110. [Red Tide] Deep Dweller

Red Tide, Enchantress of the 5th Renown, the Reef, and her growing pod

Throne Gazer, Cuda Bite, and Salt Wall, champions of the Reef, finally returned to their people

Deep Dweller, sister of the Queen of the Coralline Throne, sea witch, Throne Gazer’s mother

***

10 Clocksend, 61 AW

The Ledges, on the east coast of the North Continent

20 days until the next Granting

The northerners had strung the bodies of dead Coralline Elite with ropes of seaweed—a stinking, decomposing buoy that marked the entrance to the Ledges. Red Tide understood their reasons. The corpses were meant to terrify and provoke. But, now that the champions traveled in the company of some thirty Coralline Elite who had defected from the queen’s service, the northerners’ bloody excesses would just make tempers flare anew.

“Tell your people to loose these bodies,” Throne Gazer murmured to Salt Wall.

The berserker grunted. “They have spent the winter fighting off intruders,” she replied. “They won’t like that.”

“I can’t stand the sight of more of our dead,” Throne Gazer said.

“Not a feeling they’ll share,” Salt Wall replied with a snort. Even so, she turned to look at Red Tide, who floated beside the two.

“Clean it up,” Red Tide said with a nod. “The north won. Tell them to act like it’s not their first fucking time.”

Without further comment, Salt Wall dove down to treat with the pod of wild-eyed northerners who had tried to aggressively circle the champions and their companions that morning. Their fledgling ambush had been swiftly quelled by the champions—forking surges of Throne Gazer’s [Eel Sting] sending the overeager from ocean to sky.

These waters still belonged to the northern pods. Red Tide would not challenge for hunting rights or migration havens. But all the oca’em here knew the truth.

The champions owned any ocean they swam through.

On their way to the Ledges, the champions had bested two more pods of Coralline Elite. The first they had caught resting around a rocky jetty and Red Tide's song had been in their ears before they were even fully awake. The second they had met in the ocean—a twisting and churning fight like true oca'em—but one that didn't last long. Both of those pods had been given the same choice as the one led by Unyielding Hunger: give support to the Reef's champions or return shamed to their coward queen.

Half joined. Half were stripped and sent south. They avoided any more killing. Back on the beach, Unyielding Hunger had chosen to face his queen empty-handed and naked rather than commit to the cause of the champions. That was fine, Red Tide thought. Already their ranks swelled to a number that made her uncomfortable. And now, the champions and their entourage would merge with the northerners that had spent months waging a bloody war on their behalf. Too many pods to keep track of. Too many egos.

Playing politics was not how Red Tide wished to spend her last weeks. Luckily, it was Turtle Jaw who kept their new allies in line. Red Tide had heard some of the old bass return to his voice—the warden’s stern diligence keeping the other oca’em in check. He liaised with the southern sea witch who had been traveling with Unyielding Hunger. All these new oca’em had sung for the champions, but Red Tide listened closest to the sea witch’s naming song. She was called Final Comfort and had made easing the pains of death her life’s work. Going to war had not been Final Comfort’s decision; upon Turtle Jaw’s betrayal, the queen had quickly entangled every pod with a history of rebellion into the hunt, dividing the most powerful amongst her Coralline Elite. Thus, the mystics of the volcanic southern seas had come to be in grudging service to the queen. The queen has thought she was heading off a wider rebellion, but in the end, she only helped the champions’ cause.

So many factions amongst the oca’em, and yet all of them existed under the dolphin symbol of the Reef. Meanwhile, as Red Tide had seen, the land-walkers were carved up into some hundred little factions, splitting into new pods at the pettiest of schism. Only the oca’em truly remembered how to wage war, yet the gods had made it impossible for them to fight their real enemy. It hardly seemed fair.

Red Tide shook her head. Too easy to get lost in thought out here.

Before her, four overlapping waterfalls burst forth from a sheer cliff face. The thundering waterfalls only spewed in summer, when the groundwater seeping down from the north unfroze and rushed toward the ocean via an underground river. As Salt Wall told it, there was an underwater cavern entrance into the rocky coast, one that led behind the waterfalls, into the eroded network of tunnels called the Ledges. A frozen and impassable place for most of the year, the northerners had fled here when it opened in the spring, and used the cavern’s entrance as a choke point to fight off the Coralline Elite.

Floating next to her, Throne Gazer scanned the craggy coast with a faraway expression that likely mirrored Red Tide’s own. She flicked water at him.

“Where’s your head?” Red Tide asked. “Looking for your dog still?”

