Spellbreaker (48 page)

Cold apprehension gripped Leandra. She had never known Holokai to hide anything. “You think he…” She stopped herself. Whatever doubts she had about her predatory captain, they were not for her changeling and erstwhile confidant to hear. “Thank you, Dhrun.” She squeezed his hand. “Thank you. It is clear where your loyalties lie. I am fortunate to have you.”

His dark brown eyes were studying her with particular intensity, and suddenly Leandra became aware that they were standing no more than an inch apart. She could feel the heat radiating off of his body. She suffered a twinge of guilt that she should be talking so intimately with one of her crew while entertaining suspicions of another.

She let go of his hand and her double perception of Dhrun as persona and text simplified to only the former. She straightened. “Please tell Captain Holokai that I should like a word in my cabin.”

“And shall I accompany the captain?”

“Thank you but that will not be necessary.”

Dhrun bowed and headed aft. Leandra went belowdecks into her cabin. It was a small space, low-ceilinged. The forward wall boasted a slim horizontal window that during the day provided a slice of the aquamarine world sliding between the ship's two hulls. Now the window was a bar of night.

Her sleeping pallet had been laid out, so she stowed it and set up her low table. It was a good piece of sea furniture: bamboo legs, polished hardwood tabletop, a few gashes scored during rough weather. She lit a single kukui lamp on the table before kneeling on the cushion behind it.

As the ship rocked, Leandra put her hand on the table and stared at it as if it were someone else's hand. She was changing so fast—texts modified her thoughts, emotions, position in time. And yet she was still herself, wasn't she?

She decided to trust Holokai. Perhaps he had a reasonable explanation, maybe even an obvious one. So she laid the leimako down on the table.

Water rushed below while sailors called. Then heavy footfalls and a scratching on her door.

“Come in, Kai.”

The screen door slid back revealing Holokai's broad silhouette. He crouched to step into the cabin. “Hey, Lea, four-arms said you wanted to…” His voice trailed off as he saw the leimako. He became perfectly still, ceasing even to breathe. His eyes flicked up to hers. And then she knew. Oh creator, she knew.

His posture was too tense, his mouth too tightly pursed. She knew. It was both a horror and a relief. “Kai, I believe you were looking for this.”

He didn't move.

“Dhrun brought it to me.”

“If that little bug is playing one of his games—”

“Then you can chew him into foamy pulp,” she interrupted with a light tone. “I'll watch.” She was amazed that she felt no new strong emotion, only the same mixture of horrors that had filled her since she had paralyzed her father.

“You can't trust that four-armed bug. Think about it, Lea. We don't really know who he is. We don't know what kind of a neodemon he was before he converted himself. Neodemons don't convert themselves. There's something wrong with him.”

“All right, Kai, I will look into it. But can you tell me why were you looking for your leimako?”

“I wanted to give command to Peleki while I swam a patrol, see if anyone's following or if something's waiting ahead.”

“Why not tell me?”

“You've been through a lot tonight. I didn't think you needed more to worry about.”

“All these years sailing together, I have insisted on knowing when you go swimming.”

“Tonight was different.”

“Different how?”

“You've been through a lot.”

“Anything else?”

“No, Lea. I'm sorry if you don't like it. I won't do it again.”

“Nothing else you want to tell me?”

“Nothing else.”

More than anything else, Leandra felt disappointment. “All right, then. You can take it.”

He paused as if misunderstanding. Then he stepped forward and picked up the weapon. “All right then, Lea. Unless I run into trouble, I'll see you in Keyway.”

“See you in Keyway,” she agreed and waited for him to start to leave before she stopped him. “Kai. Before you go, will you take my hand just for a moment? Just as a precaution.”

He turned and looked at her hand. “Precaution how?”

“With the loveless on, I can see how deities are put together. I will know if you're telling the truth.”

