Verse II

  Night washed its way across the firmament, not as swiftly as it did over the cliffs of Bryndoon but still fast in its own manner. After so many days within the confines of the city -- and what a crazy few they had been! -- Sera found it to be peaceful, restful. There was something about life on the open currents that suited her.

  "You expect me to sleep where?" Others, it obviously suited not. They were only a few hours of the day and evening into this little adventure of there, and it wasn't anything like Rhiela had envisioned. Just what the princess had been expecting was hard for Sera to say. The only expectations the silly chum could have would come from the tales of guards returning from tours of the backwaters. The red mer was certain that the princess herself had never left the home waters of Bryndoon. Whatever fantasy lay in that pretty golden bubble atop her neck, it was at odds with reality, and thus far reality was winning.

  "In the grass, Your, ahem, 'Highness,' just like the rest of us." Sera gritted her teeth and bit back a snarl before it shook the waters between them. "No palaces around here, in case you haven't noticed. Gotta sleep where and when possible. If that means a grass bed, well, slept in worse."

  "Of course you have."

  "Course! And so has Ardenne, and the twins, too. None of us ever had a nice, cushy palace hammock." Sera shrugged off her pack, letting it fall to the matted grass below. "And if you miss it that much, just swim on back!"

  "In, in the dark?" That set the princess back, now didn't it? Already the firmament was faded to a deep purple, and only their little glow-lamp lit the waters. Soon enough they'd have to rest that, too, to keep the night swimmers from getting too nosy.

  Sera shook her head, tsking loudly in case Rhiela couldn't see her expression clear enough. "Unless you can magically make it daytime again, chum. Now, wouldn't mind a bit if you made yourself a fat snack for something. That huge rump of yours could choke a blackshark, and those overblown floaties in front would satisfy the chomp-chomps to a tee. So go on right ahead, serve yourself up to the toothies, be all noble and muck. Keep 'em off of us, that will."

  Even in the dimming light, her eyes couldn't miss how Rhiela went red in the face at the 'huge rump' comment, and about as purple as a ripe tuli pod at 'overgrown floaties.' For a moment, the hope drifted in that the royal brat might actually splash off and get herself killed. Small loss that would be.

  "Y-you're just jealous!"

  "Jealous? Nah. Tired and hungry and crabby, but not jealous. Open that hole in your head much more, might be I get furious, too. Now quit your whinging and pick a spot to bed down. Closing the lamps in ten verse, and no waiting.

  With that, Sera started to hum the counting song used to time students at creche. Ten full verses of it actually took a while to sing, though Rhiela needn't know that. Everyone was bedded and concealed in the grass by the time she'd finished the sixth time around. Then she put the lamp to rest, and herself as well.

  *

  Rhiela had always thought she liked the dark. There was plenty of it in the passages behind the palace, unlit spaces full of interesting things. It could be explored for trinkets, pushed back with lamps, or wrapped around her like a concealing weave. That darkness had been a close friend. Out here, though... this was wild darkness, dangerous and uncontained. Her mind refused to accept the emptiness, filling it instead with the products of her imagination. It did her no good to shut her eyes; the darkness followed her inside. And when it did --

  The memories of the day, or the past few hours only, returned to her. The grisly details floated and mingled in her mind. Shalar min Shandra, Shalar Long-Knives, surrounded by pinkish wisps of blood. The vision of the dead mer melted and reformed into that of Ardenne's mother, Messra Diana, still alive but swathed in purple torment. The ministra's face, laughing at a joke only the fat mer could hear, split apart to reveal the toothed maw and tentacles of the hag, reaching for her...

  She awoke with a muted squeak. There was a hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. "Who...?" she whispered.

  "It's me." Ardenne's deep alto was not well suited to whispers, or at least the princess would have thought. The hunter's voice was a light thrum that barely vibrated across the waters. "Are you alright?"

  "Yes. No." She would have shrugged, but there was no light by which to see it. "I am not sure how I should be." After a pause, she added, "How is your mother?"

  No light to see the shrug, but the roll of the hunter's shoulders was still felt along the line of her flanks as it pushed the water away. "She's still out," Ardenne said. "Whatever that... whatever was done to her, it's not wearing off. I'm praying that she wakes up in the morning, but..."

  "I shall pray with you."

  "You will?" Surprise curled through the hunter's voice.

