Chapter 14
Riella awoke to jungle sounds and dazzling yellow sunshine.
A breeze from the open treehouse window slid over her bare legs. Sitting up in bed, she wriggled her toes and sighed. Unfortunately, she had not magically reverted to her full siren form during the night.
Jarin had brought her to the treehouse after they disembarked the Pandora in the dead of the night. Hieros Isle was one of dozens of Dark Tide hideouts on remote islands dotted throughout the ocean. Sentinels had immediately been posted all around the perimeter of the isle, to provide warning should Artus and his crew attack.
She thought glumly of Seraphine, and willed the elf to hold on for another week. What if Polinth drained her of life completely during that time? And Riella was stuck here on an island with a bunch of stinky pirates.
The day was already hot. She still wore the dress from Madame Quaan’s, the layered skirts tangled in the white linens of her brass-framed bed. Tearing the fabric, she shortened the dress to above her knees and removed the sleeves. Her boots lay on the floor where she’d kicked them off last night. For now, she left them there, wandering around the treehouse barefoot instead.
The floorboards were smooth, and the rooms were furnished simply in brass fittings and cane, with cream linen curtains billowing in the salt-scented breeze. Excited bird chatter was the only sound apart from the distant crash of waves on the beach.
Riella drank the pitcher of water on the small round table. Hunger prompted her to search the shelves and drawers for food, but there was nothing. Her stomach ached as she wistfully recalled the fried potatoes Jarin gave her in Klatos.
She decided to go and find him. He’d know what to eat, and if he couldn’t help her, the ocean was right there. She could always dive for kelp.
As she stepped across the threshold of the front door, her head spun. The treehouse, connected to several others by a complex network of narrow wood-and-rope suspension bridges, was far higher off the ground than she thought. Last night, she arrived in the dark with Jarin leading her and hadn’t realized.
She gripped the railings as she navigated the structure, trying to find a way to the ground that didn’t involve falling to her death.
The treehouses were made of bamboo and wood, covered in snaking vines and surrounded by palm fronds. The jungle was dense on all sides and she seemed to be alone. She was struck by the horrible possibility that Jarin and the crew had abandoned her on this island. Marooned, pirates called it. What would she do?
Then, the bubbly sound of children’s laughter came from somewhere below. Riella followed it, eventually finding her way to the ground, touching down on the soft white sand with relief.
A path under the canopy led her to a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a fire pit, ringed by overturned barrels and lean-to bamboo shelters.
Two children and an elderly woman sat under a shelter, playing and eating. The kids, a boy and a girl around eight years old, looked up as Riella approached. She smiled, raising her hand to wave.
Pure fear transformed the children’s faces, and the little girl let out a high-pitched scream. The boy scrambled to his feet and dragged the shrieking girl into the tree line. They crouched among palm fronds, watching Riella, the girl falling into petrified silence.
The siren’s heart sank. Why were they so afraid of her?
The woman, at least, seemed unbothered by Riella’s presence. She had kind brown eyes and a heavily-lined face, and gave the siren a knowing look. Her hands were busy peeling fruit.
“They’ve been raised on horror stories about sirens.” Her accent was lilting and melodic, and not one Riella had ever heard before. “Perhaps they even saw a few at sea, with Ulyss.”
“These are Ulyss’s children?”
“Aye. Their mother is in the Beyond.” The woman made a fluid, ritualistic hand movement in front of her chest. “The way to deal with a child’s shyness is to ignore it. Allow them to come to you, in their own time. Curiosity will triumph in the end.” She patted the sandy spot on the ground beside her. “They are like cats in that way.”
“I met a cat once, on a ship. It didn’t like me, either.” Riella sat down, needing several attempts to arrange her legs in a manner that did not feel too strange. She settled for extending the limbs in front of her and crossing the ankles. “My name’s Riella.”
“I’m Kohara. The boy is Ruslo and the girl is Nuri.” She offered a plate of fruit to Riella. “You must try the mango.”
Riella bit into the soft orange flesh and a flowery sweetness filled her mouth. “That’s wonderful!”
Kohara smiled, showing several gaps in her teeth. “Eat as much as you will. The men work now on the Pandora, but they’ll return soon for lunch. Excepting my husband, Ferrante.” She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder, in the direction of the dense jungle. “He’s been at the caves for many days and nights now.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Thinking. Dreaming. Divining. Searching the stars and rocks and sand for truth.”
“Really? Humans do that?” Riella slowed her chewing. “He sounds like the siren elders.”
“Aye. Humans and sirens have more in common than anyone might suspect. Our elders, too, are founts of wisdom, after a life well-lived. Being young is for loving and fighting and stirring oneself. It is for mistakes and mishaps. Being old is for reflecting on the journey. Preparing to return home.”
