“Hands. Families could tell who they belonged to by their calluses.” Resentment barbed Naroh’s voice. “Or didn’t you know the cost of sea fish?”
“It’s not served at the Academy.” Hiresha’s heart was thumping. “Only hands, you said?”
“Sometimes legs. Or a boat full of heads. Once we found eight fishermen in pieces on the beach. Their limbs were in some kind of pattern, but it was hard to see through all the gulls. There were so many gulls.”
Naroh tapped on Hiresha’s bandaged fist, motioning her to open it so her arm could be pulled out of the dress sleeve. Hiresha shuddered, even though it was her other hand that held the topaz.
“I—I’ve seen specimens from sea serpents. Fangs of all hideous varieties.” Hiresha opened her second hand as well, pressing the jewel to the underside of her palm with her thumb. “But I’ve never heard of such dismemberment.”
Naroh pulled the dress over Hiresha’s head. When the enchantress could see more than just purple skirt, she glanced to Sagai. He was not looking at her or the odd position in which she had held her hand. He stared with unfocused eyes toward a shelf full of colored candles. His breathing was heavy, one arm reaching behind his back to clench his sword hilt.
“It’s called the Murderfish,” he said. “The empire should’ve hunted it down years ago.”
A look of twisting sickness crossed Naroh’s sweet, young face. She bowed to Hiresha. “I should not have said this. I only get so angry, nobody knows anything about fishing villages. Please, tell me how many meals I must fast in penance.”
Hiresha tsked. “Stand up, girl. It was my ignorance that was wrong.”
Naroh managed a weak grin. She folded the purple dress. Unpacking gowns of blue and red, she asked, “Which will you wear tomorrow?”
“The purple again.” Hiresha cupped her hands together. Her fingers worried around the jewel.
The maid lifted the purple dress. “This will be damp if it’s washed tonight.”
“No need. I can clean it when napping.” Hiresha pretended to yawn, slipping the jewel into her mouth. She swallowed, and the topaz’s square edges scraped the back of her throat. It stuck. The gem was too large, her throat too dry. She had to cough it back into her hand.
“Naroh,” Sagai said, “before Hiresha goes to sleep in the evenings, we must change her bandages. And you must search her.”
Hiresha gaped at Sagai as if he had just said to burn her feet with hot candle wax.
“With your forgiveness,” Naroh said.
Not knowing what else to do, Hiresha dropped the topaz behind her onto the ornate rug. Her bare foot stepped forward to hide it.
Naroh opened Hiresha’s hands. The maid frowned at a square indentation on the palm that had held the gem. The following search did not rank in the top thousand of Hiresha’s treasured experiences, but she had survived worse, such as having her throat cut. When Naroh directed Hiresha to move, she pivoted around the topaz and kept it out of sight.
“Lift your feet,” Naroh said.
Heavy with defeat, Hiresha lifted first one foot then the one covering the topaz. As she did she made a kicking motion to scoot the gem under the couch. She hoped she had been subtle.
“Look under the couch,” Sagai said.
Naroh did so. Any moment Hiresha expected the maid’s hand to dart under the blue cushions and lift the mystic topaz.
Naroh straightened her back and rose. When the enchantress set her foot down again she felt the gem stuck against her skin. The topaz had lifted with her sole. It felt like triumph.
They made her lie on the couch while they dressed her wounds. She pressed the topaz between her two feet. Sagai cut the bandages to size while casting embarrassed glances at Naroh. She washed yesterday’s unguent from the wounds and spread a new layer of herbs in honey.
Naroh asked, “Why do you only wear purple?”
Still feeling warm with smugness, Hiresha said, “Violet is the most potent wavelength in the visible spectrum, and crimson is the most evocative. Together they make purple. As a dye, it’s rarest. As a gem, it’s amethyst. As a color, it’s unsurpassed.”
Sagai tied off the bandage wrapped around Hiresha’s chest. “Should every family’s crest then be purple on purple?”
“No,” Hiresha said. “Only the most discerning.”
Naroh tucked a sheet and blanket under Hiresha’s feet then pulled the covers over the enchantress.
