Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  Park in the thirteenth space from the south end of the lot. Take the child across the boulders, down to the sand. Walk south. When a passing woman tells you she collects heart-shaped stones, give the child to her.

  “Heart-shaped stones?” What does that mean?

  Typically his masters had him buy or steal something, and then leave the goods on an island, one of the Shoals. Other times he gave the goods to one of their agents, usually a skinny old man named Mr. Fenhals.

  The money for the “export” operations, sometimes thousands of dollars, showed up in his bank account, or he’d open an envelope without a return address and there would be a credit card inside to be used for a particular purchase. For pricier items, he even had numbers for several offshore accounts in the Grenadines.

  But he had never taken something from the sea back to land.

  He had never lost anything. Never had anything taken from him.

  Never failed.

  His chin dropped in alarm, and he pulled back to look into the water below. Something coming up he didn’t want to meet. He choked down panic and kicked, trying to get out of the way.

  Twisting, he grabbed madly at the sea’s surface. Five hard slender claws curled around his body, overlapping as they bound his legs.

  Gregor swallowed the seawater in his mouth. He sucked in a final breath, his mind racing, trying to understand what was happening to him.

  Tangled in cables? One of my own nets?

  It might have been the numbing weight of the ocean. The dark water could chill the blood of a man, sapping the life out of him in ten minutes. Or it might have been something alive.

  The claws or cables tightened around him and gave him a cautious tug, like a monster testing its grip on its prey. Like an angler.

  The sea slapped him in the face before it overwhelmed him. Gregor closed his eyes against the cold, and then whatever it was that held his body, sucked him into the depths—something with claws then. It spun him around, and pulled him headfirst into darkness like a fish dragged at the end of a hook.

  The cold blinded him, water running against his cheeks, raking over his eyelids. His ears worked and he heard someone swimming alongside him, two of them.

  There was a rustling sound, like leaves blown across pavement. He knew that fluttering, the rush of water against thousands of light armor plates stitched together into a hauberk. They wore armor. He felt them close by, and then one, a woman, spoke to the other.

  “Is it dead?”

  Gregor pulled his jaw down. Couldn’t get the words into his mouth.

  No!

  He tried to lift his brows, tugging at the muscles in his face, tried to open his eyes. The cold—or something these two had done—paralyzed him, imprisoning his body but not his sense of hearing, which went right to the edge, taking in everything unfiltered.

  He’d heard the question, a woman’s disgusted voice above him in the water column. A man answered, closer to Gregor, older, his voice sharp and commanding, used to giving orders.

  “Do not call him ‘it’. He is not a thinling.”

  “Stasa, my apologies.”

  Stasa is short for something, a man’s name. And names he’d never heard before—but somehow knew—slid into his thoughts. Stasandros, Stasanor, Stasianax.

  Stasa grabbed one of Gregor’s hands, spread the fingers, and yanked it up by the wrist. “He was mutilated, not long ago, too.” He tugged the jacket sleeve up Gregor’s arm, revealing a gold bracelet. “From House Rexenor.”

  “An exile?” The other whispered cautiously. “He is...I have never seen one before.”

  “Take a good look. He’s the last Rexenor you will ever see.”

  “The Olethren?”

  “As we speak.”

  The woman’s voice dropped when she turned away from Gregor, toward Stasa, more questions bubbling up.

  “Why did he run from us? He is the porthmeus. He has no choice, no will. Did he throw off his enslavement?”

  “Impossible.”

  Cold currents lashed Gregor’s face, but there was a warm fluttering in his stomach, a hunger that didn’t gnaw at his insides. It filled him with a restless sense of coming home after a long absence.

  And Gregor released the last of his air.

  The rasp of saltwater flooded his mouth, shoved its way under his tongue, filling his lungs. His face compressed into a frown as a word came to him.

  Drown...drown...drowning.

  The word hung inertly in his mind. He thought about it, took a deep breath, and then gave up. He knew it was something important, but he couldn’t remember what it meant.

