by Cari Z
Vernon tapped the tray that the four full tankards rested on meaningfully, and Colm brought it with him as he made his way through the press to Jaime’s table. Tonight the taproom was packed, and Colm was grateful that his height allowed him to avoid any bumps and jostles against the tray he carried.
“What?” Jaime said as Colm drew close. “Your friend is the new barman?”
“This is my cousin, Colm Weathercliff,” Nichol explained, taking the tankards from the tray and distributing them around the table.
“Of the Caresfall Weathercliffs?”
“No,” Colm said. He was getting tired of that meaningless comparison.
“He just arrived from the mountains, and he’s already getting a reputation as the best fisherman on these docks,” Nichol boasted, bumping Colm’s hip with his.
“Wait,” Blake said, squinting for a moment as he looked at Colm. “Are you the one who’s been bringing in catches of diving dancers for the past few weeks?” Colm nodded, a bit uneasy at the sudden scrutiny. “My father mentioned you. He says Gullfoot’s lucky to have you. That old drunk’s been living high since you started with him.”
“A fisherman,” Jaime said, a little smile playing around his lips. “Well, that is a fine thing to be. Welcome to Caithmor, Colm Weathercliff.” He said it with a certain gravitas, as though he were speaking for all the city when he welcomed Colm in. Perhaps he felt he was.
“Thank you,” Colm said politely, shaking Jaime’s hand. His palm bore few signs of extensive rope work or ship handling, but perhaps his uncle hadn’t wanted to put him to work when he was there in an unofficial capacity. “I’ve heard much about you.”
“Have you, then?” Jaime smirked at Nichol. “Don’t believe a word this one tells you. It’s all lies.”
“Aye, especially the parts about you being dashing and heroic,” Nichol retorted, and the four of them laughed. Colm picked up the tray and turned to go.
“No, wait!” Nichol caught him by the arm. “Stay a moment. You’ve barely been introduced.”
“Clearly, he’s got work to do,” Ollie drawled.
“Aye, picking up your slack,” Jaime said. Nichol looked momentarily stricken.
“Oh, I left Gran in the kitchen—”
“I’ll take care of it,” Colm told him. “Stay. Vernon doesn’t really need me at the bar. I can work in the back. I’ll have food brought out presently.”
“Thank you,” Nichol said sincerely, and that made it worth it for Colm.
As he headed back into the kitchen, Colm heard Jaime remark, “He’s a strange, sallow creature, isn’t he, Nicky? Be honest, how do you get on with him?” Colm was thankfully out of earshot before he could hear Nichol’s reply.
“Jaime’s back, then,” Megg said as soon as she caught sight of Colm. He nodded. “Well, Nichol will be happy. Are they eating?”
“Yes. There are three of them,” Colm added, and he was surprised when Megg snorted suddenly.
“Of course there are. Jaime was a good child—his mama grew up just down the way from here, and a truly lovely lass she was—but he’s not had to work for much in his life, I’m afraid. Those other boys who tag along behind them, they’re the sons of merchants, from fairly well-off families. They didn’t bother to set foot in here all spring, didn’t give a whit for how Nichol was faring beyond getting him to cover their shifts in the Sea Guard, and now that Jaime’s back, they’ve returned to my inn, expecting to eat my food and drink my ale for free.”
“They don’t pay to eat here?” Colm asked with a frown.
“Oh, Jaime’s father settles up the tab at the end of every month. Karlson Windlove is a magistrate, and he’s a fair man, I’ll give him that.” Megg pressed her lips tightly shut, as though actively keeping herself from saying any more, and Colm didn’t press. He just took over Nichol’s carving station, laying slices of roast duck on the rows of plates spread out before him. Idra and the other servers grabbed them up almost faster than Colm could prepare them, and the next few hours were blurs of activity, too busy to allow much time to think.
That night, Colm went to sleep alone, which didn’t surprise him, but he was surprised to be woken up by Nichol for the first time when the younger man ran into Colm’s feet as he staggered into the room in the dark hours of the morning.
