The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea Read online

  It was rare that the crew spent much time ashore. Even more rare that they should do so in Crandon. It had been years since Flora had last seen this cursed city, last witnessed the horrible stone statue of the First Emperor crest over the horizon, to loom, enormous, over everything. She hated that statue nearly as much as she hated Crandon itself. But the captain had paid out all the men so that they could enjoy their stay here. Crandon sprawled with offerings for nearly every appetite, assuming one had coin. There were good times to be had in Crandon for a man with money, and since most of the crew called the city home, they knew just where to find it.

  All except Flora, it seemed. Being back in Crandon made her nervous. She felt compressed here, small.

  On the other hand, the Dove had been to Tustwe’s eastern shores twice, and it was not until she had visited there, had been in a place where she looked like everyone else, that she realized the power of blending in. Why her mother had left her native shore only to come to a country where everyone hated her, and her children, was beyond Flora’s understanding.

  As Nipran’s nearest southern neighbor, it was miraculous that Tustwe had not yet been colonized. But it held its own in trade against the Empire. Flora loved it there — loved the heat, loved the way Imperials looked nervous as they walked through the dusty streets and startled at the oryxes.

  Someday, she and her brother would live in Tustwe. They talked about it frequently. They’d learn the language — Alfie first, of course; he had a knack for languages, for picking up words and phrases like souvenirs from the different places they visited. Flora would follow. They would blend in. And they’d never return to Crandon again.

  That time was nearing, too. They’d been saving. Each voyage on the Dove added to Flora’s unease that Alfie would do something stupid, that the captain would decide they were no longer worth their weight. Or worse, that they’d become like the rest of the crew, indistinguishable from the murderers and rapists whose ranks they shared. It had not been so long since they started sailing with the Dove.

  She remembered the ears, severed and cold, handed to the captain as their ticket aboard.

  Their ticket away from this place. Crandon. The Empire.

  Luckily, shore leave was nearly over now. Unluckily, Alfie was not back on the Dove.

  So off Flora ran, through the city she hated, through every back alley and dingy pub Sty’s End had to offer. They’d grown up in Sty’s End, but that didn’t mean it was exempt from Flora’s hatred. If anything, her ire was inflamed in those narrow gray streets, as if their very dimensions were too small to contain it.

  They had been reared on Imperial hate. Rejected from the orphanage. They’d rarely found a roof to sleep under. Amid the desperate and the dying, the funeral homes and the pubs.

  This one, the Tipsy Pig, was the last Flora would check. After that, Alfie would be on his own, she vowed.

  This was a lie and she knew it. Alfie was the only family she had — she’d never leave without him.

  The pub smelled of piss and wine, cheap rum and sweat. Familiar smells, smells she hated. She pushed her way through the bodies, the men bellowing, loud with drink.

  Leaning over the bar, propped up on his elbows and nearly passed out, was Alfie. Though he was the elder of the two, Flora felt as though she were his keeper, today especially. Any time he had access to drink, really.

  She tried to push down the resentment, hot and red and burning, that flared in her chest. She knew why he drank, knew too well that there were memories he’d rather live without. And that if he hadn’t interceded to protect her, he’d not have them. But his burden became hers each time they hit the shore. Any shore.

  “You idiot.” She tried to shake him awake. “Get up.”

  He groaned but didn’t move.

  “Come on,” said a woman behind the bar. She was old, the passage of time plain upon her face. Like Flora and Alfie, she was not Imperial-blooded, though she was pink, which was worse, really. There wasn’t an uncolonized country left in the Cold World.

  Sty’s End was full of immigrants from all over the Known World. Hardly anyone there could boast pure Imperial blood.

  The barkeep’s immense bosom was hardly contained by her yukata, and Flora felt her face flush at the sight of it.

  “Let him be,” she said warmly. “Have a drink.”

  She poured a draft of muddy ale into a dirty cup and pushed it forward.

  “I’ve got no silver.”

  The woman nudged it closer, a wry half smile on her face.

  “Or copper.”

