Tales of Arilland (7 page)

Crews were mixed and booty was swapped, and then they were off in search of the next victim.

The second ship they burned. It was spectacular. She ran to the railing and held her hand out to the beautiful, live thing that danced on the sea as it consumed sails and timbers and bodies alike. She had seen candles and lamps, but this was a beast, wild and hot and bright as the sun. Hands grabbed at her clothes to keep her from falling over the rail, and they pinned her down when the magazine finally exploded, taking the rest of that ship’s crew with it.

On the third one, she found him.

The battle this time was a long one, and by the time Lawson brought her the captain of the other ship, he was half dead. She drank him anyway. And somewhere in the memories of this man was the someone she had been looking for.

She gasped when his face came to her. She drew back, her teeth disengaging from her meal, blood running down her chin and staining her dress. This man knew her lover. Not well, but he knew him. She tried to make sense of the jumble of images that flowed through her, but nothing connected. She searched his body for a sign, a hint, something. She found it on the smallest ring he wore, a gold band stamped with the crest she had traced over and over on the beach that day.

When Lawson returned, she pointed at herself and then held up the ring. He smiled and patted her on the head. “O’course ye can keep it, darlin’. Ye can ‘ave all the trinkets yer little ‘eart desires.”

He didn’t understand. How would she make him understand? She slid the ring over her red-tipped thumb. She would save it until she thought of a way.

The fourth ship was a long time coming.

She spent most of that time at the bow of the ship. The crew didn’t grumble much about having a woman on deck. Most of them apparently didn’t consider her a woman. Lawson made it plain that he enjoyed having her there. Word was getting around about Bloody Captain Lawson and the Siren. They struck fear in the hearts of men and made quite a profit as a result, so if anyone had disagreements, no one made mention of them.

Lawson called her their figurehead. It was an apt description, based on what she had seen on the prows of other ships. She would lean against the rail, arms spread, red hair trailing behind her in the breeze. She liked letting the wind slip through her fingers. It reminded her of home. The currents of air were not that different from the currents of water. Men did not have the freedom of movement that her kind enjoyed, but the principles were the same. They walked among it, breathed it in, let it give them life. It brought sounds and smells to them. They did not see it or think to taste it, but it was always there in them, touching them, surrounding them.

She stood there, day after day, until the salt encrusted her lips and her hair was a burnished orange. What little red appeared in the tips of her fingers had been burned there by the sun. The men avoided her and prayed hard for another ship. They tread lightly around the captain. No one wanted to be the Siren’s next meal.

Lawson finally bade her return to the stateroom, and she was too weak to disobey. The table was covered in maps and charts. She walked past them on the way to the bed and glanced down at the area Lawson was plotting. A symbol caught her eye, and she jumped back. She waved at Lawson. She pointed to herself, and to the ring around her thumb. She pointed to herself, and to the same symbol down on the map.

“There?” he asked her. “Ye want to go there? Why?”

She could not answer, so she just kept pointing to herself and the map.

“That’s ‘ome,” Lawson told her. “Where Molly is. I promised never to go back until I ‘ad a ship full o’riches. She deserves no less.” He shook his head. “No, darlin’, we can’t go there. Not yet.”

Frustrated, she closed her eyes. Disjointed thought flashes skipped through her mind. She tried to remember the man with the ring, tried to bring his soul to the surface. But it had been so long, and she was so weary…and there was a port…

Her eyes snapped open. She moved her finger on the map to an island just off the coast of the country bearing her lover’s symbol. She pointed at Lawson, and then stamped her finger back down on the map.

“There? What’s there?”

She threw her hands up in exasperation and scanned the room. She held up the medallion of her necklace to him.

“Gold?”

She nodded and kept searching. She found his knife on the table, picked it up, and then shook her head.

“Swords?”

She shook her head again.

“This?” He removed the pistol from his belt and held it out to her. She nodded emphatically.

He cocked his head and grinned. “Siren, if ye’re right about this, I’ll take ye anywhere in the world.” He strode out of the room and hollered to his first mate. “Hard to port, matey!”

“Cap’n?” the first mate asked.

