Chapter 5 The Bastard Black
Bastard, bastard, sing us a song, how the gods in the heavens have dealt you wrong.
Bastard, bastard, sing us a tune
How your fathers undoing brought you your doom.
Ihave enough sense to throw my bag toward the dry shelf before my harrowing scream echoes off into the cave around me. It should have been a breath, I curse myself, even through the cold panic. Water closes over my head as the creature drags me further down through the filmy green murk.
And suddenly my body is a symphony of fear composed of blind panic, with muscles that trill and quiver against my bone.
The memory of that night is pulling me. Frigid stormy seas, endless.
Waves crashing atop my head with no remorse or pity for lungs that couldn’t draw air.
The terror rises through me like a tide.
With all my might, I thrash and kick, fingers fumbling for the blade tucked into my waistline.
I grip the hilt and force my eyes open against the opaque water to see a large set of white, unblinking orbs attached to the creature below.
Its body is humanoid, but morphed and distorted.
Something that resembles a woman at the top, with pea green skin, rough and scaled.
Locks of oily black hair float about her face and stream across a gaping mouth lined with pointed teeth.
From the waist down, tentacles sprout, too many to count.
Too many to fight. Even if I sawed through one, two more would take its place.
A mistake made by the god's heroes in the stories my móeir used to tell, wasting time hacking and trying to swim away until they ran out of air.
The key, I recall her voice, as clear as if she were floating next to me, is to let her think she has won. Relax, go limp. But be ready to strike when she pulls you near to feast.
Calm. I need to calm down. It’s every effort to relax. My lungs burn with the need for air, and flashbacks of that night on the ship, the worst of my life, keep swirling through the black.
If I make it out of this alive, I will never go near the water again.
My eyelids flutter. I let her drag me, reeling me in closer like a fish on a line.
Her dreadful face holds no expression, but the eagerness about her, ravenous, tinges the water so strongly I can almost taste it: a rancid, bitter flavor.
Closer and closer, towards the outstretched hands topped with razor sharp claws.
I feel the first dig in hard as she grabs hold.
I’m not sure how much longer I have before I pass out and really become nothing but a meal in her arms. She seems to battle between caution and hunger as she pulls me into her, that wispy dark hair brushing over my cheeks and neck.
I stay as limp as I can, fighting through the fear, the burning, with everything inside of me.
She will tense before she takes her first bite. Móeir’s words are ringing now, the only thing left, anchoring me to life above.
A twitch of those fingers, cutting into my arms where a trail of crimson seeps out, is the only signal I need.
She pulls me to her, mouth opening wide.
Those pearly, sharpened teeth shine through the dark as she sinks them into the spot where my neck and shoulder meet.
Agony blooms from it, and a wave of sudden strength courses through me: the will to live.
I spring to action, ignoring the way my skin screams beneath her bite, and my hand weaves through her hair and I pull her close, as though about to embrace.
Instead, I lock her body to mine, clenching my blade.
The front of the throat is too thick with siren scales for any blade, even Aurelian steel. Go behind the neck, where their weakness lies, straight through to the voicebox that is her power; her tether to life must be pierced.
It’s a blind stab, full of hope and wistful luck.
I press and twist. Her blood stained mouth loosens then opens wide in surprise.
When she lets out a screech in that beautiful voice, I know I’ve hit my mark, or close to it, at least, but the scream is a power of its own.
A sound wave breaks against the water, shattering against my eardrums. She releases me, and I'm blasting toward the surface behind the force of it as she desperately claws at her back.
Vision darkening, I use the remainder of my strength to grab hold of the ledge I'm slammed into.
Her flailing tentacles are wild, chaotic obstacles as I fight to pull myself up to the glimmering surface.
I won’t make it. If I lose my grip on the wall, I'll drown. The world dims until there’s nothing left but me and the feet to the top.
A frantic grasping for higher rivets or cracks in the stone, one last strong kick of my feet, and I burst up and suck in a ragged breath before clawing my way to the rocky bank.