“To the Beyond,” said Riella. “Sirens call it that, too.”
Kohara nodded, slicing a pale yellow tubular fruit. “This lunar cycle brought a great change in energies. You can feel it in here.” She tapped the center of her chest with her gnarled fingers. “The cycle isn’t over yet, of course. It has just begun. More change is coming.”
A tingle went through Riella’s body. She knew of the lunar cycle, of course, because of her strength waxing and waning with it. And if anyone had changed during this lunar cycle, it was Riella.
“What kind of change?” she asked, hoping for some clarity.
But Kohara just shrugged. “Ferrante is trying to See. When he’s ready, he’ll impart what he finds.”
The pirates began tramping through the jungle path to the clearing. Their faces were flushed and most had been working without shirts, their muscular torsos shining with sweat. All were tattooed, and several glared at Riella with unveiled revulsion. One bearded man spat on the ground as he held eye contact with her.
Rage flamed in her chest. If she’d not been so outnumbered, she’d maul him. And to think, these men were the better Dark Tide Clan pirates. The worst of the lot had gone with Artus.
Berolt, his face as red as coral, walked straight to a bucket of water and dunked his whole head in. At the sight of their father, Ruslo and Nuri ran from the tree line, launching themselves at Ulyss. They climbed his limbs like rigging, while loudly whispering about the sudden terrifying appearance of the siren-who-walks.
Jarin was one of the last to arrive. He locked eyes on Riella as soon as he entered the clearing and strode toward her. His shirt was translucent from perspiration and his trousers were rolled to show his tanned calves, covered in tattoos. Like everyone else, he was barefoot.
He sat near Riella in the blue shade, his eyes dragging over her body. “Still got legs.”
“I do.”
“Good,” he replied with a straight face.
She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to discern if he was making a joke at her expense.
Everyone helped themselves to the food Kohara had prepared, on plates made of large flat leaves. As well as the fruits, she removed the woven straw covers from clay bowls of cooked grains and bread and charcoal fish. Jarin sat next to Riella on the sand while they ate.
“How’s Drue?” she asked. “I haven’t seen him.”
“Better.” Jarin tore at a piece of bread with his teeth. “He’s resting in his hut. Kohara made a tincture for his wounds and it seems to be helping.”
“And the ship?”
He grimaced. “Lots of work to be done.”
“I’ll help.”
“Really?”
“Of course. So that we might leave the island faster.” She gestured around at the pirates. “And I’m stronger than any of them.”
She said the last part louder than necessary, and was gratified when several men scowled at her.
Jarin shook his head ruefully. “Sure, you can help. But if you end up rolled in a sail again, on your own head be it. Pirates don’t take kindly to insult. Especially from sirens.”
He flashed a quick smile and winked at her, causing her stomach to flutter.
“Come on, break’s over.” He stood, pitching his leaf-plate into the scrub. “Let’s put you to work.”
Jarin led the way down to the beach, Riella trailing him while gazing around.
The plant life was enthralling to the siren, and she stopped every few paces to inspect the ferns and flowers and tiny creatures on leaves. The tapestry of green had a distinctly calming effect on her. It was a similar feeling to swimming through the coral reefs.
Once the fresh ocean breeze reached her, Riella broke into a run, the pristine white sand squeaking underfoot. The crystal blue sea called to her. No matter how beautiful the land was, the ocean was her home. More than her home—it was her. She was part of it. Or at least, she had been.
She stood in the water up to her waist, sighing at the cool relief of the water. The Pandora sat on the beach, supported by wooden beams driven into the sand.
At night, when the tide came in, the water would tug at the vessel, tempting it to ruin in the oceanic depths. She smiled at the thought, despite needing the ship very much. It was heartening that not all of her siren inclinations were gone.
The pirates swarmed over the ship like fish at feeding time, hauling ruined soaked wood from below deck, while others sawed and hammered new, dry wood farther up the sand under palm trees. Jarin waved his arm at her from one of the palms.
With a certain amount of reluctance, not wanting to leave the water, she went to him.
“You’ll work up here with me,” he said, tilting his head toward the Pandora. “So I can keep an eye on you. Don’t want you tearing my crew to shreds.”
“Fine by me.”
Jarin took up a saw and buried the serrated edge into a thick plank of wood, pumping his arm back and forth. The veins on his muscular, tensed arm became even more prominent, and the sweltering mid-summer sun imparted a lustrous golden sheen to his skin. Appalled at herself for noticing, Riella snatched up a saw and began working on another plank, facing away from him.
The scent of the cut wood filled the air, mixing with the salty tang of the ocean. Although she wasn’t afraid of the pirates, she was glad the nearest ones were out of earshot. It was impossible to be at ease when surrounded by your natural enemy.
“Tell me why you can’t die,” she said.
“Jeez. Right into it, huh?”
