Cursed Blade (Daughter of Air Book 2) Read online

  Conscience did not prick her as she tugged out the notebook and flipped through the pages. She was not human, after all. Their social conventions did not apply. And she was captain of the Veritas. And—

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  Varun’s neat handwriting captured the entirety of everything that happened since he boarded the Veritas, starting with his exploration of the dead zones in the once fertile Sargasso Sea, to his discovery that the captain of the Veritas was once a mermaid—and not just a mermaid, but The Little Mermaid. Varun’s notebook journaled his exploration of Shulim, the Beltiamatu capital city, and his encounter with the mer-king, Zamir. It chronicled his attempt to destroy the Dirga Tiamatu, and detailed Zamir’s grandson, Kai’s heroic intervention.

  Kai had redirected the Dirga Tiamatu away from Kalymnos and centered it on Shulim. The explosion of molten rock from the Earth’s core had not just destroyed the city, it had also incinerated most of the infected Beltiamatu, preventing their blood from further polluting the ocean. Varun had also written of his escape with Kai, and his final battle alongside Ashe as she defeated Zamir and claimed the Beltiamatu trident.

  He had written down everything…for the world to see.

  Ashe squeezed her eyes shut.

  How could he?

  As much as the siren Thelxepeia flaunted the rules, the bird-woman was right about one thing. The human world—with its compulsion to destroy instead of protect—did not need to know that the creatures of myths and legends were real. The nymphs and sirens had stayed alive through millennia only because they had deliberately skirted the edges of human civilization, as had the Beltiamatu.

  Nothing good ever came out of interacting with humans.

  Atlantis was proof of it.

  And here, Varun had written everything down.

  He was a scientist. He needed data to prove facts. And here, in front of him, was the biggest coup any scientist could hope to win—proving the existence of mermaids and of Atlantis. What if he had—? Tightness clenched Ashe’s chest. She only had Varun’s word that Kai had been with him in the escape pod that jettisoned from Shulim. Zamir’s grandson, however, was nowhere to be found. The merman had left behind some evidence that he had attempted to return to the ocean, but there was no proof of him ever having reached it.

  Kalymnos was Varun’s home, after all. He probably had willing accomplices aplenty who would help him capture and conceal a merman. If Varun revealed a full-blooded, healthy merman as a fait accompli to the world, he would be the most celebrated scientist of the age. What man would turn down that honor?

  Damn him! Ashe took the journal with her when she walked out of Varun’s laboratory. Her thunderous mood swirled the air into the uneasy prelude to a storm. Where the hell was Varun?

  Chapter 2

  Varun Zale tread water, enjoying the warmer-than-usual currents swirling around his feet. He knew better than to swim too close to where Shulim had once been. He had grown up in these waters, yet he had never imagined that the heart of mer-culture lay within striking distance of the island of Kalymnos, deep within the mysterious and dangerous waters of the Levantine Sea.

  He suspected though that the waters would become a lot less dangerous now that the city was gone. The Beltiamatu’s seismic devices, directed by the mer-king’s trident, had granted them control of the ocean’s currents in the Levantine Sea, but there was no more need for unexpected storms or deadly riptides. There was no longer any reason to deter fishermen and swimmers. The people would return as soon as the water cooled. The scientists would also visit the small rocky knoll growing over where Shulim had been.

  At that moment, however, the ground was still churning out molten iron and rock. Seismologists, who had been caught entirely unaware by the massive underwater explosion—no surprise since it had not been a natural phenomenon—estimated that it would be months, perhaps even years before the area was stable enough for exploration.

  It galled Varun to admit that they were probably right, even though he was impatient to check out the new island, birthed from the sea. It was all the more amazing since he had been a part of the process that brought it about.

  Everything my family believed, everything I didn’t believe, until now, is real. He had met the Little Mermaid, the same one who had given up her tail and voice for legs.

  His family’s story, later immortalized by the Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, got some of the details right, but all of her reasons wrong.

  No wonder Ashe was so grumpy all the time. He would be too if he went down in someone’s story as a lovesick idiot.