  "Trust me; I've had to float through so much ceremony over the years, I know every verse of common prayer there is." Rhiela considered for a beat. "Let's have 'Light in the Depths' to start with:"

  Oh! Dearest Mother of All

  Our blessing, our love, and our hope.

  Though we find ourselves in still waters

  By Your blessing, currents flow.

  Though we find ourselves lost in the night

  By Your light have we hope.

  Though we find ourselves in direst straits

  Without flow to aid or ebb to ease

  Caught between scalding heat

  And bitterest chill, we shall not despair

  For You are with us always.

  The benediction flowed from her lips with fluid ease. Though meant for Ardenne and her mother, Diana, the act of recitation soothed her own heart as well. She drew one of Shalar's knives from its sheath and cradled it against her breast. The words continued, but now they were as much in memory of the dead as they were for the hope of the living.

  We pray tonight for Your loving touch

  Not for ourselves, but for those in need

  For she who cannot ask for her own sake

  For she cannot cry with her own voice

  May they find solace

  May they find rest

  May they find peace

  Rhiela let the prayer fade into the waters quietly, without any of the closing declamations favored by the prestra. Too much of her time had been wasted with all that pompous bubble-blowing, and she could imagine Cythera All-Mother's feelings being not too different, if She had to listen to all that blather on a regular basis. There was a poetry to prayer, but also a point where enough was enough.

  "Thank you."

  For a beat, she actually thought the Goddess had spoken. Ardenne had remained silent for the entire length of the prayer, and she had half-forgotten that the hunter was even beside her in the grass. The realization was as surprising to her as it was embarrassing. Very rarely was she ever so caught up in a prayer.

  Then again, she had rarely felt the need to pray so earnestly. "Did that help any?" she asked.

  "It helped me, at least," came the reply from the nearby darkness. "It... it is good to know that someone else cares."

  "You're welcome."

  She heard the rustle of grass as the hunter turned in place. "We should get some rest," said Ardenne. "It will be light soon."

  "I'm not sure if I can," she admitted. The words came out timidly, which annoyed her. Princesses were not supposed to be timid, depths take it! They were supposed to inspire and lead! So far, that was the complete opposite of what she was doing, and the fact that the red-haired rogue was right in what she said, well, that was galling too.

  "Worried about bad dreams?"

  Oh, she'd almost forgotten about those, after the peaceful contemplation of prayer. Those terrors in the darkness had withdrawn, hiding in the murk with the night-feeders and products of her overactive imagination. "Yes," she finally replied. "And... er..." She chewed on her lower lip, caught between the need to ask and the shame of asking. "What's a chomp-chomp? Sera said something about them." Her cheeks were heated at the memory. "But she never said what they were."

  "Small sharks, about an arm's length from snout to tail, but with mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth." A beat of a pause in the hunter's words. "More full than most sharks, even. They usually take round bites out of the flanks of larger fish, other sharks, delphins, or even leviathans like cachalot or rorqual. They don't bother mers that often. The blind spots in our vision aren't big enough to hide in."

  "That is good to hear."

  "Yeah, there's not much in the Mere Le?na that will hunt a mer, from what I've been told. The Guard keeps a good job of keeping orcs and the bigger whales away, and anything smaller won't pose much risk to us."

  Thoughts of the hag crept back in, and she shivered in spite of the warm waters. "Except for abominations."

  She could hear the hunter sigh. "Right. Those things. I wish I knew more about them. They don't appear in the Mere Sangolia."

  "I like the sound of those waters more and more now."

  "Compared to your city and sea, it's not much," said Ardenne. "But it's my home, and it has my heart. I'll be happy to return."

  Sad tones weighed the green mer's voice, though they were hard for Rhiela to fathom. Home was... what? To her, it was a place to rest, to do things, to keep her stuff. The palace was nice, but she could not imagine missing it the way Ardenne missed the reefs. Her mother, maybe. Marai, definitely, but the rest of it was just there without any special connection. Oh, and Tiffy. She hoped Marai remembered to feed the little octopod. From there her mind wandered, focusing on the memories of playing with Tiffy in the palace garden. At some point, she feel asleep once more.

