109. [Red Tide] Song of Small Cuts

Red Tide, Enchantress of the 5th Renown, the Reef, writing her next verse

Throne Gazer, Trident Master of the 5th Renown, the Reef, leader of rebellions past

Turtle Jaw, Quill of the Reef, former servant of the queen

Salt Wall, Berserker of the 3rd Renown, the Reef, searching for her people

Cuda Bite, Skulker of the 4th Renown, the Reef, a lure for the Coralline Elite

***

8 Clocksend, 61 AW

A beach on the northeast coast

22 days until the next Granting

Months ago, on another beach, Red Tide had watched a pod of Coralline Elite emerge from the ocean and felt herself vibrate with the adrenaline of a cornered animal. That pod had been led by Most Loyal Spear, the personal bodyguard of the queen. As skilled a fighter as the oca'em produced in this age. The battle that ensued had been a desperate and bloody thing. The champions of the Reef had been outnumbered, not used to working together, and had been competing with each other to collect the Ink that the gods had seen fit to smear across Most Loyal Spear. Salt Wall had nearly died in the fight—would've died, in fact, if Red Tide had not taken her new Ink and turned it into [Healing Song].

By the tides, they had been like guppies then.

Red Tide felt none of that itchy fear now. In fact, she would welcome the violence. The alternative—talking with these thin-blooded loyalist bastards—was what she really dreaded. And yet, that was what they hoped to do. Talk.

They had sent Cuda Bite out into the ocean to sing his naming song and his searching song, seeking to draw out either a friendly pod of Salt Wall’s northern relatives or else a patrol of Coralline Elite. Either group would work for their purposes. They needed to figure out which way the tide was pulling. It had been too many days of chasing floaters without catching up to the battles.

At last, the champions of the Reef would announce their arrival.

In preparation, Red Tide had salted the beach with handfuls of coral. Salt Wall remained on the shore, her hook fitted over her fist; the cuff of studded coral that Red Tide had made dug into the berserker’s bicep but didn’t yet break skin. Cuda Bite was somewhere behind Salt Wall, in a patch of shadows provided by the jutting stones, using his [Camouflage] to go unnoticed. Meanwhile, Throne Gazer stood with Red Tide on an outcropping of rock overhanging the beach. The last of the dogs, Fish Dragger, napped on the sun-warmed stone at the trident master’s feet. Behind them, Turtle Jaw stood with his short sword out of its sheath. He passed the weapon from hand to hand, making irritated little noises as he tried to settle on a comfortable grip.

“Old man,” Red Tide snapped. “If we need you to use that, we're already fucked.”

Throne Gazer snorted.

“I should look the part, at least,” Turtle Jaw said, as he settled into a relaxed stance. “Give them something to think about.”

“Something to laugh about,” Red Tide muttered.

“Here they come,” Throne Gazer stated.

Red Tide remembered how Most Loyal Spear had led his Coralline Elite onto shore in orderly lines. Whoever commanded these pods hadn't instilled the same discipline, or else it had been leached away from months in bloody waters. The first four Coralline Elite came diving onto land in their bladed deep-silk uniforms, churning up silt as they knifed out of the water. This vanguard all held javelins, their arms cocked back, ready to strike. Red Tide could see the outlines of wards woven into their deep-silk—all dark, nothing more than decoration. Their uniforms were torn, seaweed poultices visible in the gaps, covering wounds. If any of them had wrung out their deep-silk, Red Tide suspected the water would've squeezed out pink.

She knew bloodlust when she saw it. Bloodlust and an eagerness to kill or be killed. To be finished. They would not extract the necessary information from this first group. Not without some softening, at least. These ones had gotten too used to war.

The spearmen recognized Salt Wall—perhaps as a champion, perhaps simply as a northerner—and charged, bellowing, across the rocky sand.  

Red Tide strummed her fingers across her harp and used [Wailing Song]. She sang of doomed soldiers and battles lost, the notes high and discordant. It still amazed her how she could feel her own will through the music, directing the power around her companions, away from them. All could hear her music, but only these four toadies of the queen could truly feel her song.

