Silent Hall (4 page)

Kelina looked down at the jellyfish, that sacred symbol of Karassa, and shrugged. “I say they're headed to the island for their mistress' festival. See, they're all drifting shorewards.”

Kelina could have been right. Now that Phaedra looked, the jelly she had spotted was truly only one among many, all drifting in toward the island with the tide. But she still wanted to believe that the Goddess had blessed her journey.

The fellow with the crossbow shared her relief, anyway. Once the dock had fallen out of sight, his posture relaxed and his expression grew less tense.

The ragged girl had the opposite reaction. Now that the fishing boat was on the open water, the girl doubled over her bundle, shuddering and mumbling to herself. Poor girl, thought Phaedra. By the looks of her she had never had a decent meal in her life, let alone a bath. That bundle of hers probably held all of her worldly possessions. At least so Phaedra thought, until she noticed it moving.

As if in reaction to the boat's motion, the bundle had begun to wriggle agitatedly. Great Gods, what did the girl have in there? She had not been mumbling to herself, Phaedra realized now: she had been whispering to whoever was under that blanket, trying to calm him or her down! Phaedra looked around, afraid to say anything but desperate to see if others had noticed what she had. Hunter was still gazing out to sea, but Criton had definitely noticed. He eyed the bundle curiously, saying nothing. The fellow with the crossbow hadn't seen it yet, but then whatever was hidden under the blanket lurched against his leg, and he cried out in surprise.

At the noise, the thing under the blanket finally freed itself with a bark and a growl that startled even Hunter out of his reverie. The ragged girl tried to pull the blanket back over the animal, but it was too late: her dog was free. Oh Gods no, not a dog! A wolf!

Kelina screamed, and the boy with the crossbow fell against her in his attempt to get away from the beast. The wolf looked at them and snarled. Hunter came around the mast, trying to draw his sword, but his arm collided with the mast and stopped in mid-gesture. The wolf leapt at him and the two fell against the side of the little boat, with Criton clinging desperately to his box to avoid falling overboard as the boat listed from side to side.

The boy with the crossbow tried to rise to his feet to load his weapon, but the boat's movement threw him back down into Kelina. With a cry and a splash, the old woman tumbled backward into the water. Phaedra screamed and reached for her hand, but now the boat listed the other way, lifting her away from her nursemaid even as Kelina began to sputter and sink. Gods, she could not swim!

By the time the boat rebalanced, Kelina was well out of reach. Phaedra cried and shrieked for the fisherman to turn them around, but he must have been too distracted by the wolf to hear her. The wind grew stronger, stinging Phaedra's eyes and pulling the boat swiftly away. Soon Kelina had disappeared entirely from view.

Phaedra collapsed against the side of the boat, sobbing. One moment Kelina had been sitting beside her, and the next moment she was gone. How could it be so simple, so easy to lose someone? Kelina had been everything to her: her wet nurse, her teacher, her constant companion. And she wouldn't even have been on this godsforsaken boat if it hadn't been for Phaedra.

What would she say to her parents? No, she knew they wouldn't blame her. She wasn't even sure how much they would care, and that only made the grief grow heavier within her. Kelina's sons had left to make their fortunes back before Phaedra even knew how to speak – Phaedra was the only person in the world who would miss her.

If Phaedra did not make it safely to Atuna, nobody would care that Kelina hadn't made it either. She had to survive this, for her nursemaid's sake if not her own. She pushed her sadness down deep inside her, saving it for later. For now, she had to be strong.

She opened her eyes. It took her a moment to register what she saw. The ragged girl had somehow managed to pull the wolf off Hunter, who had since risen to his feet and drawn his sword. The fisherman must have gotten involved at some point, because he was sitting back against the tiller and bleeding from his left leg. His hand was clutching a bloody knife. The boy with the crossbow had loaded his weapon and was aiming it uncertainly in the wolf's direction, but the ragged girl was in his way. She and the wolf were pressed up against the box of tackle, which Criton had vacated. The girl was spreading her arms wide to protect the animal from harm.

“No,” she was crying. “Leave him alone!”

Hunter made to advance on the wolf, but the girl shrieked again and he stopped. The animal was crouching behind her, alternating between whimpers and growls. It had been injured, Phaedra realized. Then she noticed Criton.

