A net stretched across the pool, perhaps ten inches above the surface. Beleaux was in the water, his whole body submerged except for his head and one arm, which was hooked through a hole in the net over his head. He was almost unrecognizable. His usual smile had been twisted into a tortured grimace. His complexion had faded to a sallow gray, and his cheeks had sunken to fit like rotted leather over his skull.
The poor man’s only crime was to rent me a boat.
Others were in the water, too, more than a dozen of them. The man to Beleaux’s left lifted an arm and reached it through a hole in the net, water sheeting off the lampreys hanging from his withered biceps and forearm. With skin like oil, the lampreys squirmed and curled like dangling worms.
With his other hand, he ripped one off his wrist, a round red sore left in its place. The creature twisted about, a sucking mouth where there should be a head. The prisoner threw the lamprey over his shoulder, and it bounced across the net before falling through and dropping back into the water.
I put my eyes on my feet.
Mmirehl’s words penetrated my senses for the first time in at least a minute. Speaking to the admiral, he said, “Perhaps he needs some time in the water to become more receptive to our questions.”
I thought of Korda, the home I’d never see again. I thought of coffee and bread and cheese, so many kinds of cheese. I thought of nights at the theater and sipping the Empire’s finest wines in the palace gardens. So beautiful those gardens. Since I was a boy, I’d always loved to stare up at the five buttressed towers stretching so high in the sky, they reached into space itself. A spectacular metaphor for the Empire, grounded on Korda but grasping for the stars.
I thought of my father and tried to take solace in the fact that he’d be proud of me. After years of jockeying a desk, I’d finally become the spy he’d always expected. And I’d carried out my mission successfully. Ugly as it was, I’d done what had to be done.
I thought of how the news would crush him, his only son, and I felt my heart shred to bits.
“Put him in the water,” ordered Mmirehl. A pair of black sashes closed in and started to untie my wrists. Mmirehl went to the net and unhooked one of its corners. He lifted it and smiled at me like he was lifting the blankets for a child to slide into bed.
I looked at the pool, and seeing so many crooked gazes drowning in misery and torment, I knew it wouldn’t be soon enough.
CHAPTER 24
“It’s not surprisng wefeel terror. What is suprising is how wlling we are to inflict it on others.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
Ropes fell from my wrists. The black sashes grabbed my arms and guided me from my chair. Captain Mmirehl waited by the pool, net in hand.
They walked me to him, cold stone like ice under my bare feet. I didn’t fight it. My fate was sealed. Mmirehl was right when he’d once told me I wouldn’t be buried in dirt. The lampreys would suck my life away, drop by agonizing drop, then he would shove my body out the air lock, condemning me to drown for eternity.
I stood at the pool’s edge, toes dangling over the lip. I looked at Beleaux. I stood in his direct line of sight, but he didn’t see me. He was lost to this world, his face a gaunt echo of its former self. His mouth hung open, lips curled downward like he’d opened them to moan and left them that way long after his voice had spent itself to nothing.
“Get into the water,” said Mmirehl, his voice straight as the blade of an executioner’s sword.
I looked back at Mnai. His brows hovered low to shade determined eyes, and his head was tipped forward like he was walking into the wind, his jaw jutted just like Sali’s when she was intent on pushing through an obstacle.
Taking a deep breath, I aimed my gaze downward and watched the creatures slither through the water, tails sweeping left and right, their bodies shaped like badly healed scars. They moved slow, funnel-like mouths first, blindly bumping and feeling for new flesh to plant upon.
I was shivering as if a breeze blew across my wet skin. Except there was no wind. And I wasn’t wet.
“Get in,” repeated Mmirehl.
I couldn’t breathe, throat muscles tightening around my windpipe.
“Now or we’ll push you in.”
I tried to speak, but couldn’t jam a word though my constricted throat. I tried again and forced my voice out with a burst of air. “No,” I said. “I’ll talk.”
“I’ll tell you about the dead man,” I said with a crack of desperation. “I know all about him.”
Mmirehl looked past me to the admiral. Gaining approval, he told me to sit.
I padded back to my chair and rested my naked skin on the bamboo slats.
I fumbled for something to say. Anything that would delay the inevitable. “Let me see the picture again,” I told Mmirehl.
He obliged by holding out the comm unit.
I looked at myself for the second time. The picture wasn’t very old, but he was a stranger now. A wide-eyed fool responding to the calls of duty and family. That man wasn’t a murderer. Not yet. He hadn’t fallen for Sali. He hadn’t been blessed. He hadn’t killed more than a dozen bystanders with his sabotage.
He was a child. An ignorant child reaching for the stove’s pretty blue flame.