Sagai stepped away from the couch. “One color of gem doesn’t enchant better than another. Mistress Hiresha’s preference is an opinion.”
“Know this about opinions,” Hiresha said. “They’re all wrong, except for one.”
The enchantress’s drooping eyes closed the discussion. She fell asleep with speed, but she forced herself to wake in an hour. She had to know if Spellsword Sagai slept. To escape she would need to be unobserved.
Sagai and Naroh kneeled side by side before a tea set. Steam swayed, and candlelight reflected red in their cups. Naroh’s hand rested an inch from his, tattoos of roots reaching down his fingers. They drank in sips.
Hiresha shifted, bringing the topaz up from her feet. She wiped it on the sheet before slipping it into her mouth. Returning to her dream laboratory, she Attracted the topaz into the safety of her stomach. After the necessary enchantments, she woke again.
Naroh held a practice sword. The wooden blade inched through the air. She lifted a foot, turning with deliberate slowness. She swayed forward but corrected her balance with a twitch of the sword. Beside her, Sagai performed the same measured steps. His grace made the room seem to turn around him.
Do they never tire? Hiresha herself was drifting back to sleep petting the fennec fox. Youth stay up so late it’s as if they only had a few years left to live.
When she opened her eyes next, Sagai and Naroh sat facing each other. Their knees touched. Before Hiresha was awake enough to understand their words, she marked the urgency and hush of their voices. Tension, anger, and worry strained against their desire for quiet.
“A third son may never sit the throne,” Sagai was saying, “but I can slay the Murderfish. That I can do.”
“You can’t. No one can.”
“We will stop in Jaraah. I will ask the arbiter for leave to go to sea and destroy it.”
“It—it’s not a thing that can die. It’s the sea’s angry soul.”
“It has flesh, and flesh yields to an enchanted sword.”
“No.” She gripped his wrist. “It is waves and foam and death.”
“You said the Murderfish has eyes.” Sagai shifted onto one knee, leaning so close that his brow brushed against wisps of her dark hair. “The mongrel fishermen dared say your eyes reminded them of the Murderfish.”
“The fishermen said lots of things to my family.”
“They must learn to respect us. They will, once I kill the Murderfish.”
“Think you’re the first to try?” Her voice broke with a barb of emotion. “A—a spellsword dressed in rags rowed out with fishermen. For seven days he waited, his spear hidden in the bottom of the boat. On the eighth morning, he met the Murderfish.”
Hiresha was surprised to find herself wide-eyed, caught up in the tale.
“The spellsword came back alive, holding a broken spear high. They said the tip had snapped off in the Murderfish’s heart, that it had bled a tide of water, that it was dead.”
“When was this?” Sagai asked.
“I was old enough to take a swallow from the jug the fishermen passed around. The liquor burned. I coughed and coughed, and they laughed. But I didn’t care. We were all so happy. The spellsword smiled at me. I thought he was the handsomest man.” She gazed at Sagai, her eyes alive with tears. “At the time.”
Naroh’s whispering quickened, a tremble of words rolling over each other. Hiresha pointed her ear at the couple and leaned as close as she could without tipping the fox off the couch.
“Then the spellsword was gone. Yanked out from the center of us.
I never saw how. Everyone ran back to their huts, and all that night we had to listen. You could hear him over the surf. His screams lasted to morning.”
Hiresha worried that neither of them would fall asleep after that chilling story.
Sagai placed a hand over Naroh’s heart then reached his arm around her shoulder. He held her and asked, “It was the Murderfish?”
She nodded. “After that the city sent out three boats of guards. They were all drowned. Or pulled apart.”
“Many beasts will eat a man. Tigers, terror birds, and leopards. I’ve never heard of one that tortures.” Sagai made wiping motions with his hands over his velvet and gold jacket. “And it snatched the spellsword from the middle of your village? That sounds like no fish.”
“It is a spirit.”
“Did it leave tracks?”
Naroh scrunched up her face, and she hesitated before answering. “Many prints. All very round. I could stand in them, but mother said it was bad luck.”
“Round? Like a hippo print?”
“I don’t know.”
