by Exley, A. W.
He let the purr of the engine and the touch of the dolphin in his fingers sooth his mind. Was that what bothered him, that she knew the fate waiting for her once they docked? An inert fish was easier to kill and sell than a woman with bottomless eyes and skin like silk in his arms.
Chapter Five
Sleep claimed him eventually until discordant snoring awoke him. The first shafts of dawn caressed the small round window above his bunk and the metal glowed golden. Fenton still clutched the jade dolphin in his hand, and he tucked it between two books before arising and pulling on his clothes.
He passed through the narrow galley, swiped a hard scone to chew and slipped an offcut of minnow into a pocket as he headed up on deck. From a cupboard on the forecastle deck, he drew out a line and then settled himself at a spot close to the bow as far away as possible from the noisy engine churning the water at the stern. He dangled his legs over the side and threaded the hook through the piece of fish and then he tossed the line overboard. The sun rose over the horizon as he watched the ocean below lit up by the creeping rays. The pale blue water revealed murky undertones as though something deep below stirred up the sand. He chewed his breakfast and kept one finger on the line and eventually the strand tugged over his finger. Hauling it up, he found a small fish, not much in size but hopefully it would do.
Fenton wound up the line and stowed it away. With the fish dangling from his fingers in its gills, he headed for the stairs to the main hold. Crew emerged and began their daily tasks amid chatter and laughter and the Razor's Edge sprang to life around him. The night watch took their leave and crawled off to sleep away the day.
"Where are you off to, Mr Fenton?" Reis' soft voice came from behind.
He held up the fish. "I thought I would see if our guest is hungry."
"So solicitous of you." The captain walked into his view, his leather great coat stiff from soaking up years of salt spray.
Fenton shrugged. "She's not worth much dead. The Lady Alise needs her beating heart not a cold still one." He struggled over the words, was that really how he saw Ailin? No, he just couldn't identify what was motivating him, apart from a curiosity to find out.
A smile spread over Reis' face. "Don't let it into your head, Mr Fenton. Remember, it's a siren, as cold and flat as that fish in your hand. It will use you to its own ends if it sees an opportunity, and we don't want all that gold slipping over board, now do we?"
"No, Cap'n." Fenton parroted what Reis expected to hear but the words rang hollow to his ears. He thought of his shelf crammed with books. No one wrote poems about cold hard coin. Sonnets celebrated beauty, love and noble actions.
Below deck, he placed the fish on a crate and levered open the heavy lid. Within, Ailin blinked and raised a hand as if to ward him off.
"Good morning," he said, not knowing what else to say.
Her gaze rested on him and her hand dropped as she sat up. The water sluiced back and forth around her, from the roll of the ship. He moved around the hold and pulled open the wooden covers over the port holes, letting the sun beyond spotlight points on the floor and chase away some of the pervading gloom.
"I brought a fish, I'm not sure what you eat?"
She cocked her head to one side. "Fish is acceptable, but I prefer seaweed if you are able to find any."
"I'll keep an eye out if we spot a patch. Would you like to sit outside?" He shouldn't let her out of her prison, but what harm could it do to let her stretch? Plus, he would hold her in his arms again, however briefly.
"Outside the ship?" Her lips quirked for a moment in the briefest smile before it dropped away and sadness lingered in her eyes.
"I meant on the crate." His gut twisted, a cruel choice of words. He waved at the upturned box he used as an impromptu seat the previous day.
"Please." She raised her arms and slipped them around his neck as he lifted her from the water.
Fenton carried her and for a moment, her face rested against his neck and her breath feathered over his skin. Part of him wanted to tighten his arms and keep hold of her. It took a conscious effort to place her on the wood.
She twisted her long hair into fat strand and wrung out the excess water before draping it over one shoulder. "I have made you wet." She pointed to his linen shirt now plastered to his chest.
He shrugged. "I'm a sailor, you get used to being wet and this'll dry shortly." He moved around the hold, checking all items were secure, tightening a rope here and tucking an object behind the netting there. As he worked, he ignored the crunch of scales and bones. The next time he turned, she sat, licking her fingers and no trace of the fish remained.
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" A myriad of daily tasks awaited him on deck but he found himself lingering, wanting to engage her in conversation.
Her sad eyes rested on him, a question poised on her full lips. "If I asked, would you carry me up on deck?"
And just like that, she reminded him that he was the captor and she a prisoner. Reis watched him already. None on board would forgive the man who let a fortune in gold slip through their fingers. They wouldn't kill him, not when Reis knew he longed for it. But pirates were resourceful, there was many ways to make a man wish for death without letting her embrace take him.
"I cannot. The captain says you are a cold siren who would drag a man to his death for your own amusement." He remembered the tale from the previous night. "He said he once encountered three of your kind near the Bantea artic edge and that they killed five sailors before they sailed away from the lure of the temptresses."
She stared at the ground and the play of light and shadow created by her tail. Then she lifted eyes that shimmered with unshed tears to meet his gaze. "Four."
"Pardon?" He stopped before her.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the crate. "There were four mermaids lazing in the sun on that outcrop."
