Verse XIII

  Diana's recovery came with agonizing slowness. Many days, she lay in her sandy niche as stiff and unmoving as a spar of coral. Other days saw her writhe and twist like an eel in a trap. They took turns caring for her, massaging her limbs and feeding her morsels of fish meat. There were times when she would cry out, babbling nonsensically to a face that was not there, but mostly the older mer remained silent.

  They planned their time around Diana; for lack of a better goal, she was their reason to continue. Rook and the princess pored over the shells in their library, making what sense they could of the runes upon them and seeing what each of the members in their party could learn to use. Many of the sigils were new to them, or had novel interpretations of grammar of which the Temple authorities would surely not approve. Sera drilled them all in the healing cantrips, going so far as to nick herself with her own knives so that they would have a chance to practice.

  Every evening, they gathered to listen to Marai's whispered words from the Mere Le?na. To hear the princess's friend tell it, the palace was still in a frenzy, with everyone chasing their tails without a current to follow. The secondhand reports of abominations in the waters were disturbing in their numbers. Something had stirred up the monsters. Everyone agreed on that. But as with everything else about the abominations, there was little more than rumor and guesswork. It kept the guards busy, at least. To the best of Marai's knowledge, no pods had been sent farther than the waters of the Mere Le?na as yet.

  No one doubted her words, only her chances to get information from the barracks.

  Ardenne, for her part, kept the entire group fed. She went out on the morning tides and hunted like she had never done before, bringing back clams and crab, bream and flounder, and one day she returned to camp with a long chain of salps, a colony of translucent round bodies whose rubbery flesh made for an interesting treat. The hunter spent less than half the day in camp, though everyone pretended not to notice.

  And when she was not hunting, she was courting. That was not how she thought of it; she did not even know the word as it was used in the politer society of Bryndoon. Relationships in the Mere Sangolia were often fleeting things, assignations made in passing as different groups traveled and resettled across the reefs. Arrangements were needed for when one desired daughters, as the prestra sacrista visited but once a year to perform the blessed sacrament. These arrangements helped to connect the villages, but few mers kept in regular contact with their life-mothers. Ardenne did not even know the name of hers.

  What she did with Lyrika felt different, though she could not say how. Often she would go out to hunt, only to have her eyes alight upon some stone or shell of unusual color, and the next thing she knew, she was delivering it to the mottled brown mer and receiving a passionate kiss in return. And then she would continue her hunt and return to camp. She had yet to tell anyone else.

  "I wish you could stay," said Lyrika on the fifth day. In her hands, she toyed with the delicately spiked spindle conch that Ardenne had brought. It was bone-white on the outside, and a vivid pink within. "Though I don't suppose I'd get any work done if I did. Gran'mama has already scolded me twice this week for being so slow."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Oh, don't be." She snuggled against Ardenne's chest. The two of them had found a small space in the middle of the broad field of grass that was perfect for two mers who did not mind close contact. "I like it this way. Every time you appear, it's like a happy surprise all over again. My only regret is that I never kissed you sooner. Just the once, and then everyone thought you were killed by orcs. Now every kiss feels like it's stolen." She snuck another one onto Ardenne's lips.

  "A regular thief, you are," the hunter teased. "So why didn't you? Do it sooner, I mean."

  "Why didn't you?" she countered.

  That was not the sort of thing Ardenne wished to ponder these days. Thoughts of her childhood always led back to Mother. "I just... well, it never occurred to me. Mother and I," she barely stumbled there. "We were always a little apart from the rest of the village. I didn't really know how to, you know..."

  "Yeah, you always were the odd one," said Lyrika. "Remember when we were all little, and we wouldn't let you play with us because we thought you looked weird?"

  "If you must remind me..." Ardenne twirled a lock of grass-green hair and sighed. "How things change."

  "That they do." Lyrika's fingers joined hers in the twirling, until the mottled mer had two handfuls tightly in her grasp, and Ardenne's lips planted firmly on her own. Suddenly the warmth in their little thicket was on just the right side of unbearable.

  She did not panic at the heat, not anymore. She did not understand it, either, but she knew it felt like a good thing. Mostly. It still clenched her guts something fierce if things went on for too long. As always, it was with regret that they had to end it and part ways for the day. After time spent alone with Lyrika, the camp's solitude-in-numbers was difficult to bear.

