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Chapter 2
Skehl
On his own, Skehl could have hidden easily enough. His own blue glow was subtle, like the light of the Cal-moon, if watered down and muffled behind a splash of dark clouds.
Thressel, however, was beyond hiding. Tentacle-laden as she was, she shone like a sun against the Belly’s dim, colorless backdrop.
All they could do was wait.
An older Skaltressian approached through the haze, slender and rustling with a modest amount of mauve tentacles. Her arm draped the shoulders of a boy barely beyond his youngling years. Her brother, no doubt. Skehl noted the boy’s length, those vibrant red tentacles swaying amidst his tilted posture. As if he were struggling to keep his balance.
It was the boy’s eyes, though, that most piqued his interest.
Inky white… he realized, leaning in as the siblings neared. He’s Shattered.
Skehl hated himself for the relief he felt. For the plan he was already forming.
Technically, the boy was still alive—in the sense that he was still breathing. Yet everyone knew there was no coming back from a Shattered mind. Skehl especially.
Because of Binah.
“Greetings,” the mauve sister said, her voice strained. “I didn’t expect… OH!”
Her eyes went wide, fixed on the burnt body.
“What have you done?”
Skehl turned to Thressel, unsure what to do or say. They had never been caught before. From her downcast eyes, her lips clamped tight as a clam, he knew he was on his own.
“She was, uh…” he began, crafting his lie as he went, “a Trenchguard. Killed our older sister. Burned and brutalized her for unpaid medical debts after I…” He gestured to his blind left eye.
The mauve sister recoiled when she noticed and held tighter to her brother, as if Skehl’s “condition” could have somehow harmed the boy more than he had already harmed himself.
Facing down her upturned nose and that twinkle of fright in her eyes, Skehl could only think of how this—right here—was precisely why he needed to make it to his exam. Should he pass, he would be welcomed to join the ranks of apprentice Seers. He would finally belong somewhere. With others who understood his power. The nuance of its price. And he would be spared the fate of those left untested, untrained. Like the boy with the red tentacles. That he had survived this long on his own was a miracle.
“It’s been years since we lost her,” Skehl continued, sprinkling in a little truth. “And the pain never ebbs. When we learned that the Trenchguard responsible for her death had passed, well… sometimes vengeance calls with a fervor.”
The mauve sister traced Skehl’s form with her eyes, that etching of disgust never leaving her face. Her gaze passed to Thressel, to her multitude of pristine tentacles. A symbol of status and power.
She turned back to Skehl.
“Unfortunate as your sister’s untimely fate is, it was the price of your own negligence. You never should have attempted what you did. This”—she gestured to the young boy— “is where your selfish indulgence will get you.” The gills on her neck fanned as she took a few steadying breaths. “It’s disgraceful—what you did to that Trenchguard. She was… only doing her duty.” Something flickered across her face. “Though, I suppose I can understand the sentiment. Our older brother, he, uh… The same.”
Skehl wanted to say something, to offer some sort of comfort.
But what does one say to something like that?
“Was it worth it?” the mauve sister asked. “Whatever it was you Saw?”
He glanced again at the boy, floating there. Tilted. Lifeless, and not.
That question isn’t really for me, is it?
“In a way,” he said. “What I Saw… I’ll never forget it. Or, more so… the reason I chose to do it. Rarely is one’s intention ever solely self-serving.”
The mauve sister held his gaze, a thousand nameless emotions playing at the corner of her trembling lips. “Thank you.”
Thressel grabbed Skehl’s hand, squeezed.
“Alright,” the mauve sister said, stifling a bubbly sniffle, “off with you both, then. And remember, the Belly is a place for mourning, not vengeance. Whoever they were in life, the dead are owed their rest. Understand?”
“Of course.” Skehl’s stomach was a tangle of knots; he still had a plan.
He and Thressel kicked off, left the mauve sister to her tethering, her grieving.
Once a short distance away, Skehl leaned towards her and whispered. “Not too far. I have a feeling she’ll be quick.”
Thressel stared at him in that lifeless manner all her own.
“His size.” He glanced past her, saw the mauve sister was already tying the boy’s tether. “His coloring. A strong charring and we’ve got our last body.”
“But…” She narrowed her eyes. “Skehl, he’s still alive.”
“Was Binah still alive?”
She bit her lip and turned away, blowing a hard stream of bubbles through her nose. “We’ll find another. However long it takes.”
Skehl clasped his hands together, gills fanning. “Thressel—”
“No, Skehl.” Her resolve was absolute.
Now you come alive. Just to hold me back.
She rustled off, away from the boy.
Skehl clenched his jaw and turned again to the mauve sister, watched as she pressed her hand to her brother’s cheek, every part of her quivering. She lingered for a moment, whispering something in his ear. Then swam off, disappearing into the grey-glowing gloom.
Now was his chance.
You never lift a tentacle to help me…
He beat his tail, shot straight for the boy.
Let’s see if you’ll lift one to stop me.
A kick, another—and he was by the boy’s side.
Clumsily, he rummaged through his satchel for his clamshell knife, halting only when he heard that undeniable, muscle-freezing sound: breath.
He swallowed.