Lawson hooked his thumbs in his belt. “We’re goin’ ‘ome.”

The greatest tale of Bloody Lawson and the Siren is the Massacre at Windy Port. Legend has it that their ship, cloaked in dark magic, slipped by the watchmen unnoticed. Once docked the crew cut a gruesome swath through the town, led by Lawson and his Sea Witch. Lawson brandished a rapier in one hand, a pistol in the other. The Siren, dressed in fine burgundy velvet, marched through town before him, seducing men to their grisly deaths. Her eyes were as black and cold as a shark’s, her hair a mass of ebony fire waving about her. They left none living in their wake, took what they wanted and stole back into the night as invisibly as they had arrived.

Like most legends, not a word of it was true.

They sailed into Windy Port under a royal flag they had appropriated from a previous hunt. They docked without incident, the crew scattering to the winds to pick up intelligence, hefty bar tabs, and the occasional whore.

The moment Lawson set her down on the dock, she fell. The hollowness inside her throbbed. She could not believe anything could have been so still as land. There was no life in it. The air was not strong enough to keep it fluid. It was rock. Still, empty, dead rock. She was but a shell, a humble reconstruction of the world upon which man walked every single day. How did they survive without a connection? She hugged her stomach, doubled up and gagged, only emptiness escaping her dry heaves.

“You okay, honey? Take it easy. It’ll pass soon.”

The words spoken to her had a cadence she had never heard before, and it surprised her so much she didn’t understand them at first. The hands that pulled her hair back away from her face were small and delicate. The woman had on a black dress. Her hair was pinned up on her head and decorated with shiny black beads. She smelled…soft and nice. And she was gentle when she accepted the Siren’s embrace.

“It’s all right,” the woman said as she patted her back. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

She didn’t scream when pointed teeth pierced her flesh.

Everything was going to be just fine.

Suddenly conscious of her appearance, she pulled her dress over her head and began tearing at the woman’s clothes. Lawson knelt beside her and motioned for his men to surround them so as not to draw attention to the scene. “Discovered vanity, ‘ave we?” he chuckled as he helped her undress the woman’s corpse. Once she had changed, the men weighted the body and rolled it into the ocean.

Lawson helped her stand. He tossed a dark cloak about her and covered her hair with its hood. She was glad he didn’t force her to wear shoes—it was hard enough enduring this much separation from the water. She didn’t know how much more she would be able to bear.

The inn they went to almost pushed her sanity over the edge from sensory overload. The room was filled with people of all shapes and sizes. There were smells from the food, the ale, the dogs in front of the fire, the fire itself. Men and women talked and shouted and joked and laughed. A scrawny youth crawled up beside the dogs at one point and sang for his supper. She was mesmerized. These were so different from the songs of the water, the flash of fish in the currents, the mating of whales in the deep. Some were slow and soft; some were fast and loud. And when the rest of the room joined in, she clapped her hands in merriment.

The crew dropped in one by one to report and consult with Lawson throughout the night. There were nods and low whispers. She watched as papers were signed and money changed hands. Thus Bloody Lawson conquered Windy Port, without ever leaving his seat. When the festivities ended he paid for his meal, tipped heavily and left, dragging his cloaked companion behind him. It was the sailors and merchants that returned to their vessels the next morning and found them empty or missing who took their anger out on the citizens of the port. Lawson and his crew were miles away before the massacre even began. Bloody Lawson and the Siren were never heard from again.

Several months later, Edward Malcolm opened a waterfront inn in the capitol city named The Sea Lass. He purchased the house next door as well. It had a master suite and a nursery and a very large kitchen that could be used to supplement the inn’s in case of overflow. One of the rooms in the house had a door with seven locks. They were installed the day before Molly’s return from school.

Molly’s homecoming was a grand event. Lawson, now called Edward, had covered every flat surface in the house with sweets and cakes and flowers. He had hired a seamstress to take Molly’s measurements for a whole new wardrobe, the only one that didn’t seem overly preoccupied with the Prince’s upcoming wedding. Paper-wrapped packages of all sized littered the largest of the tables. A doll and a rose waited on the chair for his princess.

