May 1, 2017 Volume 7 No 7

Hold Me Fast

by Alter S. Reiss

The man who’d set himself up out on the point by Gray Lagoon had conjured up a house out of rocks and sea-wrack, but he didn’t wear the badge of any guild or house. He was always polite, but the people who talked to him couldn’t place his accent, and people in Cartau could place every accent in the world. It wasn’t in the least bit hard for Jione to understand why people said he was someone to avoid.

They smelled a whiff of brimstone on him, and Jione could see them smelling it. When he came down to the Anside docks, nobody even dared to chase him off; they just looked away, and hoped that if he was violent, he would hurt someone else. He was sitting up on the shingles of the beach, watching the work when Jione went down, and he was still there when she came back up.

She sat on the sea-wall for a moment, her apparatus off, and watched him. He gawked like a child at the air traffic—the spinners and the liners and the fortress patrol all seemed to overawe him equally—and he seemed equally entranced by the diggings, and the workers, and the machines.

Folk from the countryside would have that look about them, between the time they came to Cartau, and the time they were fleeced. But Jione didn’t think anyone would try to fleece him. There was a hardness to the man, a tension like a compressed and rusty spring. He wore an old-style long knife on his hip, its handle curved to match his grip, but that was almost unnecessary. Everything else about him said he was dangerous, but only when he was pushed.

Dangerous and deadly and innocent; it was a strange combination. Jione headed over, her helmet under her arm. He was watching the crane lowering the number 63 pipe segment into place, but as she got closer, he looked at her. There was an intensity in that look that made Jione fight back a flush. She was a diver, and a good one, and that’d be obvious to anyone looking at her. But whoever this man was, he didn’t seem to know what a spinner was, or a traction-crane. So she’d look like a gangly woman with the left side of her hair shaved down, and wearing a dive suit going ragged at the cuffs and seams.

“Good afternoon,” he said, standing as she came close. “My name is Tam.” There was an odd motion after that, like he was about to bow, and then caught himself.

“Jione,” she said.

“Are you one of the house diggers?” asked Tam.

“Digger?” Jione gave him an incredulous look. “I’m a diver.” She tapped her helmet. “Free swimming, right? Diggers work inside a bore, or on a tether.”

Tam gave a quick nod. “I understand,” he said. “But you do excavate?”

“Not on this job, I don’t,” said Jione. “I steer the pipes in, as they’re coming down, and I weld sections together. Also, I’m not a house diver; I’m on contract with Mecater and Daim, but my rig’s my own, and so’s my time.”

Another intense look, but a different sort of intensity; he hadn’t expected that, and there was something else that he wanted. “Would you be available for contract work?” he asked. “There’s a project–”

Jione laughed. “I don’t come cheap,” she said. “And you’d have to pay a penalty to Mecater, and they don’t come cheap either. If–”

Tam dropped something into her hand. Heavy. Jione had done enough salvage to know what she was seeing. A gold imperial. Too perfect to be a forgery, but so clear that it might have just been minted, rather than five hundred years old. “Perhaps this will pay the penalties,” he said.

“Perhaps,” said Jione. She weighed it in her hand. The penalties, and a good chunk more. Mecater wouldn’t even mind—the heavy pipes were in, and it was mostly just support diving for the diggers below. Penalties would be worth more than the work she had left. “Is it clean?”

“Clean?”

There was a pause as the fortress patrol went overhead, the throb of its main engines and the whine of the spinner escort making conversation impossible. Tam had been fascinated before, but he didn’t look up as it passed overhead; he stood watching her, head cocked to one side, waiting for her to speak. “Clean of enchantment,” she said, when she’d be heard. “Gold not tampered with, and no owner’s mark from someone who’d be able to make a claim of theft and make it stick? Because the dive assayers will check.”

Tam shook his head. “It’s clean,” he said. “The terms of my . . . your assayer will find nothing amiss.”

Jione hesitated. She could just give him back the coin, and walk away. He was interesting, he was friendly, but there was that coiled-spring threat, that whiff of something wild and strange. She didn’t know him; he didn’t know how business worked in Cartau. Dealing with Tam wasn’t a good risk. And yet. He was a handsome man, trimly built, and when he looked at her, he seemed to see her. That wasn’t something she could say for guild or house agents, or other divers, or shopkeepers, or anyone else, really.