He looked up at her face. The world seemed perfectly still. Two kinds of future hours lay before Leandra, both alike in fear and guilt, one lonelier than the other. She had given Holokai the choice between the two. But, in either hour, she would continue to fall like a stone through water toward some vaguely sensed discovery that was her destiny.

So she waited for Holokai, who had navigated her through so much in life, to choose their course. She waited with her hand outstretched and her gaze fixed on his face.

He stared back at her, silent, predatory. Then his eyes went black.

Only moments left now.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Francesca woke to a dark room and bright green screaming. For a scattered moment, she thought she was a young physician in an infirmary. The patient sounded like a child. She sat up in bed, pressed her hands to her face, tried to remember the child's diagnosis. But then the horror of her present situation returned: Nicodemus, Leandra.

The child screamed again. To Francesca's synesthetic hearing, the sound was a shrill green flare, burning bright before quavering toward silence only to be renewed with another shrill flare.

She splashed water on her face and hurried out into the dark hallway. There she found Tam holding a kukui lamp. “It's Lolo,” he said. “He seems to be having a nightmare, but we can't wake him up.”

“Night terrors?” Francesca wondered aloud. Between two and twelve, some children developed episodes of sleep disturbance characterized by thrashing and screaming. The child would be inconsolable, difficult to wake, and if wakened would not recall any nightmare or distress. Lolo's mother had been human, so he might be subject to human pathology. And judging by his rate of growth, he should be about six by now.

Doria appeared in the doorway of the tearoom, where Nicodemus was being treated. “He's doing better,” she said before Francesca could ask. “He's starting to breathe on his own. Ellen is with him.”

Another shrill green scream. “Tam,” Francesca said, “take me to Lolo.”

The druid led them to the suite where he and Kenna had been looking after Lolo. Inside they found the wide suite suffused with early dawn's blue light. On the bed, Lolo's small dark figure thrashed next to the stillness of Kenna in her pale druidic robes.

As Francesca approached the bed, she saw that the boy was tossing, curling his knees up then extending them. Though it was dark, Francesca could make out the boy's sudden, spasmodic grimaces followed by expressions of slack-face dreaming. Kenna gently stroked his black hair and made reassuring noises.

“When did it—” Francesca started to ask but was interrupted by Lolo's shrill scream. Kenna increased her reassurance, to no effect.

Francesca sat beside Kenna and laid a hand on the boy's forehead to see if he were feverish, but the instant her hand touched his skin a shock of prophetic understanding ripped through her mind.

Lolo sat bolt upright and yelled “Father!” with such childish longing and fear it made Francesca's heart ache.

Francesca's awareness leapt away from the compound and out onto the Bay of Standing Island. She saw a dark catamaran slipping between the tall limestone islands. She felt the conflict in the ship's cabin. Her daughter and the shark god had come to a crossroads.

Only two potential futures were now probable, and they were diverging fast, becoming better defined. In both futures Leandra gained great strength and the potential of escaping Francesca's life forever. Francesca saw that unless she found a way to reestablish physical contact with her daughter, she would never see her again. The realization closed around her heart. In only one of the probable futures was the shark god still alive.

Into this dreamlike awareness, Francesca saw Lolo's mind shine down onto the catamaran, through its planks to his unknown father held within. She felt the boy's blistering desire to know the one who had created him. She felt Holokai's desperate reciprocation, his need to know who he had created.

And yet between her daughter and herself, Francesca felt nothing. Mother and daughter, estranged. Francesca pressed her mind harder into her prophetic awareness, trying to establish some bond with Leandra. But she could come up with nothing more than the certainty that unless she were physically near Leandra, she would lose her.

Then Francesca's prophecy broke. She was just a woman, sitting on a bed and staring down at a dawn-lit child. Lolo stared up at her with frightened eyes—an expression, she supposed, that must reflect her own.

She felt pity for the boy and his estrangement from his father. She prayed it was not too late for her and Leandra.

Lolo continued to stare at Francesca, but when Kenna gently patted his back, he flopped onto the druid's lap and hugged her leg.