  Verse III

  Set in the outer shell-work of the grand council chamber was a beautiful picture, a series of carved coral frames holding smaller pieces of shell and glass to form intricate patterns. It was a beauty to behold when the light of the firmament shone behind it, with circles of different hues for each of the nine seas. Mitera Yesca loved to look upon it and meditate in the beats and verses of time before she was joined in the chamber for a council session. The glimmer and shine was as close to divinely inspired as she had ever witnessed.

  Sadly, it was so late into the evening hours that they might need to define the night further, and the picture pattern was dark. All the mitera had to remind her of the nine seas beneath the firmament was the gathering of mers from those seas, now filling the chamber. This was not a thing to which she could meditate, and so she did not bother trying.

  It was fortuitous, in a way, that the representatives of the noble houses were at hand to attend an immediate convocation of the High Council. The only thing better would be if none could come at all. The waters were a-thrum with the vibrations of fluke and throat; the rich, comforting silence of the chamber popped like a bubble upon the firmament. No, she did not like this unusual level of activity. Not at all.

  Yesca settled into her habitual spot and watched as the others vied for their places. It reminded her somewhat of the shell-home crabs that were so common in the Mere Kamazon. The little crustaceans would tussle amongst themselves for the best, most spacious whorls and whelk shells to inhabit. The image brought a smile to her lips. Then came the memory of watching a particularly successful shell-home crab being mobbed by its inferiors, pried out of its shelter and left with the least of protections once the mob had sorted out who got which shell. The smile was swallowed up by a deeper frown, and she held herself more firmly in place.

  The duchess and the ministra had taken their usual places as well, and the rest were left to align themselves along the triangle that they formed. The representatives of din La?rta and din Menhel, the two dominant houses of the Mere Le?na, took up positions near Aysmin. Their pale softness mixed strangely with the duchess's dark, metal demeanor. Between the duchess and the mitera, the representatives of the Mere Almezzeb formed one line of the triangle. Calla din Casima was a thin, pinched mer with a long nose, who kept her hands folded carefully against her chest and looked remarkably like a prawn when she was displeased, which was often. Merhi din Sa?kra was the opposite, florid and full of body. Both their Houses depended heavily on the support of the Guard and the Temple to maintain the peace in their sandswept sea, so their choice of seating came as no surprise.

  Nor was it a surprise to see who had clustered near Ministra Marhyd. Tilla din Valit, the other representative from the Mere Tessra?, was stuck to the fat mer like a remora to a shark, and the comparison was only more apt if one knew the history between the Houses of that sea. Yesca sometimes imagined that Marhyd's House of Linnea only tolerated the House of Valit as a useful political tool. Certainly, no din Valit had gainsaid a din Linnea since the founding of the two Houses.

  On the line between the duchess and the ministra rested the representatives of the Mere Kazahn, Tamur din Hillia and Rei din Hatara. Neither looked happy to be seen with the other, but their alliances with the Guard and the Ministry all but dictated their placement. Yesca considered it amusing that for all the animosity between the two lineages, din Hillia and din Hatara might have been taken for cousins, or even sisters, so similar were they in bearing and coloration. Only the sheen of the firmament's light upon their inky black hair, one shading to blue and the other to red, marked a difference in heritage.

  The final line of the triangle, the one that would connect the points held by Yesca and Marhyd, was filled by the lesser representatives, the mers of no great House who had been chosen to represent their native seas at yesterday's grand ceremony, but who would never have expected to become involved in the affairs of the Crown. Even now, there was a dazed and bewildered look in their eyes. Yesca shook her head. These were not her partisans, nor even her allies of convenience. They were a buffer, a trio of warm bodies to separate her from the ministra. She could not even recall all of their names.

  "This convocation of the High Council is now called to order!" As the Queen's life-sister, Duchess Aysmin was officially in charge of the proceedings in lieu of the royal presence. Unfortunately, Anyis would not leave her chambers for any reason at the moment. The stress of the day, coming so close to that shared anniversary of sadness, had proven too much for the fragile royal disposition.

  She would have to visit her fatebound-sister and closest friend on the morrow. An hour of quiet contemplation and gentle embrace would do them both good.

  "The first matter at hand concerns the whereabouts of Princess Rhiela." The words produced quite a stir, with many a fluke twitching in discomfort or dismay. "As all have surely noticed, Her Highness has not been seen since yesterday afternoon, when she slipped away from the festivities for what she said was a small, private party."

