Seawitch g-7

by Kat Richardson

  He shrugged. “Busy.”

  I suppose they would have responded as well to anyone, now that the spell was broken, but everyone seemed to have agreed it was my job to let the ghosts out of their shells. As uncomfortable as it was, I managed to creep to each of the receptacles and brush away the last remaining strands that held the souls of the drowned at bay. Each time they poured out and upward in swells of lambent mist and shimmering light, sighing and weeping, then crying out in joy and vaulting for the deepening night sky that stretched above us, pierced like black velvet with the brightness of stars. The river of the Milky Way, tipped for a while into our planet’s tilted, whirling view, seemed to grow brighter and thicker as the ghosts rushed away from their captivity into freedom. An uncanny wind blew them away in coils of silvery mist that turned a massive head in our direction just long enough for me to recognize the passing shape of the Guardian Beast shepherding the spirits of the dead onward. It didn’t pause to say thank you and the velocity of its passage rocked and shook the boat as easily as an autumn leaf. I got no sense that it cared the deed was done or done by me. The balance of power in the area had been leveled and that was all that concerned it. There was, indeed, nothing human or humane remaining in the Beast and I finally put that niggling thought away, relieved.

  When the last spirit was no more than a memory of sound and light in our senses, I eased back into my chair once again, satisfied but struggling with my exhaustion and discomfort. I glanced at Shelly, who was still standing, looking up at the sky, smiling a bittersweet kind of smile.

  It seemed wrong to break the moment but I had to. “I think . . . we’re done here,” I said.

  She lowered her eyes to mine, her expression growing more grave and a touch sad. “I still need peace with the otter people.”

  I glanced at Father Otter and she took that as I meant it; it wasn’t up to me.

  “Will you stay a moment as my witnesses?” she asked, looking from me to Zantree and back. . . .

  As we nodded to her, Father Otter cast rapid glances at each of us, lingering longest on Shelly and Fielding. He stared hard at Fielding, who shrank from his gaze, for a moment, then turned back to Shelly, asking, “You don’t want this one?”

  “What would I want him for?”

  “Revenge. He harmed you, he broke your power, he ruined your value, and he allowed your mother to imprison you.”

  “Why should I care after all this time about what was or could have been? None of that is important anymore. Do you want to keep on living in the past? Living in a state of war because of some stupid dispute hundreds of years old? We could do a lot for each other, my people and yours. We don’t have to keep on killing each other. You and me . . . we don’t have to be friends but we could at least call a truce and let our people heal.”

  Father Otter scowled but it wasn’t the angry expression he’d had before. “Your people, our people . . . That may be enough for the Puget folk, but none of the others will abide by such a truce.”

  “Not at first but we can do our best for ourselves and let the rest come around in their own time.”

  “What about the Columbia people? They will kill and die and they will not respect our truce if we cross the bar.”

  “Then maybe we should send an emissary. Someone who’s from the Columbia.” Shelly turned her gaze and looked hard at Fielding. “We can net two fish with one cast: Send Gary away from here and let him be useful elsewhere. And never come back,” she added under her breath.

  “What does it net us to send him away?”

  Shelly laughed and the sound set my teeth on edge. “You don’t actually want him to stay? Disruptive, whining, self-centered idiot that he is.”

  Fielding sat down hard on the deck. “I’m not that bad!”

  “In a shark’s eye,” Shelly shot back. She looked at Father Otter. “Am I right?”

  Father Otter was clearly calculating something. “We can send him back to his mother’s people . . . Though we hate to give such a prize away. . . .”

  “Gary’s no prize,” Shelly said.

  Father Otter turned his head and cocked it to one side. “To the Columbia people he is. His mother was the last royal dobhar-chú on the river.”

  Fielding made an ugly face at Father Otter. “You lied to me! You said you didn’t know anything about my mother!”

  “Her whereabouts. Who she was—certainly we knew that, whelp!”

  “You didn’t say so.”

  “Why should we give such information to you when you brought us nothing but trouble? And you didn’t ask the right questions.” Father Otter turned his attention back to Shelly, as if Fielding had disappeared. “We will consider sending a message. . . .”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t want him gone as much as I do.”

