17. Into the Trench
Into the Trench
Valerie
This is a disaster. I thought I was prepared for facing the monster threatening Saltweather, but I was not prepared for this.
The Great Hall shakes again, and this time a banquet chair slides several feet across the stone.
Outside the reinforced glass, Sigurd and Lotan are difficult to distinguish for more than a few seconds at a time. Gray silt has swallowed most of the trench since Sigurd dragged the leviathan through the outer doors.
Every collision sends another cloud rolling across the windows. I catch a glimpse of Lotan’s plated tail, then the spread of Sigurd’s tentacles closing around him. Then, they both disappear into the murk.
The fight has already changed.
Lotan still twists and strikes whenever Sigurd gives him room, but those openings are becoming rarer.
Sigurd keeps forcing him back against the ocean floor, using his greater weight and the reach of his tentacles to close every escape.
He is no longer trying to drive Lotan away from the fortress or force him to surrender.
He is trying to kill him.
Behind me, the Great Hall has broken into frightened clusters.
The merfolk delegates have retreated from the windows, speaking over one another.
Members of the household staff secure tables and anything else that might fall.
Bastian stands near the sealed entrance, directing two attendants toward the emergency passages.
I push through the crowd until I reach him.
“Can we still use one of the airlocks? Can we go outside?”
“The secondary lock is operational. The main system sealed after they breached it.” His scarred face tightens when another impact reaches us through the floor. “Miss Priest, if you are considering intervening yourself, I strongly advise against it.”
“If I stay in here, Sigurd is going to commit murder.”
Bastian looks toward the trench instead of answering. That is answer enough.
I start toward the secondary chamber, but the sight of Solveig on the raised dais stops me.
She hasn’t moved since Sigurd took Lotan outside.
Both hands rest over the head of her obsidian cane, and from a distance she looks as composed as ever.
Up close, the tension in her shoulders tells a different story.
“Móeir, you have to stop him. Please. You can’t let this happen.”
Solveig turns her head toward me and shakes her head. “Lotan challenged Sigurd’s claim in front of every clan represented in this hall. He offered to take you from him and made the dispute public. Sigurd answered that challenge himself.”
“By dragging him through an airlock.”
“Yes.” Her fingers tighten around the cane, though her voice remains controlled. “If I order Sigurd to stop now, I tell every house watching that his authority exists only while I permit it. Lotan understood the risk when he challenged another creature’s claim before his people.”
The explanation doesn’t make abyssal politics any less insane. But it tells me why Solveig has been standing here instead of intervening. She could order Sigurd back. Doing it now would publicly strip him of the authority Lotan challenged in the first place.
Another impact rolls through the fortress. Solveig barely reacts, but for the first time since I met her, I can see fear beneath all that rigid control.
That decides it.
I leave the dais and head for the secondary airlock.
My pressure suit is still standing beside the chamber where I left it after our walk.
I pull the heavy material down and immediately remember exactly how complicated the thing is.
Ysra had needed several minutes to fasten and check every seal before I went outside.
When we returned, Sigurd had helped me release the clasps and lift the helmet because half of them were nearly impossible to reach on my own.
With enough time, I could probably struggle into it by myself. It’s time I don’t have.
Through the narrow window in the airlock door, the water clears just enough for me to see Sigurd force Lotan back against the trench floor. The leviathan thrashes, but Sigurd’s grip only tightens.
“He wasn’t supposed to attack him.”
Maren’s voice reaches me from behind.
I turn with the suit still gathered in my hands. Maren is standing a few yards away. None of her usual polished confidence remains. She seems unable to look away from the trench. And suddenly, I understand.
Lotan arrived knowing the claiming ritual had failed. He knew it hadn’t bound me completely. He understood exactly how to turn that weakness into an offer Sigurd couldn’t hear without seeing it as a challenge.
I had been so focused on the bargain that I never stopped to wonder how he knew any of it.
She looks over and finds me staring at her. “You told him what happened at Mt. Qaf,” I murmur.
Her shoulders stiffen. “I told Lotan the claim was incomplete. I did not tell him to provoke Sigurd into killing him.”
“You gave Lotan exactly what he needed to walk into Sigurd’s home and use me against him.”
