Flay’s hand fluttered to his chest. “Please, Jaza. I’m a captain and a gentleman. I’d never do anything so indelicate.”
Jazadri snorted with laughter, and Flay joined in. Kestra sensed a story behind the laughter, but she didn’t want to know about Flay’s former lovers. Sometime, maybe, but not yet. Not tonight. Tonight, she planned on spending hours curled into the warmth of his body, enjoying his presence for as long as she could. She wasn’t sure when he would leave. Usually the Wind’s Favor stayed for a week; but if Rake was telling the truth, the mermaid Queens had just spawned, and the mermidons would soon be releasing a fresh batch of starving merlows into the waters around the island. Sailing would become more dangerous than ever. Despite its defenses, if too many merlows clogged the waters, the Wind’s Favor might be mired or breached.
Tomorrow Rake would swim back through the merlow swarms, back to the Realm he’d betrayed, to collect his son. It would be a miracle if the pair escaped the sea alive. She pictured the boy as Rake had described him—flashing tail, indigo hair, dark blue eyes flecked with gold. Small but monstrous. Sharp-toothed, with a taste for flesh bred deep into his bones.
She didn’t like the idea of offering the little beast refuge on land, but it was part of their bargain with Rake. Once his son was safe, Rake would ask his memory monster if it knew of anything large enough to kill the mermaids. Of course, anything that huge and vicious would pose a risk to the island as well—
“Blossom.” Flay’s voice cut into her thoughts. “You’re thinking too much.”
“Is there such a thing as too much thinking?”
“This late at night? Yes.” He opened the inn door and held it for her and for Jazadri. The common room beyond was quiet, with a few sailors immersed in card games or subdued conversations with locals. Most had found their beds—and probably bedmates—for the night.
Kestra started to move away from Flay, toward the kitchen, but he tightened his grip on her hand. “Come to my room with me.”
“I can’t come now,” she whispered. “My mother will know. I’ll sneak up later.”
“What does it matter if she knows?” Flay shrugged.
“She’s liable to poison your food,” Kestra said.
“Am I such a repulsive choice for her daughter’s lover?” He laughed. “I’ll have you know that most of the mothers in this village would be thrilled if I took up with their daughters. In fact, they practically offer their daughters to me when I arrive. What have I done to make your mother hate me? Never mind, I’ll ask her myself.” He shouldered his way into the kitchen, with Kestra clawing desperately at him and hissing, “No, Flay, no!”
Lumina was placing clean dishes on a shelf as Enree dried them, and Lilu was wiping down the tables. Enree squeaked as Flay breezed in, with Kestra on his heels. The kitchen door closed behind them, and Lumina looked over. Her face tightened.
“Oh, I see what you mean, love,” said Flay aside to Kestra. “She truly does not like me.”
“Flay, stop,” she begged.
“Trust me,” he whispered back. Then he swept off his hat and bowed to her mother, who stood stiffly, wiping her hands on her apron. “My lady Lumina,” he said. “I wanted to tell you what an excellent establishment you have here.”
“Cawl is the owner,” replied Lumina.
“Of course.” Flay winked. “But I think we all know who is truly responsible for the smooth function of the kitchens, the cleanliness of the rooms, and the general quality of the service.”
That smile of his. How could anyone resist it?
But apparently Kestra’s mother had been inoculated against such charm. She remained stiff-mouthed and unmoving. “Thank you, Captain.”
Flay didn’t back down. “I thought you should know, my lady, that I am in love with your daughter.”
Enree dropped a plate. It smashed into shards, but she made no move to collect them. Lilu froze in the middle of wiping the table, her eyes wide.
“What does that mean?” Lumina asked.
Flay shifted his weight. “What?”
“Love, you say. What do you mean by it? That you like her? That you want to share a bed with her? You make her smile, laugh, forget herself for a while, and then what? You’ll leave, and she will mourn you until you return, if you return at all. And even if you do come back, you might decide to ‘love’ some other sweet village girl.”
“Mama.” Kestra was trembling with fury and shame. “That’s not how it is.”
