Page 3 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
“A few?”
“After you di—when you were gone, Shale and the other breeders got into the Queens’ treasury. They found jewels and precious things, and more of the leg-belts and breathing devices. And a few other things. I’m not sure what they were for. Nobody would let me touch them.”
“And where is Shale now?” Rake asked.
“He and the others live in the old nurseries.”
“Then we’ll go there.” Rake adjusted his course.
But Jewel’s tiny claws sank into his skin. “Wait! If I’m not back to The Three Cherries soon, Lumina will worry about me.”
“Lumina—Kestra’s mother? She’s been caring for you?”
“Yes, and she gets terribly worried if I don’t come straight home after work.”
“Work?” Rake frowned. “What work?”
“With the hawk-master, Takajo. The one who did not beat me when I ate his bird. And it is not work so much as learning. I enjoy it.”
Rake’s heart eased and lightened at the casual contentment in his spawn’s voice. The humans were being good to him. They’d fed him, kept him safe, and taught him useful work. If Rake had to leave again, the humans would continue doing those things for Jewel.
But Rake wasn’t sure he could let his spawn out of his sight again. In the past few weeks he’d realized how sprawling and vast the ocean really was, how easily one could be lost in the breadth and depth of it. It was frightening enough to think of braving it alone to find Flay and Kestra. Bringing Jewel along would make everything twice as terrifying, for then he’d have more to lose than himself.
He must find Flay and Kestra, and especially Mai. Bright, eager Mai, the scholar-scientist, with her sharp features and sharper eyes. She would know what to do with the knowledge he carried.
“Lumina will understand why you’re late,” Rake said. “After all, I am your father. You’re safe with me. And I need to borrow a belt from Shale before we go to the island.”
The stop at the nurseries didn’t take long, only because Rake promised Shale he’d return sometime for a longer visit. The hunger that used to bloom in Shale’s eyes when he looked at Rake was now focused on another male, a young lithe one with laughing eyes. Rake was glad to see it, glad of the joy and confidence in Shale’s movements. He was also glad of the way the spawn already swam more freely and looked healthier than they had under the Queens’ rule.
“Some of the mermaids survived, and a few of the mermidons,” Shale informed Rake quietly. “We’re keeping them confined for now.”
“Wise of you,” Rake said. “There’s a saying in an old poem—that it’s impossible to change one’s scales. Don’t trust them, not until you’re sure they won’t try to kill you or the little ones.”
After farewells were said and the borrowed belts stowed in a satchel, Rake swam toward the island with Jewel. He wondered if the ancient saying was true. Could someone change their scales, change an intrinsic part of themselves, and become something altogether different? He’d done it, of course, in a physical sense. But he wasn’t sure how deep a transformation could go.
“There’s the river mouth.” Jewel pointed. “They removed the grate, so we can get in that way.”
The metal grate across the river mouth had once prevented ravenous merlows and mermaids from swimming into town, eating up all the river fish, and dragging unwary people into the water. Its removal was yet another mark of change, rapid and startling. For a moment Rake felt as if he were spinning, end over end, through a violent current, without any control over the motion or destination. His world had shifted so quickly—he’d gone from a breeder and a slave to the destroyer of his people and a friend to humans. He’d become a father. He’d communed with eldritch horrors of the deep, and he’d killed the Queens he used to mate with, fed them alive to a monster. Sometimes he felt as if the sheer weight ofchangewould drag him down into the bottomless murk, where bony transparent things glowed and wriggled in the dark.
With Jewel on his back, he swam upriver. It did not take long for the people of the village to notice them, and they began to shout words at him, words he could not hear until he surfaced. They were cheering for him, shouting their gladness and shock at his survival, calling him a strange name—”Death-Singer.”
Rake did not like the title. He knew what singing was, but he had never done it. Music was a human pastime.
He floated next to a set of stone steps leading up from the river, and he helped Jewel climb from his shoulders onto a step. Then Rake took the golden belt he’d borrowed from Shale and latched it around his waist, spinning the small dial and pressing the lever. He winced at the familiar piercing sensation as the belt sampled his body and rewrote his lower half into legs that suited his torso. Mai had understood a little of how the belt’s science-magic worked. Rake did not, but he enjoyed the power of being able to climb from the river and stand upright on two legs.
People clustered around him and Jewel, wrapping their bare, dripping bodies in cloaks, pelting Rake with gratitude and with questions. It was all so loud. He’d been alone in the quiet of the Horror’s healing sac for a long time, with only the occasional hum of great Entity’s body and the murmur of the Horror’s voice to break the solitude. Once the Horror had disgorged him and pointed him in the direction of Kiken Island, Rake had swum a long distance alone.
The storm of voices and shouts turned his muscles rigid and his breath short. He felt his lips curling back, sensed a snarl building in the bottom of his chest. He must not react, must not terrify the people he’d saved, the ones who were grateful to him.
But the panic would not recede. He was going to turn feral and wild—or perhaps he should leap back into the river—
Strong arms wrapped around him, ushering him through the crowd, and a deep voice rolled over the chatter. “Move aside, now, move aside. Make way. Our savior is tired. He must rest. Clear a path.”
The arms and the voice belonged to Takajo, the hawk-master. His face and his narrow black eyes looked as severe as ever, but Rake knew him to be kind beneath the brusque demeanor. As Takajo forged their way through the crowd, Rake was able to take in deeper, slower breaths. His lips fell back into place over his fangs.
“Jewel,” he said, desperate, for he could not see his spawn in the sea of villagers.
“Here,” said a small, confident voice at his elbow.
