Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

14. The Blood Pearl

Emboldened, I darted to the barracuda's side and stabbed it with my knife.

The blade shattered on impact.

Away, away I swam, bubbles trailing after me along with the dirtiest cuss out there, repeated for emphasis. And the crazy thought, we shall dance... we shall dance...we shall dance forever!

I rolled and grabbed the fish into my embrace, hacking at her with the hatchet, crashing the gills more than cutting them. Finally, the small ax lodged in her flesh firmly enough. I was pulling her up.

At the same time, the monster smashed into me, scraping off bands of skin, cutting in with her fins. She was pulling me in deeper.

But inch by inch, I won the deadly race.

One human height to the interface between the water and the air.

Half human height!

Someone plunged into the water next to me. Loop after loop, the rope wound around the red-eyed head of the barracuda.

The rope snapped taut. An invisible force of a winch on board of the Naiad pulled both of us up, the monster and me. Embraced, writhing, inch by inch, we came out of the water.

As soon as the air touched her nostrils, the barracuda bucked like a wild bull.

I held on to her. Even in my delirium of proximate victory, I didn't think I could stop her from dragging me to the bottom of the sea if the rope snapped. But I could teach mules to be stubborn. So, I held on.

The winch almost tore clean off its rigging with our combined thrashing. Every woman on board was pulling on it, scarring their hands raw on the strained rope.

The Bhutas' monster—full of hatred, with the drug almost washed out by water, as large as our boat—the Naiad's crew was pulling her on board. We all went mad, but when mad is the only way to victory, it pays to abandon sanity.

Abandon it or lose.

It seemed like hours before the barracuda stopped moving. It seemed like a miracle that the boat didn't overturn, because the monster looked bigger strewn on the deck than she did in the water, more than twice my height, almost three times even. And she was more vicious than a thousand crocodiles.

Many legendary victories were won like that, by inches, by tenacity, by refusal to let go, but at the moment only this one mattered to me.

When the realization came that we'd won, when my teeth unclenched and the muscles relaxed, then the onslaught of pain hit me. I screamed.

Sharim splashed a bucket of water into my face. "The fight is over, Safic."

I blinked, breathed and counted.

"That's it, that's good," she said, thumping my back. Then, without as much as one intake of breath, she added, "It'll hurt now. If you hit me, I'll throw you overboard. Understood?"

I spotted a needle with a gut thread in her hand. Sticking gaping wounds with it sounded like a really unfair and rotten way to do business, but I nodded and stared at the sky. It was as blue as the water, but full of air. A marvelous thing, air.

While Sharim sewed and I ground my teeth to stifle screams, the divers washed blood off the deck and crowded the monster. It was softening in the sun, rotting faster than a normal fish would.

"We should get rid of her before she poisons us with her death-stench," one of them said, referring fortunately to the barracuda, not me.

"No." Sharim frowned. "Everyone needs to see proof that she's dead. And we need today's pay."

"Do you think there is a treasure in its belly?" The same woman prodded the bloating belly with her toe.

"Let's find out, shall we?" Sharim muttered with a disgusted grimace at the stench.

I swear, she slowed down her doctoring to torment us all. Not until the last scrape, the last bruise was examined and attended to or deemed unworthy of the aid, did Sharim take the hatchet to the monster's gut.

The despicable goo of rotting entrails and teal slime came out first. The Captain chopped grimly to release more and more stink and indescribable fluids. Yet we converged onto the sight, heads touching, eyes eager.

Finally, Sharim found the bulge she was looking for and pulled it out. I couldn't hear anyone breathe for self-evident reasons.

A grimy knife sliced the barracuda's stomach wall. Its contents sprayed us, poured out, the sight both nauseating and mesmerizing. Tears spurted out of my eyes. It was so bad. But it was worth it!

The same ancient consciousness that drove our barracuda to kill must have given it a preference for the oysters hoarding pearls. In the soggy mass of the almost digested mollusks and other prey, the pearls looked reddish and ugly, but when dropped one by one in a bucket of clean water, our prizes glittered.

Most of them gleamed white or bluish, like snow on the mountain tops, but some were deeper blue and sea-weed green, or even a soft hue of peaches. Three were the most prized color--black.

And one, so perfectly round that it rolled away, was blood-red. It wasn't as large as the others, but the color was irresistible to me, because it was Mythra's. My foot moved before my consciousness did. The tiny treasure fit neatly between my toes.

***

Battered as I was, there was no question about swimming all the way to Gala's Rock that night. Instead, I left the bonfires of the impromptu celebration early, trusting my Safic disguise and someone's old saree to conceal me.

An epic kill and a cup of wine would rob a wiser woman of sense—and I was seventeen, basking in Divines' favor and women's praise, with her first lover waiting.

This was the hour in Palmyr when the townspeople made beelines for the temples and taverns after their busy day.

I threw a longing glance toward the houses and stalls hiding the theater... and didn't turn toward it. I made a beeline for the Temple and mixed with the pilgrims.

I crossed the grounds with reverent shuffling steps, knelt before the bronze statues, added handfuls of rose petals to the cups with the prayer candles. I asked Gala to cleanse me of the violent thoughts and deeds, for many of them plagued me that day.

Then I slunk away and hid in the deserted library to wait for the last ringing of the bell, the shutting of the gates, the acolytes and the priestesses hurrying back and forth.

Then I waited even longer—it felt like hours—for the sweetest moment of my day.

I traded my hiding hole in the library for the one by the seawall. From that nook, I watched Kozima pace in the thickening shadows. He rubbed his forehead, grew agitated, peered into the sea until the night extinguished every color in the sky above him. First stars came out. He was still waiting.

I stepped out of my hiding spot and whispered his name.

With a muffled cry, he half-climbed, half-tumbled down, clutched me to his chest, kissed the top of my head with his hot, soft lips.

His chin scratched me a little, a brand-new sensation. "How? Are you back? What..." he asked me in a flurry of joy.

"Easy, sweetheart, easy." Euphoria buoyed me, a twin to his joy. "I'm held together in three places with medical gum and gut thread."

He gasped, released me, and cleaved to me again. The stonework never felt warmer against my back.

Before I allayed his fears, before I let him inspect the stitches, before I even told him the glorious tale of slaughtering the sea monster, before I sheltered his hardening wanderer, I said the most important thing.

"Kozima," I said, "I know what we must do about Lydia's courtship."