Francesca stood and felt her draconic nature awakening. Waves of heat and strength began to wash through her.

“Lady Warden,” Tam said behind her, “what was it? What's wrong with Lolo?”

“The boy misses his father,” she said faintly. Such a dangerous thing, to create or be created. “Keep comforting him; he'll be all right. Doria, come with me.”

She led the other woman through the hallways back to the tearoom. Inside she found Ellen attending to Nicodemus. He lay supine and almost skewered by a matrix of luminous silver prose. As she watched, he drew a slow breath through the tube she'd slipped into his trachea. The textual bellows contracted, providing pressure to help him take a deeper breath than he could on his own.

“He's doing much better,” Ellen reported. “I've been able to reduce the pressure support again. I don't think it will take too much longer to wean him back to breathing on his own. Really, Magistra, you can go back to bed—”

“Can you manage without me?” Francesca interrupted.

“Y-yes. For how long?”

“A day. Maybe longer.”

Ellen looked at Doria. “We … We can replace the texts as fast as he is deconstructing them. So … once we're sure the paralysis has completely worn off, we could deconstruct the censoring spells to wake him up.”

Stronger waves of heat washed through Francesca; her draconic nature wouldn't give her much longer before it forced a change. She went to Nicodemus's side and carefully reached between the lines of silver text to take his hand. “Nico,” she said, “I'm going to get our girl back.”

He lay slack amid the medicinal language. His long glossy hair splayed out into a black halo. He drew another breath; the spells contracted.

Francesca squeezed his hand. “Keep him alive,” she said and made for the door. “It's not a good idea to let a dragon's husband die while she is away.”

Ellen muttered something about how she tried to keep all of her patients alive whether or not they had been stupid enough to marry a flying lizard. But Francesca ignored her. The need to find her daughter could be denied no longer.

She jogged down the hallways and up the steep stairs. At last she threw open the screen door that led onto the pavilion's roof. She was running now, her feet taking longer and longer strides until she reached the building's edge and leapt out into the churning air.

A band of monkeys, who had been perched on the roof just below, chattered in fear as her dark figure flew overhead.

Now with her auburn wings wide, Francesca climbed above a dawn-lit city. She flew out over the glassy bay to find her daughter.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Stepping into Holokai's leimako swing, Leandra grabbed his bicep just before it smashed into her nose. Sharkteeth raked across her back but did not bite deeply. She stumbled but did not fall. This wasn't the blow that would kill her. Holokai's intentions were of escape, not slaughter. He might have managed it too, if she didn't have the loveless spell.

Leandra quick-stepped, kept her balance. Holokai snarled and made ready to strike again, but it was too late. First touch was all she needed. She transformed his fingers into interlocking crimson paragraphs, his palms into subspells. She incorporated them into her own hands, felt their strength.

The leimako clattered on the floor. Holokai staggered back, looked with emotionless fish eyes at the stumps that had been his hands.

Leandra felt only blunted sadness. She had known him as well as it was possible to know another soul, or so she had thought. “How?” she asked softly. “How did she get to you?”

His lips pulled back in a predatory rictus, displaying serrated teeth.

“How did Mother turn you against me?” Leandra said with more passion than intended. “How?” Her eyes stung and she wondered if she were going to cry. In a way, that would be a relief.

Holokai's lips slowly lowered, his eyes lightened by a shade.

“How?”

“My son. She has my son.”

“You have a son? After all this time?”

He did not move.

“Creator damn it all. Who had your son? How long ago?

“A pillow house prostitute. Maybe three days ago.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died.”

“How?”

He only snarled.

“How, damn it?”

“The sickness they get when the baby god starts growing.”

“They? Kai, how many have there been?”

Holokai didn't answer.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't learn about it until Francesca already had him. There was nothing I could do. If I don't return to Chandralu tonight and tell her where you are going, she'll kill him.”