Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) Page 19

  “I’ve been reading books,” I said defensively. “I even read some of Tanuu’s textbooks.”

  “I mean starting a family, Meela.”

  I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth.

  “I don’t even want … You know I’m not …”

  “You’ll be a great mother, Meela.”

  “Ew, Mama. I can’t stand babies. They’re annoying and not even cute.”

  She waved it off. “Don’t say that. You’ll feel differently when they’re your own.”

  I leaned back, staring at her. How could she bring this up right now? Yes, I’d been through more than most adults I knew, but I was still only eighteen.

  “How old were you when you had Nilus?” I said.

  “I was your age.”

  The year my father went on the Massacre. I narrowed my eyes. “Same year you got married, right?”

  She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Right.”

  Her hesitation told me everything. I made a repulsed face.

  “Nice summer wedding, I guess? About five months before Nilus was born?”

  “Meela, Nilus was the best thing that happened to me at eighteen.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I’ve spent a third of my life in warrior training. I need to live my own life now.”

  “I wouldn’t have a problem with that if living your own life meant you were doing something worthwhile. Instead, you choose to spend your days hunting for some silly myth.”

  I clenched my fists. “I’m trying to stop more of our girls from dying!”

  “Use your head, Meela! If we don’t send warriors to kill the demons, we’re letting them spread like bacteria.”

  “They’re not bacteria,” I said. “They want something. Until we use that to our advantage, they’ll keep attacking us.”

  “This is exactly the type of thinking that got you into trouble as a kid. Sea demons don’t think like us. They’re savages.”

  I wrapped my fists in my hair, trying not to explode.

  “Your mother’s right.”

  I hadn’t noticed my father come back. He sat down, placing a cloth-bound book on the table.

  “We need to assert our power over the demons,” he said. “At the very least, we need to thin the population so they stop eating all our fish.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Nothing seemed to convince them that they were wrong.

  “Do you think you’re reaching for alternatives to the Massacres for other reasons?” said my mother. “I know as a little girl you felt sorry for the mermaids, and sometimes I wonder if you still—”

  I stood. “I’m done. Thanks for dinner.”

  “Finished already?” said my father, tucking into his meal.

  My mother’s lips tightened. My father scraped the rest of my plate onto his.

  “Can I borrow the book?” I said shortly.

  My mother seized it from the table, turning it over as though checking for a hidden message.

  “Why the sudden interest?”

  I made an exasperated sound and turned on my heel.

  They didn’t stop me from leaving.

  I kicked a clump of dandelions as I walked down the driveway, causing the flowers to pop off and scatter.

  “Start a family,” I muttered. “They’ve got a shock coming if that’s what they’re expecting.”

  I’d wanted to go back to school and start a career before thinking about any of that stuff. Nobody had talked to me about career plans, but somewhere in the back of my mind I’d always wanted to work with animals. A vet, maybe. I was probably being stupid. A vet needed years of education, and I hadn’t even gone to high school.

  Between their attitude towards mermaids and my mother’s infatuation with Tanuu, how was I ever supposed to tell my parents about Lysi?

  Voices carried from around the bend ahead. It sounded like our neighbour, Elaila, and the widow from the Massacre Committee. I pulled my hood over my head and cut through the bush so I wouldn’t run into them.

  The sun wouldn’t set for another four hours. I wandered through the forest, not sure where my feet were taking me. I didn’t feel like talking to Annith about this. Besides, she was likely with Rik.

  My desire to see Lysi was more painful than ever. I scowled at the enormous trees, not wanting their still, insulating silence, but rather the crashing waves and the cold, salty spray on my face.

  I watched my feet. I’d chosen a difficult part of the woods to navigate. Moss-covered logs crossed my path in every direction, slowing me down as I climbed over and sought ways around them. Ferns grew out of every surface—an entire ecosystem sprouting from each fallen tree.

  Following an unexplored route, I passed under a rocky outthrust that must have formed in some huge earthquake tens of thousands of years prior. The rock was so splintered and crammed together, the face angled so acutely, it looked like the cliff might fall on me at any moment. A fallen cedar leaned against it, forming a canopy over my head and giving the impression that the tree was the one holding up the rock.

  I brushed a hand along the face, poking my fingers into deep cracks where the earth had smashed the rock together. This formation was so close to my home, yet I’d never come across it before. What else had I yet to discover about this place?

  Everyone liked to complain that the island wasn’t big enough—but now that I was trying to find something, it felt vast and insurmountable. I could spend my whole life combing every bit of this place and never find Eriana’s Crypt.

  Of course, none of that would matter if I didn’t know my ancestry. I would have to sneak my father’s book away.

  I moved slowly through the dense bush, not caring if I got lost. Several times, I had to backtrack to get around some deep ravine or impassable clump of logs.

  Eventually, I came to a well-worn dirt trail. I followed it for a minute to get my bearings, and arrived at a marsh full of skunk cabbage. To my right, a less boggy path would lead me through. This was the route to the training base.

  I hesitated, considering whether Dani and her trainees would be there. It was likely, given the Massacre would depart in mere days.