“Tell me.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess.”
“No. You said your mother made you that way. How?”
He merely grunted, tossing a piece of cut wood on a pile.
“Tell me,” she repeated. “Please?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “She cast a spell on me, alright? Because she thought the palace would come after me on account of her crimes.”
Riella immediately stopped sawing, fascinated. “What crimes?”
Jarin straightened up, his face guarded. “And she was right. The palace did pursue me. It’s how I came to be a stowaway.”
“What crimes?” pressed Riella.
He hesitated again, the blade of his saw suspended over the wood. “I suppose you’re going to find out anyway. Everyone knows about it. I’d rather you hear it from me, while I’m armed with a saw.”
She raised her eyebrows, her curiosity reaching fever pitch. “What?”
“Did you know of Queen Petra Nikolaou of Zermes?”
Riella nodded. “She was a great friend to the sirens. We gifted her a Sirenstone for helping us during the war. I was quite young then, but we were enraged and devastated when we heard she’d been—” Her eyes narrowed in comprehension. “Queen Petra was murdered by a mad sorceress. You don’t mean to tell me that?—”
Jarin heaved a sigh. “Yes. My mother was Levissina. Is Levissina. She lives still, in Velandia, being a scourge upon Petra’s son, Davron. I don’t condone what she?—”
Anger stirred Riella’s blood. “How dare she!”
“Petra’s husband, the king, had my father murdered, that’s how,” retorted the pirate. “My mother loved my father beyond reason, and yes, madness took hold. But her actions weren’t unprovoked.”
“I don’t understand humans,” said Riella, her fury fading as quickly as it appeared. She never realized the sorceress’s mate was slain by the king. “You kill each other over feelings.”
The pirate scoffed. “And sirens don’t? Rage is a feeling too, you know.”
She resumed sawing. “Our fury is righteous.”
“Everyone thinks their fury is righteous.”
Riella recalled Kohara saying that humans and sirens were more alike than many thought. Certainly, since being given legs and other human attributes, Riella was experiencing unprecedented levels of emotion. She shivered as she tried to imagine the rage that would take hold of her if she loved someone, and that someone was murdered.
The siren had never been in love, of course. The notion had never interested her. But now, as feelings filled her like floodwater, she wondered if she might ever experience it. Did she even want to, given the atrocities humans were prone to committing when it was taken from them? How was love worth the risk of such destruction and pain? It must’ve been, though, for humans to continue seeking it out.
Another thought occurred to her. “The spell of invulnerability your mother cast, why does Polinth not perform it on himself?”
“Because he can’t. No one can.” Jarin made a derisive noise in his throat. “She was more gifted than any of them, the High Magus included. No one will ever admit that, of course, after what she did.”
When he continued, Riella detected an odd blend of bitterness and sadness in his voice. “But to answer your question. My mother cursed the Nikolaou family for killing my father, right? Such a curse takes an enormous amount of energy. Spell-work that potent would be too unstable to last beyond a few moments, had she not figured out a way to balance the energies. She extended the spell to me, except I got the backward end. The light to the dark, or the dark to the light—not sure which you’d call it. But the ongoing counter-energy from the curse preserves my life. She felt guilty for choosing vengeance over her only child, so she solved the problem the same way she solved every problem. With magic. As long as the curse is in place, I can’t die.”
“Can you not break it yourself?” asked Riella. “If the magic was cast on you, too?”
“No, she would never make it that easy.” He shook his head. “Every now and then, I hear news of Prince Davron from other sailors. He’s been alone in his Velandian castle for a decade. Given up hope, probably. Not that you could blame him.”
Riella nodded slowly. “You said Artus wants the same thing that you have. But if a mage can’t give it to him, how would he do it?”
“Not by a curse, but a trinket called the Amulet of Delphine. It’s why the royal patrol came after us at the docks. He sank a ship in pursuit of it. It’ll give him life, apparently. I’m sure he believes it will allow him to surpass me, and all others.”
A cold shiver ran through Riella. “The Amulet of Delphine. Polinth wants it, too.”
She tilted her head, trying to remember what he’d said, exactly. She’d been shackled and incandescent with rage at the time, so it was hard to recall. “He draws life from Seraphine, but sooner or later that will kill her. The amulet would restore him in full, he believes. Ever since I was young, I’ve heard stories about the Sea Witch and the amulet she created. Strange to think it might be real. The idea of a vile human stealing it infuriates me, though. Stories say the Sea Witch gave her mortal life to create something beautiful and everlasting.”
Jarin grunted. “Artus reckons he has the map to find it.”
“He has the what?”
Riella burst into unhinged laughter, which made Jarin frown in bemusement. He watched as she put her hand down the front of her dress. A moment later, she retrieved a crumpled piece of parchment.
“Do you mean this map?”