by Helen Adams
I hugged him. I left him right there, gaping, and went to get dressed.
Half an hour and a hearty cooked breakfast later there was a knock at the door. Raz got up but I waved him away. I was healed now, dammit, and I could answer my own damned door.
I peered through the spy-hole. Then wished that I hadn’t. While the woman standing outside my flat wasn’t a golem, troll, or anything intent on ripping my head from shoulders, she could still cause trouble.
“It’s my boss!” I hissed. She stood outside my flat in all her Black Widow glory, drawing the night down into a middle-classed pair of trousers and a sweater. Melodramatic? Moi?
“Mina?” Raz sounded surprised. Then he shrugged. “What harm can she do?”
“How about sack me?”
Something pricked at my memory – something I needed to tell Raz, something about Mina – but it was there and gone in a second. I didn’t have time to chase it down.
I imagined ignoring her. Pretending I was still asleep. She’d go away, and I could get on with what I needed to do.
Only she wouldn’t go away. I knew she wouldn’t. I sighed and opened the door.
Mina Grey looked up at me. Her brown eyes moved over my damaged face. I didn’t see a scrap of emotion.
Words tried to push out of my mouth. I gulped them down, knowing that I’d say something stupid – something I shouldn’t – and she’d finally have enough to sack me.
“Alice told me what happened. You have my sympathy.”
There was no inflection to her voice. Had she always been this flat? Would it kill her just to say ‘sorry’? That’s what most people did. Most normal people, anyway.
“May I come in?” she tried.
Nope. No, non, nien. She wasn’t setting one pointed toe inside my flat.
“Sorry, Mina.” I tried to sound contrite. I didn’t try very hard. “The place is a tip. I meant to clean it at the weekend, but… well.”
I shrugged. It was a good shrug. It implied that, because I’d had the living shit beaten out of me, I just hadn’t had the time for housework.
“Of course, of course…” She looked away.
When she looked back, I flinched.
If I’d thought she’d been flat before, it was nothing to what I saw now. The woman looking back at me was empty. Not just vacant – not just distant – she was gone. There wasn’t a spark of humanity left in her eyes, no hint of warmth or dislike or boredom or anything.
Hadn’t Alice said something about this? I’d speculated that maybe Mina had been having a fit. I wondered that again now, and I also wondered – with more than a little alarm – if she was having a stroke. What were the symptoms…?
“Why aren’t you dead?”
I stared at her, slack-jawed with surprise. Her voice had deepened, roughened, become something I struggled to recognise. Her face twisted with a violent mix of emotions that I couldn’t identify.
Then Mina shook herself. It was a tight movement that made her whole body vibrate…
…and she was back.
“I stopped by to pick up your doctor’s certificate.” Her features smoothed out, voice returning to the cool, inflectionless tones I knew and hated. “Alice neglected to bring it back with her, despite a promise to the contrary.”
“Oh, uh… I’ll go and get it. Two ticks.”
I won’t say that I closed the door in her face. But I won’t say that I didn’t.
Where was my sick note? Alice had put it somewhere, on the table…?
“There’s something wrong with my boss.” I kept my voice low as I searched, not wanting Mina to hear. I was freaked. “She had a… an absence, or something. Her voice got all weird. She asked why I wasn’t dead.”
Raz’s eyes widened. “Possession? Bewitchment?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” The note was right there on the table. I snatched it up. “All I know is that I’ve never seen her like this.”
“We need to watch her.”
“We need to go talk to your mermaid friends,” I snapped. “Mina will have to wait.”
Mina took the sick note and left. Raz rustled up more fried paradise; if hobbits could have second breakfast, I could too. I’d put my boss and her weird ‘absence’ out of my mind, because there were just too many other things to think about. Over coffee and a second round of toast (I was calling it elevenses, though it was nowhere near eleven. Third breakfast would be greedy) Raz picked up last night’s conversation.
“We should talk about your boyfriend.”
“How many ways can I say that it’s none of your fucking business?”