  “What do you offer us to make it worth our effort to conduct him safely back to the Columbia? Our folk outnumber yours and we could order them to attack again.”

  “That battle will not be as easy as you think, Fa Dobhar-chú. My mother’s power no longer restrains mine and you don’t know what I can do. . . .” She gave him a cunning look and stared him down for a moment. Having made her threat, she paused and then her face brightened and she added, “Besides . . . I have treasures: pearls and the salvage of hundreds of lost ships. . . . Such knowledge as your folk could do much with. And I will share with you if you become my allies rather than my enemies.”

  Father Otter smiled a little; it wasn’t a greedy smile but an appreciative one.

  “What if I don’t want to go back to Oregon?” Fielding objected. “You can’t compel me, either of you. Not if I choose to live in this form.”

  Solis cleared his throat. “In this form you will return to Seattle with me and stand trial for what happened aboard the Seawitch.”

  Fielding looked smug but the expression was wobbly. “By what evidence and under what charge?”

  “Piracy, perhaps, or criminal negligence as the captain who allowed his ship to be taken and his charges killed. And as you are the only surviving member of the crew, the questions will be pointed. If your answers don’t please the court, you would be remanded for psychological examination at Western State Hospital, which could take quite some time in that landlocked and miserable place.”

  Quinton cleared his throat, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Actually . . . if his answers or actions—like turning into an otter in the holding cell—set off the wrong alarm bells, he’ll be made to disappear.”

  We all turned to regard Quinton with a range of emotions from curiosity to terror.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your dad’s little project, would it?”

  He was pale and upset. “Yes.” He looked at the others and continued. “I can’t tell you much but certain groups within the U.S. government know that there are . . . people like Fielding and Shelly and Harper. One of these groups is headed by my father, who is even less agreeable than Father Otter here. If Dad gets wind of someone like Fielding, his agents will hunt him down and snatch him. He won’t even make it to court.” He shifted his focus to Fielding. “Once that happens, you get to be the biggest rat in their lab and these guys . . . they redefine the term ‘living hell.’ You really, really don’t want them to find you. Or even hear of you.”

  “You’d narc on me?” Fielding asked, appalled.

  Quinton gave an adamant shake of the head. “Not in a million years. Not to anyone and especially not to these guys. No one here would.” He cast a desperate glance around and all the humans nodded. “But if you are booked on charges, information about you will get out. That’s just the way the booking databases are connected to other parts of the electronic world and there are specialized programs cruising that information pool like sharks looking for the right kind of food—food like you. Once they figure you out, they’ll descend like ninjas and you’ll disappear in a small puff of paperwork that will claim you’ve been transferred to a special facility that doesn�
�t exist. No one will see you leave or where you go, and if guys like my dad have their way, you’ll never come out.”

  Fielding’s eyes widened, his mouth gaped, and his chest began to jerk as his breathing went panicky and shallow. He was ready to bolt but there was nowhere to go.

  I caught his eye. “I recommend that you go to back to the Columbia. As their royal dobhar-chú, you’ll be a lot safer than you are as Gary Fielding.”

  “Only if you behave,” Father Otter put in. “Kin they may be but the Columbia folk are not easy. They will make you earn your place—as we should have done.”

  Fielding nodded like a broken doll. “All right. OK, I’ll go back to the Columbia.”

  Father Otter bared his teeth. “We will know if you do not.”

  Fielding flattened himself on the deck, a cowed and horrified expression on his face. “Pax, pax,” he muttered.

  Shelly gazed at Father Otter. “Can he be trusted to swim the whole way?”

  “I’ll take him,” Zantree offered. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, the gleaming cutlass in his fist making him look every inch the pirate captain, although the starstruck smile he turned on Shelly did somewhat ruin the effect.

  Shelly seemed bemused by it all. “Will you? Why?”

  “Well . . . I’ve got this big ol’ boat to myself these days and I rarely take her out, but now I’ll have a top-notch bar pilot along. I always did have a yen to cross the bar on my own. I’m sure Gary can teach me a few things—being half otter he must have a feel for the water I don’t. I think that would be a fine adventure. And . . . well . . . it would be my pleasure to do something for you.”

