Steel Sirens Read online

  Emeree stops dressing and shakes a fist. “He would perch above that house and shriek. Shriek shriek shriek for hours. He’s not native to these lands, you know… Gray hawks live in the Tamil lands, around the oases.”

  “I – No, I didn’t know that. He showed up on the eaves one morning and followed me into the Wood.”

  “He doesn’t know it, either. He’s got no mate, but he still sat up in the boughs moaning about it.” She stops with one boot half on. “Swords don’t have fingers, Ewan. I couldn’t plug my ears. Noise just...pierces.”

  “No, I... I imagine –”

  “Here.” She thrusts a canteen at me. “Carentinian Rye. Found it on the captain.”

  I pause with fingers on the stopper. “Why was an undead man carrying liquor?”

  “He’s undead, Ewan, not dead. Goodness.” Emeree shakes her head. “And I am fifty-fifty on that being liquor with no poison. Fifty-one to forty-nine, in fact. You’ll be fine.”

  “How do you know?” I unstopper it, take a long draught. My nostrils almost ignite. Carentinian Rye is practically poison already, according to rumor. It’s made from rye grown in a gaseous swamp. Actual poison. But a drink, any drink, feels like a blessing.

  I sniff, braced for fumes. Nothing.

  A test sip. Spicy. I brace but it tapers into a warmth across my tongue. Dry, it puckers the skin of my mouth. Hardly a burn when I swallow.

  Emeree sits beside me, rubbing my back. “Right? It’s wonderful.” She takes the canteen from me and swigs. I grab it back, open my throat and swallow all I can. The rye tastes good. It feels good.

  “Wonderful,” she whispers softly, prying my fingers loose, “For about five minutes more.”

  “It tastes fine! It’s not poison.”

  “Not in your mouth! No one would import Carentinian spirits if they tasted like bile.”

  Embers ignite below my ribs. “The gut. It’s not the mouth…”

  “The gut,” Emeree confirms, pounding the stopper home.

  “I didn’t know,” I hiss, doubling over.

  “Get dressed and let’s get to tracking. We can catch up as we go. There is a lot you don’t know. And me too.”

  She’s right, I realize through an amber haze. Three days ago, the world was Braemar and the Upper Swell. Cities, kingdoms, the wide world...They weren’t real. My village was real. No dragons or dead men.

  But life before everyone was taken wasn’t exactly easy, either.

  At least, it wasn’t exactly good, not for me.

  Emeree’s forced me to admit what my sister tried to tell me. And she’s silently offered help. That’s put me at ease about the world I didn’t know...along with a generous amount of the worst thing I’ve ever imbibed. “I’m all right.” I think I say this mostly for my own benefit. “Let’s break down camp and head out.

  “Sure.”

  She packs away the cooled spit while I struggle with my boot laces. “So, tell me one of those things I don’t know.”

  “Ever hear of the Sirens?”

  I almost laugh, but she’s so serious for a change. “Everyone child has. Four warriors made a deal with a Goddess. I think my sister pretended to be all four until she was almost too old for make believe. Father told us all the stories until we could say them along with him.”

  I’d lie in bed, eyes closed to see the Battle of Tralan or a silver-haired battle maiden in flight. My mother would lean in our doorway, adding details so Father’s story grew in the telling. Bri never wanted him to stop but I was glad when the lamp was put out, free in the silence to imagine the people and places my parents described.

  “What happened to the Sirens?” she asks, passing me my quiver.

  “Nothing? They’re not real.” I laugh. “I guess their stories faded into time.”

  “I wonder why.” Emeree isn’t breaking camp. She stands beside the stump, watching me.

  I freeze, bow in hand, half slung. “Why do you think it happened?”

  “Maybe because they weren’t real. Or maybe once the last Siren was captured and cursed…” She shrugs.

  No.

  Shock ebbs fast. I wonder...Why not? After what I’ve seen and heard, why is this impossible to believe?

  “My father’s stories were mad.” I defend myself with this; it’s all I can think to say.

