The Deepest Blue

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Mayara didn’t lower her knife. “Are you a Silent One?”

  Lanei let out a humorless laugh. “Do I look or sound like one of those monsters? No, I’m just like you. Or I was.”

  “You can’t be,” Mayara said. “The last group came a full year ago! How could you have survived here for that long? And why? The Silent Ones should have taken you home.”

  “Like they took the others home? Oh, wait, they didn’t, because the others died.”

  Mayara eyed the water. She knew the way back, if she had to flee. She couldn’t be sure the spirits weren’t still there, searching for them. “Did you kill them?”

  “I haven’t killed anyone.”

  “Your snares . . .”

  “Failed. I spent months laying them, but you set free the only two people they caught. So you can stop waving that . . . is that supposed to be a knife? You can stop waving it around because I’ve never successfully murdered anyone,” she said with a tinge of bitterness.

  “Most people would consider that a good thing.”

  “When the Silent Ones came with an heir at the end of the month, I was ready to leave. I was the only one who had survived, and I was about to present myself. But then I heard her talking: the heir, saying to the Silent Ones that the queen would have to end the tests if there were no new heirs. She’d have to find a different way. A less cruel way. And I knew I couldn’t show myself. If I did, the tests would never end. And others would have to go through what we went through. But then your group arrived. And I knew one failed test hadn’t been enough. Everyone needed to die again. Then the queen would have to end this! If Belene has no more new heirs, she has to find another way to train spirit sisters. I thought if no one survived for a second time, it would be considered too costly to continue the tests. These deaths, your deaths, could put an end to all future deaths on this forsaken island.”

  “So you decided to help the spirits murder us? That was your solution?”

  “Sacrifice! Not murder! Your deaths would have served the greater good. It’s what we’ve always been told anyway, right? Believe me, this was not something I did lightly.”

  “And I thought I had bad ideas.” Mayara tried to keep her tone light, but she didn’t release her grip on the glass knife. Lanei had not only set snares, but she’d set an overwhelming number of them, nearly every other tree. That wasn’t the sign of someone who was thinking rationally. “Here’s a better idea: How about we work together to survive the month, and then find a way to end the tests?”

  Lanei shook her head sadly. “It will never work. If any of you last the month, the queen will think the test is fine. It will continue.”

  A thought hit Mayara then. “Maybe there’s another way to convince the queen.” Other than our gory deaths. “I’d like to introduce you to one of my friends. Her name’s Roe, and she’s the queen’s daughter.”

  “What? That makes no sense. She sent her own daughter to be tested? Our queen is more depraved than I could have imagined—”

  Mayara interrupted. “She doesn’t know her daughter is here. This island isn’t the only place our traditions aren’t what they seem. And once Roe survives the month, she’ll have the queen’s ear. She can talk with her mother—heir to queen—and convince her to end the tests.”

  Lanei shook her head. “I wish I could have faith it would work. . . .”

  “Can you be certain your idea will work? It didn’t last time. So come meet her,” Mayara said. Meet the people you’re trying to murder. If she saw them face-to-face, talked with them, then maybe it wouldn’t be so easy to think of them as disposable. And if Roe could convince Lanei there was another way, they could all work together to survive this place.

  Lanei looked as if she wanted to refuse.

  “At least talk with her,” Mayara pleaded. “If we can’t convince you our way is possible, then you can go back to trying to kill us.”

  She added silently, And we’ll stop you.

  THEY MET IN THE CAVE WITH THE LAKE, FIRST ENSURING THERE WERE no spirits nearby. Mayara drew the line at bringing Lanei to their home cave. It would have made it far too easy for Lanei to summon spirits to attack them while they slept. Perched on a rock, Mayara listened while Lanei explained her vision to Roe and Palia.

  “It has to end!” Lanei declared.

  She’s passionate, Mayara thought. You have to give her that.

  “Far too many women have died,” Lanei said. “And too many others live in fear of exposing their power, when they could be using it to keep the islands safe!”

