Verse X

  In the handful of days since she had come to the palace, Estrella din Hillia was only able to familiarize herself with the basic and most commonly used chambers in the grand complex of tunnels and shell-work domes. The royal residence was vast, complicated, twisty -- and in this moment, filled to the far edges with mers enjoying themselves.

  It was a shame she and her bond-sister were there in a professional capacity. More than a shame, even. Her mind stretched for a better word, something more shameful than shameful. Ignominious, her memory provided. The two of them had swum in the far back of the school of guards during the procession, while high above them the Head and First Daughter of their House stroked in glory. Strella had only seen her cousin Suela din Hillia once that day, in passing, and the stuck-up First Daughter had not even acknowledged them.

  "Strella..." And then there was her bond-sister, her cousin Tachi, less shameful and more embarrassing. The two of them were assigned to the same stretch of passageway, overseeing the flow of traffic and otherwise reminding the common mers, by grace of their red and gold uniforms, whose authority ruled here. They were supposed to remain still, calm, and imposing -- not to mention floating in position at least three tail-lengths apart.

  Tachiana din Hillia was currently none of those things. Rather, she was fidgety, morose, and clinging to Strella's elbow.

  "Maintain your place," she told her bond-sister. "Float it out. Over there." With a nudge of the chin, she tried to direct Tachi back to the proper spot.

  "B-but..." Tachi choked out a stammery string of bubbles. "The taste is so strong..."

  There was no need to ask what taste. The instant a mer had glid through the passageway with a platter of ripe tuli pods for the merrymakers, Estrella knew that her cousin and fatebound sister would have troubles. She had only hoped it would not be so soon.

  "Hang in there," she said, as kindly as she could muster. "Not on me!"

  "S-sorry..." The spiky-haired mer wobbled herself straight, though every part of her bent bonelessly one way or the next. A twitch had developed beneath her left eye. "Doing... my best..."

  She had feared as much. Shouldering her bond-sister carefully, Strella floated her back to the proper position, leaning the mer against a wall to help brace herself. There was only an hour or two left in the day. If Tachi could hold out...

  Ah, she did not know who she was trying to fool, if she couldn't even convince herself. A mer might, in this moment, pray that none would notice. Strella was never do great a believer in divine grace or providence, and accepted it as inevitable when attention arrived on steady flukes.

  "What is the matter here?" asked the sergeant, Shalar min Shandra. The tall mer with the matching knives at her flanks was on a regular circuit of the halls, checking on each of the young guards under her tutelage. This included Tachi and her cousin, much to the dismay of Strella.

  "My cousin, she is... ah, feeling poorly," she said quickly. "Nothing she ate, else I would be feeling it as well. The excitement, perhaps..."

  Yes, she made her own cousin look the useless twit, because that was the simple truth. More important was it to establish that Tachiana din Hillia had not been partaking of anything untoward while on duty.

  "M... 'm sorry..." Tachi mumbled. The waters around her shivered.

  Shalar's sigh was a slower ripple. "How long has it been?"

  "Ah, what?" asked Strella.

  "Since her last tuli." The sergeant placed a hand to Tachi's face, cupping the other mer's cheek and jaw as she murmured a phrase in the sacred syllables of healing. Strella could recognize the flow of the grammar for what it was, though she had no real talent with the runic arts. The effect on her bond-sister was immediate.

  The shivers broke with a large gasp as Tachi went rigid from her flukes to the spikes of her hair. A beat later, she flopped to the stones below like an old flatfish. "Get her to the barracks," Shalar ordered. "Yourself, no help from others. She's your mess, got it?"

  "Always." Strella winced as she yanked the dead weight of her cousin into a more manageable carrying position. "And after that?"

  "After that, report back to me and we shall discuss things." The sergeant spared one hard glance at Tachi. "Many things."

  With her dearest bond-sister a weight upon her neck and back, Strella made the heavy strokes back to the soldiers' shell-work barracks. She did her best to ignore any stares or muttering upon the waters as she passed. If she ignored the attention, then all would be forgotten soon enough. At a party like this, a dozen things more interesting would happen before the end of the hour.

  Verse XI

  When Ardenne finally learned the meaning of the word 'garden,' she found herself disappointed. She'd been too embarrassed to ask Marai or her companions when faced with yet another unfamiliar word. Since coming to the city, her life was one new thing, one new word after another, and she was tired of sounding ignorant every few beats. Rook had known the spot and how to get there, and so Ardenne had followed, confident that her ignorance would soon be dispelled.

  So now she knew what a garden was, and it was not much of anything at all. Ardenne could not figure out the why of it, however.