Of course, the pain began in their ears. All four of the oca'em dropped their weapons to clap their hands against the sides of their heads, but they had already heard the first notes, which meant it was too late. A burning twinge traveled through their nerves, growing into a fully body agony that pulsed with the rhythm of Red Tide's plucking, as if she were digging her fingernails in trenches under their skin. Three of the four quickly collapsed screaming into the sand. The fourth was tougher—or maybe his eardrums were shot from years of diving. Regardless, he gritted his teeth and plodded forward, grasping for his javelin though his limbs twitched madly.

Salt Wall bounded out to meet him. One looping punch into the midsection was all it took to put the spearman down with the others. She could've killed him then—could have quickly executed the others, too, but the champions had agreed to try diplomacy before brutality. So, Salt Wall looped her arm around the oca'em's neck, wrestled him upright, and dragged him backward.

“You are the lucky one,” Salt Wall said, tapping her hook against her captive's temple. She held him in front of her, ready to use him as a shield if, as expected, there were harpoon-flingers with the rest of the pod.

Meanwhile, a fast-moving distortion passed across the sand, a rippling outline that Red Tide had a hard time focusing on—Cuda Bite in his [Camouflage] collecting the javelins before retreating.

“So far, so easy,” said Turtle Jaw.

“I expected better from the Coralline Elite,” replied Throne Gazer. “These ones look exhausted.”

“Your mother said she would provide a diversion to keep them from following us,” Turtle Jaw said. “Apparently, she did her part.”

Ten more oca'em soon waded onto the beach, this second group exercising far more caution than their vanguard. Red Tide stopped her playing to let them come. They stopped short of their fellows, who were still writhing in the sand, clutching at themselves as Red Tide’s song wore off. An orderly line of spearmen took shape with a second line of harpooners behind them. They had their weapons ready, but with her [Awareness+] Red Tide could sense their weariness. Like the others, their deep-silk uniforms were shabby and showed their recent wounds. They were uneasy, but dutiful. They knew this was a trap—that Cuda Bite had been a lure—and they came anyway. Ready for an ending.

“Who leads you?” Throne Gazer called down in that imperious tone of his. “Speak up!”

In the back row, Red Tide noted a woman who didn't wear the deep-silk of the Coralline Elite, but instead dressed in the eclectic shells and weeds of a sea witch. Her bald head was dotted with jewels and pearls wedged into divots carved into her scalp. The sea witch gazed steadily up at Red Tide with the sort of arrogant verve that suited a pod leader, so Red Tide was surprised when a spearman from the front row stepped forward to answer Throne Gazer. He was a man in his fifties with a surprisingly round belly for a warrior. In addition to his javelin, he wore a selection of fine-looking knives in a bandolier across his chest—little blades that looked meant for fileting fresh catches.

“I lead these pods,” he announced. “And by the queen's authority–”

“Stew Maker?” Turtle Jaw sidled forward, guffawing. “Is that you?”

The leader rolled his shoulders and stood straighter. “An old name, an old song,” the man replied. “They call me Unyielding Hunger now.”

“My aunt's cook,” Throne Gazer said flatly. “The queen sends her chef to fight her battles.”

“Every oca’em sworn to a peaceful existence has taken up arms against your madness, Turtle Jaw,” Unyielding Hunger replied. “I volunteered my knives but wasn’t made leader until two others sank, killed in this pointless war you’ve instigated.”

The chef didn’t look like much of a warrior, but Red Tide could respect the baritone in his voice. Speaking with passion and keeping warriors fed seemed like a fine way to earn a pod’s loyalty. She scanned the rest of the Coralline Elite, wondering how diluted the queen’s prestigious army had become over the last few months.

“Madness,” Turtle Jaw repeated. “Is that what the queen has told you?”

“You break the truce with the Bay,” Unyielding Hunger replied. “Your four champions will die in the doing and be spared seeing the repercussions. What’s left of the Reef—wished from existence! You know what they will do, yet you endanger us all. How can that be anything but madness?”