  Verse XIV

  The Great Western Flow was a grand and terrible thing, streaming chill waters from the northern reaches of the Mere Arkhala past the Mere Le?na, through the Mere Sangolia and Mere Almezzeb, all the way down to the overly warm climes of the Mere Hetropa, where a mer could turn around and ride the Great Eastern Flow up the other way. Many were the caravans that traveled along it, even in these trying times.

  Sometimes Grett din La?rta wondered why she had not just stroked off to join the caravans herself, in her slightly younger years when she still had yet to decide her course in life. Beneath the leather cap of her rank, tightly coiled blonde hair itched, and she could not take the beat necessary to scratch it properly. Not now.

  A day spent on the great flow, rushing forward at speeds neither fit nor safe, and the hardest part came after they arrived.

  The Mere Sangolia.

  How she hated this sea, how she had hoped never to return to its ugly reef and backwater inhabitants. But, like it or not, Grett knew the area around the Grandest Reef better than any other officer in the Crown's service. She might still have refused. Only the fact that she had helped personally to verify the lack of abominations in these waters led her to accept the assignment from Duchess Aysmin. In that one sense was this sea preferable to any other.

  This did not mean she was happy facing anything or anyone else who lived there. She could not scratch her own head just then because she feared that even the least sign of weakness might lead to her getting lynched.

  "It is as I have told you," she repeated to the mers gathered in the common flats of yet another reef village. This one was the unfortunate sort of memorable. "We seek a mer, an outlaw, who visited terrible harm upon servants of the Crown in Bryndoon. Her Majesty takes a dim view of those who would mistreat her subjects."

  "What does she think of you, then?" came a jeer from the back. Crowded as the flats were, and the babbling wake of mers gossiping, it was not possible for her to tell where the words originated.

  "I am her humble servant." Grett took the opportunity to drive the notice-post into the sand. Carved from a long coral spar, the post carried a broad shell with the etching of a face upon it. She knew the face too well, though she had only met the mer once and not for very long. Ardenne min Diana was not a mer one soon forgot, much as she wished otherwise. "And she asks me to find this mer. We offer pearl for any information"

  "Thought you said she was dead!" came another shout. The local villagers all remembered the green-haired mer as well, and more fondly than Grett. "Or did you tire of blaming orcs for your incompetence?"

  That voice, Grett recognized. "It did seem as though they had," she said to the elder now sinking down from her shell-work hut. "And we were mistaken."

  "Not the first time," tsked Elder Raqua. "Nor the last. Begone, Grett. Take your pearls with you. We want nothing of this."

  "But she--"

  "Went to get her mother, I'm betting. Just as she said she would." The old mer shook her head. "Like mother, like daughter. Nothing ever stopped Diana either, whatever she set her mind upon. I would trust Ardenne to do anything necessary to rescue her mother. Whom you denied ever knowing," the elder added pointedly. "And the taste of that denial lingers. We cannot trust you. So clear out. We want nothing of you, either."

  "Likewise," the lieutenant growled out. "But I still must make inquiries."

  "Fine, fine! Inquire away!" Raqua waved her arms in broad circles. "None of us have seen her since she left with you and those two overgrown prawns floating behind you right now. Not our fault you lost her. But let us make it easy. Herina, have you seen her? No? Neriss? You neither? Oh," said the elder, waving to a younger mer with similar colors, now stroking in from the fields. "My darling granddaughter Lyrika! Have you seen anything of Ardenne? They say she's returned to these waters."

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  The granddaughter came up short, shocked to a halt. "Ardenne? She..." A three-beat followed, then: "She's alive? Really? Truly? O, Mother of All, what news! Where? Has anyone seen her?"

  "Perhaps the lieutenant has," the elder said.

  "Who... oh, it's you." Lyrika made a face. "Never mind. I'll get back to chores. Sorry for the noise, gran'mama."

  The common flats shivered with the froth of laughter. At least some mers found this amusing, even if Grett did not. Still, it was better than fearing for her own scales right then. With a jerk of the hand, she signaled to the two guards behind her to follow her out of the village proper and towards their new camp. She did not bother saying a word until they were well beyond earshot of the village.

