“Can’t have you dying too quickly,” said the mermaid, her voice unexpectedly clear through the burbling water. “Breathe, little sweetmeat. Through your mouth.”
Kestra shook her head.
“You’ll breathe eventually.” The mermaid grasped Kestra’s wrist, her claws nicking skin. “Oh, this is delicious. We’re going to have so much fun.”
She hauled Kestra along through the water. Kestra’s chest burned and tightened—she was going to burst—she risked a tiny sip through the mouthpiece and found that she could breathe. It wasn’t as satisfying as a deep breath above the surface, but she could get a little air at a time.
After a short swim through open water, the mermaid drew Kestra into a forest of tall kelp and whipping sea vines. Kestra couldn’t see the bottom of the kelp; its stems seemed to plunge downward forever into darkness. But in a clearing between the waving plants, his head locked in a mouthpiece similar to hers, was Flay. He floated, bound between two thick stalks, his forearms twined with sea vines. His shirt hung in shreds, blood spiraling from scratches across his chest. His eyes widened with panic as the mermaid drew Kestra forward.
Kestra struggled, but her arms and legs were slow and sluggish in the water. The mermaid pulled Kestra’s arms behind her and slapped sea vines against them. Instantly the vines coiled around her wrists, squeezing almost to the point of pain. Then the mermaid tethered Kestra to a stalk of kelp.
With a flick of her spiked rainbow tail, the mermaid bounced back to a spot between Flay and Kestra, her teeth bared in a savage smile.
“I am Acrid, Second Queen of the Realm Below, and you two luscious bits are the bait for my rebellious breeder. After I make him submit to me again, I’ll dine on you. Although I may take a little taste before he arrives.”
She wriggled forward, pausing in front of Flay and stroking his forehead with a long finger. “The female has richer flesh, but you are rather pretty for a human.”
Kestra thought of the knife strapped to her left ankle, under her pants. She’d worn it every day since they left Anchel. The mermaid hadn’t thought to look for a weapon on a weak little human girl. If only Kestra could reach it, she could defend herself, and Flay.
She tried lifting her ankle up behind her, to where her hands were secured, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She squirmed, twisting and bending her fingers to touch the vines. The way they had wrapped around her wrists so sharply upon contact—it reminded her of the coilvines in her garden behind The Three Cherries.
Acrid was curling around Flay, the spikes of her tailfin grazing his skin. Kestra could see his stomach jerking with each short, panting breath through the mouthpiece.
“Human bodies are so strange, so exposed,” Acrid said, hooking a claw into the waist of Flay’s pants. “You’re such vulnerable fleshy things. And deliciously sensitive to pain in so many little places.” Acrid moved up, partially blocking Flay from Kestra’s view. Kestra couldn’t see what the queen did next, but she saw the convulsion of Flay’s body, the evidence of his pain.
An angry scream rattled behind Kestra’s teeth and pounded in her head, unable to escape. She writhed and bucked against the vines.
Acrid’s head swiveled back to Kestra, her lips stretching in a smile. “Ah, you two must be mates. The mated pairs are always more fun to torment. Such a treat.” She grazed a sharp nail along Flay’s ribs.
Kestra thrashed, heart pounding. She was breathing too fast, too fast—not enough air ebbed through the mouthpiece into her lungs. Her head was going light and strange, her thoughts floating away even as her eyes darkened.
“Stop!”
Kestra stopped breathing for a second, and through the encroaching shadows she saw a pale chest and a flash of golden tail.
Rake.
Kestra went weak with relief. She focused on sucking air again, a little at a time, just enough to drive back the clouds in her brain.
“There you are,” said Acrid. “A little sooner than I expected. I was just beginning to have fun.” She darted away from Flay and charged Rake open-mouthed, as if she planned to slash him or swallow him. And he stayed still, letting her teeth scrape his ribs as she passed.
Kestra frowned as hard as she could, glaring at him. Why are you letting her hurt you? Fight back!
But Rake shivered, his eyes glazing. Kestra frowned. No, no, no! He must not go there now, must not let himself be trapped in old memories and fears. Not when they needed him. With that blasted mouthpiece, Kestra couldn’t speak, couldn’t persuade him to come back, to calm down.
