by Chris Howard
"I don't fear him," she said with a forced shrug. "I just felt confined. I needed fresh water—and air!" She waved her hand at the city. "We live in a prison with the door left unlocked." She sang the old lines, "Our term of punishment, thrice a thousand. . ."
Phrastor wilted in front of her eyes, his hands covering his face. "Please," he said softly. "Beg you not to sing."
She sniffed, and went on. "I also wanted to see him. . .wanted to look into the eyes of the murderer of my father. That is all." She shrugged. "No one should get in trouble for a little curiosity."
"Tell that to Lord Gypselos," said Phrastor wearily. If not death at the mother's hands—or voice, perhaps the war-bard's daughter would finish him off.
As if on cue, Gypselos wheezed, "Nikasia Lady Kirkêlatides." He drifted menacingly in the water over the judge's block.
She flinched and kicked around to face him. He pointed a bony finger at her.
"If I see you in court again, Nikasia daughter of Epandros and Theoxena, your punishment will be severe. The Vents wash away. Eventually. What if you were to lose something dearer to you? Permanently. Irreplaceable. Closer to your family talents, in your blood? An eardrum punctured? One of your ears removed? Cut off the side of your pretty head. I knew your father." He made a sign to honor the dead. "You shame his memory. I don't care who your mother is."—although he made a sign to honor the living. "I don't want to see you again in front of this judge's block. Have I made myself clear?"
Her jaw was so tight she fought to open her mouth. Phrastor tensed up behind her. Her confidence returned when she felt the little waves of fear shivering off her lawyer.
Nikasia tilted her head back and said, "As water." An elbow from Phrastor and she added, "Lord."
Chapter 7 - Nikasia's Chain
Nikasia's maid, Lamidion grabbed her wrist in one strong hand, hauled her through the lanes of the Nine-cities, higher in the water than the shoppers and strollers, between towers and battlement walls, through quieter estate districts, and didn't let go until they reached the gates to the property of the family Kirkêlatides.
"Let go of me. I'm not a child."
"Silence, Nika." Lamidion put a finger to her lips. She was a short powerful woman in her forties who'd let her hair go gray—or bleached and dyed it as Nikasia thought—to help with the airs of maturity and authority she put on. Her calloused hands made a slow swirling gesture in the courtyard that brought her around to face her charge. "Your dear mother is handling this. Weeping Hera! When she discovers your crime...that you've gone in front of Lord Gypselos, that you're to go to the Vents tomorrow...Oh, Lord! Even I have some pity for you."
Nikasia looked down at the big links of silver chain that wrapped her waist, made a bitter face and sniffed. "Admirable of you to save a bit for me."
Lamidion's eyes widened at the slap in the face sarcasm. "Why do I bother?"
"I ask myself the same question."
Nikasia kicked away. She'd already forgotten everyone in her way, Lamidion, Lord Gypselos, her lawyer, and the rest of the world—everything but the hate, an entirely new world of her own making. She glided to the east side of the courtyard, elbowing through the forest of kelp to the clearing where a statue of her father stood.
The Kirkêlatides household was one of the oldest walled estates in the city, with a yard open to the sea above, lit with it's own miniature version of Helios, the sun, that followed the tides' schedule in a hemispheric path twice a day, up and back. The burn of magic in the dark of the ocean's floor enabled them to grow the enormous green plants of shallower seas right in their courtyard, and earned the family the enduring respect of their neighbors whose gardens also benefited from the additional light. The larger twin of Helios, the fiery globe set in its arcing path over the entire city, drenched the fields and farm tracts east of the high walls with light for most of each day, but there were still many places inside the walls of Nine-cities where the abyss-dark prevailed, or at best received a dull glow that made deeper pockets of darkness of the shadows.
The funeral statue of Nikasia's father, Epandros, stood in the center of the courtyard.
Nikasia pulled more water past her and reached for the statue's armored shoulder, carved in stone and streaked with age. Epandros stared blankly at the green and brown columns of kelp, a slight smile bending up one side of his mouth. The artist had captured him so clearly that Theoxena still cried when seeing the likeness of her dead husband—and made sure the kelp grew tall so that she would not be reminded more than necessary.