  “You’re not the first person to have thought that,” Palia said. She was looking a little better, Mayara thought. Not well, exactly, but out of immediate danger. “Every family with a girl who shows power feels that way.”

  “Exactly why extreme measures are necessary! Everyone has accepted this ‘tradition’ for far too long, despite knowing it’s wrong. We need to remove all benefit from it and expose it for the horror it is. Force the queen to admit that a change must be made.”

  “So you’ve planned a dramatic murder-suicide?” Roe’s tone was cheerful, as if they were discussing the weather, and Mayara admired how completely she rejected Lanei’s speech with a single perky question. She was obviously not persuaded by Lanei’s passion.

  “I’ll kill as many as it takes, until no one is sent to die anymore.”

  “How noble of you.” Roe turned to Mayara and said conversationally, “Just so we’re clear, if she calls to the spirits to end it all now, we’ll push her into the lake, right?”

  “Or hit her with a large rock,” Mayara agreed. She wasn’t able to match Roe’s cheerful tone. Truthfully, this entire conversation unnerved her. She’d never met anyone who talked so eagerly about murder. It made her skin crawl.

  Palia held up her hand. “No threats. She came to us to talk, didn’t she? Lanei is right—too many of us have had to live in fear, both for ourselves and our loved ones.”

  “But her methods!” Roe burst out. “You can’t seriously be listening to this?”

  “Don’t you want the tests to end?” Palia countered.

  “Of course!” Roe said. “But this isn’t the way! If you wanted the heirs to think the test failed, you could have just brought all of us down to the caves and hidden us. Make them think we all died. Instead of trying to kill us!”

  “I couldn’t have hidden all of you,” Lanei said. “That never would have worked.”

  “So your solution was to let people die slowly and horrifically from starvation or dehydration if they weren’t found, tortured, and killed by spirits? That’s cruel!”

  “How do you propose to change the world?” Lanei challenged. “You want to ask your mommy nicely to alter hundreds of years of tradition? She’s been so badly suckered in by the myth of the Deepest Blue—believing the worst problems of Belene lie out in the ocean, when they’re all here on our shores.”

  But that was the thing: Mayara had never wanted to change the world. She just wanted to survive long enough to return to Kelo. As she saw it, there were only two outcomes to this test: win (and leave this nightmare) or lose (and die). Mayara didn’t like the idea of losing. In fact, she was adamantly opposed to it. And Lanei was just as adamantly opposed to any of them winning.

  Roe and Lanei began arguing, with Roe saying killing the innocent was never a solution to anything, and Lanei saying she was merely hastening the inevitable.

  “Our deaths are not inevitable,” Roe said. “You didn’t die yet. Why do you think we’re doomed? We survived this long. Admittedly, it hasn’t been pleasant, and I would trade my right arm for a bath with soap, but day by day, we’re surviving. And maybe others are too.”

  Palia chimed in. “How many others are left?”

  “Besides you three?” Lanei said. “I don’t know.”

  “Then there could be others surviving too!” Roe said.

  “So what if there are? What happens next? You all go out and fight for the queen? How long will you su
rvive that?” Lanei asked. “Do you know how few heirs ever make it past thirty? Surviving here isn’t a guarantee to a long life. Heirs are lost in every wild spirit storm. They’re lost in storms we don’t even know about that never make it to shore. The queen uses those losses as an excuse for the atrocities of the test—because the battle after is so tough, it can only be fought by the best. But why not just train all of us to fight? Select a few to be actual successors, but leave the rest of us alive to defend our homes. No more dying on Akena. No more Silent Ones. All of us trained to fight side by side.”

  Palia looked impressed. “You have plans.”

  “Yeah, murderous plans!” Roe said.

  Lanei smiled. “Think how effective it will be when Queen Asana learns that her adherence to tradition has resulted in the death of her daughter. She will cancel the test. Hundreds will be saved, and the world will change!”

  And this conversation just took a turn for the worse, Mayara thought.

