Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"
Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
Half a dozen Serafi ships sat on the line of the sea. The fleet moved toward the harbor quickly, their ominous sails full of a northeasterly wind. Beyond the breakwaters, Varian warships weighed their anchors and cast off. They moved at a clip, out to the open water. There were other warships docked too, hundreds of sailors on their decks, hurrying to get their vessels pushed away from their slips.
I felt an unfathomable responsibility for them all.
It was because of Theodore and me—joining our blood on the floor of that drafty chamber at the top of King Nemea’s crumbling fort—that they were now in harm’s way.
The rope above me bit into my palm as I gripped it and pulled myself up to stand atop the ship’s rail. I took in the whole of the docks. Another Varian warship was two slips away from the Hercule. Sailors readied the ship to sail, climbing over the rigging as easily as spiders did the strands of their webs.
“Your Majesty.” The Hercule’s captain looked up at me from the deck. His dark red hair was cropped short. The sun had darkened his skin with a thick covering of freckles. He narrowed his light brown eyes as he reached a hand up, a silent order that I come down. “Protocol states that the docks empty until the navy clears the threat.”
I pointed behind him, toward the warship. “I’m going with them.”
He spun to look at the ship. “Going where?”
“Toward the Serafi fleet. I’m going to sink them.”
He smiled, a patronizing twist to his brow. “The king and commander were very clear in their orders. You are under my protection till your task is done. You’ve set foot on my ship, you’re my responsibility now.”
The thought of being “his to protect” set a burrowing fury through the vacant space in my gut—where Theodore’s bond had sat. I had no time to reason with him. I refused to beg his permission. With half a thought, I threw out a silent lure. The captain only gave a shake of his head, then looked up at me with foggy eyes. “What the hell was that?”
My brow knit. The lure hadn’t hooked in. I remembered Lachlan’s letter—the entire crew was Siren-bound and therefore immune to my lure. I jumped down from the rail and blew out a frustrated breath. “I hope you’re prepared to grovel before your king, then, Captain, because I have no plans to remain under your watch.” I skirted around him, but before I reached the gangway, he grabbed the band of my trousers and hauled me back like I was a misbehaving cur on a lead.
I spun, breaking free of his hold, and threw my fist into the edge of his jaw. It was a poor punch, and a driving pain shot through my hand, but he went stumbling backward, groaning and holding his chin, nonetheless.
Heart as loud as the tolling alarm bell, I hurried down the gangplank. When the captain raced down behind me, I threw my arms wide to keep my balance. The man was my height, thinly built, but I was hardly faster than he was. I took a turn on the docks, leaping over the corner where water sloshed up to wet the wood. His boots drummed on the planks, the sound growing louder as he drew steadily nearer. The port had mostly cleared now. Those who remained were naval sailors and soldiers, tending mooring lines before their ships pushed out to battle.
I sent out four lures and praised the bloody Gods when I felt them slice into the sailors before me, taking hold deep in their chests. It had been effortless. My command had hardly formed in my mind before the men obeyed it. Once I raced past them, they made a blockade to bar the captain, tangling him in their arms like an animal in a snare. I ran faster toward the warship, my power suddenly bursting through my chest more intensely than ever, a mass of hot, gurgling sludge.
Two uniformed sailors were loosening the warship’s mooring lines and readying to hurry back up the gangplank. “Wait,” I yelled to them, stalling their progress.
A guttural scream from behind me hitched my strides. I whirled, peering through the windblown strands of my hair, as one of the sailors I’d lured pulled a dagger from their belt. Another wrestled the captain of the Hercule to the docks and set a heavy boot to his shoulder, pinning him as another held his legs.
Panic shot through me like lightning. “Stop.” I’d said the command clearly, I’d thought it with intention, but my lures would not dislodge. That pour of hot sludge continued through me and I gritted my teeth, trying to rein it in. It was my power, after all, but the bond I shared with Eusia had changed since the severing ritual. It had strengthened.
My bond with Theodore must have kept her hold on me at bay.
The sailor pinning the captain reared his dagger back, just as the ship’s gangplank ahead of me was being lifted from the dock. “Shit.” I was mere feet away from boarding. “Put it back,” I yelled. “Let me on!”
But the sailors only looked at me with befuddlement and continued hauling the gangplank up.
My attention was too splintered, my terror a buzz in my ears. My entire body was power-riddled, consumed. Possessed. Reluctantly, I sent out new lures, this time to the sailors on the ship, commanding them to return the gangplank to its position. Their faces slackened. Their eyes glazed. As they returned the gangplank, I ran back down the docks, toward where the Hercule’s captain fought and shouted.
