“Janez!”
A violent hand caught at his shoulder. Janez tore it away.
“If misery is all my duty leaves me, then afford me the mercy of making it brief!” he bellowed. The room was a virulent scarlet. The pain in his chest was a spear that pierced right through. He would bleed ice water onto the stones and dissolve into naught but foam, like the mythological mermaids of old.
He tightened his heart about the cold and sealed it. Pulled his shoulder taut.
And clicked his heels. The prince. The lieutenant. A nameless, faceless man, to die a footnote in history, with no trace of any real life left behind.
“May I take my leave, Your Majesty?”
The words felt thick and foreign, like Held’s garbled language. He so rarely used this address, so rarely spoke it—but then this was not his brother, staring at him from the other side of the war room table.
This was his king, and his king ordered him to be bartered for a treaty and a handful of lacklustre ships, with a spitting insult of duty.
Duty! Had Janez not done his duty in nearly drowning in their last skirmish? Had Janez not done his duty in visiting with the princesses in the first place? Had he not done his damned duty whenever it had been asked of him, from the day of his birth to this very instant?
His teeth ground against each another.
And he would do it again now. Because he had no choice.
“May I,” he repeated stonily, “take my leave. Your Majesty.”
Alarik looked oddly wounded. But then frowned. Jerked his head.
“Go. To the royal chambers.”
“House arrest?”
The words escaped before Janez could prevent them. Alarik looked alarmed.
“You are not a prisoner, Janez.”
“Am I not.” It wasn’t a question. And before his brother—his king—could utter a single word, Janez turned on his heel and marched out with all the stiff, brittle grace of a soldier on parade.
So tense that a single weight might snap him in two.
So angry that he wished for it.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE BEACH WAS cold and wreathed in shadows when Held reached it.
Janez had not returned by the time the air had turned its telltale grey and gold, so Held had slipped away with determination in his heart. This would not be the end. It must not. He would entreat with the Witch for more, for longer, for a whole lifetime. He could not leave this life and love behind, not for anything in the world. If she demanded his voice, his bones, his very soul, then Held would give it.
This would not be goodbye, so none was needed.
The sea was very cold, and Held settled up to his neck in the soft tide as the shadows grew longer and the temperature dropped yet further. Tiny sparkles of light began to show in a deep blue—and then it happened.
Pain.
A lancing pain that shot up both legs and drove him into the tide. Salt water filled his mouth. He choked on it and writhed, panicking. Blood. There was blood in the water. Pink and foamy. He lashed out at it and saw the edges of his fingers splitting apart, the skin frayed like fabric. The salt burned. He screamed and suffocated upon the sea. His bones ground together—knuckles drove fingers into one another; his hips wrenched, and his legs collided angrily. The sharp stones on the seabed stripped his skin. His chest hurt, hurt, hurt—and agony burst like fire in his ribs and spine, and gashes tore themselves, like claws from some invisible monster, into the flesh of his neck.
Water.
Oh, sweet water. He gulped at it, breathed it in, and sobbed past the agony in his legs. The salt scoured him; he felt scrubbed raw, fragile, and the terrible fitting of raw and unbridled pain dissolved into pathetic twitches as his very bones dissolved. The water was black with blood—he would die, he would die, surely he would die—and great holes burst open about his waist and chest as skin ballooned and gave birth to brims and breasts that he’d lacked for only three days, yet felt as terrible and alien as though he’d never had them at all.
The scales erupted like pox, great scabs of blood-soaked pain, and he curled in on himself and screamed until the shallows rippled with it. His fingers parted, the webbing thick and lumpy with clots and scars. Yet it was not the pain that tormented his mind as his form returned. It was not the blood or the strange feeling of water instead of air.
It was—
It was her.
The soft, supple back, finless and free. The lumpy misshapen chest. The soft arms and round shoulders. The wide hips and gentle belly.
The delicacy.
The maid.
He tore at that terrible chest and cried. It looked wrong; it felt wrong. It was not his, not him, not Held. This was Calla, and he was not her. He was not; he was not. He was—he—was—
Lost. Imprisoned. Trapped. This body was wrong, all of it, from its pretty frill to its soft face. He clutched at his hair—short, shorn, thankfully still so—and wrenched at it as though he could pull the maid away and find the man. He was there—he was. Inside somewhere, somewhere—
For the longest time, Held just—cried.
He’d never understood before, but—oh, this was not simply the love of the legend. He’d not been wrong for being a mermaid. He’d missed the sway of his hair, and the drift of the tide, and the strange leg-endings of skyfolk were nothing to be jealous of. But this was about her and him, and—
He was not her.
Had he ever been? Had all those years been down to this? That loathing of singing, of the high tone of his voice; that displeasure in swimming bare whilst no other seemed to mind; that strange sense of something being wrong when the odd merman had shown interest? That knowledge he was beautiful whilst being convinced he was ugly?
Had that been this?