“I expected a political confrontation, Valerie. Not this.” Maren glances toward the window again, and whatever she sees there drains the remaining defensiveness from her voice. “I didn’t realize that what the two of you had was… real.”
The anger comes quickly, but I force it down before it can become another argument. Maren gave Lotan the weakness he needed. No doubt, she thought the result would drive me away from Sigurd. Maybe it was out of pettiness. Or maybe she wanted Sigurd back. But I can’t afford to worry about that now.
I look at the pressure suit, then back through the window. Even if I manage the seals alone, I still have to fit the helmet and cycle through the airlock before I can begin the slow walk across the trench.
The memory of Saltweather arrives before I have finished the thought.
A merman standing on the quay with one webbed hand raised. Magic closing around the crowd. The strange pressure in my ears as the barrier separated us from everything outside it.
I let the suit fall back against its stand.
“When Eiriksson Maritime came to Saltweather, one of the mermen cast some kind of barrier around the crowd. It sealed us inside and changed the pressure around us.”
Maren frowns as she listens. “A containment ward, most likely.”
“Could you put something like that around one person?”
She understands what I am asking and immediately shakes her head. “Not exactly the same spell. That kind of ward is fixed to a location.”
“Then can you change it?”
Maren hesitates before looking toward the airlock. “I could anchor the field to you instead. It would travel with your body and carry breathable air. But the protection would only compensate for the depth. It will not save you if a kraken or a leviathan hits you.”
“I only need to get close enough for Sigurd to hear me.”
“That is still an extraordinarily bad idea.” She comes nearer and lowers her voice. “He is fully shifted, furious, and fighting on instinct. Solveig will not even interfere with him.”
“He’ll stop for me.”
Maren studies my face for several seconds. I don’t know if she believes me, but another heavy vibration passes through the floor before she can argue.
“You caused this,” I tell her. “I’m not asking you to fix everything. I’m asking you to help me reach him before Lotan dies.”
The fight leaves her expression. She looks once more toward the trench and gives a short nod. “All right. Get inside.”
I step into the airlock while Maren remains outside the inner hatch.
She raises one hand toward me, and the spell begins with pressure rather than light.
My ears pop, then settle as a faint distortion gathers close to my skin.
It doesn’t form the rigid sphere I remember from Saltweather.
This version follows the shape of my body, leaving enough air around me to breathe.
Maren keeps her hand raised while I reach for the controls. “I can carry your voice through the ward once you are outside. Don’t assume the magic makes you invulnerable.”
“I won’t.”
I trigger the cycle, and seawater rises quickly through the chamber. Cold closes around the ward, but the crushing force of the trench never reaches me. When the outer hatch opens, I push away from the threshold and swim.
Without the pressure suit’s stiff joints and heavy boots, I move easily through the water. The ward stays close as I kick forward, letting me cut across the trench far faster than I did during the walk with Sigurd.
The fight has carried them away from the fortress. I follow the broken rock and deep gouges carved through the seabed. By the time Sigurd comes fully into view, the fight is over.
Several tentacles hold Lotan against the trench floor. One side of the leviathan’s neck is torn badly enough to darken the water around him, and the little resistance he still manages does nothing to shift Sigurd’s weight.
Another tentacle rises above his exposed throat.
“Sigurd!”
Maren’s spell catches my voice and carries it through the water. Sigurd stops before the strike lands, remaining exactly where he is for several seconds before his head turns toward me.
I swim closer until there is no chance he can mistake who he is seeing. “Don’t kill him. You’ve already won.”
The killing tentacle lowers, although the others remain firmly around Lotan. One reaches toward me instead and stops at the edge of the ward, close enough that I can see every scar crossing the dark skin.
“Valerie, what are you doing out here?” His voice reaches me through Maren’s magic, deeper and rougher than it ever sounds in his humanoid form.
“I came for you.” I move closer, keeping my attention on Sigurd rather than the battered leviathan beneath him. “Look at me.”
His head turns fully toward me, but the tension in his body does not ease. Every tentacle remains drawn tight, and I can still feel how close he is to finishing what he started.
“He challenged my claim,” Sigurd says. “He came into my home and offered to take you from me.”
