Saltwater lapped at the hull, dark and patient and hungry.
Titus Binkovsky groaned and squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, but the morning sun forced its golden light relentlessly through each shutter of wrinkled skin. Titus’s nose still hosted the scents of wine and girl and sweat from the night previous, competing now with ocean salt and whiffs of piss and vomit.
He threw out one hand, reaching for the nearest bottle of…it didn’t matter what, he just needed something to wet his throat, but instead of cool glass he found himself with a handful of ample naked breast. That’s worth opening my eyes for, he decided, and pried his lids up.
The breast in question belonged to—he knew her name, it would come to him—Rayna. One of the girls his brother Maki had brought with him. Titus couldn’t remember if he’d sampled Rayna’s charms the night before or not.
He sat up with some effort and, once his head had steadied, tried to take stock of the Gray Stag’s situation. Empty bottles clinked and rolled around every square meter of the yacht’s deck, animated by the motion of the waves. His friends lay on the bare wood, emptied of their strength and lust, every bit as drained as the wine bottles cast off among them.
Rayna shifted on the deck. A tiny, somewhat endearing snore escaped her lips. Her thick, black hair had fallen across her eyes, which Titus figured was what kept the sun from waking her up.
“I feel like Dragon’s ball crust,” Maki said from behind him, and Titus twisted around to see his brother sitting just inside one of the doors to the wheelhouse. “Also, quit groping my girlfriend.”
Titus scooted the meter and a half it took to put him in a tiny measure of shade, leaning against the wheelhouse. Kirker lay right out at the prow, curled up with a brown-skinned, red-headed girl whose name Titus didn’t think he’d ever learned. Saerg half-lay, half-sat, slumped against a rail post with Sheeli’s head in his lap. Both of them were awake now. Saerg played with Sheeli’s hair as she grinned up him.
“Look at those two,” Titus said, softly enough that Saerg wouldn’t hear him. “How long have they been together? Ten years?”
Maki grunted. “Since Saerg first grew fuzz on his balls.”
“You’re awfully ball-centered this morning.”
Maki had found a mostly-full bottle of wine somewhere and took a long pull off of it. “I’ll tell you what’s true. Together ten years or not, you know who’s been getting his cock wet on the regular? Like, whenever he wants it, no matter what?”
Titus shrugged. “Saerg.”
“Yeah. Just remember that, the next time you’re hard up for some tail.”
“As if either one of us is ever going to be hard up for tail again.”
Maki grinned. “Well. True.”
Titus ran his hand along the deep, lustrous wood of the deck. Their father had accepted a new position in Caulspring the previous autumn—a position that brought with it prestige, respect, and more money than the Binkovsky family had ever dreamed of. “Wise to be in the Cathedral’s favor, that’s a fact.”
Maki got unsteadily to his feet. “No shit, that’s a fact. You think we’d have this fucking boat if Dad was still stacking numbers at that termite-infested sawmill? The answer is no.” He turned in a slow circle. “Hey. Uh…”
Titus cranked his neck to look up at his brother. “Something wrong?”
Maki’s voice lost its wine-fueled mellow. “Get everybody up. You’d better get everybody up.”
Titus lurched to his feet, and when he saw the whites all the way around his brother’s deep brown irises his stomach tightened. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Maki made a broad gesture with one trembling hand. “Where’s the shore?”
Titus’s world snapped into crystal focus as he peered in every direction.
There was nothing but water.
“Get them all up,” Titus said, his words shaking as badly as his brother’s hand. “Get them all up now.”
He could hear Maki shouting at their friends, but the sound of the voices grew muffled and distant, masked by the frantic roaring in his ears as he scrambled to the stern. The Gray Stag’s anchor line disappeared into the water, exactly as he’d left it the previous evening at sunset, but when he took the great rope in his hands and tugged, it moved easily.
Titus Binkovsky came very close to losing control of his bowels.
They’d taken the Gray Stag out into the bay the night before, the lights of Caulspring watching over them from the northwest, nothing more than a couple of fortunate brothers wanting to show off their new yacht for a few friends.
Wanting to show off. The voice of Titus’s father came to him, the chastising tone, the warnings against flaunting the family’s newfound affluence. I’m sorry, Papa, Titus wished he could say. Fractured thoughts sought out the Great Silver Dragon, begging for help, begging for deliverance. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!
He pulled and pulled, dragged the heavy line over the gunwale, and no more than three or four meters came up before it ended in a ragged, frayed mess. Titus was holding the end of the anchor line in both hands when Maki and Kirker and Saerg came back to the stern, Sheeli and Rayna and the other two girls trailing after them, and when Maki saw Titus’s face, all the color drained out of his own features.