  The space atop the Pillar of Queens was mixed-up, illogical, with species of animal and plant gathered in no way that made sense to her. Familiar kelps and sargos were anchored in the same pebble beds as strange, blue-hued weeds and reddish grasses. From a branching spar of horn coral dangled a yellowed pod-fruit, many days past its ripest. Stony pillars broke the floor, each harboring two or three species of foliage that were distinct in both shape and tint. Tiny shrimps prowled their fronds. Anemones covered several large rocks, their tentacles waving idly in the currents. An enterprising blue crab was in the process of stealing one of the vivid pink blooms to add to the defenses atop its shell.

  The one thing the place lacked was living coral. It was a reef without a reef, this garden. Perhaps that was what felt so strange and disappointing to her. Even the pod-fruit stands and root patches of home retained something of the wild to them, growing where and as they would before being pulled and deposited in the shallows near the village. Gatherers such as Lyra and Lyrika would sometimes need to search far to find the best foodstuffs. But in this place, the hand of mer was obviously in control. Everything was well in order, in spite of the chaotic mix of species.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Ah! You're here!"

  The words had hardly registered in Ardenne's ears before the lavender mer was upon her, grabbing her hands and pumping them up and down with excitement. Marai's braid curled and snapped behind her head as she twisted to look behind her. "See, see? Hair like fresh grass, just like... er, just like I said!"

  The oft-mentioned friend approached them slowly, keeping her gaze focused on the hunter. Longer than the lavender mer in both body and tail, she had burnished orange scales and hair possessed of a deeper yellow than any Ardenne had ever seen on a mer. There were fish on the reef with just that golden a hue, but those were tiny, shy things that usually kept to themselves. This golden mer had none of that attitude, and with a chest like hers, she'd not been called tiny in a long verse, either. It took effort not to stare at the mer's well-padded top enviously, and it did not help that she was being closely examined in return.

  "Amazing," said the golden mer, breaking a hush that Ardenne had not even realized was fallen over the garden. "Every line of the face, the shape of the muscles... a perfect match." She reached out, tracing a finger along the contours of the green mer's chin, down the curve of her neck, and down to where the collar of her smock revealed the top of her chest. The hunter flinched in surprise.

  The sudden motion brought them all back into the moment. The golden mer blushed, her hand returning to her side as Sera and Rook stroked over.

  "What're you on about?" Sera demanded. "Dunno how you Bryndoons do it, but back home we don't go hassling strangers like that." The red mer came up fast, closing the distance between herself and the newcomer in two beats. "How's it feel?" she demanded, nose to nose with the other mer. "Someone getting into your face and prodding?" She jabbed a finger at the green-bound chest twice for emphasis. "Maybe gotta find your mum and tell how her daughter's a rude little... what?" Rook broke off in mid-harangue to glare at Rook, who was tugging at her sleeve. The short mer's face was pale, her freckles standing stark in contrast.

  "Er, Red... Red, I think that's the princess yer be assaultin'."

  Sera and the princess both blanched -- one from mortification and the other from incandescent fury. The two mers, still face to face, stared at each other, and tension swelled between them. Ardenne could feel it as a blast of pressure, for all that the waters were still. After the longest beat in her life, she watched the golden mer slump back.

  "Ah, my... my apologies. I, I barged in, made a boor of myself... oh! what a poor impression. Mitera Yesca could lecture me for hours on end if I did this to someone in court, and I don't even care what those stuffed fronts think..."

  If the rambling apology was supposed to calm Sera down, it failed. The red mer's hands were grasping for knives that were presently not on her hip, but rather cached in a storeroom two layers deep into the cliff. That was a relief for Ardenne. Her companion couldn't stab at anyone physically.

  With words, on the other hand... "Scum-licking, funge-scaled, scabrous bottom-feeders..."

  Much to Ardenne's surprise, the golden mer did not react. She simply floated there and absorbed the verbal lashing. To the right of her, Marai looked ready to faint, and Rook was not doing much better, but the princess seemed to accepted the tirade as just punishment for her folly. It took several beats before Sera's stock of insults and curses petered out, finishing with a half-hearted comment about the relative sizes of the princess's chest and brains. Red glared at gold, one daring the other to respond.

  "I... I suppose that I deserve that." The princess swallowed back her water nervously. Turning back to Ardenne, she bowed. "And I apologize for my lack of manners. Allow me to start over. I am Rhiela min Anyis, din Brynduin, and I am amazed to make your acquaintance."

  Green eyes blinked their confusion openly. "Ah, why is that?"

  "It's... well, it is hard to explain properly. There is something I would like to show you. If you would..."