"I am here, father." Nikasia's tone made it sound as if she was the only one who remembered him. "Gregor Rexenor will not survive long." Her voice went cold, almost inhumanly sharp. "Dead. Painfully dead. His bones broken, marrow dumped out for worms, blood thick in the water. His family, the lords of House Rexenor, I will track down what is left of them and kill them all. You have my word."
She leaned back in the water, and sang softly,
"Do not let him cross the river with Charon's help, but let the water sting his skin, and bite him with icy teeth. O Lord Hades, you know the one I mean, the man whose waking makes me die, Gregor Lord Rexenor, the murderer of my father. Let him swallow poison for every moment of my suffering, fill his mouth and lungs with sand, a hammer to his teeth. Make him see the dark I bring to his life and then cut out his eyes. Let him taste defeat bitter on his tongue before I rip it from his mouth."
Behind Nikasia, deep in the shadows of the courtyard kelp forest, a pair of large eyes cupped in overlapping folds of leathery skin watched her singing to her father's statue.
Nikasia touched the statue's face, her fingertips pushing against the smooth stone. A wreath of red leafy algae ringed his head, its stiff serrated edges scraping her knuckles as she slid her fingers over his forehead.
"Does the Rexenor have a child, tell me Lord of Hate? Let him have one on whom he bestows all his love. Let him have a daughter as my father, Epandros, once had me. Let his strong hand rest on her hand. Let his fingers take hers and hold them with the promise that he will remain to the world's end. Let that promise grow true, take its roots deep in her heart, let it grow to the ocean's ceiling and beyond. And then take his life, drain his blood, shatter his spine. Let him hold his own beating heart with the last of his strength, and then break his fingers, Lord of Death."
She blinked and scanned the courtyard to see if her sisters or one of their loves had come in to watch her pain, and then turned back to her father's statue.
"Mother is looking. I don't know where. I fear she seeks your killer in the wrong places." Her voice dropped lower but her tone grew more passionate. "The king does nothing! More than five years the Rexenor lord has been free from his box of stone. What does the king do to find his prisoner?"
One of the kelp stalks shook against the thick flattened hemisphere of bone that protected the watcher's eyes like a soldier's armor. It paddled awkwardly from one column of green to another, continuing to track Nikasia.
She threw one arm over her father's shoulder, and followed his cold stare into the kelp. "Stupid king, losing wars and allowing armies of the dead to go to the other side." Her voice softened to a whisper. "The Wreath of Poseidon has not gone out of the oceans as we had all thought. So many stories from the new war in the North. What is true? Prisoners' stories. Who can say what is true—or what they were led to believe by the deceiving Rexenors. Kassandra showed them the Sea's trident, a crown. Over what does Kassandra rule? Who is her father or mother? She is the granddaughter of King Tharsaleos and Queen Pythias. Kassandra of the Alkimides is now heir to the throne. She plays with fire, she has her own dead army, she defeated the king's force in the north. If this stupid two-bleed king will not kill a murderer, perhaps Kassandra as queen will have the stomach for justice. But she sides with the enemy Rexenors." Nikasia's thoughts had already moved beyond her latest surface foray and the punishment of the Vents the next day. "Another journey? Perhaps I should find Kassandra? I can persuade her."
She drew in a deep pull of the sea, and sang of cold and the stilling of motion. The eye widened and a large old sea turtle fumbled out of the kelp stalks, paddling awkwardly in the net of her song.
Nikasia kicked forward with a hostile glare that only stayed a moment with the turtle, then darted through the forest to the far side of the courtyard, looking for her sister Melinna's boyfriend. It was his turtle.
"Didn't think he had enough going on to teach it to track and spy on me."
Like shadow over its shell, Nikasia used a fingernail to scrape off a tiny piece of the turtle's hide, rolled it between her fingers, and then jabbed the crumb of reptilian flesh into a pocket in her tunic.