“Madness is filling the ocean with the bodies of your brothers and sisters,” Turtle Jaw said.

“Tell that to the savage northerners you’ve been hiding with,” Unyielding Hunger said.

The warrior in Salt Wall’s arms squealed as the tip of her hook scraped against his skull. “Be careful who you call savage, ass-licker,” the berserker said.

Red Tide considered Unyielding Hunger’s words. For months, ever since the champions escaped from Most Loyal Spear, the Coralline Elite had been hunting them. It was likely rumors started by Deep Dweller that provoked the queen’s warrior pods north to wage a series of pointless battles against Salt Wall’s belligerent brethren. A bloody diversion, indeed.

“We have not been hiding,” Throne Gazer spoke up. “We have been up and down this damned continent, collecting the Ink that will assure our survival in the Granting. We have made allies. We have brokered deals. We have done this for you. For all of you.”

The words were good, Red Tide thought. But the tone was wrong. Throne Gazer could simply not help himself. The haughtiness always crept in. He made it sound as if the Coralline Elite owed a debt to the champions. His words were greeted with withering smiles and sneers from the warriors.

“Boy, I served meals to your silken cell after your first rebellion. You ate better than the warriors who defeated you. I watched you kiss the queen’s feet in apology and knew you did it on a full stomach,” Unyielding Hunger said, earning laughter from his cohorts. “You deluded guppy, even your own aunt is sick of humoring you. She’s ordered your death, along with your treasonous mother, and the rest of you fool champions. Turtle Jaw, you will live only long enough for our queen’s grief to be visited upon you.”

“And to give her the Quill,” Turtle Jaw replied. “She fears it will not go to her, if I’m killed. What does that say about her leadership, old friend? Even she no longer believes she represents our people.”

“She represents me, and we do her will,” Unyielding Hunger snapped. “We had peace until you broke that! We were rebuilding! Better our queen than her conniving sister or blubbering nephew. Look at him! Even now, he looks like he would cry!”

Red Tide resisted the urge to actually look at Throne Gazer with all the others, to add another set of probing eyes to the many. She could sense him vibrating with rage next to her, she could hear his sweaty palm squeaking on his trident’s shaft, and she already knew how his eyes grew watery if you made him angry enough. He would never lead his people. At least, not the way his mother had once envisioned. Red Tide half-expected him to attack. To prove that he could not be insulted without consequence. She would not have blamed him. Instead, though his jaw worked as he ground his teeth, Throne Gazer simply draped a hand atop his dog’s head and scratched her behind the ears. He said nothing.

“You see?” Unyielding Hunger crowed. “As pathetic and misguided as—”

“Cut off your braid,” Red Tide said.

She spoke loudly, with a sharp note on her harp to back up her words. Unyielding Hunger turned his eyes to her and she was pleased by the flicker of apprehension she saw there.

“What?” he replied.

“I told you to cut off your braid, you braying walrus,” Red Tide said. She ran a hand over the neat rows across her own head. “You are old and don’t have so much hair, but it should still be worth something. Cut off your braid and I will send it to the Bay. We’ll see what it buys you.”

Red Tide stepped in front of Throne Gazer, then hopped down to the next rock. Another quick hop and she was on the beach, standing beside Salt Wall and her hostage.

“We met the Bay’s champion who the queen lets hunt us for sport,” Red Tide continued. “Gucco, he calls himself. A lump of shit. Yet, he wears the scalps of our people on a vest. Years and years of our dead, swaying as he swaggers about, soaked with his filthy sweat. The queen gave him those. You’re so loyal, eh? Cut off your braid. There’s a merchant ship right out there—” Red Tide pointed toward the horizon. “They’re watching us kill each other. Having a laugh. When the fun’s over, they’ll know where to send it so you can have your reward of peace. Come on. Cut off your braid.”

“No,” Unyielding Hunger said.

“No?” Red Tide replied. “No?”

