Sirens of Faldion: The Final Bond

by Anya Merchant

  Kai managed to get himself up to a kneeling position and twisted to give the girl access to his bonds, expecting her to immediately start untying them. Instead, she went over to the fat man, lifting his head up by the hair and wrapping her arm around his throat.

  “Hey!” said Kai. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure he isn’t a threat.” The girl levered her grip with her free arm and tensed her muscles, preparing to twist and break the man’s neck.

  “No!” Kai’s voice came out with more vehemence than he’d intended. He paused and took a breath. “Stop. Don’t kill him.”

  “Why not?” asked the girl. “He was going to kill you. He’ll try again if he gets a chance, without question.”

  “Don’t kill him,” repeated Kai. “Just… untie me. There’s no time. We have to get out of here.”

  The girl hesitated for only a split second before letting the man go and moving over to free Kai. She loosed the knots with deft fingers, tossing the rope aside. Kai rubbed his wrists as he stood up, feeling the familiar tingling sensation of blood beginning to flow back into his sleeping extremities.

  “Come on,” he said. “The other guard is going to warn the camp. We have to get out of here, now!”

  He started running in the direction opposite of the camp. The girl kept pace easily, and he could tell that if she wanted to, she could outpace him without trying, even in her dress.

  Sounds came from behind them, back toward the river camp. The slavers were organizing a search, and Kai could hear the snarls of their bound beasts, forest wolves and tusk cats, sprinting across the grass toward them. An eagle let out a call from overhead, announcing its presence as the predators closed in on them.

  Through desperate, determined running, Kai and the girl managed to keep ahead of their pursuers, but only just barely. The night did them a massive favor in keeping them from being easily spotted by the pacter’s animals. A single bound owl or bat would have tracked their exact location with no trouble and led the slavers right to them.

  They ran for what felt like an eternity, several hours at least. Kai slowed before the girl did, though he kept pushing himself forward, dead set on not being the first to drop from exhaustion.

  “There,” said the girl. “There’s a forest ahead of us.”

  Kai blinked, focusing his eyes. The southern province’s grasslands had a few small patches of thicker vegetation mixed into the dusty plains, and the two had stumbled upon one of them. Several tall trees stood out amongst the flora like massive, green pillars, branches extending outward and providing shade for plants that wouldn’t normally be able to grow on the dry, sun parched landscape.

  He slowed to a stop and listened, finding that he couldn’t make out the sound of their pursuers anymore. He looked over at the girl, and despite the still dire situation, found himself grinning at her.

  “You saved me,” he said. The girl shrugged.

  “It’s not as though I had much of a choice,” she said. “You’re my master.”

  “And you’re…” Kai trailed off, examining her. “Do you have a name?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “If I do, I don’t remember it.”

  Kai thought for a moment about everything he knew of her, and how she’d come into his world.

  “Sky,” he said. “Do you mind if I call you Sky?”

  “I don’t think you really understand how this works,” she said. “You are my master. I have to agree with you and follow your instructions, regardless of whether or not they appeal to me or make logical sense.”

  Kai chuckled at the feistiness of her tone.

  “Of course,” he said. “But what do you think of the name?”

  The girl shrugged again.

  “Sky,” she repeated. “It’s… fine, I guess.”

  She fidgeted slightly, as though a little uncomfortable expressing her opinion.

  “Alright then, Sky,” said Kai. “Thank you for saving my life. I won’t forget what you did for me today.”

  He reached a hand out toward her, wondering if she’d tear into the gesture in the same way she had him asking for her opinion. Sky hesitated for a moment, and then shook his hand, her palm feeling soft and yet strong against Kai’s.

  CHAPTER 9

  Lacking a better option, the two of them climbed up into one of the taller trees, finding spots in the branches to rest for a while that wouldn’t expose them to the ground or open air. Kai climbed first, keeping himself in front of Sky and her billowing dress.

  It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but Kai had endured worse. He sat straddling a branch as thick as his thigh was around, shifting every few minutes to keep his legs from falling asleep. Sky took up a spot on the branch next to his, lying on it as though it were a bed, and she a cat.

  “So…” said Kai, considering his question. “You say that you can’t remember your past. But what’s the earliest thing you can remember?”

  Sky twitched her head slightly to the side. A warm breeze blew through the night, causing the leaves of the tree to ripple with activity and soft noise.

  “I remember the inside of a building,” said Sky. “I remember… being in chains, and hearing people speaking, people that I couldn’t understand.”

  “Could you not speak Faldion to start?” asked Kai.

  Sky shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “These people weren’t speaking Faldion, I don’t think.”

  Kai frowned at that. Most of Faldion had adopted Faldish after the One Master had unified the realm, with the exception of the Kness in Knessomar and the natives of the colonies in the Fertile Islands.

  His own native Meridian tongue was only vaguely removed from Faldion in pronunciation even though Meridia was on the other side of the Firecrack Desert. The two languages were close enough that an untrained listener on either side could make out every other word or so.

