Chapter 99: Chapter 43: Little fish

> “The two complement each other well, but with any family business, there will eventually be tensions. Hopefully not for a few generations, though. In any event, I have secured favorable pricing for their goods for the next several decades.”

“What the fuck just happened?” I yelled across the room to Dalia and Ty after everyone had cleared out.

“You were named as Dalia’s champion,” said Ty. “You’ll present your Relic of choice at the Park Avenue Armory in two weeks and you and Emma will fight it out to see who will be crowned victor. And to the victor’s champion goes the Chair.”

“That much I gathered!” I said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think this meeting was going to end with a ‘fight to the death’ royale with me at the center of it.”

“I told you several times that a tie would make things more complicated,” she said. “And it’s not a royale. A royale implies more than one combatant per side.”

“But you never mentioned this! Had I known that was even among the remotest of possibilities, I could have … I would-”

“You would have proceeded exactly as you already have,” said Dalia, quietly. “Because that is who you are.”

“I … you don’t know a damn thing about me,” I said. “All you know is that all I have left in my life is the Guild and you’ve taken full advantage of that, over and over again.”

“You seem to forget that it was Mr. Laurel who chose you as my champion, not me,” said Dalia.

“True, but it was you who agreed to Trial by Relic in the first place. Who did you imagine he was going to pick? Ty?”

“It crossed my mind,” she said. “Her small-weapons combat is not one of her strong suits.”

“Hey, I resent that!” said Ty. “But yeah, seeing what Emma did to those schoolgirls, she probably would do me over pretty quickly.”

“And I’m going to do better?” I asked. “It seems like I’m getting set up as the sacrificial lamb!”

“An apt comparison,” said Dalia. “But there is the new matter of Emma’s injury. It worsens by the day.”

I decided I had had enough half-shouting and walked up to the front Table.

“She could beat me easily with one hand on a bad day,” I said, sitting in J.P.’s Seat.

“Also accurate,” said Ty. “But you need to go more than skin deep. She’s doing worse than you think.”

“How reassuring,” I said. “Well, maybe I’ll stab her quickly with the Medoblad before she can slice open my stomach.”

“Who said you could use that?” asked Dalia.

“Ty said I had to present my Relic of choice. As that’s the only one I can borrow, it will have to be that.”

“See, uh, that’s the thing,” said Ty. “It’s not, you know, technically yours? It’s Ms. Stallard’s.”

“So?”

“So,” said Dalia, “she would be free to use it herself were she the named Champion. But you, you will have to find your own.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “So not only do I need to fight Emma, who has not one, but two Relics at her disposable—one of which by the way rapidly ages you if you get sliced with it—but I also have to go get my own legendary weapon in a week? Are you kidding me right now?”

“No jokes here,” said Dalia. “You’d better get searching, I think.”

I stared at her in disbelief, wishing I had a shotgun in my hands so I could put my new shooting skills to the test.

“Sorry, that was a joke,” said the Chair with a smile. “Hard to fathom, but I’m not a robot.”

“What my mother was so unartfully trying to tell you,” said Ty, “is that we know where you can get a Relic of your very own.”

“Yes,” said Dalia. “In fact, you are familiar with it already. During our first meeting, I believe I mentioned it.”

“You did,” I said. “Curtana, the Sword of Mercy. But that’s the Guild’s Relic. Not mine.”

“Well,” said Dalia, “not quite. Curtana was the property of our predecessor organization and it took many years to arrange for title to be relinquished to us. A party was sent to Glastonbury Tor to fetch the Relic and bring it to New York. They were supposed to have set sail on the HMS Foxhound, but the ship never arrived in the New World.”

“So even Dalia de Wyck, fashion maven, Guild Chair, and terrifying specter, is full of shit!” I said with a laugh as I banged the Table. “That does make me feel a tiny bit better. And let me guess, it’s up to little ol’ me to somehow fetch your lost sword from the bottom of the Atlantic, right?”

“You’re halfway there,” said Ty. “Once you retrieve Curtana, by the law of the sea and by the laws of the Guild, it’s yours. And fortunately for you, the ship didn’t even sink in the ocean!”

“Then where, pray tell, is it?” I asked.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“The history books will tell you that there was no record of the Foxhound’s last voyage. That it must have been sold for scrap. That is because we removed all traces of what really happened. That the ship was done in by the waters of the Hell Gate,” said Dalia. “It’s in the East River.”

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My hands fumbled with the regulator as I struggled in the darkness. The ankle weights tipped me to my side as I lost balance, causing the air cylinders on my back to hit the bottom with a soundless thud. They taunted me with their oxygen that was just out of reach, and I tried to slow my breathing and let my muscle memory work through the last steps, but the disorientation, the cold, and the complete lack of vision overwhelmed me. I let out a wordless curse, detached the weights, and surfaced.

“That was terrible,” said Ty, who was waiting for me at the edge of the frigid pool. I removed my polyprene blindfold as I began to shiver uncontrollably.

“F-f-f-uck you!” I said, trying to push myself up from the water but failing, thanks to the now-heavy canisters still strapped to me.

“Just being honest,” she said, offering her hand and then a preternaturally warm towel. “If you can’t get your equipment right in this controlled environment, you’ll never survive the Hell Gate.”

I undid the Velcro straps on my shoulders and the metal cylinders hit the pool deck with an unceremonious thud. It was three in the morning and we had purloined the only Olympic size pool in Manhattan for an overnight training session through a combination of subterfuge, bribery, and breaking-and-entering. Despite the ease with which we had obtained access, I knew that our time was short and the sense of urgency made my heart beat loudly in my chest.