  The woman dug her fingers through his hair, jerked his head back so that Stasa could get a good look. “You have seen this one before?”

  Gregor listened eagerly. Maybe there was some nodding back and forth, or hand signals. Then Stasa said, “Speak no more of him. The king must hear of this before word gets to the other houses.”

  Gregor Porthmeus pulled at the restraints. He made a noise in his throat, lost in the rush of water. Nothing came from his mouth. He wriggled in his bonds one more time and gave up.

  These must be the givers of orders, or maybe they just worked for them. They knew his name, although they didn’t use it properly. He wasn’t the Porthmeus. That was his surname, not what he was or what he did.

  Distant thoughts—mainly doubts—surfaced with the tightening pressure and cold water on his skin, thoughts hovering at the edge of his mind, enough to give him a glimpse, a taste of something important, before they wavered and vanished.

  He had a faint feeling that Porthmeus was a word or title, not a name, and they were using it correctly. Other feelings, like little collections of dust, drifted through his head, awakened and formed into shapes, stars into constellations. They said he wasn’t a ‘thinling.’ He knew that word, knew it was something awful but didn’t know how he knew. He wasn’t sure what a thinling was.

  The woman spoke, her voice loud in Gregor’s ears. “What’s to be done with her?”

  Kassandra?

  “Let her sleep.” Stasa sighed. “If it were up to me, I would feed her to Ochleros. It would be merciful. The king...who knows? Probably send her off to one of their inland states, like Nebraska.”

  Gregor heard the woman gasp and sputter some spell to ward off evil. He couldn’t hear her words but he felt the shudder of terror in her voice. It was the reaction to a penalty of suffering no one deserved. Even Gregor felt a moment’s outrage without really knowing why. Nebraska. They wouldn’t dare!

  A shift in the water’s motion, and Gregor’s head shot around at a louder rustle of armor plates. Stasa moved above him and said, “Ochleros, loosen your hold.”

  Then he whispered something, a spell, and Gregor’s body, suddenly feeling very heavy, folded forward, then snapped straight, his spine turning into what felt like a cracking whip.

  The claws eased their grip, not enough for him to escape. A wave of heat passed through him, took hold of his muscles, and drained his strength. He fought it feebly, like clutching at air while slipping off the end of a cliff.

  The muscles in his shoulders jumped, wrenching his neck as he tried and failed to throw his arms out to stop his fall. His head slammed into the overlapping claws. There was a bright flash behind his closed eyes and he tasted his own blood in the water.

  His last thought was a sudden certainty about his name that the depth brought to his clouded mind. Porthmeus didn’t belong to him. The other name his captors had mentioned, Rexenor, was his real family name.

  Gregor heard nothing more.

  A year passed. Another. So many of them, and in his stone prison in the abyss, Gregor Rexenor replayed the memories thousands of times. The events never changed, but they grew clearer in his mind every time he watched them, sharper, more real, the boat’s wheel colder, the storm louder, the baby girl more familiar.

  Chapter 8 - Storm Brewing

  I spent the rest of the day trying to get away from
everyone.

  Nothing was more important than making time to ask King Praxinos the million questions that had been stewing since the attack at the lake and the appearance of Ephoros. Unfortunately, I only had a few minutes between classes, and that meant whispering to myself in the halls and hoping no one heard me.

  After school, it was little easier. I devised what I thought was a brilliant plan, pretending to read while really chatting with Praxinos. It even worked for a while.

  But Matrothy was restless and kept barging into the nine-to-sixteens hall to bother everyone—and by everyone, I mean me.

  The director spent most of her time slapping me around, making me brush my hair, and leaning over me, arms folded, while “the scared little rat” repacked everything in the clothes trunk, most of which was arranged neatly already.

  I kept my psycho mouth closed, but gave her a couple glares.

  Tonight of all nights. Why can’t the hag go clean that stupid vest or something?