“I was supposed to get the anchor line changed out,” Maki said, almost too softly to hear. “It needed—needed changing, it was on the schedule, I was supposed to do it, I—”
Titus tried to talk. It didn’t work, and he had to swallow hard and get his breathing under control before he could make any sound at all. Finally, in a soft, tiny voice that chilled him even as he spoke the words, he said, “I think we’re past the Buoys.”
Sheeli screamed.
A girl whose name he didn’t know burst into tears.
A fragment of a children’s rhyme came to him as he blinked away tears of his own.
The deep, deep water will take your breath
The deep, deep water holds only death
Kirker said, “Get the sails, get the sails up, we’ve got to get the sails up,” but Titus had already thought of that, and didn’t make a move toward the mast because there was no wind.
It was Saerg who first went to the rail and looked over. Down at the water, down into the water, and when he turned his head and met Titus’s eyes, Titus knew.
By then Kirker had also realized how still the air was, and he ran up and down the Gray Stag’s length, shouting, “Oars, there have to be oars, we can still get back to land! We can row, all of us, we can do it if we work together, we can’t be that far out!”
Maki had joined Saerg at the railing. As Kirker passed him, Maki caught his arm and dragged him to a halt, and pointed at the water below. “Oars won’t help,” Maki said, and the cold, bleak words stopped Kirker cold.
Titus went to his brother’s side. He didn’t want to gaze down at the glassy water—at what might be lurking beneath the surface. Waiting. Watching. When he finally summoned the will to follow his friends, some dim, distant part of his mind obscenely grasped at the smallest shred of hope.
An elegant, streamlined head emerged from the waves, staring back up at the hapless humans on the yacht. Ivory in color, sleek and hairless, fashioned so as to knife elegantly and gracefully through the water, yet with a domed skull that left no doubt as to the intelligence lurking within. Larger than some of the river dolphins Titus had seen, yet…not that large. Not a…not a monster.
Despite the silver eyes that shimmered and flashed in the unforgiving sunlight.
“It’s not doing anything,” Sheeli whispered. “It’s just watching us.”
Rayna clutched Maki’s arm. “Maybe it’s not—not like—maybe it’s not angry?”
Titus wanted to echo her. Desperately wanted to believe that the creature observing them felt nothing more than curiosity.
Then, below the creature at the surface, something moved.
Something immense.
Something that also bore eyes of silver.
A raucous chorus overhead made Titus look skyward, and when he saw the gulls and pelicans circling the Gray Stag, the hope that had struggled in his heart lost its strength and died.
Those Who Dwell Beneath the Waves had come.
Sheeli screamed again as the sea boiled around them, and the last thing Titus saw, rising up beneath the hull, was the gaping, tooth-filled maw of a vast ocean-born god.
CHAPTER 2
Marshall Bendt remembered struggling to describe Caulspring to his parents the first year of his apprenticeship. Part of his lessons involved reading and writing—a skill required of the Empire’s citizens, but to which he had never been exposed in his home village—and his instructor had encouraged him to write letters back to the tiny, mud-encrusted hamlet of his birth.
People call this city “the Bloody Forest,” Marshall had written, a year into his new tutelage. It’s the oldest city in the Empire, and all the buildings are made of brick or stone or both. All of them! I haven’t seen a single building inside the city walls made of wood, and all the roofs are stone, too. I know Maree’s going to think I’m making up stories, but it’s true, everything I’m telling you. The city walls are stone, but they’ve got red bricks built into them in patterns. I climbed up to the top of the tallest tower I could find, and that wasn’t the tallest tower in the city, just the one they’d let me up in, and I couldn’t count all the buildings. It really is like a whole forest of bricks and stone blocks, and even the streets are made of stone, and there’s a waterfall right beside the Emperor’s Palace, you can see that from anywhere, and the river goes through the city and all the bridges over it are stone and the bridges have roofs just like the houses and churches.
Marshall had kept up writing letters back to his family for the first two years. Then, in the spring of the third year, a Cathedral soldier came and gave him back the latest letter he’d written, and told him that his family and the rest of the village had been slaughtered in a Skahna raid.
That was the last letter Marshall ever wrote. He fell out of love with the written word that day, but it didn’t seem to matter much to the Imperial tailor’s office. Numbers reigned there.
Forty-one years later, Marshall Bendt had become the Imperial Tailor himself, and as such had been charged with outfitting the latest group of visitors to Caulspring with proper clothing for an audience with the Emperor. The closest he’d come to writing anything of substance in four decades was the notes he always took on the chalk-slate he habitually carried with him.