Two sailors held him down at each shoulder. One sat upon his legs. And the fourth sailor drove his dagger down. I screamed, sending new lures, tugging on the ones that were still hooked through their ribs, but nothing I did knocked them from their task. The dagger sank into the captain’s belly with a sickening, wet thud. His scream shredded the air as I reached the sailor who held the dagger. I extended my talons and sank them into his arm, but the man who sat upon the captain’s knees lunged. He locked an arm around my neck. With all his weight, he brought me down hard onto the docks. I shredded at his arm too, sending his blood pouring down the front of my tunic, but he made no sound, he gave no quarter.
I could only watch as the dagger sawed through the captain’s belly, straight down in a vertical line. From sternum to groin. His entrails bubbled from the gash and spilled to the dock. Blood ran thick and dark through the cracks, it seeped into the waterlogged wood, and still he screamed and screamed and screamed. In a few horror-struck breaths, the captain quieted.
That was when they spoke the prayer. “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me. Cleanse the sea.” The sailors stood. They used their booted feet to roll the captain’s limp body off the edge of the dock and into the empty slip.
A trembling breath fell through my lips as all the burning power in me began to cool.
Finally, the sailor who held me let me go, and he too walked to the edge of the dock. Blood streamed from his ruined arm, but they all stood blank-faced, watching as shadows passed through the water below them. I rose up to my knees, gaze riveted on the dark streaks cutting through the sea.
The nekgya had come for the body. For the offering. The water frothed and turned pink and then, as if instructed to do so, all four sailors mumbled Eusia’s prayer once more. I held my breath as they stepped off the dock, into the deep, bloodstained water.
I marched up the gangplank, shaking and cold. My tunic was wet with the blood of the sailor who’d held me back, and it clung to my stomach. The bond I shared with Eusia was like a hand slipped inside me. I’d become a puppet, and she the master.
My gaze locked on the sailors at the top of the gangplank. The sailors that my lures were still strung through. Their eyes were glazed, their bodies loose. The thought struck me: They are marionettes at the end of your strings. You are no better than her.
When my boots hit the deck, I released their lures in a rush and waited with bated breath. I waited for praying lips and fisted daggers, but they both shook their heads like they’d awoken from a feverish dream.
One set a hand to his brow like it ached, but both went about their business as they had before. They heaved the gangplank onto the upper deck, and soon the ship cast off into the harbor. It bobbed beneath me, and once its sail caught the wind, it lurched.
“Who are you?” The woman’s voice behind me was rasping and harsh.
I whirled and knew precisely who I faced. There was no doubt, what with her perfectly pressed uniform, her steely eyes, and the abundance of medals pinned to her chest. The warship’s captain. She was reedy and time-hardened, twice as old as all the other soldiers and sailors around us. Her eyes cut down to the bloodstain on the front of my tunic and narrowed further.
My mouth dropped open, my mind blank. I was still dazed from the gutting I’d just witnessed. “I… I’m—” I couldn’t even think of what to call myself. “Captain, I—”
Her fair brow lowered dangerously. “A stowaway, then.”
“No.” I still shook but tried to stand straighter. I tried to imbue my body with the easy command that Theodore always wore like weightless armor. “I’m Imogen Vathia.” All this time I’d been unable to remember Ligea’s inherited name, and now it fell from my mouth as easily as an exhale. She’d been Vathia for the spirit of the deep water that had helped create her. “Daughter and heiress of the Great Goddess Ligea. I’m here to help you sink those ships.”
The captain’s eyes widened as she studied me. “I knew Ligea. She aided my ship once before, when I was a new captain, many decades past.” She pursed her lips. “You have the look of her.” She scanned her crew as they milled over the deck. “We have rules about Sirens on our ships, Your Majesty,” she finally said.
“And they are?”
A deep thunderous boom rent the air, pulling our attention. The Serafi and Varian ships were close enough to exchange cannon fire, and the first shot appeared to have hit a mast on one of the Varian ships, snapping it in the middle like a branch in a windstorm.
The captain took a deep, uneasy breath. She glanced down once more at the dark stain of blood. “If a Siren is on board, wax is required for all sailors, so they aren’t affected by their song. But seeing as you are the Goddess’s daughter, I expect wax will do little to keep them safe from your silent lure?”
My mouth went dry at the mere thought of my power. At how tangled and dangerous it had become. “No,” I managed. “It won’t.”
“I’ll need your word, then,” the captain said, holding my gaze.
“My word?” The wind sliced, pushing salt mist up my nose, setting my power strumming through my middle.