Coughs and splutters rip from my throat as I drag my body up, heaving rancid water out of my lungs.
It’s impossible to stay upright, and each time I try, I fall again, until I give up and simply crawl over to my bag and throw it around my shoulder before clambering up the bridge.
If I hit the right spot, she should be dead—disintegrated around my favorite blade.
But if I only nicked it, she could recover and seek to settle the score before I get back through the fall.
The risk of trying to regain my bearings before scaling the way back is too great.
Hel or high-water, I'm making it to the top before I find out.
It's much harder work than going down; my neck and left shoulder weep blood where she clawed and bit me, so I have to lean most of my weight on the right and grip the bridge with my thighs, lifting to move forward a few inches at a time so I don't slip back down.
All the while I keep a careful eye on the water below me.
I don't know what I'll do if the siren springs up, but she won't be catching me off guard again.
Finally, I'm on the upper ledge where a startle rattles through my bones. A quiver of surprise to see that this side of the waterfall is as still and clear as glass. I can see right through it to the other side and almost topple backward at the glimpse of two men trading low arguments.
The sight of Lord Solomon Black standing in a dank cave that smells of mildew and sea froth is bizarre, but his brother next to him is far worse.
Harlow Black. How often has Solomon tried to distance himself from their father's disgrace?
The bastard stain on the family. In the shadows and filth of East Slag, it's common knowledge that Harlow runs the darker side of Lord Black's businesses, but in the upper end—Hightower and Harbor Valley—Solomon would deny such a thing with his dying breath.
He'd have to, or no one would associate with him out of fear or disgust, depending on the person.
"You've had weeks now, Harlow, and you've still not figured this damned thing out?
Rhyland Crow is practically at our doorstep!
" Solomon's face is almost as red as the crown ruby.
A straining purple vein pulses in his forehead beneath the peppery hair combed back into a neat, short ponytail.
It seems the years since I've last seen him have not been kind ones. Stress lines and age have begun claiming his features, like overgrown weeds in an unkempt garden. He’s still tall and broad shouldered, but a roundness has started at his gut and he leans heavily into a black cane with an ivory snake-head handle.
Harlow has the same dark hair, but that's where the similarities end.
He's street-worn, with tan, calloused skin, a strong jaw, thin lips and what would be a handsome face if not for the gruesome scar that starts above his left eyebrow and continues down to the side of his mouth. His right eye is deep brown, but the affronted left is milky white. Blind from my móeir’s hunting knife, which is there, strapped at his waist. Rumor has it he carries it everywhere with the promise it will be the thing that ends the one responsible for his maiming.
Me.
I can still remember the feel of it scraping over his skin, his blood warming my hand, the animal-like sounds he made as each layer was sliced through to the bone.
Good. It felt too good. But that pleasure didn't last long.
Because he dragged mother and I across his ship deck, all the same.
Kicked me down the stairs to the hull where his men bound me in irons.
The threats they whispered, what Black would do to me after he recovered, make me certain if it weren't for the storm I'd have been dead before we reached Helgate.
Shaking off the thoughts, I crouch, though it quickly becomes clear they can neither hear nor see me.
The view from that side is completely distorted by the fall, while I have an unhindered eye-shot of the whole cavern around them.
The sound of the fall, which had been roaring on the other side, is perfectly quiet here. Such strange, strange magick.
"I told you, I've tried everything. This fall has cost me both good men and slaves—hydriads, naiads, nereid, acheloids, any of them I suspected might have a clue.
Might value their life over this damn riddle.
All water nymphs, yet they withered apart, crumpled to nothing at the touch. What else do you expect me to do?"
"I expect you to use that pathetic excuse for a brain," Solomon hisses. "Stop sacrificing your bloody slaves and try something else! Look around you, this bush or that one. There must be something here." He gestures angrily toward the dreamberry and sanaberry bushes.