He grasped her hands. “The Murderfish sounds real enough to kill, if fish it is. And I must make something of myself.”
“Even if you could kill it, it wouldn’t matter.”
“How could you say—”
“Sagai, the sea is full of monsters, but there’s only one of you.”
The prince and the maid held hands, gazing into each other’s eyes.
Hiresha felt a creeping heat of embarrassment. Watching any longer felt as wrong as wearing someone else’s jewelry. She closed her eyes. She still heard Naroh speak.
“Promise me to never go near the sea.”
The silence that followed pressed down on Hiresha. Whether Sagai gave his word or not, the enchantress never knew. Sleep bore her away.
She waited in her dream world, gliding among the stars. The enchantress tried not to dwell on the story of the Murderfish, what manner of creature it was, what drove it to kill. The Murderfish has no bearing on my escape plans. Unless Sagai abandons his duties to hunt it.
Hiresha discovered that she could not wish that of the spellsword, not even though he had held her down under the skin-stitcher’s knife. Besides, I must escape before we reach Jaraah and the sea. The lands beyond the city would dry into inhospitable desert then become too crowded on the flood plains. Hiresha’s chances of escaping unnoticed and surviving would only worsen.
10
Jaraah
The city glittered above the heat mirage. Domes of brass and green glass seemed to float above the rippling horizon. The camel beneath Hiresha swayed its way closer, and spires descended from their bulb-shaped roofs. A wall appeared, an arched gateway of gleaming metal. Jaraah shimmered into view.
The city docks pointed toward the desert. Sails billowed white as the land ships heaved their way over the dunes in sprays of sand. Enchantment reduced the weight of such vessels, and they carried trade goods throughout the empire. Commerce moved on magic.
Passing caravans cheered Arbiter Cosima. They paid Hiresha less notice in her gown without jewels. One captain steered his land ship close and hailed them, his hand bright with rings.
“Enchantress, may the goddess’s beauty ever shine through you. Will you honor my wretched ship by sailing aboard to the city?”
The arbiter lifted her hand to shield the sun. “We must graciously refuse, unless you have room for my entire company, our horse, and camels.”
“I’ll throw urns of oil overboard as needed, and may the goddess witness it.”
Arbiter Cosima demurred. They trudged onward. The heat and the entourage of flies were the least of Hiresha’s misery. She had failed to find an opportunity to escape. Sagai watched her every night. He seemed to doze only a few hours in the morning and afternoon, when any of the elite guards could alert him in time to catch her.
Monstrous. Hiresha found his willful avoidance of sleep harder to believe than the tale of a murderous fish dragging a trained spellsword from the shore.
Hiresha had almost convinced herself that Sagai drew some kind of power from his interest in Naroh, that their bond granted him more vigor and alertness than was decent for a mortal. The enchantress realized that some more frivolous cultures in the empire might have said Sagai and Norah were in love. Hiresha had not been brought up to believe in such nonsense, but if she did allow for it, she would have named love as a perfect inconvenience.
Worse still, Hiresha had seen nothing of Spellsword Fos. A fraction of her held out hope that he had escaped the company of Inannis and Emesea and was a stowaway on a land ship that had passed her on the way to Jaraah. The majority of Hiresha maintained a respectable pessimism.
She smelled the city long before reaching its gates. A whiff of spice, a stench of sweat, an aura of sesame oil, a sweet dryness of burning dung, and a gust of the sea.
Hiresha had traveled through the city before but never noticed the fishermen’s village. A slum, to be precise. The mud huts cowered against the outside of the city wall. Several of the homes that had sprawled too close to the water were crushed. No docks dared venture into the surf. The beach was a wreckage of boats. If any were seaworthy, Hiresha could not say. They looked puny, their sails patchwork rags compared to the proud merchant ships that cruised the dunes.
Even from a distance, the fishing slums stank of despair. Naroh refused to look, and when Sagai said something to her, she shook her head and faced the other way on her camel.
Seagulls teemed above the coastline. They scared the fennec fox. He crouched on Hiresha’s lap, ears turned down. His white paws dug at the fabric of her dress. He wore a harness that looped beneath his forelegs. Hiresha detested it. She wrapped the leather lead around her hand, which bore a whitish-pink scar in the shape of a moon crescent. Shielding the fox’s eyes from the sun comforted him.