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  No matter how she might wish to, Yesca did not turn to glare at Ministra Marhyd. The fat mer had not revealed that little morsel of detail until a full hour after the first alarm was made. Of course, at the time the incident with the prisoner had seemed to take precedence, but still...

  "We are not certain whom she was planning to meet, but it is likely that those mers were involved with the attack on Ministra din Linnea's personal offices," Aysmin continued.

  Calla din Casima rose from her place, her arms still folded close. "It was the Free Flow rebels," she declared, not waiting for recognition before speaking. "I've warned you all before, have I not? Those anarchists cannot be contained indefinitely within the waters of Almezzeb. Despite our best efforts, their numbers swell." The tip of her nose quivered with indignation.

  "Yes, we are all aware of what you say." Aysmin spoke with the tired tones of someone who'd spent too much time debating the matter in the past week. The mer from Mezzegheb claimed much and showed little to support it. "And while it is certainly possible that the Free Flow is involved, our best leads in the investigation point us in the direction of the Mere Sangolia."

  All heads turned as one to stare at the representative from that far sea. Messra Prinel min Nisa had the look of a tiny fry trapped in the gaze of a shark, with her eyes popping and mouth agape as she stammered a confused string of syllables into the water.

  "It should be noted," Yesca said loudly over the thrum of the waters, "that the perpetrator who is believed to have a vendetta against Ministra din Linnea is originally from the Mere Sangolia, but that she is a singular case with known motivations. While her actions are criminal, they do not and should not reflect upon her home waters."

  That calmed the lot down, and won her a thankful gesture from Messra min Nisa as well. It was a small kindness, a small mercy to extend, and perhaps nothing would come of it, but it never hurt to throw scraps into the currents.

  *

  The ministra could have applauded. Would have, but for the consternation and confusion it would cause in the already muddy waters of the chamber. The moment simply was not the right one. But Her Holiness's save had been masterful, and now the scrawny mer from Sangolia's reefs would be kissing the mitera's tail flukes forever more.

  Why were the mers from that sea so underfed, she wondered idly. Messra min Nisa looked like she was built of stick coral and kelp, and Messra min Na?da had not been much larger. Marhyd's own fat tail twitched as she curled herself into the cupped reclining cavity, perhaps in sympathy for those who need live the rough life out in the backwaters, with no soft silt-grass to line cushion them.

  From the inner fold of her vest she retrieved a small package of kyun-pod fruit. The tiny red capsules popped and snapped between her teeth. Poka-poka-poka... They were a rare and favored delicacy imported from the Mere Hetropa, and she never regretted the time and effort she'd put into devising a means to raise them on her estate in the Mere Tessra?. The only problem was that others were always asking her to share, but in the flurry of bubbles and words that filled the chamber, no one noticed her discrete snacking. Marhyd let the conversation wash over her, picking out the details as it pleased her. All the talk of politics and military matters bored her, to say rightly, and so she let others handle the business. As necessary, she nudged her co-representative, din Valit, to speak on behalf of the Mere Tessra?. Like a good little pet, Tilla could be trusted with such simple task.

  Eventually the patter of voices slowed and the echoes died out. The time had come for the true business of this late hour.

  "Have we discussed the matter of the abomination yet?" she asked sweetly into the empty waters, knowing full well that they had not. She could almost suspect that the mitera had been steering the debate away from this very topic -- almost, because Yesca's face told her left no doubt that this was exactly what was going on. There was no need to suspect when such proof was at hand.

  Tamur din Hillia was the first to speak. Blue-black hair swirled around itself in a thousand little curls as she turned her head back and forth. "What abomination? Has there been another incursion?"

  "Oh, yes!" Marhyd exclaimed in false astonishment. "In the caverns behind the palace, if you would believe! One of Her Grace's own guards was killed while fighting it, perhaps even in defense of Her Highness Rhiela! Surely that was mentioned previously?" There, that was enough emphatic punctuation. Then again, why play a r?le when you could over-play it? "You really should come by my offices to see it. Truly is it an impressive specimen. It took a work of rune-crafting to defeat it at all."

  And there was the stir that she was hoping to get. The thrum of the waters rose to block all meaning to the words now vying for place within the chamber. Some things were easy to pick out, however. It was not just that an abomination had made it so far into the city, or that the princess's disappearance might be connected to it. Those were enough to send anyone into a proper froth, but to add all that together with the means of the creature's demise, well... She could not quite hide her pleasure at the fluster, even as Mitera Yesca failed to hide her displeasure.