She flipped the coin, caught it out of the air, tucked it into the grouch-pocket of her suit. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “Where and when?”

“Tomorrow morning, at Gray Lagoon,” he said. “Unless you need more time to prepare, or—”

“Tomorrow,” she said. She’d made her call; no point in delay.

Against reason, Jione had chosen to help Tam, but that didn’t mean she was going to neglect basic prudence. The gold imperial checked out; it was what it purported to be, and there weren’t any spells or marks on it. The dive guild knew where she was going, so if she turned up dead, there’d be a record. The next day she headed out to Gray Lagoon, her apparatus in a duffel over her shoulder, and her heart in her mouth.

Tam was waiting on the point, looking back over the lagoon, at Cartau’s towers. “They’re beautiful,” he said, as she came up.

“From far enough away,” said Jione.

He started, turned, and smiled when he saw her. “Yes,” he said. “Most beautiful things require distance. But not all. Are you ready to begin, or are there preparations?”

Jione sighed, unslung the duffel from her shoulder. “I’ll have to get into the dive suit,” she said. “And calibrate the apparatus, and get that on. How deep is your site? And how much area are you going to have to cover? What sort of equipment am I going to need? And, most importantly, how much are you paying?”

Tam threw back his head, and laughed. Jione raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, but that didn’t bode well.

“My apologies,” said Tam. “I must sound like ten kinds of an ass. It’s just that I’m only recently arrived, and I don’t know a damn thing that I should. Start with the last. Two imperials a day, fine as the one I gave you, should cover the costs?”

Jione swallowed her own laughter. Two imperials a day, even if they were clipped and smoothed and marked, would pay for three, maybe four divers. But hell, if he was paying, she wasn’t going to say no. “Yeah,” she said. “That’ll do fine. What do you want me to dive for?”

“A thread of gold,” said Tam. “Long enough to reach from a man’s fingertip to his heart. As wide around as a flower’s root.”

“More gold in one of your imperials than that,” said Jione.

“Yes,” said Tam. “But that’s what I’m looking for. And if you were to draw a triangle between this house that I’ve built, and the Castle of Doves—you can see the ruins, looking out over the water, on the spit of land there—and the line of the old stone quay, it should be somewhere within those limits. I believe the quay can still be seen?”

“I think so,” said Jione. “There’s a line of rocks and dirt, anyway, not too far from the shore.”

“Dirt?” asked Tam. “So it’s not silted over, there?”

Jione shook her head. “Since they built the Five Dams, the silt’s been going down all along the coast. Fifty years ago, Grey Lagoon was half as deep as it is now. The rocks you’ve built your house on are being washed out too; another fifty years, there won’t be anything between the lagoon and the sea.”

Tam stopped, and considered. “What I am seeking won’t have washed away,” he said. “That is the area I would have you cover. I’ve no idea what equipment you’ll need; that’s your field of expertise.”

Jione considered. He was asking her to cover a hell of a lot of the lagoon. And while there wasn’t much silt left, there were still stretches of sand there that’d take days to move. “Nothing I don’t own,” she said, after a while. “It’d be easier with an airlift, but there’s deep water there. No point in bringing it out for maybe 15% coverage. It’ll be a sea-dredge, and a sniffer, and a few other things. Sniffer’ll cost you worse than I will, though, if you’re going for gold.”

“I will put my trust in you,” said Tam. “Despite not having the slightest idea what you’re talking about. The sniffers I know are lyme hounds and rachet hounds, and I scarcely see what use they’d be in your work.”

Jione shook her head. “Most sheep,” she said, “don’t ask to be fleeced.”

Tam smiled. “I’m overpaying you already,” he said. “That’s clear enough. You’re not going to risk that by trying to get another peck or two of wool.”

“Watch me,” said Jione. “Besides,” she continued. “It’ll be less than anyone else would take. Sniffers. . . they’re a spell, right? Bound to a tool. If you’re looking for gold, they burn gold. The idea is that where you find a bit of gold, you’d find more, but it’s going to burn . . . shit, sixty, maybe seventy grains a day. Even not counting what you’re paying me, which is less than you should be, that’s a hell of a lot of gold chasing down a thread.”

“It’s a thing I’ve lost,” said Tam. “You are probably right about its worth, but I want it back.”