But she could look. And when he met her eyes, she poured all her emotion through her gaze, mutely pleading for him to be strong, to fight.
“How are you here?” Rake said to Acrid. His voice was no longer oddly subdued or unnaturally crisp at the edges, but pure and mellow in its natural element.
His body twitched as the queen swept past him again, slashing.
“I followed you,” she answered, licking his blood from her teeth. “Your Queens are wiser than you, and despite your little trickeries, we know you stole from us. Bruta and I understood immediately what you took—that you turned traitor and went crawling up the wall like the slug you are. Calla wouldn’t believe it, not until you were spotted wearing legs, aboard that wretched ship. I’ve been swimming after it for days. You know I’ve always been one to wander farther than the others.”
“You and I have that in common,” he said.
She shot toward him, catching his throat in a clawed hand. “Do not presume to compare yourself to me, you disgusting lump of shit. I will kill you for your treachery, but not before you tell me what you’re doing here, with these humans. What are you plotting?”
“The end of our race,” he said dully. “It is already done. Even now, the great beast begins to stir, awakened by my words and my memories. Within the hour it will rise and follow us back to the island, and all of your people will die.”
“Your people too!” she screeched. “Your spawn, your queens!”
“My spawn were never mine. They were taken from me and taught to be like you. The only one I will ever claim is Jewel, and he is safe on land. You can’t hurt him again.”
“Those belts belonged to us,” she snarled. “You and your male-spawn are not worthy to touch them.”
A faint smile played over Rake’s mouth. “Why did our ancestors spend time inventing such things? Those relics must have been fabricated with human technology. Which would mean that once, long ago, the humans and our people were not enemies.”
“Those artifacts were invented solely for the purpose of going ashore and luring the land-slugs back to the ocean,” said Acrid. “And the breathing mouthpieces were designed to keep our meat fresh until it was consumed. If humans helped with the devices’ creation, they were slaves, sworn to our purpose.”
“How would you know?” he retorted. “You weren’t there.”
“There are poems and histories you haven’t heard, idiot,” she said. “Secrets that only the privileged may hear. Your mission is foolish, and I demand you end it now!”
“I’ve told you, I can’t. It’s too late. Even if I wanted to, I can’t stop it.”
As he spoke the words, Kestra felt something—a deep, groaning shudder, a colossal rumbling as if the very bones of the world were breaking. The ocean shivered around them.
Acrid darted away from Rake, staring wildly in one direction, then another. “What is that?”
“The great beast that drove us from our former home. It came to rest near here, where it has slept for a century—and now it is awake. And it is hungry.” He smiled slowly. “You’ll find out what it feels like to be eaten, Acrid.”
“You are not allowed to call me that!” she bellowed, and he actually cringed away from her. “I will kill you! I’ll kill you, and your precious weak little humans.”
The queen whirled around, whipping the sea into a frenzy of bubbles and striking Rake’s jaw with her sharp tailfin. His head snapped back, blood thr
eading from a slice along his cheek.
Kestra twisted against the vines, but they only seemed to tighten. Just like coilvines, reacting to tension. What if they had other similarities to coilvines, like the pressure points along the stem? Find a trigger bulb, press that point just so, and the sensitive vine would relax, releasing its grip.
She wrenched her hands aside, feeling along the stem of the sea vine until she touched a nub. It slipped from her fingers. Cursing mutely, she caught the stem again and fumbled along it.
“We’ll start with the human male,” Acrid said.
Kestra’s fingers found the nub.
Acrid caught Flay’s left arm.
Kestra pressed the bulb in the stem, rolling it and squeezing. It popped, and the vines around her wrists loosened.
Not in time to stop the snap of Flay’s forearm, or the burbling force of his scream as Acrid ground her jaws deeper and ripped his hand from his body.
Kestra bit down on her mouthpiece so hard she nearly broke her teeth. She reached for the knife at her ankle, jerked it from its sheath, and struggled forward, her limbs heavy from lack of air.
Blood flowed from Flay’s arm. Don’t think about it.