  It was time to twist the knife -- metaphorically, this time.

  "I must say that I am impressed with whoever cast that spell, and I do not say such things often, as many of you may know. From what I have been able to divine from the ethereal echoes, this mer took a common pot-boiling spell and adapted it into an effective weapon against the abomination. Startlingly effective, in fact. It certainly worked better than anything else we have yet tried against those foul, lugubrious monstrosities."

  Oh, she was proud of that one. She could practically see the other mers' heads spinning as they sought to place a meaning to the word 'lugubrious,' distracting them from any deeper consideration of her follow-through: "Actually, I was hoping to bring the matter before the military council. Perhaps the duchesses would find it useful. Do you think they might?"

  And there went the finishing blow. How the regular House legates hated to be reminded of how little clout they possessed. Din Hillia and din Hatara were at each other's throats for the chance to bring the matter to a vote and take preemptive credit for future success. The Almezzeb legates were not far behind them. Her Holiness did her best to shout them all down, to cow them into a proper obeisance to the wisdom of the temple, but a decade and more of fear at the thought of the shadowy threats on the current was not working against her.

  "May we count upon the assistance of the Mere Arkhala in this matter?" Marhyd asked sweetly once the initial vote had crashed through.

  "Ah?" Rethel min Ressa, representing the northernmost sea, twitched as if shocked. Her faded orange braids whipped lightly through the waters. "Oh, yes. Yes. The few records as what remain shall be placed in yer care. Afraid it won't be much. Most was destroyed after the war. That, or thrown down the Maw," the mer added hastily, with an eye to the mitera.

  Marhyd nodded at that, as it confirmed everything she had ever heard. After the destruction of Le?si during the War of the Black Flow, the Temple had forced a ban on many sorts of rune-craft, and the Arkhalan rune keepers had swum frothingly in circles to prove themselves trustworthy, lest they be the next to suffer a military visitation. A great deal of knowledge had seen itself dumped down a hole in the bare stone of Arkhala's greatest mount, the swift current of which sucked all things in and gave nothing back. And then again, whenever the Temple found some new reason to change the rules.

  "Whatever is left may still prove useful," the ministra said, showing a warm face to the Arkhalan mer. "If nothing else, the pieces we have may give outline to those we lack."

  The council dispersed soon after, the individual mers leaving to pursue their own politics and perhaps a spare hammock. The mitera left as soon as it was polite to do so, bidding farewell to Marhyd but not speaking one word more. For her part, the ministra kept to her resting cavity and received visitors until well after the turning of the midnight hour.

  "Ministra Marhyd? A word, if it pleases." Tamur din Hillia had waited until the last, and now the lithe mer eeled her way across the surface of the council shelf. "After discussing the matter with Her Grace," the mer said, flicking her tail in Aysmin's direction. "I would offer my nieces to act as assistants to the office of natural philosophies. Currently they are with the Home Guard, but Her Grace is willing to part with them."

  Oh, that was surely true. Aysmin hadn't had much good to say yet of Estrella din Hillia, and even less of her cousin and bond-sister, Tachiana. Estrella had actually born witness to at least some of the event with the abomination, though it had taken the ministry investigators the hours of the afternoon to get much of use from her. Once they had all the details of her testimony confirmed, it was doubtful that she'd be of any more use to Marhyd -- and the cousin, even less -- but the political capital of such a placement would benefit the House of Hillia.

  She would simply need to decide the best way to benefit from it, herself.

  "Thank you, Your Honor," she said. "They will doubtless be a credit to their House." A bubble would not have burst against the soft oiliness of her voice.

  "Er, yes." The dark-haired mer seemed to be under no illusions there. "Please, make use of them as you would. My only hope is that they may be of some assistance."

  Her grin was cheerful and bright in the night hour. "Oh, I'm certain I will be able to make something of them."

  Verse IV

  There was a ridge near the border of the Mere Le?na, beyond which the waters darkened and deepened towards the abyss. The flat-topped promontory of stone was swept suspiciously clean of sand and silt. Ardenne kept her eyes fixed in that direction, noting the curls and swirls of detritus that rolled across and betrayed the motion of the currents. That rock marked a launching point for mers wishing to ride the great western flow to the southern seas.