“How did he find out that you were in hospital?”
I bit my lip. I had no answer to that. Only two people had known; of those, he knew Raz a little and Alice not at all. They’d seen each other a few times in passing but never spoken. Both would have mentioned talking to him.
Unless… unless Lee had gone looking for me in the library after Alice had gone back to work. Yeah. He’d asked where I was, she’d given him the story.
“He’s keeping secrets from you,” Raz pushed again.
“I’ve got more than him. Now if you’re not going to produce any more manna from Heaven, let’s cut the crap and get going.”
My theory was plausible. I held onto it, just as tight as I could, because if I let go… everything would crumble.
TEN
Traffic on the way to the lake was rough, but this time we could just stroll through the gates rather than climb over. The few people we passed all stared at my face. One kid – bundled up against the autumnal chill – tugged at his mother’s hand and pointed. She looked at me and her eyes widened. She glowered at Raz, picked up her toddler and hurried away.
“She thinks I’m a wife beater,” Raz scowled.
A sudden flash: - a fist, a broken bottle, a black eye. I pushed the memories aside; my mentor wasn’t that kind of man. I didn’t know the intimate details of his marriage – I didn’t want to, they were private – but every part of him was reflected in his kids, and I’d never met a more well-adjusted family.
However…
“Remember the first time you punched me?” I asked with grim humour.
“That was training.” His scowl deepened. “I gave you warning and slowed down my attack.”
“I didn’t believe you would actually do it.”
“As I recall, you rubbed your jaw, spat something profane, and punched me in the gut.”
“Me, profane?” My laugh was short and hard.
Despite the daily threat of violence, becoming a berserker was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I was stronger than any dewdrop woman, faster, more resilient.
Prison had taught me to stand up for myself. But Raz had given my life purpose. I would never – could never – forget that.
We weren’t expecting trouble with the mermaids, but we believed in being prepared. We were tooled up. Raz’s specialised duffel bag seemed as old and battered as mine, but the mechanism inside was even more complicated. When he nudged it in just the right way, two shamshirs popped out of the top and he’d grab them, his movements smooth and fluid. He’d performed them often enough – in practice and combat – that they’d become second nature.
Aside from the ‘big guns’, Raz was packing some little shiny throwing stars that made my hands all hot and sticky, but the spoil-sport wouldn’t even let me touch them.
And me? The police still had my Bowie knife. I didn’t have a chance of getting it back. As far as the boys in blue knew, it wasn’t mine. They might suspect otherwise – my prints were plastered all over the hilt – but with no other evidence they had to suck it up and walk away.
But Raz hadn’t let me go out without a backup weapon, just in case I lost my sword. As we got deeper into the park, he had a quick look around and pressed something cool and hard into my hand. From the length and width of the sheath I could tell that it was another Bowie. I pulled it free – just an inch – and be
held beautiful, gleaming steel.
“An early Christmas present,” he murmured, when I turned a megawatt smile on him. “What are you going to call her?”
“The Knife With No Name… Mark Two.” I made it disappear into my jacket, then leaned across to kiss his cheek. He blushed.
My birthday and Christmas had come early. All I’d needed to do was almost die.
We knew something was wrong before we reached the far side of the lake. I heard great booming explosions of water punctuated by screams, and I was running before I realised that my legs were moving. I hated mermaids with a fiery passion – but they were our best hope of getting the information we needed.
Besides. They were under attack. Whatever could make a kick-ass water mage scream was a danger to everyone, and it was our duty as berserkers to neutralise that danger.
On my shoulder Lorl had puffed out and turned bright orange. Ques hissed. I gritted my teeth and nudged the duffel, grabbing the falchion’s hilt. The path ended near the edge of the lake and I skidded to a halt, Raz stopping beside me. Our taufrkyn found refuge among the trees.
There was water everywhere, a living force in the air and on land, moving like an airborne maelstrom. In seconds my clothes were soaked.