Fenton frowned, why was she contradicting his story? "Reis was there and he says three sat on the rock."
She wiped a hand over her cheek before continuing. "Three remained after the sailors harpooned one through her stomach and dragged her screaming to their ship. When they couldn't find her mating passage, they took their knives and cut slits in her body to satisfy their base urges while she bleed out on the deck. Then they argued over who would get to eat her heart."
Fenton froze. Her story so different to the scene Reis painted over dinner and few rums. He shook his head. "They waited to lure sailors to their deaths."
"That part of the Bantea arctic region used to be a spawning ground for my kind. Safe, or so we thought, far away from the reach of man. Those females had all just given birth, their young hidden in crevices in the rocky outcrop. They needed time to recover and regain their strength before swimming back to our home waters." She wrung her hands together, her gaze now fixed in her lap.
This didn't make sense but how did she know of the incident Reis narrated? More siren trickery or was this part of their magic? "If they were weak from childbirth, then how did five sailors drown?"
"They mutilated one mermaid then turned their eyes to the remaining three. They dropped a long boat of men over the side and they rowed for the outcrop. There was one merman under the water. One male against an entire ship, the other mates had gone off hunting and chasing another predator. The sole male did what he could, he remained hidden and prised apart the bottom planks of the boat so that it took on water." She swallowed and then took a deep breath as though the words pained her. "A few swam back to the ship, a couple could not swim and were abandoned by their brothers and two more tried for the rock and the merman pulled them under."
No. He shouldn't listen to her tale. It painted the mermaids as victims of the pirates' lust when Reis said it was the other way round. They lured the innocent men to their deaths. This was trickery, she saw into his heart and used his uncertainty against him. "How can you know any of this? You are trying to deceive me, to make me sympathetic to your plight."
"I was one
of the young hiding in the rocky outcrop. My mother lost her much loved sister that day." Tears ran down her face. "A change of perspective can change a story. Men ascribe motives to my kind that say more about your nature than ours. Ask your captain what became of our sister's body."
He shook his head, a seductive tale of wronged mermaids. Who could he believe? The captain whom he had known for twenty years or a woman he knew for twenty hours? He couldn't think in her presence, the air in his lungs heated and emitted vapour that fogged up his brain.
"I'll return in a couple of hours and put you back in the crate." He spun on his heel and sought the fresh air up on deck. Routine occupied his body while his mind pulled at his thoughts like a puzzle, one he couldn't solve without the missing piece. He needed more information from Reis.
He found the captain on the sterncastle deck. Reis checked their bearing with his sextant and read off the calculations to Maynard, their navigator. Then, Maynard disappeared into the navigation room to consult his charts. Reis stood by the helm, surveying his workers below.
Fenton crossed his arms over his chest and kept one eye on the horizon. "I have been talking to Ailin, she knows of the encounter you mentioned last night."
Reis huffed. "Does it now. Do fish gossip, I wonder?"
He pitched his voice conversational rather than outright confronting the volatile captain. "She says there were more than three mermaids on that rock and to ask you what became of the fourth."
Reis turned his head and one black eyebrow arched as he gazed on his first mate. "Would you take the fish's word over that of a man you have known all your life?"
Yes, Fenton's gut whispered. Because I have had my whole life to gauge what type of man you are. "Was there a fourth?"
Reis turned back to the helm and watched the crewman make a small correction to their course. "We managed to snag one and dragged it on board to satisfy our curiosity."
Ailin spoke true, did that mean the rest of her tale was accurate? That the crew defiled her aunt while her mother watched, unable to help? "Did you eat the creature's heart, is the legend true?" Was that the source of Reis' power and his ability to peer into a man's soul with his black eyes? Had he consumed a mermaid's heart all those years ago?
The wind caught the captain's laughter and it seemed to whip around from all directions. "We fought like dogs over a bone. Every single man wanted to claim its cold organ, the captain had no hope of controlling us. Its heart was torn into a thousand pieces, most trampled underfoot. The only thing I learned was never to trust my fellow sailors."
Fenton glanced down at the working sailors. They called themselves a family but he knew most men would slit his throat for the coins in his pocket. The bigger the prize dangled before their eyes, the fiercer the fighting to grasp it. "What happened to her, afterward?"
"We packed the carcass in salt and sold it in Darjee to a collector of curiosities. One dead fish and each man received enough gold to stay blind drunk and sated for a solid week, or enough to buy a piece of ore-mancer wizardry." Reis glanced at his gauntlet and caressed the face of a dial with a fingertip.
There was still something that didn't make sense to Fenton, a remaining inconsistency between the two versions of the story. "Did the men drown because the mermaids pulled them beneath the water or because they couldn't swim?"
The captain dropped his hand back to his side. "My brother could swim, he never made it back to the ship. Captain refused to let me avenge him but by the time we sailed up the Darjee channel, I was in command of the Razor's Edge."
