Issue #149 • June 12, 2014

“Ink of My Bones, Blood of My Hands,” by Vylar Kaftan

“Silver and Seaweed,” by Greg Linklater

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INK OF MY BONES, BLOOD OF MY HANDS

by Vylar Kaftan

        He often tortured the girls, throwing their severed hands into the tar pit. The girls screamed until they bled out, and then he disposed of their corpses in the blackness. The boys he worked to death, having them carry water or gut animals or do other tasks he considered beneath me. Some boys collapsed, but others hatched escape plans. These he liked best, for he sent ghostly alligators through the swamp after the fleeing children; the reptiles shredded all who did not die of fright. Their bodies returned to the tar pit, the fierce source of his power; and this was the work of Ghraik, king of Surthenon, my hated lord and master.

        The gators were why I never conspired with these boys, the brave few who found means to approach me. They would scuttle from corners, in the kitchen or hallways or even my room, pleading wild-eyed for help. I could do nothing; I waved them off hurriedly, lest the necromancer think I aided them. I considered them the walking dead—not from callousness, mind you, for I too longed to escape this repulsive fortress atop the blighted swamp. No one hated Ghraik more than I. But these boys were dead to the world, like their sisters, all purchased from the necromancer’s terrified subjects. I steeled myself against them to protect my mother, whom Ghraik would torture if I betrayed him—my beloved mother, from whom he had torn me as a boy.

        Thus it was not escape but vengeance in my thoughts, night and day. Rage strengthened my hands as I scrubbed his sandstone throne at the tar’s center. Determination preserved my mind as I washed the pedestal beneath the chair-shaped boulder. The necromancer would never let a slave boy near the great rock formation, which stood in the vast courtyard surrounded by his obsidian fortress. Such tasks were mine and mine alone, as his unwilling apprentice.

        At his behest, I sharpened cursed knives and mixed toxic salves; I dissected human hearts and boiled unlucky salamanders in preparation for his spells. I locked screaming children in cages, and threw the keys in the mire as he ordered. All of this I did because he trusted me, and I dared not cause him to question that. For I was the only soul that could free the Surthenon from his brutal grip, suffered these two hundred years. Only I, so close to his blackened heart, could find and exploit his weakness. I committed every dark sin he commanded, for the kingdom’s sake, and purged my soul with fervent nightly prayers to gods I was unsure existed. I constantly sought my opportunity to obliterate him.

        The day that changed my fortune started as any other. I woke Ghraik from slumber by rubbing his shriveled feet with warmed lamb’s fat. He stretched his bony arms across his red velvet bed and yawned, showing teeth jagged as his stronghold walls. He gazed at me sleepily, through cat-yellow eyes, and I pressed my lips to his greasy toes.

        “Good morning, my lord,” I murmured, fantasizing as ever about slashing his throat as he woke. But no blade touched him; no toxin poisoned him. He controlled his breathing and pulse at will. This he had demonstrated the night he brought me here, by stabbing himself with ten different knives and breathing a purple cloud of gas; no damage marred his body. Then he sliced my cheeks and immersed me in the cloud until I passed out. I woke to him scalding my arms with acid, which he then drank while mocking my shrieks.

        “Good morning, boy,” he said, sitting up in his luxurious pillows. He waved a clawed hand towards the bedside. I had brought his tea as always, and I poured the foul green liquid into his bone teacup. I offered this cup with both hands outstretched.

        He took the cup, his skin brushing against mine—ah, even in fifteen years, I had not grown accustomed to his flesh’s numbing touch! He said, “I believe today I shall linger abed. Tomorrow I must journey to the capital and purchase more children.”

        “Does master desire his orb?”

        “Yes, bring it.”

        At his request, I fetched the infernal globe from its tripod. The ice-cold orb was larger than my head; it glowed red when idle. It weighed far more than an earthly object should, and I struggled beneath its weight. I set it on his bedcovers, between his bent legs. He clutched it with his knees and ankles. Slowly he wove his hands, and curved apparitions showed the actions of Surthenon’s people. By this sorcery he discovered and foiled plots against him. I knew any attempt I made must succeed on the first try. I would only get one chance to destroy him.

        But how?

        After he had satisfied himself for the time, he smiled at me affectionately, which was worse than his scorn. He said, “You’ve been a good boy. Shall we see how your mother is getting along?”

        Wicked fiend, he knew what tore me. I said only, “As you desire, my lord.” He showed me my mother’s face, wretched and worn, where she lay upon yet another man’s bed. I had known for years that my mother, a salt-maker’s widow, had turned to whoredom for her supper. She remained lovely in her suffering, despite her taut yellow face and the cough she suppressed in a sleeve.

        “Ah, the poor lady,” he said, tutting the sphere with a finger. “I cannot allow any harm to come to your dear mother. I shall refresh her life tonight.”

        By refresh her life, he did not mean heal her; he simply meant to extend her life such that she could not die. Some days I desired her release, and nearly struck the necromancer with fury. But I remained steadfast. I had devoted fifteen years toward exterminating this monster. Calmness was my vanguard; patience my counselor. I would wait a lifetime if needed for the right moment to crush him—forever.

        So I merely said, “I am grateful, my lord.”

        He gestured. The image changed to a vast sea, wavering beneath a cloudless sky. “Let’s see what’s happening off the island as well. One never knows when those pesky allied kingdoms will try to dethrone me. ‘Tis only a matter of time before I become impervious to their threats!”

        “My lord?” I asked politely, hoping he would let slip some useful knowledge. He rarely spoke of such things as battles or magic, but I kept hoping. I had gathered only morsels of information from his words; he had once said that the tar pit’s power lay in the past, present, and future, and no man excepting him understood the potential of its energy. Thus I knew his power source, but not why; no understanding came to me when I observed him sitting upon his throne, gazing into the mire for hours on end.

        “My power gathers as we speak. ‘Tis but a few years until—aach!” He cried out hoarsely.

        I had never heard such a noise from him. My heart raced. “My lord!” I exclaimed. “Are you unwell?”

        “The White Ships!” he cried, and his hands clutched the globe. Through the shapes of his fingers I saw them: brilliant white frigates, outlined against the blue sky, each rigged with seven sails. The ships were white from bow to stern, as if made of light itself. Rainbow luminescence scattered in their wake. No souls manned these vessels; at least none I could see. They looked like white foam cresting the ocean waves. My heart leaped with ineffable hope.

        I offered him more tea, but he dashed the cup against the wall. He leapt from his bed and paced the room stark naked. “They did it,” he muttered. “Those bastard knights and their pious king actually summoned the White Ships. Didn’t think they had it in them.”

        “What are these ships, my lord?”

        “An oppressive force born of meddling sorcery. Those ships will blockade this island and drain my power. Those damned knights want my tar pit, you see.”

        I kept my voice neutral. “Do these ships threaten you, my lord?”