“How is it then?” said Lumina. “I want him to tell me. Speak, boy.”
Flay stiffened, his eyes flashing, but he didn’t claim his rightful title. “You want the truth?”
“If you can manage it,” Kestra’s mother said. “No frilly words, no charming phrases. The plain, solid truth, if there is anything such thing behind those blue eyes of yours, the eyes that do so much damage to soft little hearts.”
Flay advanced, setting both fists atop the worktable and leaning across it toward Kestra’s mother. “She is in my head always, in my heart and my bones and my blood. I left her three months ago, and I couldn’t look at another woman without longing for her instead. She is more than beautiful to me. And hers is no soft little heart. I’m not sure what it is—it’s deeper than I thought, and darker maybe, but I love it still. I am hers. She is my captain.”
Kestra thought she might burst apart at the seams, shatter into a million glittering stars, and float blissfully up into the night sky. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but stare at her mother’s shock-stricken face.
Lumina collected herself, closed her mouth, and cleared her throat. “Well then. May the world have mercy on the pair of you.”
A blessing or a curse? Perhaps a little of both.
Flay took Kestra’s hand and drew her out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into his room. While he closed the door, she stood silent, scraping the inside of her brain for words to say to him, beautiful words that might match what he had just given her. She found nothing.
He threw his hat to the bedpost and rubbed his jaw, half-smiling. “Your mother should be an interrogator. She certainly knows how to extract the truth.”
Still Kestra could not speak.
“You don’t have to say anything. Do you want to go back to your room? You followed me up here, but I—I’m not assuming that you want to stay, Blossom. You owe me nothing—”
She leaped for him, wrapping her legs around his waist. He staggered a step but kept his balance, carrying her to the wall and pressing her against it. She twisted her fingers through his blond hair, crushed her mouth to his, tasted the salt and sweetness of him, explored the ridges of his teeth with her tongue. She wanted everything that was him to be part of her—wanted to draw him into herself until their pulses danced to the same hectic rhythm.
“Flay,” she whispered into his mouth.
“What?” He began a series of tantalizing little kisses along her jawline, up to her ear.
“I love you.”
-16-
Rake
Rake stared over the edge of the sea-wall at the dark, foam-flecked waters below. Light seeped from the eastern edge of the sea, a faint amber glow skimming the blue-gray ripples, leaving their black shadows untouched. Part of him longed to leap into the water, to feel its coolness wash over him and welcome him. But another, louder part of him cried Danger, danger! There were teeth in that liquid expanse—teeth, and torture, and slavery.
“What are you waiting for?” Kestra said from behind him. Already he recognized her voice quicker than those of the other humans. Soft and melodic, with rounded syllables that took on an incisive edge whenever she spoke to him.
She’d roused him that morning, before dawn, in that same sharp tone. As if she longed to stick a sharp blade between his ribs, and failing that, a volley of piercing words were the next best thing. “Get up, monster. You have spawn to fetch.”
He’d shifted on the floor of Takajo’s house, aching from hou
rs of sleep on a hard surface. He’d never slept anywhere without the ocean to buoy him and cushion him, without sea grass to provide an extra layer of warmth and security. When he opened his mouth to reply to Kestra, a croak issued from his lips.
The older man with the square, seamed face knelt beside him, offering a bottle of saltwater and a bowl of raw fish and soggy vegetables. Rake drank the saltwater greedily, relieved as his throat moistened and his stomach settled. He was able to keep down the food; it was familiar, and delicious. But he didn’t like the way Kestra’s lip curled as he slurped the fish’s flesh and crunched its bones.
They worked out the details of the plan while he ate, and then brought him out to the sea wall in the cool gray remnants of the night. Rested and fed, he was ready to dive into the waves and find his son. He wanted to, of course. But fear crawled through his veins—fear that he would be trapped and slaughtered, his scales and viscera floating through the ocean, bones sinking down to rest forever on the sand.
Kestra spoke again. “We have to do this now, before the villagers are up and about.”
“Go on, fish.” Flay slapped a hand on the wall next to Rake. “Or would you like a push?”