“Sorry!” he apologized, his voice too loud to be called a whisper but obviously trying for that. “I’m sorry, shit, did I break your foot?”
“Not even close,” Colm said, sitting up so he could get a better look at Nichol. He was leaning against the door and swaying forward, looking just moments from falling down altogether. “Don’t move,” Colm cautioned him, pushing off his blanket and getting to his feet. “Let me help you.”
“You don’ need to,” Nichol informed him, the slur of his words belying their meaning. “’M fine.”
“You’re drunk,” Colm said, bending so that he could get an arm beneath Nichol’s shoulders and help him to his cot. He sat him down, and Nichol looked at Colm blearily, then laughed.
“You look pretty in this light.”
Colm chuckled as he bent and got to work untying Nichol’s boots. “You mean I look best in darkness?”
“There’s light here,” Nichol informed him. “’S moonlight, it’s…’s romantic, right? Blake and Ollie say the girls think it’s romantic. They talk to them about moonlight and starlight and, and…what…oh, candlelight! That’s romantic too.”
“And what kind of light does Jaime favor?” Colm asked as he put the boots beneath the cot. Gods, they were filthy. Nichol would have to clean them tomorrow.
Nichol grinned. “Daylight shining on white sails and blue seas, he says. The girls don’t find that as…as romantic. But he doesn’t care.”
“I suppose he doesn’t have to work hard to impress girls,” Colm said, pushing Nichol back onto the thin mattress. He lay down easily enough but forgot to lift up his legs and, leaving them dangling over the side, was a knotted muscle waiting to happen, so Colm picked them up for him, resettling them with ease.
“Doesn’t work at it at all,” Nichol said, his voice breaking at the end as he yawned widely. “He thinks ships are more beautiful than girls…” He yawned again.
“Rest,” Colm told him, settling back down on his pallet.
“I can’t. I have to ask you something,” Nichol said seriously, rolling onto his side so that he could look at Colm. “It’s important.”
“Ask me, then.”
“Did you like him?”
There was no need to specify who Nichol was referring to. “He seems to be a good friend to you,” Colm said, almost honestly. “I like that about him.”
Nichol frowned. “But you don’t like him?”
“I don’t really know him yet.”
“But you will,” Nichol said confidently. “And when you do, you’ll like him. Just as he’ll like you.” Which meant that Jaime didn’t like Colm yet either, but that was no surprise. If Nichol was waiting for that day, Colm had a feeling he’d be disappointed.
Fortunately, no reply seemed necessary, since Nichol fell asleep between one instant and the next. Colm lay on his blankets for a while, trying to recover the last few hours he’d hoped to have before getting up to work, but it was no use. When he was drunk, Nichol snored terribly, and after a while, Colm got himself together and left.
Despite his early arrival at the Serpent’s Tail, Lew beat him to it. Or perhaps he’d never left it. The man was laid out on his nets, another drunkard in the night. Colm rolled his eyes. He’d yet to notice anything good that came from being intoxicated, especially when a useless stupor ended up being the result.
Well, he’d head out anyway. There was no sense in wasting time, and Lew would probably just sleep through it. Colm untied the boat and unfurled the headsail, and the little bit of nighttime breeze fluttering over the docks pull
ed them gently from their berth and out to sea.
It wasn’t as cool out as Colm had been expecting. Spring was giving way to summer, and it showed. The seas were lively, those types of fish that favored warmer waters making their way up the coast, while those that preferred it cool were slow to leave. Colm let them continue on at a slow pace for a while, watching the sky over the cliffs surrounding Caithmor become navy, then purple, then the silvery-gold that heralded the dawn. His hand lay forgotten in the water as he watched the brilliant display, until a sharp pair of teeth nipped at it.
“Ouch!” He pulled his hand back and glared at the seal, which barked at him. “That was uncalled for,” Colm told it, resisting the urge to snap right back. The seal had come to bother him almost every day he’d been on the water, stealing fish from the net and chewing through lines here and there. It didn’t do enough damage to hurt their trade, really, just enough to leave Colm feeling harried, which today of all days he didn’t need. He scrunched his face up tight and controlled a sudden, inexplicable urge to scream.
