Veritas

by St Clare, Kelly

  “O’ course,” she replied, scanning his face. “He gave me the beads.”

  “No, what I meant was: Is there anything going on between you and Jagger? Romantically?”

  What? A short laugh burst from her lips. “Ye’re kiddin’.” She snorted. Lowering her voice, Ebba asked around a chuckle, “Me and Jagger? Ye’re bonkers, matey.”

  “Just a jealous fool then,” Caspian said, darting a sheepish look down at her. “I apologize.”

  Ebba shrugged. “Better out than in. But just so ye know, I don’t like it when ye’re jealous. If I ever felt sumpin’ for someone else, I’d let ye know. Why were ye comin’ to get me?”

  He started. “Oh, time to check the direction again.”

  “Best hop to it then,” she said, stepping around him.

  She climbed up the ladder, but feeling Caspian’s eyes on her from below, Ebba glanced back down.

  “Ye’re lookin’ at my butt,” she hissed at him, lips trembling.

  Caspian’s face flooded red, and as he stammered an apology, Ebba’s trembling lips gave way to violent, all-consuming laughter. She clutched at the ladder, but as the gales burst from her mouth, the force of it slowly drained her strength.

  “Caspian,” she gasped as the waves of laughter wracked her frame. “My arms are gone. I’m goin’ to fall.”

  She heard his mad scramble downward and had the presence of mind to double-check he’d reached the bottom before relinquishing her grip on the rungs.

  The force of her fall sent them both to the ground.

  Ebba rolled off him, snorting and gulping for air. She clutched her stomach, curling in a ball.

  “I’m glad that amused you rather than offended you,” Caspian said, a wry twist to his mouth.

  Barrels poked his head out of his office. “What’s going on?”

  “Uh,” the prince stuttered.

  Ebba’s laughter only swelled higher and louder, and Barrels lifted both brows faintly before disappearing back into his numbers-and-letters room.

  In the chuckling aftermath, she half-crawled to the ladder. “I’m near-on sweatin’, I was laughin’ so hard.”

  “Just so you’re aware,” Caspian said in her ear, “I enjoy looking at your body very much. I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”

  Did he now? Ebba smiled widely and propped up on tiptoes to kiss his mouth.

  “Oops, I missed,” she said, pulling back from kissing his chin. “I’m laugh-drunk, I be thinkin’. And nay, I’m okay with that.”

  She turned from him and climbed the ladder, burningly aware that Caspian would be watching, but not willing to glance down for fear of laughing so hard she cracked her skull open on a second fall.

  Shoving open the bilge door, she wavered toward Jagger, her body still weak.

  “Why’s yer face flushed?” he asked.

  “A laughin’ fit.”

  He peered past her at Caspian, and Ebba glanced back to see the prince grinning widely. She giggled and slapped a hand over her mouth.

  Jagger stared at her in disgust. “Did ye just giggle?”

  He couldn’t be more disgusted in her than she was. “Nay, it was a belch. We doin’ this or what?”

  The pirate made to reply but then froze, his eyes roaming over her hair. He was in front of her in a second, one hand going to a beaded dread.

  “Ye put yer beads back in,” he said curiously. He dropped a hand down and touched veritas.

  Oh, right. “Aye.”

  The urge to dislodge his other hand threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to itch her scalp, as though a tiny tingle ran from his fingers, up her dreadlocks, and into her skin.

  “You can see them perfectly well with your eyes,” Caspian seethed from behind her.

  Ebba didn’t look back. “Nay, it’s okay.” Whatever Jagger currently felt was strong, and he could touch her dreads if he needed to.

  The pirate didn’t appear to have heard the prince anyway. He thumbed the beads and golden thread at the bottom of one dreadlock, expression closed off, silver eyes fixed. He didn’t just stop there. Gently pushing back her bandana, he let veritas clatter to the deck and trailed his fingertips over all eight strands in turn.

  Ebba was transfixed by his expression—equal parts wounded and wonder.

  “Excuse me, comin’ through,” Peg-leg said, elbowing between her and Jagger.