If she found it—when she found it—she could probably tuck it into her grouch pocket, and see what she could get for it. Someone as green as Tam wasn’t going to stop her. “You have anywhere I can suit up?” she asked.

“My home is yours,” he said, seriously. “Have you your dredge and sniffer with you? I would see what I’m paying for.”

“I’m not going to unseal the dredge in the air,” she said. She rooted around in her duffel for a bit, took out the sniffer. “This is the sniffer. Don’t break it.”

She headed along the debris-littered beach, out to the house he’d called up on the point. As she walked, she could feel his eyes on her, and she put a hint of a sway into her walk. It wasn’t . . . people usually didn’t look at divers like that. And given what he was paying, she figured she could afford to throw in a show.

It wasn’t like her, but none of this was like her. Breaking guild and house rules wasn’t too different from breathing in while surfacing; it would feel fine, and you’d die a few hours later. Safe was the only way a diver could play things. Only now she wasn’t playing by guild or house rules. Tam was too strange and different to be safe. She wasn’t playing things safe, so she wouldn’t play things safe, at least not until Tam’s gold ran out. Once she was in, no reason not to go all the way in.

She swept into Tam’s house, a surprisingly trim building, with stone floors, a timber roof, and a fire burning cheerily in the grate. If she hadn’t known that he’d called it up out thin air, she’d have thought it had been standing there for centuries; it felt old, comfortable, lived in. The sort of place that you’d expect to see far out in the countryside, or in an old-times talkie.

Tam might be green, but he was paying, and while she was going to soak him, she was also going to do the work. She changed into her dive suit, fastened all the cuffs and collars, and then got the apparatus seated. Lung-blood ports always stung going on, but the sea-eye felt cool and sat right on her left eye. She’d shaved down before she headed out to the lagoon, so the whole thing fit like it should, no chafing, not too heavy. She’d gone in feigning confidence, but came out feeling it; this was who she was, what she did, and she was good at it.

When she came out, Tam looked up from the sniffer, and smiled to see her coming, helmet under her arm. “By my judgment,” he said, “your sniffer will destroy three and a half grains of gold every hour; while I appreciate the energy on your part, it does not seem wise for you to attempt to work for twenty hours a day.”

Jione hesitated, then laughed. Green, but not without resources. Green, but not stupid.

“Yeah, true enough,” she said. “Won’t have more than four, maybe five hours of bottom time anyway, not at depth.” As he passed her the sniffer, she had a horrible thought. “You haven’t done anything to it, have you?” Fun was fun, but if he’d damaged it…

“No,” said Tam, “I would not interfere with your tools. And it’s a very clever working; complex, but elegant. Any improvement I would make would take some time, and at best would improve its effectiveness by a tenth part.”

Jione was tempted to snort, but held back. Tam was as green as a fresh broken stick, and seemed to think that spinners were something marvelous and strange. But he’d also pulled a stone house out of nothing, and it seemed that none of the houses or guilds had decided to dispute his right to do so. Maybe he could improve a sniffer by ten percent. Be a hell of a thing to bring back to the diving guild, if she could.

“Maybe some other time,” she said, taking her sniffer back, and strapping it into its sheath on her leg. “You’ve got an odd angle on things, Tam. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to tell me about where you came from.”

“I have most recently spent a term in hell,” said Tam, amiably. “It’s where I learned my skills.”

He hadn’t said that as though he was deflecting your question, or as if he was talking metaphorically. It was as matter-of-factly as though he was giving a street address. There were still some folks who believed in that stuff, mostly out in the country, but even they didn’t believe it like that.

“With fires and demons?” she asked, trying to keep it light.

“There were demons,” said Tam. “No fire. There was all the pain of fire, but none of the heat. It is a cold place, hell, cold and distant and dark. I’m hoping to avoid a return visit; that’s why I need to find this thread.”

“If you say so,” said Jione, and she walked out into the surf. Could be he was crazy; if so, she didn’t want him crazy at her.

Once she went below, things were a bit more normal. There’d been construction work in Gray Lagoon, plenty of it. Pipes from the offshore rigs, pilings for a dock that never got built, that sort of thing. It was deep enough and close enough to the shore that there was plenty of garbage there as well, and a few wrecks. If it weren’t for the sniffer, it’d take years to comb an area like that. As it was, if the gold was there, two, maybe three days.