  “You don’t look like you do,” the woman said. “But then I bet a boy like you has plenty to offer a poor lady like myself as compensation for this here spirit.” She gave Flora a long, lascivious look up and down. “You ever been with a woman?”

  Boy.

  Flora took the cup and drained it. It was horrible — flat and stale. It tasted the way a horse smelled.

  “If I hadn’t,” Flora said carefully, “I wouldn’t start with you.”

  The woman laughed a deep belly laugh. “S’too bad!” she said merrily. “Your mate here was much more obliging. My biggest customer all night.”

  Alfie groaned. It wasn’t until then that Flora could see he wasn’t just drunk. His stare was focused, but not on anything in the pub. His gray eyes were eclipsed black with dilated pupils. Flora’s heart raced. She had not checked their stores, had not seen what he’d taken from them, had not counted their savings before she left the ship.

  Just how much did he spend?

  “What has he been drinking?” She feared she already knew the answer.

  The woman smiled, clearly pleased to be the bearer of bad news after Flora’s rudeness. “Mermaid’s blood. Had it in fresh from the port just this afternoon.”

  Flora’s eyes fell shut.

  Mermaid’s blood was the oblivion drink. Men drank it to escape the cruelty of their lives. Drink the blood, they said, and you’d see beautiful things. But memories would disappear. Gone, gone, gone. Which was what most drinkers wanted. It was mermaid’s blood that made the Nameless Captain nameless, after all. He’d had enough that he’d forgotten even his own name.

  Mermaid’s blood changed men. And the cost was high.

  How much had Alfie had? Flora wondered. How much of Alfie is left?

  Flora shoved her shoulder beneath her brother’s arm and hoisted him swiftly to his feet. It was a practiced gesture, one she’d made countless times before all around the Known World. With Alfie muttering to himself, she supported him out of the Tipsy Pig and into the gray Crandon sun.

  “You’re a lucky stupid thing,” she said to him. “That you’re thin as a skeleton, and that you’ve got me for a sister.”

  Alfie twitched in her grasp but managed to find his feet beneath him. He laughed, but it was a distant sound, more like the memory of a laugh than a real one.

  “Fish with legs,” he said. “Crawling onto the shore.”

  “Sure. Let’s get you home.” Her voice was much softer than she might have liked.

  As they drew close to the Dove, Alfie insisted on walking of his own accord. His legs were shaky, but he pushed her and her help away.

  “Oh, save it,” Alfie groaned. “Don’t let them see you.” His voice trailed off, but Flora knew what he hadn’t said: Don’t let them see you being a girl.

  The men of the Dove knew she was a girl. Or had been one. But after the captain had ordered her to kill — and she had, unflinchingly — she had earned the respect to be something better than a girl. Something safe. From then on, the crew had only ever called her Florian. It was the name that Rake had given her. It was the name of a murderer. It was the name of a survivor. It was a spell that allowed her to blend in with the crew.

  Florian was the captain’s man now, everyone knew. And so grudgingly, she’d been granted respect.

  “I’ve got no love for you anyway,” she shot back. And Alfie’s laugh transformed into a retch as his body rejected the
black blood he’d paid so dearly for all over the ground.

  The question of how much he’d spent dogged her. They always talked about going to Tustwe, about leaving the Dove. Just one more voyage, he’d say. There was always one more.

  She may as well square herself with it. With the Dove and her horrible purpose. With the life she couldn’t escape, the brother she loved and hated.

  She deposited Alfie in his hammock, and he groaned with relief.

  “Just you and me, Florian,” he said. “Just us against the world.” His voice was hoarse from vomiting.

  Beneath the hammock, Flora pulled out their rucksack. In it was a silver dagger, a woven bracelet from Tustwe, and the leather sack they kept their wages in. Years of wages she’d saved. She knew right away, could tell from its weight and the obvious lack of dimension, but she still opened it to be sure.

  It was empty.

  It smelled of rot on the Dove, of decay and mold. But it was home.