  “You would take this risk for me? How can you trust him after what he has done? His presence nearly got your boat destroyed,” Shelly objected.

  “Oh, I imagine your folk and his folk will want to check in on us once in a while . . . won’t you?” He turned his attention to Fielding with a gimlet eye. “And you won’t dare give me trouble. Will you?”

  Fielding looked horrified but he nodded docilely enough.

  Zantree looked back to Shelly. “First we’ll have to drop these folks off, though. If it’s all right with you.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “It’s a wonderful plan. If Father Otter agrees . . .”

  The dobhar-chú gave a stiff nod.

  Zantree turned to me and asked, “You have any objection to being dropped off at Victoria? You can take the hydroplane in the morning and be home before lunch. I think Gary and I’d be best served to head straight on down the coast as soon as possible. Don’t you?”

  I agreed. “That sounds like a plan. Can we pause long enough to drop this off?” I added, pointing to the Valencia’s bell lying on the deck.

  “Where do you want to take it?” Zantree asked.

  “Back to its proper home. Out where the Valencia went down.”

  “Well . . . it’s a bit of a ways . . .”

  Shelly smirked. “Not with my help.”

  Zantree smiled like a kid with a present. “Would you?” I had the feeling Paul Zantree was utterly enchanted with the new sea witch—though not in the usual way.

  Shelly’s smile warmed to something genuine. “Of course.” Then she turned to Fielding. “Be a better man this time, Gary. The nature of a second chance is that you only get one.”

  EPILOGUE

  As wonderful as it had felt releasing the spirits that had so long lain imprisoned by the previous sea witch, I was exhausted, sore, and miserable, and I wasn’t convinced I was the only one—just the worst off. The human vote was to head out in the morning, after we’d all had a chance to rest. Fielding went off with Father Otter, unhappily but not actively resisting, to be watched over by his furry kin for the night—just in case. With the assistance of Shelly and her merfolk, the cruise back up Spieden Channel in the morning was as smooth and swift as an ice cube sliding down a satin tablecloth and we passed the turn for Victoria Harbour about ten in the morning, making Pachena Point less than two hours later. There we broke a bottle of red wine over the bell at Zantree’s insistence, and, asking for the help of Poseidon—I was a bit leery of this, but Zantree claimed we had to—we ceremoniously heaved the Valencia’s bell overboard and let it sink to rejoin the last remains of the ship from which it had been taken long ago.

  We entrusted the emptied shells, bells, bottles, urns, bowls, and boxes that had contained the spirits of the drowned and shipwrecked to the merfolk for disposal in the most appropriate places. All but the first brass bell, which we carried away to return to Seawitch.

  Shelly’s merfolk, though not much seen, were in evidence throughout the trip in the persistent strangeness of waves and wind that ran fair on our stern even when every other boat in sight was caught up the other way. We couldn’t do much about the tide, but with Zantree’s knowledge of the currents, we didn’t have to. We slipped back to Victoria ahead of the turn of the tide and Quinton, Solis, and I disembarked on the pier at Victoria Harbour at last, carrying our baggage and feeling altogether grubby, sore, and disconnected from the normal world. Since it was Sunday, the Victoria Clipper’s morning hydroplane was full and we had to wait for the next boat. We did have some complications because we had appeared pretty much out of nowhere, but both Solis and I had our passports with us all the time and I am still not quite sure what Quinton said to earn a startled look and a quick escort to a private office before he was released again under a barrage of nervous smiles from the Victoria Harbour master.

  On the high-speed ferry trip back to Seattle, Solis and I discussed the reports we would file. For the first time in my experience of him, he had no interest in telling the unvarnished truth about a case. As far as I could tell, he was as ready to bury this one in obscure paperwork and oblique wording as I was. It was weird to feel so much in tune with him and I wondered if I was going to feel this new oddness forever. I found myself calling him Rey more often than I’d meant to. It was a strange way to build a friendship but it looked as if that’s what we had. Solis even invited us to come home with him for dinner but we declined. I didn’t want to know what he would say or not say about our trip—not yet at least.

