Chapter 79

  There were great arguments among the crew, mostly the officers, about who could go to shore. The Grand Admiral listened to each of them, knowing that there were limited options on who would be able to swim if the sirens decided to betray them and dump them in the water. And while Dymion’s spot was guaranteed, the Grand Admiral needed to leave someone in charge. Which meant she could not bring both Evander and Epelda. Either her first mate or her heir must stay on board. And while she desperately wanted to leave Nereida behind, she knew that was not an option.

  “I should go,” Evander said, grinding his teeth. “I need to be there when Dymion comes back to himself. I can’t let him… I can’t let him go through that alone.”

  “And if it kills him?” Nereida asked softly.

  “Then I need ye to run, ma’am. I’ll be avenging him if he …. I’ll need ye to run.” He pced his hand on the hilt of his bde, his knuckles going white. The Admiral looked to her First Mate, saw his pain, and measured if the focus the pain would bring was a boon or a liability.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” she decred. The Grand Admiral squared her shoulders. “And there will be some that don’t like it. But it is our best chance. Myself, Nereida, Dymion all must go. I will bring Evander, Gregors and Jules. I know the boy isn’t an officer, but he and Nereida have done finger wiggling together, and if we need them to heal together, they will be better than one alone. I leave my Heir in charge. Lorain, see to it that all her orders are followed.” The woman nodded curtly.

  She dismissed the officers, and asked Gregors to bring Jules and Epelda to her. Best to end this quickly. She was expecting anger, temper from her daughter. The sun was almost gone, and she wanted all of this done by moon-rise. If they were going into danger, she wanted to spend a calming night with the young ones. She wanted them to remember her as someone who was present if she lost her life on the mission. Dragon’s saggy tits, why did anyone have children when it was so awful to leave them behind? How did anyone manage without going mad? They weren’t even hers, not like they were Nereida’s. How did her wife manage? What fears were pguing her wife now?

  The footfalls on the stairs knocked her out of her spinning anxiety. Epelda came up the stairs first, followed shortly by Jules. Epelda stood on the st stair, looking at the Admiral.

  “Mom or Admiral?” the young woman signed quickly. Ael stopped herself from grinning at the girl. She donned her title as armour.

  “Your Admiral has tasks for both of you.” Her tone left no room for argument. Epelda nodded, her own face shifting from carefree youth to hardened soldier in a breath. Jules, standing next to her, let loose a small gasp, before he did his best to mimic her. Epelda stepped forward and offered a salute, Jules two steps behind her before he did the same.

  “What would you ask, Admiral?” Epelda signed, her movements precise, almost clipped. The Admiral lifted the neckce with her whistle off her neck. Epelda stilled, took a quick breath. “Me?” she signed, a squeak escaping her. The Admiral’s armour crumbled at the sound.

  “You, daughter, Heir.” Ael pced the heavy chain around Epelda’s neck. “In my absence, you are Captain. Do you accept this burden, Countess Epelda Kyverna?” She could not ignore the tears in her daughter’s eyes. It was the first time she had used the name, and clearly Epelda had not been expecting it. Ael hugged her daughter.

  “I do,” she signed, her hands shaking. She took a breath, her hands still trembling as she kept signing. “Come back, mom, please.”

  “I have every intention, sweet girl.” Ael smiled, her heart full of pride. Epelda slipped a hand into Jules’ hand, the boy still half a step behind her. He was clearly trying to observe the difference in their rank.

  As the st of the sun’s light dipped beneath the horizon, it was the Admiral who turned to Jules, her face set back to neutral, discarding the joy and pride she had been feeling to finish the orders that no one would like.

  “You, Jules, are to report at dawn to the deck, ready for danger. Bring your spear. You are coming to shore with us.”

  “No!” Epelda signed. There was naked panic on her face.

  “Yes.” She looked at her daughter, the earlier pride fading from her expression. “Having him and Nereida is our best chance that everyone lives. You, Captain, need to remember that there are times we must sacrifice our hearts for our crew. I am sorry.” She let the armour crack again. “Go, spend some time together. Stories are called off until we are in safer waters.”

  “Wise, Admiral,” Jules said. “Some of the songs I’m hearing are less friendly.”

  “Anything I should worry about?”

  “No ma’am, mostly just calling us variations on “interlopers”.”

  “Well, we are that, aren’t we? Go on, before I regret telling you to be alone together.” Epelda giggled at that. She took her beau’s hand, pulling him after her.

  She went to find her wife. Nereida was outside the cabin, a tired expression on her face. At least tired was a step better than the hopeless exhaustion from earlier.