  Emeree dazzles with her smile. “Most of your father’s stories were true. I know.”

  “I guess you heard him tell some of them.” Strange to think the nights my father talked and we nodded off around the great room hearth, Emeree was listening.

  “Let’s mount up,” she says, slinging my pack and her sword. “We definitely have some talking to do.”

  This brings us to a crossroads. “Where are we headed?” We need help, but how far? Who?

  “We need Siri.”

  “A siren?” The idea erodes some of my struggle.

  “I can feel her, I think…” Emeree closes her eyes, lips parted around a slow breath. Her presence inside me hums with the turning of a millstone.

  “She’s close.”

  I lean into her, chest pounding. “How close?”

  “Close enough to feel her.”

  “So…”

  “That way,” she indicates with her chin.

  “That’s not a distance.”

  “And I’m not a carpenter’s tape. You keep track and tell me how far it was when we get there.”

  “Fair enough. But I’m like a teamster I charge pence by the mile.”

  “Extortion!” Emeree declares, turning for her horse.

  Panic sets in and I grab her wrist. “How do I wait? I need them back now and I can’t… can’t reach them. How do I get through this?”

  “One minute after another,” she answers sagely.

  My heart pounds at how right this feels, us being together. I don’t know why I thought I could face this alone. At least she’s gestured toward Minster Lowe; it feels less like leaving Bri and Kell if I keep to the same direction.

  We approach the clearing’s edge and I get my first good look at the horses she’s secured.

  “Those are my horses! Not mine, but from Braemar.”

  “Hm. Farming village?”

  “No. Well, Orchards. Why?”

  “Huh.”

  I follow her appraisal of thick haunches and wide withers. “Glaer and Falnir are faithful lads.” I defend, smoothing Glaer’s dapple flank. “Stout mounts.”

  “Very...stout. We should have taken Tarin’s beasts.”

  I swing into the saddle, pleased with my fit. “A loyal horse is worth ten men at a day’s labor.”

  Emeree mounts and grins at me. “The difference is, those men have all day to labor.”

  She gets a laugh out of me, double when I urge Glaer and lunges into a full mosey. “All right. Fair point.”

  “I think I should just be grateful to ride anything,” Emeree says, trying to settle on Falnir’s broad roan back. “The air, the sunlight.” She lets out a satisfied breath. “Things could be better, clearly. But they have been worse. I’m just glad to have the chance to fight. To try.”

  “What were you doing under the stones?” I ask.

  “Oh, that?” She spurs to bring us even. “That’s the easiest part to explain.”

  “I’m glad for that.”

  Finally, something easy. Finally, I’m about to have some answers.

  6

  The Twenty of Flails

  The Seer turns her next card. It depicts a sly lass concealing an empty basket atop her flame-red hair. It is associated with deceit, a bet, a case of mistaken identity, and a romance. Inverted, it represents a secret, a detour, and injury. The card smells strongly of blood. Its reverse is flat black with a fish leaping the rising moon.

  “I have no idea why they put me down there,” says Emeree as we reach the creek.

  “You said that’s the easiest part!”

  “I don’t know why there specifically. I know exactly why I was in the blade and why i
t was meant to go undiscovered.”

  “You heard so much. You must have heard something in the beginning. A clue.”

  Emeree rides beside me, close enough for our knees to almost brush. But the feeling of her inside me? It’s hollow. “Imagine I grabbed you right this second, stuffed you in cell with no light and no touch. You have nothing, not even the hope of escape. You will be there forever.”

  I wasn’t panicked until she said, ‘no hope of escape’. Every prisoner in the mortal realm has some odds of getting free. Animals gnaw off limbs. The idea of an impossible escape crushes my heart into one panicked beat.

  Emeree’s presence warms inside me after a moment.

  “What I mean is, those first days, or maybe they were months or years …Madness is all I remember.”

  She feels grey and threadbare inside me.

  “Before?” I ask, needing to know and wanting to shift the subject.

  “How did I wind up in my sword?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know the orpheotelestai?”

  “The what?”