Fenton frowned, piecing together the story. If the mermaids didn't pull the men under, then they had either drowned because the other sailors abandoned them or the merman had protected the females. He opened his mouth but Reis silenced him with a wave of his hand. "I think you ask too many questions. Best get about your duties Mr Fenton and stop listening to the siren's song."
"Yes, Cap'n." He nodded his head and left the helm but in his mind he compared the two tales. Ailin was right, perspective completely changed a story.
The next day followed the same routine. He rose early and fished off the bow. Today he caught a snapper and he trod lightly on the steps to the hold, eager to see Ailin. He stopped himself on the stair, half in shadow and half in the light. What was he doing? In just a couple of days, the creature had tunnelled into his soul in ways he didn't understand. His need to see and talk to her becoming as vital as oxygen. He slowed his pace the rest of the way and busied himself pulling aside the porthole covers before he opened the crate.
She stretched like a sleeper. Arms over her head, a pose that made her breasts more prominent and he averted his gaze. From the corner of his eye, he watched her take her wet hair in both hands and she twisted it over one shoulder before reaching out for him, waiting for his embrace.
He slipped his arms around her and placed her on the crate. This time he watched as her sharp teeth tore at the fish. "I asked the captain about the fourth mermaid."
She sucked in a breath and froze for a moment. Then she cocked her head to stare at him, before she resumed eating.
"They sold her body in Darjee." Which version did he believe? Which perspective was narrated with a true eye? Either the sailors violated and murdered a mermaid, and then drowned because they couldn't swim or her kind were heartless killers that lured the men to their deaths.
Or was there a third option, perhaps the truth lay somewhere in the middle. What would females and their mates do to protect their young?
She licked her fingers and kept her gaze on him. "You still don't know which of us to believe."
"No." It bothered him. If he believed her so easily, did it prove Reis' point, that the siren's lure took control of his mind? Or did it validate his gut instinct, that there was an inherent gentleness about her, the opposite of the captain's harshness?
"Perhaps it no longer matters, but thank you for asking," she said.
"The captain says you would do anything to be free, that you would fill my head with promises your body would never deliver." He couldn't help it, his gaze roamed her form, from the high breasts to the swoop of her waist. Even the sensuous length of her tail appealed to him on a primal level. For the man who controlled the kraken, she seemed a purpose-made distraction.
Her gaze held his. "I am stuck in a box on my way to be sold and eaten. Of course I want to escape death, wouldn't you?"
"Death is an escape," he whispered. One he longed for, to free him from his prison sentence. He laboured every day for the captain, his movements controlled. Inside he was a mess of discordant notes, nothing felt right as though he were contorted into a shape not his own. Outwardly, he looked like the rest of the crew but the monster that shadowed the ship in the ocean, dwelt inside him too. He would never be free, only death would severe his bond. He ran a hand through shaggy hair, pushing the curl from his nape.
"Death is an end, a void of nothingness." She frowned.
He wrung his hands together. How to make her understand and why had it become important that he explain it to her? A tentative bond of trust extended between them, forged over the story of her past. "Your prison is tangible, like your predicament. You are in a steel crate. With your hands you can feel for any weakness, caress the bolts and hinges holding down the lid. Once open, your path lies before you. You need to lever yourself out of the crate to the floor, then across to those stairs."
He pointed behind him where a swaying light cast movement over the rough steps. "Up there is the deck and beyond that the ocean. You know the obstacles you face, which means you can plan and plot your way around them. What if you were kept in a prison you could not see or feel? How would you plan an escape if you don't even understand what contains you?" He paced back and forth in long strides across the planks. The words sought to be free, words he never spoke to another soul. Until now. As though her captivity allowed his words to escape.
Ailin gestured at him. "You roam this ship freely, how can you be trapped?"
Chapter Six
Ailin stared at Fenton. The damp shirt clung to his body where she touched him and revealed the tattoo underneath the fabric. A kraken covered his back, its tentacles wrapped around his arms and torso as though it embraced him. She suppressed a shiver. Why would anyone permanently etch the terrible creature into their skin? This landwalker confused her, his appearance and words clashed and made no sense. Not that she had any dealings with men and had to rely on the stories told by the elders of a cruel race interested only in gold and defiling women.
Yet this man spoke about freedom as though it was some precious thing all the while he played the role of her captor. Even more confusing, he treated her like a fellow creature with intelligence and emotions while the other men saw her as a cold fish to be gutted and filleted for dinner. What game did he play and which of the two images she glimpsed was the real Fenton? And more perplexing, why did her heart beat faster whenever she raised her arms for his embrace?
"Why do you treat me like this?" she asked.
The pacing stopped and he turned to face her. Lines scoured his brow. "Like what?"
"You brought me fresh water, food and allow me to stretch. You show me kindness and speak to me like an equal. And yet you are my captor. Why?" She couldn't stop the tear that rolled down her face. With all her heart, she wanted to return to the ocean, to find her people. Most of all, she wanted to forget. This man brought her the smell of the ocean but she couldn't touch it. He awoke something in her heart that unfurled and reached for more.
"I cannot change our destination but I can make the journey tolerable for you and perhaps distract your mind a little." He shook his head. "I wish I could release you."