The invisible blow shoved Sol away from her, and he was so startled that his erection drooped. The other two men were still stiff, bulges poking prominently against the fabric of their pants, though the arousal probably stemmed as much from the promise of violence as from the anticipation of physical pleasure.
Sol recovered himself. “Bitch, you’ll lie back and—”
Nicci ignored the poison, ignored the dizziness, ignored the sickness raging through her. She called on the air again, focused it, pushed it, forming a weapon.
The storm outside blew with greater fury, and winds lashed against the Wavewalker. Sizzling, splattering rain came down so loud outside that no one could hear her struggles inside the cabin. But if she made these men scream loudly enough, someone would hear.
Nicci manipulated the air, shaping it like a hand … and then a fist. She used it to clutch the testicles between Sol’s legs.
He cried out in sudden alarm.
Nicci created two more hands of air that seized the sacs of the other two wishpearl divers. They cried out, flailing their hands against the invisible grip.
“I warned you.” She rose up from the pallet, not caring that her breasts were still exposed, and she glared at the three with her blue eyes. “I warned you—now choose. Do you want them torn off, or just crushed?”
His face a mask of red fury, Sol lunged toward her. Nicci manipulated the air to tighten her hold around his scrotum, and then twisted as if she were wrenching off the lid of a jar. She contracted her air fist with sudden force—but not so swiftly that she couldn’t feel each of his testicles squeeze until it popped like a rotten grape. Sol let out a high wail that could not begin to express his pain.
Giving the men no chance to beg, because she had no interest in mercy, Nicci crushed the testicles of the other two, leaving them moaning, whimpering, and unable to manage much of a scream as they fell to the floor of her cabin.
“I think you would rather I killed you.” Nicci pulled the front of her dress back up to cover herself. “I can always change my mind and come back.” Standing straight on her wobbly legs, she glared down at the writhing men. “Even poisoned, I’m better than you.”
She didn’t have time to clean up the garbage, though, before the main attack struck the ship.
CHAPTER 14
The air-breathing thieves drifted overhead in their great ship, vulnerable at the boundary between the water-home and the sky. The dark hulk cut across the waves high above, aloof but not unreachable. The interface was choppy and stirred, indicating a turbulent storm on the surface. The fragile creatures up there would be fighting for their lives against the wind and rain, but down here, the water was calm and warm—peaceful. A true home.
The selka were not the ones who had declared war.
The stirring currents carried the faintest echoes from the raging storm. The selka queen could taste the difference in the delicate flavors of salt as water flowed through the fine gill slits at her neck. Though the selka were far from the reef labyrinth where they kept their precious treasure, the queen could still taste the bitter, alien taint of humans in the water.
She swam faster than a shark, stroking along with webbed hands, her beautiful smooth skin sliding through the water. Behind the queen, like a school of predator fish swimming in formation, came her selka army. Enraged, they swooped through the currents with their fin-sharp bodies and claws that could mangle a kraken. The selka queen had proven herself in undersea battle many times, gutting a hammerhead with her hands, spilling its entrails in clouds of murky blood. As a people, the selka remembered the days of great human wars from thousands of years ago … when their race had been created. Those were times of legend, times of enslavement.
Selka history told of how human wizards had tortured and modified unwilling subjects, turning vulnerable swimmers into lethal aquatic weapons to fight in their wars. Back then, the selka had been terrors of the sea, sinking entire enemy navies.
But that had been long ago, and the air-breathing wizard masters had forgotten about the selka. Their discarded warriors—former humans, now changed and improved—had withdrawn into the deep cold waters, building homes in the reefs and on the seabeds. The selka were a free people now, frolicking, mating, exploring. They had their own civilization, unknown to the air breathers, undisturbed and at peace.
Until the humans intruded, until the thieves wrecked the reef labyrinths, took away those things most precious to the selka, losses that could never be recovered. All those dreams …
The selka had killed and devoured two of the thieves that swam down to take the wishpearls. They had seized those divers, holding them down. The queen knew that the weak air breathers would drown soon enough, expended air boiling out of their exhausted lungs, but such a quiet death was not a sufficient price for them to pay. With her long claws the queen had torn open the throat of the first diver, watching red blood gush out in an explosion of bubbles.
The second diver had struggled to escape from the selka soldiers, but he was weak, unable to squirm away. As her people closed in to drink the flowing blood from the first victim’s gaping neck wound, the selka queen saw the wide-eyed terror of the second victim, watched his last breath of air gasp out in terrified astonishment. Before the light could dim from his eyes, she tore open his throat as well and let her people feed.
It was a beginning—and it was not enough.
From the shape of the ship’s hull overhead and the lingering taste that its barnacled wood left in the water, the selka queen knew this was the same vessel that had robbed the reef labyrinth several times. She knew it would come back, and therefore they must stop it. Perhaps if they killed the entire crew and sank the wooden ship, this one battle would be enough. The humans might be wise enough to stay away.
Perhaps … perhaps not. And then it would be all-out war.
Her people were hungry for blood. Human blood had a sharper, brighter taste than fish, and tonight the selka would feed well.
She arced upward, stroking toward the vessel that hung overhead. All told, more than a hundred of her people swarmed up to the hull and grasped the slimy wood with their clawed hands. Kicking and stroking, they emerged into the hostile air and scaled the side of the ship.
* * *
As she stepped over them, Nicci ignored the three moaning, emasculated men on the floorboards wallowing in her vomit just inside her cabin. She still felt weak from the poison, but she took satisfaction from the fact that she had permanently disarmed the would-be rapists. She left them entirely behind.
The Wavewalker shuddered in the throes of the storm, and Nicci stumbled against the wall of the narrow corridor as she tried to make her way to Nathan’s cabin. She wondered if the old wizard had heard the men’s screams, but the howling storm and the lashing wind were so loud she could barely think. Her skull pounded. Suddenly, Nicci doubled over, retching onto the deck. She hoped the wizard could help her, draw out the poison and spill it into the open air.
When she reached his cabin, though, Nicci found the door ajar. He had gone out on deck into the whipping wind and the spray of waves. When she emerged outside, cold raindrops slapped her face, but the frigid shock braced her. The wind flung her hair in all directions. She sucked in a breath and shouted Nathan’s name.
She saw him clinging to a ratline at the base of the mizzenmast. His long white hair hung like wet ropes down past his shoulders. He had wrapped himself in an oilskin cloak, but the storm blew so hard that he was surely drenched. His face was drawn, his expression queasy, and Nicci wondered if the wizard had been poisoned as well. More likely, Nathan was just seasick. He wore his sword at his side, as if to battle the rain.