In the blinding darkness, Held screamed until his voice gave out, screamed until the rasp and choke sounded as deep and alien as his voice upon the shore, screamed until surely even the skymen, high above him, could hear.
And then, when he had nothing left to give, he curled his arms about himself and sank to the bottom of the hole, the great crack of pain from tail to temple threatening to split his very soul in two and consume him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“HAVE YOU EVER been married, Doktor?”
The question came about in the early morning. They were breaking their fast together on the balcony behind the kitchens, overlooking the frosty garden, and Janez interrupted the lecture upon the evils of mushrooms with a question he wasn’t sure why he was asking, nor why he’d never asked before. Yet, quite suddenly, he wished to know.
For Hauser, it occurred to Janez, must have had life before Janez did. He’d birthed both king and prince, though he was not yet fifty and looked far younger. His soft tones were from the mountains; his cheap grubbiness about his clothes spoke of a meagre upbringing, rather than any aristocracy, and in all of Janez’s years, he’d not once seen the good doctor with a respectable wig upon his scalp.
Who had he been before he became the doctor?
“Yes,” Hauser said and returned to his diatribe. “In the villages where I was reared, mushrooms were—”
“And where was that?”
Hauser huffed impatiently. “The borderlands, boy. But another mile and a half, and I’d have been serving another king entirely, and have brought a smarter prince than you into the world.”
Janez pulled a face at the mention of it.
“Now, there, mushrooms are rare—the cold, you see—and those that do grow—”
“So, where are your wife and family?”
A raw chuckle, almost a croak, escaped the doctor’s throat. “Wife and family? I think not.”
“But you said you’re married.”
“I was married. No longer.”
Janez paused. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” the doctor said.
“No?”
“No. I needed to pay passage to the capital, to begin my medical studies. Her father was a coachman. He would give no free ride to some upstart student with delusions of grandeur—but to his son-in-law, now, that was a very different matter.”
“So you married her for…a ride?”
“For several, if we include every meaning of the word.” The doctor chuckled darkly and shook his head. “She was as wild a wench as I was thickheaded. She needed a man to keep her growing belly respectable, and I was once very well thought of—don’t laugh so, you’ll choke—and fit the bill quite nicely. We wed and moved to the capital. She birthed a girl—supposedly mine, though I’ve never touched a woman such in my life—and once I had my place in the university and she her little apartment above the river, we parted ways without a word. For all I know, she is still there.”
“So—you didn’t love her?”
“I barely even liked her.”
Janez pushed his bacon about the plate, pondering it.
“Loving a wife is all well and good,” Hauser said, “but it is hardly necessary if the marriage is to serve a higher purpose.”
“And what higher purpose did yours serve?”
“It allowed me to attend at the university and become a surgeon,” he said evenly. “That ring, that signature to falsify a birth certificate, has saved a hundred lives or more by now. And quite likely it paved the way for a better life for the baby. A whore’s daughter is no existence, in the city or the country.”
“But she will be a doctor’s daughter.”
“Quite so.”
Janez shook his head. “My daughters must be my own.”
“Greta proves that loving a woman will be no great hardship for you.”
Janez looked up sharply. Hauser simply stared back, unafraid and unashamed, with those great cold eyes.
“I’d have married her, then, if given the chance.”
“You would be quite miserable now.”
“Probably,” Janez allowed. “But then—if never separated, perhaps I’d never have fallen out of love?”
“I doubt that very much,” Doktor Hauser said. “You were barely more than a child. And who knows? Perhaps over time, you will come to love her.”
“Did you ever love, Doktor?”
The pause was longer, and Janez waited almost with bated breath. Had he? This man who was so single-mindedly devoted to his work? Who could fly into a rage about the mere act of wearing shoes in a sauna room, or dissolve into a passionate diatribe about the godliness of salt-water scrubs upon the skin?
Had he ever torn himself free for long enough to love?
“Yes,” Hauser said. “Once.”
“Just once?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Hauser’s lips pursed. “I suppose one would say it was not meant to be.”
Janez frowned. It couldn’t have been station—a village boy rising to the king’s own surgeon was meteoric and spoke of disdain for such things. More likely, it’d been something more personal. More hurtful.
“She…loved someone else?”
“No, no…they were merely uninterested in what any man had to offer.”
Janez had played enough at tight discretion to catch the shift apart from ‘she,’ and blinked in quiet surprise. Good Lord. The way he softened for the women of the castle, from Sofia to the scullery maids, Janez had thought quite the opposite.
Yet—it made sense, did it not? Such a thing was a far more intensely private matter than a love for a woman, and so much rarer to see reciprocated.
“Did you—love…them, enough to marry?”
“No, no, nothing so intense,” came the dismissive reply. “I am hardly a romantic, in my field.”
Janez swallowed, glancing down.
