. Do not take steps that could leave me all alone here in Tigrid.”
Amista swallowed a lump in her throat, guilt assaulting her.
Her grandmother was so buttoned up and rigid most of the time that Amista sometimes forgot that she was still a person. A woman who had borne six children and seen only four into adulthood. Of the remaining two… Amista’s grandfather had married her aunt off to some king across the great sea on a distant continent that Amista had never set foot upon. Her grandmother had never visited. Too dangerous. The journey was so treacherous that not all of her aunt's letters to the family she had left behind had made it. Tigrid did very little trade with the country, too afraid that their gold and valuables would end up at the bottom of the sea.
And now, with Amista's father dead and gone, that aunt across the sea was the only child her grandmother had left. Well... her and Amista.
She looked at her grandmother with new eyes. It wasn’t her fault that Amista's father had turned out to be a monster. Wasn't her fault that she'd had to remain behind in Tigrid while her husband sent her children away to marriage and war, while sickness took the others. She couldn't just start over somewhere new after he passed. Their world had roles for women like her and starting a life of adventure wasn't what the future held for an elderly woman like her grandmother. Even if her will was stronger than most.
A life of adventure... she sighed and shook her head. She supposed that wasn’t what the future held for her either.
Amista’s gaze tugged back toward the horizon, where trade ships and war vessels sat, anchored in the current. The water betrayed no sign that Mara had disappeared beneath it. Not even a suspicious ripple was in sight.
Her grandmother was waiting for her response. She clasped the elderly woman's wrinkled hands in hers. "I promise," she said. "I won't make you worry like that again."
9
Mara
Mara did not swim back to her home island. Instead, she swirled away from Amista’s shores through the sea like a typhoon of pure fury, ripping through any creatures who had the misfortune to get in her way. A cloud of blood and mist followed her as she whirled through the water, cursing herself.
Before the old woman had interrupted. That had been Mara’s moment to strike. And she hadn’t taken it.
Why?
It all boiled down to one simple answer: She couldn't kill the little human. And yet not so simple. Because why couldn't she kill the little human?
It was not as her dam had suggested, that there was some strange and stupid fear preventing Mara from sinking her claws into Amista's neck and drinking her soul down deep. Mara wasn’t afraid to kill Amista. There was something else.
She just... she didn’t want to kill her.
Mara paused in the midst of tearing into a minnow to place a hand on her chest. The muscle beneath her breast had twinged in pain when she thought of draining the life from Amista's eyes. Those eyes that could shift from laughing to a melancholy contemplation in an instant.
Mara hissed, bubbles issuing from her mouth as she released her chest. The muscle there gave a slow, steady throb, beating against her. She would not go home. Not until she understood what this was between them. It was not the relationship of predator playing with its food. Not anymore. Though perhaps it had begun that way.
It wasn't the begrudging respect she held for her sister monsters. The bone deep magical bond that prevented them from doing each other true harm, no matter how they may wish otherwise sometimes, in the heat of the hunt. Even the competitive thrill and the murderous intent racing through their blood wouldn't allow a killing blow. They were each alike. Identical in form and intent. Killing another Mordgris would have been like severing one of her own fingers from her hand.
What she felt for Amista... it was something else. Something entirely new.
It defied anything she had ever felt before.
It was... interest? Yes, certainly that, but it was more too.
And she didn’t care anymore what her dam may think of her. Or any of the rest of them either. They could think whatever they wanted to at this point.
Because Mara didn’t know what she thought. And she couldn’t make a proper move until she understood what was happening inside of her.
Mara growled in frustration and twisted around until she was racing back toward Amista's palace. The guards racing down the beach truly drove home the point that her little human was their new ruler, like her sire before her had apparently been. From everything Amista had and hadn’t said about him, he hadn’t been worthy of the other human’s loyalty the way that Amista was.
She wanted to know what Amista was doing, what she would make of all of this. Would she understand it any better than Mara did? Did the muscle in her chest ache and throb in the same way?
She couldn’t rest with all of these questions coursing through her.
Water slicked off of her skin as she emerged from the depths. She crept low to the surface, using the night to shroud herself as she contemplated Amista's castle tower. She eyed the heavy wooden door, barred with iron, that Amista had disappeared inside. Lights glowed from inside windows, the gentle light the only way a human would be able to see the structure in the night's darkness. It was a night with only the slim sliver of a moon and with the clouds covering the sky above, the stars did not twinkle down on the Tigrid center of power.
There were only ships bobbing in the harbor and Mara's black eyes, intent on the woman inside.
She would wait, she decided. Wait until Amista could find her again, wait until they could exchange more words. The beach may be a difficult place for them to see each other again now that the little human’s guards had seen her. They’d be wary. They’d arm themselves to make
sure that one of the dreaded Mordgris did not harm their queen. They would not want to lose another ruler, much less the second one in less than a month to be felled by Mara’s kind.
She didn’t intend to harm their queen. Quite the opposite, in fact. She wanted to see Amista’s smile. To hear her laugh, watch the corners of her eyes crinkle with mirth.
She wanted to try out different transformations, to see which ones Amista found the most pleasing. She knew that she favored the red hair, but did Amista? Would she prefer her with brown hair, or blonde?
Mara had never cared what anyone thought of her choices before. But she cared now.
Her stomach quavered. But it was not as vicious a hunger as it should have been. It had been weeks since she’d had a human soul. Even the dolphin had been a day or two ago now.
She snatched a passing fish and munched on it to take the edge off while she thought. Somehow, around Amista, she forgot to be soul-hungry. She forgot that she was an unceasing terror in her quest for satiation. She was never, ever satisfied.
But she felt… well… not satisfied. Not yet. But something approaching it.
Another question for Amista if Mara managed to speak with her again. What sort of strange human emotions were infecting her? What kind of feelings could make one forget to eat? To forget the basic instincts that kept them running? The ingrained primal behaviors that kept them alive?
She didn’t know why she thought Amista would have the answers. Mara had seen plenty of fat humans, lazing about their ships. It clearly wasn’t a problem that plagued their entire species.
But Amista was the only one she could talk to about it.
And she’d wait however long it took.
10
Amista
If Amista had known how Mara pondered over her out in the sea beyond her castle, she was afraid she would disappoint the Mordgris girl. Because, in that moment, Amista didn’t feel half as interesting as Mara thought her to be. The Queen of Tigrid tossed and turned in her bed, unable to rid herself of the demons that plagued her. The spectre of her father haunted her when she closed her eyes, his anger just as palpable in death as it had felt in life.
Kingdom of Salt and Sirens Page 33