Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  Both of them seem to want to care for Thais far more than they want to catch me or kill me. I cup the ignit Thais gave me at the mechanic’s shop, rubbing my fingers over the smooth blue stone. The glowing veins of sapphire and cyan pulse gently, a deeper version of Thais’s eyes.

  Still clinging to it, I follow after the humans, climbing from roof to roof. The streets hold a few stragglers, but most of the hunting parties have moved on. No one bothers to look up.

  My muscles feel like they’ve been stripped and roasted in the sun and then sewn back into place, scorched and tenderized. The river calls to me from beneath the village. I’ll leave. I will. I just have to know whether or not Thais is going to die first.

  The memory of her knocking into Rubem crashes through my head like a raging river. Why did she do that? Fucking hero. Why does she have to be so damn good?

  I swish my tail in frustration, and it stings where the gashes from the crocodilian rub against the roof tiles. The hat woman and redhead enter a two-story building with a sign outside bearing a picture of a hammock and the stiff lines the boat humans call writing. A light comes on in an upper room, shining through the redhead’s cloud of hair as they wrap the curls at the top of their head and stick a long piece of metal through the bun. The hat woman yanks the curtains closed. I coil across a pole connecting this roof to theirs and hang from the edge, watching them upside down through the crack between the fabrics.

  The humans lay Thais on a small bed. She breathes heavily. The redhead meets my gaze through the slit, and I try to yank back up, but my muscles refuse in a tantrum of pain. Their bun bounces as they open the window and wave for me to come in.

  “They’re good people.” Thais moves sluggishly, her deep-olive skin an off color.

  I balk, clutching my ignit.

  “I can translate for you—”

  I cut her off with one hand, “No, you’re hurt.”

  “Not—not that hurt. I feel just fin—” She curls, clutching her stomach. Her shoulders shake and she leans over, but only spit comes out. Slowly, she lies back down.

  Stupid boat human.

  A stubborn hunting party approaches from down the mist-strewn street. I make one last feeble attempt to pull myself back onto the roof before giving in to my exhausted muscles and slipping the rest of the way through the window. The redhead tries to help, but their reaching hands give me a burst of new strength. I dart into the corner, my tail slapping against the wall. Teeth half-bared, I coil up.

  The hat woman ignores me. She says something to her companion, who turns down the light and sits beside Thais. I watch. And I wait.

  Fatigue curls itself around me in the shadows, deepening as the once ruckus-filled town subsides to tranquility, then to a stillness so heavy it could be a grave. Thais dry heaves twice more before the exhaustion overwhelms my senses. I descend into darkness with my head propped on one hand, and my thoughts still lingering on Thais.

  FIVE

  My Kingdom for a Cure

  Sometimes we are what we think,

  and sometimes we’re the things we say

  when we’re not thinking.

  BRIGHT MORNING LIGHT AND achy muscles wake me. I lie crookedly across my coiled tail. Peeling my fingers off my ignit, I stretch my arms over my head and scan the small room. The redhead works at a little table near the window, a contraption of metal and wires stealing all their attention. A soft breeze sneaks through the curtains, a sliver of blue sky and rooftops beyond. Thais’s bed is empty.

  That jolts me to life.

  I burst upright, and the redhead startles, dropping her tools. I sign Thais’s name. They sign something back, but their hands use foreign motions, some kind of siren seas version of sign language. Whatever. I’ll figure this out myself.

  I rub the ignit, sliding toward the door of the room. It opens before I reach it. Thais enters, her soft curls braided across her shoulder and her loose outfit clean once more, her scarf twirling at her back. She lives. My chest warms. Not because I’m glad. Or maybe it’s because I am glad, but I’m only glad because I didn’t want it to be my fault if she died. That’s all.

  She holds two plates of human food, each with a few slices of bread and a mix of cut fruits. It barely looks like a meal. No wonder humans have to eat so many times a week.

  I draw back into my corner.

  Thais hands one plate to the redhead and sits on the bed with the other. “Good morning.”