First dive was a survey. Just to see what the state of the bottom was, get a sense of current patterns, the movement of sand and silt. And Gray Lagoon was close enough to Cartau that she didn’t expect many surprises; anything interesting would’ve been found long ago.

Only, with the five dams, the silt had been going down all across the coast. And damn if something interesting didn’t come up, right in the middle of the search area Tam had given her. There were always wrecks, sure, but this one was different. There was a figurehead rising out of the muck, and it was a two-headed lion, carrying a sword in one mouth, and a book in the other.

The Grand Invincible. She’d found the goddamn Grand Invincible. When it had disappeared, it’d bankrupted the last king in Cartau; the crown and regalia had been aboard, and three quarters of the imperial treasury. Thirteen million imperials in gold and silver. There were timbers and cannons lying scattered on the bottom, crockery and black lumps that looked like corroded masses of silver coin.

Jione had dived salvage before. She’d worked on the Tranch, and they’d recovered three tons of silver specie. They’d also been so wound up by spells by Aen House that she couldn’t even clear her filters without explicit permission.

If she tried to salvage the wreck herself, one of the houses would nail her, and the diving guild would either sell her claim out, or take ninety-nine parts out of every hundred in fees and licenses. Tam. Whatever he was, wherever he was from, however crazy he might be, he was a talent. The way he’d talked about hell . . . Jione wouldn’t want to try to take something from him. Even the houses would tread lightly near a claim made by someone like that.

She laid out claim-stakes near the biggest pieces of debris, and across where the main body of the wreck would have to lie. Then she headed back up. It was a deep enough survey that she needed to pause on the way up to keep from getting a blood boil or depth joints. It was a chance to settle herself before going back up to see Tam. It was the biggest damn thing that had ever happened to her. Maybe the biggest thing that had happened to anyone. She floated in the middle depths, above the Grand Invincible‘s figurehead, until the blood gauges clicked over to clear.

Then came the awkward climb out of the surf. Tam was watching her, and she fought back a flush. He hadn’t done anything, hadn’t said anything that wasn’t entirely polite, neutral. And yet, there was a deep hunger there, a delight in looking at her that made her feel awkward and strange.

“You have the most amazing luck,” she said, once she was clear, and her helmet was off. “There’s a wreck down there that’s worth half of Cartau. Since I wouldn’t have found it without you, how about we go in on this together? Partners? I’ll do the work, do the hiring; you’d have to keep the houses off, but I’d think that if–”

“What wreck?” asked Tam.

“It’s a treasure ship. Biggest there ever was. The Grand Invincible. Wreck hunters are going to straight up shit themselves when they find out how close it was, all these years. They’ll . . .” Jione caught Tam’s expression, and trailed off. “What?”

“The Grand Invincible went down in a hurricane; she lies off northern Jessail, fifty leagues from shore,” he said.

“I saw the figurehead, Tam,” she said. “Whoever told you that didn’t know what they were talking about.”

“I heard it from the steersman and the pilot both,” he said. “And from twenty other men beside. There are few sailors who walk through heaven’s gates.”

“Tam—”

“Perhaps I sound like a fool. But it seems that obstacles are being set in my path; if you do not trust me, you will be led astray.” He looked at her, terrible fear and terrible need held under the tightest of control.

“Look, even if you’re right, there’s no way that I’ll be able to pick up what you’re looking for. The sniffer is going to show gold all across the bottom there. I’m going to have to—”

“No,” said Tam, and there was a triumph in that, like he’d solved some deadly puzzle. “If it does, perhaps I was misled. But it won’t. Silver and bronze, diamonds and rubies—those you’ll see in abundance. But no gold, not gold that can fool the spells on your sniffer. You’ll have to let all the rest go, all the silver and the gems and whatever else they show. If you take even the smallest silver coin, it will not be well. But the sniffer will smell the truth, and true gold cannot be faked or corrupted.”

Jione shook her head, but there was the ring of truth in that. Anyway, if he was wrong, she’d find out the next time she went down. If there wasn’t any gold there, there was no way that the wreck was the Grand Invincible. The discovery had been like a shock, like a dream, and she could feel it ebbing as she unhooked her apparatus. But hell, she’d done things right. She’d checked with her land crew before engaging, and while Tam hadn’t specified what would happen if she went after the finds from the wreck, it seemed like she’d dodged whatever it had been.