This isn’t living, he reassured himself. Like Binah wasn’t living when Thressel—
He drowned the thought, focused once more on the boy. On that whisper of warmth radiating from his cheeks. On that screaming expression that would forever mar his too-young face.
Yet in his eyes…
Skehl saw Binah, his older sister. Her madness in the end. The pain of losing her.
He saw himself. The future he was fighting so hard to escape.
He withdrew the clamshell knife from his satchel, raised it to the boy’s throat. Pressed so tenderly, his hand trembling.
Why can’t you understand?
He felt that steady pulse, the boy’s life, rippling through the water. Like a prayer.
But for what?
He took a breath. Then another.
Readied himself. Then readied himself some more.
“I can do this!” He hadn’t meant to shout.
He didn’t move. Couldn’t. Not a muscle.
His eyes began to sting.
“I can—”
Movement in the water, Thressel swooshing up beside him.
“Skehl,” she said. There was no fury in her eyes. Just his own reflection: puny and pathetic, so filled with fright.
Is that how you see me?
“Is getting into the Tide’s Eyes really worth this?” she asked. “After all Seeing has done to us? To you?”
He recalled Binah’s face from that last day, when he had found her—what remained of her. Her lifeless eyes. Her mouth agape, as if frozen in perpetual pain. How weak she must have felt after so long strong. How she must have lost control while doing that singular, glorious thing that is most indescribable. Practically irresistible.
“Yes,” he said.
Because I can’t do to you what she did to us…
Thressel stared into his eyes; he almost recoiled. Almost.
“Fine,” she said. “Then kick off.”
“But I—”
“Kick off!”
That tone of hers, it brooked no argument.
He slunk away. Watched as she coiled her tentacles around the dying boy’s body, squeezed. She looked to be more clinging to the boy than… killing him.
Sparing him the prolonged pain of suffering in this state, Skehl thought, wanting to believe a kinder truth.
Still, he refused to turn away.
Not as she let loose another burst of blinding light.
Not as the ocean rocked and trembled all around him.
Not as the sharp crackling of his sister’s power pricked and bit at his scales and skin.
Not as his one good eye screamed in its socket from the brilliance of her Shock.
He did not turn away.
If he could not manage the deed himself, he could at least bear witness. Act the accomplice.
Wasn’t that the role he knew best?
The crackling quieted. The ocean calmed.
And the deed was done.
The deed was done.
They started back through the Belly in silence, kicking their way towards the tail-end of the trench, where it opened to the uncharted waters of the western ocean. Best to avoid swimming directly surfaceward through the trench itself, to keep away from curious eyes and rumor-spinning tongues. While cruelty was not uncommon for Trenchguards—indeed, it was negligible at best—the commonkin were better left in the darkness of ignorance.
Skehl swam fast, playing dozens of scenarios through his mind. In some, he arrived at his exam on time; he considered the tests and trials he would be asked to complete. In others, he arrived late, and all was for naught. They were distractions, of course. Inept ones at that, for the boy—now dead—surfaced in every one.
He was already gone. Already gone…
A familiar voice pulled him from the mess of his mind, and he realized they had arrived at the trench’s tapering end.
“I should be getting relieved soon,” came that deep, predatorial tone that could only belong to a Tethien—to Bren, Thressel’s romantic partner. “And we’ve both got the next few days off. How about we go for a little hunt, hm? Just you and me. Out in the western ocean. Heard a pod of spear-nosed slashers should be migrating through—and I know how much you love a good chase.” He pumped his brow and flexed his absurdly large biceps, clearly for Thressel’s enjoyment. “What do you say?”
Skehl rolled his eyes at Bren’s asinine proposal. The western ocean was said to be amongst the most perilous. Only the strongest—or the most foolish—would dare venture there.
“Hey! Before everyone gets all mushy,” came the shrill voice of Cahla, Bren’s Trenchguard partner, “Pay up.”
She held out her hand to collect their bribes, the cost for her discretion.
Skehl dropped three moonstone-chips into her palm.
“Well?” she said, dark eyes fixed on Thressel.
“Assignment came unexpectedly. I… forgot my chips in the barracks.”
Cahla’s sunrise-yellow tentacles flared brighter.
“That’s the second time this month you forgot. I’m not running a Carekeeper’s hovel here.”
“You’re not doing anything here,” Thressel snapped.
“What did you—?”
“Please,” Skehl interrupted, holding his hands at his sides, “Can you two just drown all that?” He pulled out another three chips from his satchel and shoved them into Cahla’s hand. “Here. Some of us actually have places to be.”
Cahla accepted the chips with a grunt, then kicked off a short distance away.
“Well?” Bren flashed Thressel a toothy grin, his long, silvery shark-like tail practically wagging under him.“What do you say?”
Thressel hesitated, and Skehl was out of patience.
“Whatever you do,” he said, “be smart about it. And don’t go anywhere until the afternoon classes start, okay? I–I need you nearby. Please?”
Thressel nodded, the two charred bodies still swaying on the tethers she held. She would need to deliver them to her commander to confirm their assignment was “successful.” That would ensure she kept near enough to the palace. For a short while, at least.
“Thanks,” Skehl said, meaning it.
And as he kicked off surfaceward, he thought he heard her voice, soft as a whisper, saying something that sounded an awful lot like: “Good luck.”
Read Chapter 3 here!
Joshua Stavick 