Seaborn

by Chris Howard

  She kicked and clutched at the walls of the cave, tearing off a mat of sea-sponge in her scramble to right herself.

  Get into open water.

  She twisted her body around and climbed clumsily toward the mouth, her fins catching on the sea-growth on the floor, tiny flowers with mouths and questing tentacles, rigid patches of needlework sponge. Snags of rock cut through her gloves and her blood twisted in the water like smoke, clouding the dim light at the cave mouth. She pushed through it, and shoved her head forward.

  The invisible current hit her, pushing her neck back. It tore her fingers from the rocks, and threw her deeper into the cave. She kicked madly, clawing her way to the entrance again. She ripped a big chunk of sponge off the wall, and shoved it behind her.

  Corina froze.

  She forgot to breathe, and the whole ocean went silent. She turned to her left, her eyes locked on the stretch of bare rock where she had torn off the sponge.

  A human handprint stood out on the flat stone face. It was like a blood painting on the wall of some Paleolithic era cave.

  Corina's mind raced, throwing thoughts in every direction. How? She choked on her first conclusions. Questions sparked and went cold. Forty meters down. Never. This cave's never been above the waterline. Ice age? Sea level dropped hundreds of feet. Okay, even if it ever had, the water would have washed away man's presence thousands of years ago. She started to shake her head, her muscles just coming into sync with her thoughts. It's paint or blood on bare rock.

  And she wanted to touch it. Badly.

  Paint or blood in saltwater. Under a hundred-year-old growth of sea-sponge. Who—whose hand?

  She forgot where she was, or how she had been dragged there. She stared at the print. Long fingers, a wide palm, a man's hand. The pigment blurred like webbing between the fingers.

  Her eyes dropped in alarm to her own hand reaching up, fingers spreading to match the one on the rock. A stringy haze of blood seeped from her glove, twirling in the water like strips of black gauze.

  She placed her right hand against the stone, over the wound-red print. Her fingers flexed but didn't reach the tips. She pressed her palm hard against the unyielding stone.

  A bolt of heat rushed through her. Her arm and shoulder went numb. She sucked in air in tight little drags, rabbit breaths, in-and-out gusts seesawing in her ears.

  She had ... done something. The handprint was a lock of some kind. She was a key. She couldn't catch up to her thoughts to find out how she knew that. Her mind raced with a flood of ... someone else's information.

  She arched her back, kicking violently, struggling to get away from it. The stone cracked, and whatever was locked behind the handprint fired out of its prison and into her body.

  Corina flew across the cave and slammed into the wall of sharp coral and rock.

  Sobbing in terror, her mouth opened and she spit out her regulator. Something moved through her hair, against her neck ... pain shot into her head like hot iron coming through bone.

  The world buckled inside itself, narrowed down to the iridescent circle from her shoulder light. It danced along the cave wall and her soul nearly followed it out of her body; it remained anchored only by thin threads of sensation, the sound of her chattering teeth and the hot seep of urine down her thighs.

  The motion of the world slowed to a crawl. Her legs glided up in front of her, and a sizzling sound tickled her ears.

  I can't move.

  Her eyes closed and she couldn't open them again. She couldn't lift her neck. She screamed ... inside her head. Nothing came from her mouth.

  Some primitive directive fired repeatedly, told her to close her mouth. Do not let the ocean inside your mouth. Too late.

  Her regulator hovered over her, swaying up and back like an offended cobra. Even without her eyes, she knew it was always in reach. She couldn't lift her arms, or curl her fingers.

  She sagged in the ocean's embrace, unable to stir the smallest of muscles. She tried to move her feet and wrinkle her nose. She tasted something sour, as if someone had shoved her face in a bucket of rancid cabbage—but it wasn't her doing the tasting.

  Then she heard her own voice—someone else controlling it—using a thoroughly disgusted tone. It snapped off a bunch of words in a language she didn't understand.