  I crossed the marsh with new purpose.

  Dani’s shouts met my ears before I was anywhere near the Enticer.

  “I don’t care! You think the sea rats will let you rest because you’re out of breath? Get moving!”

  I left the path, slowing until my footsteps were silent over the carpet of moss. When I was close enough to see the glade, I stopped, scanning the trees. The spruce to my left had a few solid, low branches. I climbed it. The scaly bark dug into my palms.

  “Keep going!” Dani shouted. “Get - up!”

  I peered into the clearing in time to see her swing something at one of the trainees. The girl scrambled away on hands and knees. Dani’s iron prong, apparently the one from the fire pit we’d stumbled on, sliced through the air without making contact.

  The girl kept running, joining her classmates. They sprinted back and forth in the clearing, stopping at either end to do a push-up.

  Every face looked sweaty, miserable. One girl convulsed at the end of her push-up, as if about to be sick. But without question, these trainees were at the peak of fitness. Their muscles appeared chiselled out of wood. I looked down at my own bicep, which was admittedly impressive, but even from a distance I could tell these kids would knock me flat in a fistfight. Was the new training program really turning out better warriors?

  “A demon won’t pause to let you stand if you stumble,” yelled Dani. “She will catch you and sink her teeth into your flesh. I’m the demon here, and I’ve got a few more days to prepare you to fight for every second aboard Vindicti.”

  She swung her iron at a passing runner, who had to leap to avoid being caught in the shins. She landed with a grunt, tripped, swung her arms for balance, and kept moving. Dani’s next swing grazed her calf.

  “Good. This isn’t unlike the weapons you’ll be seeing out there. Sea spears.
Harpoons. A sea rat might strike face-on, or she might wait until you least expect it, popping out of nowhere to launch a dart into the eyeball of the first girl to lower her guard. She’s stronger than you, faster than you, with better vision in the dark and better balance on a careening ship. She will have every advantage, except for one thing: feet. You have your legs, and you can run and jump where a sea rat is stuck to the blood-soaked deck.”

  She paused, watching the trainees run.

  “So use your legs properly!” she shouted, and swung the iron with all her might.

  Her victim—the girl who’d been heaving—was too tired to jump, and it caught her hard on the back of the legs. The girl cried out and hit the ground, where she coughed and gasped, unable to stand back up.

  Dani descended like an eagle swooping on a salmon. I couldn’t take my eyes away.

  Then a tall, surly girl burst out of one of the cabins, and Dani turned.

  I hadn’t seen Texas since we returned from the Massacre. Like many of us, she’d gained a bit of weight back. Next to Dani’s bony frame and the overworked girls running laps, her presence was more formidable than ever. She leaned in to discuss something with Dani in voices too low for me to hear.

  The girls kept running. The one on the ground took her chance to scramble away.

  After a minute, Dani nodded, and Texas skulked back to the cabin. I wondered what subjects Texas taught. My pity for the trainees, if possible, increased.

  Dani whirled to face the trainees again. The way she eyed them reminded me of a cat looming over a nest of baby birds.

  I regretted coming to watch. Feeling worse, I lowered myself from the tree and landed lightly on the forest floor.

  A small scream came from behind me. I spun with my fists raised, but dropped them when I saw Adette standing there, hands thrown over her mouth.

  Flattening myself against the tree trunk, I checked over my shoulder to ensure nobody had heard. The girls still ran, Dani still screaming at them.

  “What are you doing in the bush?” I whispered.

  Adette narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing in the bush?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She had a point.

  “I asked you first,” I said.

  She crossed her arms, flustered.

  Though Adette had hit a growth spurt in the last few months, she was still tiny and frail. I tried not to think about how she’d soon be forced to toughen into a warrior like the girls running laps behind me. The question was: how soon? The yearly ritual had crumbled under Mujihi’s new program.

  “Shouldn’t you be in a cabin somewhere with the others?” I whispered, nodding towards the glade.

  “Dani’s not teaching us until next block. I have Emma right now for First Aid, and she’s not as mean if you’re late.”

  “Who?”

  “Emma—erm, Blondie.”

  “Oh. Right. She’s teaching, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  Blondie wasn’t as bad as Dani or Texas, but she’d still sided with them on the Massacre.

  “What about Fern?” I said.

  “No. She was supposed to teach Rigging, but Dani didn’t want her. Said Fern didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “Figures.”

  She leaned over to peer around the tree at the older trainees, chewing her lip.

  “So why did you skip part of First Aid?”

  She hesitated. “I was with Papa. He needed me at home.”

  “Why? Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head, but unconvincingly, with another nervous glance past my shoulder.

  When I kept staring, she averted her gaze into the woods beside us, as though contemplating taking off in that direction.

  It was then that I noticed a mark on her neck, in the same place as the girl who’d talked to Annith at the Enticer.

  It was a burn, barely healed, pink and bubbly.

  “What’s that on your neck?” I said, jumping forwards.

  She clapped a hand over it and looked at me in alarm.

  I pulled her hand away. A symbol had been burned into her flesh. Two dots, like eyes, sloping inwards as though angry, and a triangular beak beneath them.