Acrid’s teeth ground and crunched over Flay’s finger bones. Don’t listen to it.
She centered her sight, her soul, her everything on Acrid’s curved neck, on the prime spot where the blood flowed strongest.
She raised the knife. Caught the opposite side of Acrid’s neck for extra leverage. Drove the knife in deep, deep, until red spewed around the blade.
Gargling through Flay’s bones and her own blood, Acrid spun and snatched at Kestra’s throat. But Rake intercepted, shooting between them, his jaws spread hideously wide. He sank his teeth into Acrid’s flank, right above her scales, and with her body gripped in his jaws, he dove. Down and away, into the dark.
Kestra didn’t want to see what he would do to his former queen. She had bigger problems, like her captain bleeding to death in front of her.
Clumsily she cut a strand of sea vine and coaxed it to cinch tight around his bleeding wrist. She thought about pinching loose the vines around his good arm—but she wasn’t a strong enough swimmer to get him back to the surface, and the thought of his body sinking down into blackness, lost forever, was unbearable. So she tucked her knife back into its sheath and treaded water near him, holding his eyes with hers, wordlessly urging him to stay conscious.
The entire ocean was surging, rolling, as if something prodigious were moving in its depths. Kestra could barely keep herself in place beside Flay. When Rake’s golden tail and pale skin glinted through the depths, she wanted to cry with relief, even though his lips and cheeks were streaked with crimson gore.
He didn’t speak, simply took Flay in his arms as Kestra pressed the sea vine’s trigger point. Up they swept, Kestra following slowly in their rushing wake. Rake and Flay disappeared somewhere in the distance, up where the ocean was lighter in color. Kestra kept swimming, struggling to climb higher, fighting the sucking force of the currents.
But she was tiring, fading. Dying for a deep breath, her muscles screaming for life-giving air. The rushing of the water filled her head, a clamoring darkness begging her to stay, to let go, to be part of the great oneness of the ocean.
For a moment she yielded, relaxing her body, letting herself sink lower, lower.
And then Rake was back, slipping an arm around her waist, pressing her to his chest. His tail whipped the ocean, driving them both upward, and he corrected their trajectory with sweeps of his strong arm. Kestra’s brain felt silly and slippery—not enough air to fuel rational thought—and she couldn’t help noticing the hardness of his body, the flex of his stomach muscles and the streaming glory of his dark blue hair. His hair seemed to grow longer and longer, swirling around her until she was overcome and everything turned to midnight-blue and her thoughts melted away in it.
Minutes later, she came to herself aboard the Wind’s Favor. A newly transformed Rake was crouching on his human legs, unlocking the headgear holding her mouthpiece in place. When it fell away, she drew an enormous breath, filling her lungs to capacity again and again.
“Flay,” she gasped, when she could speak.
“In his cabin with the physik,” Rake said.
Jazadri appeared at Kestra’s side, holding out Flay’s hat. “I fetched it from the skiff,” he said hoarsely.
Kestra accepted the hat and opened her mouth to thank him, but a deafening roar shook the air, causing the very masts to tremble and the sails to slap. The young red-haired sailor screamed, and the man on lookout in the eagle’s nest shouted something panicked and unintelligible.
Jazadri raced for the helm of the ship, his huge legs devouring the deck in immense strides. Kestra and Rake followed, climbing the steps and looking in the direction of the roar.
Something monstrous and mountainous heaved itself up, out of the waves—a gargantuan expanse of rocky carapace and thrashing tentacles. It shredded the sea, creating whirlpools and walls of spray. Slowly, steadily it began to grind southwest, and behind it a vast wake opened up, a trench in the surface of the ocean.
“They are on the move,” said Rake, almost reverently. “We have to go, Jaza. We have to stay far enough ahead of Them so the ship is not swamped.”
Jazadri didn’t ask for any further explanation. He whirled the ship’s wheel and began shouting orders in nautical gibberish that Kestra didn’t understand. Sailors raced to obey, and the deck turned into a whirlwind of ropes and sails and straining bodies.
Jazadri had the Wind’s Favor well in hand. He didn’t need Kestra, but someone else did.