“I know what he offered.” I swim closer until the thin ward around me almost brushes the tentacle beside me. “I was going to say no.”
The words reach him in a way nothing else has.
His body goes still, not with the terrible focus of the fight but with something quieter. The tentacle nearest me loosens first.
“I don’t want Lotan, and I don’t want him breaking the claim.” My throat tightens, but the rest comes easily now that I finally have the chance to say it. “I love you, Sigurd. I would have chosen you in the Great Hall if you had given me another ten seconds.”
Some of the pressure leaves the tentacles holding Lotan down. The leviathan draws a rough breath beneath him, but Sigurd barely seems to notice.
“I thought you might want what he offered.” The words come slowly, stripped of the rage that brought him out here. “Saltweather safe. The surface returned to you. A way out of something you never asked me to begin.”
“I know.” I press my palm against the ward where his tentacle waits on the other side. “You were wrong.”
For several seconds, we stay like that with Lotan still pinned between us, and the fortress watching from behind the glass. The current carries the last of the disturbed silt across the trench, and Sigurd’s tentacle settles carefully against my hand without putting pressure on the magic.
“I came out here because I knew you would stop for me,” I tell him. “So stop.”
The last of the violence leaves him slowly. His weight shifts away from Lotan, and the tentacles around the leviathan begin to loosen until only one remains across his body.
Lotan drags in another breath and lifts his head from the rock. He does not try to provoke Sigurd again.
I keep my attention on the kraken in front of me. “Let him go.”
Sigurd hesitates long enough that I know exactly how much the request costs him. Then the final tentacle unwinds.
Lotan doesn’t waste the opportunity. He coils backward, putting several lengths of water between himself and Sigurd before turning back toward us. His scales are torn along one side. Blood still trails from the wound at his neck, but he can move under his own power.
For the first time since I reached them, I look directly at him.
“The djinn’s basin will be sufficient once the work is finished,” Lotan says. There is nothing triumphant left in his voice, only exhaustion and a very healthy awareness of Sigurd behind me. “Saltweather will remain untouched.”
I nod once. “Then finish the details with Rakan.”
Lotan’s gaze shifts briefly toward Sigurd. Whatever he sees convinces him not to prolong the conversation. He turns and disappears into the dark water beyond the fortress.
I barely watch him leave. Sigurd is still in front of me.
Only now that the fight is over do I notice the cuts along the tentacle nearest me and the scrape running across one side of his head. They are minor compared with what he did to Lotan, but the sight pulls me closer anyway.
“You should be inside the fortress,” he says. His attention moves over me as if he expects to find some injury Maren’s spell has hidden from him. “That ward will not hold indefinitely at this depth.”
“I know.” I rest my palm against the thin magic separating us. “But I meant everything I said.”
Sigurd stays very still, and for once he does not answer with another warning. The tentacle opposite my hand curves carefully against the ward, following the shape of my palm without actually touching it.
“I would have let you go,” he says after a while. “If that was what you chose.”
The words carry none of the distance he has been hiding behind for weeks. They sound like what they always were underneath it all. Fear.
“I know you would have.” I move closer until the ward presses softly against the broad curve of his tentacle. “But I didn’t come all the way out here because I wanted to leave.”
His gaze remains fixed on me.
I think of Saltweather, of my grandmother’s cottage, of the library and Hattie and Marta. None of those things have stopped mattering. Choosing Sigurd does not erase them. Loving the life I had doesn’t mean I have to give up on a different future.
I came into the abyss believing everything down here was something I had to survive. Somewhere along the way, that stopped being true.
“I want you,” I tell him. “Not because of the claim, and not because I’m trapped here. I want the life that comes with you.”
The tentacle against the ward tightens slightly, careful even now. Sigurd lowers his head until one enormous eye is level with me. The silence between us no longer feels like something he is using to keep me away.
“There is a cavern nearby,” he says eventually. “Deep enough that I can complete the claim without hurting you.”
My heart starts beating harder, but the choice itself feels calmer than anything has in weeks. Lotan is gone, and Saltweather is safe. Sigurd is finally waiting for my answer instead of fearing it.
I swim closer until only Maren’s thin layer of magic remains between us. “Then take me there, Sigurd, and claim me properly.”