By the time she was finished unhooking her apparatus, Tam had spread out a blanket on the sand, and opened a hamper which smelled amazing. “Something you’ve conjured up?” she asked, sprawling down beside the blanket.

“Conjured?” Tam shook his head. “I’ve had enough and more of conjured feasts. Honest bread and honest meat, though it took longer than I would have dreamed to find good capons.”

Jione sank down to beach next to him, and started unpacking the hamper. “Not worried about suffering for the sin of gluttony?” she asked.

“Gluttony isn’t a loaf of crusty bread,” said Tam. “Or a . . .” he held up a bottle, and tried to puzzle out the label.

“Lime phosphate?” suggested Jione, taking one for herself.

“Yes,” said Tam. “Or a lime phosphate. It is forgetting one’s humanity in pursuit of bread and phosphate.”

“You’re the expert,” said Jione, raising up her bottle of soda to clink it against his. Nothing wrong with lime phosphate, and whether it was a chicken or a capon, the bird Tam had prepared was delicious. As was the bread, as was the candied fruit.

“S’it okay if I forget my humanity while I’m eating?” asked Jione, through a mouthful of fruit. “Because I think I did, when I got to those pears.”

Tam laughed. “I appreciate the compliment,” he said. “And I do not recall seeing many who were damned by enjoying a dessert.”

“What about the other sins?” asked Jione. “Anger, despair, all those?”

“More or less the same,” said Tam. “It’s not that people live a decent life, and find themselves in hell because they were mad about a cast horseshoe, or because they desired a hawk that was not theirs. Those I met in hell were there because they destroyed themselves to gratify their wrath, or because they let their sight fall only on what they did not have.”

“And which one sent you there?” asked Jione. She took a swig of her lime phosphate, looking out at the waters of the lagoon. There was a long pause, but she didn’t look over at Tam, didn’t want to see if she’d been wrong to ask.

“Call it greed, if you like,” said Tam, finally. “I saw a great prize, and did not consider well enough the costs. And I gave o’er my father and all his lands, and spent a year and a day with the queen of fairies.”

“First hell, now fairies,” said Jione. “You do know those are stories, right? Not real?”

As an answer, Tam leaned forward, and moved the hair back from the nape of his neck. No matter how green he’d seemed, how innocent, Tam had never looked vulnerable, but just then he was. And where his shoulders met his neck, there was a glowing knot of rainbow color. “The mark of the fey,” said Jione, and Tam let his hair fall, straightened up to look her in the eye. “It’s all real?” she said. “All of it?”

“As real as ships which swim in air, and spells that burn gold to find it,” said Tam. “I went with the queen of fairies, and after a year and a day, she paid her tithe to hell. I had given myself to her, and she spent what I had given.” His shoulders tensed, and those last few words dropped like coals; endless pain there, endless hurt.

“But you’d done nothing…I mean, you didn’t deserve . . .”

“I was not properly condemned,” said Tam, “and I was not subject to the full rigors of the place. But the tithe had been fairly paid, and fairly claimed, and I was bound to hell for a long time. Longer than I could bear. So I made a bargain, though bargains with hell are ill advised. Should I claim again that thread of gold, it will not have happened. I’ll never have left my father’s hall and gone to the fairy court, never have taken nectar and honey from she who is queen there, and I will never have gone down to hell.”

His eyes lit with so much hope at that, she had to look away.

“Were things that much better back then?” she asked, after a while.

“Things were smaller,” he said. “Less grand. Easier to understand, maybe? But it’s my home, and I had not seen . . . had not endured. It is not that my world was better than this; it’s that I gave so much to the queen of the fairies, and I have lost so much in hell, that there is too little left for me. That thread of gold is a cable that shall haul me back to where I had not lost those things. If I claim it, I get it all back, and I will never even know that it was gone.” He looked back out over the waters of the lagoon. “It was a foolish bargain that I made, to come here, a foolish risk that I took. But if I had not taken it, if I had served the rest of my term in hell, there wouldn’t have been anything left when I was freed.”

“Risk?”

Tam nodded. “If I cannot gain the thread, I will go back down to hell. And there will be no end to that stay, no difference between me and those who earned their place through their life.”