He was crouching on the prow, clinging to the mast with his claws. Claws? Yes. Razor sharp, four-fingered claws sprouting from flesh covered in shining golden scales all the way up his forearms, fading back into skin past the elbow. Phaedra suppressed a scream. When would the horror of this voyage end?

The boat rocked. The fisherman dropped his knife to steady the tiller, still swearing and clutching his bleeding leg with the other hand. The easterly wind that had risen up when Kelina was lost blew mercilessly against the sail, driving them ever onward.

“Wicked man,” the ragged girl cursed at the fisherman. “Wicked man!”

None of the men knew how to talk to this girl; they would only make the situation more dangerous. Phaedra rose unsteadily to her feet.

“What's your name?” she asked the girl.

The ragged girl looked suspicious, but Phaedra spread her arms and repeated her question. The girl seemed to take some time to think about it, as if she had not considered the subject before. “Ban-doo,” she said finally, with authority.

Phaedra had never heard of such a name, but she thought it best to go along. “Bandu,” she repeated soothingly. “I'm Phaedra. And this is Criton, and Hunter, and… do you have a name?”

The youth with the crossbow looked startled. “Narky,” he said.

“Yes,” Phaedra continued, “Bandu, this is Narky. Does your wolf have a name?”

The girl nodded vigorously. “He is Four-foot, and he is good. Not wicked. Good.”

“Like hell he is!” the fisherman spat.

“Four-foot is good!” the girl shouted at him. “You are wicked! It's not his fault he doesn't like being on your leaf. Everybody wants to hit him!”

Bandu's grasp of language was tentative, Phaedra realized. Where had this girl been living?

“Bandu,” she said. “Nobody wants to hit Four-foot. They're just afraid of him, because he's big and has sharp teeth, and he jumped on Hunter. Can you control him? Can you prevent – can you make him not bite them?”

“Four-foot only bites wicked people,” Bandu asserted, pretty outrageously. “I talk to him only if you throw sharp things away.”

Behind Phaedra, Hunter snorted. “Not likely.”

“You don't need to throw your sword away,” Phaedra snapped at him. “Just sheath it, for Karassa's sake!”

Kelina had always said that it didn't do for a girl to be so forceful, but at least in this case, she had been wrong. Hunter blinked at her and slid his sword into its sheath.

“That God-cursed thing bit me!” the fisherman protested.

Phaedra turned to glare at him. “Well, it looks like you stabbed it, so I think you're even. Just sail your boat and shut up!”

The man stared at her, but he didn't argue. “Give me a hand,” he said to the boy called Narky. “No, just help me bind my leg. Obviously none of you know a damn thing about sailing, or you'd stop rocking the damn boat every which way.”

Criton at least seemed to grasp what Phaedra was doing. “I have never seen a wolf before,” he said to Bandu, trying to placate her. His hands were an ordinary shape again, which for a moment made Phaedra doubt what she had seen. But the mast still had claw marks on it.

“I'm sorry if we frightened it,” Phaedra said. “It frightened us.”

The ragged girl put an arm around her wolf. “Nobody frightens Four-foot,” she said. “He just doesn't like water. When my kind try to hit him, he gets angry.”

Phaedra nodded. “Of course. I didn't mean to insult him by saying he was afraid. I hope he's not offended.”

Bandu seemed to take this at face value, and turned to whisper to her wolf. After a few moments of listening to the animal's incoherent growling, she announced that Four-foot was not insulted. Poor girl. What kind of life must she have had?

“When we reach Atuna,” Hunter said, mostly to Bandu, “I would be happy to buy lodging for us all. Atuna is famous for its inns. If you'd be willing to leave your wolf outside the city, you could have a proper bed with silk sheets and pillows.”

“Pillows?” Bandu repeated uncertainly. She did not seem to recognize the word.

Phaedra let out a breath and looked to the growing shoreline ahead. The danger seemed to have passed. She fell back onto the bench and put her head in her hands.

Behind them, Tarphae sank into the distance.

O
nce the fisherman's
boys were settled in the otherwise empty kitchens, Lord Tavener set out at a run for the festival of Karassa. He hated being late, but what could he have done? The Oracle had been very clear, and everyone knew it was unwise to ignore a prophecy.

The fires had already been lit by the time Tav made it to the square. Commonfolk made room for him as he pressed forward toward the altar – as the king's champion, he was to make the second sacrifice. King Kestan was relieved to see him: the bulls were already being brought forward. Any later, and it would have been a bad omen.