  “Where’s the egg?” Ael asked, realizing her wife did not wear the carrier.

  “With Basi. I can’t trust anyone else right now. Bad enough to be sending the boys below with Carlos… but he likes them well enough; he had kids of his own.”

  “Carlos… one of the newcomers?” Ael asked, incredulity overtaking her senses. She knew she should not question her wife’s parenting decisions, but this one seemed… unwise.

  “I actually know him quite well. We spent a great deal of time chatting on the isnd, and besides that, he’s been here months now. If he wanted to harm us, he’d have done so.” Nereida’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Ael put her hands up in mock surrender.

  They retreated into the cabin to get some much needed sleep, with twice the usual number of lookouts on patrol. There was a comfort to their routine, slipping into sleep clothing as the children’s breathing and ocean’s waves were the only sounds. In the dark, they held each other, talked about their day. Today, Nereida told her all about what had occurred below, her voice trembling at some parts. She had truly feared to lose Epelda. They both had. Nereida cried in her arms, finally letting herself break under the strain. She did not sob, just let tears roll down her cheeks as if the tears were carrying away the worst of the pain. Ael did not wipe them away. Instead she let the tears do what they were meant to. She held the silent siren, pulling the covers around them. And she confided her fears, hearing the spsh as her daughter had disappeared below the waves, then the second when Nereida went in.

  “I didn’t know it was you, at first. I thought… I thought someone had decided to be a hero, and that we were going to lose two to the waves.” She didn’t cry, but she let go of her control, let herself actually feel. It made her want to vomit more than cry. She wondered if that was normal. Nereida kissed her, and her fears began to melt away. They had survived, the sirens were nominal allies now, they could rest. She settled down in the bed, holding her wife until sleep cimed them both.

  The arm piped on a whistle woke her with a start. Ael flew from her bed, grabbing her sword and charging onto the deck before Nereida was even fully conscious. She kicked one of the boy’s toys onto the deck as she ran, cursing as she went. A pain shot up her leg, a familiar one. She had broken a toe. The sharp pain kept her from focusing at first. In the light of the moon, she saw no attackers. Until she saw three shapes on the far end of the ship, one down, one being held and the third trying to keep them both upright. Ael moved across the ship as quickly as she could. Before she could process what she was seeing, the sound hit her.

  Epelda was crying.

  She hurried toward the scene, three other crew alongside her. She felt their presence more than saw them. The only thing she was interested in was her daughter. The scene before her came into better view as the clouds parted. An unknown siren was on the deck, pummeled but still breathing. His heavy, jagged sword was bloodied, kicked nearby, the blood forming a little trail that caught in the light. Epelda was in Jules’ arms, and she was crying, a wracking, sobbing cry that shook her whole body. Jules was trying to hold her arm steady, trying to heal her as her blood poured onto the deck. Ael felt as if she were in a nightmare. Epelda’s right hand had been cut from her, the hand mangled. There was a sharp smell in the air, something familiar, but not.

  “ADMIRAL!” Jules barked at her. “I need Nereida! Now!” One of the other crew took off, running for her cabin, not waiting for her to give the order. She heard someone shout for Nereida, and she put the crew from her mind to focus on Epelda.

  Epelda’s terrible sobs subsided, and she leaned into Jules, a suddenly dopey expression on her face. As if she felt no pain at all. Ael felt her blood run cold. No. She pushed forward to her daughter, saw, up close, that the girl’s wound and the bde were both coated in something sticky and dark. Epelda was lost in the poison’s grasp. Ael called to her daughter, touched her face, but Epelda hardly reacted at all. She kept reaching for Jules, as her lust took her, but he carefully kept her from doing anything, even as he was singing to slow her blood flow.

  Nereida arrived after what felt like years. The princess wasted no time, and began looking over Epelda’s wounds. She was soon singing, pulling ooze from the wound. Jules sang too, his voice soft, loving, supportive, as if he were trying to keep her from feeling pain. Epelda slipped into unconsciousness as a rge amount of green, acrid ooze slid out of her wound. Ael rushed forward, gd she could do something, anything, for Epelda.

  “Hand!” Nereida signed as she kept singing. Ael reached for the mangled hand. The two smallest fingers had been sheared off, the thumb looked to be broken. The bloodied mass was barely recognizable as a hand. Ael brought the hand to the slowly bleeding stump. The singing around her was intoxicating, and she felt her own magic rise in response. There was something she needed to say, needed to do, but it was just out of reach, like an itch in the center of her back. She could drown in the power, she knew, and get the answer, or she could help her child.

