Kat Richardson - Seawitch

When the last spirit was no more than a memory of sound and light in our senses, I eased back into my chair once again, satisfied but struggling with my exhaustion and discomfort. I glanced at Shelly, who was still standing, looking up at the sky, smiling a bittersweet kind of smile.

It seemed wrong to break the moment but I had to. “I think . . . we’re done here,” I said.

She lowered her eyes to mine, her expression growing more grave and a touch sad. “I still need peace with the otter people.”

I glanced at Father Otter and she took that as I meant it; it wasn’t up to me.

“Will you stay a moment as my witnesses?” she asked, looking from me to Zantree and back. . . .

As we nodded to her, Father Otter cast rapid glances at each of us, lingering longest on Shelly and Fielding. He stared hard at Fielding, who shrank from his gaze, for a moment, then turned back to Shelly, asking, “You don’t want this one?”

“What would I want him for?”

“Revenge. He harmed you, he broke your power, he ruined your value, and he allowed your mother to imprison you.”

“Why should I care after all this time about what was or could have been? None of that is important anymore. Do you want to keep on living in the past? Living in a state of war because of some stupid dispute hundreds of years old? We could do a lot for each other, my people and yours. We don’t have to keep on killing each other. You and me . . . we don’t have to be friends but we could at least call a truce and let our people heal.”

Father Otter scowled but it wasn’t the angry expression he’d had before. “Your people, our people . . . That may be enough for the Puget folk, but none of the others will abide by such a truce.”

“Not at first but we can do our best for ourselves and let the rest come around in their own time.”

“What about the Columbia people? They will kill and die and they will not respect our truce if we cross the bar.”

“Then maybe we should send an emissary. Someone who’s from the Columbia.” Shelly turned her gaze and looked hard at Fielding. “We can net two fish with one cast: Send Gary away from here and let him be useful elsewhere. And never come back,” she added under her breath.

“What does it net us to send him away?”

Shelly laughed and the sound set my teeth on edge. “You don’t actually want him to stay? Disruptive, whining, self-centered idiot that he is.”

Fielding sat down hard on the deck. “I’m not that bad!”

“In a shark’s eye,” Shelly shot back. She looked at Father Otter. “Am I right?”

Father Otter was clearly calculating something. “We can send him back to his mother’s people . . . Though we hate to give such a prize away. . . .”

“Gary’s no prize,” Shelly said.

Father Otter turned his head and cocked it to one side. “To the Columbia people he is. His mother was the last royal dobhar-chú on the river.”

Fielding made an ugly face at Father Otter. “You lied to me! You said you didn’t know anything about my mother!”

“Her where abouts. Who she was—certainly we knew that, whelp!”

“You didn’t say so.”

“Why should we give such information to you when you brought us nothing but trouble? And you didn’t ask the right questions.” Father Otter turned his attention back to Shelly, as if Fielding had disappeared. “We will consider sending a message. . . .”

“Don’t pretend you don’t want him gone as much as I do.”

“What do you offer us to make it worth our effort to conduct him safely back to the Columbia? Our folk outnumber yours and we could order them to attack again.”

“That battle will not be as easy as you think, Fa Dobhar-chú. My mother’s power no longer restrains mine and you don’t know what I can do. . . .” She gave him a cunning look and stared him down for a moment. Having made her threat, she paused and then her face brightened and she added, “Besides . . . I have treasures: pearls and the salvage of hundreds of lost ships. . . . Such knowledge as your folk could do much with. And I will share with you if you become my allies rather than my enemies.”

Father Otter smiled a little; it wasn’t a greedy smile but an appreciative one.

“What if I don’t want to go back to Oregon?” Fielding objected. “You can’t compel me, either of you. Not if I choose to live in this form.”

Solis cleared his throat. “In this form you will return to Seattle with me and stand trial for what happened aboard the Seawitch .”

Fielding looked smug but the expression was wobbly. “By what evidence and under what charge?”

“Piracy, perhaps, or criminal negligence as the captain who allowed his ship to be taken and his charges killed. And as you are the only surviving member of the crew, the questions will be pointed. If your answers don’t please the court, you would be remanded for psychological examination at Western State Hospital, which could take quite some time in that landlocked and miserable place.”

Quinton cleared his throat, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Actually . . . if his answers or actions—like turning into an otter in the holding cell—set off the wrong alarm bells, he’ll be made to disappear.”

We all turned to regard Quinton with a range of emotions from curiosity to terror.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your dad’s little project, would it?”

He was pale and upset. “Yes.” He looked at the others and continued. “I can’t tell you much but certain groups within the U.S. government know that there are . . . people like Fielding and Shelly and Harper. One of these groups is headed by my father, who is even less agreeable than Father Otter here. If Dad gets wind of someone like Fielding, his agents will hunt him down and snatch him. He won’t even make it to court.” He shifted his focus to Fielding. “Once that happens, you get to be the biggest rat in their lab and these guys . . . they redefine the term ‘living hell.’ You really, really don’t want them to find you. Or even hear of you.”

“You’d narc on me?” Fielding asked, appalled.

Quinton gave an adamant shake of the head. “Not in a million years. Not to anyone and especially not to these guys. No one here would.” He cast a desperate glance around and all the humans nodded. “But if you are booked on charges, information about you will get out. That’s just the way the booking databases are connected to other parts of the electronic world and there are specialized programs cruising that information pool like sharks looking for the right kind of food—food like you. Once they figure you out, they’ll descend like ninjas and you’ll disappear in a small puff of paperwork that will claim you’ve been transferred to a special facility that doesn’t exist. No one will see you leave or where you go, and if guys like my dad have their way, you’ll never come out.”

Fielding’s eyes widened, his mouth gaped, and his chest began to jerk as his breathing went panicky and shallow. He was ready to bolt but there was nowhere to go.

I caught his eye. “I recommend that you go to back to the Columbia. As their royal dobhar-chú, you’ll be a lot safer than you are as Gary Fielding.”

“Only if you behave,” Father Otter put in. “Kin they may be but the Columbia folk are not easy. They will make you earn your place—as we should have done.”

Fielding nodded like a broken doll. “All right. OK, I’ll go back to the Columbia.”

Father Otter bared his teeth. “We will know if you do not.”

Fielding flattened himself on the deck, a cowed and horrified expression on his face. “Pax, pax,” he muttered.