  After the third interruption in two hours, half the girls in the hall stirred to anger over sympathy for me, which was unusual—most of them making snarling under-the-breath comments at the director. The other half wished Matrothy would just finish the job, and kill me, so that so much of her attention wasn’t directed at the nine-to-sixteens. I had to agree. Most of their troubles would be eliminated if they could just get me out of their hall.

  On her fourth trip up to spread some cheer, Matrothy meandered down the center aisle, folded her arms, and stopped to study me with distrust.

  “There’s something different about you, what is it?”

  Keeping my mouth shut, I dropped my gaze to my feet.

  Oh yeah, tell me a question like that’s not a trap.

  She prodded for answers a couple more times, and when I refused to answer, the director found a misplaced sock among my clothes and up-ended the trunk on the floor, ordering me to fold everything again.

  Fucking bitch.

  So, I was happy to start classes the next morning. Mr. Henderson seemed less afraid to answer a question I had about sound moving through water. (Matrothy hadn’t gotten to him yet). But then I pulled words I didn’t know out of my head—I mean I just spoke a different language like it was natural to me. Then I spent a minute trying to measure the depth of my psychosis, and didn’t really pay attention to what Mr. Henderson had to say.

  My suspicion was that Praxinos didn’t have to sleep and spent the night feeding his knowledge into my head—or from his head, which was somehow inside my head, back into my head. That really hit home when I had a hard time waking up the next morning. Of course, I demanded to know what he did in the middle of the night, but he played stupid. Asshole.

  So I gave him the silent treatment, and Praxinos played along like a pro. He was quiet the rest of the day. After dinner, I gave up and went back to asking him what the hell was going on, who I was, and what it meant to be the Wreath-wearer.

  “Girl’s the Wreath-wearer!” Screeched a voice from the motel bathroom. “She’s got the Wreath of Poseidon!”

  “What!” Limnoria screamed and threw a coffee mug full of water into the air. If she’d been drinking it, she would have spit it up. Instead, she shot around the room like a crackling fireball in her gold taffeta dress.

  Helodes stood rigid, stunned into silence.

  “Calm down,” said Parresia in the low growl she always used to cut through her sisters’ chattering excitement. “Tell us what happened, Olivia.”

  A fourth naiad had joined the first three. Wearing the ratty terrycloth robe that came with the motel room, Olivia paced in front of the bathroom door as if afraid to move far from any source of water. She rubbed her ears and threw her black hair up into a twist with one of the bath towels. Her eyes darted around the room fearfully, and she sniffed in disgust. She hated being away from her nice dark fresh water. She’d take a mushy bog, even a sweet-smelling salt marsh, any place that didn’t have wall-to-wall carpeting. Her eyes were cold gray like the rounded boulders of a creek bed. Her skin looked a little less green out of the lake.

  “Kassandra’s got the Wreath. I could see it, glowin’ all about her. She was wearin’ it!”

  Olivia had a dry squeaky voice that sounded like wood being twisted and tortured into different shapes to form the words. She told them what she had done at Red Bear Lake, how she had started by scaring the girl, grabbing her ankle, dragging her down, the usual stuff, and then the squirmy little bitch turned on her, and attacked her with a sound that melted the water itself and made her bones turn to liquid.

  “The girl hurt me,” Olivia wheezed, flinging her hands over her head. “She’s got it! She’s got the Wreath!”

  Helodes and Limnoria gasped, turning to Parresia.

  “But the king told us it was destroyed,” Helodes whispered rapidly, her voice a little quivery. “It wasn’t the first thing we thought to ask, but we asked it, does this girl have the Wreath? She’s an Alkimides, but not royal, the king told us. Kassandra’s the daughter of a maid devoted to a traitorous royal. He said we wouldn’t have to worry about the power of the Wreath.”

  “I think King Tharsaleos’ exact words were...” Limnoria cleared her throat and brought her voice low to mimic a man’s solemn tone. “The Wreath is destroyed. Its power has gone out of the oceans.”

  “Yeah, out of the oceans.” Olivia spat on the carpet. “It’s here in Nebraska.”

  Limnoria and Helodes shrieked two different curses against the seaborn at the same time.

