The place suited Nita’s mood perfectly. She swam low among the corpses of dead ships, thinking bitter thoughts — most of them centering on her own stupidity.
They warned me. Everybody warned me! Even Picchu warned me: “Read the fine print before you sign!” Idiot! she thought bitterly. What do I do now? I don’t want to die!
But “Any agreements you make, make sure you keep,” Tom had said — and though his voice had been kind, it had also been stern. As stern as the Blue s: “Nowhere does the Lone Power enter in so readily as through the broken word.”
She could see what she was expected to do… and it was impossible. I can’t die — I’m too young, what would Kit say to Mom and Dad, I don’t want to, it’s not fair! But the answer stayed the same nonetheless.
She groaned out loud. Two days. Two days left. Two days is a long time-Maybe something will happen and I won’t have to die.
“Stop that sniveling noise!” came a sharp, angry burst of song, from practically in front of her. Nita backfinned, shocked at the great bulk rising up from the bottom before her. The echoes of her surprised squeak came back raggedly, speaking of old scars, torn fins and flukes, skin ripped and gouged and badly healed. And the other’s song had an undercurrent of rage to it that hit Nita like a deep dive into water so cold it burned.
“How dare you come into my grounds without protocol?” said the new whale as she cruised toward Nita with a slow deliberateness that made Nita back away even faster than before. The great head and lack of a dorsal fin made it plain that this was another sperm whale.
“Your pardon,” Nita sang hurriedly, sounding as conciliatory as possible. “I didn’t mean to intrude—“
“You have,” said the sperm, in a scraping phrase perilously close to the awful sperm-whale battlecry that Nita had heard from Kit. She kept advancing on Nita, and Nita kept backing, her eye on those sharp teeth. “These are my waters, and I won’t have some noisy krill-eating songster scaring my food—“
That voice was not only angry, it was cruel. Nita started to get angry at the sound of it. She stopped backing up and held her ground, poising her tail for a short rush to ram the other if necessary. “I’m not interested in your fish, even if they could hear me, which they can’t — and you know it!” she sang angrily. “Humpbacks sing higher than fish can hear — the same as you do!”
The sperm kept coming, showing more teeth. “You look like a whale,” she said, voice lowering suspiciously, “and you sing like a whale — but you don’t sound like a whale. Who are you?”
“HNii’t,” Nita said, giving her name the humpback accent. “I’m a wizard. A human wizard—“
The sperm whale cried out and rushed at her, jaws wide. Nita arrowed off to one side, easily avoiding the sperm’s rush. “Spy! Murderer!” The sperm was howling, a terrible rasping song like a scream. It came at her again—
Again Nita rolled out of the way, her maneuverability easily defeating the other’s rage-blinded charge. “I may be a human,” she sang angrily, “but I’m still a wizard! Mess with me and I’ll—“
WHAM! The sperm whale’s spell hit her with an impact that made the displaced-water explosions of Kit’s shapechanges seem puny. Nita was thrown backward, literally head over tail, thrashing and struggling for control as she swore at herself for being caught off guard. The spell was a simple physical-violence wizardry, as contemptuous a gesture from one wizard to another as a slap in the face… and as much a challenge to battle as such a slap would have been from one human to another.
Nita went hot with rage, felt about for her inner contact with the Sea, found it, and sang — only three notes, but pitched and prolonged with exquisite accuracy to take the power of the other’s spell and turn it back on her tenfold. The spell and the water thundered together. The sperm whale was blown backward as Nita had been, but with more force, tumbling violently and trailing a song of shock and rage behind her.
Nita held still, shaking with anger, while S’reee and Hotshot and Kit gathered around her. “I’m all right,” she said, the trembling getting into her song. “But that one needs some lessons in manners.”
“She always has,” S’reee said. “HNii’t, I’m sorry. I would have kept you back with us, but—“ She didn’t go on.
“It’s all right,” Nita said, still shaking.
“Nice shot,” said a low scrape of song beside her ear, angry and appreciative: Kit. She brushed him lightly with one flank as a great pale shape came drifting down on the other side of her, eyeing her with dark-eyed interest.
“So,” Ed said, calm as ever, “the Sprat has teeth after all. I am impressed.”
“Thanks,” Nita said, not up to much more conversation with Ed at the moment.
Slowly they swam forward together to where S’reee was hovering in the water, singing more at than with the other whale. “—know you were out of bounds, Areinnye,” she said. “There was no breach of protocol. We came in singing.”
“That one did not,” said the sperm whale, her song so sharp with anger that it was a torture to the ears. “My right—“
“—does not extend to attacking a silent member of a party entering your waters within protocols,” S’reee said. “You attacked HNii’t out of spite, nothing more. First spite, then anger because she was human. We heard—“
“Did you indeed? And what else have you heard in these waters, you nursling wizard, you and your little playfellows?” The sperm whale glared at them all as they gathered around her, and the rasp of pain and hatred in her voice was terrible. “Have you seen my calf hereabouts? For all your magics, I think not. The whalers have been through these waters three days ago, and they served my little M’hali as they served your precious Ae’mhnuu! Speared and left to float belly-up, slowly dying, while they hunted me — then hauled bloated out of the water and gutted, his bleeding innards thrown overboard by bits and pieces for the gulls and the sharks to eat!”
When S’reee spoke again, her voice was unhappy. “Areinnye, I share your grief. It’s things like this that the Song will help to stop. That’s why we’re here.”
The sperm whale laughed, a sound both anguished and cruel. “What lies,” she said. “Or what delusions. Do you truly think anything will make them go away and stop hunting us, S’reee?” Areinnye looked with hatred at Nita. “Now they’re even coming into the water after us, I see.”
Kit glided forward ever so slowly, until he was squarely between Nita and Areinnye. “I guarantee you don’t know what she’s here for, Areinnye. She’s saving your life, along with those of a lot of others — though at the moment, in your case, I can’t imagine why anyone would bother.”
Areinnye made a sound at Kit that was the sperm-whale equivalent of a sneer. “Oh, indeed,” Areinnye said. “What could she possibly do that would make any difference to my life?”
“She is the Silent Lord for the Song,” S’reee said.
Areinnye turned that scornful regard on Nita. “Indeed,” the sperm said again. “Well. We are finally getting something useful out of a human. But she doubtless had to be compelled to it. No human would ever give up its life for one of us, wizard or not. Or did you trick her into it?”
Gently, hardly stroking a fin, Ed soared toward Areinnye. “Unwise,” he said. “Most unwise, wizard, to scorn a fellow wizard so — whatever species she may belong to. And will you hold Nita responsible for all her species’ wrongdoing, then? If you do that, Areinnye, I would feel no qualms about holding you responsible for various hurts done my people by yours over the years. Nor would I feel any guilt over taking payment for those hurts out of your hide, now.”