  And then that story made it big, vaulted into eternal international fame by a movie, its sequels, and merchandise. Wherever he looked, he saw the heart-shaped face, flaming red hair, and the wide blue eyes of Disney’s rendition of the Little Mermaid.

  The benefit, of course, was Ashe—whose irritability exceeded even her compelling beauty—wasn’t anywhere close to being recognized as the Little Mermaid. Especially not with her foul-mouthed parrot translating her sign language.

  Ashe probably had it right, he conceded with a half-smile. Perhaps the best disguise from the idealized version of her was simply to be herself.

  Varun swam toward the Veritas, his strokes and kicks clean and strong, the motion effortless as he churned through the water. He enjoyed the apparent solitude and vastness of the ocean around him even though he knew the solitude was a lie. He had scarcely skimmed the surface of a world unlike any he had seen. Who knew what other mythological creatures and places were real; what mysteries and dangers lurked? Mysteries like the dagger...

  Ashe had called it Isriq Genii—Soul Thief—a weapon magically bound to deliver the soul of the next person it killed to Zamir, Ashe’s son.

  Varun acknowledged fully that the Isriq Genii wasn’t his, but it had remained in his family’s keeping for almost three hundred years, which made him, if not its owner, then at least its caretaker.

  He had not forgotten that Ashe had driven that dagger at his back.

  He did not know why, at the last moment, she had altered the angle of the blade to cut through the kelp binding his wrists instead of plunging the dagger into his heart.

  Varun only knew that when he asked her why she had changed her mind, she had not replied.

  He could not guess at the reason. Human women were mysterious enough. Ashe, as a non-human, was utterly inscrutable. He was not even certain exactly what she was, only that she commanded air and water with nothing more than a whim and a wish.

  Try not to piss her off.

  That had been his mantra ever since boarding the Veritas and realizing that its female captain could make hardened sailors cower with a single glance.

  He had not succeeded, of course.

  He was too curious and too quickly frustrated by infuriating women who gave orders but refused to explain themselves. That description fit Ashe to a tee.

  Inevitably, they had clashed, but then, they had also pulled together. Against the odds, they had saved Kalymnos.

  But the dagger was still missing.

  He had seen it last when Ashe cut his bonds instead of killing him. In his frantic attempt to escape the onrushing charge of Beltiamatu, Varun had not been able to retrieve the dagger as it floated, apparently unnoticed, to the bottom of the ocean.

  It was, however, no longer there. Varun had run his calculations, and he was certain they were right. Accounting for the weight of the dagger, the direction of the currents, the dagger had to have landed right about here. He had dived repeatedly and sifted through the soft sand on the seabed for several feet around the expected landing zone.

  He had found nothing.

  Had Zamir or one of his mer-warriors found it?

  Had it been used?

  Surely, if Ashe had found it, she would have told him. They were partners in this effort to save the oceans, right?

  But she had almost killed him, and in the last moment, had changed her mind.

>   Which made him wonder if she had changed her mind at all, or if she were merely biding her time.

  Did he trust someone, a creature, who held to no human conventions and whose motivations he did not understand? Could he?

  Chapter 3

  In the laboratory, Ashe slammed her hand down on the intercom. Jinn hopped close to the microphone and preened. “Jackson.”

  “Jinn. Captain. What’s up?”

  “I’m going to Kalymnos. There’s something I want to check out. You have the bridge.”

  “Aye, captain. Should I lower the speedboat for you?”

  “No, I’ll be all right.”

  “Aye, captain.”

  Ashe frowned. Jackson had been complying with her unusual, even illogical, requests ever since the storms hit Kalymnos when, without Jinn present, she had screamed her orders directly into his mind. She had hoped he had lost track of the event in the chaos that followed, but perhaps he had not. It’s almost as if he knows something is up…and he’s humoring me.

  Perhaps her first mate was more than just a competent sailor. There was a passing good chance he was more observant and smarter than she had given him credit for. She scowled, and Jinn’s voice took on a waspish tone. “Let me know when Varun returns to the Veritas.”