She grabbed the turtle by its wide shell, kicking and steering it like a float-board into the house where Melinna and Erixenos chuckled from the shadows near the ceiling of the hall into the kitchens.
She shoved the old animal toward its master.
"One more time and I'll make a lyre out of your pet."
Erixenos, brushed his dark curly hair out of his eyes, and gave her a puzzled look. "Liar?"
Nikasia's gaze hit her sister's boyfriend, thinking he was playing stupid. She paused for him to figure out that it wasn't funny, and then said, "Oh, it's not an act. Musical instrument."
She shook her head. She wasn't getting through.
Erix was stunningly beautiful, tall and muscular with strong hands, and a brain the size of his big toe.
Nikasia smiled. "Good thing you have rather large big toes."
He glanced down at his feet and then back at her. "What? You have something against turtles?"
Nikasia kept her voice slow as if she was speaking to a dull child. "Keep it away from me, or I will be turning it into something that needs to be tuned regularly."
She swam off.
Erixenos laughed at her back—an uncomfortable laugh that broke in the wrong places, an obvious effort to keep it going long after its futility was recognized.
Then Melinna, joined by the oldest Kirkêlatides sister, Airesis, shouted ineffective threats after Nikasia, hisses of disease songs and offensive gestures they had learned in dance lessons.
The Fates had chosen Nikasia the youngest to bleed off their mother, passing over the older sisters, and Melinna and Airesis now cursed themselves for not poisoning little Nika when they'd had the chance. She had already taken in half their mother's power, and could not now be stopped by anyone in the household except Theoxena.
Nikasia kicked harder, taking the tunnels deeper into the house, cutting the corners sharp, her fists in front of her, ready to break anything that got in her way. She swung her legs up in front of her bedroom door, and pressed her hands against the hard material, feeling for her spells. Her mouth tightened in satisfaction. She ducked her head and closed one eye against her own wake as it caught up and shouldered rudely past.
She paused a moment for the water to go still, and then glanced up and down the unlit hall, flattening her hand and running it along the top edge where the door met the frame. Her fingers plucked a single hair out of the seam, caught it with two more fingers, and slid the silky thread between them, stopping with a tightened grip at its end. Satisfied with the hair's length, Nikasia stuck one end in her mouth, catching it with her tongue and pushing it against the back of the top row of teeth, tasting it.
She stared absently at the ceiling, her mouth closed. It looked as if she were using her tongue to tug out a piece of meat lodged in her teeth. Satisfied, she stuck it out, pulled the hair up to her head, and sang it back into place.
She slid the latch aside, pushed the door in, and spent nearly as much time spelling it shut from the inside.
Trust is for the weak.
She kicked to her bed, a narrow platform halfway up the wall on the far side, grabbing the edge and spinning her feet toward the ceiling. She snapped her fingers with a short burst of song and her dark room blazed with light, a brilliant gold glow like a thousand candles.
She gave the water a sweep of her hand and brought her feet flat against the ceiling. Her braids swayed lazily below her as her fingers worked the links of silver chain at her waist. She curled forward to get a better look at the King's judgment bindings.
"Pitiful."
She had the chain off a moment later, swinging it below her, timed with the pendulum sweep of her braids.
She had already decided what to do with it. In the morning she would have to appear at the Vent train with the other condemned, wearing the chain, but tonight she had other plans for it, and she set to work on the modifications immediately, pushing her toes into the ceiling to give her enough forward motion to reach the stone floor of her room.
She set the chain down in a straight line, the links pulled tight, and then she kicked in short rapid strokes, circling the bright silver.
"Artemin agroteran...we are going hunting, you and I...drakôn kai sauras kai ta toiauta tôn herpetôn...of things that crawl and slither in the deep, of things that swim with leathery fins and paddles like wood. Things with teeth thick as my fingers and sharp as a dagger, things with beaks with cutting edges like the snap of sheers. Egg layers, venom seeping, webbing between their claws, dragons, serpents, turtles, lizards, all. These will be yours, I will make them yours, grant their wills to you, and you in turn will bind them to my will." She touched the chain, and flicked her eyes to the top of her wardrobe, a towering black cabinet that held all of her clothing.
