“No—”
“Yes. Yes. Admit it to yourself. You despise me, you think me unnatural—”
“I did all this for my son!” Rake shoved the other male away. “And I have to go. Now. I can’t be responsible for anyone else.”
“Then, my friend,” Shale said, “I’m afraid I shall have to raise the alarm and see you punished for the traitor you are.” He opened his mouth to shout, but Rake had the knife out and pressed to his throat before he could make a sound.
“Hush now,” Rake said. “I’m leaving for good. You won’t see me again. I am truly sorry for the pain I caused you, and I’m grateful you weren’t killed because of me. I hope you can find someone to care for you as you deserve. Though I don’t envy you the danger such a connection will bring.” He turned his head. “Jewel, come here. Reach into my bag and get the rope. Bite off two pieces as long as your arm.”
Jewel hesitated, whimpering.
Rake lowered his voice to a snarl. “Now, Jewel.”
His spawn obeyed, handing over the pieces. Rake stuffed Shale’s mouth with sea grass and tied it in place, then bound his hands, wincing at the sight of the peeled flesh on his back. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I wish you well.”
He weighted Shale’s tailfin with a rock and pulled Jewel onto his back. “Hang onto my shoulders,” he said. “And don’t let go, whatever you do. If anything comes near you, smack it with your tail, or bite it.”
Jewel tugged on Rake’s plaited hair. “Can I hold onto this?”
“The plait, the strap of my bag, my shoulders—whatever keeps you close to me,” said Rake. “You can even dig your claws into my back. Don’t grab my gills, though. I’ll need all my breath.”
With a final look at the bound and furious Shale, Rake shot out of the cave and away.
The persistent tug on his braid and Jewel’s tiny fingers gripping the satchel strap gave him confidence. He swept the ocean back powerfully with his arms and thrust forward again, hands pointed, a bolt speeding through his natural element. Walking was slow and awkward, but swimming was smooth, liquid, and easy. Like flying. He reveled in the motion until he saw, several strokes ahead, the darkening cloud that marked the edges of the swarm.
Rake halted, floating upright, reaching back to grip Jewel’s arm and assure himself that his son was still there. In the maelstrom of teeth and terror, there would be no time to touch Jewel. He would have to focus all his intellect and energy on screaming their way through, on swimming faster than ever.
If Jewel lost his grip, if he were torn away for even one second—
That’s all it would take, a bare moment for him to be reduced to bones.
Rake quivered, darting upward and then down again in an agony of fear. He should have asked the humans for armor. He had thought of it, but he’d been afraid it would be too weighty and slow them down. And even if the humans had lightweight armor on hand for someone his size, there would have been none to suit a tiny body like Jewel’s.
“Why are we waiting?” Jewel asked. “Are you afraid?”
“Yes. You must hold onto to me tightly, so tightly, Jewel. For your life, do you understand?” He bit back more words of warning, afraid that if he terrified Jewel too much, his spawn would refuse to come with him. “At the end of this there are friends of mine, waiting to help us. If you can be very brave, we can get to them. We can be safe. You’ll see wonders, Jewel, like you never imagined. You’ll taste things, and smell things—it’s incredible.” As he spoke, he felt his own will strengthening.
“Are they coming too?” asked Jewel.
“They?”
“Those mermaids behind us.”
Rake spun around to see five shapes shooting toward him, lances in hand. The foremost of the mermaids unhooked her jaw as if preparing to feed, and she screamed, a wordless declaration of death.
“Hang on!” Rake cried, and he streaked away, carving a path through the ocean. He pulled out the trumpet and howled the warning cry into it as he and Jewel burst through the first cloud of merlows. The creatures bucked away, squealing and biting at each other as they fled; but they doubled back again, more quickly than before. They could smell Jewel’s tender flesh, and they craved it almost as much as they feared the warning call. Swirling just beyond arm’s length, they screeched and snapped their jaws. With each forward stroke, Rake’s fingers brushed sharp fins and nicked against teeth.