  She felt her lips move, her throat contracting, lungs struggling to make words, but it was someone else making her mouth and throat say them. She heard bits of words: "Lepto ... “ followed by "koost-ho ... “ She didn't catch the rest, but she heard the revulsion, a bottomless hatred in the tone.

  Someone using her voice said the word "Thalassa" several times. A compound form then burst from her mouth, "Thalassogen?is."

  She felt the words against the inside of her own throat, rumbling through her head, and the last of her breath escaped her lungs, passing her lips in fat shaky bubbles of air.

  Her body shuddered and curled into a knot, her arms wrapping her knees. She felt her mouth move feverishly, more words she didn't know, and without any sound. Her lips opened expectantly and let the ocean inside. She tasted it, salty and ice cold against her teeth. It punched into the back of her mouth, down her throat and filled her empty lungs.

  Her mind halted in terror. It was like experiencing someone else's drowning. A burn like hot metal shot up her spine, sharp cramps gripped her stomach. Every thought in her head disintegrated. Her mind went blank, dead, a bitter black pool.

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  Chapter Five

  Visitors

  They laughed when I used the word kiss?r?s, meaning “clad in ivy,” to describe their hauberks of pointed pale green plates sewn to a thin, finely woven undergarment of a material like silk.

  —Journals of Michael Augustus Henderson

  * * * *

  Kassandra Alkimides froze, her eyes going unfocused halfway through the pages of Jane's Underwater Warfare Systems. She tilted her head to listen, glaring at the doorway to the kitchen.

  "Something's in the house.” She whispered the words with only the slightest movement of her lips.

  She dropped the book and curled her hand into a fist, hiding the scar tissue lining the skin between each finger.

  With her hearing focused on the quiet house, she put her weight down on her heels, leaned forward, and grabbed her chair by the seat, lifting and sliding it noiselessly away from the table at the same time.

  Her shorts were riding up. She gave them a tug, and then slid one hand around her back to tug her T-shirt from the waistband, loosening it by rolling her shoulders. She didn't want her clothes to interfere in a fight.

  She crept past the dining room table, then stopped moving and stopped breathing. Her gaze shot left, chasing a new noise in the house, a faint scraping sound, something metal dragged against gritty stone. A soft splattering sound followed.

  She took a few steps, entering the short hall from the kitchen.

  Kassandra listened at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor and the bedrooms. She looked up the stairwell, into the afternoon sun casting big yellow squares across the white walls, and blew a short burst of air. It returned to her a moment later and she sniffed its contents.

  Whatever it was, it wasn't upstairs.

  She stepped into the kitchen, glancing past the refrigerator, the center island counter, to the sink. She released a normal breath this time, a cautious sense of relief building inside her as she approached. Her shoulders dropped.

  Through the partly open window over the sink, she saw her father out in the side yard raking leaves off the drive. She looked down at the faucet. A drop of water fell from the tap and hit the drain.

  Who left it running?

  Kassandra pushed the lever down, furious at someone's stupid mistake.

  She turned, sniffing the air. The house still didn't feel right; she stopped everything in her body except her heart and listened, matching the sounds her father made with the metal clicking and scraping sounds she'd heard a m
oment before.

  They hadn't come from the rake against the gravel.

  Her arms lifted away from her sides, fingers flexing as she turned from her father toward the shadowy stairs leading deep under the house to the grotto and continuing through caves to the Atlantic. She walked around the center counter, past the fridge to the top of the basement stairs, and blew a breath into the cool darkness.

  What could get through the gate?

  She grabbed the cold railings with both hands and sniffed, closing her eyes a moment to zero in on the smell. The ocean, a salty gauze that hung in the air, points of pungent seaweed ... and something ... someone. Wet footsteps approaching.

  When she opened her eyes, four helmeted soldiers in green-scaled hauberks, all of them dripping seawater, stepped from the shadows of the basement landing, and pointed short heavy spears at her. The front pair had their weapons low, aimed at her knees, their cheek guards down, thick glassy green plates covering the skin of their faces. Kassandra let her eyes shift from one soldier's dark blues to the other's olive-browns. Blue-eyes coughed up a mouthful of water, spat and then blinked up at her. She stared back at them and they bared their teeth threateningly.