She tugged with her thoughts, and her lyre, a stout bow of gold and inlaid mother of pearl, slid off the cabinet into open water. She caught it by the base, tucked it into her arms and plucked a sharp chord that made the links in the chain vibrate in the halo of bright sound coming off the strings. She reached into her pocket. Her fingers came out pressed firmly together, the tiny scraping of reptile skin held between them. The sound washed over the links of silver and Nikasia opened her hand. The turtle's skin burned in the glow of her song and disintegrated, a line of flickering dust that danced in the waves, settling among the links, fusing to the silver.
She tugged three strings in quick succession, damping them, and then pulled a sharp attack of sound that cut into her skin and sprayed her blood in a lacy fan that stretched from one end of the chain to the other.
The music died. Her heartbeat racing, and dribbles of her life curled in the webbing between her fingers. She folded her legs and let her body drift to the floor, eyes closed, meditating, and the links of silver writhed on the stones in front of her like a serpent.
An hour later, Nikasia emerged from her room, sealed one hair in the door, set her locking spells, and kicked down the hall, hunting a turtle. She found it grazing near the floor in the courtyard, snapping feebly at a crab that bent it's carapace up defensively.
The silver chain helixed her arm like an overprotective Death Eel, links clicking and snapping expectantly, sensing prey in the water. Nikasia swept shark-like around the tail end of the old sea turtle, unwinding the chain.
The reptile lifted its head, spotting her, but only had time for one good thrust of its limbs before the coiling line of silver metal snapped around its scaly neck, leaving forty more links free to slide under its long fore flippers and bind them.
She whispered, "Come to me, sweet animal," and the chains slackened, allowed the turtle to pull itself around in the water and swim to its new master. "I won't hurt you. You and I will get along well. I will feed you and take care of you, but first there is one small thing you must do for me. You must earn my trust chelônos and then I will protect you."
Her fingers eased under the turtle's head and lifted it. She curled forward and pressed her lips to the hard leathery skin just above its eyes. "I am your master now. I will reward obedience." She slipped her other hand
affectionately along the shell.
She uncoiled the chain and released the sea turtle, which paddled away with determination. She paused mid-water at the entrance to the halls that led to the bedrooms, and then smiled at the scream of pain and cursing. A moment later, her new pet swam into view, Erixenos kicking angrily in its wake, bleeding from his arm and shouting abuse.
Nikasia swam into the open, arms folded, and the turtle paddled past her for protection. Erix back-kicked, his eyes opening from the rage that blinded them, startled to find himself alone in a room with Nikasia. He closed his mouth, just smart enough to know that speaking aloud any of the thoughts swimming through his mind could ruin him, take Melinna away forever, and sour any ambitions where the Kirkêlatides had influence.
How many determined social climbers had feigned love for Melinna or Airesis only to use them as stepping-stones to the real power in the family, the youngest sister? Nikasia saw them coming a stade away, read their thoughts, and had even revealed their crooked ambitions to her sisters—thinking that this was one chance to do something warm and sisterly toward them, but instead it had aroused a deeper hatred. Melinna and Airesis twisted her honesty into an attempt to steal away their lovers.
Nikasia tilted her head to one side, turned the corners of her lips down, daring Erixenos to say a word.
He shook his head as if answering an unsaid question, clapped a hand to his bleeding arm and retreated.
His boldness returned in the company of others, and later, when Nikasia kicked into the hall where her sisters and several servants had gathered for dinner, Erixenos snapped off a few biting remarks about the soul-staining Vents. "They'll stay with you for the rest of your life, the darkness like ink in your soul."
Nikasia glanced over at him, thinking that it was a bit too poetic for someone with so little nous. She pushed her back against the corner of the room, reaching over the board to pick up a strip of fish, red and raw. She whispered an athanatêros a little too loudly, earning a reproachful glare from Mandris the chef—at the notion that he would allow anyone to poison his dishes.