  Gripping her glass knife, Roe jumped to her feet.

  “Wait,” Palia said. “We all want the same thing here!”

  “I really don’t think we do,” Roe said, eyeing Lanei.

  “Palia’s right,” Mayara said. “Sort of. We want the test to end, don’t we? But we also don’t want to die if it can possibly be avoided. Can we all agree on that much?”

  Roe didn’t lower her knife as she nodded. Lanei was still smiling creepily, but she also nodded. She seemed unnaturally calm, as if she thought she had control of the situation. On a hunch, Mayara reached out with her mind, scanning the nearby tunnels for spirits, but she felt nothing. So far, they were safe. Just a nice, safe, calm conversation about our own murders.

  “Future generations should not have to live like this,” Palia said. “Our daughters . . . shouldn’t have to fear their future. Lanei’s goals are worthy.”

  Lanei beamed at her as if the older woman were a child who had remembered her manners. “You have to ask yourself: What would you give to end the tests? How far would you go to save those you love? Those are the questions you need to ask. I’d give my life. And yours.”

  “The thing is: my life isn’t yours to give,” Mayara said.

  “Right. And besides that, how do you know for certain our deaths will end the tests?” Roe asked. “They didn’t stop after all the spirit sisters died last time. Why should it be any different now? I have a much better chance of convincing my mother alive than dead! Everything she does, she does to keep me safe! If I survive the month and become an heir, I can talk to her. Persuade her.”

  The three of them continued to argue, but those words echoed inside Mayara. Mayara thought of Kelo and how he’d persuaded her to try to escape from the Silent Ones. I’m asking you to pick a third choice, he’d said. “A third choice,” she said out loud.

  The others stopped.

  “What was that?” Roe asked.

  “We need a third choice. We’re talking as if the choice is survive the test or die. Win or lose. What if there’s a third choice?” Her heart began to beat faster. This felt right. “What if we just don’t play?”

  “Cryptic,” Lanei said. “Go on.”

  “You say your mother would never do anything to endanger you, right?” Mayara asked Roe. “That’s the whole reason your family was taken. As collateral against her good behavior. A way to control her. So if she found out you were on the island . . .”

  “She’d stop the test,” Roe said. “Yes, but there’s no way to get word to her from here. Believe me, I tried for years to reach her from Neran Stronghold—you know, before we were imprisoned on a remote island guarded by Silent Ones and plagued by bloodthirsty spirits—and it was impossible then from there. It’s more impossible now from here.”

  “Then we escape,” Mayara pushed. She was aware that wasn’t an easy thing to do, but neither was surviving here, right? “We leave the island, we find the queen, and we tell her that she either stops the test right now and saves whoever is left, or her daughter will risk death fulfilling a tradition that should have been abolished years ago.”

  “No one has ever escaped the island,” Palia said.

  “No one has ever survived the island for more than a year,” Mayara pointed out. “No one has ever stayed here voluntarily, gotten to know its caves and tunnels, and stayed hidden from not just the spirits, but also the Silent Ones. No one . . . until her.”

  All of them looked at Lanei.

  “But the spirits—” Palia began.

  “The spirits aren’t our real enemy,” Mayara said. “It’s the Silent Ones who are keeping us here. Lanei, you know the secrets to staying out of their sight. And if we can stay out of their sight, we can escape.”

  “They’re watching all the time,” Roe objected.

  Lanei looked thoughtful. “They aren’t watching as much as you think. The Silent Ones are, almost by definition, afraid to risk themselves. That’s why they opted to renounce their former lives instead of choosing the test in the first place. So they don’t set foot on Akena. They watch from afar, on islands just beyond the reef, through the eyes of the spirits. To survive, I left evidence that I’d died, and then I made sure no spirit ever saw me.”

  Mayara didn’t want to ask what that “evidence” was.

  “So we just have to make sure spirits don’t see us,” Roe said, beginning to smile. “And then what? Swim to my mother’s palace and knock on the door?”

