The ship’s witch, Tyentso, was marching aft, with Captain Juval close behind her. Sailors scattered as they advanced. It wasn’t the Captain’s presence that made them jump back as if they were about to touch a diseased corpse.
Some women are worth staring at because of their beauty. When men stared at Tyentso, it was not admiration or lust but shock that the gods would be so unkind. She was a dark, thin woman, scarecrow-like, who dressed in a shapeless robe of layered rags and stained sacking. Her eyes were hard and arrogant; she held herself with the straight-backed poise of an aristocrat—one who could order the death of anyone who displeased her. Her tangled, unwashed nest of hair was the color of dirty sand and bleached driftwood; her nose and chin long and sharp enough to polish on a grindstone; her lips little more than a razor’s gash across her face.
It would be impossible to guess at her talismans, not because she had none showing, but because she had too many. Bones, dried kelp, seashells, and bird beaks hung from her staff of ocean-washed, twisted pine. Similar flotsam found a home in that tangled hair. The staff made a noise like a rattle as she walked, as if to warn people to get out of her way.
Which they did if they were wise.
No, she did not radiate beauty. Instead, her aura was fear. She took the superstitious dread most people felt for the idea of a witch and wore it like a crown. No one who saw her doubted her profession, or that she could curse—would curse—any man who crossed her.
The first mate, Delon, liked to use the threat of a night spent in her bed as insurance on good behavior from the crew.
I liked her.
Yes, she was the one responsible for summoning the succubus who gaeshed me, but only under Juval’s orders. She had been my single and only ally on board The Misery. Her spells were the only reason I’d survived Delon’s attentions. When not otherwise occupied, she’d spent the voyage locked away from the rest of the crew, studying her books, casting the myriad minor spells designed to keep the ship safe or detect danger.
This was why the purposeful strides she made toward us, her storm-cloud eyes giving hard examination to the blooded ocean, made me so uncomfortable. She wouldn’t have left her cabin—worse, dragged the Captain with her—if the situation wasn’t every bit as serious as I feared.
She saw me and stopped dead in her pace. “Just what in Tya’s name are you doing here?”
“Never mind them,” Captain Juval said. “They’re passengers. They can walk the deck if they stay out of the way of the sailors. You two—” He gestured toward Teraeth and me. “Get out of here. We’ve business.”
Tyentso ignored the Captain and continued to stare at me. She was, I realized, waiting for an answer.
I looked over at Teraeth. Taja, I thought. The illusion isn’t working on her. She recognizes me.
“I—” What could I say? How could I answer her with Captain Juval right there?
“Never mind. Later.” She waved away any chance of response and moved to stand above the rudder. She paled as she looked out over the bloodied waters.
Tyentso raised her staff into the air and spoke in a language that tugged at the back of my mind—something almost but not quite comprehensible. She moved her free hand in the air, and I couldn’t so much see as feel the faint traceries left behind. Complicated skeins of mathematics and arcane notation lingered behind my eyelids before releasing, with a rush of imploding air, out the back of the ship. The energy trails arched into the water: dozens, no, hundreds of tiny pulses created visible splashes.
Teraeth joined me at the railing as we both watched the water. For a long pause, nothing happened. Every sailor on the ship was holding their breath. Then the waters around the whales began to fleck and boil with new bodies: smaller, silver flashes that converged on the blood smears growing faint in the distance as The Misery continued her trek. Another tentacle flipped out of the water, and the whole ship seemed to gasp. Hundreds of white water trails rolled over the waves toward the monstrous form.
“Dolphins…” Teraeth whispered.
Tyentso proclaimed, “THUS will I destroy the creature!” Her theatrical gesture was overdone, performed for the audience behind her.
There was an audible sigh of relief, a sense of reprieve. The first mate, Delon, began snapping at the men to get back to work.
Only Teraeth, the Captain, and I saw Tyentso’s expression held no such promise. She lowered her arms and glanced at Juval. “It’s a delay,” she said, “and nothing more. That is a Daughter of Laaka in those waters, not any mortal being.”*
I felt ill. I was enough a minstrel’s son to know the songs and stories of the great kraken, the cursed daughters of the sea goddess. They were immortal beings and deadly foes of any ocean creature large enough to be prey, including ships. I had wanted to believe they were nothing more than stories.
“We’ll outrun it,” Juval said. “By the time it’s done with your sea dogs, we’ll be long gone.”
“I’m afraid,” Khaemezra said, “that would only work if the whales were ever her true quarry.”
Captain Juval looked annoyed at the interruption. He didn’t notice how Tyentso’s eyes widened as she saw Teraeth’s mother, or the way the sea witch’s knuckles turned white as she gripped her staff. Tyentso’s gray eyes moved to Teraeth, then to me, and finally back to the Mother of the Black Brotherhood.
She saw all of us for who we really were. No illusions for her.
“Blooded shells!” the Captain snapped. “What is it with the passengers on this run? You three got no business here. Now get back to your damn cabin and leave this business to folks who know what’s what.”
The rest of us looked at each other. I felt an unexpected sympathy for the Captain. I had been so scared of him once. He had been so angry with me; done terrible things to me in the heat of that anger. He was a towering figure, full of brooding violence that had never been just for show. Now—he was unimportant. He was all but dismissed, and just didn’t realize it yet. Tyentso and Khaemezra would decide who was in charge. The slave captain possessed no power to decide his destiny.
“Juval, these are not normal passengers. It would be best if you leave this to me.” Tyentso’s tone belonged to a queen and allowed no room for argument.
“Witch—”
“You must trust me,” Tyentso hissed. “We are not yet out of danger.”
I watched the battle going on under the waves. Even though the ship outpaced the original site of the whales and their attacker, I saw shapes moving in the water, sometimes jumping above it. Through it all, the long slithery tentacles slammed up above the waves to come crashing back down. The creature that owned those arms had to be enormous.
I felt bad for the dolphins. I doubted Tyentso had politely asked them to throw their lives away fighting that thing, that they had volunteered.
Tyentso turned to Khaemezra. “What did you mean about quarry?”