Child of a Hidden Sea (36 page)

The octopus snagged her again:
Come on.

Okay,
she thought. She was eighty feet down.
It better be close, Lassie
.

Ninety.

A hundred feet.

A hundred and ten.

She'd been deeper, but not alone, not in unfamiliar waters.

Now the octopus stretched out again, rippling again. Threat?

She turned a slow circle, shining her light in every direction. Nothing.

Then she kicked, swimming closer to the root ball.

Oh no.

This corpse wasn't wrapped up. It wasn't exactly human either.

The body was twenty feet long and combined human and reptilian characteristics. It had the upper body of a woman, but instead of legs her hips merged into a long, black, reptilian tail. It—she—reminded Sophie of the iguanas she'd just seen on the surface.

Another magically transformed person. And those were shackles on its wrists. Another slave?

One of these may have been towing the rowboat,
she thought. It was about the right length, and what remained of its muscles looked bulky enough. A tail that long would make it a strong swimmer. She had no gills that Sophie could see.

It had been dead for a while.

Under the body's breasts hung a combination of purse and lockbox, a heavy container affixed with heavy, criss-crossing straps that buckled across her chest. Seaweed and vines were twisted around it; the otters were doing their best to make the body, and her bag, a permanent part of their makeshift keel.

Was the dead woman in cahoots with the octopus? Sophie tried to reckon whether Parrish would have told her if slaves were involved in hiding Yacoura. He'd only mentioned the octopus, who was currently sitting on the box, caressing it, probing the lock with its tentacles.

Don't guess: observe.
She shone the light up and down, examining the dead woman.

The body was wearing a heavy tunic and a helmet, one shaped like those little skullcap motorcycle helmets. It had been pulled askew, its strap stretched somewhat over the face, whose eyes were already gone.

The distortion of the strap had tightened it around the dead woman's jaw … and there was something caught in her mouth.

Sophie let her camera drift on its tether for a second so she could switch the light to her left hand. Using the dagger Tonio had given her, she cut the helmet's strap, letting the helmet drift away. An otter darted in immediately, claiming it for the raft.

The body's mouth relaxed, saving Sophie the grim task of prying it open, and revealing enlarged, pointed teeth. As the lips gaped, the sea washed out the remnants of bloody foam and something else—a rotten, rubbery hunk of flesh with suckers—part of a tentacle.

Ah ha!
Sophie thought.
So maybe you tried to take the heart from Lassie here. You did take the heart. And she fought back. Poor woman. I hope I'm wrong about you being a slave; I hope you had a choice.

If one of these things had towed her rowboat to the raft, it wouldn't be far away.

So stop fooling around.
She got to work on the entangling vines and then unbuckled the lockbox, taking it slow.

No rush, don't rush, do it right the first time. Could the octopus really have killed something this big?

She'd have to hope so. There was another out here, at least one.

Probably not more than one, right? I mean, Lassie couldn't hold off twenty of them
.

Where was it? Why hadn't it come down here and got the lockbox while Lassie was fetching Sophie?

Maybe Yacoura's not in here.
The chest strap came loose and she took the bag, turning her back on the body before tackling the assortment of smaller straps and locks. There was a velvet bag inside. She snuck a peek, and caught a quick glimpse of spellscrip. A sense of cold power roiled through her as she touched it, a indifferent and deadly force—the power of earthquakes, avalanches, indifferent crushing deaths. The octopus unfurled, caressing it … and then let it go.

Okay, Bram, you're just about saved.
Sophie wrapped the inscription, feeling more than a little relief as that feeling of sheer force abated. She forced the inscription into her wetsuit, tucking it between her breasts. It would, she hoped, be invisible.

As she pondered the question—why hadn't the other lizard-thing come for it?—she fiddled with the lockbox, rebuckling it, closing it up tight.

The corpse had no gills. Maybe the creatures couldn't function at this depth. Or maybe Lassie had done a good enough job of hiding the corpse that it didn't know where to look.

