The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea

by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

  A flutter of movement, and Rake saw a foot as it slipped beneath one of the upturned spare boats. It was a bare foot, shining with recent wet. As though it had only just touched the Sea, perhaps, before climbing up the rigging. Onto the Dove. Not from the Imperial galleons. But from below.

  A wet footprint remained in its wake.

  He looked away, studiously fixing his eyes elsewhere so as not to draw attention to the foot and its owner.

  “C’mon, then.” One of the Imperial sailors hoisted Rake roughly away from the mizzenmast. Rake’s hands were bound behind his back, and he was led down the great staircase to the captain’s cabin.

  He took care to keep his chin high as he walked. He would have the men of the Dove know that, even facing torture and death, Rake was still their first mate. And he did not fear any of that. No true pirate did. As he passed, several of the men nodded their farewells to him. Rake did not nod back.

  He wondered what torture they had in store for him, and how long they would make it last before they killed him. He wondered what it would be like to die, and what awaited him on the other side.

  He wondered what would happen when the Leviathan arrived — for it was already on its way, the Pirate Supreme themself aboard.

  He wondered who the foot belonged to, and why it was there.

  Hours later — surely, it must have been hours, it had to have been — the Lady Ayer washed her hands in a tub as Rake lay weeping on the table. She was calm in her demeanor, and efficient. She did not waste movement, did not waste words. And there was nothing Rake could do to stop her.

  As soon as Rake had been properly bound to a chair in the captain’s cabin, she’d gotten right to the point.

  “Where is the Pirate Supreme’s stronghold?”

  But Rake had only shook his head. He did not wish to hear his voice betray the fear he knew was swelling in his chest. He would not have Imperial scum know the terror they wrought. He thought of Quark, thought of the flames. He did not forget. He would not make this easy for them.

  The Lady had nodded then, and one of the Imperial officers stepped forward, the sleeves of his stupid, posh little uniform rolled up to his elbows. They were stupid uniforms, impractical for life on the Sea. Too much white in them.

  He punched Rake in the gut. There was no air anymore, not for Rake. He gasped but said nothing. The Lady nodded again, and again the officer punched him, this time in the face. The man shook out his fist. Rake could see where he had skinned his knuckles on Rake’s teeth. It had to sting, Rake knew. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

  He’d smiled at the Lady Ayer then, a wide grin, knowing his teeth were red and disgusting.

  “I see you’re hoping to be difficult,” she said. “Which is your prerogative, of course. But unfortunately, we’re somewhat pressed for time. And so if you do not wish to cooperate?”

  Rake kept on smiling his morbid smile.

  “Then we’ll have to go about this the quick way.” She reached to the table and lifted a pitcher of water that stood there. It was an oddly hospitable gesture, as though she meant to pour him a glass so he could clean the blood from his teeth.

  Instead, two of the sailors picked up the chair to which Rake was tied and slammed it down on the captain’s table, so that Rake’s head dangled off the edge of it. He stared up at the room, strange and upside down.

  The Lady pulled a handkerchief from her breast and placed it carefully over Rake’s face. It smelled just as a piece of silk tucked into an Imperial woman’s cleavage would smell. Expensive.

  “Now, Rake,” the Lady said, her voice tinged with condescension, “we know who you are. What we want to know is where you were leading the Nameless Captain. Where is the Pirate Supreme’s stronghold?”

  But Rake did not reply.

  “Remember, you were given a chance to answer under much more comfortable circumstances.”

  And then she started to pour.

  It felt pleasant at first — Rake had not been able to wash in weeks. But the pleasantness subsided almost immediately once the water began to trickle sickly into his nose. He tried to open his mouth so that he could breathe but found that it, too, was filling with the wet cloth of the Lady’s kerchief. He sputtered against it, but still the water came, insistent and terrible.

  Soon, he was sure he was drowning.

  Distantly, he was aware of his hands and feet thrashing against their constraints as he tried to right himself, tried to rip the cloth away from his face. He was dying; he was dying slowly and painfully, drowning on a table. His body fought and screamed against it.