  "There's no one guarding it," she said aloud. "Why is that? I'd think it deserved a guard posting at least."

  "Out of the way," came the response. "Holdover from a decade ago, before abominations scared the local mers all the way to Bryndoon. Anyone riding the flow's more likely to get on near the capital or the Mires. Handy for wanderers, though."

  "Like your mysterious friends?" It bothered Ardenne a little, that she still did not know where Sera's loyalties were moored. The red mer had connections, that much was certain, but she would not say to what.

  "Right. Well, clear of sharks, orcs, and anything else. Day's a-wastin'." Sera waved once, twice, and then the twins appeared over the edge of the rise with the float behind them.

  The construct of baleen, leather, and kelpen fabric billowed in the morning currents, but it was not fully active. Jumie and Millie had promised that the flow would give it enough push without the need for rune-chant. The bigger problem, they said, would be getting it to slow down enough to quit the flow when they needed.

  "All ready," a twin announced -- Jumie, the one with the marginally broader nose. The float was stretched into four broad fins now, prepped and set to catch the moving water. In the cradle at its heart, the hunter's mother lay as still as ever, with Rook and the princess to keep her steady. The twins would handle the direction, while she and Sera kept watch ahead.

  Her hands braced against the rough surface of the rock; her tail coiled beneath her. She willed the passage of water to flush over her gills, and felt her heartbeat slow in response. Calm, calm... there was no need to be nervous. It was only her first time to ride the fastest flow of waters in this corner of the seas.

  And Ardenne was not about to let Sera see her worry or fret. The red mer launched first, leaping into the rush. The hunter followed right after, pushing away from the edge of the promontory and towards the deceptively gentle ripples. Any lingering worries were ripped away as the flow took her.

  Sera had not warned her of what to expect, and the hunter would not have believed it anyway. No current she'd ever ridden could compare, with the waters focusing her into a single stream of conscious motion that afforded no opportunity to look left, right, or any other direction than straight ahead. Strings of bubbles scraped against her face in their haste to pass her by. Up ahead, Sera's distinctively colored tail stuck out against the froth, and those flukes became the focus of her own movement. She could only pray that the shifty mer knew what she was doing.

  They made break twice along the way, stopping each time at a cleared launch point. The four city-born mers had stuck with the float -- tied to it, in the case of Rhiela and Rook -- and her mother Diana rested peacefully within its folds with the rest of the luggage. Ardenne would rather have pushed straight through to the Mere Sangolia, but she could concede that the others did not have the stamina. She was not entirely sure she did. Rook in particular was having a bad time of it, and the little orange mer's skin was tinging to green around her face and gills.

  The first stop passed, and they stayed long enough for Ardenne to spear a few medium-sized bream for them to eat. The strips of translucent white flesh, shading to a delicate pink where the scales still clung, were a welcome meal for all. The twins surprised by her by catching a half dozen scallops as the little shells clapped away from the mers' presence. They pulled the little blue eyes from the edges of the shells, enjoying the salty crunch before prying them apart for their central column of muscle and the pink-orange wedge of their egg pouch.

  There was a happy taste to the waters, or perhaps rather a relieved one. If it were not for the circumstances, this could have been an enjoyable picnic beneath a bright, clear firmament. Diana's motionless form, swaddled in the folds of the float, was a stark reminder that this was not all fun and games. It was not long before they launched themselves into the great flow once more.

  When they slowed their strokes for a second time, the experience was less of an idyll. It was almost the second hour of the afternoon, if Ardenne was judging the angle of the light correctly, with the shadows only now starting to lengthen and hide the spaces between rocks. The scene before them was much the same as the previous launches: open, empty, with bare rock and a few patches of sand. Scattered about were thin spars of coral and baleen, the sort that might support a tent, and thin tatters of cloth drifted like lazy fingers in the current.

  Ardenne's eyes narrowed at the sight. Grandmother Na?da had been a weaver of great skill, and the old mer had made sure that her granddaughter knew enough of the craft to understand how cloth worked. There were runes carved into the loom and chants sung as the weaver worked, all to ensure the integrity of the fabric as it was made. Ripped and torn fabric degraded slowly unless repairs were made, and shreds like these would not last long at all. Someone had been staying here until fairly recently, and they had not left willingly.

