11 Imogen
Imogen
The Eleuthios towed my launch boat behind it.
I straddled its middle bench holding a pewter cup of Halla’s blood in one hand and Lachlan’s dagger in the other.
A compass sat on the bench beside me. After feeling that swell of power and nearly hurting Theodore, I’d refused to let anyone come with me.
The morning was bright, throwing yellow light over the swollen guts of gathering storm clouds to the north. They were gray and portentous, but they were the very least of my worries now.
I held up a hand against the glare and peered at the faces haunting the Eleuthios’s windows.
Eftan and Markis stared down at me—Eftan with unbridled abhorrence and the royal steward stroking his beard, studying me with a slimy sort of fascination.
Beside them, the stoic woman in blue robes—who I’d learned was Aleka Baros, Theodore’s marshal—watched me as a naturalist might, free of judgment and brimming with curiosity.
I’d insisted that Theodore be contained to the ship’s bow, as far from me as possible, with Lachlan and his other guards at his side.
The sun flashed off the dagger in my fist. I stared at the dark blood in the cup, but I couldn’t bring myself to start.
Shame felt like muck on my skin. I did not want to confirm what they already believed—that I was touched by death and darkness.
Monstrous. Dangerous. I did not wish for Theodore’s council to see me summoning rotting Sirens from the water to serve me in my task.
There were few crimes more heinous than the act of abusing the dead.
On Seraf, we could not bury bodies. The soil was too craggy or loose from sand. So the deceased were burned. I did not recall anything from my lessons about Varya’s death traditions, but I’d never forgotten what the Sirens did with their loved ones.
Had the nekgya died naturally, Siren tradition would have seen them washed and wrapped while those preparing them sang.
Their hair would have been oiled and tightly braided, and wildflowers—like the ones that once grew in the rolling fields of Anthemoessa—would have been tucked into the strands.
Weighty stones were set into the folds of their wrappings, and then, once they’d been made heavy and adorned with perfumes and song, they were given back to the sea. A gift returned with gratitude.
As a girl, I’d pictured the entire ritual in such vibrant detail. Even now, I wondered over the scents of the oils, the melodies and harmonies of the songs. I’d mourned the fact that I might never learn.
A deep breath. Then I forced my thoughts toward the water.
It was gentle now, even as I rode in the ship’s wake.
We were much farther out to sea than I’d been on Nemea’s ship, when that nekgya had taught me Eusia’s spell.
They occupied the shallows, where hunting was best. I searched the water’s depths and while I could not sense any of Eusia’s undead, I could feel her.
I’d grown used to her thrumming presence, used to the vibration of the debased string that connected us. It was the very same span that tied me to all the nekgya. It was to that bond in my middle that I sent my command.
It wasn’t long before I felt something surge through the water. I’d sensed it surfacing from far, far below me, and I wondered with a morbid shiver if Eusia kept her nekgya across the whole of the Leucosian Sea, dormant, ready for when they were needed.
A small hand shot up from the water and grabbed hold of the port side of the launch. It was missing its last two fingers on one hand but easily heaved itself into the boat, spiderlike, where it settled on the bench across from me.
I stared at it—no. At her. Water ran down her horrible body in thick cascades, the bright sun glinting off the droplets.
This nekgya was different. She was only a girl.
Fifteen or sixteen at most. Her frame was small and her once deep golden coloring had drained to a grayish blue, but that wasn’t what made me stare.
It was the scaled, iridescent skin that shimmered across the lower half of her body.
It had stretched itself between her upper legs, fusing them.
Her toes had grown long, and were slotted with crimson webbing. Her eyes had become too large and too round. The inky pupils were wide inside the light brown iris, so that they looked uncannily, unsettlingly, like those of a fish.
So long in the deep, dark water must have turned her into this.
The sudden croon of Eusia’s smooth voice inside my head made me flinch.
“Dear girl.” This nekgya’s mouth did not move with the same ease that the others I’d encountered had.
The jaw cracked, the lips fumbled and showed darkened teeth.
“Look how you’ve faded. The light has fled your eyes.
Perhaps magic does not suit you, after all.
” She snickered. “It did not suit your mother either.”
“It suits no one,” I fumed. “From what I’ve learned of your life, it has suited you least of all.”
