Sins Against the Sea (3 page)

You are to rendezvous with the whales at Vaternish Point. The strait is narrowest there and the whales will block the passage to prevent the ketos from entering our part of the Minch.

Murtagh’s instructions inside his head filled Cuan with excitement. The mention of the sea monster especially hooked his interest. He’d never encountered a ketos before, but he’d heard—from Seanchai the bard and some of his fellow warriors—that the fire-breathing basilisks were the most terrifying creatures in all the seven seas. With their great gnashing fangs, armor-like scales, and razor-sharp claws, they could cut down a whole fleet of ships with a single swipe. Far from being afeared, he welcomed the chance to confront such a formidable beast.

When the briefing was over, the warriors formed a circle and, while treading their tails to maintain the sacred formation, said their usual prayer to Oceanus and Tethys, the gods protecting all the waters of the earth.

“O Great and Glorious Oceanus, lord and master of the seven seas, hear us this day. Your dominion is being befouled and your children killed by those who would selfishly exploit the abundance you mean to provide for all.

“O Good and Generous Tethys, mother of the Oceanids and source of all life, guide and protect your children, and with your husband stop those who would willfully harm your watery province and all the creatures that dwell therein.”

After the prayer, Cuan went to his room and put on his gold torque, seal-leather cuirass, and bronze wrist bracers inlaid with polished bits of coral, sea glass, and walrus ivory—the battle gear of a warrior. When he was dressed, he took up his coral trident before rejoining the others.

Fifteen minutes later, he was swimming in formation alongside Shan, Each-Mara, Ronan the weapons master, and all the other warriors of Clan MacMuir’s fiana. Chief Murtagh and his bearded officers, with their long black hair billowing behind them on the current, led the procession.

When they reached Vaternish Point, Murtagh gave the signal and all surfaced. The instant Cuan’s face hit the air, his gills began to close. As he drew a deep breath through his mouth, the air burned his bronchial passages. The sun was shining, but the wind was brisk and the water choppy. Bursts of icy spray erupted here and there. He shivered, glad for the protection of his cuirass.

When the water around him began to vibrate, he tightened his grip on his trident. A strange, deep droning sound filled his ears and echoed back from the cliffs. As the rumbling grew louder, he spun around in search of its source. Disappointment bit him hard when he saw the monster approaching from the south. It was not the terrifying fire-breathing serpent he’d been hoping for. Och, no. Their foe was a ship with a bulbous bow and a long, flat deck. He’d seen many similar vessels in these waters before, though none quite so immense. Painted along the side, white on black, was one towering word.

Ketos.

As the behemoth drew closer, engines rumbling like thunder, there was an explosion of flapping wings from the cliffs of nearby Ronay. The seals, frightened by the sound, began baying and humping toward the sea.

A few feet away from the warriors, Chief Murtagh was balancing high on his tail, facing the tanker head on. As the carrier came to a stop, the engine quieted. Men in knitted caps and pea coats gathered along the deck rail, their expressions ranging from hostile to surprised to curious.

Murtagh lifted to his lips the auger shell he used to amplify his voice. “
Ketos
, you sail a perilous path,” he called out to the sailors. “Turn back now or you shall know my wrath.”

A man with a thick ginger beard and a Highlander’s brogue answered through an amplifier of his own: “Who the fuck might you be, eh? And what’s with the Braveheart get ups? Is that blue crap you’ve smeared all over yourselves supposed to strike fear into our hearts?” Sniggering, he added, “Or maybe the cold water has turned you lot as blue as my bollocks!”

When raucous laughter erupted on deck, Cuan’s bowels knotted. He’d learned enough English from Meredith to recognize impertinence—a foolhardy strategy in the extreme.

“Which of you is the captain?” Murtagh demanded, his booming voice silencing their mirth.

“Who wants to know?” replied the red bearded man.

“I am Murtagh. Chieftain of Clan MacMuir of the Charmed Isles…and the guardian of these waters.”

“Oh, yeah?” the man retorted. “Well, I’m Red Beard the Pirate, so la-dee-da.”