If their roles were reversed, if the Witch were to change Janez into a merman and bring him down below the sky, would Held still feel so very bad? Yes, he realised. Yes, he would. It wouldn’t matter that Janez could kiss him, touch him, be with him—it would be wrong, so very wrong, and it would be all because of her. Because this body was maid, not man. Because it felt like slipping into clothes several cuts too small and being told they were perfect.
Was it possible? For an entire body to be so misplaced? How could it be? He’d been born in it, grown in it; he was his body, and his body was him. Only…
Only the body was her, and Held was him, and that could not be.
It could not, it could not, it could not…
He lay, weak from blood loss and exhaustion, in the dark shallows for the longest time, the thoughts chasing one another like merlings in his mind. And they came back to the same inescapable fact.
He was her.
And he could not stomach the fact.
HE DIDN’T KNOW how many hours had passed before he finally moved.
The tide had turned, and Held had abandoned the shore, diving deep and straight until he hit a great wall of seaweed, tall and deep red in the gloom. There, he tore at the stems and bound them about his loathed chest like a bandage, trapped the bulging chest under layer upon layer until it ached to breathe, but he looked—and felt—a little more like himself.
And a lot less like Calla.
Once bound, he set out northwards.
The Witch had done it once, and she could do it again. She could turn him into a skyman—and if the potion always must be temporary, then perhaps she had another to keep Held a man. To banish Calla, and this terrible, ill-fitting form, and bind him to himself. To separate him from her, enshrine one and dissolve the other.
He would give anything. Anything at all.
And so he swam straight for the Whalelands. She had ordered it, but he’d have gone regardless. The sea was dark and dour, so very unlike the bright brilliance of the world above the sky. He’d missed home, yet it was nothing to the fierce agony of separation. There was no Janez here. There could be no merman even close to his brightness. The Witch had been wrong—the men who walked on water were wonderful cr
eatures, incredible beings, and Held loved one with every fibre of any form he’d ever known.
And so he swam straight and hard, against pain and exhaustion, for the Whalelands.
The season was changing. The sea was cooler than before. He hugged the seabed as the ice-clouds began to pierce the sky. If ice-clouds had come, then the orcas would have too, so Hold slowed and swam carefully as the distance closed.
And then the white towers began to jut from the earth, and Held could have wept.
“Witch!” he called, diving into the courtyard and swirling about the central column. “Witch! I need you! Please! I need your help!”
Silence met him.
“I came back, as you said! And—and it’s not enough, I need to go back, I need to—”
Silence.
“Please!”
A great pain was welling up in his chest again. Desperation. He begged the empty sky and untamed gardens; he pleaded with the columns and the ceilings. Send him back, make him a man again, let him go, please-please-please—
“And why,” came the voice—finally, finally, that blessed, terrible voice, “should I help you again?”
Held whirled. She lay atop the central point again, draped as languidly as before.
“I’ll do anything,” he begged. “Anything—anything!”
“You have nothing I am interested in,” she said idly, rolling onto her back. “Begone. You have had your fun.”
“I love him!”
A laugh. “How terribly nice. I think you will find that I still have no interest in your little love affairs.”
“This—this is wrong, this form, this being, me—”
She turned back over, and squinted at him. “This form? It is exactly the same as before.”
“Exactly!”
Her eyebrows rose up her pale face.
“Explain.”
It was a demand. And Held acquiesced.
“I became a man. Up there. I wasn’t a skymaid, I was a skyman.”
“Of course,” the Witch said. “My husband brewed it. He had no interest in becoming a woman. Of course it turns the drinker into a man.”
“Changing back was—was—” Held struggled to find the words. “I’m not this. I’m not her. I’m him. It was—every bad thing I’ve ever felt, every time I’ve hated something I couldn’t even define about myself—it went away when I was a man. I’m him. I’m not her, I’m him, and I can’t—I can’t—please don’t make me stay like this. Please.”
The Witch’s face was entirely blank.
Slowly, she shook her head.
Held’s chest caved in. “Please!” he begged and felt the savage pain rising in his throat. “I can’t do this, I can’t be this, please, please, there must be something, something—”
“Oh, there is something,” the Witch said very slowly.
She let go of the plinth. Drifted, oh-so-slowly, to peer into Held’s face and touch his shorn hair.
“There is something, indeed,” she said. “I could make you a skyman. I could. But are you ready for that?”
“Yes!”
“Are you?”
“W-what do you mean?”
“You have not yet learned the truth about what you now are.”
“What—what am I?”
“Homeless.”
“W-what?”
“If you do this—if you shed this form and take on another in permanence—sky or mer, but man, whichever you choose—then you will lose everything under the sky you have ever held dear.”
Her words were cool. Chilling.
And Held caught his breath.
“My home?”
“Your home. Your sisters. Your father. Your clan. Your very flesh and blood will tear you limb from limb and drink your spilled blood.”
“W-why?”
“You wish to become the enemy.”
“The e-enemy?”
“Humans are the enemy.”
“But…but Father said…Father said skymen are—are legends.”
“No.” The Witch drew herself up. “Did you never wonder, my little mermaid, why I would help you?”
He—yes. Oh, he hadn’t wanted to, and certainly hadn’t asked, but he’d wondered.