  This time it was Ardenne who interrupted. "I am very sorry, but I can't. We have some business we need to see to."

  "What, for the party?" Rhiela waved dismissively. "Don't worry. I can get you out of kitchen duty with only a word."

  "No, no. It's not that."

  "Well, what then?"

  The princess posed with hands on flanks, the very model of determined curiosity. To her rear, Sera was shaking her head and making all manner of signs with her hands. Ardenne supposed that the red mer wanted her to hush up, to not say a thing about anything, but what was the point? From all she had seen and heard that day, for that entire week now, she doubted that Rhiela had anything to do with important matters in the palace. They needed the help, and everything that Sera had said about recruiting Marai for the task was still true. And it couldn't hurt to have a mer of authority on their side as well. She flushed her gills a few times, considering and then deciding.

  "It all started when my mother and I went out one morning..."

  Verse XII

  For a grand event such as that day's, certain rites and practices needed to be observed. Let the manoa to their frivolities; the leondra knew the serious nature of a pledge unto the Mother of All, and thus the prayers continued well after the princess and her royal procession had receded back to the waters of the palace, and with it a goodly portion of the mers living in the harbor of Bryndoon. Now-empty waters carried sound in strange ways, warped and stretched in the wake of so many bodies moving at once. The last ripples would not fade until the end of the next hour.

  Grand Mitera Yolien rested in the center of a spherical formation as the lesser mitera -- each a powerful messra in her own rites -- wove prayers from the sacred grammar, sending the words in arcs around her. The uncomfortable robes of office were discarded, removed to storage until such time as they were needed. Each of the leondra wore at most the temple kilt and a thin wrap or sash across her breast, regardless of rank. Such outwards displays were for the benefit of the manoa. Those raised in the temple needed no hints to tell who had authority.

  Nehemi min Noemi floated to the side with the other prestra sacrista. Many givers of the blessed sacrament were as young as she, right her and now, and this might well be the first greater working any among them would have seen.

  The intermingled chants washed across the chamber of prayers, growing louder and louder still as the mitera reached the closing beats. With a grand shout, all twelve of them finished the final syllable in unison, and the waters shook.

  The waters stilled. A hush rolled in, voiding all echoes, and none dared push back against it with words of her own. They waited. They listened.

  In the farthest distance, in waters beyond what her ears might meet, Nehemi thought she heard a sob of sorrow. Her eyes ticked back and forth, searching for some sign, some reaction to inform her that the noise was not of her imagination, and that some other prestra had heard. She saw none, and without that reassurance, Nehemi was not about to mention it herself.

  At her spot in the center of everything, Grand Mitera Yolien broke the hush with a simple grunt of water flushing through gills. "For this convocation," the old mer announced, "there is again no response. Let it be noted that we made the attempt. Praise be to Cythera, Mother of All, and to everyone a good rest."

  The school of prestra sacrista let themselves out quietly, none daring to say a word. Even the gathered mitera lacked voices. Nehemi lagged behind, the singular note of despair caught between her ears. What figment of the imagination had spawned it, she could not say, but it lingered.

  "Prestra Nehemi." Those words, that voice, were none of her imagination. Low and throaty, it demanded attention.

  "Yes, Your Holiness?" she replied, making the sign of respect to Mitera Yesca as she turned around. The two of them were still not far down the way from the chamber of prayer, so she followed where the temple senior led. "What may I do for you?" she inquired as soon as they were arrived at a private alcove.

  "A question only," said the mitera. The bubbles in her fur released all at once as she shook her head. "Did you hear Her cry?"

  One beat, two beat, three beat, five... "I... perhaps? It was a trick of the ears, I am sure. No one else--"

  "No one else ever does," the mitera told her. "Never more than one in a generation, and only at their first calling to the greater communion. I heard it once, heard that cry of sorrow, twenty-five years ago when Anyis was of age and the mitera of that generation made the calling. Yolien spoke to me afterwards, as I do with you now."

  Nehemi gulped back the water that threatened to choke her gills. "What... what was it?"

  "It was She, Cythera, our Mother. The better question is, why... and we do not know the answer to that. She has never seen fit to tell us." A frown stretched long below the mitera's broad face. "We serve Her so that one day we hear Her cries of joy. Come along, then." Mitera Yesca gestured with a single finger. "I must make an appearance at the palace for the festivities, and you shall accompany me. Unless you have aught else to do?"

  "N-no, Your Holiness..."

  "Good." The frown tilted up at the corners, ever so slightly. "You are a swift learner, Nehemi min Noemi. Continue on this current, and you shall swim far."