  “What is this?” I said through clenched teeth.

  She mumbled something.

  “What?”

  I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me.

  When our eyes met, I saw panic on her face. I dropped my hand.

  “We all have them,” she said.

  “The trainees?”

  She nodded once, lips tight.

  Heat rushed into my face, like lava bubbling inside a volcano. “Did Dani do this to you?”

  Her eyes flicked left and right. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

  “Adette.”

  “She calls it branding. Every trainee gets one, as a mark of her loyalty to her crew and Eriana Kwai.”

  “And Dani,” I said. “It’s a mark of your loyalty to Dani.”

  Adette said nothing.

  I thought of the fire pit in the clearing, and the rod lying on the ground—the one now clutched in Dani’s bony hand. A branding iron.

  “I’m going to talk to the committee,” I said. “She can’t get away with this.”

  “No, please don’t! My friend Jace told her parents that Dani was being too harsh, and the next day Dani made her run until she barfed.”

  “But—” I faltered, trying to compose myself, and drew a breath before continuing. “She won’t know it was you I was talking to.”

  “Then she’ll punish all of us. Please, Meela.”

  I ran my hands through my hair. If all went according to my plans, we wouldn’t need the training program, anyway.

  “Hasn’t your father noticed?”

  Surely Anyo wouldn’t stand for this.

  “Yes, but I told him I wanted to do it. Dani has one too, you know. She did it to herself. Twice. She also has a snake head on her wrist.”

  “I don’t care—Wait. What?”

  Adette shrugged.

  My heart skipped several beats. Why would Dani have branded a snake onto her body? Was it coincidence that I happened to be searching for a leviathan? Or did Dani know something?

  Behind us in the clearing, Dani shouted at her trainees. “Twenty more laps and you can stop, girls!”

  Adette’s eyebrows pulled down in desperation. I nodded once to indicate I wouldn’t tell anyone.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  Before I could say another word, she took off into the trees and skirted the edge of the glade. She would enter the cabins from behind, I knew, to avoid the iron rod clutched in Dani’s white-knuckled fist.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Capital Punishment

  I swore the explosion hit me before the dart left Coho’s crossbow.

  How?

  That was all I had time to think before my head cracked against the back of the cave. Torrents surged, slamming me against the rocks, pushing me sideways. It would have carried me away if Coho had not been there to grab me.

  Everything was dark, murky. A high-pitched wailing filled my ears. The water stirred too much to feel anything. My flesh stung. My scar seared. Even my tongue hurt from the bitter taste of iron.

  All I knew was the rocky cave, and Coho, wrapping his arms around me to stop the current pulling me away.

  Terror seeped off of him. Ephyra. Had she made it to safety? She had nothing to cling to, as we did. What if she’d gotten carried away in a whirl of iron debris?

  My head throbbed, as though my brain had smashed against the inside of my skull and was now dripping down my spine.

  Where were Spio and the others? The blast happened before the guard made it to Spio—but that didn’t mean my friend was safe. Had his hiding place been enough? Did he get blasted away?

  The sea churned for an eternity. The surface roared as displaced water cascaded back down.

  We stayed huddled in the cave, wordless, waiting for
the iron to settle.

  I pressed my palm over my scar, fruitlessly trying to keep the dirty water from making it burn. I needed to get away from here. Even more, I needed to surface. Between the pain and lack of air, my head spun.

  Coho’s heartbeat drummed against my skin. Beyond that, my senses were blind. The ringing in my ears wouldn’t stop. The world was too murky to see beyond an arm’s length. My flesh prickled.

  How did the mine detonate? The more I reflected, the more certain I became: the dart had not left the crossbow when the mine exploded. I’d seen Coho’s fingers on the trigger.

  Did one of the other guys do it—too impatient, or nervous, to wait?

  Maybe I’d been confused in all the panic. My perception could have been off. I remembered feeling dizzy moments before.

  Slowly, the water calmed.

  A face appeared in front of us. I straightened.

  Spio.

  He looked unharmed, though his face was smudged with green muck and his hair stood on end more than usual. His leather cap had fallen off, or been blasted away.

  We exchanged a sense of relief at the sight of each other.

  He said something. The words were lost beneath the ringing in my eardrums.

  “What?”

  My voice was hollow. I shook my head. Pain shot through my skull.

  “... going to find the brothers,” said Spio.

  He sounded distorted, like he was speaking to me from above surface.

  “See you back at Utopia, all right?” he said slowly.

  I gaped at him. In the chaos surrounding the explosion, I’d forgotten about the rest of the plan. Spio, Pontus, and Junior would need to get moving so they could notify the commander.

  “Is Ax dead?” said Coho.

  Spio nodded once, jaw tight. He exuded something I’d rarely felt in him before—something dark, serious.

  I tried to speak. So many questions raced through my mind but none of them came out.

  “Go,” said Coho. “Bring our troops home.”

  Was this victory?

  I hadn’t exactly planned on a celebration once we detonated the mine, but I had expected to feel some sense of triumph and relief. Instead, I felt only fear.