“If I let you remain on this ship, Your Majesty, then we are all at risk. I am entrusting the safety of every crew member and soldier into your hands. The Goddess could be a terror, but she was precise in the execution of her power. Are you like your mother?”
My entire body stung from the onslaught of shame and worry, from the responsibility she was asking me to bear. Dark, sticky blood stained my vision. The Hercule’s captain’s death screams echoed in my ears. I knew nothing at all of my mother, and my power was anything but precise. I was certain, too, that Eusia would relish an offering as grand as an entire warship of Varian bodies. But despite all that, I opened my mouth and said, “I am.”
The captain gave me an approving nod. “Then welcome aboard.”
The cannon fire grew louder. The ship rolled and dipped over the striated sea. I raced toward the bow for a better view. The Serafi and Varian ships had formed two rows, sides of the ships facing one another. Blooms of white smoke exploded between them. The whistles and cracks of cannonballs bunched my muscles. I could not stop one with my power, and the ships floated so close to one another that I had no idea how I might sink the Serafis without pulling the Varians to the seafloor too.
The wind was rough and dragged hair loose from my braid. I firmed my stance, despite how I felt like I was tipping. The captain’s voice rang out behind me. “Trim that sail. Cannons at the ready.” The ship was pulling up alongside the sixth Serafi vessel. She gave me an authoritative nod. “Whenever you’re ready, Your Majesty.”
I stared out at the Serafi ship, taking in the black leather armor I knew so well. My fear felt like fingers curling around my throat, stifling my breaths. Across the narrow strip of water, I spotted the Serafi captain, foreboding in his dark helmet. For a moment, I thought of Evander.
I pictured his face, stretched with disgust as he beheld me. I pictured Nemea’s throne room and my mother’s wing on the wall. I pictured the words below it carved proudly into the marble.
THE MONSTER IS ALWAYS SLAIN.
Black, burning power ruptured through my chest at the memories. I wanted the Serafi crew to freeze, and a wave of lures shot from me, spanning the space between our ship and theirs. My throat burned and I grew cold, like I’d been sliced at the neck and left to bleed dry, but at once, every sailor, every crew member, fell still.
The Varian captain’s voice boomed. “Fire!”
My ears ached from the cracking of gunpowder, but I stood unmoving. I watched as the Serafi ship suffered our assault. Cannonballs split through its side, wood splintered, and clouds of dust climbed high into the salt air. But it was the way the Serafi crew and soldiers slowly began to move that had me most transfixed. One unnatural step at a time, they began to walk toward the ship’s bulwark and climb over its rail to jump, one by one, into the sea below. I’d not ordered them to do it. I’d only intended to make them freeze. As their ship crumbled, as the sails ripped and the masts snapped, I watched the way their mouths moved in perfect unison.
With all of them speaking as one, I could just make out the words.
I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me. Cleanse the sea.
“No.” Eusia was ravenous. Since her creation she had starved for power, for recognition in the shadow of her sister. For years and years, she’d sought a way to fuel her insatiable magic. And now, she’d found a way to keep herself fed.
Me.
My mind sat in a grief-stricken fog by the time we came alongside the next Serafi vessel. It was badly damaged already; massive holes had been blown through its upper hull, but it took on no water.
The captain patted my shoulder proudly, nostalgia and pride deepening lines around her eyes. “Once more, shall we?” she said, inclining her chin toward the Serafis.
I nodded absently. “Of course.” I gripped the ship’s rail, resigned to the awful reality of it all. There was no way to keep Varya and its people safe without giving Eusia the bodies she so yearned for. I focused once more on that sickening, oily power in my middle when I realized what ship sat before me.
It was Seraf’s flagship. I recognized the squared-off stern, the four tall masts. The fanged eel painted on its largest sail. It had been Evander’s ship, and decades ago, when Nemea had been a seafaring king, it had been his. He had pushed it to the farthest edges of the world, to every island, and the northern continent too. There were stories of the haunting collection of Siren bones that decayed in its hull, of the Sirens who had been tied to its masts, left to blister in the sun for days on end.
The fabled ship belonged at the bottom of the sea. The cannon smoke was thick and white, stinging my eyes. I pulled myself above it to cling to the ropes and scanned the flagship. My heart crushed as I let the lures build within me, as I set my intention on the vast crew, but I clamped down on them all when I saw a flash of gold through the lingering smoke.
I froze as I made out the shape of that old, crenellated crown. It was Nemea. Here. He had not been on a ship in nearly thirty years. He’d refused, keeping himself safe from all its threats by remaining cloistered in his mountain fort.