“I’ll get it,” said Jione. She hesitated for a long time, on the verge of saying something more. Tam seemed to sense that, and did not interrupt.

Hell with it. She’d gone alone with someone she did not know, and risked crossing the diving guild for him. She’d taken enough risks already, trusted deeply enough already. Why not go for it? “Getting back to lust,” she said. “If you want to come back and help me with the dive suit. . . .”

Tam groaned, from his core. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Jione,” he said.

She looked at him, and did not look away. “I have a pretty good idea,” she said. “There isn’t much love in hell, is there?”

“There is none at all,” said Tam.

She turned and went back to his house, and he followed, and helped her with the diving suit. The canvas was treated by skill and spell, and he was nothing but gentle, but she could feel how close he was to tearing it apart.

Tam was careful and controlled, at least at first. But it didn’t take long for the control to slip; he was hungrier than she would’ve believed. She came apart in that hunger, and he came apart in her, hands on her hips, mouth on her breast.

He fell asleep in her arms, his face trusting and open. She held him for a time, before she fell asleep herself. The whole story—the fairies and hell, the bargain and rest of it—was still hard to believe. But Tam was real and was with her, wild and strange, innocent and knowing, so controlled and so open to her that it hurt to see. If the thread was there, she would get it for him.

When Jione awoke, Tam was sitting beside the fire, with a brass-bound book on his lap.

“Morning?” she asked, hoping that the answer was somehow no, despite the sunlight streaming through the windows.

“Morning,” agreed Tam. He smiled at her, and he was again as open as he had been; as hopelessly lost. “There’s coffee, and pastries,” he added, the control reassembling itself.

The coffee was good, better than her usual half-chicory swill. Pastries were good too, but less sweet than she’d expected, and not the sort of regular shapes that machine bakeries made.

“There will be other obstacles beside the wreck,” he added, when she came up for air.

“Mm?”

“Once you get hold of the thread, if you let it go, that’s it; it would be lost, and I would be lost with it. There will be attempts to make you let it go.”

“What is this thread, anyway?” asked Jione.

“My soul,” said Tam. “The better part of me. All the things that I lost; everything I gave to the Queen, everything I lost during my years in hell.”

“I’ll hold tight,” said Jione.

“Thank you,” said Tam, and he meant it. “I haven’t been able to determine exactly what will happen once you touch it; it may be that it will grow heated or chilled, or it may change its form? I don’t know. It will hurt you, Jione.”

“I’ve been hurt,” she said. “But if it gets too hot, I won’t be able to hold.”

“That would be . . . that would violate the terms of my agreement. It will hurt, but not more than you can bear; it will do you harm, but no permanent harm.” He paused, shook his head. “At least not physical harm.”

Jione waited for him to finish.

“I am sorry,” Tam said. “I had meant to observe, and then learn the diving myself. But it seems that I have not been given sufficient time for that.”

Jione didn’t laugh or interrupt, though she was tempted to do both. He didn’t have the build for it, and it took months for someone to learn to use the apparatus safely, even for a simple trip to depth.

“There are the false hopes—that is the wreck, I think. And the thread will change. After that . . . I am not certain what the last is. The closest that I have come is that you shall, ‘learn a true thing.’ I don’t know what that means, and I don’t know what it shall do, and I cannot quantify the harm the last shall cause. Whatever it is, I will not be permitted to gainsay, nor make any argument. Once you take up the thread, the matter will be entirely in your hands and your heart.”

“I’ve been hurt before, and I’ve learned true things before,” said Jione. “Pay me the three imperials you owe me–”

“Two.”

“The two Imperials you owe me, charge the sniffer, and I’ll go get you a thread of gold.”

Tam proved almost as adept at getting her into the diving suit as he had been at getting her out of it, which sped things along, and then it was back into the murky waters of Gray Lagoon.

The visibility wasn’t as good as it had been the day before; the currents were moving faster, sending up puffs of dirt and dragging in bits of floating garbage. The wreck was still there, Jione’s claim stakes still marking it as hers, but when she turned the sniffer on, nothing pinged.