  “Hah. Good. Better not to know them. At least not personally.”

  “Bad news then?”

  “Mm. A cult. More commonly called the Orpha.”

  “A cult? The most exciting thing we had in Braemar was a group of men who met in Till Framman’s undercroft to try and summon the ghost of a prostitute.”

  “Really?” Emeree jerks her reins and beams at me. “Now that’s my kind of magic.” Now she frowns, knocking Falnir into the brush. “On the other hand, do you want succubi? That’s how you get succubi.”

  “Succubi...aren’t…”

  She wags a finger. “Real? Stop right there. You already know. Anyway.”

  “Anyway.”

  “No one knows the origins of the cult. I know, that sounds very bedtime fairy story. In this case it isn’t clumsy obfuscation. Truly no one understands how it all started. But it started with a scroll found in a necropolis.”

  “Necropolis eh? Nothing good comes of that.”

  “Nope. His name was Anaxagoras. On his tomb slab was etched ‘Lord of the Assembly’.”

  I’m so absorbed I barely miss a branch to the eye. “Meaning?”

  Emeree shrugs. “He lived at least two millennia ago. We found exactly one record of him in the Great Library at Loria. A stone tablet charging Anaxagoras with impiety and exiling him from Ionia.”

  Something doesn’t fit about this. I don’t know much about nobles, but I know a little about criminals. “He was buried as a nobleman?”

  “You catch on quick!” Emeree calls back, leading us along the creek bank.

  I urge Glaer with heel taps, hurrying him along the defile to wider ground ahead. I have to hear the rest of this story.

  “So, we assumed Anaxagoras did someone a great favor; great enough for the reward of land and a title,” says Emeree when I catch up. “The creation of the Orpha, probably.”

  “We?”

  “The other Sirens and I.”

  “You were brought to fight the Orpha, I take it.”

  Her voices lowers, nearly lost under water trickling and a dry rustle of brown autumn leaves. “We were created to fight the Orpha. Through a conduit with the goddess Cailleach.”

  My hands slacken around the reins. Glaer slows under my limp legs.

  “Are you all right?” she asks, bending in the saddle to get a look at my face.

  I tap my temple. “I feel like I started this out with the well kind of empty, you know? Bri and Kel being taken, and the others...that drained my mind. My heart. Nothing’s going to break me,” I rush to add. “But the world isn’t the place I thought it was. I don’t know what I thought it was; nothing beyond the Fortingall was real.”

  “I can stop, for now.”

  “No. You said it earlier; we don’t have time to coddle me, physically or mentally.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know. But maybe you should have. This isn’t a simple errand.”

  Our eyes have been trained the far bank, the tree line. My ears at least have been on the deeper forest, animal sounds or an absence of. I realize I haven’t looked at Emeree’s face in long minutes and I doubt she’s looked at mine. Just being able to feel each other hasn’t prevented tension.

  She brightens. Maybe some science will ease your mind.”

  “You were created with science?”

  “Some. And the powers of a goddess, and that’s not really magic either, is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Emeree shakes her head emphatically. “Magic is the learned burden of mortals. A god’s powers are innate.”

  “I continue learning how much I don’t know.”

  “Hah! I’ve had a lot longer than you to figure all this out.”

  “So, explain this science and not-magic to help me catch up.”

  “Loria Maritima is a great city at the center of realms. Not geographically; realms don’t have any order or hierarchy no matter what a Halite tries to tell you.”

  “Noted.”

  “Magisters and demi-gods living in Loria sorted out how to open gates, portals to other realms, by harnessing the universe’s energy. So, the city became a hub, and cities lined to it became smaller hubs and so on.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Knowledge. All sorts of knowledge, but primarily that of preventing and identifying the corruption of magic or god influence.”

  “That’s very specific.”

  “For good reason. The rightful king of Loria became a god, but it was thanks to some...dark circumstances. Worse, mortals suffered as pawns while immortals fought out their comparatively petty squabbles. Loria was nearly destroyed in the cataclysmic final battle, The Sundering. It was the king’s ancestral home and he did everything afterward to protect it.” Emeree waves her hand. “This was eons ago, but his efforts endured. Realms united to protect mortals and lesser ascendants.”