  Like dogs.

  A third soldier crouched behind them, holding his spear higher, the tip aimed at her face. The fourth she presumed to be in command, standing straighter, a less threatening posture—simply because he did not feel the need to threaten young women. His cheek guards were up like pointed ears on the sides of his helmet. His long black hair, tangled and heavy with seawater, curled in stringy lumps across his shoulders. His nose was broad, and he had tidepool-clear gray eyes that only left her face to read the word, Thalassogen?s—Seaborn—on her bright yellow T-shirt. He gave her a moment to run or scream. When she did not, he narrowed his eyes in impatience.

  "Where is the Rexenor lord who lives here?” The commanding soldier pushed a calloused broken-nailed finger at her.

  She stared back at him with infuriating coolness.

  Kassandra looked into his eyes, studying him. Something bubbled behind them, not fear, but uncertainty, as if he suddenly found himself unable to determine why he was there. She lifted his name and other details right out of his thoughts.

  Stratolaos. These men are trusted House Dosianax soldiers. The king's House—and by blood, mine.

  Kassandra let her gaze follow a glassy stream of the sea that ran down his cheek, off his chin. He swallowed the saliva collecting in his mouth, his lips curling in disgust.

  Her focus dropped to the hand he extended toward her and the water that pooled in the gaps between his fingers where a thin web of skin connected each.

  When she did not answer right away, he jabbed his finger again, shaking the water into the air. “Who are you? Can't you speak?"

  She raised an eyebrow, mildly surprised. She tilted her head and in a well-mannered tone, said, “It is customary for visitors to introduce themselves first."

  "How dare you use that tone—"

  "Stratolaos.” She said the man's name in a cold steady voice that cut through his words.

  Stratolaos jumped, startled at hearing his name uttered by the young woman. His voice broke in panic, but he managed to gargle out the words: “In the name of the king, swim—move aside!"

  Kassandra let her hands slide off the railings. She spread the fingers on her right hand, closed her eyes, let out a breath, and snapped her hand around a sword grip. Like crawling mats of vine, a knee-length hauberk of thousands of tiny silvery-blue scales bloomed and slid over her shoulders, tight around her waist and along her arms.

  One moment she stood at the head of the stairs, a young surface woman in a yellow T-shirt and shorts, and the next, she was pointing a sword at them and in armor finer than any they'd ever seen.

  Kassandra felt the influence of the warrior queen Andromache stir to life in her hands and shoulders, a burn of excitement that raced through her muscles, waking them up with smooth flexing tugs and squeezes, preparing for any spin of advantage a battle might throw, simple intimidation to cutting out the commander's heart and lifting it above her head, bleeding through her fingers.

  Kassandra opened her eyes to find the wet hands of the three spearmen re-gripping hafts and the scuffle of their feet on damp stone, shifting them for balance.

  They were uncomfortable out of the water.

  She thumbed closed the throat buckles of her armor, brought her sword around, the lusterless blade whistling over their heads.

  Nodding at Stratolaos, she took up a fighting stance at the head of the stairway. The old maxim, Kill the king and the army will fall, drifted through her thoughts, and her eyes automatically followed the seams in the commander's armor.

  Stratolaos blinked away his alarm and swung a crossbow up at her.

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  Chapter Six

  Captive Ocean

  There is a world deep in the Atlantic, a kingdom made up of nine great houses that have endured thousands of years without anyone on the surface, in the modern world, knowing it exists. The Seaborn have lived and perished, fought wars at a thousand fathoms, and banished noble houses to the Arctic. Many of them possess hereditary magical power, bleeds, that pass from parent to child or a grandchild. Some have ventured to the surface as exiles or as slaves to the Seaborn rulers—given the Porthmeus surname. Some have come to see True Helios—the sunlight—with their own eyes, reflected in the towers of surface cities. Others hide from cruel Seaborn rulers.