I was the scorched aftermath.
“George Barnes,” said Mmirehl. “Who is he?”
I dropped my head into my hands. “His name isn’t George.”
“We figured it was an assumed name. But the real question is why he looks so much like you.”
Captain Mmirehl was shouting at me now, but I wasn’t listening. I was too focused on the rabbit hole in my head. said the somber voice.
Mmirehl’s open palm struck my face, but I didn’t feel it. The psychological slap of Pol’s words were so much greater.
I struggled to stay focused on his voice after another slap.
Another slap struck my cheek.
Feeling the full weight of crushed hopes, I said,
Mmirehl said, “Hold him down.”
The black sashes grabbed my arms and legs, fingers squeezing down until my muscles ached. An arm forced itself under my chin, and the choke hold tightened until I could barely breathe.
Mmirehl had s
omething in his hand. Something that glistened like oil and twisted in his grip.
He lifted it to my eye, and the jawless mouth stretched wide, exposing circles around circles of close-packed teeth. A brown tongue reached for my pupil. I pressed myself against the back of the chair and tried to turn my head.
But my head wouldn’t budge. I closed my eyes, but fingers pressed into my eye socket and pried the lids back open.
The tongue tasted me, just a little sweep. Then came a full lick, the coarse swipe scraping across my eyeball. My eye burned like it had been blown full of dust. Reflexes made my eyelids twitch against the fingers that held them firm.
“Once it attaches,” said Mmirehl, “you won’t be able to pull it free without pulling out your eye.”
It licked me again. The pain was excruciating. Tears streamed from my eye, and my lungs heaved in my chest. Sweat raced down my forehead as I struggled against the arms and hands that held me tight. It was too much. It was easy for Pol to make me promise to keep silent, but he couldn’t feel what I felt. Couldn’t feel the teeth that were about to attach to my eye, or my life being devoured by this insatiable parasite.
The lamprey moved closer to my eye. So close that my entire field of vision was filled with teeth. I had to say something. Anything . . .
“My brother!” I shouted. “He was my brother.”
Mmirehl pulled the lamprey back, and the choke hold loosened enough to allow air to fully fill my lungs. I plucked the name from memory. I’d studied Kell’s bio for a year. “His name was Daniel,” I said between panting breaths. “Daniel Kell. He looked like me because he was my brother.”
“Your brother?” Mmirehl scoffed. “What was he doing here?”
Lies tumbled into place. “The Empire sent him. He snuck into my house. He took a boat under the city platform and climbed up my garbage chute. He tried to talk me into turning against you.”
Mmirehl took a quick glance at Beleaux and turned back to me, thought lines forming on his forehead. He was likely merging my story with the one he’d extracted from the boatman, seeking contradictions and, I hoped, finding none.
Encouraged by Pol’s words—and trying to forget that just moments ago he had told me to resign myself to torture—I told the black sashes to let me go. I was talking now. With a slight nod from Mmirehl, the black sashes released my hands, and the arm under my chin slipped away. However, a pair of heavy grips stayed on my shoulders.
I rubbed tears from my eye and craned my neck to look at the admiral. I had to see if he believed the lie, see if the rekindled hope burning inside me really had a chance to flourish. But his face hadn’t broken from its stern pose. He watched me meet his stare and doused the embers with a disapproving shake of his head. “I don’t believe you.”
I had no other lies. Only the truth. But these bastards didn’t deserve the truth. And I knew the truth would condemn me to the pool anyway.
The clang of a hatch echoed from somewhere out of sight. Sali raced into the room and made a hard stop.
I felt a surge of heat in my chest. I still had a chance.
She looked at me. She looked at her father. She looked at the pool, eyes darting from one victim to the next, her face blanching. “What is this place?”
“Who let her in here!” shouted Mmirehl, the lamprey still squeezed in his hands.
“Get away from him.” She rushed across the room to stand between Mmirehl and me.
The captain backpedaled a few steps and tossed the lamprey into the water. “How did you get in?”
Sali ignored him and turned to face me. “Are you okay?” She slapped at the hands that still held my shoulders. “Move this chair back.”
The chair scraped over the stone.
“Father,” she said, “whatever you think he did, he didn’t do it.”
“He hasn’t been truthful,” said the admiral. “He could be working for the enemy.”
“He can’t be working for the Empire. He was the one who talk-ed you into rebelling in the first place.”
“Show her,” he said to Mmirehl.
The captain promptly displayed my picture for her. “This man’s body was recently recovered from the water. He was murder-ed.”
Sudden doubt quirked her eyebrows. “Who is this, Drake?”