The Siren sat on a stool in the corner, cut off from the sun and the earth, the water and wind. She waned as she watched the miniature cherub-faced human run through the door to embrace her father. Her mop of dark brown curls disappeared in her father’s coat as she hugged him, right before he picked her up and twirled her around the room. There was something about this strange apparition, this child, and she could not decide what it was.

Molly giggled as she snuggled her doll. She reached out to the rose.

“Be careful,” her father warned her.

“Yes, Papa,” she said smartly. “I will watch for the pricklies and the thornies.” She buried her nose in the crimson petals and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, Molly saw the Siren there in the shadows.

The child set her doll down carefully on the table. “Who is she, Papa?” Molly whispered.

“She’s…” he started, twisting the ruby ring on his finger. “I saved ‘er,” he said finally.

“She’s so pretty,” Molly said. The child came around the table and held the flower out to her. “She’s just like the flower.”

“Yes,” he said. “Just like the rose. She’s got pricklies and thornies too, Molly. You have to be careful around her.”

Molly took another step forward, still offering the flower. The Siren took it and grinned, being careful not to show any teeth. Before her father could stop her, Molly launched herself into the Siren’s arms.

The child’s skin was softer than the woman’s at the pier. Her hair smelled of sugar and…something…indescribable. She took another deep breath. There was life within this little bundle, so much life she all but vibrated with it.

Edward wrenched her away. He took her by the arms and held her tightly. He sank down to his knees, so that he could address Molly eye to eye.

“Don’t ye
ever
go near ‘er again,” he said sternly.

“But Papa, she’s so sad,” Molly cried.

“She is dangerous,” he admonished. “Just be a good girl and do as yer papa says.”

Molly bowed her head. “Yes, Papa.”

“We’ll even call ‘er Rose, okay? So ye don’t forget.” Edward chucked her under the chin. “Now, what are ye gonna name yer dolly?”

Molly’s eyes brightened again and she rushed back to the table for her doll.

The Siren sunk her nose into the flower and inhaled sugar and sweetness while she watched the child open the rest of her gifts.

That night as he escorted her to her room, he said to her, “Ye touch my daughter, I’ll kill ye.” Then he shut the door and turned seven keys in seven locks.

Each day after that was much the same. She was not allowed to leave the house, and the third time Edward caught her staring out the windows, he forbade her that too. Each night he would take her to her room and give her the same warning about his daughter before turning the seven keys of her prison.

She would sit on her bed and stare into the darkness, wondering what she had done wrong. Had she not given him the riches he desired? Had she not paved the way for him to return home to be with his daughter? She had made him happy—why should she suffer as a result?

She edged closer to the window and watched the moon move across the sky. Somewhere not far, the reflection of that same light was skipping across the waves. Somehow, she would escape from this prison. Someday, seven locks would not hold her.

Every few nights he would bring her someone, long after Molly was asleep. He would wake before the dawn and take the body away. She learned all she could from these poor souls, but it was never enough. They were whores or cheats or liars, people whose absence in some way benefited Edward and whose minds were such a jumble of unreliable information she could never discern anything that could help her.

She waited. She waited while he scolded her every night. She waited as he shoved each of the seven bolts home. She waited as he fed her, sparingly, enough to survive. She waited for him to get comfortable, to slip, to let something get by him.

Like the snitch.

Edward bent over and the unconscious man fell from over his shoulder and onto the bed before her. “Small, but ‘e’s all ye’ll get, understand?”

She opened her mouth, throat contracting. “Yeth,” she managed to say.

“Good. ‘Cause if ye touch my daughter, I’ll kill ye.” He shut the door. She counted slowly to seven before pulling the man into her lap and feasting.

Her heart pounded with a foreign pulse.

He was there.

Her lover.

He was everywhere inside this man’s head. He sat at the head of a table, talking sternly to a group of older men dressed in black. He sat in a large chair at the end of a hallway. He rode a horse down the path through the garden and along the beach. He rode in a carriage beside a beautiful, golden-haired maid and people threw flowers in the street before them.