  The blackness of Death crowded in on him, and he welcomed it, for it was preferable to the unwavering pain of fighting for breath, feeling it elude him. His lungs howled, and he writhed in pain.

  She pulled the kerchief from his face and smiled down at him beatifically. Rake gasped for breath, the joy of it filling his lungs more than he could bear.

  “You can suffocate like this, you know,” the Lady said coolly. “It’s happened many times in interrogations. We call it dry drowning. A humiliating end for a sailor, don’t you think? To spend your whole life tangling with the sea only to drown in a cupful of water?”

  Rake said nothing but shook his head violently. He had no words anymore, no more breath for them. All he could think about, all he could hope for, was to stall another dose of torture.

  “Let’s try this again, shall we?” She smiled, and it touched her eyes; Rake could see it, her true joy in her work. She liked it, and she was good at it, and she was eager to get on with it. “Where is the Pirate Supreme’s stronghold?”

  Rake tried to keep the Supreme’s face in his eye, to see them, the person who had granted him a life worth living. The person who had toasted to Manuel with him, the only person in the world, it seemed, who could hold strong against the Emperor and his many tentacles of influence and power. In his mind’s eye, they watched solemnly. Their men had seen worse than this.

  And, knowing more pain would come to him, he shook his head.

  “Right, then.” The Lady covered his face once more. “Thanks to the Emperor,” she whispered. Rake could hear the smile in her voice.

  Immediately, he regretted his choice, and he fought, his wrists and ankles burning against the ropes that he could not break.

  But the water came just the same.

  Again and again the Lady asked. Again and again she drowned him, let Death bring him close and whisper its secrets into his ear.

  Everyone dies alone, Death told him, and Rake did not argue.

  And Rake — he could not stand it, could not stand the pain.

  So he told her. He told the Lady the Pirate Supreme’s truth. They were headed for the Forbidden Isles. Where the Forbidden Isles were.

  But — and it was such minor consolation in the face of his own weakness — he had not told her about the Leviathan. And so at least the Imperials sailed without knowing they would be met head-on by the Sea’s own galleon. Perhaps he would be killed in cannon fire. If he’d had more of his wits about him, the thought may have been comforting.

  The Lady Ayer washed her hands in the tub of water her men had brought into the cabin and barked some orders Rake could not hear. He was gone now, adrift in the sea of his own suffering.

  Death had come, but it had not taken him.

  And for that, he wept.

  The first gunshot was a surprise.

  For a breath, it stopped all other noise, save for that of a body hitting the water a moment later. There had been murmuring before, a spattering of voices raised in argument. And then the shot. From the yelling that followed, Flora knew more shots would be fired.

  Huddled beneath the spare boat, Flora and Evelyn clung to each other, taking up as little space as they possibly could. Flora had not expected quite so many men abovedeck — it was the middle of the night, after all. Typically, the night watch was sparse and most of the men would be belowdecks, drinking or eating or sleeping. Nor had she exp
ected the Dove to shortly be boarded by Imperial forces. Evelyn had pointed out their uniform boots, and they’d stared at each other wide-eyed in fear and confusion. At least the captives would be safe, but that said nothing of Alfie, nor Rake. Nothing about this Dove resembled the Dove Flora knew like the back of her hand.

  Then men shouted, and even through the cacophony of their voices Flora heard the wet smack of knuckle on flesh. And before she could tell Evelyn to hold fast, to be ready, as their moment for potential escape belowdecks could soon be upon them, the sound of an Imperial officer’s voice pierced the night.

  “Thanks to the Emperor, your captain has seen fit to hand you over to our control,” he yelled. “And the Emperor does not look kindly upon pirates.” There was the sound of men being pushed into position, their backs against the starboard gunwale. Flora could see their feet, could recognize some of them. This was the crew she had sailed with, the crew who had shaped Florian. She searched them furiously for Alfie but did not see him.

  There was a terrible moment when Flora realized what would happen just before it did. But there was nothing she could do.