        “Ha! Of course not. They are merely annoying.” He ceased pacing, and whirled to stare at me. His eyes slitted. “But I shall take precautions nonetheless. I will accelerate my plans.”

        By this I knew the ships struck terror into his foul heart, and I rejoiced. I said, “Very wise, O Ruler.”

        He pointed a bony finger at me. “The rite takes place tonight. Prepare yourself as I command. This is the day for which you were born, boy.”

        I bowed my obedience, but inside my hopes blossomed like a rare evening flower. He had let slip a clue: the day for which I was born. Never had I known why he had chosen me as servant, above other boys. And so I spent the day as instructed, bathing in scalding water and fasting on bitter tea. What could it mean that I was born for this?

        Often I pondered the mysteries of the day he abducted me. On the hottest summer day, near the wetlands where my poor village stood, no ocean breezes moved our air. I was a small boy, clinging to my mother’s skirts while she boiled brine for salt-making. My older sister swept the floor. The necromancer appeared soundlessly at the threshold; only a cold wind marked his presence. My mother turned and dropped her spoon.

        He said, “I’ve come for the other,” and looked at me.

        My mother protected me with her body, but the necromancer stepped forward and, with a gesture, snapped my sister’s neck. My mother shrieked, and the sound pierced my heart. The necromancer pushed her aside like a discarded rag, then touched my chin with a finger and examined me. I trembled, transfixed by his gaze, sick with fear. He nodded as if pleased, and said, “Come, boy. Keep your mother safe by obeying me.”

        These memories stirred while I sheared my body hair, as commanded. The other what? For years I thought he meant my sister; then I realized women were so subhuman in his eyes that he would never associate me with such creatures. He meant something else, which my mother had understood.

        But I could not solve this riddle before tonight’s ritual. I contemplated schemes for killing him first, for who knew what damnation this sorcery might bring upon me, but I concluded the same as ever: no means at my disposal would ensure his death. I needed more knowledge of his rites. Thus I must undergo this ceremony, or waste my invested efforts. I took scant comfort from knowing his magic controlled life and death, not the human mind; if he knew my thoughts, he would eviscerate me.

        That night, naked before the tar pit, I renewed my vow to discern the truth. I stood on a half-sunken marble platform at the throne’s base. The stone chilled my feet despite the humid weather; warm tar oozed onto my toes. Only his sorcerous swamp-lamps lit the courtyard, hazy with miasmal mist. The gnats and mosquitoes that normally swarmed the pit were curiously absent. Stars speckled the sky. The necromancer wore a heavy velvet robe, blacker than surrounding night, his wicked pendant glittering over his heart like a dagger.

        “Master,” I said, for it suited me to appear weak, “what shall I do? Please tell me. I am afraid.”

        “‘Tis nothing, boy,” he soothed me. “No harm will come to you.”

        I continued my half-charade, for indeed I feared what came next. “Master, please! I tremble, not knowing what I face. Will it hurt?”

        He scoffed. “Not a whit. In fact, you might enjoy it. You will see and hear things you never could before. I will open your soul to the earth magic of eons past. You shall become a conduit for unimaginable power. Consider it a reward for your loyalty.”

        Now I truly did tremble, for I had underestimated his madness. But I could not stop him. He waved a hand, and so the ritual began. My platform rose through fog and hovered over the tar. Hot wind whipped against my hairless skin, and I shook as if convulsing. Red bars encircled me and caged me like a sacrifice. Black shackles manifested about my limbs.

        Ghraik chanted mystical words in a hollow baritone. Though I understood nothing, I sensed the urgency in his recital. I knew his dark rites the way a maiden knew her ravisher, and thus I saw his fear. I memorized his actions as best I could. Through such observation, I had learned what little I knew of magic. Magic sought blood relationships; thus he frequently purchased siblings, as their connection provided great power. These and other facts I knew only because I had fought to learn them, and resisted despairing over my plight.

        The platform spun so that I faced the tar, pinned like a butterfly. The necromancer chanted louder, a human heart clutched in each hand. Sulfuric smoke swelled about his feet. His chanting peaked, and Ghraik crushed both hearts in his clawed hands. Unearthly howling rattled my bones. Black clouds consumed me. The platform dove, and I screamed as the tar swallowed me.

        I lay immersed in the inky depths, holding my breath, not knowing my fate. Hot tar oozed up my nose, into my ears, up my anus. It squeezed me like a relentless python. I could neither kick nor scream. Time stopped. Here it held no meaning. Nothing breathed, nothing moved, nothing thought. The endless tar stretched as far as the soul could feel. Since I could last only minutes without air, I thought the necromancer had finally killed me.

        When I could wait no longer, I succumbed to breath. I thought my death upon me—yet the tar seeped through my lungs and did not burn. It flowed deep into every sac of my organs, filling my useless body with arcane ichor. I inhaled the tar, I was the tar, and the weight of uncounted years became my entirety. A voice spoke—an ageless, sexless voice that thrust words along my every nerve. You are mine, the tar told me.

        At that I swooned so deep that I recalled nothing. I woke to the necromancer’s abhorrent face looming over mine as he held me in his arms. Vile fiend! His touch repulsed me. Had I possessed any senses, I would have reviled him at once. Only my stupor spared me this catastrophe, which would have ruined all towards which I worked.

        “Ah, my son!” exclaimed the necromancer. “Finally I understand a father’s pride! I always hoped you would please me thus.” He kissed my forehead, burning my skin with an icy lip-print.

        My father! Bile rose within me, and I shook like a consumptive. I could not respond, could not rebel. Against my will, Ghraik carried me to a silken chaise. I could not abide this tenderness from him, even less now that I knew our blood connection. What atrocities had he forced upon my poor mother? I writhed in pyretic spasms, knowing neither place nor time. I recall Ghraik spoon-feeding me broth, which I lacked the strength to spit back. Throughout this torment, the tar whispered to me: I own you.

        At first, I wished nothing less than death, for I had foolishly granted my body as a reservoir for his evil sorcery; I sensed his power had grown a hundredfold. I knew that a father and son’s powerful bond fueled extraordinary magic. But soon I recognized that what seemed a foolish error might offer my redemption. For the tar pit whispered incessantly, with such low words that I might mistake them for my own rumination. And with myself now bound to the tar, I might yet turn this power against the monster.

        Before dawn, Ghraik pulled me from the chaise despite my weakness, and brought me to his throne. “I fear the White Ships approach, my son,” he said, “and thus we can dawdle no longer. You shall be my focus. Through you I can summon more power than ever before. Let us raise a hurricane and shatter the ships into kindling.”

        He arranged my limp body on the stepping-path, and ran the muck over me like black gold. Warm and viscous, it dripped down my flesh and reunited with its source. I spoke to the tar within my mind, and told it of my mother’s suffering under Ghraik’s cruelty. I told it of the children whose bones rested deep now, who screamed as their bodies were sundered. I described the agony of my island kingdom, as if pleading with a foreign diplomat: Surthenon bleeds like a sacrifice. Will you not aid us?