Either was plausible, as theories went.

If it's the depth, it'll be waiting farther up.

She clipped the lockbox to to her dive belt, checking twice to make sure it wasn't interfering with her scuba gear. Then she checked her dive computer. She'd been down here for forty-two minutes, at a hundred and ten feet.

Not great. She'd need two stops.

She did the circle again, shining the light up, down, around, and took a second to think through her ascent. She wanted to come up clear of the raft, and she needed to stop twice. Once at twenty feet, for two minutes—no big deal. But she'd have to sit at ten feet for over twenty minutes.

There was nobody to help her if she got decompression sickness—

—or attacked by half-human monsters.

Dive alone, die alone.
Bram's voice, in her head.

Well, she had Lassie, right? The octopus showed no sign of abandoning her.

Nothing for it—she couldn't just shoot up to the surface unless she wanted the bends. She would take it slow, photograph the root ball, shoot the diversity of life on the seaweed colony, maybe get a little otter footage too and keep her eyes peeled.

Right. Slow ascent to twenty feet. She kicked up, one two, leisurely rise. She checked the dive computer again, watched for monsters and nets.

She marveled at the root ball as she passed it. Its upper edge was at a depth of ninety feet, where the last streamers of seaweed were bound tightly into one another and there were bones and shells and even rocks stuck in round structure of dead vegetation. The otters swam around tending it, poking runaway bits back into the holes in a sort of ongoing reverse game of pick-up sticks.

It was an elegant, beaver-like feat of engineering. The ivy got going above on a piece of floating wreckage, the weeds started growing below. They used the ivy runners to tie in more and more biomass.

The more weeds it can support, the more life it attracts. The otters get shellfish, shelter, and all this stuff gets a nursery. The bones and heavy material wound in at the bottom provide minerals for the vegetation and weight to stabilize the raft. Anything that floats goes up top to keep it in the sun.

She could spend her whole life examining this thing, she thought. Despite Bram's predicament, she felt a wave of something like love.

The diversity of fish species taking shelter in the raft's shadow was enormous—not quite as impressive as what she'd find on a well-established coral reef, but she saw many of the same species, mixed in with animals that looked similar: batfish for sure, and goby. There was no coral and thus no parrotfish, but she saw more anemones, growing on the scavenged spars and on long shreds of torn, scavenged sail. And at least a few cleaner fish stations, she saw—thirty feet above her a ray wafted in place, getting its parasites munched away.

She took another look around for monsters, saw nothing, and checked her watch.

She spent two blessedly uneventful minutes at twenty feet, filming.

She'd just kicked up, making for ten feet, when the iguana-man made its appearance.

He appeared out of the black, coming from around the far side of the kelp braid, and the only reason he didn't just grab her on the first try was that she'd been watching for him. She twisted in the water, holding the light out in front of her, hoping the brightness right in his eyes would do something, anything.

Do you fight?
she remembered Cly asking.

No,
she'd said,
not at all.

The iguana-man seemed bigger than the dead woman below: He had the ballooning, overdeveloped upper body of a cartoon superhero, and his tail coiled and twisted powerfully, making him a streamlined and very fast swimmer. There was no chance Sophie could outpace him even if she didn't need to stay at this depth.

But the trick with the light worked, barely; she managed to dodge, and he was moving fast enough that he whirled past her with a rush of water and just the barest scrape of flesh against her foot.

Her fin went tumbling away—
there's a non-biodegradable present for the otters,
she thought, and sure enough one of the little opportunists was already diving after it, indifferent to her predicament.

She had a death grip on Tonio's knife. It was probably ridiculous, but what else could she do?

Not a fighter, not at all. Can't outrun it, can't break for the surface.
She mastered her breath, watching for opportunities, automatically stabilizing her depth at ten feet and noting the time.

Twenty-minute stop.

Bram, think of Bram. Gotta do this for Bram.

Her best chance was Lassie. The octopus had already killed one of them.