  “It sounds like someone had you as a slave,” said Kai. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

  Sky sat up on her branch. She shifted so that she was sitting on it sideways, crossing her legs like a proper lady in the process and looking at him expectantly.

  “The other spirit sirens are treated almost like deities,” said Kai. “The Chosen use them to rule their cities with near absolute power. The only time the One Master makes demands on them is to raise levies to fight the southern barbarians or the ice dancers.”

  Sky nodded.

  “That’s what I am,” she said. “A spirit siren. I can feel it. And you are my master now, Kai.”

  Kai gave her a slow nod. It was hard to accept, and he half expected himself to awake from a dream at any moment. But he’d seen what Sky could do with his own eyes.

  “All of the Chosen were picked by the One Master,” said Kai. “Technically, they’re his servants. If you actually read the histories, they spend more time bickering and backstabbing each other than serving anyone, though.”

  “There’s seven of them, right?” Sky looked as though she was concentrating, one hand on her forehead and the other holding her steady against the branch.

  “One for each element,” said Kai. “The spirit sirens all have different magical abilities, and different spheres of influence. If they could manage to work together, Faldion would be a very different kind of place.”

  Sky nodded thoughtfully. Kai watched her for a moment, carefully forming a question that had been burning on his tongue in a way that wouldn’t offend her.

  “Sky,” he said. “Do you have a range of abilities, like the other spirit sirens?”

  Sky kicked one of her dangling legs and shrugged slightly.

  “I’m still not sure,” she said. “I can step through the void. That’s all I’ve discovered so far.”

  “The void?” Kai raised an eyebrow at her. “But that’s just… a children’s tale, isn’t it?”

  Sky shook her head, smiling as though his disbelief amused her.

  “It’s a realm of its ow
n,” she said. “It’s where magic comes from and returns to. And because of the way time and direction work inside of it, I can pass through the void to travel short distances here in the physical realm instantaneously.”

  “That’s how you teleport, then?” said Kai. “Nifty.”

  Sky shot him a strange look, but said nothing for a moment. The wind passed through the tree again, and a few dry leaves fell from the branches higher up, slipping through the tree’s canopy like massive green snowflakes.

  “What will you do now?” asked Sky.

  Kai didn’t have to think about it for longer than a second.

  “I have to go after Selene,” he said. “If what Mariella said is the truth, she’s headed for Last Port with Terrion.”

  “Selene?” asked Sky.

  “She’s a friend of mine,” said Kai. “More than that. She’s like a sister to me.”

  “Your lover?” asked Sky.

  Kai felt his cheeks flush at the insinuation, though it was too dark for it to be noticeable.

  “What? No!” He shook his head, almost unbalancing himself on the branch. “That’s sick! It’s not like that. Seriously.”

  Sky laughed. The sound of it was like everything related to her, beautiful, and slightly anomalous, the pitch a bit too high, her voice as clear and sharp as a bell.

  “Alright then,” said Sky. “We can get started first thing tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to come with me,” said Kai.

  Sky blinked at him, confusion spreading across her face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re not my slave,” said Kai. “If you have things you want to do, or places you need to be, don’t feel like you have to worry about me stopping you.”

  “That’s…” Sky shook her head slowly. “I don’t think that’s how this is supposed to work.”

  “I don’t care,” said Kai. “I won’t have you with me against your will.”

  Sky met his gaze, searching for something in her eyes. She smiled after a moment.

  “You’re a fool,” she said. “A good hearted fool.”

  “Thanks?” Kai smiled back at her.

  “I will go with you,” she said. “And I do have my own reasons for doing so, if it really does matter.”

  Kai nodded.

  “Good,” he said.

  Sky kept her eyes on him for another half second, long enough for Kai to feel a bit of tension creep into the air between them. Then, she looked upward, toward Vana, bright overhead in the sky. Enough of the clouds had parted to reveal its surface, an intricate mix of blue and green color that was a delight to look at, even as familiar as it was.

  The two of them spent the next few minutes in amicable silence. Kai leaned his head back against the tree, sure that he’d never be able to get any sleep in such an odd position, right up until the moment when he drifted off.

  CHAPTER 10

  Kai was on the ground when he woke up, and immediately felt a flash of fear, assuming he’d been recaptured. He bolted to his feet, looking around and seeing the tree trunk behind him, and the sun slowly rising over the eastern horizon back in the direction of the river camp.

  “Good morning.” Sky walked over to him, carrying something in her hands. “Here.”

  She passed him a large, ground fruit, freshly dug from the soil nearby. Kai nodded his thanks and ran a hand through his hair, still shaking the last remnants of sleep away.

  “How did I get down here?” he asked. Sky looked amused by his confusion and waved a hand through the air.

  “I carried you down, after I scouted out the area and made sure that it was safe.” She held another ground fruit in her hands and set about wiping the dirt off it. “Sleeping in a tree isn’t good for your body.”

  Kai nodded slowly, though he felt a little uncomfortable at the fact that he hadn’t woken up during the night. He took a seat against the tree’s trunk and set about cleaning and eating the fruit.

  “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll have to set off to the west as soon as we’ve eaten. They will still be looking for us.”

