by Cari Z
Colm knew Nichol. He knew how he thought and how he felt. Colm knew that even though Nichol would probably never admit it, probably didn’t realize it himself, there was a part of him that was greatly satisfied to be having an adventure, even one as ugly as this. Nichol’s sole goal for years had been a commission with the navy, and without that goal and the friends that came with it, he’d been lost. He might not be at sea now, but he was traveling and experiencing a new side of life, and the worry that had plagued him, that Colm was dead, had been assuaged.
These small sources of comfort were all that kept Colm going some days, when the crowds were less afraid and more disgusted, when someone actually threw a clod of mud at the tank and was jerked out of the House of Horrors by an angry Nichol. Fear, anger, even fascination were emotions that Colm had had quite enough of.
By the second week, the only thing Colm looked forward to were the nights, when Kith went off to drown in booze and women and Nichol lit a lantern, and they sat together and Nichol talked about his day, about another act or sometimes about nothing at all as Colm quietly, carefully worked tiny slivers of bone into the crevices between metal and glass. When he ran out of the tiniest slivers, he made more of his own, scraping the bigger bones with his sharp, hard teeth until shards broke off.
Colm had expected Nichol to be disgusted by it at first, but Colm was rapidly coming to the conclusion that nothing he could do would disgust Nichol. Nothing drove him away, and he was the one to badger Kith into doing the spell that cleaned the water once a week, so Colm didn’t have to float in too much of his own filth. Colm was sure that Nichol’s devotion to him was motivated as much out of misplaced guilt as true affection, but he wasn’t going to reject it no matter what the source of the constancy was. It was such a terrible relief not to be alone. First Rory, now Nichol… Colm didn’t know how he’d gotten lucky enough to earn such loyalty from his family, but he felt every bit of his luck every time he saw Nichol smile, or heard him laugh.
There was only one night when Colm found himself without Nichol’s company. Nichol, or Nyle as they all knew him, was a young man running from his past. It made sense to all the other young men that he would want to drown his sorrows, and to put his peers off every night with excuses had the potential to make them wary. When he couldn’t delay any longer, Nichol went with them, finding a way to let Colm know that he was going to be reluctantly gone before he left the tent to Kith’s surveillance for the evening.
Colm was sorry to see him go, but he didn’t want to be selfish. Despite Nichol’s protestations to the contrary, Colm knew Nichol couldn’t be blamed for his transformation. He deserved a chance to relax, to be with other people, real people, who could speak to him and touch him and make him feel welcome. Colm watched him leave, and then spent the rest of the evening pretending not to watch Kith, who was already stumbling drunk.
The more he drank, the easier he got with himself, less self-conscious about the turmoil of his belly. He sat down a few feet from the tank and hoisted his flask over and over as he stroked his stomach, murmuring to it so softly that Colm couldn’t hear what he was saying. He was almost treating it the same way Colm remembered Desandre doing, talking to her own stomach when she was carrying children, only no pregnancy that Colm had ever seen led to such permanent distension. It was one more mystery in the layers of mysteries that surrounded the Roving Spectacular. Colm’s true form might be one of the biggest secrets, but it was far from the only one among the rovers.
By the time Nichol got back that night, Kith had left, gone to refill his flask and staying gone. Nichol pushed back his hood and stepped close to the tank, shuttering the lantern he carried so that it only let out the tiniest sliver of light. Colm could just see the bridge of his nose, and the soft skin of his cheeks where his dark beard hadn’t quite grown in. “Don’t think I’ll be doing that again,” Nichol said quietly, leaning his forehead against the tank. Dark curls tumbled forward, and Colm wished he could touch them. He could barely remember the feel of their silk between his fingers. He clenched his clawed hands tightly and focused on listening.
“Wes leads the other men into all sorts of mischief, with his money as a lure. He had plenty of ideas about things to do to you, but I…persuaded him it would be a bad idea.” He grinned and ducked his head down, and now the light caught on the edge of his eyes, one of which was swelling up.