Clutching Flay’s hat, she hurried to the captain’s cabin.
He lay on his bunk, the same bunk where they had been together only last night. White under his tan, hair still wet from the sea, he gulped shallow breaths while the physik stirred something in a bowl.
“I have to heat this,” the physik said to Kestra. “Stay with him. Make sure he keeps the arm up. And press the cloths to the wound as tightly as you can.”
Kestra sat on the edge of Flay’s bunk. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she bit down hard on the inside of her cheek and placed her hand firmly over the wad of cloths covering his stump.
He opened his eyes, blue like the sea, and surging with pain. “Blossom.”
She couldn’t speak. She only nodded, her face crumpling. Blazing tears coursed over her cheeks.
“Oh, love, don’t cry. You were so brave. You stabbed that mermaid. Saved me.” He spoke the words in broken gasps. “I don’t know if—fish-boy could have managed—to defy her without you there.”
“But I wasn’t fast enough. Your hand. Oh, Flay, your hand—”
He winced. “It wasn’t my drawing hand. And at least—now I look—like a real sailor. Oh, thorn and thunder.” And his head lolled to the side, his eyes closing.
All the better that he’d passed out. Kestra sat beside him, tears flowing unrestrained, mourning that lost, mangled hand. The hand that used to catch her wrist and play with her fingers. The hand that cupped her hip when they danced at the inn, and pressed at her back when he hugged her. The hand that spun the ship’s wheel, the same one that did such lovely wicked things to her when they were alone. Flay’s beautiful, warm, strong hand.
She thought she might shatter from the aching unfairness. And then she felt selfish for thinking about her share in the loss, when his was so much greater.
After all, he was alive. Alive, and precious, and here, and breathing. She watched the rise and fall of his chest to reassure herself.
When the physik returned with a steaming, sticky substance that smelled powerfully of herbs, he instructed Kestra to hold Flay still.
“He’ll wake when I do it,” he warned. “Be ready.”
Tossing the bloody cloths aside, the physik swabbed the thick, hot liquid over Flay’s bleeding stump.
Flay came to with a bellow and a lurch that nearly tossed Kestr
a onto the floor. She threw her body across his chest and shoulders, her muscles straining to keep his left arm still. “It’s all right, it’s all right. Flay, please calm down, we’re trying to help you. Another minute and it will be over. Please try to be still.”
He heaved and choked under her, but he stopped fighting. When the physik had finished and rewrapped the wound more securely, Kestra slid off Flay and took his face in her hands. His cheeks were slick with tears. She kissed him, soft and tender, and whispered, “I love you,” in his ear. He didn’t open his eyes, but he felt for her with his remaining hand and squeezed her fingers.
The physik placed more bandages over the bite on his right shoulder and tied them in place before leaving the cabin. Only after the door closed behind him did Flay speak.
“I wanted to be the one,” he whispered. “I wanted to salve the pain in your heart and give you the revenge you wanted, the safety you needed. But Rake is doing it. He’s making it happen.”
“Ridiculous,” Kestra hissed. “Without you, none of this would have been possible. Each of us has played a part—you, me, Mai, Rake, Jaza, Takajo, even Jewel. But none of us have had the role we wanted. Mai hoped to use her science to devise the end of the mermaids. I hoped never to touch one. Yet she’s at home, and I’m here.”
“Mai will have her chance to change the world, I’ll wager,” Flay said. “The Sparrow is smarter than most men, with a quick tongue to match. But I’m out of the game. Wounded and useless.”
“You’re far from useless,” Kestra said. “Your men need you. They rely on you, and so does everyone I know, everyone in my town. That’s why you’re going to stop feeling sorry for yourself and start working on healing that wound immediately. All this self-pity—it’s very un-captain-like.” She kissed his cheek. “Rest now. I won’t leave your side.”
-24-
Rake
Rake didn’t visit Flay’s cabin that first day, or the next. He spent his time on deck, prowling the stern, watching the prodigious shape of the monster lumbering through the sea some distance behind the Wind’s Favor. He couldn’t tell if it was swimming or walking along the ocean floor on its tentacles. Maybe a little of both.
The Teeth in the Tide Page 26