  “Aye, captain. Make sure you take your satellite phone with you.”

  A dry bag kept her phone safe during the swim to Kalymnos. Propelled by air, she sliced through the water faster than a speedboat and emerged on an empty stretch of beach. The sand was soft beneath Ashe’s feet as she walked barefoot across the beach. Jinn, perched on her shoulder, preened his feathers. This section of the island faced the still-smoking site where Shulim had once been. Out in the distance, not far from the newly born islet, she saw something pop out of the water.

  Probably Varun.

  He had no concept of “sit and stay.” He always had to be out there, looking for samples, for data, for facts. She hoped he had sense enough to stay away from the islet, but it was just as well she had chased off the siren. The revelation would probably be too much for Varun to handle, on top of mermaids, air sylphs, and monstrous sea creatures, including the sea serpent, whose name, translated literally from the ancient Beltiamatu language, was Big Thing.

  She hoped Big Thing survived the upheaval of the oceans without any lasting damage. It would be a shame to lose so magnificent a creature, even if the sea serpent ate merfolk for snacks between meals. Medea, the sea witch, who made her home amid Big Thing’s coils probably had some kind of symbiotic relationship with the monster and would look out for it.

  What would old Medea think about the entire escapade?

  Ashe was almost afraid to wonder. It certainly had not gone the way she had planned.

  The evidence was seared into the ground, the crushed grass and blackened soil leaving a trail straight to the escape pod that Varun and Kai had used to escape from Shulim moments before its destruction. Dark streaks marked the egg-shaped pod—evidence of its harrowing escape—and dents pockmarked its surface—proof of its less-than-graceful landing. It had served its purpose, though. Both Varun and Kai had survived.

  Or so Varun said.

  The wind swept around Ashe, carrying to her the scents permeating the area, and confirming what she already knew. She was alone on the cliff overlooking the beach. Jinn fluttered ahead as Ashe walked alongside a thick strip of flattened grass. A Beltiamatu had tried to pull himself through the terrain. The trail stretched several feet to the cliff’s edge, and from there it was downhill to the water. The sand, however, showed no sign of Kai’s passage.

  It was as if Kai had simply vanished at the top of the cliff.

  Which was ridiculous.

  Without legs, Kai would have taken a long time to drag himself over land to return to the ocean. If he had not made it back to the water, then where could he be?

  Kai was the logical heir to the mer-empire, whatever was left of it. He was a Beltiamatu; she was not, and her schedule did not allow her to simply hang around trying to rebuild the culture and civilization of a shocked and devastated people. The trident of the mer-king belonged to Kai, and Varun was the last person who had seen Kai alive.

  Scowling, Ashe pulled out Varun’s notebook from the dry bag and flipped through its pages, as if the truth were concealed within. Varun had proved himself perfectly willing to risk his life in search of the scientific truth.

  What would he not do for scientific fame?

  Her smartphone buzzed. She stared at it with distaste, even though it was necessary for keeping in touch with her crew who did not yet know that she was not human.

  She gestured and Jinn, who had been perched on a tree, flew back to her and settled on her shoulder. “This is the captain.”

  “Hey, Jinn,” Jackson greeted first the parrot, then her. “Captain, Varun has returned to the ship. We’re headed to Kalymnos, as planned.”

  “Affirmative,” Jinn said in response to the flick of Ashe’s fingers. “I’ll see you at the dock.”

  In the distance, the speck that was the Veritas began moving toward the island. Ashe frowned. She needed answers, and Varun had them.

  She slipped her phone back into her pocket, together with Varun’s notebook. Her fingers brushed against something cool and hard. Ashe held her breath as she drew the Isriq Genii from its makeshift leather sheath. The wind stirred around her, suddenly restless. The waves rose a little higher before smashing into white caps of foam on the rocky shoreline. Sunlight broke through the gathering storm clouds and glinted off the dagger’s curved edge.