“Wossa matter w’ye, eh?”
Colm’s eyes shot open to see Lew, leaning back on his hands but sitting upright and peering at him. “Nothing,” he said.
“On the water already, are we?” Lew grumbled. “Can’t leave a man to sleep it off alone…”
“Not when you’re sleeping interrupts our business.”
“All business, all the time,” Lew said, as though making money weren’t the sole reason he let Colm onto his boat in the first place. “’S’no way to live, boy. Now shove over. I have to piss.” He heaved himself to his feet and came over to brace himself against the tiller, which Colm gladly gave up in favor of more distance from the smells of booze and Lew’s unwashed body.
“Ahh, that’s better,” Lew grunted once he was done. He felt around for the canteen of water he always kept on board—one of his sole wise precautions, in Colm’s opinion—and drank deeply. “My mouth was foul as a week-old fish left in the sun,” he said, then settled down at the tiller. “Now. Where’re we headed today, boy?”
Colm evaluated the quivers of the sea, the knots of movement and the flow of the current. “There’s a lot of activity farther north,” he remarked. “Another hour’s worth of sailing or so, and we should be in the midst of it.”
“Oh no,” Lew said with a vehemence that surprised Colm. “No, no, boy. Another hour north and we’ll be too close to Cairn Rock, and you won’t get me within a seabird’s sight of that cursed place.”
“What’s wrong with Cairn Rock?” Colm asked, but Lew just shook his head.
“Pick another way,” he said grimly. After a moment, Colm pointed northwest instead, far enough, of course, from whatever Lew seemed to fear that he accepted it. They didn’t speak again, not until they’d found a good spot and set the nets, angling the lowered mainsail to give them some shade from the now-vibrant sun.
“I suppose you should know,” Lew said at last, breaking his silence. “So that you don’t head out there by accident and get your fool self killed. Even those as don’t believe the tales still won’t be caught in the waters close to Cairn Rock.”
“What tales?” Colm asked.
“Dark ones, boy. Cairn Rock’s carried that name for centuries, and it’s because the place means death. No one knows it better than I.” Lew stared down at his hands, rubbing them together compulsively. “I used to be in the coast guard. ’Twas smaller back then, under the old king. Not the fat, bloated thing it’s become now.
“Our boat was sent up the coast,” he continued, managing not to get sidetracked as Colm had half suspected he would. “There were reports of fishermen vanishing, boats disappearing, that kind of thing. Our captain suspected pirates. Cairn Rock had a bad reputation back then, but it had been years since anything had happened round there. So we went to see what we could see. She was a fine boat, that one. Mary’s Mercy, named for some admiral’s wife. Two masts, her timbers strong and true. She could weather the worst squalls with hardly a rope out of place.
“The sea was churned up when we got there, debris scattered all over the water. I could see bodies floating on the surface, and we figured the good thing to do was to collect ’em so they could be burned properly. Three of my mates got down into the lifeboat and rowed out to fetch them. They’d barely touched the first one when we saw it.”
“Saw what?” Colm prompted when Lew seemed to freeze. “What did you see?”
“A great dark shape beneath the water,” Lew murmured, his eyes distant with the past. “It loomed up like a sudden wave, just a coil of it, with tremendous spines along the back. It looped right over the lifeboat and crushed it, and the lads as well. They were pulled under before they had a chance to get more than a single scream off. We had harpoons on the deck, but none of those newfangled cannons that make war so miserable now.
“We fired on the creature, and the lines stuck, but then it must have dove down, for it pulled us so hard that the Mercy tipped over and spilled us all into the sea. Those of us who were uninjured and could swim made it to the surface, but many of the men were lost then. And it still wasn’t done with us. The serpent, for beneath the water I could see now that it was a serpent, stretching down into the depths past my ken, lifted its tail from the water and smashed it down onto the boat, turning ’er into naught but kindling. One of her spars floated my way, and I grabbed on to it and held on for my life. The water was so unsettled that I couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down. I heard the few men who were left screaming, and I knew that this was the end for me.” Lew’s voice drifted off, and he sat in silence, staring down at his knotted hands.