        What is your infinitesimal suffering to I who control behemoths? You could not tap the smallest fragment of my power.

        Are we not bonded now?

        You are mine, it told me. Your worthless bones lie within me as we speak.

        I did not understand its riddle. Perhaps with an altered sense of time, it believed me still immersed. As I wondered, Ghraik drew sigils upon the mire with powdered bone and dried blood. I had little hope of survival; when Ghraik used animals in his rites, the magic usually mangled them. My awoken mind recognized my last chance to thwart him with my newfound power.

        The necromancer drank a black liquid and forced the remainder down my throat. It tasted of mold and diseased organs. As I lay there sputtering, I realized I had never seen him use a human focus; why had he not killed a child in this fashion? He derived maximal power from the young. I was still young, and our blood bond intensified this charge.

        The wind intensified, and I shivered. I asked myself—if blood bonds were so valuable, why had the fiend not defiled hundreds of women, and used their progeny for his black magic? I weighed the possibility that he had secretly done so—but no rivals had come to the fortress, and the children he purchased bore no resemblance to him. No, ‘twas I alone through whom he channeled power. Something about my birth marked me as special.

        The necromancer summoned shadowy clouds on the storm winds. The stars overhead blackened to nothingness. My mind reached a frantic state. I recalled his words to my mother: I’ve come for the other. I wracked my brain for an answer. My poor sister’s face flashed into mind. In my near-manic thoughts, a divination came to me: perhaps I once had an elder brother? I would not realize if there been an apprentice before me; a brother, son to Ghraik, whom the necromancer had drained like an inkpot.

        Ghraik suspended me once more over the tar pit and flipped my platform. The necromancer cried his determination like a hundred hellbound trumpets. A foul smell rose from the land itself. Weeds uprooted and shriveled at his words. Lizards fell from trees. I stared into the inky blackness, desperately trying to solve this riddle.

        If I’d had an elder brother, why would the necromancer have caressed me like the first creature he’d ever cherished? Surely he would work alone if he could; he owed me no role in his thaumaturgy. No, my body must grant him some power that he could not otherwise achieve. He needed me. But what magic was more powerful than the bond of father and son?

        Blue lightning crackled the air. The first storm winds battered my face, heralding the hurricane. I pleaded with the tar. Help me. What connection do we share?

        Your truth is inked inside your bones, murmured the tar pit. Your heritage is written in every morsel of your flesh, passed through your father and your father’s father. I am your past, your present, your future.

        What could it mean? I strove to understand. What was inscribed deep within my body? In that moment the answer came to me, as if the tar reflected the truth in a looking-glass. The tar knew my bones because I did indeed have a brother, deep within the tar. We shared a bond written in every sinew of our muscles, each section of skin, and the hollows of each bone.

        My twin.

        Winds lashed across my face. Rain sheeted down like floodwaters. Distant cypresses bowed to the ground. My twin! The poor boy was likely stolen at birth and sacrificed in the tar pit. The necromancer needed no other sons; he held the one living, and one buried, which together could plumb the depths of the tar’s power.

        Armed with this knowledge, perhaps I could defeat him.

        Thus the necromancer used my life-force, linked inextricably to my twin’s tar-bound bones, to raise the greatest hurricane ever known on the isle of Surthenon. The storm’s malevolent eye swept over the coast and assaulted the wetlands. Water poured from the sky, thick as plated armor. Wind struck the startled birds, throwing them against trees, where they died like mice. The storm blasted everything flat, like an alligator slithering over reeds. My strength did not deplete; rather, I invigorated with each moment. But I lacked control. I was not the assassin, but the poisoned knife. Through me Ghraik would destroy my world.

        I begged of the tar pit, Help me, for you need not this man who commands you.

        I have no need of any man.

        He does not understand you the way I do, I told it. Read the message inked inside my bones. You and I understand each other.

        You understand nothing. I do as I please, and none will stop me.

        Helpless, my soul distorted under the unyielding pressure. A million red-hot nails drove through my extremities. A thousand arms sprouted from my soul as if a monster birthed its young. My awareness spanned the island, and my grotesque magical hands trawled the ocean seeking the White Ships.

        I discovered the fleet racing towards the northern shores. Against my will, I lifted the ships like so many flower petals and scattered them into the hurricane. Their sacred planks splintered like matchsticks. I screamed inside—but my actions were not my own. Through me Ghraik banished the wrecked White Ships to the ends of the seventeen seas; only the choppy ocean remained, noxious beneath my tainted hands.

        My hopes disintegrated with the White Ships. My efforts to destroy the fiend had ruined me. My kingdom, my family—all lay waste under his rule. My desolation swallowed me, consumed me like endless tar, until nothing remained but my white-hot rage. Through despair, the blade of my wrath transformed to a searing needle. I possessed the will of the gods, for I had nothing left to lose.

        Thus I wrestled Ghraik for my soul. We grappled, our spirits locked in opposition, linked by a thousand contacts each more intimate than the last. I knew Ghraik and every foul deed he’d committed—and he knew my conviction of the last fifteen years. We battled each other, and our magical exertions ignited our world. Fire swept the open courtyard. Cypresses blazed, and swampwater burned. The tar’s surface burst into blue flames—its power incensed, like a sleeping bobcat pestered by flies.

        I begged of the tar: Stop this. Please. I will give you all you desire.

        I do not know what moved the tar to respond. Perhaps I held more sway than I thought; perhaps it had merely grown weary with me. A swell came over us, deeper than the ocean floor, of magic stronger than time itself. Roaring deafened my ears, and the mire shuddered. My innards twisted like wrung-out clothing.

        Slowly the tar’s surface broke. One by one appeared skeletal creatures, dripping tar from their pitch-black bones. All manner of dead deformities gathered on the sticky surface, as if it were solid. Dogs and snakes, alligators and birds—the dark skeletons shook themselves, and howled a cacophony of unearthly sounds.

        But more skeletons came—all of them black as sin, black as nightfall. Here were the children. Ah, the condemned boys, many still broken in pieces! And their handless sisters, clutching their wrist-bones to their empty eye sockets. They wailed in unison; their battlecry could empty a man’s bowels. I could not scream as the army amassed, for the necromancer and I wrestled for control of my soul. I could not seek my brother among them, for I fought for my salvation; he had to be among them, but I did not know.

        With a wild shout, the undead battalion burst forth upon the necromancer. He could not ward so many. Ensnared by my efforts, he collapsed under the bony swarm, which crushed him underfoot like an afterthought.

        This onslaught spread through the courtyard and into the fortress, but others still came: now behemoths, twice the size of a house, with four enormous legs and sword-like tusks. These beasts rampaged outwards, stomping the flaming swamp under their cadaverous feet. They trampled Ghraik into a watery pudding, then bellowed and stampeded to the wetlands beyond.