“Daniel.” I rubbed my watering eye. “My brother.”
“Your brother was here?”
“Yes.” I loaded my voice with as much conviction as it could hold. I had to convince Sali and hope she could convince her father. I grasped her wrist like it was a lifeline and looked into her eyes. “I killed him, Sali.”
“Let her go,” ordered the admiral.
I did as I was told, letting go of her wrist but not the lock I had on her eyes. “The Empire sent him to talk me into turning against your father. He promised they wouldn’t punish me if I did as he said, but I knew it was a lie. We had a fight, and I killed him.”
“When did this happen?” she asked.
“The night before you came back from your mother’s. His body was in the closet, and I threw it out the window when you were in the shower.”
She brought her hand to her face, the squint of her eyes telling me she was thinking through every detail of that morning.
“The cuts on your hand,” she said. “They weren’t from a crab. They were from the fight.”
I nodded.
“Your chest was scrape-ed up, too. More wounds from the fight. And that was why you were acting so strange. That’s why you haven’t been the same person ever since.”
Another nod.
“If this story is true, then why didn’t you simply tell us?” asked the admiral. “You could’ve told us the night it happen-ed. You could’ve told us when the body was recover-ed. But you didn’t.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the well was dry. I needed that perfect lie, that perfect fragment of logic, but it didn’t exist.
“You could’ve told us,” Admiral Mnai said. “Nobody would’ve condemn-ed you for it.”
Mnai was right that my claim wasn’t rational. Reasoned argument wasn’t the way forward. My mind shifted direction. I had to go big. Bold. I had to take it to the edge and leap off.
“You need to tell us,” said Sali.
I pinched my lips tight, knowing I had to act like a man who had been holding it all in. I crossed my arms and hugged them tight to my body. I closed in on myself like a man who had been cursed with a guilty enough conscience to hide what he’d done.
“Talk,” said the admiral.
I contracted the muscles in my shoulders and neck. Tensed my legs and gritted my teeth. I held my breath until blood rushed to my cheeks. A chorus of “whys” peppered me from every direction. I let the tension mount, my shoulders starting to shake, holding on until the time came to let loose.
Intentionally forgetting my nakedness I sprang from my chair. “He was my brother!” I shouted. Turning on the admiral, I threw my chair aside and blasted him with unbridled emotion. “I loved him, damn you. I didn’t want to kill him.”
I pounded my chest, tears leaking from my eyes. “He was my brother. What I had to do was none of your fucking business.”
Giving my chest a slap, I channeled every ounce of lamprey-fueled terror into a fiery torrent. “I sacrificed everything for you, you stupid, ignorant fool.” I stalked up to Mnai, spitting bitter words with every step. “I gave up my career. I gave up my home and my family so you could lead this world to a better future. And now
I’ve murdered my own brother. His blood was my blood, and I spilled it to preserve what we’ve made. How dare you accuse me of disloyalty? You were nothing without me! And this is how you repay me? Torture? Accusations?
“Fuck you!”
Black sashes closed in, but I didn’t raise a hand to the admiral. Just kept marching him backward until he bumped the wall. I pressed my chest into his, pushed my face up to his chin, and unleashed the loudest, longest, most primal scream of my life.
Mnai stayed silent after my voice was exhausted. Creases stood out in the corners of his eyes while the two of us stayed locked in a high-intensity staring contest.
A hand landed lightly on my shoulder. I backed away from the admiral and turned to face Sali. “It’s okay,” she said, wide eyes full of compassion. “Let’s go home.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” said Mmirehl.
I waited on the admiral’s word, his face lined with tension.
Sali tugged on my arm. “Come on, where is your uniform?”
I went to the pile of clothes sitting under an aquarium filled with green-striped fish. Mmirehl and Mnai didn’t budge. I pulled on my pants. My comm unit was still where I’d left it in the rear pocket.
Mmirehl watched me with a disapproving stare. The admiral with his unbreakable gaze.
With an unbuttoned shirt over my shoulders and boots on my feet, I followed Sali toward the exit.
“Wait,” said the admiral. He covered the ground between us with two long strides. He gave his daughter one of his gap-toothed smiles. “I need a quick word with the man. I’ll send him right out.”
She gave a long, suspicious stare.
He widened the grin. “He won’t be harm-ed, child.”
With a reluctant nod, she went down the corridor. The admiral waited to hear the clank of the closing hatch before turning off the lights on his smile. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I no longer believe a thing you say.”
“I wasn’t lying.”
He struck quick, the heel of his hand ramming into my solar plexus. Air whooshed out my lungs, and I gulped for air.
Tides of Maritinia Page 19