  The choice was obvious. She held the hand, pressing it to the wound, trying to get the fingers to reattach as well. Magic flowed over her, through her daughter, echoing and pouring everywhere. Ael bit her lip, hard enough to hurt, to keep herself focused on the here and now, despite the echo of words she heard. She would give in ter. Now she had to help. Epelda came awake with a start, as the magic healing her forced her out of shock. She gasped and cried, her voice breaking as she whimpered.

  “Hush, Epelda,” Ael managed, blocking out her overwhelming grief to comfort her child. “It’s almost done. Be brave, love.” Her arm tingled with magic, as if Nereida was pouring a bucket of endless icy water down her arm.

  And then it was quiet as Nereida and Jules stopped singing in the same moment, both of them tilting dangerously. The waves had calmed, the air stilled and became dryer. Two of the crew helped the dizzy sirens to sit, and Ael dared to assess the damage. Epelda had a thick, ropey scar around the entirety of her wrist. Her thumb moved, she could wiggle the fingers she had… but the two smallest fingers were still in Ael’s hand, and Epelda’s knuckles ended in bright red, scarred stumps.

  “I’m sorry,” Nereida wept. The siren tried to stand to get to her daughter, but she sank to the deck immediately, the colour gone from her face. “We weren’t enough… I couldn’t save the thumb and fingers… I… I had to choose.”

  Epelda did not answer, she just leaned into Ael, quietly crying, using her good hand to hold Ael’s shirt tightly. Never let me go, she seemed to say. Ael clenched her hand around the two severed fingers. Anger rose up, threatening to drown her, but she pushed it down. Epelda did not need her anger, just her comfort. And when the young woman’s cries finally ceased, Ael helped her to the cabin, tucked her in her brother’s bed and sat beside her until she fell asleep.

  Once her injured daughter had been seen too, the Admiral stormed back onto the deck. The unknown siren was bound to her mast, his mouth stuffed with rags, his arms bound tightly. She considered breaking his hands, but he was unconscious, and thus likely wouldn’t feel the pain of it. She, instead, found Jules, who was leaning on Nereida as if he could barely stay awake. She almost snapped at him, but then she remembered the boys and their failed attempt at healing Epelda’s tongue. They had nearly died.

  “What. Happened?” She bit each word out, leashing her anger as best she could.

  “We were… alone…” the boy struggled with his words. “We didn’t hear him. He came up the side. Came to kill her. I don’t know why.” He sounded anguished, exhausted and in pain. She realized he had a bck eye. He had fought for Epelda. “She took his air, after he took her hand.” His voice shook, and Nereida moved to comfort him, a soft hand pced on his shoulder. He tossed a grateful look back at her. “There was so much blood, so much… and I couldn’t see the hand, and then I smelled the poison and…” Ael kicked an empty bucket toward the boy as he spoke. The bucket slid across the deck, and he caught it as he spoke about Epelda’s blood. He had a firm grasp on it when his feeling tore out of him violently in the form of vomit.

  Once the boy had control of himself, Ael sent him to the cabin to sit beside Epelda. She refrained from making any comments about “funny business” out of respect for her daughter. She barked orders to the nearby crew about how to guard the prisoner, to kill him if he used any kind of magic or looked as if he were going to escape.

  “I’m going to kill him, Ner,” she said softly to her wife. “I’m going to kill him so they all see.”

  “No,” Nereida replied firmly. She took Ael’s hand. “When the escort comes in the morning, it can’t be you. Not if we want them to respect us.”

  “Then who?” she demanded. “Or do we let him go with a sp?”

  “Epelda, if she is awake,” Nereida’s voice was full of emotions, so many she may have been drowning. “Me, if not.” Ael felt the rising tide of anger. Epelda was her daughter. But she was Ner’s too. This had to be good enough. “We don’t require his suffering,” Nereida whispered to her, an echo from so long ago, an echo from yesterday. “Only his death.”

  They both napped fitfully the rest of the night, the crew on high alert. The sleep they got was as restful as a cat with fleas at midnight. Still, Ael rose before the dawn. Jules was asleep in Alejo’s bed, holding Epelda’s hand as she slept in Egaz’s bed. The clutter that had caused her injury had been picked up, though she could not say by who. Epelda’s fingers were still in Ael’s pocket. She did not know what to do with them. Nereida told her the flesh was dead, beyond saving. But she could not just throw a piece of her daughter into the sea. Would that send part of her soul to nguish in the depths of hell forever? She could not take the risk, and so she wrapped the fingers in cloth, and poured melted candle wax over them to keep longer. She pced the ghoulish wrap into her pocket. Once on nd, she’d find a proper pce to bury her daughter’s fingers. She only hoped Epelda forgave them all for not being able to do more.