        But the tar was not finished. The greatest of beasts were yet to come. Like titanic alligators they were, these skeletal juggernauts—eight times a house’s size, erupting from the depths. Rain tore through their open bodies like a storm through unfinished shelters. The juggernauts lumbered through the ruined fortress into the flaming swamp, destroying all in their wake. With them I knew the tar had divulged its last secrets. I struggled against my magical bonds, longing to reach Ghraik’s mangled flesh and seal my promise. Without a final blow, I feared he might survive his grievous injuries.

        But before I could free myself, an army of severed hands scuttled forth from the tar, like giant skeletal ants. They stripped his flesh like ravenous carrion-eaters, heedless of his screams. They pulverized his organs, then crushed his bones into dust. This they scattered to the wind, removing every last trace of Ghraik from the island’s soil. Then the hands shattered, piling their broken joints beneath the damaged throne.

        I know not how I came back to earth, though later I guessed the necromancer’s magic died with him. I know not how long I lay there, senseless, while the skeletons ravaged the island. In time they must have collapsed, for I found them everywhere, heaped atop the island’s ashes, where they had annihilated all they encountered.

        Nothing remained. I wandered the island naked, needing no sleep, no food, no warmth. All villages were razed, and I could not locate my mother. Nothing lived on this island; no fauna, no flora, nor even the tiniest insect remained in the wasteland once called Surthenon.

        Thus I returned to the tar pit for solace, and ascended the sandstone throne of this ruined kingdom. And here I have remained to this day, alone with my tortured thoughts and the tattered remnants of my soul. I cannot leave the tar pit. Nothing else sates my hollowness.

        I abide on my ashen island and await the resurrection of the White Ships, which I think shall never happen. I pray for my salvation, which I never expect to find. Time passes, or it does not; I can scarcely tell. Truly, as I feared, the necromancer could not die. He needs no body to haunt me. He attends every day of my ceaseless existence; he cradles me in his loathsome arms, the heir to his legacy.

Copyright © 2014 Vylar Kaftan

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Vylar Kaftan writes speculative fiction of all genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and slipstream. She’s published stories in places such as Clarkesworld Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and Lightspeed. She founded a new SF/F convention in San Francisco called FOGcon (fogcon.org). Recently, she won the 2013 Nebula for her novella “The Weight of the Sunrise.” She lives with her husband Shannon in northern California and blogs at www.vylarkaftan.net.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

SILVER AND SEAWEED

by Greg Linklater

        He draped a tentacle over her tiny shoulders and leaned in close, turning the shark side of his face towards her, as he did whenever he was about to tell her to do something. That dead black eye swiveled. “Time for your medicine,” he said, offering the tumbler full of tarry essence. He stank of fish and seaweed left too long in the sun. “No arguments this time.” He opened his mouth to show her the rows of triangular teeth on that side. Maybe a smile, maybe not.

        The submerged hull creaked around them. She heard anchors dropping, chains clanking, and the distant groan of whales. She took the tumbler. The fresh webbing between her tiny fingers stretched as she gripped the glass. He loomed over her.

        She studied the poison, the essence. Scales and residue of fish-guts floated in it. He kept a complicated chart scratched into the top of their lone wooden table with a knife, although how he kept track of time underwater she had no idea. Rows of boxes, rows of crosses, a smiling face in every seventh one (a smiling face; the irony), and whenever they hit one of them he would call her over to his briny tub, have her wait while he produced a metal lock box that he would open with one of a pair of keys he kept buried in a fold of gelatinous flesh under his arm, inside what may have been a gill of some kind that opened like an infected eye. He would unlock the box and she would see the stoppered bottles of the stuff lined up inside the padded interior, the bodies of small mashed fish floating in the liquid. He would take out the tumbler, wash it in the briny slop that supported his lower half, fill it to the top from one of the bottles, then hand it to her with an unspoken threat wrapped in a smile.

        She swallowed the contents in one gulp. It slid thickly down her windpipe and she gagged. He massaged her back gently, taking care around the budding fins and tender patches of scale. The essence grabbed her from the inside, pulled open her veins and raced to her brain. She could feel the transmutation always now, a dull ache in her bones, as the essence turned her on a wheel away from what she had been toward what he wanted her to become.

        “My girl,” he said, sighing as he took the tumbler from her and returned it to its case. He locked the box and slid it back under his tub and returned the key to its secret pocket. “You make your father proud.”

        Only he wasn’t her father.

        Or at least she had her suspicions. The truth of it lay somewhere in the past beyond reach, and with every moment she spent in this place with him, swallowing his poison and doing what he needed her to do, his claim became more and more true. Soon it would win out entirely, and there’d be nothing else left.

        “Can you swim?” he said. The withered shark side of his face was turned away now, leaving her the almost-handsome half that he still had to scrap with a razorblade to keep from becoming overgrown.

        She nodded.

        “Good. Then out you go. You know what we need.”

        “Air, food, and the sparkly stuff.” Sparkly stuff; that’s what he called it.

        “The most important of all,” he said. “Don’t come back empty-handed again.”

        She wanted to hate him, but he was all she knew, and he probably actually was her father like he said, so how could she hate him? She pecked him on the cheek, the good one, and padded down the steady slope of the floor to where water cut the submerged hull across the diagonal. She unhooked three old glass balloons, each one full of bad breath and dead air,  and took her tri-pronged spear from its rack.

        “Be safe,” he called out as she plunged into the water.

        He said that every time now, ever since the accident; not the first one, the truly catastrophic one that he’d only told her about, but the second one, more an inconvenience once his wounds had healed, and why he needed her more than ever.

* * *

        The ocean outside was dark and full of sediment.

        She kicked clear of the open hatch now home to a colony of eels. A kelp forest swayed in the current. She followed a shaft of sunlight up, up, up to the liquid silver surface, where the air smelled sweet and she heard gulls calling and the groan and clank of ships anchored at the nearby port. The city beyond bristled with smoke and steam and distant noise, a cesspit even without his embellishments at the sheer moral decay to be found there, the place he called Pelagar.

        On those rare occasions her errands took her into the city she felt intensely uncomfortable, even with her growing number of visible mutations concealed as best she could. That world was no place for her, not now, and as she navigated those labyrinthine alleys and choked markets she found herself longing for her underwater home.

        Gasbray, the bespectacled merchant and craftsman she sometimes called on for new glass balloons or other magical trinkets, had tried to tempt her to stay for warm mint tea and chocolate jellies, maybe even some sweet liquor to ease her rasping cough.

        “It’s nothing,” she would say. She knew it was the transformation, her lungs becoming less tolerant of the lower pressure topside, her gills drying out. But she couldn’t say that, not even to Gasbray (who probably knew more about any of this than her so-called father), because he might stop her from going back. At least, she had the sense he might try.