“Not necessary.” Rake adjusted his shoulder bag and unclasped the belt around his waist. Again he endured the stab of pain, the odd floating sensation as his tail reformed and the lingering effect of the belt ebbed away. He was himself again. Or—his old self again. He balanced on his tail, gripping the wall for support.
Kestra took the belt from him. He hated leaving his two precious artifacts in her hands, but they would not serve him under the sea, and he couldn’t risk being caught with them. He wished that the Wind’s Favor could have taken him farther out, past the merlow swarms, so he could simply dive straight down and fetch Jewel—but after the kidnap of Scythe yesterday, the presence of the ship would have drawn far too much attention. His best bet was to dive at the wall, brave the swarms, and sneak into the breeders’ quarters from the western side. Then he could extract Jewel and race back to the island unnoticed.
To make it back through the swarms and up the wall with Jewel in tow, he’d have to trust his human allies to play their part.
“You’ll be waiting here, to distract the swarms and pull us up?” Rake asked again, for the twentieth time.
“As we agreed,” said Kestra.
“Don’t fear, fish.” Flay only gave him half a smile, but his eyes were sincere. “I won’t break my word.” And he handed Rake his pale knife with the wickedly notched edge.
“Thank you.” Rake fluttered his gills to ready them and secured the flap of his bag.
“Wait! Don’t forget this.” Mai pulled a flared metal trumpet from her own satchel. “I tweaked the conch design. Added a few things. This should improve the volume and range of your cry.” She cleared her throat and spoke into the device, her voice blaring across the wall and the waves. “Good luck.”
Kestra hushed her and snatched the trumpet, slapping it into Rake’s other hand. He wobbled, off balance, and Flay steadied him.
“Someone will have heard that,” Kestra said. “He has to go now!”
Flay signaled to a pair of sailors farther along the wall, and they tossed an entire butchered pig into the water. A flurry of fins and jaws attacked the carcass, and while the merlows were distracted, Rake tumbled over the wall and dove.
But the dead pig had only drawn away a fraction of the swarms that extended far beneath the waves. Rake sliced through the center of the remaining merlows, tightening his belly and screaming the warning cry with all his might the instant he was beneath the surface. The sound reverberated through the water, shuddering in visible waves while the merlows writhed away from it.
Swiftly he swam, alternately shrieking and slashing at the merlows, all the while wondering how in the maelstrom he’d make it back through this mess of monsters with Jewel intact. Tiny jaws ripped one of his scales loose and he whipped his tail faster, charging through another thick cloud of hungry whirling shapes.
He swam for what felt like days, years. Nothing else existed but the slap of barbed tails, the ravenous screams, the dark bodies swirling in hideous synchronization through the water. The surface, the land, the human faces and voices all felt like a distant dream, not a recent memory. Maybe he had imagined them. Maybe he had never left the sea—maybe he’d been fighting the merlows the whole time.
Exhaustion ate into his bones, chafed his soul. He should give up. Give in, and let the swarms disassemble him. Relenting might be a mercy—no more cares or worries. Blissful oblivion.
But he wasn’t destined to be processed in the bellies of a hundred merlows and discharged as waste into the sea. No, when he died, it would mean something. It would accomplish a greater good.
He thrust his tail again and screeched another warning; and this time, when the merlows scattered, he saw clear water ahead.
He had made it out of the Shallows, into the settled area of the Realm Below. And he’d been gone less than a day. With any luck, no one had connected him to the theft and the murder as yet. Jewel would still be playing in his quarters, bored but unhurt.
Tucking the trumpet and the knife into his bag, Rake took a circuitous route to his cave, looping upward to dive down into his quarters from above. He tasted home on his tongue—the metal of jewelry, the briny bite of sea grass, the faint gamey warmth in the water, a trail left behind by another hot-blooded living thing.
But Jewel was nowhere in sight.
Frantically Rake scrabbled through the sea grass in the alcove. Empty. Jewel’s bits and baubles lay abandoned on the sandy floor, and the food bag containing the extra rations had been emptied and tossed aside.