“Why would I care if the great king’s daughter found out about humans and fell in love with one? And why would I help her?”
“Why?” Held whispered.
“Your father.”
“Father?”
“Your father made me a widow.”
“He—”
No. No, it couldn’t be.
“It was your father who banished my husband to live amongst the humans in the first place, as punishment for bestowing their fishing fleets with luck. Your father who left him to die alone on the land, as vengeance for being their friend. Your father who has forbidden the merfolk to speak of them, to swim to the surface, to know anything about the world above the sea.”
“But—but—that’s not—that can’t be true!”
“Oh, but it is.”
“But why?”
A thin, cold smile curved the Witch’s lips.
“Your father has seen your pretty little clouds fall from the sky before. And the last cloud to fall killed a mermaid. A beautiful mermaid, with hair like the brightest coral.”
Mother.
“Go home, Calla. Find out who you were. And then—only then—decide who you are.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
HELD HAD GOTTEN wind of something and fled.
Janez didn’t blame him. He was—glad of it. In a way. After his outburst, Alarik likely would have had the man arrested and thrown into a cell to be tortured for information.
The little room he’d kept in Hauser’s quarters was neat and tidy, his meagre things gathered and gone. He’d vanished like a ghost.
Janez knew the signs of someone taken—the chaos, the torn-apart rooms in which they’d stayed, and the sombre silence of the guards. There was none of it. Held had run under his own power, and wherever he’d gone, he’d be safer there. Janez was certain he’d know if Held were held, for after their argument, Alarik would undoubtedly summon him to watch the interrogation.
But he mourned the loss, too.
With Father dead and Mother in the Winter Palace, and now this rift between king and prince, what reason did Janez have to stay? He couldn’t bear to enter the royal chambers, for fear of Alarik’s anger following him there, or Sofia’s chiding. He retreated, rather, to Doktor Hauser’s quarters. And then, at first light, he fled the palace entirely for the ships, donning his lieutenant’s jacket and saluting his captain properly as the sun came up, weak and sickly over the horizon.
“Good,” the captain said with utmost disinterest. “Let us practice the guns.”
So Janez spent the day at sea—oh, not far, a mere hour from shore, but at sea all the same. In a world apart from kings and arranged marriages—in a world ruled entirely by the silver epaulette on the captain’s shoulder. A world where Janez’s duty was to the ship, and whatever emotions he had about whatever persons were irrelevant. Defend the ship or die trying. That was all.
Sometimes, he wished royal duty were as simple.
He wondered bitterly if it wouldn’t have been easier if Held had left him lashed to the gun, and the sea had taken him like it had taken Father. He’d long since resigned himself to an arranged marriage, which hadn’t seemed so bad when he hadn’t been in love. Now—
Now, it was as though he was bound by a different set of rules. As though Father and Alarik—and even the children, much as Janez wouldn’t wish his position upon them—could love whom they would and marry if they so desired, and all would be well, but Janez was a tool, rather than a man.
And tools could—would—be discarded.
He steeled himself as the gunnery practice ceased, and the captain stalked critically amongst the men, snapping his displeasure at the slow rate and poor accuracy. He’d give Held a few days to reappear. If he didn’t, Janez would retreat
to the Winter Palace, meet his bride, marry, and succumb to the inevitable and terrible drudgery and misery of his future.
But he would not return to the summer fortress.
He wasn’t so desperate to stay as his brother’s compass, if said brother thought so little of him to damn him to a loveless existence. If Alarik cared nothing for him, then Janez would go where people did. Mother loved him, and always had. He would remain with mother until marriage, and then either he would stay and rear his own family there under the shadow of the mountains, or he would go with his new wife to a foreign kingdom, and forge an entirely new life. Whichever one he chose, he would bring Held, too, if he were to be found again.
And Alarik could forge his next alliance alone, using people he cared for more than Janez, perhaps.
When the Ente returned to the harbour, therefore, Janez didn’t go ashore until nightfall—and when he did, he went to the narrow alley, to Rosa, and found comfort in her plump arms.
“My Karl,” she crooned when he’d been calmed and sated. “So very angry tonight, yes?”
“Yes,” he agreed placidly, closing his eyes and imagining her fingers combing through his hair to be Held’s.
“You have troubles. See this tension, see-see, here.” She began to knead his shoulders, and he sighed. “You need no tension. Too young for tension.”
“I wish,” Janez said sourly and was reprimanded by a bitten ear. He chuckled tiredly, shrugging out of the grip of her teeth, but the massage continued. “I have no right to love, it seems.”
“Have right to much love, if you have the gold,” she said coyly, and a smile flickered and died upon his face.
“Not your kind of love, Rosa. True love.”
“Is true for two gold coins.”
He laughed and finally rose from the bed, reaching for his trousers.
“I won’t be back.”
“No more Karl?”
“No more Karl,” he agreed, and sighed. “I have to marry. Whether I want to or not.”
“She will love you fine,” Rosa predicted with a salacious smile.
“But I won’t love her.”
“In time, in time…”
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