“What the…”
A mermaid shot past, hurtling through the crazy air/water mix, face twisted in terror. Her hands were moving – she was casting a spell – but if she was trying to free herself, it wasn’t working.
Some huge, unseen force slammed her to the ground. I dropped into a crouch, looking everywhere, Raz flanking me. The mermaid didn’t move and I inched closer. Water droplets splashed my face, wet and cold.
“Get back here!” Raz yelled over the roar.
I crabbed my way to the mermaid’s side. White-blonde hair plastered to her face and shoulders and her amber tail was bent at a ninety-degree angle. I turned her over, sliding her lids down over wide, dead eyes. Then I slid down a second set of lids.
A massive force smashed into my body. On instinct I curled into a ball but dropped my sword. I slammed into a tree. I couldn’t move… couldn’t think… couldn’t breathe…
Then I was rolling away, hurting, wishing I was dead but still very much alive.
“Daphne!” Raz yelled. “Shit, they’re water golems!”
I lunged back to the illusory safety of the tree line. I wasn’t fast enough and iron bands clamped around my ankles. I heard a dull crunch as bones ground together; I didn’t even have time to scream before I was yanked off my feet.
I hung in the air, writhing and desperate to get free. I thought I was looking at a vortex, but when I stared – eyes hard with pain – the roaring blur resolved itself into a humanoid figure. A massive, fifteen foot tall humanoid figure. Made of water.
Liquid splashed my face. I spluttered and coughed. Correction: - made of cold, brown, earthy tasting water.
I knew enough about golems to realise that I was royally screwed. Flesh or blood, berserkers could kill it; silk, bone or any of a dozen variants, we’d beat the shit out of it and call it good.
But this was a golem without substance, without a solid body. You couldn’t fight that. All you could do was hide, cringing, until it went away.
And here I was, dangling by my broken ankles, separated from the falchion and my friend. I still had the Mark Two, but so what? It couldn’t hurt something that didn’t have a solid body.
But that didn’t stop me trying. I pulled the new knife out of my jacket and shoved it between what I hoped was the water golem’s ribs. The creature laughed, a roaring, gushing sound that made my wet skin crawl.
Then it hurled me over the lake.
There was a sensation of biting air against my face. It made my eyes tear so I screwed them shut. I skimmed across the water like an oddly shaped stone… then I sank like one, too.
The water was murky and freezing. I tried to breathe – before I’d fully clocked what was going on – and began to choke.
Panicked, I struck out for the light. Too far away. My arms and legs were lead and my saturated parka pulled me down. Strange, the pain from my ankles had gone far, far away. All I wanted was to breathe – or maybe throw up – but I couldn’t do either for the water in my throat.
Blackness crept around the edge of my vision. I swam harder. Fuck this; I hadn’t survived the silk golems just to drown.
Lungs screaming, arms and legs burning, I finally broke the surface. I heaved in air and immediately vomited out the water that I’d swallowed. I was alive. My ankles were on fire but I was alive.
Something knocked me on the head.
When I came around it was dark, wet and freezing.
Why was I sitting in the bath?
Hang on, I wasn’t in the bath, wasn’t even at home. This was a cave and a woman was calling my name.
I tried to focus on the sound. My head hurt and a sharp, blunt object was poking into my arse. I wiggled and stuck a hand between my legs, feeling sodden bark under my fingers. I was being touched up by a tree root.
“Daphne! For Poseidon’s sake, pay attention!”
I focussed, squinting in the gloom. Features swum into view – stark, staring eyes, gaunt cheekbones and a pouting lip bitten to shreds. Her hair was a wet, tangled mess around her shoulders, splayed out over a huge pair of boobs.
Oh. Right. Mermaid. That’s why I was sitting in a bath. Excuse me, muddy pool.
“Kassandra?”
“Why are we under attack?” she hissed, face contorting with dark anger. “You show up and ask about golems, then they start killing us!”
Hang on, she’d got the connection all wrong. We didn’t create the golems. The wrangler must have found out that we’d asked the mermaids for information… and tried to take them out.