  It was a long bus ride from the Clipper terminal downtown to my place in West Seattle, since the sporadic foot ferry to Alki was not running. Quinton and I leaned our heads together and didn’t talk. I loved the quietness we fell into after our hectic weekend of monster seeking and ghost saving. We barely spoke for the next two days, thinking about what had passed and simply enjoying the quiet of being together at home again, while I gave my ribs and my arm the rest they needed.

  Quinton’s anxiety about his father died away once we’d been able to talk for a few minutes in bed one night. I still felt sore and delicate in body, but my emotions were calm. I did not need to fret about my friends, my lovers, or the vicissitudes of guardians and ghosts.

  The first day at home I checked my computer for anything that really needed my attention before I stuck myself in the shower. In the backlog of weekend e-mail, I found a note from Mara and Ben Danziger. It was long and rambling, as Mara often was, and I found myself tearing up a bit over the familiar tone.

  On the subject of the dobhar-chú, I can’t say as I’m the best source. Although they’re of Irish origin I’ve never seen one and most folks say they’re long gone—by which I mean the beastly ones, not the common otter, as the term is now used. All tales agree that they are vicious and entirely animal in nature, having only the instinct and cunning of a beast and none of the reason of higher creatures. I do hope you haven’t had to tangle with them. Perhaps Ben and Brian will wish to go in search of them. . . .

  But it’s truly a pleasure to hear from you! We’ve been out in the English countryside with a circle of mad druids preparing for the summer solstice and entirely out of touch with the computer for weeks. It’s a pleasure all of its own, yet I’m missing my friends in Seattle terribly. I had not thought I would feel so much a foreigner, yet I often do—and I am no longe
r the cleverest witch in the room—which quite puts me back on my heels. But the news is that Ben has been offered another teaching position here in England now that the primary work on the book is done, so we are likely to remain a while longer on loan, so to speak. I shall certainly miss you and Quinton and now that the research is over, I suppose I shall pine for the excitement of investigating things. I know we had a rough patch before our parting, but that has not put an end to our friendship. I hope that in distance we may rediscover the value of compassionate friends. . . .

  If Mara meant me, I was afraid I didn’t really measure up, though I was trying. I was struck by the phrase “compassionate friends.” This was what the Guardian Beast was not and what I had been lucky enough to find in the people I was able to call friends: the Danzigers, Quinton, Solis—I found it strange to think of him as a friend, but that was surely what he was now—and Phoebe Mason, with whom I needed to do some fence mending. Friendship wasn’t always easy and I thought of Linda Starrett and her lost friend Odile and wished there was something I could have done to comfort that lonely woman. But there was nothing in my power. No amount of compassion in me would mend the hole in her life.

  It occurred to me that human compassion, as much as my ability in the Grey, was what had forced me into the role I had. I wasn’t very good at compassion—I tended more toward the hard-ass side of the line—but I had considerably more of it than the Guardian Beast. And I had friends who reminded me of the need for it. That was perhaps the real reason I was the one tasked with being the Hands of the Guardian. I’d met one other Greywalker in my life and he was not like me—a colder, harder man whose better impulses rarely broke past the shell of his bitterness. He felt little need for friends or to seek justice.

  Solis sought justice in the law, but in the end it was not the law to which we had turned in the matter of the Seawitch. We had agreed, with a pang of guilty conscience, to lay the legal blame on Gary Fielding—a negligent captain who’d been busy with his private relations with another of the crew and allowed his boat into dangerous waters on autopilot, where it had been taken up in the tidal race in the straits and swept out to sea with all aboard lost. We claimed the boat had drifted in and been returned to her berth by an odd stroke of luck and a sailor who was in the country illegally and had been deported the same day he’d dropped off the boat. Having laid the blame, we then let Fielding disappear in the fiction of an anonymous death rather than become a lab rat in a nightmare experiment—or be hounded to death by his own people. We were both a little surprised that the police and the insurance company bought the story, but in the end they did. I even got a bonus from the company for wrapping it up so quickly—which made me laugh all the way to the bank. Perhaps we would regret having tempered justice with compassion someday, but not today.