The Deepest Blue(103)

Looking at Roe, she nodded.

And Roe jumped.

Leaping off the tower, Mayara arched through the air after Roe. She heard the wind scream in her ears. The bells had stopped, she realized dimly. And then they hit the water, slicing into it. Cold squeezed her.

She heard Roe hit the water beside her. Pivoting, she scanned the sea around her. It churned with dirt and debris—there! Roe!

She swam toward her, grabbed her hand, and then she propelled herself down, pulling Roe with her.

Kicking her way down, Mayara focused only on what she had to do: go as deep as they needed to go. Dimly, she sensed Roe calling for a spirit.

She felt her lungs burn, and then she passed the moment and became one with the water. She sensed the spirits all around them, but oddly they didn’t scare her. She felt as if she were one of them.

Ahead, below, she saw the rib cage of the grove.

She swam toward it, pulling Roe with her.

And then the water wrinkled as a bubble of air expanded around her. She glanced sideways to see a spirit attached to Roe. It was an air spirit, shaped like a bird but with scales in place of feathers. Its wings were wrapped around Roe’s chest, and it was exhaling a steady stream of air.

Mayara tried sucking in just a swallow.

It tasted pure. Like the air you breathed on an empty beach, far from the smoky fires of the village houses, far from the mingled scents of a dozen cooked dinners, far from the stench of bodies and life. She breathed in more as she swam between the rib bones.

Pulling Roe down, she aimed for the obsidian floor. The air pocket around them grew, widening to encompass their whole bodies, and they fell to their knees on wet stone.

Sea swirled all around them. Mayara saw the palace wall through the slits between the ribs. It was distorted from the murky water and looked as if it were wavering, dreamlike.

It was silent within their air bubble.

The air spirit made a chittering sound, looking at them.

“When the queen dies, I’ll lose control of it,” Roe said softly.

Mayara nodded. “The water will rush in, and the spirit will try to kill us.” She looked around, hoping for a bit of rope. There was nothing here. Even the heir’s body had either been found and taken or had swept away in the water. Quickly, Mayara untied the piece of her wrap dress that had served her so well as a sling on the island. She tied it around her waist and Roe’s, and then tied it to one of the ribs.

The spirit watched them.

They breathed.

And waited.

Mayara felt the leviathans nearing the city. They’d come from impossibly far away, but had traveled fast, their vast bodies propelling them through the water at incredible speeds. She felt the vastness of their hunger. It was an ancient hunger that reminded Mayara of the space between the stars. An empty void that felt as if it would obliterate any speck of light that dared break through its darkness.

“You’ll need to make the spirits fight them,” Mayara said, “as soon as you have control. Drive them away from the islands, back into the deep, before you can make them sleep.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Roe said. “I didn’t mean to try to become queen. My mother . . . She’s supposed to be queen. All I wanted was to be near her, to get a chance to know her. And now I don’t get that.”

“You’ll have a chance to get to know who she was,” Mayara said. “By being like her. By bonding with the same spirits she bonded with.”

Roe was staring up at the debris-choked water. Bits of the broken city swept by. A wheel from a cart. A chair. A body. “But I won’t get to know her.”

“The spirits knew her,” Mayara said. “You could get to know her through their memories, once you’re bonded with them. I know it’s not the same. But it’s something.”

Roe considered it.

It was almost peaceful in the pocket of air within the grove. None of the debris came through the rib cage. It brushed along the outside. If it weren’t for the roiling of the water and the pressure in her head, Mayara could have believed there wasn’t a disaster in the city, that there weren’t people dying right now.

“It is something,” Roe said at last. “If I live long enough for it.”

“Not dying,” Mayara said. “That’s what we do, right?”

Roe squeezed her hand. “Right.”

The moment came both fast and slow. Slow because they had been waiting for it. Fast because they could have waited forever and Mayara still wouldn’t have felt ready.

The air spirit screamed.

Water collapsed the bubble, and Mayara had only time to half fill her lungs with air before the spirit shot through the water toward them, hate and rage and death in its eyes.

Roe screamed silently. Mayara heard her through the minds of the nearby spirits. Choose me! Make me your queen! Choose!

Mayara echoed her: Choose her. Choose Roe. She didn’t know if it would help, but she pushed the thought out as hard as she could.

Water bashed against her. She clung to Roe’s hand.

The spirit that had given them air latched onto her arm. Twisting, Mayara fought it off. She pulled the glass knife from her belt and plunged it into the spirit’s throat. It reared back as silvery blood spurted into a cloud around it, obscuring it from view.

She felt her lungs begin to burn.

Roe didn’t have experience holding her breath. She wouldn’t know how to resist it. She’d begin to lose focus and then consciousness.