Chapter 37

  The ship righted itself just as a cannonball from the Dragon’s Tooth careened into the deck, smashing into one of the guns and killing the gunner. The cannons were not firing as fast as the Admiral wanted, but she quickly realized the problem. Evander would not want to fire on the ship that held his husband. Dymion, nearby, had made knives of stone conjured from nothing, and had used them to cut himself and his crew mates free. Ael danced across the ship, finding the first mate who still had a grasp of Nereida‘s hair.

  Ael engaged him first, even as the other captain screamed obscenities at her.

  “That’s not yours,” Ael said, deadly calm.

  “Take it from my cold dead hands. Siren hair will net me a fortune.” He parried her first blow, dancing back. She closed with him again, knowing, somehow, that he pnned a feint. She countered the feint, slipping where he had intended to go. Her blood sang, wanting him dead for what he had done to Nereida, for what he had taken. It wasn't just her hair, it was part of who she was. Even the demons who had held her had not tried to take her hair. She slipped her bde past his guard, catching his chest and leaving a long, thin gash. He tried to parry but she was done being civilized. He did not deserve mercy, civility or honour. She brought her heel down on his toe as she slipped in his guard, and stabbed at his groin. Her sword came back bloody and the demon first mate howled in agony. Her bloodlust satiated, she ended him with her next strike and moved to the next opponent.

  Her crewmen were fighting for their lives, two of the three still on deck had no weapons, and so the Admiral took the sword from the fallen first mate and made her way toward where her men fought. The two without weapons were showing no mercy either, throwing any who got near them into the cold ocean. Nereida was singing, her voice echoing in a terrifying way. Ael could feel her magic, and the song Nereida sang was without words and without pleasant harmonies. Ael wanted to check on her beloved, but her crewmen were in much more danger. And so she left the siren to do what she would.

  There were twenty men aboard the ship, about half had been killed by the time the Admiral stopped to take count. She was unsure how many more had ended in the drink after Nereida's first attack. The deck was slick, and so she made her way to the main mast. The captain came after her next, muttering in the fowl tongue the shadowcasters always used. It made her skin crawl, the slimy, leech feeling.

  “You may have killed some of my men, Admiral, but if you won't surrender, I will pull your soul from your body and feed the remains to your pet.”

  “Not my pet,” she growled. She knew she had to keep him talking. She was waiting for something, she just was not sure what. “No, has it not occurred to you that your people kept expanding and expanding to the point that the sirens were ready to deal? That they want to see you and your colonizing kind wiped from all maps, driven to your isnds never to return?”

  “Impossible. The sirens are mad!”

  “A clever bit of misdirection on their part,” Ael replied. “The only ones who were ever mad were the moon-touched.”

  “The moon-touched are dead. The first empire to fall to our might!”

  “Their descendants remain.” She was not sure why she said that. She knew the truth, that her family had done the unthinkable to gain power. But it needed to be pnted, this seed. “Did you think the prescient moon-touched would go gently into the night?”

  He was about to respond when a spear of ice bloomed in his chest. He gasped, words impossible, before he dropped to the deck. Nereida finished climbing over the edge, panting at the effort, but her eyes were wild. Her short hair was equally wild, almost like sea-weed now. She walked over to the fallen captain and whistled shrilly. That gained attention. Fights slowed or even stopped as she lifted the dead man's head, slicing it clear from its neck with a sharp word and a fsh of ice magic. She held the head high, staring at the demons.

  “He touched what is mine,” she decred. Her voice carried. One of the demons wet his pants nearby. “Surrender to the Admiral now. Any who resist I will drown after I cut out their tongues.” She was not Nereida now, not the princess. This was the siren, wild and angry like the ocean. There may have, in fact, been some truth to the idea that the sirens were mad. But Ael could not help but think how fierce and lovely she looked, how commanding.

  The cannon fire stopped, as if Evander was seeing what occurred on the deck of the enemy ship. Four demons took a knee, but did not move toward her. The other seven seemed to think they could win, that they outnumbered this siren, this crew of five. Two of her men were injured rather badly. Dymion, however, was not. He looked up at Nereida, something hard in his gaze, and he brought the ship's wood to life. The wood itself grew vines that lifted and tangled the feet of the seven remaining threats. The men who had surrendered looked on in fear.

  “Mercy!” one of them begged as the Admiral approached them to bind them with rope from the ship they had stolen.

  “For you? Yes. Not so much for them.” She turned back toward her lover, her siren, her princess, and watched as the woman that shared her bed removed the tongue from a man that had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side.

  “Nereida,” she called, a st try, perhaps, to bring sense back to the woman before she was lost. “You don't need to do this. I don't require their suffering, just their death.” The stormy eyes that looked back at her were haunted.

  “Tell me, tell me that it wasn't a man like this who cut the tongue from my daughter. Tell me that and his death will be swift.”

  Oh Dragon's bloodied tail stump. Ael opened her mouth, but then shut it quickly. She couldn't lie, not when it was this important. Her ck of answer was enough, and so Nereida began to sing again. It was a small mercy that she did not take the tongues of the others. She called the water up onto the deck in seven little bubbles, just bigger than the head of a man. Dymion watched, his eyes steely and full of hate, while the three crew that were not dragon-blooded drew behind the gnome as if he could protect them. The water bubbles floated above the men, slowly lowering down their heads until their mouths and noses were covered in water, filled with it. Nereida's eyes were full of fury and pain, tears leaking down her face, but she stared into the eyes of the nearest man as she condemned him to hell. She watched his panic, his futile attempts to get free, and she did not stop singing what Ael had come to realize was a dirge.

  One by one the seven who stood against them fell, drowning on deck, their clothing still dry. A special kind of ticket straight to hell. Ael felt a thrill of fear run down her back, but then looked up at her beloved and saw her tears. She took a step, then another, until she was at Nereida's side. She took her hand.

  “It's done, love.” Nereida turned at those words, her song cutting off abruptly and she began to sob. Ael held her, gently stroking her short hair, leaving the others to Dymion and his carpentry crew.