  “You’re alive,” I sign.

  “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m strong and stubborn.” She snatches a piece of her bread and shoves it into her mouth in one go, as though that will hide the scent of her fear, so stark I can pick it up for once.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I have to know, because . . . because I have to. Not because I care whether she hurts.

  “Nothing.”

  Something on Thais’s face must suggest she’s lying, because the redhead waves a metal tool at her and interjects.

  I glance between the two, not meeting either of their gazes. “What did they say?”

  Thais tears into her second piece of bread, yanking it apart without eating it. “She, not they. Her name’s—” Thais tries to describe the syllables, like the beginning of my species’ name combined with my pronouns and the word for eel, because somehow, she refuses to understand that none of those things have a sound to me. “Murielle is here with her wife for their anniversary. Her brother’s partnered to a siren, apparently, so they’re cool with all kinds of mer.”

  A siren? I roll my eyes. Sirens eat humans, like the fishers do the boiuna, only twice as bloody and incredibly more deadly. But if the predators of the Murk can work together, then maybe even sirens and humans can cohabit. “Who cares?” I snap. “I asked what’s wrong with you.”

  Thais crosses her arms over her stomach.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll eat you. Then I will know what’s wrong because I’ll be digesting it.”

  “No!” Her hands fly through the sign like they’re on fire. “Then you’ll just be poisoned too.”

  “That green stuff’s still in you?” I creep a little closer until, somehow, I end up sitting on the ground beside the bed, leaning my head against its wooden frame. “Isn’t it going away?”

  Thais shakes her head. “Murielle’s an expert in ignit-related technology. According to her, the poison is a substance made from a powdered version of a rare activated green ignit.”

  “The green ones are nasty,” I sign. “When pressed to the skin, a whole green ignit causes blisters and heaving, and then you die pretty much immediately. The Murk banned them a long time ago. Throws them into the sea near the deepest part of the drop-off.” They even tried to destroy the individual ancient notorious for making them. Thais doesn’t need to know about that, though. Since the Murk’s ancients are producing far more ignits than usual this century, the stones often spill into the rivers, but most boat humans still don’t know their creators are mangrove-bound parasites.

  Thais’s nose pinches.

  Maybe referencing the green ignit’s effects was the exact wrong thing to say to her now that the stuff flows through her veins, no matter how small the quantity.

  “Anyway,” she continues. “Murielle was able to track the movement of the poison through my body. It’s congregated in my bloodstream but still far too dispersed to deactivate or remove.”

  “But you’re not throwing up anymore?” The question barely leaves my hands before I answer it myself. “Because the powdered ignit still has to recharge itself, just like a normal stone, doesn’t it? That would make the sickness it brings come in waves.”

  Thais nods. “It’s been taking a lot longer than a full ignit stone, even a small one. I had two episodes while you slept.” If she feels anything about this, I can’t tell—the scent of her fear has dissipated now that she’s composed herself. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.” Her mouth moves with the repeated signs.

  Murielle throws a cog a
t her.

  Thais’s lips turn down. “I will be fine! Murielle is making me a reversal mechanism.”

  “A reversal mechanism?” I ask, even though I absolutely do not care, not even a little bit.

  “You know how both sirens and yellow ignits give out trance waves? Decades ago, some pirate in the siren seas used yellow ignits to cancel out the siren’s songs. Murielle thinks we can do the same thing with the toxic waves making me sick. I’ll just need a green ignit for the device to function. So, I get one from my mother’s hoard, and everything will go back to normal.” She gives the motions an extra flare.

  Now, there is something I do absolutely care about. “Your mother’s hoard?”

  “Unfortunately.” She brushes a wisp of her curls behind her ear. “My mother had a few of them. I’d bet Rubem has another as well, but we’ve proved we can’t steal from him even if the ignits are sitting in plain sight.”

  “Who said anything about we?”

  Thais shrugs, drumming her fingers on her leg. “No one. Nothing. You’re not coming with me. I can manage the Murk on my own.”