Marshall polished the slate as he walked along one of the glossy stone corridors of the Palace’s south wing, preparing himself to jot down measurements and fabric requirements. He tapped the comforting shape of the coiled measuring twine in his pocket.
One of the two bronze-clad soldiers standing outside the door to the parlor bowed crisply and worked the latch. Marshall pushed the heavy door inward, drew a deep breath to introduce himself, and—
For a moment, just a heartbeat, as his voice clenched in his throat, he forgot to breathe. No, more than that—he forgot how to breathe.
Everything Marshall thought he knew about tailoring, about beauty, about the world itself, changed in a heartbeat.
A creature of breathtaking grace stood before him, the kind of grace that the coarse bronze-inlaid leather armor could not hide, the kind that a tailor longed to see.
One hundred ninety centims tall if she was a millim, though he’d have to measure to be certain. Broad shoulders, but not too broad. Modest curves at the bust and the hips, legs as long as dreams. Right behind those stunning proportions, crowding up in his head now that he’d taken a few seconds to think, were her deep violet skin, her eyes of brilliant yellow gold, and the tasteful, jet-black horns protruding from her forehead—he’d have to take those into account, of course, especially with a hood or a veil—
“You’ve struck the fucker speechless, Nysska,” someone declared, and Marshall had to drag his attention away from the violet-skinned goddess to acknowledge that there were indeed other people in the room. He looked them over perfunctorily. All in the same unremarkable bronze-and-leather. All human, which just in the last few seconds he’d come to find terribly boring.
One dark-skinned, straight-backed man with a Commander’s band around his head; another man, this one small and pale with long, snow-white hair and a forked white beard. A dark-skinned woman who, before today, would have taken every bit of his interest. Now he found her athletic build and shorn-off hair and high cheekbones ordinary, her ample bosom and full hips problematic, the gleaming silver runes embedded in her irises nothing more than a distraction.
The dark-skinned man said, “We are the Ninth Crucible, reporting as ordered. I’m Commander Raoul Cullen. This is Keeper Percy Bitters, Sensor Camble Delakroy, and—” He nodded toward the goddess. “—Enforcer Nysska Stonegate.”
Marshall succeeded in clearing his throat. “I am, uh, if I may—pardon me—” He took a deep breath. His lungs felt creaky. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Imperial Master Tailor Marshall Bendt. I—”
Marshall broke off when he felt something touch his ankle. He looked down and found himself staring into a pair of silver eyes—not more glimmering argonium runes like Sensor Delakroy’s, but pure, natural, true silver. The sight made his balls tighten. The eyes belonged to the biggest cat he’d ever seen, easily as big as many of the stray dogs that roamed the streets of Caulspring.
A seraphic animal. A seraphic blood lynx.
Marshall had been around seraphic animals before. They had made him intensely nervous then, and continued to do so now. He said, “Uh…good kitty?” and rummaged through his pockets. “I might have a treat in here somewhere…?”
The cat made a noise that sounded like Hmph and walked away from him. Marshall watched as it joined another large, silver-eyed cat at the other end of the room, and he realized the second animal had been there the whole time, sitting perfectly still.
“Look, Mister Bendt,” said the small, pale man—Keeper Percy Bitters, Marshall reminded himself. “If you’re going to do this measuring thing, could you please get the fuck on with it? We’ve been waiting here for half an hour, none of us have been fed yet, and if I don’t get my kitties some meat here shortly they’re going to make off with a small child.”
Marshall fumbled the measuring twine out of his pocket. “Yes, of course!” He dropped the chalk, scrambled to pick it up, and then almost dropped the slate. “Please forgive me! With whom shall I start?” Marshall knew he should be directing questions like that to the Crucible’s Commander, but simply could not take his eyes off Nysska Stonegate. Nysska Stonegate. He said the name silently a few more times.
“Let me guess,” the goddess said, speaking for the first time as she shrugged off her heavy bronze-inlaid jacket. “I’m the first sethyd you’ve met.”
She spoke Plainish with an accent he’d never heard before, a lilting, husky melody, and Marshall felt himself begin to sweat. Sethyd. He’d been aware of the term, of course, but had never heard it spoken by one of them. “True, I’ve not had the pleasure—er, not been tasked to—it’s not been my duty before now, no. To fashion clothing for a, a sethyd.”
Out of the jacket, Nysska Stonegate wore one of the Cathedral’s standard-issue long-sleeved shirts, tucked into a pair of bronze-inlaid brown leather trousers. The trousers fit her snugly enough, but the shirt was too baggy, no doubt sewn for a man of her height but without her proportions.
Gathering his nerve, Marshall said, “Would you mind—Enforcer, if I may assume you have the standard undergarment—what I’m trying to ask is if you wouldn’t mind, could you please remove your shirt, so that I may be as accurate as possible?”