“What happened next?” Colm asked. He couldn’t let Lew leave it like that. “How did you survive?”
“By havin’ the best bad bloody luck in the world,” Lew said darkly. “All of us had drifted in close to Cairn Rock by then. Too close, though I didn’t know it. One moment I was waiting to be pulled down into the depths by the serpent, and the next I was surrounded by mer, streaming by me as they swam out to do battle with the rival for their territory. Didn’t give me a second glance, but if they had, I’d have been gone for sure.”
“What is a mer?”
“A creature made by the Two to plague us. They’ve the tail of a fish instead of legs, but the arms and chest of a man. The heads, though, the heads are all wrong.” Lew held up a hand and gesticulated around his face. “No hair, just a fin from nose to nape, and their jaws are too wide and full of teeth that could tear your arm right off your body. Got gills along their neck, like a fish. Terrible, terrible beasts. A group of ’em is termed a rending by those who know, but even just one is more trouble than a man can take.
“They’re the worst creatures in the sea, and even worse than you’d imagine, because the females are beautiful in a way. Look much more like us, and they use themselves as lures, they do, to get men to abandon their reason, and then the males set on them and tear them to bits.”
“Why didn’t they kill you?” Colm asked.
Lew snorted. “Disappointed, are ye? They just didn’t have time to bother with me, boy. Serpents and mer, they both feed along this coast, or they did for many a year. They compete for food and a safe haven, and the serpent had come too close. The water, it turned purple with blood. I kept my wits about me long enough to paddle my broken spar down the coast until I found a beach to land meself at. Fifty-two men, and I was the only survivor.”
He reached out and patted the single slender mast. “I kept the spar, turned it into the spine of this boat. It helps to remind me that every day I’m here, that’s one more day than I ever thought I’d have. I reckon the Four have forgotten about me, let me slip through the cracks, and I can live with that. I’d rather not be seen,” he muttered, then shut his eyes resolutely and turned onto his side. “Enough, now. Let me know when the nets are full, boy.”
The nets took a whil
e to fill, but not so with Colm’s imagination. Mer? Sea serpents? It made a certain amount of sense, Colm reasoned. If there were people who could turn from seals into women and back again, then the idea of half-fish, half-human beings was at least plausible. It was the first he’d heard of them, though, and Colm had spent a fair few evenings listening to drunken stories from behind the bar at this point. Sea serpents, those he’d heard mentioned. He could even picture them, much larger versions of the eels that fishmongers sold at market. Kraken, those were just the larger cousins of octopi, even Nichol had seen one of those. But fish people?
It reminded Colm of what Farrel the farm boy had called him on the road. It seemed too ridiculous to be true. According to the priests, humanity had been formed by the Four, a concentrated effort toward perfection, and they were meant to be unique among all the creatures of the world. Selkies were technically an abomination, Colm had learned, a fusion of humanity and magic that harkened back to the bad days, although not one that many people made a fuss about anymore. Mer, if they existed, were probably classified the same way. How could anything else look so like them that it lured men to their deaths?
Colm knew his own ignorance was deep. He’d lived a sheltered life in Anneslea, and his education had been tightly contained by the village priest, limited to essentials of reading and writing, history and religion. The few tales his father had told were misty things, dimmed by time and grief. But Fergus had spoken of manticores and curses, and he had the ears to prove at least half of it. Ignorance didn’t sit well with Colm, and he decided he would ask Megg, and perhaps Nichol, if they knew anything about mer or sea serpents as well.
They had a good catch of lionsmane perch by midmorning, about as big as a dancer but without their vibrant colors. Lionsmane perch were a good fish for soups and stews, though, and their elaborate fins were used by the fancier establishments in the city as a special garnish for some dishes. Colm hauled in the nets and set about freeing the fish while Lew sailed them back to the harbor, the silence between them deep and seemingly untouchable. Lew wasn’t going to say any more, and Colm wasn’t going to press.