She swung her harp onto her back and strutted forward with her hands on her hips, closing the distance between her and the lines of Coralline Elite, stepping through the prone bodies of the first wave who must have been recovered by now and were only biding their time to spring into action. Red Tide put herself in the middle of them all with the confidence that they couldn’t hurt her. The other champions wouldn’t allow it.  

“Cut off your finger, then,” Red Tide said. “Your toe.” She glanced to the spearmen next to Unyielding Hunger, the harpoon-flingers behind him. “Cut off an ear. Cut out your tongue. Peel your skin so the Bay has a place to wipe their feet. This is all you are good for. Carve yourself up into pieces because it’s what the merchants want. Cut yourselves down to nothing because your queen won’t ever tell them no.”

“You’re trying to shame us?” Unyielding Hunger said quietly, not raising his voice because Red Tide was so close. “You? An outlaw who should’ve stayed locked in the Grotto.”

“Locked up because I protected what’s ours? What’s all of ours?” Red Tide grinned. “You out here killing your own people because some land-walkers say so, and I’m the fucking outlaw?”

“The northerners—”

“Savages, right?” Red Tide interrupted. “Old man, I seen the trolkin of the north. You shouldn't be using that word until you walked on their ice. They smoke a poison into their lungs that haunts them. Some of them conquer the shit, but the rest turn to animals.” She tapped her finger on her teeth. “They’re a lot like you. Like us all, I guess.”

“How is that like us?” It wasn't Unyielding Hunger who spoke, but the sea witch in the back line. She sounded more curious than confrontational. 

Red Tide smiled at her. “We got a poison in us, too. A poison of weakness. A poison of failure. I got it passed down to me from my father. Some of you suckle it right from the queen's titties. Too scared of what might happen, you'd rather keep cutting off your braids, your fingers, your little cocks, cuts and cuts, until there's nothing left, which is what you fools been scared of all along. Having nothing. Don’t you see? It’s already happened.”

The Coralline Elite were breathing quicker now, their eyes darting. They didn't know what to do. They hung on her words—maybe because of the [Charm+] or maybe because they knew she spoke true. None of them reacted when she stopped right in front of Unyielding Hunger.

“The gods of the ocean came to me,” Red Tide said. “They want more bodies for their depths. But those ain't going to be our bodies.” She reached out and cupped Unyielding Hunger's weathered face. “We aren't here to hurt you sorry fuckers. We're here to cure what's got you sick.”

Unyielding Hunger's eyelids fluttered. The touch seemed to have broken her spell over him. Spit flew off his lower lip as he stammered his way to shouting, “Take her! Take them, now!”

Red Tide used [Poisonous]. She let the rot flow into Unyielding Hunger's cheek. Not enough to kill him, but the sight of his flesh moldering would work nice for her metaphor. Even as her sickening touch overtook him, Unyielding Hunger managed to raise his spear for Red Tide's midsection. 

Cuda Bite stepped out from Unyielding Hunger's own shadow and stabbed into the spearman's armpit. The pod leader screamed and crumpled, Red Tide hopping out of his way just as two of the harpoon-flingers loosed their weapons in her direction.

A [Wall of Water] appeared before her—the new trick Throne Gazer had acquired when they killed the troll—sucking in the projectiles. The wall collapsed with a splash, parting just as arcs of electricity from Throne Gazer's [Eel Sting] sent the two shooters into seizures. 

With pleasure, Red Tide noticed how not all of the Coralline Elite had taken up arms. Some had knelt, instead, or stayed prone in the sand. The sea witch had pressed her dagger to the throat of one of the harpoon-flingers, preventing him from firing his weapon. Behind her, Red Tide heard the crunching of Salt Wall snapping arms and legs, smashing through those who stood to fight. Cuda Bite slipped between shadows, slicing hamstrings or using [Blindness]. With a thought, Red Tide used [Coral Tender] and shaped herself a chair right in the middle of it all. She sat down.

The fight lasted only seconds. Only when it was over did Red Tide take up her harp again. 

This time, she played [Healing Song] for all who listened.