Colm keened very, very softly, and reached instinctively for Nichol’s face. “Don’t fuss,” Nichol chided him. “He’s worse off, and he won’t be trying anything. That’s the important bit. Couldn’t have him ‘buggerin’ up me livelihood,’” he added sarcastically. “It’s all right. Now I’ve got a reason to avoid them, and I’d rather be here with you anyway.”
Colm was genuinely surprised by the earnestness in Nichol’s voice. He knew that Nichol had come along on this awful adventure to be with him, because he felt guilty and—yes—because he loved him, but Nichol’s preference for his company, when Colm could barely even communicate, still astonished him.
“Shall I tell you what idiot things they confessed to doing outside of Caithmor?” Nichol asked, settling down on the wagon next to Colm.
Yes.
Nichol smiled for him, and spoke, and Colm listened as raptly as he ever had.
Things stayed manageable up until the very last day of the Roving Spectacular’s stay in Devanon. The rovers would be breaking down camp the next day, and some of them had already started. Nichol had been called away by Kith to help with something, and so when Colm’s heart broke all over again, there was no one to witness it who understood this time.
The crowd was just a trickle, probably because it was a cold spring day out judging from the mud that decked their boots and hems. Colm swam his tight, cramped circles and swayed, and tried not to let on how ungodly bored he was with the whole thing. Why couldn’t it be nightfall? He was almost a third of the way done with the grate, and he could feel the spell that bound it on weakening, feel it in the way the cracks widened, minute but definite progress. He circled lazily and glanced out at the people watching him and saw a thin girl in a familiar woolen hat push her way to the front—
No. Oh no. It couldn’t be. It was impossible. Colm plastered himself to the glass, scaring some of the watchers back. “Baylee,” he tried to say, but all that came out was his usual hiss.
“Gods, it sounds awful,” one of the other young women said, drawing back even farther. “Told you it was a horror, Lee. Come on, let’s go.” Baylee didn’t move, though. She stared wide-eyed at the tank, and Colm stared right back, achingly desperate to know more.
What was she doing in Devanon? How had she gotten here, and why? She looked at him so intently—did some part of her recognize him? Could she help him? Colm spread his hands and kept his lips closed so his teeth wouldn’t scare her. He reached out as best he could, imploring, so close to his dearest sister he could almost feel the warmth of her arms.
“You were right, Glena,” Baylee said after a moment. “It is rather horrible, isn’t it?”
“I told you, din’t I? Had to look for yourself, and now we’ll be late gettin’ back to the caravan. C’mon, Lee.” Glena took Baylee by the hand and led her toward the exit, and Colm—
He couldn’t just watch her leave. It was like watching his own execution. “No,” he tried to yell. “No!” The few other spectators left in a hurry, disturbed by the noise despite how the water muted it. Baylee’s friend hustled her through the doorway, and his sister cast a final glance back before vanishing from Colm’s sight.
“No!”
That one was loud enough to make Colm’s head hurt. The vibrations of his noise bounced back at him from the smooth glass walls, and he covered his ear holes with his hands and curled into a heap on the bottom of the tank, more miserable now than he’d been when he’d first been put in here.
“What did they do to you?” he heard Nichol shout as he ran back into the te
nt. “What did they do? What happened?”
“What happened?” That was Kith, who sounded more engaged now than he’d been since they first came to Devanon. “Y’should ask the people who were watching, not the mer. It can’t speak like a man.” His voice turned speculative. “Why do you expect it to?”
“I don’t,” Nichol blustered, but Kith wasn’t buying it.
“I think perhaps you are. Is there some trick going on here that I don’t know about? Do you have some magic after all, Nyle? Can ye speak to beasts?”
“I don’t have any magic,” Nichol insisted. “I just got worried, that’s all. I’ve never heard him make that sound before.”