A scream of horror jolted in Rake’s chest, and he bit his tongue to keep from voicing it. Where, where was his spawn? Lost, tortured, or dead? Where?
Desperate, he swam out and slithered along the channel between the breeders’ caves, darting glances into each opening. Two of them were empty. One held a group of three males playing at ten-square. Shale was not among them. Rake wondered if he’d been imprisoned or executed already. On impulse, he paused at the entrance to Shale’s quarters.
And there, rolling across the sand and giggling uncontrollably, was Jewel. Shale hovered nearby, flicking quartz chips for the spawn to fetch.
Suspicion strangled Rake’s relief. He braced a hand on either side of the cave entrance and waited for them to notice his presence.
Jewel was the first to spot him. He shot forward, his curly head smacking into Rake’s breastbone.
Rake grunted at the impact. “I’m happy to see you as well.” Over the top of Jewel’s head, his eyes met Shale’s green ones.
“Much has happened since you left your little squid alone,” said Shale, flicking his sparkling green tail. “Let me see—oh yes, the biggest piece of news. I was seized by the guards and accused of robbing the Court Treasury. Apparently several witnesses spied me darting about the lower passages, and one saw me within the treasure room itself.”
Rake held Jewel tighter. “Yet here you are, free and undamaged.”
“Yes, indeed. Although I narrowly escaped being stripped of my skin and thrown to the merlows.” He swiveled in the water, showing Rake a red patch of raw muscle on his back. “You see, at the time of the theft, I was at the Queens’ spawning, surrounded by many mermaids and mermidons who could clearly recall my presence. The Queens began stripping my skin as punishment—but lucky for me, I had friends who owed me enough favors to speak out on my behalf.”
“You are fortunate.” Rake swirled his tail, backing away.
“Yes.” Shale smiled savagely. “I stopped by to tell you all about it. I consider you a dear friend, after all. We are friends, are we not?” He swam nearer and paused, his pale hair floating luminous around his head. Rake was briefly reminded of Flay, though the captain’s hair color was richer, like living gold.
“We are friends.” Rake nearly choked on his guilt as he spoke the words.
“Of course. So imagine my surprise when your spawn pointed at me and laughed, and told me how you had dressed yourself to look exactly like me, right before you disappeared on some mysterious errand, all with the goal of finding a ‘safe place.’”
At the tightening of Rake’s fingers, Jewel looked up, his eyes wide and penitent. “Sorry I told.”
“It’s all right,” Rake said through gritted teeth. “I found our safe place, Jewel. And my friend Shale is going to let us go quietly away.”
Shale laughed, a trickle of merriment. “Is he?” He swam closer still, and Rake moved Jewel behind him, pressing the boy to his back with one arm.
Shale’s bare chest was a hand’s breadth from Rake’s, his delicate profile so near that Rake could see each pale eyelash, and the sprinkling of large freckles across his skin, like the spots on a cowrie shell.
“I thought,” said Shale softly, his fingers grazing Rake’s chest, “that you and I had a connection.”
“Such a connection is not permitted among the Queen’s males,” said Rake. “It would mean torture, and death.”
“As if the threat of death or torture ever frightened you.” Shale’s eyes narrowed. “It’s one of the reasons I admire you, Rake. You have always gone where others will not. You risked much for knowledge, and now—” he nodded to Jewel, “—for love. And yet, you would have blamed me for your crimes. Sacrificed me to our Queens in your place.”
“For love,” said Rake.
“Of him?” Shale sneered, with another glance at Jewel. “And what of me? Did you spare a thought for my pain?”
“I did.” Rake swallowed. “But I could see no other way. You were most noticeable, easiest to mimic.”
Shale’s hand closed around Rake’s wrist. “What did you take from them? What was worth destroying me?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“What can you tell me?”
“I have nothing else to say.”
Shale’s mouth twisted, his eyes filling with pain. “You betrayed me, Rake. After all the years I’ve watched you, wanted you—and you knew it. You can tell yourself whatever you like, but you chose to implicate me because of what I felt for you. Because you despised me for it.”
The Teeth in the Tide Page 18