  Helodes shook with the effort of finding something to say. “Can’t trust a sea king. I’ve always said that!”

  “You’ve never said that in your life!”

  Olivia growled and squeaked something that sounded like, “Want to get that girl for what she done to me!”

  “Quiet.” Parresia’s voice cut through their panic. And the room went quiet. “Let me think.”

  Still huffing, the three of them stared at the eldest and waited. Limnoria fidgeted and made little crackling noises with her dress. Helodes sat quietly and made sharp practice motions in the air with her fingers. In freshwater, the figures she drew would have come to life and attacked anyone at whom she pointed. Olivia went back to the bathroom and spun the big knob in the bathtub.

  “Help me set up a path. I’m gonna throttle that little brat right now!”

  “Turn it off,” said Parresia firmly, her voice growing loud and commanding. “Get in here. We have to talk.”

  “What about?” Limnoria stopped rustling.

  “No. There’s something wrong here.” Parresia shook her head. “Either the king lied to us and wants us to go against this Wreath-wearer by ourselves...” They all shuddered. “Or he doesn’t know who Kassandra really is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Of course he knows who she is. King Tharsaleos sent her to Nebraska in the first place.”

  “I’ll choke the little maggot!” Olivia squeaked.

  “Quiet! I don’t think he would have sent one of his own children or relatives here.” Parresia had to shout above a new wave of cursing. “Tharsaleos said that Kassandra was the daughter of Zypheria, a maid to a traitorous member of the royal house.”

  “...and that he had also devised a particularly cruel punishment for the maid. I remember, something involving prisons in the desert.”

  “Kassandra cannot be the maid’s daughter.”

  “Only one of the royal family of House Alkimides can wear the Wreath...not their maids. The traitor must have passed it on to her own baby daughter.”

  “Kassandra,” the four of them said at the same time, with Olivia’s bitter squeaky tone underscoring the name.

  “And they tricked the king into thinking the maid had given birth to Kassandra, not the traitor.”

  “We must tell the king,” said Helodes immediately. “He’ll find out anyway.”

  “Is he going to be angrier at being tricked or because he’s punished his own kin?”

&
nbsp; “He’ll kill the messenger.”

  “Kill the girl, I say,” grumbled Olivia.

  “Shut up!” The other three shouted together.

  After a long space of silence, Parresia stabbed one of her bony fingers in the air. “We must not rush into this. But plan well. We must not jump at any decision.” She threw a serious look at Olivia, and emphasized the word ‘any’ to make it clear that that also included choking and killing the girl. “We must be patient.”

  “Go on,” said Limnoria, knowing that when Parresia started like this she meant to say a lot more.

  “If we run to the bottom of the Atlantic and tell King Tharsaleos that the girl at the school is his daughter or granddaughter or whatever she is, what will he do?”

  “Take his wrath out on us.”

  “Be surprised?” Helodes put in to be helpful.

  “Kill the girl,” said Olivia.

  Limnoria and Helodes swung scowls at her, but Parresia waved her finger at them with a gesture that told them, “There’s that hastiness I just warned you about.”

  Limnoria and Helodes exchanged looks and then went still, waiting.

  “All three correct answers,” Parresia said quietly.

  Limnoria scowled. “But you just said he’d never knowingly send his own child or descendent to Nebraska? He wouldn’t do that, but he would kill her?”

  “I also said that we must think about this before we do anything. Maid’s daughter or not, the girl wouldn’t be here if he liked her. What if he does know? What if he doesn’t, but when he finds out, he wants to kill Kassandra?”

  Helodes gasped, putting a hand to her mouth.

  “War?” Limnoria asked faintly. “Here?”

  “Won’t that be a sight,” said Olivia and smiled grimly, showing a few pointed teeth.

  “Perhaps.” Parresia picked something off her sleeve. “The king may send his soldiers, but Kassandra wears the Wreath. She’ll not be easy to defeat if she knows how to use it.”

  “Oh, she knows,” breathed Olivia and then rubbed her hands together as if they hurt.