Lies, lies. Nichol had heard that sound the last time Colm’s heart broke, but he couldn’t exactly tell that to Kith. Colm knew he was being worrisome, that he was putting Nichol in a bad spot, but he couldn’t quite muster the willpower to turn over and act like everything was all right. Baylee had left home, left Anneslea, and her path had somehow led her…here? Why not through Isealea, why not down the main roads? Was she being taken care of, did she have money, did she have a plan? These weren’t questions that Colm had the answer to, but they plagued his mind now, all the worries he’d harbored since he first learned that she would do anything to escape being forced into marriage.
Not that there was anything he could do. He was impotent, useless. She didn’t even know who he was, and how could she? Baylee remembered a tall, fair man, with brown hair and a gentle voice. Not a mer. Not a monster. It was probably for the best. He couldn’t speak to her even if she’d known him, and had no means of reassuring her, not when he and Nichol didn’t know what they were doing themselves.
“Colm.”
He turned his head farther into the floor.
“Colm.” Nichol’s voice was soft but insistent. “Kith’s gone now. I think it’ll be all right. Colm, look at me.” He didn’t move. “Please, love, please look at me. Let me know what happened.”
Colm wanted to. He wanted to comfort Nichol’s fears and receive comfort in return, but it was too much right now. The pain was still too close, the cacophony of his own changed voice still rang too loudly in his own head. He pressed a hand back to rest against the tank, palm flat, and he felt the faint vibration of Nichol’s own hand coming to rest on the other side of the glass. Nichol didn’t ask again, but he stayed put for a few minutes, until Colm could just barely feel the warmth of Nichol’s hand seeping through, before he was called away to begin packing things up. No one else would be venturing into the House of Horrors today.
Not until much later, not until it was dark outside and Kith had drowned his suspicions in rotgut and most of the Spectacular was sleeping, did Colm finally make an effort to reassure Nichol. He ate the fish that Nichol offered him—freshly caught; he must have bargained hard for it—and met his eyes in the bright moonlight, and tried not to let his sadness overcome him again.
Nichol pressed his face to the glass, close enough that Colm could feel the vibration of his voice. “Tell me what happened,” he murmured. “Did you see something upsetting?”
Colm knocked on the glass once.
“Was it a thing?”
Two knocks.
“A person, then?”
Yes.
“Did they say something that hurt you?”
Colm shook his head in frustration. Yes, her words had hurt, but not for the reason Nichol was assuming. He could handle the imprecations. He had heard every epithet under the sun.
“This is the wrong direction, isn’t it?” Nichol said. “Did this person remind you of someone you know?”
Yes. Yes. Yes. Colm knocked, not in rapid succession, but in an effort to get his point across. Nichol looked surprised, and considered him for a moment.
“Was this actually someone you know?”
Yes.
“Oh gods, Colm.” Nichol’s compassion was swift and fierce, and Colm let it soothe his frayed emotions. “I’m so sorry. Someone from Caithmor?”
No.
“No?” Nichol’s brow furrowed. “Someone from…Anneslea?”
Yes.
“What a strange thing,” Nichol marveled. “The floods have pushed the mountain travelers away from the direct road of out Isealea, so a lot of them are coming through Devanon, but still…what a chance. Was it a man?”
No.
“A woman? Why would a woman be travelling—oh.” Comprehension dawned like a rising star, and Colm hung his head. “Your sister…your sister. It was Baylee?”
Yes.
“The priest must have tried to make her go through with the marriage,” Nichol said. “That’s the only reason I can think of that she’d try to get out of the mountains during the winter, with no way to let us know she was coming. If we’d known…we could have gone to get her. Met her along the road, eased her way. We might have stayed away from the coast.” His voice grew bitter. “We might have stayed out of the water.”
Colm turned his head sideways and pressed his cheek against the glass, feeling every constraint of his silence like a weight in his heart. It was painful not to be able to reach out to Baylee, even if it had probably been for the best, but he hated leaving Nichol feeling like anything about this damnable situation was his fault. Colm had never appreciated the soothing power of the spoken word more than when it was taken away from him. He stroked the glass with his hand.