“My sisters are being slaughtered!” Kassandra blurted, seizing one of my crushed ankles. “Answer me!”
Agony flared along my leg. Before I realised what I was doing I grabbed her throat and squeezed.
Her reaction was instant and gratifying. Did that make me a bad person? Maybe. Right now I didn’t give a flying fuck. She was hurting me so I hurt her back.
She was choking, clawing at my hand. Her long nails scratched my skin but there was no pain. All I felt was her neck bulging under my fingers.
“You don’t threaten berserkers.” I released my grip, speaking slow so that the bitch would understand. “You ask. Got it?”
“I could rip your filthy entrails out through your nose,” she snarled, rubbing her throat. I’d left fingerprints.
“Please,” I snorted, “if you had the juice I’d be dead by now. You’re tapped out, aren’t you?”
Kassandra seemed to wilt.
“Most of my people are dead,” she whispered, hoarse, but not because I’d strangled her. She was close to tears. “We’re all that’s left.”
She moved the thumb and little finger of her left hand in a complicated gesture. Light filled the grotto, soft and diffuse, revealing a much larger space than I’d imagined. A dozen mermaids sat, lay or flopped around the cave, resting in the water or on rock ledges. Some of them were young – children – but there were no old mermaids. Did they even age?
They could have put me on a ledge. But no, into a pool I’d gone. My feet were going numb. Considering how bad my ankles throbbed, that was a minor blessing. I didn’t bother trying to heave myself out.
“The golem…?”
“Golems,” she corrected. “Whoever sent them wanted us exterminated.” Her bottom lip wavered. She bit it, savage, and lapsed into silence.
I looked around the cave. Really looked. If I ignored the fish tails and fulsome breasts, all that was left was women and girls. They’d been attacked and violently beaten in their own territory. Their own home.
Another flash of memory: - blood on my face, pain, fear. Love. All mixed up inside and turning my stomach sour.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Kassandra, I’m really sorry. What… where are we now?” I remembered
the lump on my head. “And if you pulled me out of the water, thank you.”
“I wanted to watch you drown,” the mermaid grumbled. “But I’d prefer not to start a war with berserkers when so few of my sisters remain.”
Great. Me and Kassandra, bestest buddies.
“Get that woman out of the water! She’s freezing to death,” a deep, melodic voice interrupted.
Another mermaid shuffled into view. It was bizarre watching her move over dry land; she put her weight on her hands, wriggled her arse and braced with her fins. When she was close enough she dipped her tail in the pool beside me, letting out a sigh of obvious relief.
“Your Majesty,” Kassandra mumbled, looking away.
Oh boy. A queen? Today was getting better and better.
Two minutes later I’d been manhandled – or fish-handled, in this case – out of the water and onto a ledge. My soaked clothes weighed a ton and I doubted that the parka was ever going to dry out. Time to add it to my list of charity-shop replacements. And with the cessation of cold, however minor, my toes began to tingle.
Unfortunately so did my ankles. Definitely broken.
“I’m Petra,” the queen introduced herself. “You’re Daphne, yes?”
I wouldn’t have bowed – or curtsied – even if I’d been able. But I nodded.
The queen was statuesque. Where Kassandra’s figure could be called enchanting (if you were open to enchantment) Petra’s had developed muscle along the way. Was this how mermaids rose to power? Through wrestling? She had enough muscle that, if she’d been human, I would have hesitated to scrap with her. Harpy’s Bestiary was sketchy about some aspects of mermaid culture and too detailed about others.
If Kassandra was a Greek statue, Petra was an Amazonian effigy. Huge dark eyes, ebony hair cascading to her waist – bone dry and curly, of course – and full lips. Her beautiful face was lined with sorrow and worry.
Unusually for mermaids, she wore an armband. I’d never seen them sport so much as a pair of earrings. Hers appeared to be leather studded with precious gems, all milky blues and greens. The mark of royalty? And where did they get leather from? Whale skin?