  "Were you expecting anyone here?" she asked as the red mer darted about, picking through the wreckage. Sera dug a small line of beads on a leather strap from the sand, and with that the mer's body slumped like she'd gotten a punch in the gut. One of the twins -- Millie, the one with the slightly sharper chin -- had to grab their guide before she snagged on her own tail flukes.

  Sera's voice, when it came, was nervous. "Not... not exactly. Told you, got friends who swim this way pretty often. No surprise to find one of their camps, but..."

  "Something smashed straight through this tent," Jumie observed. "There are traces on the spars, like they were chewed on, and..." The twin held out a hand and rubbed her fingers together slowly. "Strange feel to the waters here. Sort of oily."

  "Don't stick our head in too far, sis! Could be like the bubbles of rock-gas from the deep mines."

  "Abominations." Sera spat out the word like she was tasting the waters herself. "We need to leave. Now."

  Ardenne's eyes darted around. "But there may be survivors..."

  "If none's showed her face or flukes yet, then none will," said the red mer, her face grey. "Gone, eaten, or worse. Who's to say? No point in finding out personally." The red mer turned back towards the launching space, wobbling as she did.

  There was no sign that Sera heard the faint -ffft- of something blown through the waters, but Ardenne had. Grabbing Sera by the sash, she pulled the red mer back just as three darts crossed her course. The long points were slender and jagged along one edge, and they buried themselves in the nearby sand with surprising force.

  On the far side of the darts' path, at their place by the float, Rhiela and Rook were shouting and pointing towards the far edge of the launch area. Jutting boulders created space for shadows, and the purplish things within those shadows were hard to see unless they moved. There was a sense of something rounded and prickly, and when one crept forward, Ardenne could see... well, she was not exactly sure what it was. Perhaps if someone had disassembled an urchin's shell and then put it back together while still alive, with a round mouth on top and a whelk's foot on the bottom, that might describe it. Nastily barbed spines protruded from all angles, and even now several were changing direction to aim their way.

  "Small ones," said Sera. Her knives were drawn and ready. "Seen these before. Cuts sting like nothing you'd ever believe, right before numbing you senseless." She and Ardenne pushed off the stone floor as one, allowing another barrage to pass harmlessly underneath. "Thank the Goddess they're easy enough to dodge once you know where they're at," she added.

  "Knives won't do well against that," the hunter pointed out.

  "Neither will that spear of yours."

  To one side of the launch, the twins were making themselves busy, tugging and heaving at one of the old mooring stones. The rock had broken free, or perhaps hadn't been placed by the time the launch was abandoned, and it lay toppled and unanchored in the fundament. Even so, the weight must have been staggering. Jumie and Millie did not seem to notice as they chanted along to their work. The words failed to carry all the way to Ardenne's ears, but they had the sing-song feel of runic magic. Muscles bulged, strained, and then the stone was lifted by the combined strength of four solid arms. The twins fought as inertia pulled the stone back, right until they reached the tipping point of force where it became more difficult to slow down than to speed up. All they had to do then was aim it true, sending the mass straight into the prickly purple-black mass of fake urchins. The stone's fall was slow, inexorable, and the abominations did not have a chance.

  There was a large number of cricks and cracks, followed by a low squelch. The rattling of spines ceased.

  "Good work," Ardenne called to the twins as they swam over.

  Jumie shook her head. Her broad nose was flattened and flared. "There's an awful scent on the waters here. More of those things will come."

  "And we're not going to stick around, are we?" the other twin chimed. Jumie stroked over to the float, where Rhiela and Rook were waiting with eyes wide. "Okay, you two. Let's get her up and swimming fast! Princess, if you could check Messra Diana's straps. Rook, see to the rune lines..."

  The cloth and baleen frame was billowing open and shut in record time, looking for all the seas like a gigantic jelly. The weaker swimmers clung to it as the float rose into the open water, while the twins guided it towards the great flow. Sera and Ardenne took the flank position, keeping an eye out for trouble. Hands gripped tightly on spear and knife, and Ardenne noted how Sera's fingers refused to let go of the trinket she'd picked up. Searching the tableau one last time and finding nothing, the hunter took her hand, beads and all, and led her back to the safety of the rushing torrent.