  At least the Dove did not look like a pirate ship, or even a merchant ship. Rather, she looked and felt like a fine passenger vessel, with a vast set of upper decks that befit the wealthy people suckered into paying for passage aboard her.

  As Alfie slept off the last clutches of the mermaid’s blood, Flora set about her duties to prepare the Dove for voyage. She wasn’t sure how many voyages of this manner she’d taken with the Dove, but this one felt different.

  This was probably because it’d be their first time abducting Imperials. From the heart of Nipran.

  There was no looking away from what they did — the crew of the Dove hoodwinked people into paying for safe passage, then instead sold them into slavery. And as hard as Flora’s life in Crandon had been, it was not, she knew, enslavement. That institution was illegal in the Empire — supposedly, though she had seen her fair share of enslaved people in the colonies — but it was fully and actually barred in Tustwe. Not that she’d ever live there now.

  While the captain took a great many precautions — he hit new ports each time with his con and did not force the passengers belowdecks until they were far enough from their homeland to preclude any possibility of escape — coming to the Nipran shore, to Crandon itself, not even a day’s walk from the Emperor’s palace? It seemed like madness.

  Despite Flora’s small frame, her body was wiry with taut muscle after all her time aboard the Dove. It had taken many trips with the crew taunting and teasing her before she’d built the strength to see to tasks like hauling barrels of seawater from the gunwales to the stores on her own. If they were attacked, if the Emperor’s fleets found them, these stores would put out the fires that would follow. The stores of water did little to salve her fear, but they were something.

  And wasn’t it better to do something?

  To keep busy?

  As she worked, she sang the only song she knew. It was an anthem for pirates, if drinking songs could be anthems. Flora was no great singer, but now in her solitude, she carried the tune quietly:

  Mermaid caught

  Returned to Sea

  By witch taught

  To be free

  Two souls bound

  By love, by knife

  True love found

  Restored to life

  Two souls fight

  For love, to be

  True love’s might

  To save the Sea

  “That’s a good man.” Rake’s face was split into an uncharacteristic shape. Was that a smile?

  He wasn’t as big as the captain, not as tall. But the men feared him more. He was tightly wound, always ready. She’d seen him slit more throats than she could count, and not always those of prisoners. He was the hammer the captain brought down. “Just in case, sir,” said Flora.

  Rake made her nervous. Always had. Not just in the way he frightened the whole crew, but also because she desperately, deeply, wanted to please him. She had not known her father. But she liked to think he might have been something like Rake.

  “I know, Florian. And that’s a good song for the work.” The name rang like a bell. Flora smiled. It was magic, the name, a spell that kept her safe. And when Rake used it, it sent a shiver of something rare through her.

  Pride.

  Florian was never a better man than he was in Rake’s regard.

  “You ever hear the one about the Pirate Supreme and the Emperor’s crown?” Rake asked.

  “No.” This was a lie. Of course she had heard it. All pirates had. But she loved stories. And she wanted so badly to hear Rake tell it. He motioned for Flora to sit, which she did, ignoring the wet of the barrel through the seat of her pants. It was not every day the first mate offered to tell a crewman a story.

  Nor did any prudent sailor speak too highly of the Pirate Supreme in the captain’s presence, or even aboard the captain’s ship.

  The Pirate Supreme may have been the undisputed lord of pirates, but the captain was the captain. He paid his tithes. But the word was that the Pirate Supreme had gotten word of the captain’s misdeeds and was angry. That the wrath of the Pirate Supreme would soon find the Nameless Captain. The Supreme had operatives, men and women with secret identities who did the royal bidding. The captain had ordered the deaths of more than one man under the suspicion that they were operatives.

  This was likely because the captain regularly broke the Supreme’s only and most sacred law: never drink the blood of a mermaid.

  And now Alfie had broken it, too.

  They said the Pirate Supreme and the Supreme’s operatives found those who broke the sacred law and saw them dead. There was a time that Flora wished that were true. That justice might even find her captain. But she’d stopped believing in justice years ago.