His unfeeling gaze seemed to sense me through the smoke. A dark apparition, he stood in the middle of the deck, wearing worn, ill-fitting black armor. Those stabbing gray eyes locked with mine.
My mind couldn’t process the sight of him. On a ship. In Varian waters. I was supposed to go to him. Rohana had told me as much. Eusia had taunted me with it, pointing me home, home, home.
Power swirled through me, surging like a storm, but I held it in. I pulled at the buttons over my spine and ripped them open, one by one. The captain’s order to fire sliced the air. Cannonballs flew from both ships. One of the Serafi volleys cracked through the bulwark to the side of me and I shielded myself from the splintering wood, but I felt the sharp pieces pierce my flesh. My cheek, my neck, my arm, burned from the stuck shrapnel.
I fought to keep my mind clear, then set my intention on the water and ordered a deep current to slice between our ship and Nemea’s. In two beats, the Serafi ship careened, forcing their cannon aim to skew.
“What the hell are you doing?” the captain yelled to me as I pulled the back of my tunic even wider. “Freeze them! Lure them into the water!”
My wings broke through my skin. I stretched them wide and tried to keep my balance with the new weight tugging me back. Our ship was badly beaten, splitting further with each blow. But the Serafi flagship had not been able to overcome my current. It listed, its sails going slack.
“I’m boarding that ship,” I called back to the captain.
Her face was red, spittle at her lips. “Get them in the water first, Gods damn it.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t risk accidentally luring Nemea over the side of that ship.
She drew her sword. A cannonball flew over the deck, and she ducked, darting around sailors at work. “You gave your fucking word,” she yelled, sword tip pointing at my throat.
“Tread carefully.” My body had grown taut—my power tremulous. “I have a poor history with captains.”
The lines on her face deepened with my threat. She bared her teeth, her nose wrinkling with disgust. “Get off my ship.”
The strike of her enmity felt familiar, and I bore it well. I held my chin high and got my footing. Nemea’s ship was close enough for me to glide across. When I called it, a gust blew under me, and I stepped off the ship with my wings spread wide. My stomach flipped at the sensation of moving over the air. Ungracefully, I landed on the Serafi ship’s shroud and held tight. The square-hatched ropes burned my palms, my knees, my shins.
My presence unsettled Nemea’s crew. My dark wings set them on edge, like hounds scenting their quarry. They nocked arrows and prepared ropes as they dodged the cannonballs that still flew at them. With a clamped jaw and all my focus, I sent out only three lures. I shook to maintain them, to not let Eusia take them from me. They pierced the chests of the men standing nearest Nemea. The men’s shoulders slumped as they surrounded him. As they hauled him toward the nearest mast, that burn began once more in my throat.
Nemea didn’t fight them; he didn’t rail and scream. I kept moving, trying to keep myself from arrows’ paths, trying to keep my hold on my power, and watched through the ropes. I waited for his face to redden and his eyes to bulge as they always did when his ire was up, but he only leaned back, head tipped against the mast as they tied him to it. He looked me directly in the eye. His graying hair whipped, and he held my stare even as they took his sword from his scabbard. They bound his hands and pulled the wax from his ears. And as my body began to drain of its warmth, they took the dented gold crown from his head.
The sword and crown clattered to the deck as the three men turned toward the port side of the ship. I’d sent no command. I’d not even felt when the lures had putrefied, but Eusia now tugged on the strings. The three men mouthed the prayer as they stepped over the deck with jerking movements and threw themselves into the sea.
Arrows whizzed past me, and I climbed up, fighting to keep my balance, when Nemea called up to me.
“You’re tarrying, girl.” The slice of his voice through the din made my body lock up. I felt like a child, small and powerless and in want of discipline. “I thought I taught you better. We die when we tarry, Imogen. Do what you mean to do before we both meet our ends.”
He was right, and it anguished me to admit it. It anguished me to do what came next. I closed my eyes and let my power fly. I could not count how many lures, but my power—or Eusia—knew what was required. They hooked in and the sailors on the deck all let out a breath at once. I whimpered at the searing pain in my throat and the chills that broke out over my skin. Bodies went limp, weapons clamored to the ground. And then they all began to climb over the edges of the ship. Like a wave of tar, they slowly crested the rails and spilled into the briny water.
I looked to Nemea. I’d set all the focus I’d possessed on keeping him safe from my lure. The wind rolled over the deck, carrying with it the incessant splash of bodies and the mumbled prayers of the crew up to me on the shroud. Our gazes locked.
When Nemea heard his crew speak the familiar words of Eusia’s spell—the one he’d taught me so long ago—a slow smile curled his mouth.
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