        “He can’t be trusted,” the man who called himself her father had said. “He may look friendly and nice, a generous uncle, but he’s a snake. His family were known informants during the Shadow Nights,” he continued, forgetting none of this meant anything to her. “So keep your business with him brief, understood?”

        But Gasbray was only trying to be kind. Once, he even asked, “So how is your father? Doing well?”

        She wasn’t sure what he did or did not know about her father’s situation (her father was never generous with details), so she shrugged uncomfortably and said he was fine. Gasbray looked about to say something more, then thought better of it and smiled. “Give him my regards.” She noticed a sudden bitterness to him. “Tell him our friends have agreed to his terms: a reduced price in return for the trade.” Almost a challenge, skirting the edge of something dangerous.

        Price? The terms had already been agreed, so far as she knew. And trade? What trade? Her father had explained his whole plan to undo the damage done to him, but this was new to her.

        When she’d relayed the conversation to her father he’d flown into a rage, lurching from his tub and lashing the table across the room with one of his tentacles. “What else did he say to you?”

        “Nothing,” she said, cowering.

        “I don’t want you talking to him anymore, do you understand? Not a word. You write your order down and hand it to him. No more talking.”

        The next time, when Gasbray finished engraving a fresh glass balloon and raised his magnifying lens atop his head and said, “Tell your father there could be some complications. Disputes over allotments and such between the guilds,” she had almost walked away. Almost. Instead, she said, “He doesn’t like me talking to you.”

        Gasbray had frowned, perplexed. “Why ever not?”

        “Maybe he’s worried about what you will tell me.”

        “What I will tell you? But hasn’t he explained it all to you already?” There it was again, that slyness.

        “Explained what?”

        “Our arrangement.”

        “Of course he has.”

        “Really? And you are onboard with all this?”

        “I....” Were they talking about the same thing? He seemed to know more than her, when he should have known less.

        He grew angry at her blank expression. “Blasted coward,” he muttered, but not to her. He twisted out his cigarillo on the sole of his boot. “You tell him to come see me, at our usual meeting place.”

        This had been before the second accident, when her father could still venture out. When she conveyed Gasbray’s instructions, her father had stormed from their home, dragging his bulk off through the water to the meeting place. She had followed at a discrete distance and popped up a hundred yards away, where the night could hide her. Her father sprawled on the wet sand beyond the reach of the lights from the promenade, arguing furiously with Gasbray, who himself was throwing his arms about in a manner very unlike his usual reserved self. Their words didn’t carry, just their intonation, and when she’d seen enough she had returned home. No sense in getting caught for nothing.

        When her father returned he carried a sack of fresh bottles filled with essence. He placed them in his lock box, and when she lingered near him he slapped her with his one hand.

        “Gasbray is not your friend. You cannot trust him.”

        After that, Gasbray was cool towards her, more distant, more professional. Every visit seemed to be her first, as he slid forward with a “Yes, may I help you?” Whatever her father had said had been taken on board, and whatever Gasbray might have told her before was now lost to her.

        She had thought she understood the nature of it all, but now she wasn’t so sure, and she resented Gasbray for making her question without daring to give her the answers.

* * *

        She swam to the end of the great breakwater and tethered the old glass balloons to a rusty iron bolt sunk in a half-submerged rock. She held each one and ran her finger over the complex pattern Gasbray had scratched into their surfaces, every cross-hatch, dot, and swirl marked with a tiny number beside it to signify the correct order. As she completed each pattern it flashed gold and the balloon began to hiss, first expelling the trapped fumes through invisible pores before drawing in fresh air the same way and compressing it tighter and tighter. Once full, a balloon contained enough air to keep them breathing in their home for days.

        She left the balloons floating there to fill while she plunged down with her spear. The fresh gills just below her throat meant she could stay under for minutes at a time, and soon she had a string of squid, pig-jackets, even a crackling eel. She was now near the cliff, so she tucked her catch under a rock, rose to the surface for one last deep breath (the gills helped, but a lungful of air still made a difference), then dropped over the edge, heading down towards pitch blackness just to test herself, as she did every day. She had never seen the bottom; ears popping, joints screaming, she always pushed as far as she could but it was never enough. Not without further mutation, or “enhancement” as he called it.

        And that was the whole point of her existence.

        “It is a superstition among the outgoing sailors that you make an offering to Selessi before every voyage,” he had explained to her (she recalled in a memory so dusty it might well have been the oldest she had). “Once you cross the channel and pass Widow’s Rock way out beyond the edge of the bay and the seals are all around, Selessi will hear you, and you offer her what you can to provide safe voyage. You take your trinket, your coin, your gem or other valuable, whatever you can spare to save your life and you say a prayer as you toss it overboard. So it has been for hundreds of years. How many sailors per ship? How many ships per year? Too many to count.”

        Which meant that down below, far, far down below, there were fields of treasure waiting to be scooped up. And he wanted as much as he could get. He showed her his second, more prized lock box, this one with an air of reverence that he felt warranted an additional warning. “If I ever catch you even looking at this,” he said as he unlocked it with the second key on the chain he kept semi-swallowed, “I will hurt you.”

        Inside were fistfuls of copper coins, silver bracelets, a couple of smell gems that he must have sifted from the sand. This was before he had her trade all of it, a couple of items at a time (not trusting her with any more), for bronze square-coins in the markets of Pelagar. He didn’t even trust Gasbray to fence the goods for him. “Now I cannot reach the bottom, although I have tried,” he said. “Some of these sailors are impatient and toss their offerings too early, and these I collect from the cliff’s edge. But the real treasure is way down below, and that, my beautiful girl, is where you must go.”

        Said as he offered her the first tumbler of essence, back when he did everything outside their home; gather balloons, food, meet Gasbray on the beach, because she was still incapable of leaving that sweet pocket of trapped air.

        “But why do you need this?” she asked, meaning the treasure.

        “Look at me. This was an accident, me ending up like this. I used to look like you. I shall tell you all about it sometime, but the point is it can be undone, so I’ve been told, but it will cost money, vast sums of it for the guild specialists to undo all this, make me a man again. How else am I to get my hands on that kind of wealth lurking here at the bottom of the sea, eh?”

        “What about Selessi? Won’t she be angry at us stealing from her?”

        “Ha! Sailor nonsense, girl. Charkuna is the one true god, of that you can be sure, not some watery bitch demanding tokens for her protection.” Although after his second accident he was no longer so sure, but by then she was the one taking all the risks, heading out and down to strive for the bottom.

        “The plan is this.” He pinched her cheek fondly. “We collect enough for them to restore the pair of us—”

        “Why me? I’m fine already.”

        “Do not interrupt me!” The pinch turned sharp and she squealed. “Silly girl. I will explain it all to you. You need some enhancements to allow you to reach the bottom, where the true cream lies. I myself could not survive those depths, and I have already evolved too far in a particular direction, as you can see. Any more would most likely kill me. But if you trust me, I can make it so you can swim further and deeper than anyone has ever done. Fear not, the guild can undo such things once we no longer have need of them, and by then we shall have accumulated enough on top of the required fees to live like king and princess for the rest of our days. Not bad, eh?”