  —Michael Henderson, notes

  * * * *

  Corina woke with seawater heavy in her mouth, trickling to the back of her throat, her body breathing it in, her lungs expanding. She was alive.

  She groped hazily for a sense of how much time had passed. She had the feeling she had been awake for some time, but everything had been so still there hadn't been enough of a difference between death and the low hum of some neutral state to make her notice.

  There was motion now, her body stirring to life.

  She heard clicking noises. It could have been things moving in the rocks in the cave, but it also sounded like her teeth clattering in icy seawater.

  At this temperature—for any length of time—I should be dead.

  Then her eyes opened.

  Corina didn't open them. Someone else did, something inside her, something foreign, the prisoner she had released from the stone behind the bloody handprint. She felt it exploring her senses. She felt her lungs expand, her body living, her heart beating, everything working under the water.

  Then the thing that controlled her moved her legs, her arms, her eyes, her tongue. It was a man.

  Panic echoed through her mind. She'd had no trouble getting rid of Alan Yeater, but this guy—she had a feeling he would be worse than Alan Yeater—he would be more than a little difficult to walk away from.

  * * * *

  Almost two hundred years...

  Aleximor the Bone-gatherer blinked his new eyes. Almost two hundred years since he had last opened and closed them. These were his now. He scowled, squinted, and opened them wide. They felt strange and dry and could not see as well in the dark as his old ones.

  He tried out his new voice.

  "Finally, it is time for the king to die."

  A shock ran through his new body at the high pitch. He foraged for a word ... puppet? Something similar to that, but closer to the controls, as if the puppet and master were one, as if the master could fit inside the puppet's body and wear it like a costume.

  But a thinling! Some woman from the surface had released him from his prison.

  "What wonderful and awful fortune at once."

  Aleximor looked down at his new host and spat, a curl of saliva tumbling through seawater. The woman had almost drowned before he realized her body would need immediate ... alteration ... in order to breathe under the sea. He had managed, but only just.

  A female body—shorter than he was used to, with a higher voice. He doubted very much if
her vocal range could come close to what he expected.

  He touched the mask clinging to her face, and then his focus wandered up and down the arms of his host. He didn't understand the thick spongy skin she wore over her natural skin, dull black with violet stripes.

  His new fingers glided over it to the wrists. Rough and grippy in some places, slick in others. It wasn't like any kind of clothing he recognized.

  Some kind of armor? Protecting her from what?

  He looked up at the jagged gap of blue coming from the cave entrance, a question starting to form. What is this surface woman doing by herself? How is it even possible for her to reach this depth?

  He had dragged her part of the way, but his retrieval tools would not have selected her if she had not been below the ocean's ceiling for some time.

  Aleximor paused and drew a long breath. He pulled in another one. Alive. Again. Real death had been so close.

  He wasn't as quick with his voice and words as he had once been, his own soul sluggish after two centuries of imprisonment, his understanding too slow, this new host unfamiliar. He had tried to substitute his psyche for hers, but she had seeped back in with him like an octopus seeking shelter, squeezing into some impossibly narrow space.

  He made an angry snorting noise. He had expected a Seaborn host, not someone from the damned surface.

  Aleximor let his new fingers play over his neoprene outer covering. “I have your body for now. It is yours no longer.” He spoke to the puppet on the off chance it was capable of listening.

  * * * *

  Corina was a groggy spectator at some perverse show, watching someone else control her arms and legs. She felt the internal sensation that went along with the hair standing up on her neck, a wave of cold that spread and branched through her thoughts. A moment of paralysis caught her. Her thoughts slowly loosened and fell into place.

  Think, girl.

  Uh ... Demons. Corina vaguely remembered some rule about demons from stories she'd read, something about wizards and demons. Your true name is power. There are things in the world that can enslave you with your name.