They had left Fish Dragger behind after the first battle with the Coralline Elite, when they had decided to take to the ocean. The last they saw of the dog, she still sat on that sad beach, patiently awaiting her master’s return.

“No. Although, that would please me, to see her up there,” Throne Gazer replied. “I am thinking about how little I am looking forward to this.”

“The cavern?” Red Tide nodded in agreement. “Never seen the appeal, either.”

“Not that,” Throne Gazer said. He turned to look at her, pointing at the side of Red Tide’s head. “One of your braids is coming loose.”

“Fuck off,” she replied. “Who cares?”

“You will want to fix it,” he said. “Before we meet my mother.”

With that, Throne Gazer sunk beneath the surface, diving for the entrance to the Ledges. Red Tide sneered. She pulled her harp off her back and set it gently on her belly, floating on her back. With the waterfalls as percussion, she plucked a gentle melody. Red Tide would take her time. She wasn’t one to be summoned.

***

The entrance to the Ledges was a narrow crevice in the coastal wall—dark and twisting—not a place where Red Tide would’ve wanted to pick a fight. The water there was still sour with spilled blood from the Coralline Elite who had tried and failed to force their way through.

Red Tide bumped aside fist-sized snails as she climbed out of the basin and emerged onto one of the cavern’s stone platforms. Northerners posted as guards recognized her, nodded, and stepped aside. The cavern ran deep, curving up-and-down like a serpent’s body, each section divided by stone outcroppings—the ledges that gave the place its name. Blocks of melting ice still sat atop some of the shelves, dripping water down onto fluorescent growths of lichen.

Aimlessly, Red Tide climbed across platforms connected by woven seaweed. She passed warriors eating and resting, but also elders at work on simple tasks and children playing their stupid games. The northerners had sequestered their weak here while the waters were too dangerous for migration. It had been years since Red Tide had seen such a gathering of her people. She stared at the children, and they stared back at her until she bared her teeth.

A high-pitched whistle drew Red Tide’s attention to a higher ledge, where Cuda Bite sat with his legs dangling. She climbed up a ladder to join him.

“I never liked when we’d migrate to one of the caverns,” Cuda Bite said as Red Tide sat down next to him. “After the Grotto, I can’t stand places like this.”

“Yeah, you seem like a Horizdock boy,” Red Tide replied.

“What’s that mean?”

 “Some like the city, some like the sea,” she said. “It makes you soft, but it also makes you tricky.”

“Shit, listen to you,” Cuda Bite said. “Let’s find you a fish to gut, you can read my fortune.”

Red Tide pursed her lips. For a moment, her body went cold at the memory of the vision she’d experienced while twisted on the trolkin frosswiss—a gouged fish with Cuda Bite’s voice, floating through the water. Insane gods damned trolkin. It didn’t mean anything.

She rubbed her upper arms. “We’ll be back in the sun soon enough.”

Cuda Bite bumped his knee against hers and pointed downward. On a platform below them, they watched as Salt Wall pressed foreheads with a fiercely muscled northern oca’em, then pushed her mouth against his for what looked more like a battle than a kiss. A child danced around the two—no more than five, but already with a body like a barrel.  

“Did you know Salt Wall had people?” Red Tide asked.

Cuda Bite shook his head. “Guess I never asked.”

When Salt Wall took a hold of her man’s head and shoved his face down into the whorls of her Ink, Red Tide smirked and looked to Cuda Bite. “You got somebody?”

“Just you, Red.”

“Fuck off with what.”

The skulker leaned back on his elbows. “Nobody’s waiting on me, if that’s what you mean. I swam with a pod of cast-offs. Thieves and exiles. We had an agreement not to screw each other over, but we were doing it all the time. Half the fun of it.”

“The scum of the seas won’t miss you?”

Cuda Bite thumbed his dagger. “They’re probably all in the Grotto by now. Could’ve been any of them who Turtle Jaw picked. Just my bad luck.”

“I think they put more thought into their choices than that,” Red Tide replied.

“Maybe,” Cuda Bite replied. “Some of us more than others, though.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The ge’oca didn’t come to me,” Cuda Bite said. “They didn’t ask me to feed bodies to their depths.”

Red Tide ran a hand across her braids. One of them had bunched up on her, just like Throne Gazer had said. She scowled, but quickly turned to wink at Cuda Bite.

“That was only a song, fool,” she said. “I’m just as fucking doomed as you.”

She could see the skepticism in Cuda Bite’s boyish features. Before he could say anything more, rigid footsteps approached, and the two champions turned to see Throne Gazer. He pointedly cleared his throat.

“I have been searching for you,” he said.

“Damn, look at you,” Cuda Bite said. “Ready for the coronation.”