  “When the Emperor’s eldest son was to wed, they say the Pirate Supreme came to Crandon. They say this because all could see, even from the shore, the long shadow cast by the Leviathan.”

  Just the sound of the ship’s name made Flora’s breath catch in her throat. The Leviathan. It was the Pirate Supreme’s ship — a gift, they said, from the Sea herself.

  “Which, of course, sent the Imperials into a madness for security. So the Emperor ordered his entire fleet to ready for battle against that one ship, our Supreme’s ship, which they did. Fast as lightning, they took orders — you know how they are. Can’t obey fast enough.”

  Flora listened, rapt. She rarely saw Rake so pleased, his eyes so light.

  “They don’t catch her, of course. No one’s catching the Leviathan unless she wants to be caught. They come back to their Emperor with their tails tucked and tell him they’ve failed.

  “But by the time they get back, the Emperor is in a rage. His crown’s been stolen, and just before the wedding! He’s thundering mad, of course. The ship got away, and somehow with the crown to boot. People say it was magic, but it wasn’t.

  “I’ll tell you what it was. It was just smarts. Long before the Leviathan was spotted, the Supreme came to Crandon. No Imperial knows what the Supreme looks like, so who’d sound the alarm? Then when the Leviathan came as a distraction, the Supreme could slip in and just steal that unguarded crown right from underneath the Emperor.” Rake chuckled.

  Then he leaned forward and whispered to Flora: “They say the Supreme wears the Emperor’s crown.” He paused meaningfully. “But only to take a dump.”

  Flora burst out laughing.

  “You know what the moral of that story is?” Rake asked.

  “Plan ahead?”

  “Sure. But more importantly? If Imperials weren’t so hopped up on their own tales of military victories, they wouldn’t have been so quick to try to take down the unsinkable ship. It was a fool’s errand, and the Imperials were made the fools by their own stories of themselves.” He stood and gave Flora what might have been an affectionate pat on the back if it hadn’t been quite so firm, knocking the wind out of her. “Know your truth, not your story,” he said.

  Flora nodded and hopped off the barrel. “I’ll keep that in mind. You know, in cas
e I ever command my own ship.” She tried to say it with a laugh, but it just came out as pitiful.

  “You never know.” He examined her, his face inscrutable. “You’ve the feel of destiny about you.”

  The word worked through Flora’s mind, a rock tossed in the waves. Destiny. She felt that, with Rake’s belief in her, maybe it could be true. Maybe Florian was worth something, anything, after all.

  Rake put his hands behind his back and walked off, the sound of his footsteps silenced by the wind.

  The entire household was to see Evelyn off. All except Keiko, whom the Lady Hasegawa decided should watch over their home in their absence. Evelyn found Keiko in her room, now bare of all the things Evelyn valued, which had been packed neatly into her casket by Keiko herself. Keiko wept freely, and so she didn’t hear Evelyn come in.

  For a moment, Evelyn was able to watch Keiko in a way she never had before — unimpeded by etiquette or shame. She was small and lovely in her plainness, most beautiful with her hair down.

  Evelyn backed out the door as quietly as she could, saying nothing. What good could her comfort possibly do Keiko now? But the floor creaked beneath her step, and Keiko whirled around.

  “Hello, Keiko.” Stupid.

  “You mean goodbye, my lady.”

  “Don’t call me that. Not now.”

  Keiko looked at her feet and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “What’ll I do without you?” Her voice was a whisper.

  “You’ll keep your hands clean.”

  Keiko made a noise that may have been a snort of laughter or a sob. She stepped forward and rested her cheek on Evelyn’s shoulder, her breath warm against her neck. “I love you.”

  Evelyn pulled Keiko close, savoring the heat of her body, the familiar curve of her waist. Keiko was lovely, but love? Evelyn wasn’t sure.

  “I love you, too,” Evelyn managed.

  She kissed Keiko, gently, on her uneven lips. They were dry and soft, and Evelyn wished she had time to kiss her until she was sure of how she felt.

  “You should go,” Keiko said. “The carriage is waiting.”