The shadowman’s voice seemed to come through a thick fog. He turned to Kenté. “You may be able to resist me, you see. But your companions cannot.”
Many things happened at once. Kenté reached for the sky. Markos and Daria disappeared. Nereus let out a ferocious war cry, yanking a knife from the back of his trousers, and sprang—not toward the shadowman but at me. Seizing my arm, he sliced my hand open. A flash of pain burned my palm.
“Ow!” I clutched my bleeding hand. “Why’d you—”
Then I realized. I was awake again. Blinking away my grogginess, I tried to refocus on what was happening.
Cleandros laughed at Kenté. “You think yourself powerful enough to hide them from me? The masters at the Academy will purge you of such childish overconfidence.” He made an impatient gesture, as if brushing aside cobwebs.
And froze, sneering voice caught in his throat, when Markos and Daria did not reappear.
Turning to my cousin, he spat, “You have no training. You shouldn’t be able to veil them from me. It’s not possible!”
Before I could move to stop him, Cleandros aimed at the spot where they had vanished and pulled the trigger.
No one cried out. No blood spattered the deck. They simply weren’t there.
He advanced on Kenté, ramming powder and shot down the pistol. “Where are they?”
I scrambled backward, dragging my cousin with me. My heel hit the foot of the bowsprit and I stumbled, grabbing onto a stay for balance.
“I might’ve ransomed your cousin back to the Bollards,” Cleandros told Kenté, anger curdling his voice. “But enough is enough. Let this be a lesson to you.”
Behind him, Nereus lunged for the gun, but it was too late.
The shot struck me in the right side of my chest, red blood spraying out in a mist.
Pain—searing pain. My whole arm seized up. Spots danced in my eyes. My breath was uneven and raspy, as if I suddenly couldn’t gulp in enough air. Blood matted my shirt and waistcoat. I staggered, slipping on the bowsprit. My hand loosened on the stay.
Time seemed to slow. I heard, as if from a great distance, my blood dripping on the deck. Below me, the sea rose and fell.
There are some sailormen who say the drakon is nothing more or less than your fate coming for you. If it was still down there, would it be drawn like a shark to my blood in the water? Was this my fate, to be gulped up by a sea beast like the Nikanor and her ill-fated crew?
No. Understanding flooded through me. The drakon belonged to the sea. And so did I. That same drakon had been following me since the river. As what—a protector? A guide? If I was right, the drakon would no more hurt me than cut off her own tail.
I let go of the stay—and dropped into the sea.
The shadowman laughed. Distantly I heard Kenté scream as I hit the water. I couldn’t feel my right arm, and my legs were like limp dough. A wave sloshed over me, stirring the blood that clouded around me like spilled ink. I inhaled a gulping mouthful of ocean, salt stinging my nose.
I had been wrong. And my life would be the price for my mistake.
Then I heard her.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I greet you, ssssssister.”
Something slippery but solid rose under me. I tangled the fingers of my good hand in the tuft that trailed from her back, which looked like feathers but felt like seaweed. Her neck was dotted with clumps of barnacles. With the last of my strength I tightened my knees around her body.
She burst forth from the waves like an explosion. She was beautiful.
Foam sprayed out from between the drakon’s teeth as she swiveled her head. On Vix’s deck a wherryman stumbled backward, screaming. The scent of salt and snake dampened the air. Water streaming into my eyes, I fought to hang on.
“Show me our enemy!” she hissed.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured Cleandros, concentrating hard on his gilded robes and plain face. Shivering uncontrollably as I tasted blood in my mouth, I hoped somehow she could understand me.
“Ah! I smell him,” the drakon declared. “The sandy grit of sleep. The sweet taste of darkness. I have eaten one of you before.”
Cleandros turned to face her, and then it was as if the world went black. The shadowman vanished, and so did everything else—the sky, the rolling waves, and Vix.
I heard the drakon laugh. “Fool. The sea does not fear the dark.”
She sprang, arcing out of the water like a rainbow, and I clung to her back as she flowed under me. She plucked the shadowman from the bowsprit with a bone-shaking crunch. Her sides convulsing under my legs, the drakon swallowed. With a splash her head hit the water on the other side of Victorianos’s bow.
The world plunged back into twilight, just in time for me to see the ocean rushing toward me. My stomach lurched and I took a last frantic breath.
I sank.
And sank.
I knew nothing.
After a long while, it came to me that I was not dead. I thought I might be breathing, or at least bubbles flowed out of my nose. I tried to keep count of the seconds as I drifted down, but it was like trying to grasp the wind in my hand.
I gave up and let myself float.
Beams of light shafted through the murky water, lending it a turquoise color. I couldn’t see the source of the light, precisely. Maybe it was all around me.
How had I come to be here? I couldn’t remember.
Something brushed my leg. I thrashed in panic, until I saw the yellow-and-black-striped body of a fish flitting away into the darkness. A second fish came to investigate, weaving about me.
I swatted at my billowing shirt, trying to see where I’d been shot. The bullet had torn a ragged chunk from my flesh. Hesitantly I touched the pale, clammy skin around the hole, too squeamish to stick my finger in it. No trail of blood curled through the water.
Perhaps I was dead. The colors of the sea and the fish reminded me of my dream about Mrs. Singer, the drowned wherryman’s wife. Perhaps it had been a true dream, a foretelling of my own fate.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was in a city.
I sat on top of a great tower, the ruins of ancient buildings spread out below me. Draped in seaweed and decorated with barnacles, some of the structures had toppled, the wooden beams that once formed their bones rotted away. The white stone remained, rounded smooth by time and water. Fish flitted in and out of the windows, and a hunk of bright coral grew in the middle of what had once been a road.
A whole city, at the bottom of the ocean.
Beside me stood a heron. I blinked in surprise. The heron didn’t look as if it was worried about breathing any more than I was. It stood on the tower wall on one spindly leg, with the other one tucked up into its feathers. Its beady eyes held steady on me.
“I’m imagining this,” I told it.
The heron spoke with a woman’s voice. “Why do you think so?”
“Because I was shot in the heart. I’m either having fever dreams or I’m dead.”
“Laughter. That isn’t where your heart is.”
“How would you know? You aren’t human.”
“Aren’t I?” it asked. Which annoyed me, because obviously it was a heron.
“Don’t you know what you are?” I demanded, bubbles tumbling out of my mouth.