The iguana-man had got itself turned around and eased back toward her. And yes, by now the octopus was between them. It wasn't bothering to stretch or display this time, just waiting. It looked ridiculously small next to the bulk of the other creature.

But it must have killed the iguana-woman, and it had protected Yacoura once it got stuck there in the corpse's lockbox.

Sophie and the iguana-man stared at each other, connected by the beam of her LED spotlight, the octopus hanging between them.

Stand-off.
Could they stay this way for twenty minutes?

The iguana gestured at the lockbox.
Gimme.

Good. He thinks it's still in there.
She shook her head, raising the camera again and taking footage of it: face, helmet, tunic and the shackles on its wrists. At least there'd be a record of what had happened to her.

It gestured again.

No.
Sophie shook her head again, more vehemently.

It feinted toward her and the octopus moved, liquidly, to just outside of grabbing range. Sophie blew bubbles, just to make a noise. She didn't especially want Lassie drowning lizard-man, or getting killed by it. She tried to sign this out, gesturing down at the corpse, pointing at the octopus, then waving at it in a “clear off” gesture.

He bared his teeth, letting out a little air of his own, and this time when he lunged at her

—
oh, he's so fast!
—

—it turned out that grabbing for her was the feint. He reached out with one arm as the octopus unfurled, catching it near its head. By squeezing and keeping his arm extended, he was able to hold Lassie at arm's length as it stretched and groped ineffectually for his neck with the tips of its tentacles, encircling but failing to get enough muscle around his throat to strangle him.

Smirking, the iguana-man coiled his tail, coming for Sophie one-handed.

Guess you had a bit of time to think about how to deal with Lassie, after she killed your partner.

Sophie shut off her light, kicking as hard as she could for the braid of seaweed, whipping herself around it by tugging on an outstretched tendril of vegetation and clutching Tonio's little dagger with her other hand.

As her eyes adjusted, she saw the bulk of the iguana body, black, moving around the braid, his arm still outstretched. She edged around the braid again, keeping it between them, working to control her breathing. In, out, in, out, kick.

Oh no, he totally sees me. What the hell am I going to do?

A scaly hand closed around her ankle.

Sophie kicked for his face with her free leg. Her heel slid harmlessly off the biker helmet. The hand on her ankle tightened, squeezing. Pain shot through her ankle and shin. He was obviously strong enough to break the leg easily.

Instead, he twisted, trying to pull her close to his teeth—with his right hand occupied with holding Lassie at bay, he could hurt her but not manipulate her.

Sophie took a firmer grip on the dagger Tonio had given her, bending like a hairpin.

Move slow, move slow,
she told herself,
you've been injured before, don't screw this up, oww, he's going to snap my leg off!
She aimed the point of the dagger into the back of his shoulder. If she could just get him to unlock his elbow …

Her first attempt glanced off his arm—she'd been tentative, and his skin was tough.

The second time she made herself concentrate, exhale, and thrust.

It worked; the iguana-man's arm bent, creating enough slack for the octopus to improve its grip on his neck. He let go of her ankle and grabbed for Lassie with the other hand, trying to stave off strangulation. The pair of them, locked in struggle, slipped downward into the murk.

Ow, ow.
Pain sang up and down her leg. Sophie checked her depth—she'd sunk back down to fourteen.

They'd drifted closer to the raft as they struggled, bouncing through the tendrils and scraps of net at the heart of the underwater structure. She needed to remain at this depth, and she needed to get away from all these bits and pieces before her hoses got entangled. But if she swam clear of it, there would be nothing to hide her.

Even so, Sophie began swimming—clumsily, because she had no swim fins now, and her right leg was wrenched, hurting and uncooperative—for the clear water beyond the raft.

The struggle had attracted the otters' attention. They were swimming around, watching, clearly agitated by the threat to their structure.

She cleared the vines and other entanglements, turning in place, looking up, down, all around. There was no sign of the octopus or the iguana-man, her leg was throbbing, and—she realized, she was still clutching Tonio's knife.