There was tension in the air as the High Priest of Karassa said the preliminary prayers before sacrifice and handed the knife to Kestan. Tav tried not to breathe so heavily. He always felt nervous on holidays, and today was worse than usual. It came from being so close to the Goddess, from knowing that Her attention was on the island and its people, and it was worse because he was unable to focus on his duties. He had just sent his beloved son off into the world.

The king's bull stared at him through its right eye. Tav coughed nervously. The king approached and put one hand on its head, then turned to face the heavens. “O Karassa,” he began, “watch over us as we…”

The bull collapsed. The knife hadn't even touched it, but it fell lifeless to the ground between Tav and the king. There were gasps in the crowd, and Tav's chest constricted as he stared down at the lifeless bull. What was happening?

There was a gurgle behind him, and he turned to see his son Kataras vomiting onto the ground. It was seawater – there were even bits of seaweed in it. Tav tried to breathe, but couldn't. His chest was too heavy, too full of saltwater and sand and kelp, and as he tried to scream, water poured out of his mouth and soaked his clothes. He fell to his knees and the crowd around him did the same, all drowning together in the warm summer air. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe! His lungs were burning with the salt and the strain of trying to expel water that would never run out, never leave his chest clear. O Gods, why? What had gone wrong?

The water kept coming, kept bursting out of his mouth, and he felt himself slipping away into blackness. In his final, delirious moment, he saw Hunter on his boat, sailing away to safety. He died with Hunter's name on his lips.

G
alanea spent
the hour after Criton's departure trying to compose her thoughts and decide what she would say when her husband came home. But her mind was blank, and she knew it didn't especially matter what she said – he wouldn't be listening to her anyway. What would he do to her when he found out?

She knew she should have left here with Criton years ago. If she had only been strong enough, she could have left this prison of a house, this prison of an island, and started over again. It would have been better for Criton. It probably would have been better for her.

Tears came flooding into her eyes again. Letting Criton go meant admitting that she had been living all these years in a prison of her own creation, that she could have walked out the door any time she wanted to and never come back. Whatever her husband did to her, she thought she might deserve it. How many times had she let him beat their son, let him torture their beautiful boy with the golden scales? She could have protected him, but she hadn't, and she had failed to act out of the worst kind of selfishness – the kind that made your life worse instead of better.

She had stayed out of fear, prioritized that fear over her son's safety and her own. There was no excuse for what her husband had done, but she had excused him in her mind because it was easier than admitting she could have done something about it.

She could have changed her appearance again, to something completely different and new. She could have left years ago, walked right past him on the street with Criton swaddled tight, and he would never have known. But she had been too afraid of change, and too afraid of her own magic. And she had foolishly thought she deserved to suffer for what she was, and for escaping her family's fate and surviving when the rest of her people had died.

Her lungs filled with cold water so suddenly that she fell straight to the floor, coughing and convulsing. As she struggled to breathe, her body rebelled against years of control and went back to its hereditary deformities. Yet where was the fire that had always terrified her? The fire that had caused her so much pain and suffering when Criton was still in the house, and that she had thought for years would doom her? It was dead, extinguished. After years of wishing she could put it out, now she coughed up water and wished that it still burned inside her, anything rather than this terrible sloshing portal to the sea.

Her claws scraped against the floor where she lay drowning, but her breath had been stolen by the water that poured from her mouth. In her final moments she thought back to the way her husband had held Criton's head in that bucket, punishing him just for being himself and being sick.

Was this her punishment?

N
arky's father
had almost drowned once, as a boy. It had haunted his nightmares his entire life, that feeling of breathing thick heavy water instead of air. He had moved away from the sea, surrounded himself with pasture lands, and now here he was, drowning in the village square. But this was impossible, it was ridiculous!
You're dreaming again,
his mind scolded him.
Wake up.

The flames of Karassa's sacrifice died on the altar, while all about it the bodies of the villagers were strewn here and there, all gaping in horror at this impossible thing that was happening to them.
Wake up!
If you don't wake up, you may die in real life!

Why wouldn't he wake? It usually didn't last this long, not to the point where his bowels and bladder gave up, where his head began to cloud and he forgot who he was. It never lasted this long.

Wake up!
his mind screamed.