Her flame-yellow eyes glittered and narrowed.
Raoul Cullen stepped up beside the towering sethyd woman. The top of his head reached her ears. “Just do what he wants so we can get this over with.”
Nysska Stonegate sighed and said a word in a language Marshall had never heard before, though her tone made it obvious what she meant by it. He watched as she unbuttoned and stripped off the shirt, revealing the standard-issue camisole beneath it, and he tried to keep his breathing even as he took in the long, graceful lines of her perfectly toned arms. My designs will fit this woman better than any clothing I’ve ever touched.
“This won’t take a minute,” Marshall said, and grabbed a small wooden stool from beside the door, measuring twine stretched out and ready to go.
* * *
Ninety minutes later, after the Imperial tailor had taken all of their measurements and left—and after the members of the Ninth Crucible had been moved to a chamber adjacent to a small kitchen and fed a decent meal—Nysska Stonegate stood in a room with marble floors, stacked-stone walls, a waist-level trough with a stream of clear water running through it, and six narrow doors in a wall behind her. She had just finished washing her hands in the trough when one of the narrow doors opened and Cam Delakroy emerged, straightening her clothing.
Nysska didn’t turn. A long, horizontal window above the wash-trough looked out over the roofs of Caulspring, and she kept her eyes focused on the most distant one.
Cam made her way to Nysska’s side at the trough and washed her hands just as Nysska had.
“How happy are you to have indoor plumbing again?” Cam asked. “And how miserable were those last two villages? I don’t mind so much when we’re out on the trail, but the Empire’s had, what, three hundred years? You’d think they would’ve made this kind of accommodation standard by now.”
“Every home on Patrinamonto had indoor plumbing. It was the first thing I learned to do without when we had to flee.” Nysska turned and leaned against the trough. Folded her arms across her chest and let her chin drop. “I don’t want to talk about indoor plumbing.”
Cam put her hand on Nysska’s arm. “You can still change your mind. You can take it to Raoul—something like this should come from a Crucible’s commander anyway.”
Nysska pursed her lips. Exhaled softly. “No. No, we stick to what we discussed. You know nothing about it. None of you do.” She turned her head, yellow-flame eyes meeting silver. “None of you. Promise me.”
“I already promised you.”
“Promise me again.”
Cam moved in front of her and gently unfolded Nysska’s arms. Moved into her embrace. “It’s going to be all right.”
“You don’t know that. There’s no way you can know that.”
Cam traced the curve of Nysska’s lips with a light fingertip. “Whatever happens, I’m here for you. You know that.”
Nysska kissed Cam’s fingers. “You’re only saying that because there’s a decent chance my headless body will hang from a fork in the city center tomorrow.”
Cam’s eyes narrowed. It made the silver of the argonium runes shine just a hair brighter. “You’re bringing him valuable information. Information you’re sharing of your own free will. You’ll probably be rewarded.”
“And if I weren’t? If I’d decided to keep it to myself?”
Cam’s body stiffened. “But you didn’t.”
“So pretend I had.”
“What’s the point?” Cam pushed away from her. “Why even bring that up?”
“What if I said, ‘Yes, Cam, I’ll tell the Emperor about the sethyd plot to overthrow the Empire—on the condition that you only use your runes when you have no other choice.”
“I would say that’s a really shitty thing to do.”
“Cam…”
“You said you understood. I explained—”
“The runes are still poison. They’re still killing you.”
Cam jabbed a finger toward Nysska’s nose. “Do not fucking cut me off. I told you why I made my decision, and you said you understood. I—” She made a quiet growling sound in her throat. “You want me defenseless, just so I might make it to forty before the runes take me?”
“You’re hardly defenseless without them.”
“I’m blind without them. Great fucking Dragon, how many times do I have to say this? It doesn’t matter how well I’ve adapted if I can’t see an archer twenty meters away! If I do what you ask—knowing what I know—” Cam sighed, a long, raspy, exasperated sound. “Ten or twelve years versus however long it is before we get ambushed again. Take your pick.”
Nysska opened her mouth, but then closed it again. She had almost said the words she wanted to say.
I can protect you.
But she’d said that to Cam once before, and the conversation had gone poorly. Poorly enough that she didn’t want to risk it again.
A knock sounded at the door, and Nysska did her best not to look relieved. Cam called out, “What do you want?”
An attendant’s polite voice answered, muffled by the door’s heavy wood. “Master Bendt’s people have brought your clothes.”
Cam peered up at her, and loaded up a single word with a barrage of emotion. “Well?”
“Well,” Nysska answered quietly. “I suppose we should go get dressed.”
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