“Could you marry again, if you didn’t love?”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
The reply was simple. True. And a lump swelled in Janez’s throat.
“I do not want to marry, Doktor.”
The truth whispered free. It disappeared into the cold rustle of the trees below them, and the doctor’s face twisted in a rare show of sympathy.
“It is your place, Your Highness.”
“The rest of my life married to a stranger?”
“She will not be a stranger for the rest of your life.”
“You could walk away from your wife. I cannot.”
“Oh, but you can. All you need to do is put a child in her belly, and your duty is done. Quite likely after the agony of bearing it to you, she will be as glad to see the back of you as you of her. I feel for her more than I do for you.”
“Don’t you always?” Janez asked, mock-sourly, and cast his gaze further to the iron-grey sea beyond the walls. “Held ran away. Sometimes, I want to do the same.”
“The alliance is needed. Much as we both wish it were not.”
Janez’s mouth tightened.
“I am not the only way it can be found.”
“You would sacrifice your niece or nephew instead?”
It would be cruel of him to put a child in his position, yet—
“Yes.”
Because the baby—should he live to his naming day—would be the crown prince for his entire life. And little Ingrid was a princess, destined for such marriages. They would spend their entire lives in that knowledge. They would never know anything else but their destiny.
Janez had not done that. He’d always been the second son, the spare. There’d never been a question of him becoming king, aside from some terrible accident, and Alarik’s love match to Sofia had promised babies from the very beginning.
Janez had tasted freedom—despite his father’s iron fist, despite Greta. He’d gone to sea. Lost himself in Rosa’s arms. Had Held.
By all rights, he ought to
be left in peace. His naval career would have brought the honour that the family required of him. He needn’t father children and create future usurpers of his brother’s throne. He could have been a man first, and a prince second.
To have it snatched away by a king who’d married for love, in the great shadow of a dead father who’d done the very same—
And to be matched like this, to be the son-in-law to a king who’d wedded a servant girl from some southern kingdom with year-round sun…
It was intolerably unfair, much as it made Janez feel like a sulking child for saying so.
“It’s their birthright, not mine.”
“If the king would not listen to such then, he will not now,” Doktor warned.
“He threatened to have me married by proxy if I refused to go.”
“Then if I were you, I would pick the best of the options given to me and attempt to learn to love her.”
“That can’t be done, Doktor.”
“Learn to love? Oh, but it can.”
“Not,” Janez said, still staring at the flat sea and heavy fog above it, “when one is already in love.”
He said no name.
But then, he rather imagined Doktor did not need to hear one.
“YOUR MAJESTY.”
Alarik glanced up from his papers at the guard, frowning.
“Captain Kühe to see you.”
“Send him in.”
Alarik cleared the more sensitive letters from his desk as the captain marched in, and gestured for him to sit, signalling the cup-bearer for wine.
“It’s that foreigner, Your Majesty.”
“Which foreigner?”
“The one under the prince’s protection.”
Alarik narrowed his eyes. “What about him?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean, Your Majesty, I’ve, ah…I asked one of the servants—very loyal man, very, absolutely trustworthy, sir—”
“Get to the point.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Ah. I was informed earlier today that the foreigner appears to have left.”
“Left?”
“His things are gone, and so is he.”
“Janez is—”
“With Doktor Hauser, last I heard, Your Majesty.”
There was that. Alarik sat back, tugging on his beard a little. So the spy had fled. But Janez remained, apparently unharmed.
“Send someone to check. Quietly. I won’t have him know.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Would the spy return? It would be utterly stupid of him. And if he did, Janez would likely find excuse for that, too.
“If he comes back, or he is seen elsewhere,” Alarik said, “then have him followed. Do not intercept him. I want to know what he’s looking for.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Dismissed.”
Alarik stared into the middle distance as the door closed behind the captain. So the spy had moved. Why? What had he learned? Or had he never intended to be in the palace, but elsewhere?
And yet—
It still did not answer Janez’s question.
What kind of a spy would save the prince’s life?
Chapter Twenty-Five
IT COULD HAVE been a thousand years, or a mere thousand seconds, before the stillness was disturbed.
And when it was, it wasn’t light that broke it, but sound.
Beyond the rock of his prison, trumpets were blowing. And it was no ceremonial pomp or celebratory joy.
They were the klaxons of war.
Slowly, Held uncurled this—her, not his, so this—bruised and bloodied body from its bed on the slimy stone and pressed broken hands flat against the rock that kept him here. He could hear Father bellowing orders, but not their content. He could hear the trumpets growing louder and more insistent.
Something was coming.
What would happen if the nest were attacked? They’d been attacked before—orcas, other clans, even a whale maddened by sickness once—and they usually abandoned it for a time until the threat passed. Would Father leave him here to starve and die? Or did he intend that regardless, even if they never moved more than a foot from the mouth of Held’s grave?