  Ebba sighed at her father’s intervention, her hair swinging back into place.

  “We need to find the direction.” Caspian walked up to her side, expression closed off.

  Jagger took her hand again, but this time Ebba withdrew, opting to clutch his forearm instead. He stilled but reached out to clasp Caspian’s shoulder without comment. She grabbed the prince’s hand and, in less time than it took to blink, a white beam shot from their glowing trio into the distance.

  Peg-leg shouted to Locks at the helm. “It’s headed northeast.”

  Locks altered their course, causing Felicity to lurch in the swell.

  “Can we assume that means Grubby’s turned whatever has the fifth part around?” Caspian asked.

  “He’s meant to be herdin’ it to us, not sideways—” Jagger started.

  The beam shifted.

  “Northwest,” she called to Locks.

  Plank and Stubby joined them, standing just outside their glow to watch the beam.

  “That’s more like it,” Jagger said smugly.

  The beam shifted again. Northeast. Northwest. The direction changed every ten seconds, then even that whittled away until the beam jerked erratically.

  A geyser of water, much like water forced upward from a whale’s blowhole, exploded from the Dynami.

  “Grubby’s signal,” Plank said.

  “The thing be near,” Stubby told them. “Don’t break the co’nection.”

  She wasn’t planning on it.

  Stubby hurried to the sheets with Plank, shouting for Barrels in the hold.

  Peg-leg made directly for the bow.

  Ebba tightened her grip on the others, trying to peer through their glowing aura to see ahead. The beam shifted frantically, twisting and bolting like a fish hooked on a line.

  “There be sumpin’ in the water,” Peg-leg hollered, leaning over the bow.

  “How far?” she asked him.

  They waited, but Peg-leg straightened, scanning the water. He went to port and then starboard to peer down each side of the ship.

  “It disappeared,” he announced.

  “Shite, it’s bloody gone past us again,” Locks exploded from the wheel.

  Ebba stared at the beam, watching as it looped in a lazy circle about the ship.

  The beam pointed directly down.

  Felicity pitched and fell back to the ocean. Ebba yelled, glancing up at Jagger and then Caspian, and from the horror in their eyes, she could see they’d come to the same conclusion.

  There were many things a ship could do, but jumping wasn’t one of them.

  She choked out the words anyway. “It’s under the ship.”

  Ten

  Something huge slammed into the underside of the ship. Ebba’s hand was ripped from Caspian’s, her grip on Jagger torn away as the ship began to shudder and jerk. She staggered to regain her balance, but then her feet were leaving the deck entirely. She sailed through the air as Felicity pitched upward out of the water.

  Ebba cried out, arms flailing as she struggled to make sense of which way was up. Sea spray exploded in every direction. Shouts from her fathers heightened her desperation. Her gaze caught on a piece of the rigging and, pushing away her shock at the sudden height, Ebba twisted her body and stretched her fingertips out as far as she could.

  By the skin of her teeth, she managed to latch onto the lowest boom.

  But the assault from below the ocean’s surface wasn’t over. Ebba didn’t have time to search for her fathers or time to look for the creature attacking them. She clung precariously to the boom, nails digging into the wood, arms shaking as
the lurching, plunge and slap of Felicity continued.

  And then all went eerily, eerily still.

  Ebba pulled herself atop the boom. She’d ended up on the lowest boom, close to the mast.

  “Where’s Ebba?” Plank shouted.

  “Up here,” she called, peering down.

  Grubby burst from the water and landed butt-naked on deck. Stubby was trying to help Peg-leg up. Plank and Caspian had ended up at the bow, and Jagger at the helm.

  “Barrels is below deck,” she heard Caspian yell.

  All of them were accounted for. Ebba allowed herself a shaky exhale.

  “What in Davy Jones’ was that?” Stubby demanded, limping up to the naked Grubby.

  “Is it,” the selkie corrected. “It’s still here.”

  Plank wasn’t the only one to yell, “What?”

  Her fathers surrounded Grubby.