  The Murk. My heart clenches. I rub my ignit, only letting go to sign. “If you’re traveling through the Murk, you’ll need a guide. Boat humans don’t come out of the swamps alive.” I saw to that personally before. “Even the cartel won’t send people in unless they’ve got a really good reason.”

  “Yeah, well, if you see a Murkling offering their aid, send them my way.”

  “I’m a Murkling, and I am offering.” The words come out before I think them through. They chill my spine and wrap tight claws around my lungs. I shiver the sensation away and trace my fingers over the stones of my necklace.

  I know the Murk well enough to act as an escort, but if the council learns I’ve returned, there won’t be enough left of me to guide a flock of vultures. And Thais’s safety isn’t my problem. She can go with Murielle or Murielle’s feather-hat wife.

  But as my thumb brushes the surface of my humming ignit, the ignit Thais took for me when I couldn’t steal it myself, I know what I need to do. “I’ll guide you through the Murk. But only if you give me the rest of your mother’s hoard.”

  Her face slackens. She smells like a void, emotion hiding behind layers of mist my senses can’t infiltrate no matter how far I submerge in them.

  I choose to make my point as clear as possible. “I can get you wherever you need to go, as long as we have a boat. I grew up in the Murk. I’m the best bet you’re going to find, and I won’t sell off your mother’s ignits like Rubem would.”

  A shudder runs through her, trembling her hands. “I know you won’t. You’re a selfish hoarding slung-drain. Someone would have to pry them from your grimy fingers.”

  “Exactly.” Fire boils in my stomach, but it feels more natural than the heat my chest held earlier. It turns out I didn’t have to hurt Thais. I just had to wait for someone else to. “Good to know we understand each other.” I clutch my ignit. I’ll have an entire hoard. An entire hoard. It feels unreal. Slowly, I force my fingers to detach. “Where are we headed?”

  “Straight through the Murk, to the crescent peninsula.”

  “You can’t just sail along the coast?”

  Thais shakes her head. “Rubem controls the river system from here to the sea, and it’ll take too long if I have to waste my time trying to avoid him.”

  “What do you mean too long? Are you . . .” I hold my ignit a little tighter.

  “I’m fine. I’m just dying, that’s all. But we’ll go through the Murk, and we’ll get to my mother’s hoard in time. No more poison.” She lifts her chin, giving a rhythmic rap of her hands. “This is just a momentary inconvenience.”

  “An inconvenience for me,” I grumble. But the signs bite back a thought that hurts like the breaking of bone: Thais is dying, slowly, painfully, the light being drained away from her eerie ignit eyes. Because she took a poison trying to save me. But she won’t die, I remind myself. I’ll get her to her mother’s hoard and get my ignits, and I won’t have to think of her again.

  That goal settles in me like great stones landing on the bottom of a still lake.

  Murielle pops up from her seat, bringing her little mechanism with her. It fits perfectly in her wrinkled palm, flat and oval, attached to a long bronze chain. Tiny gears and wires run through the inside, and at its center sits space for a large ignit. She loops the necklace around Thais’s head.

  Thais tucks it into her flowing shirt, not letting go until she finally speaks to Murielle, signing her words for my sake. “Thank you. This means a lot to me.”

  She translates for Murielle as the redhead replies, “Glad I could finally use that damn tech for something good.”

  “Well, thank you all the same.”

  Thais’s rain-cleaned scent fills me up, and I can’t help but look at her, my gaze catching on her eyes. They shine with the purest blue, brighter and truer than the sky and the sea. But they send a buzz of agitation through me as they meet mine, haunting my bones, and I look down at my ignit instead.

  “We’ll need a fan boat,” Thais signs.

  A dry grin slips over my face. “We know someone who has more than his share of those.”

  Violent banging from the downstairs entrance breaks my smile.

  SIX

  This is Our Traveling Song

  Touch is a dishonest silt-breather.

  It means a million different things

  at a million different times.

  And all of them fuck you over.

