For the whirlwind of passions she set in motion, Lydia was an ordinary-looking woman. Plump, round-faced, with coarse features. She had a ready smile though, and her eyes, while small, had a spark. Years imparted dignity, but she remained down-to-soil not dazzling the rest of us with Divine inspiration. She didn't impart awe with the exquisite perfection of body and movement like Parneres' sister did either... and Sharim loved her.

Anyone could see it, particularly me, who had only recently tasted the fruit of forbidden love and so was sensitive to its signs. The touches abandoned midway, when lovers were drawn together instinctively, but the reason repelled them. The clandestine glances yanked hurriedly away in fear of reciprocation. The unsaid truth filling the long pauses between trite exchanges.

But maybe I saw forbidden love everywhere precisely because I was experiencing it? Spurned love could look so much alike. So, what kind was Sharim's?

Once we were alone between the sky and the sea, I made a tentative foray to find out.

"Lydia'll come around. You'll see," I said.

"Gossips!" Sharim spat zestily into the waters after the disappearing divers.

"Don't blame them, Captain. Blame your face."

Sharim held out while we stashed the first catch of the day into the hold. Once the divers rested, they grabbed the ballast stones to help them on the way to the oyster banks, empty baskets to fill with oysters and knives to harvest them. Then they jumped overboard again.

Once the last of the four women disappeared in the water, Sharim muttered, "It's not Lydia's fault. It's the pox-ridden porcupine her mother made her marry."

"I bet," I said, though I'd never met Lydia's husband.

"Lydia's family owned their business for seven generations. Always it went from mother to only daughter. So, yes, it was out of the question for Lydia to stay unwed and childless."

Sharim shrugged and I repeated her gesture in solidarity. "The husband didn't mind his place?"

"Worse. He's a petty man, full of poison, like a puffer fish. He's just confessed that he bought a curse from a rogue Scribe. Said with that curse, Lydia's womb would only sprout boys. The wretch laughed about it. Laughed!"

I gawked. "But it's a curse on him too!"

"Ah, but he blames it on us. Lydia and I, we've been together since... well, since we both were your age. I could have been more than a fishing boat captain, but I stayed on the Naiad for her. He knew from the start, everyone did. How's that any different from another husband? But no, somehow he couldn't stand it."

"It sounds like an idiotic way to exact revenge," I said. "The more boys his seed quickens into, the more likely she's to divorce him."

"That's what he wanted, I suppose, for her to set him aside, pay his keep, and he'd be the victim in the eyes of his mother and sisters. But Lydia is a decent woman, and their two families were tight for generations, intermarried before... So she refuses to turn him out, even after giving birth to three boys."

"He's lying," I said with conviction. "Just trying to cover up that his seed is only good for making boys. It's his fault."

Sharim sighed. "That's what I've told her a thousand times. But she went to a fortune-teller who put an idea into her head that she could break the curse if she marries a pure boy."

Did the Head Priestess hear this ridiculous tale before she presented Kozima as a prospect? A match based on mutual affection or familial business interests was one thing, but this was a superstitious ritual, unworthy of Gala's blessing. My poor Kozima was heading for a hellish marriage.

"She won't marry any virgin, I promise you that!"

Sharim sighed. "She already found one. He's as soft as they get. I think she likes this about him after years with her porcupine."

I tried to grit my teeth as quietly as possible. If virginity was required to break Lydia's curse, Kozima was useless to her. Not an inch of his skin remained innocent of a woman's touch, and I saw to that. The stone statues on the temple walls had a good reason to blush when the dawn sun fell on them. They wept sea spray at the memory of how he was ravished in the night, outside wedlock, how his body was pressed into the roof tiles with thrusts, his lips swelling from stolen kisses...

Kozima's virtue had suffered irrevocably in my embrace, but at least I wasn't using him to fix my inheritance issues. If Lydia carried another boy-child, Kozima didn't have a family to shelter him in the fallout. He had me, and I... Gala's tears!

I should tell him to throw his epic tantrum. Bad reputation or not, at least he'd be safe in the temple. If Lydia felt she was swindled, she could turn his life into misery. And with the elder husband to add on top of it! They would turn him out of the house in disgrace. Even for me sleeping in the gutters was hard. A gentle boy like him would be destroyed.

I pictured Anastasia swooping in, merciful and virtuous, ready to succor him. But even if she was willing to offer him a second marriage, she had to climb enough rungs on the ladder before she could restore his virtue.