“Are you trying to make me feel better?” Nichol asked, with a hint of his old wry humor. “You are unbelievable. I should be making you feel better, not the other way around, and all I can do is moan and cry.”
No.
“No, I know I do. And I know I need to be more careful too.” He cast his gaze toward the wagon where Kith slumbered on. “I can’t give them a reason to look more closely at you, especially not now. There’s nowhere for you to go yet, no escape. We need to get to the coast road, and I can’t move this tank without the wagon. There are too many people here to get it done without someone catching on. But I swear to you, I’ll find a way. We’ll find a way.”
Not for the first time, Colm was able to take a grain of comfort from Kiaran’s words: “I will ruin you, but I’ll save you too.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Roving Spectacular’s normal course of travel would have had it wind down the coast of the Muiri Empire, sticking close to the water that was the lifeblood of commerce and conquest. That would have kept them close to the sea, to unending salt water and the potential for freedom. It would have afforded them some chance, even if it was slight, for Colm to get free.
The spring floods changed the Spectacular’s course. Kiaran made suggestions, but it was Regar who made the ultimate choice and he kept them inland, in the low hills where the ground was stronger, away from washouts and flood plains and anything else that might slow down his caravan. When Kiaran objected and was overruled, he came to them. Nichol was a reluctantly sympathetic ear, and Colm had latched on to Kiaran’s presence like a lucky talisman.
“How can you prophesy things that you know will come to pass, when your own father doesn’t listen to your advice?” Nichol asked one night. Kith was with them, sadly. He’d stuck closer ever since that final day in Devanon, despite his drink-addled memory of Nichol’s interaction with Colm in the House of Horrors.
“Most of the time it isn’t a real problem,” Kiaran said, blowing on a skewer of meat to cool it. “I get feelings, impressions of the best way to go, but my interpretation isn’t always correct, as my father loves to point out to me.”
“Like the time you led us into a damn lightning storm,” Kith muttered from behind his jar of ale. His stomach was growling so loud even Colm could hear it. “Had to hunker down beneath our wagons for an entire day to ride that out.”
“And I still maintain something worse would have happened if we’d taken the other path,” Kiaran said. “But that
wasn’t one of my shining moments, no. Sometimes there’s no perfect solution. Sometimes you have to live out something bad in order to get to something better.”
“What if there isn’t something better to go back to?” Nichol asked quietly.
Kith laughed. “Missing your woman, Nyle? What, she leave you for a sailor back in Caithmor?”
“Something like that,” Nichol said, because it was worse to stonewall Kith than to give him enough information to think he understood.
“If there’s no hope at all, I rarely see anything,” Kiaran said around a mouthful of meat. “My talent’s way of protecting me, perhaps. It would be too sad to see nothing but hopelessness all day long.”
“’S’ a rare gift, that. Deathspeaking,” Kith put in. “My village had a deathspeaker, but he killed himself when I was a lad. The king’s forces came in not long after that,” he added morosely. “Can’t even find my village any longer. The forest has swallowed what was left of it.”
“The emperors have left behind too many empty villages, empty towns,” Kiaran said bitterly. “They’re too powerful not to be positively reeking with magic, and yet their priests beat back anyone who would lay claim to their own small piece of it.”
“They use magic more freely across the sea,” Nichol offered. “The priests loved to make it the subject of their sermons in Caithmor. Our Emperor is not just a conqueror; apparently, he’s a bringer of peace and truth in the face of foreign savagery.” Nichol rolled his eyes derisively.
“You don’t sound full of love for your religion,” Kith said. “Strange for a city boy.”
“I love the gods,” Nichol replied. “I just don’t love their messengers. I’ve seen the results of how they like to extract the truth, and it sickened me.”
“Well,” Kiaran said lightly, “I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I look forward to seeing if any of us are struck dead in the next few days. Divine retribution for such language is a tricky thing. Say a prayer tonight, Nyle.”