  She forced her eyes to stay open.

  The Imperial sailors opened fire. And the men, the men who had raised Florian, the men whom she’d seen nearly every day for the last few years, whose cries of defiance were cut forever short, either fell overboard from the force of the bullets that tore through them or crumpled where they stood, their arms and legs folded gracelessly in death.

  Beside her, Evelyn clamped her hand over her mouth in mute horror.

  The Imperials set about pushing the rest of the bodies overboard, two men to lift and toss each life they’d taken into the sea.

  “Sharks’ll eat well tonight,” one quipped, and several others laughed.

  Flora had known Imperial cruelty in her time. She had witnessed it in the streets of Crandon, seen indifference more deadly than murder. She had seen battle, witnessed the frantic actions of men cut down without reason. But still, her stomach roiled. In anger and in horror. The Imperials promised order when they colonized, swore that their rule was the only just rule in the world. But there had been no trial here. No justice. Just men before the firing squad, no more official than the bloody business of one street gang eliminating another.

  Everywhere, the copper smell of blood, the unmistakable earthen odor of opened guts.

  “We have to find him,” Evelyn said.

  What she did not say, what she did not need to say, was: before they do.

  There was a call, and all the men stood in erect salute.

  “We will be sailing for the Forbidden Isles,” the officer’s voice declared. “We sail to destroy the Pirate Supreme. For the Emperor. For glory. For justice.”

  There were cheers from the men, hooting and hollering. Their forces were split back upon their original boats, with only a skeleton crew remaining aboard the Dove to lead the sail. The Dove was only a decoy to lure the Leviathan, Flora realized, to distract the Supreme before the true threat was realized.

  But at least one thing was true: a skeleton crew would be much easier to avoid than a full one. She clutched her knife in her fist.

  This knife binds.

  She would find Alfie.

  It was nearly dawn by the time Flora and Evelyn were able to slip out from underneath the spare boat. They made immediately for the lower decks, where the brig and the stores and some of the lower-ranking sailors’ cabins were, scrambling across the deck, which was still sticky and wet with the blood of the crew.

  But the lower decks were where Alfie’s berth was. Perhaps he’d just slept through the call to assemble? It wouldn’t be the first time. He was a viciously deep sleeper, especially when he’d been drinking. Flora had not seen him, his feet easily identified by his black skin and the tattoo of a pelican that wrapped his ankle.

  He’s still alive.

  She did not spare a look behind as she scurried, and simply trusted that Evelyn had followed. When Evelyn tumbled down the stairs after her, landing on her bottom with a thud, Flora smiled. She may have a bruised ass, but she was safe. She grabbed Evelyn’s hand, and they ran to the brig, with Flora’s pistol drawn and cocked.

  As they turned a corner to head down the next staircase, though, Flora nearly ran headlong into Fawkes. His arms were full with pistols and ammunition, and in his surprise he dropped much of his load. For one crazed moment, it seemed he did not even see Flora, what with his mind on the task at hand. But it was only a moment. A horrible, wide grin spread across his face.

  She was just out of his reach, but she knew a man like Fawkes could close that distance quickly.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “If it isn’t little Florian.” He looked beyond Flora to regard Evelyn, whom he apparently did not recognize. “And you brought a friend.”

  It was as though her mind had stopped entirely. Flora stalled, frozen to the spot. Of all the men to survive the firing squad — Fawkes was big, and cruel. She’d never stand up to him in a hand-to-hand fight. He’d kill her. He stared the way hungry dogs stare. She was scared of him, and he knew it. She tried to think of anything useful to do, anything clever —

  There was an explosion just next to Flora’s ear. Before she could understand what had happened, Fawkes sank to the ground and curled in on himself, around a wound in his thigh that blossomed red. Dumbly, she turned to look behind her and saw Evelyn with one of Fawkes’s dropped pistols still pointed.

  “You little bitch,” Fawkes spat. But he could do nothing but try to stanch the blood that pooled beneath him. Evelyn had accidentally shot well. A puddle spread, too fast to be stopped, under the enormous man. He’d bleed out in minutes, Flora could tell. And from the way Fawkes’s face lost its color, she imagined he must know as well.