  “Beyond the reef, the spirits aren’t under the command to kill us,” Mayara said, warming to her idea. “We use them to travel to the capital, and then yes, we knock on the door of the palace, say who you are, and ask to see the queen. She won’t refuse to see you.”

  Roe blinked at her. “She won’t. You’re right. That . . . actually sounds like a plan.”

  “And no one else dies, either now or in the future.” Mayara looked at Lanei. “Well?”

  Lanei was quiet for a moment. “A third choice, huh?”

  They all fell silent, considering it, sensing all the spirits swarming over the island and outside of the caves, and trying to figure out how to get past them.

  Because if they could, there was a chance to end this once and for all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “A third choice,” Kelo said. “That’s what Her Majesty is looking for. The Families offered her either obey or her loved ones suffer. But she needs a third choice.”

  He was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he was back in the palace, with the queen’s personal adviser, Lady Garnah, in a room inlaid with more turquoise than he’d ever seen, listening to secrets that he wished he didn’t know. Kelo had received the summons while he was politely informing the innkeeper that he’d be leaving. The innkeeper had been crushed to hear his customer wasn’t about to be showered with riches and then elated when a slightly harried courtier had arrived to insist Kelo’s business at the palace wasn’t finished.

  “Exactly, a third choice.” Lady Garnah looked as if she wished to pat him on the head like a well-behaved dog. “Smart boy. She needs her power back.”

  “You mean, she needs her family back.”

  Lady Garnah waved her hand airily. “Same thing.”

  “And once she has them back, she’ll end the tests?” Kelo asked.

  “Yes—permanently. There are other ways to train heirs.” She said it so easily, as if she weren’t proposing upending generations of tradition, as if everything she’d told Kelo wasn’t shocking.

  Kelo felt as though his view of the world had been dropped into a mixing bowl and stirred. He, like all islanders, had regarded the queen as the source of both ultimate protection and ultimate power. To learn she’d been hamstrung by the Families . . . “It’s not right, what they’ve done and what they’re doing.”

  “Agreed.” Lady Garnah was watching him closely, as if he were a fascinating new species of bug that she’d been proud to find.

  “But I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” Kelo said. “I’m
a simple charm-maker. How can I possibly help you with Families and heirs?” He’d never expected to encounter any of this. Certainly never intended to become wrapped up in politics. He just wanted to make his art in his studio and see his new wife when she came home from a day of oyster diving.

  Lady Garnah rolled her eyes. “Really, master artisan? You’re claiming you’re too lowly to do what needs to be done to save your wife? After coming all this way? Admit that you’re a coward and go home alone, then.”

  “I’m not a coward! Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it.”

  “The queen can’t investigate the whereabouts of her family,” Lady Garnah said. “If they think she’s involved, her family will suffer. You, however, are an unknown. You can access the Families. You are hereby commissioned by Her Majesty, blah blah blah, whatever official language you need to hear, to create portraits of the most influential people on the islands. You’ll start with the members of the Families who work in the palace, and once we know which stronghold to visit, you’ll continue your work there until you’ve found the queen’s parents and daughter.”

  He considered that. It was clever. And doable. Portraits were within his skill set, even with a broken wrist. It would be easier than carving. “I’ll have hours alone with them if they pose for me. But how can I possibly convince them to tell me where the queen’s family is?” It wasn’t as if it would come up in casual conversation. Often portrait conversations became deep, as the person unfolded more of their personal and emotional life than they intended. But still, he doubted they’d include a confession of kidnapping the queen’s family. That seemed beyond the normal range of even the most intimate conversation.

  “They’ll be parched after posing for you for so long,” Garnah said. “You’ll give them a drink. It will . . . include an extra flavor that will relax them. You’ll be able to ask them whatever you want after they drink it.”

  “There’s such a ‘flavor’?” Kelo had heard about people who could create potions and powders that could confuse the mind and warp the body. He hadn’t expected to find one so close to the queen. “Are you a poison-maker?”