There were loose gemstones scattered across the bottom–sapphires and rubies, emeralds and amethysts, large as pigeon’s eggs–there were those black corroded masses of silver coin and plate, there were cannons and porcelain and everything else. But the sniffer didn’t show any gold. There was the wealth of kingdoms there, and she passed it by, doing her sweep with the sniffer. If there had been anything–any blip, any possible match, Jione would’ve counted Tam wrong and gone chasing it. But there was nothing. Not until she got to lowest part of the search area, when the sniffer showed a match for the gold it was burning. Small quantity, but pure. And buried under eight feet of sand.

Well, hell. Nothing she couldn’t handle, but eight feet of sand was a pain in the ass. Jione got to work with the dredge, and what looked like a pain in the ass turned out to be worse than it looked. The current shifted three times, and each time it happened to line up so that the stuff she’d dredged out got blown back in where she was digging. And the visibility got worse, almost as bad as if there was a storm blowing on the surface, for all that it’d been clear when she went down.

The current shifted three times, so she reoriented three times. When the visibility went down, she switched the sea-eye over to sound spotting, and when flecks of opal started showing up in the spoil, she kept after the gold, rather than trying to figure out what she was hitting. It wasn’t two imperials worth of work, but it was a lot of work, and she was twelve and a half fathoms down for most of it.

By the time the thing came up, she was so tired she didn’t even think about what it was she was doing; there was a flash of light, and she reached out to clear it. For the merest flicker of an instant, it was a length of gold thread in her hand, and then she was holding on to a stonefish.

Reflex should’ve made her let it go. Most divers—all divers—wouldn’t have held on to a stonefish that was twisting in their hand. One spine would permanently maim, more than one would kill. But there was that instant of gold thread, the way that Tam had looked when he slept.

She held, and it twisted and stabbed. Then, she almost did let go. It was death. All her senses said that it was real, and all her training, all her experience told her that it was death. But she held, though her hand was growing numb, though she could feel the poison coursing through her veins, as the stonefish stabbed, and stabbed again.

Then it wasn’t a stonefish. She was holding onto the tail of a fifteen-foot long praecursor shark. In one way, it made it easier; she knew that Tam had told the truth, that she hadn’t been poisoned by a stonefish, that the shark wasn’t real. In another way, it had been a lot easier to hold onto a stonefish; the shark was strong and fast and mad. In its first twist, it knocked two blood feeds loose from her apparatus; she could see the blooms of red from the corner of her eye, and the thrashing of the tail nearly pulled her arm loose from its socket. She held. The sandpaper roughness of its skin tore at her hand. She held. It turned and snapped at her with a mouthful of teeth like daggers, and she held, and then it was thread of gold, long enough to reach from a man’s fingertip to his heart, and as wide around as a flower’s root.

Jione wrapped it three times around her wrist, so it wouldn’t fall, refastened her feeds, checked all her gauges and dials, and made her weary way back up to the surface. Until the gauges clicked over into warning, and she took her depth break, floating in the space between the bottom and surface until the pressure of the air in her blood was close enough to the pressure of the surface air to let her return in safety to the world above.

There was no voice, no infernal growl or heavenly choir. But as she floated there, she knew. When Tam claimed that thread of gold, he’d have his soul back. Everything that he had given away, all the damage that had been done in hell, that would all be undone. Everything would be undone; he’d be back where he’d been when a line of dirt and rock was a quay, when the ruins he’d pointed to had been the Castle of the Doves. He’d never have gone to hell, and he would grow into a fine knight and lord. And things would be different. Unavoidably. Small changes would cause large changes, which would unmake everything and make it anew.

Everything she ever knew, everyone she ever loved, would have never been. There’d be something else there; maybe something better, maybe something worse. But if Tam claimed that thread of gold, it wouldn’t merely kill her. She would never have been born at all.

Once, twice, and a third time, Jione let the thread unloop from around her wrist, so that she was just holding the very end of it. If it had then become. . . if it had become anything, even the smallest minnow, it could have flown away on its own. But it didn’t, and she couldn’t let it go.

The gauges clicked back down to normal, and still she floated there, neutral. There was no chance of mistake, or fraud; Tam had said that she would learn a true thing. She could let the thread drift away. Maybe her Imperials would still be in her duffel, and maybe they wouldn’t. But Tam would be gone, and would never return. Or, she could go back, and give him the thread. Maybe she would have that one moment, where he saw what she had done, maybe she would see the bottomless hurt vanish, before she was gone, before she never was.