  “I was aiming for his heart,” Evelyn admitted a little sheepishly.

  Evelyn. Evelyn with a pistol! Flora felt a strange pride billowing in her heart. She wanted to take Evelyn in her arms and kiss her the way a pirate ought to be kissed.

  But now was not the time. Surely, someone would have heard the shot. “Let’s pick up the rest of those guns,” she said, and Evelyn did.

  They made to leave Fawkes where he lay, cursing and moaning, but Flora paused. She wondered if she should kill him where he sat, if she could bring herself to do it. She’d not killed since Mr. Lam, always seeming to find an excuse not to pull the trigger. Her fist was just as fine a weapon as a blade at this point, her tolerance for pain as high as it was.

  But this is Fawkes. He was a liability, an unknown variable she was adding to an equation already dense with the uncontrollable, the unknowable.

  She tried to think of what Rake would do.

  She pulled her pistol and pointed it at Fawkes.

  “Why’d you not face the firing squad?” she demanded, though she hardly needed to. The captain had not died. He must have made a deal for them both. The two worst men of the Dove.

  Still clutching his wound, his face going paler by the minute, Fawkes managed the energy for a throaty chortle. “You going to shoot me, little man?”

  Flora cocked the pistol. Beside her, she could hear Evelyn draw in her breath and hold it.

  “It’d be a kindness if I did.” She did her best to keep her voice calm and reasonable. She was talking to a dead man, after all, and it did not do to taunt the dead. “You’re going to bleed out on this floor, so you might as well make yourself useful before you pass. Where is Alfie?”

  “Wish they’d let me at him again. The captain. Rake. He was punished, you know, after you ran off, fifty lashes I delivered myself. Squealed like a right piggy, he did.” Even close to death, bleeding out, he was a monster.

  “You’re disgusting,” Evelyn spat. She didn’t even know the half of it, and Fawkes knew it. He smiled his hideous toothy grin.

  “You think that was the first time I made him squeal?”

  Flora tried not to think of Alfie, of the terrible day the other sailors had le
ft him and Fawkes alone, of the screams. She’d known, of course, what was happening just as well as she’d known there was nothing she could do about it. The rest of the men were bent on holding her back, or laughing at her, laughing at Alfie. It’s all part of being in a man’s world, they’d said. It was the price they’d have to pay if they wanted to live among them. And besides, Fawkes had been riled up on drink, and under those circumstances his actions were hardly surprising. They said this, and Flora accepted it, because she could not imagine how they’d survive another Crandon winter. She’d accepted it because she didn’t know better.

  But she did now.

  She did not know if Alfie was alive or dead. But she knew he had not deserved what Fawkes had given him. She and Alfie were bound in love and in betrayal, bound as family. And she knew that if Fawkes lived, he’d do it again.

  “Tell me where he is.” It would be the last time she asked.

  Fawkes grinned up at her defiantly. “No,” he said. But his voice was less confident now; a touch of fear seeped in around the edges.

  Flora leveled her pistol at him and took slow, careful aim.

  “You’re on the wrong side of the Dove entirely,” Fawkes added hastily. So he feared death. Flora should have known he would.

  “Say your last,” she told him.

  “Don’t shoot!” he called, frantic now. “He’s in the officer’s cab —” But before he could finish, Flora pulled the trigger.

  She did not need to hear the end of the sentence. She knew where Alfie was now, and she knew how to get there.

  She did not even hear the explosion as the gunpowder ignited, propelling the bullet from her pistol straight into Fawkes’s broad, lined forehead. It was as though all sound evaporated in that moment of justice. Fawkes’s head snapped back with the force of the shot, a spray of blood painting the wall behind him.

  It was the second time Flora had killed. And though it would haunt her, as taking a life always does, she felt sure of her own righteousness.

  Men like Fawkes were too cruel to live. He was a disease. And she had cured the world of him.