Undertow (Whyborne & Griffin #8.5)(15)

I took the lead, and Persephone followed. The crypts occupied a small series of rooms, with a chapel at the far end. Other than the fact the prop room was in a crypt, nothing unusual presented itself until we reached the chapel.

The place seemed darker, somehow, and the scent of the sea stronger than it should have been beneath the ground. The light of the candle struggled against the shadows. Reluctantly it crept across the marble floor, the empty alcoves where saints had once rested, until it touched the rusty iron bars of a cage.

*

Persephone let out a hiss and rushed to the cage. I approached slowly, expecting to see poor Irene or Mr. Burton imprisoned within. Instead, the candlelight revealed a ketoi.

She huddled on the bottom of the cage, barely moving. Glossy skin had gone dry and cracked, and her tendrils lay limp and shriveled against her neck, their tips gone brown as rawhide. Her ribs heaved, breath rasping through parted lips as if every inhalation were a struggle.

Persephone crouched by the cage, her eyes narrow and teeth exposed. “Who are you?” she asked.

I paused in my approach. “You don’t know her?”

“She isn’t from our city.”

The ketoi opened her eyes at the sound of Persephone’s voice. Her lips parted, but what issued forth was the strange language Persephone sometimes sang in. The ketoi tongue, no doubt.

Persephone tugged on the padlock holding the cage shut, but it resisted her strength. “Can you open this, Maggie?”

“I’m sure I can.” I knelt beside her. “Who is she? Where did she come from?”

Persephone’s tendrils thrashed and coiled. “She isn’t making much sense. She says she’s a chieftess, like me. That her city was destroyed, her people slaughtered. But the rest is incoherent.”

“A destroyed city?” I asked, alarmed. “Is that possible?”

“It’s happened before.” Persephone’s expression was grim as she regarded the other chieftess. “We trade with one another, send emissaries to one another, but we are scattered across the globe. We are in close contact with the ketoi city off the coast of Cornwall, but otherwise? If she’s from a distant place, it might take months, even years, for word of it to travel to us here.”

I bent my attention to the padlock. The foreign chieftess valiantly struggled to sit up in the confines of the cage. “Why is she here? And what’s wrong with her?”

“The first, I don’t know.” Persephone put her hand between the bars of the cage, and the other chieftess seized it. “As for the second, she’s been outside of water for far too long. We can come onto land, but not live here indefinitely.”

The lock fell open. Persephone hastily swung open the door, then hauled the other ketoi out. “She’ll recover, in time, but only if we get her into water soon.”

I reached out to help. The ketoi snapped her shark teeth at me, and I snatched my fingers back in shock.

Persephone snarled something at her angrily. “She’s confused,” she said to me, apologetically.

I took a deep breath and nodded. Somehow I’d let myself forget just how dangerous those teeth could be. “I understand. She’s been held captive. Tortured.”

“Still. I won’t let her hurt you, even by accident.” Persephone shifted the chieftess into her arms. “I’ve got her. You lead the way.”

Seeing them close together, it was even more obvious how sick the foreign ketoi was. Her markings were pale, her muscles wasted. Sinews stood out beneath her skin, and the edges of her gill slits were red and inflamed.

I moved up the stairs as quietly as possible. Before I could make for the stage door, however, there came the murmur of voices. “… be here soon,” a man said.

Oh dear. Apparently the theater wasn’t deserted after all.

I froze. Persephone stopped as well, but I could still hear the rasp of breath from the freed prisoner. If we were caught…

Ordinarily, I would have believed Persephone equal to any threat. But the imprisoned chieftess suggested the acting troupe—or whatever they truly were—had defeated ketoi before. An entire city, even. They’d slay us without a thought.

“Yes, Grandfather,” replied a woman. The siren—Joanna Ayers. “I’ve done this before. You don’t have to repeat yourself.”

Footsteps echoed, making for the direction of the stage. Of all the bad luck.

I turned to Persephone. Careful to stay clear of the other ketoi, I leaned in, until my lips were nearly at her ear.

“We can’t risk the stage door, if there are people moving around near it,” I whispered. The tendrils of her hair shifted, perhaps in response to the touch of my breath. One glided over my skin, where my throat met my jaw. A shiver ran down my body, and my mouth went dry. “We’ll have to sneak out the front, and hope no one is about on the street outside.”

Persephone nodded mutely. I withdrew, but her scent of salt and ambergris still clung to my skin.

I went cautiously, careful to stay in the back corridors, away from the auditorium. The voices faded—they must have gone to the stage, as I’d thought.

A discreet door let us out into the lobby. I led the way across the shadowy space, relief creeping over me. We’d escape, and Persephone would carry the foreign chieftess back to the sea, and the ketoi would take care of whatever was happening here at Undertow.