        It had seemed a brilliant plan back then. It still did.

        So why these fresh misgivings? Did she no longer trust him? Why couldn’t she; her own father (most likely)? He would never do wrong by his own flesh and blood; he had no reason to. He loved her (in his own way) and she loved him, and that was all that mattered.

         #

        She scooped up a lovely scrimshaw figurine, a pouch of metal bits, a shrunken skull with marbles sewn into the eye sockets, an ivory comb, and an amber bead inside an empty ink bottle.

        She re-gathered her catch, although blood from the pig-jackets had drawn a shark. Not a big one, but big enough. She flashed her spear and the thing vanished, but adrenaline from the encounter forced her to the surface to suck in a few heavy breaths. Something similar had caused her father’s second accident, and look how that had left him.

        She collected her balloons and dived for the last time.

        She noticed something as she navigated the barnacle-encrusted hatch leading back inside: a flash of silver among the green and white shells. A locket. She’d never seen it before and had no idea why she had noticed it now because she could tell it had been here a long, long time by the way it had become so in-grown that she had to tuck it sharply to free it, breaking the fine chain. She clutched the tiny locket in her hand, a simple latched thing that she unclipped and opened.

        Inside was an engraving of a woman’s face, etched soapstone rubbed with ink. Plain and smiling. Valuable to someone, and probably more valuable than most of the junk she’d scavenged recently, so her father would be pleased.

        He was in fact the complete opposite.

* * *

        The second accident had been bad, although nowhere near as bad as the first.

        A small orca hit from behind while he lingered on the cliff face sifting coins from the sand with his trusty sieve (so he explained to her once he could speak again). It was the large silvertail hooked onto his belt that did it, trailing blood everywhere. The whale thought the blood was his and nearly tore him open. He couldn’t exactly say how he managed to fight it off and return home, but when he bobbed up inside, blood everywhere, and she dragged him out of the water, he was white as bleached bone. There was nothing to be done; either he’d live or die, and it was just a case of waiting it out.

* * *

        He held the open locket to his good eye, and when he recognized it the shark side seemed to spread. Everything human just dropped from his face.

        “Where did you find this?” he said as quietly as she’d ever heard him say anything. His hand shook.

        “Just outside the hatch.”

        “No,” he said, but not to her. Maybe to himself. Then: “How?”

        “But isn’t it valuable?”

        “Junk.” And he shoved it in his mouth so roughly he cut his fingers on his teeth. One swallow and it was gone, and when he flapped her across the face, the slap so loaded that he could barely control it, the blood from his knuckles dashed up the wall. “Who told you to go snooping around here? The cliff is where you look, and nowhere else, do you understand me, girl?” She danced away from him and in his rage he spilled over the side of the tub. He half-settled against the floor, howling. “You come back here!”

        She shook her head and he seemed at a loss.

        “Charkuna mark you, disobedient whelp!” He eyed the cold water at the bottom of the room, a plan forming. “Suit yourself. You stay here then while I go outside.”

        “Where are you going?”

        “If I see you leave here the pain will be worse than anything you could imagine. Do you hear me? You stay here otherwise I feed you to the sharks.”

        He let the downward slope of the room drag him to the water, and when it caught him he sighed in pleasure. But there was madness in his eyes, and he raised a warning finger at her. “You stay right there until I return.” And he vanished.

        But where could he be going? He almost never left since the second accident. And what about that locket had enraged him? She had to know. It could have been a trap, one of his loyalty tests; he could be waiting just outside to spring on her the moment she disobeyed him, but the risk was worth it. He made threats and turned nasty on occasion, sure enough, but he needed her more than she needed him now, so no chance he would do anything irreparable to punish her.

        At least, anything more than he already had.

        She lurked inside the shadow of the hatchway, studying the ocean bed outside, knowing it so intimately now that she could have told if he was hiding there. Seeing nothing she eased out, expecting him to strike at any moment, but when he didn’t that presented another problem: where had he actually gone?

        Something large had kicked up a cloud of sand to the right of the outcrop she faced. Had to be him. Ever since the second accident he clung to the bottom on those rare occasions he did venture out, lacking the nerve to leave himself exposed in the open water. She climbed up the outcrop to peer down on the far side and saw him creeping along the alleyways of the ocean bed towards Pelagar, so maybe it was more business with Gasbray, for some reason.

        But no, now he took a new path. She followed, nimble as a fish, darting from cover to cover while he blundered mindlessly ahead. The struts of the main pier loomed through the sediment and he made for the base of them, for one in particular, and she settled into a bed of seaweed to watch. The sand here was littered with trash tossed from above; bottles, shoes, an overgrown accordion. And something else, a shapeless twist flapping in the current. He made for that. His bulk settled down before it, blocking it from view as he worked. An octopus sidled close and he flashed at it, his fist tight when he did so she knew he held something in it.

        Then he was done, but heading somewhere else instead of back home. She followed again, knowing she could always outrun him and so she was in no danger of being caught out unless he actually saw her, and she had to know what was going on here, sensing something important without knowing the true shape of it.

        He seemed a tad aimless, as if lost or looking for something. He found a pocket of sand and dug with one of his tentacles, his hand still clutching whatever it was he had come for, which he then buried. He placed a rock on top of the sand and drifted backwards, studying his work. Satisfied, he turned for home, and so did she, swimming so fast it wasn’t until her vision began to blacken as she dashed through the hatchway that she realized she had forgotten to take a single breath.

* * *

        It had happened like this:

        (Was this a memory of him telling her this? No. Maybe?)

        He was a grade two supplicant serving the fourth year of his apprenticeship on one of the guild’s harvesting rigs out by the Vent. Nothing exceptional there. Rig labor was equal parts slaves (prisoners, mostly, given the dangerous nature of the work) and guild members of varying degrees of expertise, him being towards the lower end of that scale but still far enough removed from the riskier elements associated with harvesting.

        He assessed samples... or no, he managed the diving globes? Yes, that was it. The prisoners, they were lowered in magically reinforced globes to take initial samples of the rainbow-colored effluent billowing from the Vent, and he was charged with directing them during their descent using levers and pulleys greased with magic.

        (Why was there a woman’s voice attached to all this? If this woman had been the one to explain it all, then who was she?)

        Something had happened. A globe had burst, or a chain snapped, or a sudden upsurge from the Vent rocked the boat. He had tumbled overboard, or a rope snagged his leg and yanked him off. The water was thick with effluent, the essence that formed the very base of all the guilds’ powers, and when he plunged into it, it had filled his mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes; and the millions of fish and turtles and seabirds and even sharks that followed every plume of essence, feeding off it, when they swarmed him in sudden interest the essence took every living thing and scrambled them together, so that when the crew hooked him and pulled him back aboard and pounded the water from his lungs, the cancer was already eating away inside him.