As they entered the city, Hiresha’s stomach tensed, shrinking to the size of a shriveled fig. She would soon attempt her escape. Her plan had risks, but she could no longer wait for such an impossibility as Sagai sleeping.
Arches of mosaic tiles covered the streets and turned them into tunnels. The shade felt like bathing in cool water, bringing gasps of relief from the elite guards. The only light squeezed in through slits in the roof, and motes swirled in the bright beams. The streets of Jaraah had the feel of traveling through caverns, passages full of the treasures of merchant stalls. Shadows shimmered with half-seen glassware.
Hiresha uncovered the fennec’s eyes, and he started hopping and yipping. His ears and tail stuck up with glee. The camel turned her head around and blew her lips at the tiny creature on her back.
“Fennec, you must feel at home in this palatial desert burrow.”
Hiresha’s voice caught because she knew she would have to leave the fennec behind. She whispered to the earsome troublemaker.
“Would—would you forgive me if we parted ways?”
As if in answer, the fennec wriggled from her grasp and leaped from the camel. The fox had not even taken a backward glance. The leash caught him, and Hiresha pulled him back up by his harness. I can’t give him up just yet. Seeing his furry legs paddling in the air tore at her.
“I could accuse you of an unequal level of commitment, fennec.”
The fox squeaked a bark. Beyond his chatter, someone called out from the shadows.
“Lady of Gems, paint your eyes with the sign of your goddess.”
Hiresha considered herself the Lady of Gems, even if she currently possessed only the singular, and she thought she recognized the woman’s voice. Glancing about, she saw many people with kohl paint darkening their eyes. Designs of scorpion tails or ostrich plumes spread over their cheeks and temples to declare homage to a god, after the fashion of the empire’s capital. Hiresha never saw who had shouted, and she began to think it had only been a merchant calling out to Arbiter Cosima.
Dozing, Hiresha saw the truth.
Her dream was a place of dark rock and bright jewels, of lotus-
tiled floor and domed ceiling. Its air had the crystalline pureness of never having been breathed before. Here, nothing had weight unless Hiresha willed it. Tourmalines of yellow and garnets of green bobbed through the air overhead, while mirrors coasted along the walls. In the laboratory that Hiresha had built in her mind, every magic bauble stood in its proper place on the shelves. She wore her preferred dress of amethyst spirals. Everything was as it should be.
A mirror revealed the recent memory of a woman standing in an alcove. Her eyes looked similar in shape to Naroh and Sagai’s, but Emesea was stockier, her face rounder, and she wore green eye shadow of crushed malachite.
“I can’t be surprised Emesea would smear a poisonous gemstone around her eyes,” Hiresha said to herself. “She does have an affinity for toxins, such as Inannis.”
In the mirror, Emesea called out to the “Lady of Gems.” Then she hid herself under a shawl and walked away.
The next voice that spoke had a similar timbre to Hiresha’s but a more youthful melody to its speech. “She scares us more than a cradle full of vipers.”
The words had come from high in the dome. Hiresha did not need to look up to know that Intuition sat atop the laboratory, dangling her legs through the skylight.
“Inannis’s accomplice.” Hiresha nodded to the mirror with Emesea. “But no sign of Fos.”
“Where could he be?” Intuition floated down from the skylight. Her face was much like Hiresha’s, though without any worry lines. She clapped her yellow gloves against a mirror to peer into the memory.
“Perhaps they have him hidden in a city cellar. Fos is rather conspicuous,” Hiresha said. “Emesea yelled that she wants me to paint my eyes, perhaps to better disguise me.”
“Sounds more fun than our plan.”
Hiresha touched her lips and Attracted the mystic topaz up her throat and into her hand. Her magic then Burdened the unsavory liquids off the jewel. Droplets fell onto a dais below her levitating slippers.
Intuition took a few hesitant steps toward Hiresha and grasped her skirt. “We aren’t really leaving Fos and the fennec behind, are we?”
Dream Storm Sea Page 6