  MURIELLE’S WIFE BURSTS INTO the room, her pounding boots clashing like thunder against my head ridges, and I nearly jump out of my scales. As she speaks, Thais translates.

  “Someone’s here looking for you two. Murielle is going to try to distract them, but they’re adamant.” She turns on her heels, her hat feather flaring, and guides us out of the room.

  I sign to Thais, “Are they Rubem’s?”

  “No, fishers.” After a short exchange with Murielle’s wife, Thais adds, “The light-skinned orange-haired woman leads them.”

  “Lily.” I press against the hallway to keep Thais’s hands in my line of sight as we follow Murielle’s wife.

  At the stairs, I pull to a stop, glaring at them angrily. Thais waves at me, her motions turning aggressive as the voices from the building’s entrance escalate. I bare my teeth and shake my head, but with a tight jaw, I plunge down the steps, half falling, half rolling. The floor below meets me with a thud.

  “Quiet!” Thais grabs my arm, yanking me after Murielle’s wife, away from the shouts at the front door.

  My panic catches up to me a moment too late, as though the trauma of last night had stunned it somehow. It slams through my muscles, trembling them into action. I burst through the hallway, curling around the feather-hat woman. She ignores me and pulls up a grate in the floor. Above her, water drips from a shower head with dozens of tiny holes in the bottom. Too many holes, the sort that crawl up my spine the way netting does. I look down at the grate instead, rubbing circles into my ignit.

  Murielle’s wife pulls it away and loosens a sloping bit of metal to reveal the river slipping lazily by beneath us. Thais grabs my tail and drops it through the hole.

  It falls, dragging me down with it. “Muck—”

  I splay my body as I hit the shallow murky water. Thais wavers over the opening. She catches herself a moment too late and topples, belly first. Her landing creates a silty splash.

  “Cacao!” She climbs to her feet, drenched once more and sputtering like this is somehow my fault. The water comes up to her waist. Her new necklace hangs like an amulet beneath her shirt, round and heavy.

  I shrug. “Yes, boat shit?”

  But I feel the tremor of the fishers’ feet charging down the hallway above us. I grab Thais’s arm, pulling her along. The river slides gracefully by me, my tail barely riding along the surface as it beats back and forth, my torso low. Thais stays upright, sloshing through at half my speed. She trips
and collapses into the water before pulling herself up again.

  I flick my tongue at her. “As amusing as it is to watch you make a fool of yourself, we have to hurry.”

  “I’m fine, Cacao. I’ve got this,” she snaps.

  I lift my hands. “Whatever, boat shit. It’s not like I wanted to help you.”

  Light streams through the gaps in the village street above us, cutting shocking golden walls into the dimness. Drafts of spicy human food and pungent oil mingle with the damp stink of the covered water. We keep to the shadows, moving slowly toward the bobbing hulls of the fan boats at the edge of the village. Every time Thais falls, I stare at her, but she doesn’t ask for help, and I don’t offer it.

  I focus on the vibrations around us, glancing back every now and then. No angry fishers appear in the water, but someone seems to keep pace on the walkways above, always just a little behind. We need to move faster. I glance at Thais. Her pinched face and determination not to look at me make the comment fall from my hands.

  We slow when we near the docks, scouting along the undersides for something small, painted with a scarlet fang on the front. Even the larger riverboats are fairly flat underneath compared to the deep-bedded canoes of the Murk, and with the river low for the dry season, the humans climb down onto bobbing decks to reach them. Thais pulls me into the shadow of a small fan boat, tapping the fang as she passes. Her clammy grip slides against my scales, but I don’t ask if she’s all right. She’s not.

  She’s dying.

  Stupid hero human wants to look brave or something, I guess. Her legs shake as she pulls herself onto the fan boat and ducks behind the simple wooden railing. Water drips from her curls, pooling at the tip of her chin. I rub my ignit once and don’t look at her eyes.

  “Do you know how to work these things?” I ask.

  “My mother had one.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question, muck-face!”

  “Get your useless complaining ass up here, Cacao.”