        She imagines a hospital bed, him in bandages, still a man, pulling his waistband down to find a crab’s leg sprouting from his hip. But that was just her imagination. She hadn’t been there to see that, of course (because how could she have?), but the dangerous glee she took from his imagined howl of terror was real enough.

        And that was the first accident.

* * *

        She had to wait another day before she could investigate.

        “Be safe,” he called as she headed out with her spear.

        She headed to the hiding place first, because whatever was at the base of the pier it had been the thing he buried that mattered.

        She pushed aside the rock and dug. Found it straightaway.

        A silver locket and chain. The same as the one he had swallowed. But different. This one contained a bubble of glass with a baby’s tooth inside. She recognized it. No idea how, but she did. Then a flash of memory sharp as broken shell: her holding this thing inside a pudgy hand much smaller than the one she had now. Her stomach shriveled. This explained more than she had wanted it to. She hadn’t been expecting anything like this.

        She returned to the base of the pier, where bodies dropped and thrashed against the surface far above as children leapt from the railings on a hot summer day.

        The thing was a skeleton furry with growth and wrapped in seaweed and shreds of what had once been clothes. A leather satchel over one shoulder held it pinned forward against the sand, an anchor of sorts. Inside were eight or ten large rocks. Enough weight to suit a particular purpose. A single leather strap easily thrown off if this had been some kind of accident or administered violence.

        Her lungs cried out and she kicked up. Her head broke the surface and she looked up to the wrought iron balcony high above, and seeing it like this, in these circumstances, something finally came loose, an invisible splinter of glass finally worked from a foot after days, weeks, years of agony:

         she remembered waking in bed (her real bed, in a real house, not the dank thing she lived in now) as something enveloped her and lifted her clear, carried her towards and out a window, stinking of brine, and there had been a woman screaming. Lanterns flashing by, a cry of alarm or disgust from someone, then the hollow thud of misshapen limbs on boards, the rusty old paint smell of the railing as she went up and over, the fall, the splash, cold, cold water all around, then darkness. Nothing else beyond that. Buried so far back it came before the beginning.

        And this woman pinned here, her mother, a casualty of all that. The lone anchor point between two worlds. He had known that and had tossed aside one locket to cut the link, because one in isolation was meaningless. Together they told a story, and he had made two mistakes: being a bit too careless in disposing of her locket, and leading her directly to her mother’s. Each compounded the other. One mistake on its own and she never would have known, but he’d shown her they mattered, and that had been enough for her to remember.

* * *

        Gasbray’s eyebrows rose. “How much?” he said, repeating her question.

        “Yes. How much does it cost to undo his transformation?”

        He whistled. “A lot. How much does he have?”

        “I don’t know.” Clearly not enough, not yet.

        Gasbray rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “He and I have an arrangement, you know. This is not the kind of matter he would appreciate me discussing with you.”

        “How much to undo me?” she said.

        He winced at that. “Well....”

        “How much?”

        Dark suspicion now hardened into something tangible. Was she the trade he had mentioned in a moment of sloppiness? Gasbray cleared his throat, looked away, a good man at heart wanting to tell her something she wasn’t allowed to know; probably promised money to play by her kidnapper’s rules. He shrugged and mumbled a figure that sounded made up.

        “I don’t believe you,” she said.

        He flinched at her tone. “These are not questions you should be asking me. You should be asking your father.”

        “He’s not my father,” she said; no, she snarled. “He’s some pathetic thing who stole me from my mother and she drowned herself. I hate him, and I hate you too for helping him.”

        That stung him. “I had nothing to do with any of that.”

        “He never planned for me to be made good again, did he? The money was for him and him alone.”

        “Please, I—”

        She turned to leave, and he danced around his counter to grab her wrist, but there was nothing malicious in him, just a man who considered himself decent enough being squeezed into a nasty corner. “Do not do anything foolish,” he begged. “You know how he is. If you say any of this to him he will kill you.”

        “What do you care? He’ll still pay you. After all, I’m surplus once I’ve done my bit.”

        “Stuff the money!”

        The words stopped her.

        Gasbray wiped sweat from his face. “He was my friend, from before. That is why I have helped him. The money is neither here nor there. Then he threatened to spread lies about me to the guild, anonymous letters pertaining to certain past indiscretions that would see my license and membership stripped, if I told you. You see?”

        Pathetic, duplicitous, but she needed allies. Right now she had none. Still, one thing nagged her. “Why wouldn’t he pay to have me fixed, too?”

        “It would take too long to gather the necessary wealth, and he figures he has already waited too long. Besides.” He stroked his upper lip sadly. “The guild has need for oddities, anomalies to be probed and studied to advance the art. The Code forbids direct transmutation, as he has done to you, but you would be considered a useful... gift... by some. A way to reduce a quite breathtaking price. After all, you are no more to him than a dog taught a useful trick. Might as well get something for you when you have outlived your purpose.”

        Her lack of surprise told her some deep part of her had always known the truth. But still, it was unforgivable, all of it, and while she had tolerated all the nastiness because she believed he loved her in his own way, the lack of anything of the sort, even the intrinsic bond of blood (which would have counted for something, no matter how miniscule) meant she now had a very clear idea of what she had to do.

        “I don’t know how much we already have, but if it comes up short for what I need to be fixed then you have to help me with the rest,” she said. “It’s the least you could do for me.”

        Gasbray flushed with shame and nodded. He took his glasses off and wiped his eyes.

        Now she just had to figure out how to get her hands on the key.

* * *

        “Gasbray needs to speak to you,” she said.

        He glanced up from his book. “What about?”

        “You don’t want me talking to him, so I didn’t ask.”

        He grinned at that. “Good girl.” Then to himself: “What could he have to talk about, eh? More bad news?” He hefted himself from the tub, hitting the deck with a wet slap. The old scars from the second accident rippled gray and pink up his side, where the ribs had flashed bluish-white and the meat of him red. Distracted like this, she could have stuck him with her spear, but he was too big and strong and would tear her to pieces, and there seemed a kind of betrayal in that, a kind of back-stab he deserved but that she couldn’t bring herself to land. The anticipation of bad news and fear at his impending trip out and back had turned him nasty, though, and when she got in his way he shoved her.

        “Make yourself useful and bring me some sparkly stuff,” he said. “Earn your keep.”

        She eyed the pair of locked boxes under his tub. “I will.”

        “And re-tar the walls. I found another leak.”

        “I will.”

        He caught something in her tone and leered at her. “That’s my girl,” he said, and with any luck it would be the last thing he ever said to her. He slid into the water and vanished.

        Her heart beat so fast as she followed. The crump of it filled her ears and drew the tender flaps of her gills so tight she struggled to breathe. The cold water gripped her. There he was, just outside the hatch, but she knew where he was headed so she had no need to follow, not just yet.