Throne Gazer had donned the deep-silk armor of a Coralline Elite, the blades at his forearms and shins freshly polished and sharpened. He had made some pointed additions to the uniform. For starters, he had cut away a panel from the chest so that his Ink was on full display. He had also added a trim of seal skin to the shoulders, like a land-walker’s mantle. His braids were woven with new ornaments—pieces of bark from Besaden, obsidian stones from the Crown of the World, and the broken spear-tips from bested Coralline Elite. Red Tide would have never admitted it to Throne Gazer, but he looked halfway to impressive.

“My mother wishes to see us,” Throne Gazer said.

“Oh, finally,” Cuda Bite replied, hopping to his feet. “After all the wonderful stories you've told, I've been dying to meet her.”

Throne Gazer's features tightened into something that almost resembled a smile. “She has requested only Red Tide.”

“Well, that’s a relief, because I actually have plans,” Cuda Bite said. “Important plans of my own.”

Slowly, groaning with dramatic effort, Red Tide stood up. “Will this take long?”

“I hope not,” Throne Gazer replied.

They needed to ascend the Ledges to find the place where Deep Dweller had made her nest. She had chosen one of the highest caverns, a domed space behind a waterfall. Sunlight filtered through the rushing water, the twisting light making the room feel like it was sinking. Rocks like teeth rose from the floor and loomed on the ceiling, so that Red Tide got the sense she was about to be gulped down by some great beast. Deep Dweller, no doubt, had a sense for the dramatic.

Red Tide had seen the Queen of the Coralline Throne only once in her life, on the day that Red Tide had been sentenced to the Grotto for destroying that idiot merchant's fancy boat. The queen had sat there regal and cold, with her smooth, perfect grey skin, and a tower of braids and jewels that would have made it impossible to swim with any speed, and rendered her judgement. A total bitch, but a beautiful woman.

Deep Dweller was the queen's dark reflection, a nearly identical woman who resembled royalty undone. Her braids flowed away from her head in thick, dark coils, like eels. She had bedecked her slender form in jewels and trinkets, not unlike the queen's own finery, but all of Deep Dweller's ornaments likely served some other purpose—fish bones, opals, braided chunks of coral—all tools to practice the old ways. The sea witch sat atop a stalagmite that nature had carved roughly chair-shaped, and to which Deep Dweller had added flourishes of coral that made the rock formation more closely resemble the Coralline Throne. A ruler in exile. The symbolism was about as blunt an instrument as Red Tide could imagine.  

“My handsome son, by the tides, you are a man now,” Deep Dweller cooed.

She floated to her feet and swayed toward them, somehow giving the impression of being underwater. Deep Dweller was tall like her son, and so could rest her head upon his shoulder when she draped herself against him. After a moment's pause, Throne Gazer wrapped her up in a loose hug. Red Tide stood nearby, a half-smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.

“Hello, mother,” Throne Gazer sighed.

“Hello, mother,” Deep Dweller repeated in a flat baritone, rolling her eyes for Red Tide's benefit. She slid away from her son and cupped Red Tide's cheek. “And you, daughter. The warden chose wisely with you, didn't he? Already, your song travels to far away waters.”

Red Tide took a step back to get the woman’s hand off her face. “I’m nobody’s daughter,” she said.

Deep Dweller smiled placidly and tucked her hand under her own chin, tilting her head in contemplation of the two. “Truly, it is better than I could have hoped,” she said, then stepped aside. “Come. Have a seat.”

She gestured them into the cavern, toward the stalagmite that had been converted into a throne. There was nowhere else to sit except for the cold, erosion-smoothed floor. Red Tide sensed some witch’s game afoot. She exchanged a look with Throne Gazer, then tilted her head subtly. He took a step forward—

Deep Dweller made a hissing noise in her throat and put a hand on her son’s chest.

“Her, I think,” Deep Dweller said.

To be stubborn would only drag things out, Red Tide figured. She sauntered forward and sat down in the chair of stone. It was cold on her ass and uncomfortable. Red Tide fingered the coral filigree along the chair’s edge, then used [Coral Tender] to reshape the design, making the delicate curls jut forth like a blowfish’s needles.

“Next to her,” Deep Dweller whispered to Throne Gazer. “Go.”

Throne Gazer did as he was told. He took a place next to Red Tide, standing rigid, his shoulder muscles clenched.

Before them, Deep Dweller fell to her knees, like a subject ready to beg for some favor. She craned her neck forward and sniffed the air. Red Tide crossed her legs and eyed the woman.

“It’s perfect,” Deep Dweller said. “Now, tell me, have you made me a grandchild?”