A racking sob rose in his chest, violent and hurt. His own father would kill him. His own father would rather he were dead than have found love.
The trumpets petered out in squeaks and belches. Face pressed to the cold stone, Held felt the water shiver with a great power.
And then a voice.
A voice he knew.
He couldn’t hear the words—but she was here. The Witch. The Witch had come to their nest. She’d come for—
For what?
For him?
The thought rocked him to the very core—yet it was true, for the rock shuddered under his palms, and he’d barely released it before the whispering film of ice crept around its surface. In a matter of moments, it was covered—and then the ice cracked, rent it asunder, and it crumbled to the cave floor like sand.
The light burned.
Beyond it, when Held crept from his prison, squinting, a great shadow towered in the centre of the courtyard, as it had in the Whalelands. A great mermaid in a sea foam dress, that terrible beauty carved from the very marble of her home.
And tangled in the frayed hems of the dress, caught tight like prey in a squid’s tentacles, struggled Held’s sisters.
His heart stopped.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no, let them go, please, let them go!”
The Witch smirked. Her beauty turned ugly all at once, like a macabre statue upon a wall. Like the stone mermaid jutting from the beak of the cloud, eaten alive above the sky.
“There you are, dear,” she crooned, as though a mother to a child. “Come here. Come to me.”
The courtyard was ringed with guards, spears trained but still, afraid to strike the princesses. Father towered above them, rigid with rage but for the faint tremble of his sword—yet his vast length, his enormous bulk, was nothing compared to the Witch.
She was an immense shadow of power, and it oozed from her like blood, bright from an open wound.
Father was afraid. For his nest? For his daughters? For Held?
The tremble did nothing as Held drifted from the lip of the prison to the Witch’s side. And it did nothing when a hand cold as death clasped about Held’s throat and choked him, flattening his gills until the very water was cut off, and shook him like a caught cod.
“I give your little mermaid love, and what does her father do? He shuts love in a tomb to die, and calls this pathetic little corner of the seabed the world!”
Her voice boomed and bounced off the great stone pillars and shattered the silence across the bank. The guards tightened. Father did not move.
“I gave your little mermaid truth, and her father calls her a liar.”
Silence rang out a second time. The fingers loosened. Held took a great breath—and then they tightened again, suffocatingly so.
“Perhaps it is time the king paid for his arrogance.”
“Release my daughters,” Father boomed, “and you will not be harmed, Witch.”
A great sneer curled her lip.
“Harmed? By—what? Mutant fish? I think not.”
The hand vanished. A frond of seaweed, thick and tough as old rope, caught about Held’s wrists—and then the water surged. The frond tightened, and he was jerked upwards through the water. Below him, Balta screamed. And then they were being dragged in the Witch’s dress, high above the nest.
The seabed fell away. The water brightened and warmed. Below them writhed the guards, tiny dots struggling to keep up. Father’s terrible cry of anger echoed after them.
He turned his face towards the light and thought of Janez. Imagined the warmth of his skin. The softness of his hair.
Wanted.
His stomach twisted, and he fought t
he frond. If he could slip away now, then he could go to the Whalelands and wait for her. He would never escape Father again, not now the Witch had come into their territory and threatened his sisters. He would never—
The terrible drag ceased. For a moment, he floated up as though free. And then the frond was reeled in, and those cold, deathly hands caressed his face like a mother to a young child.
“Who are you, my dear?”
Held stared into that terrible face and knew the truth.
“Held.”
“And what is that?”
“A man. A skyman.”
“And where are your family?”
Family?
He glanced down at his sisters, who stared back with wide-eyed faces. He looked further, to the blur of his father approaching.
Father had imprisoned him, for love.
Whereas…Doktor had treated his scratches with gentle hands and given him a bed. Janez had danced with him and held him close like lovers. His tongue could command the roll and shudder of words above the sky, and he knew—without ever trying, yet still he knew—that in his own form, he could have walked on water.
He could walk on water. And his family lay above them, waiting for him to do so.
“They’re in the sky,” he whispered.
That cruel smile twisted her features, yet her voice didn’t rise, and her long fingers didn’t pinch. The frond fell away until he hung free but for the clasp of her nails about his jaw.
“Open your hands, my dear.”
Held did so, and a bottle was slid between them. The Witch leaned close, her hair caressing his face.
“You drink half of it to change back,” she said quietly, “but then a man must drink the other. And as long as that man loves you, and only you, then you will live as one of them for the rest of your days. If you cease to be the sun in his world, then you cease to be at all.”
Breathless, Held clutched it tight to the deformity of this wrong chest.
“It will turn me back?”
“Yes.”
He squeezed it, and the thick liquid inside moved softly against him.
“You will exist but for the love of that man,” the Witch said, “and for nothing else. There will be nothing else. Do you understand?”
Walking on Water Page 15