        First things first.

        She cut for the cliff, where the big monsters were found, because that’s what she needed now: a monster bigger than the one she’d lived with as long as she could remember. She caught a water fox with her spear and used a sharp rock to rip it open, turning the water milky red around her as she swam for the drop-off where the world turned to bottomless ocean and the shapes of big horrifying things lurked, waiting for a reason to venture in, a reason like blood in the water. She took a piece of string and tied one end through the fox’s gills and mouth, the other round her wrist so she could toss the lure away if needed.

        She swam beyond the protection of the cliff, and with nothing below or above her (the surface lost in haze above) the vertigo mixed with her terror and turned her movements jerky. The fox trailed behind, still billowing, and those huge shapes almost lost in the green shadows ahead seemed to shift and turn towards her. Good enough.

        She spun back towards the cliff and swam as fast as she ever had, as fast as she could while still holding her spear (which she couldn’t bring herself to toss away), turning every arm stroke, every cupped hand in as close to technical perfection as she could. If they hit the lure behind her there was every chance the force could snatch her arm clean off before she had a chance to think, but looking back would cost too much, cause too much drag, so she plunged on, imaging teeth and fins and cruel black eyes closing in on her feet as they kicked, kicked, kicked.

        Then she was above the sand of the cliff. The water turned warmer around her. She risked a glance back and found a barrel-bodied monster almost on top of her, mouth open to swallow the lure. She spun and cut and the shark followed, more nimble than something that size had a right to be. She had to yank on the string to keep the fox from it as it lunged again. The shark flicked its tail and washed right by her, so close the sandpaper skin down its flank burned her.

        She dropped into a shallow crevice for protection, lungs on fire, and watched the beast trace a leisurely curve through the water before closing in again. Every instinct told her to raise her spear, as if such a thing was any protection against that much muscle and teeth, but she needed the shark to follow, not vanish at the first sign of prey fighting back.

        So she played out her string to let the fox float up like a buoy, high enough overhead to keep that cavernous mouth well away from her. The shark lined up, surged, and she yanked the lure away again, almost misjudging this time so that the fox glanced off the shark’s lower jaw and swirled clear in its wash. Then she was gone, no more air left in her, even with the help of gills, heading for the surface where she would be the most vulnerable.

        Up, up, up, the shark following, smiling now, the power of it transmitting up through the water, and she panicked, released the lure, rolled away, twirled as the shark shoved past and swallowed the bait. They both broke the surface together. She gasped for air. The mackerel-blue back of the shark rolled too close and she had no choice but to stick it with her spear. It flinched and she dove.

        No chance to think. Pure need: she needed the shark to follow, so time to offer her own meat and bones. She poked her bicep with the prongs of her spear and squeezed blood from the wound. Now she was the bait, and she swam. She swam for the beach, the meeting point, knowing that if she passed that nest of clams there, followed that alleyway between rocks there, past the sunken wreck of that old galley beyond them both, then she would find the man who stole her, and the shark would too.

        The thing came after her, curious and hungry still, the water fox barely more than a quickly swallowed bite. She might have been a wounded seal caught too far from Widow’s Rock, delicious and full of rich fat, and she swooped and swerved like one, drawing the shark in closer and closer.

        There he was. A shadow through the water, now more than that: a target. Something to aim for. Ambling along like a sea cucumber, no clue what was coming. This was for everything he’d done to her, to her mother, to anyone else hurt by him. If she looked back through her flashing feet all she saw was teeth and white gullet.

        She swooped over him, past him, slapping him with her hands, and then he was screaming, the sound muffled and somehow even worse under all this water as that impossibly toothy mouth clamped over his shoulder. Blood everywhere. A shake of the head and the shark let him go, hoping for seal or turtle and finding something else distasteful, but that one bite had opened him up from clavicle to waist with a string of perforations the size of fists, so that it looked as if his entire side could simply be torn off with a sharp tug. He twitched in agony as the shark slunk away.

        She hid behind a rock to watch him die, feeling no guilt or satisfaction but more a sense of relief at having done a thing that needed to be done. He seemed to lose all shape, and the current washed him against a bank of overgrown rock. Even now the smaller sharks and larger fish were coming, drawn by the blood, so she had to move fast.

        She kicked into the red mist, groping for the mass at the center of it and finding soft flesh, still warm and slightly rubbery, blood still pumping through her fingers. An arm brushed her, his one arm, still there even having been deep inside the shark’s mouth, and she followed it to the shoulder, searching for that hidden pocket in the armpit where he kept his keys.

        She found two hard sharp shapes buried in the softness and shot away just before the smaller sharks swarmed him.

* * *

        Gasbray opened the box and began counting the rows of stacked coins. “Are these stolen, or are they yours now?” he said, his mouth a tight line. He meant: Did you kill him?

        She said nothing.

        He eyed the bandage round her arm. “He was a good man once. Not that it means anything now.” He studied her face. “The poison, it gets inside your brain and makes you less than you were.”

        There were insinuations there, if she cared to find them. But she was tired. Bone tired. She now understood the phrase, feeling it deep inside her, a fatigue halfway to death.

        “Is that enough?” she said.

        “Close to. You are smaller than he, so the cost scales too. Smaller doses required, you see. Any shortfall will come from my pocket, as agreed.” She sensed the shortfall was more than she had. Gasbray closed the box and locked it again. He returned the key to her. “You may think this presumptuous, but you are always welcome back here, whether or not the guild specialists are able to do what you wish them to do, or undo, as it were.”

        “I don’t think so.” She would leave all this behind and never come back.

        “But you have no family left, nowhere else to go.”

        “I haven’t had any family for a long time now, ever since he stole me from my mother.”

        “But... but you do understand?” Gasbray said. “He was your father. Why else would he have taken you?”

        She flinched. A final twist of pain. But no. Lies. She was her mother but he was just a man, no matter what Gasbray said; a cruel, damaged, deranged man.

        Bones on the reef; let Selessi have him.

Copyright © 2014 Greg Linklater

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Greg Linklater lives in Sydney, Australia, where he crunches numbers in an office so he can indulge his writing habit on the side. When he’s not scrabbling at the keyboard he’s either reading, tending to his pregnant wife, or wondering why he continues to support certain sporting teams despite the fact they only ever break his heart. A novel set in the same world as "Memories of Her" is occupying a large amount of his time.

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COVER ART

“Kaybor Gate,” by Alex Ries

Alex Ries is a Melbourne-based illustrator and concept artist. His artworks have been featured by publishers including Clarkesworld Magazine, Pearson Education Canada, and the Discovery Channel. He worked with THQ’s Bluetongue Entertainment studio and contributed to four published titles. His studies in diverse visual media such as painting, 3D visualization, and film, coupled with an interest in biology and real-world technology, have fostered an artistic style that can not only accurately illustrate life from the real world but fictional life as well. View his work at www.alexries.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2014 Firkin Press

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