  “What is it?” Locks pressed him. “Will it attack again?”

  She had to get back down to the deck. But as Ebba made to hoist herself up, her eyes caught on something else.

  Something bad.

  Gigantic tentacles with suckers the size of her head crept over the bulwarks in every direction. Ebba knew the answer to this one.

  “Kraken,” she bellowed.

  The crew spurred into action, drawing their weapons.

  Ebba pulled herself upright and ran to the mast in the middle to assess the situation. Taking tight hold of a sheet in one hand, Ebba drew her cutlass with the other and scanned the deck. Which side needed her most?

  Caspian was frozen, staring in horror at the huge, slimy arms of the sea creature slithering over the sides of the ship and onto the deck.

  Two of the massive tentacles stretched up for the rigging, weaving around the lowest boom where she stood. The tentacles began working inward toward her.

  “I’ll handle the ones up here,” she called to the others.

  Ebba had heard enough stories to know what happened next. The kraken would pull them down into the black depths of the Dynami Sea.

  As soon as she had the thought, the kraken did just that. Felicity lurched downward.

  Crying out, Ebba teetered on the boom, nearly dropping her cutlass in the natural urge to hold on with both hands. Recovering, she widened her stance, frantically looking port and starboard as the two tentacles drew closer to her.

  They had to do something. But she could only think of the four magic objects in their possession.

  “Can ye heal it, Caspian?” she yelled.

  The prince twisted to look up at her and nodded. He leaped into action, sheathing his cutlass to rip the purgium free. He edged toward the closest tentacle and held one end of the tube, stretching to touch the other end to the beast.

  Nothing happened.

  “Bugger,” she muttered, eyeing the ever-nearing tentacles either side of her.

  The scio might help if they could get the kraken’s head above water. She couldn’t see what use veritas would be—except as a normal weapon. That left the dynami in her belt.

  She counted six tentacles wrapped around the deck, dragging Felicity down, excluding the two up with her. The kraken’s hold on the ship’s hull was the biggest threat. Ebba could hack at the other two—and hopefully not die in the process.

  “Plank!”

  He craned to look up, and she held the dynami aloft, letting it drop into his hands.

  “Pull off the tentacles,” she told him.

  Felicity sank farther into the ocean, and she clung to the mast.

  Water began flooding in the scuppers.

  Plank tucked the tube in his belt. Running to the nearest tentacle, he peeled the suckers off without effort. The ship hauled from port to starboard side without warning as the kraken’s grip was dislodged, and Plank sprinted across to the opposite bulwark, peeling off the three tentacles there.

  But the kraken was already bringing the first three back.

  The rest of the crew sliced at the tentacles, trying to prevent the creature from regaining its grip.

  Hands on his knees, Plank passed the dynami to Locks, who took over, moving to the bow and the helm on repeat.

  It was working.

  As the nearest of the tentacles on the boom slithered closer, Ebba adjusted her grip on her cutlass.

  “We’ll be havin’ kraken for dinner,” she said through clenched teeth.

  With a yell, Ebba slashed at the nearest limb, smiling ferally as it retracted. She could almost hear the creature’s hiss of pain. She didn’t wait for the immortal to attack, relinquishing her grip on the sheet to follow up with another slash and another.

  She chased it back to the tip, jabbing and thrusting savagely at the tentacle as she shuffled along the boom. When the kraken drew the tentacle off the boom and below the surface, she hollered, “Ye ain’t havin’ our ship.”

  “Grubs,” Peg-leg called. “Can’t ye help it see reason?”

  Panting, Ebba turned away from the water to glance down as Grubby dove overboard. She struggled to hear the rest of their conversation over the pouring and hissing water.

  When had that started?

  It sounded a lot like when she stood from a bath and water fell off her body in torrents. Except much, much louder.

  Swallowing, Ebba pivoted as a shadow fell over her.

  She swallowed a scream.

  The kraken sat at eye level with her. Its eyes, the size of barrel ends, glowed an ugly and sinister red. The blazing orbs sat within the head of an octopus twice the size of their ship. The creature had a beak—was that normal?