  She traced the runes inscribed on the dagger. The spell that bound the dagger could not be redirected as easily as the Dirga Tiamatu. The soul of the dagger’s next victim, whoever it was, would go to Zamir.

  “But what if Zamir dies before the dagger strikes?” Ashe had asked the sea witch.

  “Then the stolen soul belongs to the one who forged the dagger,” Medea had said.

  “And who is that, exactly?” Wasn’t the dagger millennia old? Shouldn’t the one who forged it be dead…long dead?

  Medea shrugged. She did not reply. Ashe noted, with irritation, that Medea did not lie. The old sea witch simply did not respond. Ashe personally thought it was a great defense and utilized it with increasing frequency, mostly because the explanations grew more convoluted with each year of her life.

  She stared down at the dagger. What do I do with you?

  The unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question hung over Ashe like an untended open sore.

  Worse, she did not know what or who she was confused about—the Isriq Genii or Varun Zale.

  Chapter 4

  Ashe arrived at the port of Kalymnos just as the Veritas bumped gently alongside the ancient stone dock. The rank, rotting odors usually associated with small ports were mercifully absent. The ferocious storm had washed them away, along with most of the wooden docks that extended out into the sea like giant arms. Only the stone dock, its surface pockmarked by time, had survived the rage of the wind and waves.

  As a result, the ships that had survived the storm anchored at sea, coming in only to unload passengers. The Veritas, larger than most, was longer than the length of the dock. The deckhands immediately got to work tying down the ship to the makeshift mooring posts. One of them extended the gangplank, but the distance was short enough—Jackson had steered the ship into a tight spot without scraping its paint job—that Varun was able to stride over the small gap between the ship and the dock.

  Varun’s thoughtful, rather absentminded frown gave way to nod of acknowledgment when his eyes met hers.

  Ashe’s fingers danced out her question. “Find anything interesting?” Jinn managed to make the question sound peevish and demanding, even though Ashe hadn’t intended it that way—not consciously anyway.

  “Nothing interesting,” Varun said, a little too quickly and defensively, in Ashe’s opinion. “The water temperature’s still abnormally elevated. The ground is still spewing
molten rock and keeping temperatures high. According to the satellites, the rocky knoll is three times larger than what it was forty-eight hours ago. There was also a weird thing on the rocks. Looked like a large bird, but not entirely—” He frowned.

  The siren, damn it.

  “Then the air seemed to get fuzzy, at least through the camera, as if a storm had blown in deliberately.” He did not take his gaze off Ashe, but at least he managed to deliver his critique without so much as a knowing smile. “I thought I caught a glimpse of something leap out of the water, but that would have been impossible, wouldn’t it?” He shook his head. “Anyway, details were impossible from that distance, but technology gets better over time.”

  Ashe nodded, taking his words for what they were. A warning. She had to be careful on land. Humans and their artificial eyes were everywhere.

  Varun’s gaze flicked past her. “Ondine!” The heartiness in his voice seemed forced. He stepped past Ashe to give his girlfriend a quick hug. “How are you feeling?” His voice was lowered, just enough for privacy, but not enough to keep the wind from carrying his words to Ashe’s ears.

  “Better.” Ondine pressed a hand to her stomach. Her face was pale, and her voice trembled. Her auburn hair had been tugged into a messy ponytail, and she still bore the shell-shocked look of a survivor.

  The ferocious storm unleashed in Ashe’s battle with Zamir had crashed massive waves down on Kalymnos, washing away most of the villages by the beach and even tearing through the roof and smashing the exterior walls of Varun’s home on the island’s highest cliff. Ondine had apparently huddled in an interior room, her hands pressed over her ears to block off the screams of the wind and the roar of the waves, her eyes squeezed shut against the reality of the titanic war around her.

  Elemental air magic against water, flogged by devastating technology.

  And in the end, air had won, but that fragile victory felt increasingly thin. The dominion represented by mer-king’s trident weighed heavily on Ashe’s mind. The proud, ancient race could not be permitted to vanish into the annals of history like Atlantis had.