He wanted to scream at Jewel, “Stay down, stay close, hang on tighter!” But he needed every ounce of strength and power in his body. No time to look back, to see if the mermidons were pursuing. He felt Jewel bumping lightly against him, felt the swish of his spawn’s tail as he tried to help with the swimming.
Not enough speed. The swarms were closing in again. Rake arched his fingers and slashed with his claws, still gripping the trumpet with his right hand. The ocean was no welcoming parent now, no expanse of sky for him to fly through—it was a roiling, deadly maw sucking him down into darkness and pain. Destroying his dream. Eating his hope.
The small fingers around his braid disappeared.
Rake screamed, convulsing, reaching behind him.
“Here!” shrieked Jewel—and Rake felt a hand on his satchel strap. Tiny claws sank into his left shoulder and he relished the pain, stretching out to his full length and slicing through the water, fighting to get to the wall, to the wall—
-17-
Kestra
“I think they’re coming!” shouted Mai.
Kestra darted to her side and peered over the sea-wall. Sure enough, the ocean churned with activity, with frothing foam and lashing tails.
“They’re here!” she yelled, and Flay echoed her shout with an order. Sailors, posted at a distance to Kestra’s left and right, dumped chunks of raw meat into the water, in the hopes of drawing some of the mermaids away from Rake’s path of approach. Flay himself ran to the central point where Kestra and Mai stood, and with him came four other crewmen.
“Back away, please,” Flay ordered. “We need room to pull them up.”
He and the men lowered a contraption Mai had suggested—a tough rope ladder with a large basket tied to the end. “So he can pull his tail up, out of the water and out of reach,” she had said.
Kestra wasn’t sure it would work. The mermaids would probably rip right through the basket to get to Rake and his son. No matter how much she tried to relish the idea of Rake dying in a swarm of slashing jaws, she couldn’t enjoy the image. She found herself in the odd position of wanting the monster to live. Unpleasant, and confusing.
“There he is!” Flay was leaning farther over the wall than Kestra could bear. She clutched her own throat to keep from screaming at him to be careful.
Mai wrapped both arms around Kestra’s waist and held on.
Shouts from the sailors punctuated the tense silence.
“I’ve got it.”
“Get ready.”
“Hold—hold—now pull! Harder, faster!”
“Pull!”
“Heave, men, put your hearts into it!”
Legs slanted and braced, muscles straining, Flay and his men hauled on the ropes, hand over hand. Finally the basket and Rake and something else tumbled over the wall, landing in a wet, quivering lump of scales and skin and ravaged hemp.
The basket had indeed been torn open, but it hadn’t failed entirely. Rake’s tail was still cradled in its confines, and with a mighty thrash he whipped it free, sending the remnants of the basket flying over the cobblestones. He rolled over, panting, and Kestra glimpsed claw marks and bleeding bites along his torso and arms.
Beside him, flopping frantically like a terrified fish, was a small creature, human-shaped from the waist up, with a shining golden tail and several red scratches across his back. The boy’s mouth gaped as he struggled for breath.
Rake seized him and pulled him to his chest. “Breathe, Jewel. As I taught you, with your mouth and lungs. Calmly now, with me. In and out. That’s right.”
“Ke
stra, the belts,” Mai whispered.
“Let’s give them a minute.” Kestra hadn’t spent much time with children, but she guessed that watching his father’s lower half disintegrate and then reform might send the baby-monster into a panic. Better to wait a little.
“Kestra.” A voice behind her, a familiar one. She’d been expecting it since an hour ago, when the villagers noticed Flay’s crew positioned along the wall and began to gather, peppering him with questions.
She turned, forcing a smile. “Leader Chiren.”
“Kestra, what is going on here? What are those?” Chiren’s finger shook as he pointed to Rake and his son.
“Why don’t you ask the Captain?”
“I plan to, but I’m asking you first. You seem to be involved in this—whatever this is. So before I order the town watch to shoot, I’d like to get my facts in order.” He lifted his eyes to the balcony atop Takajo’s building and then to the overhang of the refinery. In both spots, archers crouched, bows ready and trained on Rake.