They were both wrong, but those were her only choices. Maybe . . . maybe Tam didn’t know. She would go, and explain. He would know that she hadn’t failed, he would know why. It wouldn’t be much comfort when he went back down to hell, but it was what she could give. Jione headed back to shore, made her awkward way through the surf to where Tam waited.

He rose to meet her, with his heart in his eyes, and she stood and tried to firm herself to choose. She held it out, but did not let the thread drop from her hand to his. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s not just your past that would be undone, Tam. It would be everybody; everything. I can’t.”

He reared back, as though he’d been stung by a stonefish. The pain she’d seen was doubled and redoubled. He put his hand back down to his side, though his eyes said that he wanted more than anything to reach out to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. But I cannot let you claim this.”

Then there was a sudden light, like when he’d realized that gold couldn’t be faked. He tried to say something, but though she was right there, Jione couldn’t hear it, couldn’t read his lips; it was as though he was already fading. He could not gainsay, or make any other argument. But he held out his hands, and though he could say nothing, Jione could hear him pleading.

She had made her choice, but now she had to choose again. Was this a bluff—had he chosen to live and not go down to hell, and let the future sort itself out, or had he seen some escape, some way in which the harm she saw would not come to pass?

Jione had held on when it was stonefish and a shark, and when she had learned what it would mean if Tam claimed what he had lost. Now, she let the golden thread slip from her hands into Tam’s. For just a second, she saw what might have been; Tam in his father’s hall, his corslet inlaid with silver, his eyes free of the pain and the fire she had seen. It would. . . .

“No!” he said, and she could hear him again. “I have gained this, but I do not claim it.” He drew back his arm, and threw, and the thread arced, high, high over the waters of the lagoon, out to the open ocean, where it sank without a ripple. “I have done what I said that I would; the bargain is fairly won. But I do not claim what was taken; I will not undo what has been done.”

Jione waited, but there was no response; no voice from above or below, no return of the thread that Tam had thrown. He didn’t disappear, and she was still there, Cartau’s towers still rose the same as they always had. “If you gained that golden thread,” she said. “You didn’t have to return to hell. And if you claimed it, you’d get back what you’d lost. Seems a fine point to argue; what if it didn’t work?”

“There is always the possibility of failure,” said Tam. “But it seems that I did not fail. Or at least, that I found a space between the word ‘claim’ and the word ‘gain’, and I left through it.”

“And if someone else finds that thing, and you do claim it?”

“It may come back, when I am feeling lost, or in despair,” said Tam. “It is as much a lure as the wreck you saw, as false as the shark. I cannot say that I will never chase it, but I do not chase it now.”

“Tam,” started Jione, and then stopped.

“I know,” he replied. “I owe you everything; you put your trust in me, and I will not betray it.”

“Everything,” she said, “And three–”

“Two.”

“And two Imperials.”

She’d put the whole world in his hands, and he’d given it back to her. “Y’know,” she said, and hesitated. She was going to say it wrong, and sound like an idiot, but she was going to try. “You need a partner.”

“Partner?”

“Sure. There’s no way the houses or the guilds are going to give you a fair shake. I mean, a ten percent improvement to sniffers, and a probable search area for the Grand Invincible? You need someone who knows what things are worth, or you’re going to get cheated, and maybe killed.”

Tam looked at her, and the flush came from beneath her dive suit, all the way up to her hair. He knew what she was asking. She didn’t look away, and neither did he.

“I have been spending recklessly,” he said. “I thought it didn’t matter; either I would fail, and go back from where I came, or succeed, and go further back. But it seems that I have washed ashore here.” He took her hand; it hurt, because of the spines of the stonefish and the sharkskin, but she gripped back hard, harder than she had held the golden thread. “It’s cold at night, Jione. Cold and dark, and I cannot trust myself to dream, lest the dreams take me back where I do not wish to go. If you will have me, I am yours.”

“All that and three—”

“Two.”

“Two imperials.” Jione put her arms around Tam’s neck, leaned forward. “Deal,” she said, and kissed him.

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Copyright 2017 Alter Reiss

Alter S. Reiss lives in Jerusalem with his wife Naomi and their son Uriel.  According to his mother, his first word was “book,” which seems about right.  He likes good food, bad movies, and hopes that at some point his apartment won’t be under construction.

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Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by Rashida J. Smith.

http://giganotosaurus.org

editor@giganotosaurus.org