  “I take it the gates are how your creators found you.”

  “In a way. Those of us who became sirens were from different realms. But we all fought magic and rogue monsters and we each availed ourselves of the Great Library in Loria to learn how to do it better. It was the library’s Keeper who made the offer of becoming Sirens.”

  “A librarian?”

  Emeree laughs, sounding amused by the idea. “The Keeper is responsible for more than just the books and knowledge. He or she is also the leader of Andraste’s Order. Assassins, witches, mages, ascendants. Tremendous responsibility.” She points me toward a slope where land falls west from the creek and nudges Falnir. “Not even they were enough when the Orpha attacked.”

  “What were you doing before that?” I can’t imagine the kind of life where being imbued by a goddess is a fairly normal event.

  “Campaigning. Improving my men. I was thegn to my brother Eddis.”

  “In a whole other realm.” My own world feels so unreachably vast. Other worlds? Beyond the horizon of my mind.

  “You were created to stop the Orpha. But you were cursed...”

  “Did we fail, you mean.” She flickers inside me. “No. We defeated the Orpha. We didn’t fail, we were betrayed.”

  “Who?” I can hardly summon my voice. Maybe I’m afraid to ask what can best the most powerful beings I’ve ever heard of.

  “At the heart, bandits, mercenaries, slavers, armies. Magic guilds. Never a threat when they were scattered factions. Someone united them all.”

  “Any guesses?”

  “I picked up a few clues. I was aware over those fifty years. Fifty years,” she repeats in a hollow tone. She raises in the saddle, recovering. “One bag of snakes at a time. We have your people to find and these slavers to track. And what in the hell became of the Hand?” She clucks, making me laugh. “See? We’re already in over our heads and it’s not even midday meal.”

  Talos dives into the clearing on a silent shift of the breeze. Falnir cants and shuffle. Glaer tenses be
neath me in a way that makes it impossible to grip my legs to his flanks. He rears and screams, throwing his head side to side.

  This upsets Talos who screeches and beats his wings above Glaer’s forelock, starting the panic all over again.

  “Whoa, whoa!” I rest my head to Glaer’s and sooth him with a hum.

  When I glance at Emeree she’s watching me in wonder. “It’s dumb as a turnip root,” she murmurs.

  “The bird or the horse?” Talos hops on my elbow and punishes me with a sharp whistle that makes Glaer shudder.

  Emeree gets Falnir going with a lot of tapping and clicking. “Not the bird! Talos is a good lad; he must have flown quite far.”

  Talos puffs like a winter owl.

  “You stop,” I say.

  He ignores me. He lets out a baby hawk sound, rotates his head and makes blinky eyes and Emeree.

  She wiggles her brows at me.

  Talos hops from my arm to Emeree’s with a sharp whistle to me that sounds like profanity.

  “Whoa!” She laughs and struggles to balance him in the saddle.

  She stretches, body taut so her curves stand out from a warrior’s lithe frame. I can’t help looking. She’s like living sculpture.

  I want her. I can’t explain it; won’t even try. Deep inside it feels inevitable.

  “I felt that.”

  “Sorry,” I duck my face.

  “It’s been fifty years; this is probably not the part anyone should apologize for.”

  “Meaning?”

  She smiles and skips over my question. “You’ll get used to the sixth sense, I think. I could sense the others, like you do me. In the beginning I hated it. It tempers.”

  Talos stretches his neck, beak hovering at Emeree’s mouth, his eyes closed to fluttery creases.

  I hold up my arm for him. “You smooth heap of fluff.”

  “Where did he learn this!” she asks, laughing harder.

  “No idea.” He’s been landing in questionable places along his route.

  She grants him a small peck. “I’ve heard hunt companions learn nearly everything from their masters.”

  Our eyes lock. I feel Emeree as much as I feel my own presence. We’re molten, pouring together.