  She frowned at the sharp edges of its mouth. The kraken snapped, and Ebba jumped.

  Her hold on the rigging slipped. She windmilled her arms, crying out wordlessly as she toppled past the point of return.

  And began to fall.

  Air rushed past as she hurtled toward the deck, eyes blurring. The scream torn from her lips cut short as she came to a jarring halt, her head whipping back against a soft, slimy surface.

  She’d stopped falling.

  She hadn’t landed on the hard deck.

  Ebba glanced down at the thick tentacle wrapped tight about her middle. The kraken caught her. Phew.

  The kraken caught her!

  Ebba shrieked, kicking and thrashing as the sea creature drew her to its snapping beak. Yellow teeth, the size of short swords, appeared each time the kraken opened its mouth.

  Her crew shouted her name.

  She couldn’t spare another breath to scream.

  Her cutlass was gone; her arms were trapped at her sides. In her peripheries, she was aware of the kraken’s other tentacles beating down on their ship. Wood splintered, shards flying past her face and bouncing off the monster’s bulbous head.

  Its grip was so . . . very . . . tight. Ebba dragged in a breath, but it wasn’t enough. She stopped kicking, her thrashing weakening, weakening, until she couldn’t keep it up.

  Ebba slumped, resting her head on the creature’s tentacle.

  Scales larger than her hands covered the kraken’s tentacles. Innumerable hues of purple and blue and silver folded together creating a masterpiece. She flopped her head back as black crept into her vision. Droplets of water and the kraken’s blood were everywhere, chaos reigned, and her vision tunneled on the kraken’s burning eyes. “Yer scales be so beautiful.”

  So tight.

  The creature reared, but Ebba couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. She listened to the droplets of water returning to the ocean surface with a hiss. She smiled as the splintering of wood stopped and as the anarchy faded to calm.

  The tentacle loosened around her, and without conscious effort, she sucked in a massive breath, coughing pathetically. She didn’t even have the strength to lift her head.

  The monster shook her, and Ebba’s teeth rattled.

  “What did you say?” The words were barely discernable through a series of clicks.

  Ebba gulped in more air, clinging to consciousness. The wind whooshed in he
r ears as she was moved downward in a blur and carefully laid on a wooden surface.

  Hands clutched at her.

  “Give her room to breathe, ye dolts,” Locks said.

  “Make her talk.” The clicks came again.

  Had she died and gained the ability to speak kraken? Or was the kraken one of the immortals capable of speaking pirate?

  “Uh . . . we’ll be tryin’, great kraken, but it may take a while. Ye cut off her breathin’,” Plank said.

  Her father understood the creature. Unless Plank had the scio, the kraken could definitely speak pirate.

  Hands rolled her, and she continued to breathe through the dizziness assaulting her. Slowly, her inhales evened out, and some strength returned to her body. Ebba opened her eyes to see her fathers. Or four of them.

  Their joyful expressions turned into alarm as tentacles flicked them away like flies.

  The kraken loomed overhead, blotting out any trace of the sun. Her eyes widened as it hovered right above until its eyes were once more on level with hers.

  “What did you say about my scales?” the kraken asked, beak snapping with every word, very close to where her innards wanted to stay inside her body.

  Ebba opened and closed her mouth. “W-what?”

  “My scales,” the kraken said. “You said something about them. What did you say?”

  Did it . . . just roll its eyes?

  Ebba tried to recall her delirious thoughts, a wrinkle between her brows. “I said that I thought them right beautiful.”

  The creature reared back and clapped two of its tentacles together. “You said they were soooo beautiful.”

  What. In. Davy. Jones’. Locker?

  Turning her head to the side, she locked eyes with Stubby. He appeared as baffled as her.

  Ebba peered past him and took in the ship. The deck was destroyed, cracked and pitted all over. The mast was still up but on one side, and where the kraken had caught her, the lower boom was demolished. Water sprayed up in several places from holes in the hull.

  She struggled up. “Barrels,” she rasped through her sore throat. He was below deck.