My throat filled with bitter bile. I clenched and unclenched my fingers around the spear. Kozima had me. I had to stop this travesty. Had to.

"You should talk sense into Lydia," I said.

Sharim groaned. "What do you think we'd been quarreling about every night? She's too afraid to be the first woman in her family who cannot bear a daughter. Divines themselves won't be able to change her mind."

"Hmm. Maybe, just maybe—" An idea crested over my panicking thoughts like the sun over the ocean.

"Float!" Sharim screamed, surging forward with her arrow knocked.

I saw it too, the emergency float, red and white, racing to the surface in a veil of bubbles. And a sinuous black shape threading through the deep blue of the water.

Three short spears were strapped to my back. I grabbed the ballast stone to break through the water and plunged toward the monster barracuda and her prey.

The red spray fanned from the diver's side. Her basket was sinking to the bottom unhurriedly, the way all things sink, even during the worst tragedies. Her knife, sharp enough to slice through a fish as thick as my wrist, bounced harmlessly from the barracuda's black scales.

I jabbed my spear straight into the monster's maw. The spear grazed her jaw, slipped out of my fingers and went to the bottom of the sea floor.

At the same time, I grabbed the diver's ankle with my free hand and pushed her up. She swam limply, blood coloring the seawater's azure with alarming speed.

The other three divers converged on their wounded friend from their corners of the reef. In a knot, they swam up. To cover their retreat, I had to keep the barracuda at bay for as long as I could hold my breath. Which wasn't long enough.

I dodged the barracuda's black-and-silver serpentine body—thicker than mine at the shoulders, a foot or so less than double my length. Two pointed fins stood up on its back like blades, and the tail fin didn't look warm and fuzzy either.

The true horror was her head. It was more like a crocodile's than that of a fish, about a third of her body in length, with the low jaw jutting out, thick with teeth curved inward. If the barracuda got a grip on me, she wouldn't let go.

I stabbed the gaping maw for the second time. Water cushioned my thrust. My movements were sluggish here, but not hers. Her jaws snapped, chomping my weapon in half, sprinkling the water with kindling.

Malevolent red eyes dared me to try my worst. She was toying with me!

I kicked furiously, putting an arm's length between us and tore the last spear from my back.

The monster swirled, aiming to slap me with her tail.

On land, I would have screamed before tossing the spear with all my might.

Under water, I pushed down the last of air in my chest, tossed the spear, and raced to the dark shadow of the boat above me. That the barracuda didn't snap her teeth on my legs meant only one thing. I hit my target. I hit her in the eye. Not hard enough to pierce through and end her, but I hit her!

So, instead of her teeth, something scarier was at my heels. The monster's wrath and her intent to devour chased me all the way to the Naiad. Only the Bhutas hated with this kind of singular determination.

The boat's side loomed ahead of me. I grabbed on, pulled up, my tendons screaming, rolled onto the deck and laid there gasping for air like I was a fish out of the water myself. Seawater pooled around me, making me glad that my head was bald.

Finally, I regained my senses enough to comprehend what was going on around me.

Sharim was doctoring the diver with gum and silk thread, but she turned her face away from her work when she heard me coughing. A grim frown creased her brows. She knew what I would say, but I said it anyway.

"Beg your pardon, Captain, but this was no ordinary fish. I must kill her before she kills us all."

The crew sat very silently, save for the crying of the injured woman, while I assembled the collection of weapons.

Two spears to replace the lost ones. The best knives we had, with curved, piercing points, not just chopper's blade. And a hatchet. The last one felt right in my hand when I took a practice swing in the air. I almost left everything else behind, so strong was my premonition that an ax was all I would need to win over the barracuda.

"Mansoora help me!" I stepped with one foot on the side of the boat, gathering my thoughts. I had to actually kill my foe, not just kill my foe in my head.

"Wait," Sharim called out softly.

She rummaged through the bobbers, charms, feathers, bells and sundry hanging from the cord on her leathery neck. Finally, she unhooked what she wanted and offered her trophy to me in the open palm of her hand.

I picked out the curved pieces of tortoiseshell—a nose clip wrapped in a cord of its own.

"There isn't much magic imbued into it, but it'll buy you more time underwater, Safic."

"Thank you."

With my nose pinched with the clip, I skipped the farewells, grabbed the stone and tumbled overboard. The demon-fish who had somehow escaped the River Vash, where the Bhutas lay drowned and the souls of the dead prepared for rebirth, awaited me in the depth of the Gulf.