She gave a thoughtful, melodious hum. “And why would you say that?”
I stared at the monstrous creature before me. Not Siren, not woman, not fish, forced to linger, half alive, and my anger rose on a violent tide. “You are cruel. Your body is ruined. You have lived almost the entirety of your life alone—”
“Cruel.” Her mocking cackle echoed in my head, in sync with the laughter of the blank-faced nekgya before me.
“Kindness does not keep one alive, Imogen. Magic does. It has given me everything I have ever wanted.” The nekgya’s lips curved like she was trying to smile.
“I know what you want,” she said softly. “Better than you do, I suspect.”
“I only want to stop you.”
“You lie.” The nekgya leaned in. “I had beauty once, and a robust body, but they brought me nothing of consequence. I had a home and companionship too, for a time, but they could not endure.” The nekgya tilted her head, and her round eyes flashed in the sunshine.
“I was always less than her—than my sister—and so it did not take me long to learn that it was power that I truly craved, darling. Power, and the reverence and fear that came with it.”
“I don’t want that kind of power,” I snapped. “And there is more to life than—”
“Oh, do tell me. What else is there?” Her voice was undeservedly lovely, warm and smooth, but now it grew brittle. “The body fades. Even good love changes and leaves. Homes crumble. None of them can be trusted, Imogen. None of them can keep us alive and safe.”
Alive. Safe. I was desperate for those things, surely.
I’d spent my life in pursuit of them. Perhaps it was foolish, but I wanted to believe that the sweet, fleeting moments life could offer were not frivolous or pointless.
That even though bodies and love and homes decayed, we did not fight like mad for them so that we could have them forever. Having them for a time was enough.
But Eusia spoke with such conviction, with a surety that made me feel weak.
“Very well.” My heart felt so heavy. I lifted the cup of Halla’s blood and the dagger between me and the nekgya. “If you believe magic is what I truly want, then teach me a spell.”
Eusia went quiet. The nekgya went still. “Hmm,” she finally said, thoughtfully amused. “If you answer a question, then I will teach you, dearest.”
I scowled. “I do not wish to play games.”
“But you will.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “For you need me as badly as I need you.”
I sat quietly, jaw tightening, as the boat bobbed and the waves lapped. “What’s your question?”
“The realm believes magic to be crude and ugly, the exact opposite of Gods’ power, which only picks a few from each generation to make great.
But I will tell you: Magic is choosy too.
It must suit the body that hosts it. I remember when your mother performed her first and only spell—we were young, and she’d wanted me to teach her how I’d filled a hole in the ground with seawater.
She didn’t like that I’d done it; she couldn’t understand how, when I had no God’s power to speak of. So I showed her—”
A sunray must have pierced my gaze because I saw a bright white flash. Suddenly the wind muffled and the sound of the waves dulled. In a beat, my consciousness slipped from my body entirely.
I watched two young women in the sand. The image was strange, wavering and bright.
One woman sat in a wide hole that had been dug up the beach, far from the water.
Her hair was waving, a warm, honey-edged brown.
Her eyes were like coins of amber—like mine.
In fact, the angles of her face, the bow of her lips, the line of her neck were all like mine as well.
Ligea.
Beside her, at the edge of the hole, knelt the second young woman.
Her hair was the darkest brown, twisted into a heavy braid.
Her skin was fair and smooth and dotted from the sun, and while her eyes were very like Ligea’s, coppery and fierce, they glowed with something different. Something hard and terrifying.
She watched Ligea, unblinking. “No cheating now.”
“I would not have spent all morning digging only to cheat, Eusia.”
Ligea’s voice had a rasp to it that mine did not.
Her nose had a slightly longer slope. From wherever I watched, I tried to strain closer, only for the image to ripple and break.
I saw only flashes of Ligea. Her hand at her mouth.
Her head thrown back on a scream. Water pouring into the hole from beneath her—
Then I was back in my own body. On the launch. Staring into the awful round eyes of the nekgya.
She’d moved closer, taut with interest. “What did you see?”
My body shook. “How did you do that?”
“Oh, I cannot give you visions, dearest.” She reached up with her maimed hand and swiped a clump of hair from where it hung over my eye. “Tell me now. What did you see?”