“Your presence in these waters violates your own maritime regulations.” Murtagh thrust his trident skyward. “You must turn back at once and go around the other side of the islands.”

“Have you lost your mind, Blue Boy? We need two bleeding miles to turn this monster around. Not that I have the least intention of doing anything of the kind.”

“If you do not turn this ship around,” Murtagh said, his countenance darkening. “I shall call a storm to run her aground.”

Cuan glanced at Shan, who now bobbed beside him. “Why does your father not want these men to pass through our territory?”

“
Ketos
is an oil tanker,” Shan replied. “Not as big as some, but too big for these waters.”

Oil, Cuan knew, was found under the floor of the ocean. Humans took it the way they took everything else they wanted. Even so, he had no idea what it looked like, what they wanted it for, or what the function of a “tanker” might be.

Just as he started to ask Shan to explain, a deafening crack rang out, calling Cuan’s attention back to the tanker. The bearded man was pointing something toward the water—a small dark object that glinted in the sunlight. As Cuan squinted, straining to make out what it might be, the device discharged with another ear-splitting bang.

A high-pitched cry rose from the water. The whales begin to agitate, stirring up the sea. Cuan shifted his tail, fighting the onslaught of waves. Whales were peaceful creatures. Firing upon them was a serious violation. Were these humans utterly unscrupulous?

Aye, well. Did he really need to ask?

Murtagh, shaking his trident at the sky, cried out, “In the name of Glauckos, god of the sea and father of our race, I command thee wind to rise!”

A howling squall kicked up and buffeted the ship. The deckhands scurried about like sand fleas. When the chief gave the signal to attack, the warriors surrounded the ship. Eyes lifted, hair whipping their faces, they called out to Zeus: “Thunder your anger; lightning, your might. Bring to us clouds, darker than night.”

Thunderheads rolled in, dousing the sun. The sea swelled and churned, tossing the tanker like a skiff. As her hull creaked and groaned, the warriors swam circles around her while chanting: “Louder and louder we call to thee: Strike a deathblow to our enemy!”

A mighty wave, big as a mountain, rose up and crashed down upon the deck. As the seamen hit the water, the mermen set upon them. Lightning cracked. Thunder boomed. The wind howled.

Ketos
’ engines bellowed as the helmsman attempted to turn her. The monstrous ship lurched. A deafening crunch reverberated back from the cliffs. The hull shrieked like an injured whale as it scraped along the submerged rocks.

The ship moaned as she pitched and rolled, exposing flashes of her rust-red underbelly. Black sludge oozed from a fracture in her hull. Alarmed by the sight, Cuan cast around for Murtagh or one of the officers.

Before he could catch an eye, the conch-blower sounded the retreat. All submerged apart from him. He treaded water for a minute, torn about what to do.

“Come on, Cuan,” Shan shouted as he surfaced. “What in the name of Hades are you doing?”

“There’s a leak in the hull,” Cuan returned, pointing. “Do you think we ought to alert your father?”

“The hull is mostly empty.” Shan sounded as unconcerned as he looked. “We would never attack a full tanker, as the risk to those we are sworn to protect is too great. So, there’s no need to trouble my father with your needless worries. Now, come on, before we miss the victory celebration.”

* * * *

Corey Parker rose from the big blue sofa that doubled as her bed with a glass of wine in her hand and a random thought in her head:
If apartments were swimwear, mine would definitely be a bikini. A barely-there G-string with an itsy-bitsy kitchen and a teeny-weeny bath.

Although tiny, her studio boasted arched doorways, coved ceilings, hardwood floors, and a cheerful Spanish-tile fireplace. Better still, French doors opened onto a balcony offering a spectacular view of Naples Island and the Long Beach Marina. The view made the postage stamp worth the exorbitant monthly rent—almost half of her take-home pay as corporate communications director for Conch Oil.

She stepped out onto the balcony and filled her lungs with fresh, salty air. Ready to drink away the stress of her day, she took a sip from the wineglass in her hand, savoring the oaky undertones and soft citrus finish of her favorite Chardonnay. The balmy sea breeze was just as pleasant and calming. A short distance away, silver moonlight winked at her from the rippled surface of the Pacific Ocean.

