A mermaid and a corsair. Natalie Yacobson

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      “They all have innocent faces, but their souls are black, rotten, magic,” morgen hissed angrily.

      Desmond had never even considered that mermaids had souls. All he had seen was Merediana’s body. It reeked of magical currents. Even asleep, she subdued him.

      One time he even wanted to throw her overboard and dive into the waves after her. Surely that was her wish, not his. The sleeping mermaid silently tells him what to do.

      No, this trick won’t work. He’s in command! A beautiful mermaid can’t woo him. Desmond struggled to muster up the will.

      “We’ve got to get her into my quarters.”

      “It will be better in the hold. I’ll draw signs on the entrance and on the bottom of the ship to keep her from getting loose.”

      “Wait! Then I won’t see her for the rest of the voyage.”

      Morgen tapped the deck sympathetically with his tentacles and tried on again to close the chest. He failed again.

      “You shouldn’t have opened it! Now we’ll have to move it somewhere else. Otherwise, we’ll all be in trouble.”

      “But she’s asleep!”

      “You’re so naive! I’ll never mess with a human again!”

      Morgen grunted like a nagging old wife. As if someone had forced him to make a deal with the pirate captain! He’d forced himself on him, hadn’t he? And now he’s not happy. Don’t the morgens know how inquisitive people are? The corsair was no exception to the general rule. He opened the chest and it was as if he was addicted to the mermaid. Even people who get used to the narcotic candy called “ette” don’t feel so addicted.

      Desmond felt uncomfortable that the morgen was touching the chest with the mermaid. However, the chest was soon empty. The tentacles coiled around Merediana and pulled her out of the chest. It wasn’t easy. The mermaid’s jewelry was stuck to the walls.

      The morgen was much better at sorcery than Cassandra. He was able to freeze the water into ice, and from the ice create a container as high as the ceiling of the hold. The container of ice was as clear as glass. Now the mermaid was inside this container.

      “Let her sleep!”

      “What if the water melts?”

      “It will not be,” The morgen drew some symbols of water near the container, which also froze with glittering ice. “Don’t bother her anymore! Suddenly, after a long sleep, she will become the Queen of Opal.”

      “Are you kidding?”

      The morgen let out either a wrenching laugh or a growl. Desmond felt uneasy.

      He looked back as he left the hold. He felt purple webbed fingers touch his shoulder, and Merediana’s voice called to him.

      He’s never even heard her voice. How would he know what it sounded like? Maybe mermaids have husky, ugly voices. What if, closer to land, a beautiful mermaid shrank and turned into a wrinkled ugly woman? On the water, these creatures can only pretend to be beautiful and trick people with sorcery.

      “You are not even a man, but a pirate,” Desmond remembered the curses he had heard both on land and from enemies defeated at sea. “All you pirates are worse than cattle. You’ll all end up in the noose and die in agony.”

      As he locked the hold, he truly felt like the last of the cattle. After all, the princess of the sea was left there alone in the dark, amidst the magical symbols that were probably draining the life out of her.

      Should he let her go? But then he’d be killed himself. Everyone knows that mermaids drag sailors to the bottom. Has anyone ever heard of an exception?

      In his heart Desmond cherished the hope that he would be the exception and the mermaid would love him instead of drowning him. But mermaids are very dangerous and cruel mistresses of the sea.

      Does he really need the love of a mermaid?

      Queen of the sea

      Desmond couldn’t sleep. He tossed from side to side on the narrow bunk. The mermaid’s song was in his ears. It seemed to emanate from all the walls of the captain’s cabin and even from the low ceiling.

      When he closed his eyes, he could see Merediana sitting on a fancy throne of shells.

      “Captain! Wake up!” The young man who had entered the cabin shook him by the shoulder.

      “What’s the matter? Is it a riot over a mermaid?” Desmond was already awake. He sat up on his bunk. “Is the crew so superstitious they want to throw me overboard with the magic cargo?”

      “No, something worse has happened,” the youngster was very shy and hid his eyes.

      He can’t be trusted, Desmond’s mind flashed. The ship’s boy was not long ago the Crown Prince’s page in Mirid. He should have brought him along for nothing. The boy, accustomed to the luxury of royal palaces, dreamed of adventure, but being in a sailor’s cabin on a pirate ship might change his mind.

      “Do you want to go back to Mirid?”

      “No, I’m fine here, but the fleas are biting me,” he flicked a creature off his sleeve that looked more like a tiny scorpion than a flea. “They must have gotten to me from the skipper. But I didn’t come to you about fleas. And I didn’t come to you about a riot.”

      “Then what do you want?”

      “I found this in the helmsman’s things.”

      “You went through the helmsman’s things?”

      “I didn’t mean to, but it was like a mermaid’s voice called me and… you know how it is, you hear a song and you do something you didn’t mean to do.”

      “It is nonsense!” Desmond was careful to hide the fact that he himself had fallen under the mermaid’s spell. He snatched a piece of paper from the young man’s hands. It turned out to be a wanted notice.

      “I didn’t know they were going to catch me and hang me like any pirate!”

      “Take a closer look,” insisted the young man. “The reward for you is very high – 1,500 gold coins. That’s a fortune. With it you can buy your own estate with plantations. For an ordinary pirate, you get a hundred gold pieces at most, but no more.”

      “So I don’t remember doing anything outrageous to be valued so highly.”

      “Or maybe it’s your past. The text at the bottom of the ad says that you’re being rewarded by the Mirid’s government, and that you must be captured alive.”

      “You’re so damn literate!” Desmond crumpled up the wanted notice. It looked like the helmsman had turned out to be a spy sent from Mirid. He’d saved him for nothing. The case had almost solved itself when the helmsman had almost died on the voyage. Now he’d have to kill him anyway. Too bad the sea creature’s СКАЧАТЬ