  “If they find us, I’ll take care of them,” said Sky. “Dead men won’t pose much of a threat to us, and will serve to scare off the rest.”

  Kai frowned, remembering how close Sky had come to killing the slaver the night before. He shook his head slowly.

  “No,” he said. “No killing, Sky. Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “It usually is,” said Sky. “And for these men, it may even be a mercy. They live sad lives, profiting off pain.”

  “Death is no mercy.”

  He watched Sky for a moment, feeling unnerved by how confident she was in her judgement. She noticed his attention and furrowed her brow at him.

  “If it is your command, I will do my best not to kill,” she said.

  “If it’s my command?” Kai crossed his arms. “You can’t see why killing is something to be avoided otherwise?”

  Sky glared at him, and Kai let out a slow sigh, reeling his emotions back in. She’d been nothing but a boon to him so far. It wasn’t his place to judge her, not after everything she’d done for him, and especially not considering her apparent lack of memories and the resulting morality to go with them. He took a bite out of the ground fruit, the crisp, nutty flavor reminding him of his hunger.

  “There’s a small pool of water in the direction we’re headed,” said Sky. “It’s clean enough to drink. We can stop by it once you’ve finished eating.”

  “Sounds good.” Kai took another bite and looked back up at her. She looked tired, her eyelids drooping as she leaned back against the ground.

  “Sky,” he said. “Did you get enough sleep last night?”

  She nodded, the gesture making her look even more spent.

  “It’s my magic,” she said. “When I use my abilities, I end up draining some of my spirit’s reserve.”

  Kai thought about what he’d heard of the other spirit sirens before. There had always been rumors about the Metal Queen and how her magic worked. He blinked, realizing that it was probably the same for Sky as it was for them.

  “Oh,” he said. “Do you… uh, know how to replenish that reserve?”

  Sky glared at him, the expression looking more cute than fierce on her tired face.

  “I do,” she said. “I can sense that much in my own body.”

  A silent moment passed between them. Kai didn’t let his eyes waver from hers, and felt the tension between them like electricity. Spirit essence was generally considered to be the source of life and power amongst all living things, at least by most religions in Faldion. It was supposedly transferred through intimate contact from person to person seeding life and granting the energy needed for magic, in the case of the sirens.

  “Is there… anything I can do to help you?” he asked.

  The look Sky gave him was annoyed and catlike, and sharp enough to sting.

  “I’ll let you know,” she said. “For the moment, I’ll manage just fine.”

  “Alright,” said Kai.

  Several awkward, silent minutes went by while the two of them finished eating. Sky made a show of examining the area around them, void stepping her way up to the top of the tree to get a better view of the horizon.

  Several white, puffy clouds meandered across the sky, occasionally dimming the sun for a few moments as they passed between it and the ground. Kai waited for Sky to come down from the tree and nodded to the west.

  “We should get moving,” he said. “Assuming the way ahead is clear?”

  “It’s clear,” said Sky.

  They walked across the grasslands in silence. Kai could only wonder about what they must look like to anyone who saw them. He wore his ragged slave clothes, and though he had neither a brand nor shackles to mark him as one officially, nobody would be going out of their way to treat him as anything else.

  And Sky looked like a noblewoman gone feral, her dress now tattered to the point of being inches shorter than it�
�d been originally. She kept her blonde hair over her ears, but they occasionally poked out when she stopped paying attention. And her tail moved almost continuously under her dress, making it look as though the fabric had a mind of its own.

  “You’re going to have to try to blend in once we get to Last Port,” said Kai.

  Sky looked at him blankly.

  “Your tail,” said Kai.

  She turned and looked behind her, a look of surprise coming over her as she saw it, and then recognition.

  “Right,” she said. “I… sometimes forget about that.”

  She watched it for a moment, and then it pulled inward, letting her dress fall as it was meant to.

  “I keep it wrapped around my leg,” said Sky. “Kind of like the winding tattoos some of the southern barbarian tribe’s warriors get.”

  “You remember that?” asked Kai. Sky hesitated, and then shrugged.

  “I guess I do,” she mused.

  The two of them stopped by the water pool Sky had mentioned earlier. It was crystal clear, set into a section of sandy ground, rather than the baked clay and infertile dirt of the proper grasslands. Kai drank deeply from it and gave Sky a chance to do the same, and then spent a minute washing his hands and face.

  They continued onward. Traveling through the dry grass was easy enough. The land was mind numbingly flat in every direction, and it made for easy hiking. Unfortunately, it also left them with nowhere to run or hide in the event that the slavers looking for them managed to catch up. Kai could tell from Sky’s nervous body language that there wasn’t much she’d be able to do to save them in the case of such an event.

  A small footpath of pounded dirt ran in the direction they were headed, slightly to the south of them, and Kai made the decision for them to take to it. The two of them walked for about an hour, and a small wagon appeared on the horizon, flanked by one of the massive work horses that farmstead owning pacters often chose as their bound beasts. It was stationary and off kilter, one of the wheels splintered and useless.