Kestra tensed. “You act quickly, Leader Chiren.”
“The safety of Anchel is my highest priority.”
“These two are no threat to us,” she said. “The large one came to us yesterday, asking for help. In exchange for asylum on land for himself and his son, he is giving us information we can use against the mermaids.”
“Information? What kind?”
“He’s going to help us find a way to destroy them. All of them.”
“All of—that’s not possible.”
“He knows a way, maybe. Somewhere we can begin. It’s better than nothing.”
“Better than nothing?” Chiren frowned. “Nothing is sometimes the preferred option, when compared to somethings like death, dismemberment, fresh waves of mermaid violence, harboring monsters—that sort of thing.”
“Please give us a chance to explain,” Kestra begged. “Talk to him. He’s surprisingly intelligent, for a sea-beast. Oh, and there’s one more thing. If I may approach him?”
Chiren nodded and motioned to his men to wait. Kestra walked over to Rake and handed him both belts. His pupils had shrunk to tiny dots in the harsh light of the mid-morning sun.
“So bright,” he groaned.
“Here, fish. Get the belt on and we’ll take you somewhere dark.” Flay lifted Rake under the arms until he could fasten the belt just above his tail.
“This might be frightening, Jewel. You should close your eyes,” Rake warned, grimacing as he switched the lever and the belt tightened.
Of course Jewel didn’t close his eyes, so Kestra reached out to cover them. The tiny monster snapped miniature dagger-teeth at her, and she jerked back. “Stop it!” she spat. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Leave me alone!” The little monster’s answer was too loud, too sharply pronounced. He was used to speaking under the sea, where the water mellowed sound.
“No!” Kestra retorted. “I will not leave you alone. You’re on land now, in our world, and you’ll do what we say.”
The boy’s chin jutted defiantly. “He said you were different, but you’re just like the Queens Below. Are you going to eat us?”
Kestra sucked in a breath. “No, of course not.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t eat creatures that think and speak as we do.”
The boy cocked his head, a sudden gesture that sent a thrill through Kestra’s stomach because he looked so much like Rake when he did it.
“You’re strange,” he said, looking her over before turning back to Rake, whose legs were nearly formed. The boy gasped, the gills in his throat fluttering. “You have legs!”
“Yes.” Rake pulled on the pants Mai tossed him and rose unsteadily. “And you can, too.” He staggered, and Jazadri caught him with a burly arm.
“Someone else will have to put the belt on Jewel.” Rake held it out with a shaking hand. “I can’t manage it.”
“We need to treat his wounds,” Kestra said, not because she cared that Rake was in pain, but because the sight of his bitten flesh made her stomach turn. “And I’m not touching that little monster spawn of his again. He nearly took off my fingers.”
Flay took the belt and knelt beside Jewel. The boy’s golden tail was twitching anxiously, slapping against the cobbles.
“You see this?” Flay held out the belt. “This is what gives your father legs, so he can walk on land. Would you like to try it?”
The boy considered. “Will it hurt?”
“A little, just at first,” Rake said. “A pinch of pain, nothing more. You’ve had worse.”
The boy’s fingers floated to his face, where crescent-shaped cuts lined his cheekbones. Recent marks, barely healed. He nodded once, and Flay looped the belt under his tail and slid it up around his waist. Kestra expected the belt to be much too big, but the instant Flay clasped it and spun the dial, it constricted to fit Jewel’s waist. The boy’s pale lips tightened, but he didn’t cry out, not even when his lower half clouded into particulates and solidified into a pair of sturdy little legs.
Delight suffused Jewel’s face, and he clambered to his feet.
The gasps of shock from the gathered villagers turned into panicked snatches of conversation. Leader Chiren held up his hands for quiet and stepped forward. “What dark magic is this?”
“No magic,” Mai said. “Science. Ancient artifacts from the mermaids’ treasury.”
“It’s not possible,” repeated Chiren. “Not possible.”