Ty offered me another bead of electrum and I swallowed it eagerly like a dog who had just performed a trick. The memories of an excursion in the South Pacific waters consumed my mind and when I regained consciousness a few minutes later, I read the corresponding card quickly to see what new experiences I had acquired.

“Somehow, I don’t think scuba diving in Tahiti is going to be applicable here,” I said.

“It’s the only other deep-water dive we have in the library,” said Ty. “Better than nothing.”

“You know what would be better than nothing?” I said. “A robot submarine so it could go down to the bottom of the dirtiest and coldest waterway on the East Coast instead of me!”

“We’re already getting one of those for you,” said Ty. “But you’ll still have to do the actual dive. It will just be tagging along as support.”

“Or I could yield the fight immediately and then enjoy my new line of credit from VAC,” I said.

“Yeah, not how that’s going to go,” said Ty. “Everyone will be fat and happy for the first year, and then, one by one, there’ll be a rash of resignation, disappearances, or maybe just straight-up murder.”

“That’s not the pitch I heard,” I said as I tossed the canisters back into the pool so I could fetch them again, all in the name of “training.”

“You weren’t listening very well, then” said Ty. “These people, they’re ruthless. They’d bulldoze our headquarters because they want to and then donate the land to some woke non-profit, or maybe an orphanage, just to rub it in our faces.”

“Fantastic,” I said. “Even more pressure on me.”

Ty pushed herself up from the side of the pool as if she was leaving, only to instead knock me over the side with her knees.

“Hey!” I said, the chill of the frigid water hitting me like a punch in the guy. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“Pressure makes diamonds, Jen,” said Ty, smiling. “Go get the weights and then dive again. I’ll be timing you!”

“And I’ll be murdering you!” I muttered under my breath as I quickly climbed out of the pool and dove headfirst back in. I grabbed the weights at the bottom and resurfaced. Reapplying the blindfold, I hit the little button attached to the top of my dry suit, which triggered the chime on the scuba equipment 10 feet below me, and returned to the water. This time, thanks to the extra memory, my fingers didn’t fail me, and I successfully equipped myself in the dark.

As I drew my first breath, a part of me started to believe that I could actually pull this off. But my optimism died as soon as I hit the surface and saw Dalia standing next to Ty, in black high heels and a bright red dress, with a bag that cost more than my life hanging from her arm, as if she had just returned from a gala.

“Status?” she said to Ty, who shook her head.

“She finally completed one beginner circuit,” said the teenager. “And only after ingesting the last memory.”

“Unacceptable,” said Dalia, and I couldn’t tell if she was lecturing me or Ty. “We have another day or two, at best, for this preliminary task. And then there is the matter of her actually wielding Curtana properly so that she doesn’t get impaled in 30 seconds.”

“I can hear you,” I said as I climbed out of the pool. “And this is doing wonders to my confidence, by the way. You try learning to scuba dive in five hours!”

“My bad. Did I hurt your feelings? Is your ego bruised? I’m sorry if I don’t give a fuck,” said Dalia. “Everything and everyone is on the line. You, me, the Guild. I don’t think you get that. Failure is not an option.”

“Then help me!” I yelled. “You’re the schemer, the planner, and yet for all of your foresight, all you could scrounge up was a tie.”

“And whose fault is that?” asked Dalia. “Last month, before I went to Europe, I had six votes. I leave you alone with Hugo for three minutes and suddenly the Woo Seat, which had been a trusted ally for generations, goes right to Laurel. What happened?”

“Give me something more than swimming lessons and I’ll tell you,” I said.

“Fine,” said Dalia, taking out a small leather-bound notebook and pen from her bag. She scribbled for a few seconds, tore the page out, and handed it to me.

“Izzy ‘the Spark’ Weston,” I read. “Essex Street Market, Stall 20A. Who is that? One of Phineas’s stock boys?”

“Not quite,” said Ty. “He’s a trafficker, but of information, not goods. We have it on good authority that he knows where to get a copy of the plans for the Foxhound. You will need that to help you navigate the ship quickly once you reach the wreck.”

“Fine,” I said. “Yet another person to charm. Hopefully, he is more pleasant than Phineas.”

I stuffed the page into my duffel bag that was resting near the edge of the water and began to walk to the locker room to get dressed, only to find my path blocked by Dalia.

“Who says you’re done here?” she asked. “Back in the pool. There are still many more hours before sunrise. And I don’t have anywhere to be until lunchtime.”

I stared at her blankly, my teeth involuntarily chattering and the remaining cold water dripping down my thighs.

“You’re serious? Fine. As you wish, Ms. de Wyck,” I said as I gave an exaggerated curtsy before jumping into the pool backward.

She ignored me and instead began writing something down on a new page in her notebook, which she ripped out and handed to her daughter.

“This is an interesting list,” said Ty. “And a long one. And it doesn’t even include what we need after she gets Curtana. Are you sure she’s up for it?”

“Come here,” said the Chair, and I swam over to the edge of the water. Dalia somehow bent down, heels notwithstanding, until we were nearly eye-to-eye.

“For the two weeks, your life, body, and mind are mine. You will do what I say, be where I tell you to be, and ingest a thousand years’ worth of memories if that is what it is going to take to get that Relic back. Are we clear?”

I paused before answering, trying to assert what little power I had.

“Crystal,” I said.

“Good,” she said, withdrawing a silver electrum from her bag, which she threw into the center of the pool. “That was from my private library, an account of the recovery of the Antikythera shipwreck in Greece. You have 30 seconds to eat it or I’m turning the temperature down another five degrees.”