Winking was okay, as long as the water came no closer. She used to love the sea, but after it claimed both her parents, she kept her distance.

“I’ll claim you one day, too,” it seemed to whisper. “Just like I claimed them.”

Corey took another gulp of wine and stepped back from the railing. She had only watery impressions of her mom, who’d drowned when her daughter was seven. She hailed from Eynhallow, a small, now uninhabited island in the Orkney archipelago off the northern tip of Scotland—where “the North Sea kissed the Atlantic Ocean,” as her mom used to say with the sweetest of smiles. She always smelled of the beach and had this mesmerizing voice that was soft, deep, and marked by abrupt rises and falls.

Eynhallow, according to her mother, an avid storyteller, was once the summer stomping grounds of the Finfolk, a race of tall, dark people with brooding faces and magical powers. Apparently, the Finfolk wanted nothing to do with Christianity, not unlike Corey’s mom, who kept an altar to a Norse goddess named Freya in the corner of the living room in their waterfront house in Marina del Rey. Freya, amusingly enough, drove a chariot pulled by a pair of tabby cats.

Every night, after tucking Corey in, her mom would tell her all sorts of fantastic stories about bewitching merrows, shapeshifting seals, and blood-thirsty sea monsters. Once, she told Corey about a man in Ireland who found two merrows on the side of a rock. Apparently, they’d been washed up on shore by a fierce storm. The mermaid was dead and the merman was barely clinging to life. The Irishman took the poor creature to his house, where he kept him in a tub of water while nursing him back to health.

Her mom claimed the story was true—that it happened during the Victorian era and was reported in all the papers. Corey, however, who’d inherited her dad’s scientific rationality, could find nothing to substantiate the tale through an internet search a few years later.

As much as she loved her mom’s colorful folktales, she never believed them. She did, however, appreciate the miracle of the ocean. Take seashells, for example. Like snowflakes, no two were the same. She grew up in Marina del Rey, a coastal town near Los Angeles, and, every moment she wasn’t in school, she was down at the beach gathering shells, cataloging her finds, checking them against her reference books, and recording the Latin names for species and genus.

Corey shook her head to bring herself back to the present. Shit. What brought on that little stroll down Memory Lane? The last thing she needed after the crappy day she’d had was for all the skeletons of her past to come dancing out of the closet like a Tim Burton chorus line.

The day got off to a bad start. On the way to work, thanks to some idiot with no tail lights, she’d spilled coffee down the front of her blouse. Then, only moments after arriving at the office, she ran her pantyhose while trying to wash out the stain. Luckily, she kept an extra pair in her desk, but still. Pantyhose were an expense men, who still earned more than women doing the same job, didn’t have to incur. As she raced to pull on her new pair, her secretary called through the door, “Gird your loins. Peter’s on the warpath again.”

Peter Blackwell, Corey’s unpredictable boss, was the president of Conch Oil. On a good day, working for him was like being a trained tiger in a three-ring circus. On a bad day, it was like playing Chinese Fire Drill on a rollercoaster.

This had been one of the bad days. Normally, Corey worked late—sometimes until ten or eleven at night, but not today. Today, she started watching the clock right after lunch, counting down the minutes until quitting time. Peter’s latest game-changing scramble had given her a splitting headache and she couldn’t wait to get home, strip off her suit and stockings, and uncork a chilled bottle of liquid stress-relief.

So, at the stroke of five o’clock, she’d made a beeline for her car, only to spend the next two hours stuck in the parking lot that was Pacific Coast Highway. She inched along, teeth grinding, knuckles white on the wheel, all the way from Wilmington, the refinery-scented home of Conch’s North American headquarters, to her string-bikini of an apartment in Belmont Shores.

Welcome to Southern California.

Thankfully, she lived at the beach, the only thing that made the stress of the job, the tooth-chipping smog, and the insanely overcrowded interstates even remotely tolerable. She might be a director now, but oceanfront real estate in Southern California was ridiculously expensive, and she’d much rather reside in a matchbox in Belmont Shores than something bigger in some inland hellhole like Lakewood or Cerritos.