“Trust me, my eloquent friend,” Flay said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’ve said the same thing to myself several times in the past two days. But my mind is beginning to expand to incorporate all kinds of possibilities. Why don’t you come with us to Takajo’s house and we’ll explain everything? I’ll send someone up to The Three Cherries for some drinks.”
Chiren licked his lips, glancing at the expectant crowd. “I suppose that would be—”
“Wonderful! Shall we go?” Flay opened his hand to Rake’s son. When the boy took it, his four tiny claws pricked the skin, raising bloodred dots on the back of Flay’s hand. Kestra scanned the captain’s face—smooth and smiling, not a trace of pain.
Why was he being so kind, so welcoming? Perhaps it was a show for the villagers, meant to put them at ease; but watching Flay stroll hand in hand with the tiny monster sent shivers over Kestra’s arms and up the back of her neck.
“Graves!” Flay snapped his fingers at his ship’s physik. “Come along. We’ll need you.”
The physik, a gaunt, nervous fellow with nimble fingers, hurried over, and Kestra fell into step behind him. Jazadri followed, supporting Rake, and then came Takajo, Mai, and a few Council members and influential villagers. They filed into Takajo’s front room, suspicion and alarm gleaming in their eyes.
“You can treat Rake in here.” Takajo slid apart the doors to a back room of his home, and Jazadri escorted Rake and Jewel through to the inner chamber.
But the physik hesitated, picking at his nails. “I’m not sure my role entails patching up a man-eater.” He spoke the words quietly, but in the tense silence of the room, he might as well have shouted.
Flay cocked his hat and drew himself up to his full height. “Who’s the captain, Graves?” His smile had a wicked edge.
“You are, sir.” Graves shrank into his long gray coat.
“You’ll do your best with the creature.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good. Allow Mai to observe. She has a particular curiosity about these creatures. Oh, and bandage the cuts on the boy’s back, too.”
Mai darted forward, but Kestra caught her arm.
“Be careful,” she whispered. “If you treat the little one as a specimen to study, Rake might become angry, and we need him to work with us.”
Mai pulled away. “I’ll just observe their behavior for now. Besides, the little one is cute, don’t you think?”
“He’s a monster, just like his father.”
Shaking her hea
d, Mai disappeared into the back room, and Takajo pulled the doors shut.
Then the villagers and leaders all began to talk at once.
The conference was long. Many parts of the story and the plan had to be repeated over and over as more Council members showed up to join in the discussion. Takajo skulked at the edge of the room, grumbling and glowering at the presence of so many officials in his private space. Kestra wished she could stand with him, squeeze his arm, and thank him for allowing them to conduct the meeting here. But she had to sit at Flay’s side, interjecting the practical bits of information that he forgot to include.
To Kestra, it seemed as if the men of the Council enjoyed rehashing the same points of concern over and over with no discernible progress except an increase in volume. The conversation was turning strident and hostile.
“I don’t believe the Wind’s Favor should be allowed to make another foray,” said a plump, red-faced Councilman. “Especially not if they plan to let this Rake creature go below and disturb an ancient monster.”
“I don’t see that it’s any of your rutting business what I do with my ship.” Flay’s smile was broad and brilliant, but his eyes glinted viciously.
To Kestra’s relief, one of the Councilwomen rose, clapped her hands together, and said, “Friends, there is no point in further discussion. The creature and his spawn have already been granted asylum, and as long as they do no harm, I see no reason to revoke it. If the captain and his crew wish to help us rid our waters of the mermaids, let us simply say ‘Thank you, and may the wind go with you.’ Until this creature Rake has gone below and returned with more information, we have nothing else to discuss. You may all go.” She bowed, palms together, and stepped to a place beside the door, waiting expectantly for the others to parade past her.
And they did, one after another, still murmuring amongst themselves, but resigned to the end of the debate. As he left, Leader Chiren nodded to the woman, a knowing smile curving his lips, as if he had seen her make the same move before.
The Teeth in the Tide Page 19