  "Assign a watch to the gathering fields," she ordered. "And... keep an eye on the elder's granddaughter. There was something about that little outburst that I mistrust. If anyone is the first to hear news, it will be that one, I figure. But be careful."

  She could afford to be patient. As much as she hated this sea, it was a safe place to harbor while everyone else chased monsters. There was no point in rushing around with tired flukes when their green-topped fugitive would eventually come this way. And she would not miss one whit the guard duties in Bryndoon. Things were getting weird in the home waters.

  Verse XV

  "If you would take your rest, Your Grace, we shall start the show." Ministra Marhyd was pleased with herself, and her words swirled and clung like sticky oil on the ears. The fat mer was looking a bit leaner these days, having worked through regular mealtimes day in and day out, though she was still twice the mer her daughter was in most every dimension. She dominated the broad stage of the amphitheater, even as her grey-clad assistants arranged targets along the stone walls that formed the backdrop. To the rear of the stage, a kelpen curtain blocked the tunnel to Marhyd's research area from view.

  Aysmin was not sure what she and the other duchesses were gathered her to see that day, and such ignorance was never a source of happiness. Whenever Marhyd was involved, what a mer did not know could be quite painful indeed. On previous days, they had been treated to demonstrations of offensive rune-craft, ostensibly gleaned from the histories chronicling the War of the Black Flow. The ministra's distant foremother had lost that fight, but at great cost to Aysmin's own ancestors. To see the daughter of the Mere Le?si so willingly and ably performing this service to the Crown was a grand irony to a student of history.

  More than a student, however, Aysmin was a pragmatist. If the fat mer brought results, if she helped against the looming threat of abominations, then it was all for the greater good. The past was in the past, and it was the now which mattered.

  They had seen small bundles that exploded into large bubbles of steam, long-handled batons which could strike a shark senseless, and shells which scythed through the water to find their targets. What, she wondered, would they have to marvel at that day?

  Marhyd waved everyone into silence and then clapped twice. The wide curtain behind her parted, and two mers swam forward. Aysmin did not recognize them at first, and it was only when they raised their heads and saluted in unison that she knew them. By their faces, they were Estrella and Tachiana din Hillia, one recruit of moderate promise and another of none at all. By their bodies, in the way they moved and more importantly the way they held themselves, they were complete strangers. The ministra had wrought a miracle here -- and 'wrought' was the proper word, Aysmin suspected. There was nothing natural about this.

  Tachiana still bore her signature hair style, all spiky like an urchin, but the way she carried it was different. No longer did she seem to dangle from the neck down; no longer did she look like a puppet on laces of kelp. There was no slouching or limpness, only a hard sense of tension. Likewise, her cousin's bearing had changed, though not quite so dramatically. Before, Estrella had seemed to look down her nose at everyone and everything. Her eyes now looked straight ahead, never wavering from the ministra and her instructions.

  One must have a chance to break the toys before they can be rebuilt. Marhyd's words came back to haunt the duchess's thoughts. Just what had been wrought here?

  The ministra was more than happy to show off the results, if not the means. At the fat mer's command, the two young warriors came forward to present their arms. On Estrella's wrists were a pair of broad metal bands covered with intricate runes. Tachiana's right arm was fitted up to the elbow within a jointed sleeve of stone and scale, with only the tips of her fingers showing.

  "Marilys," the ministra said sweetly. She gestured to the target on the far wall. "If you would please hit the shark's eye."

  It was Estrella who responded, flowing sinuously but silently from attention to action. The young mer brought her wrists together, band touching upon band for a single beat. There was a spark, a flash of the violet shade which Aysmin had learned to associate with the fulgurous force. Estrella drew her arms apart now: her left held straight forward as the right pulled back to her ear. Between them stretched a long bolt of... it was difficult to say. The duchess had never seen the like. A spear of crackling purple light made a sizzling noise in the still waters of the amphitheater. Perhaps there was nothing material there at all, only the energy.

  The young mer's right hand twitched, releasing the bolt. It leapt, reaching the target faster than any projectile the duchess had ever seen, and it left a bright black trail across her vision. Within the target, it left a sizable hole, precisely in the center.

  The other duchesses all erupted with applause, and Aysmin added her own noise to the approbation. In public, it was best to show support for her fellow councilor. There would be time for words later.

  Marhyd waited for the echoes to subside and for her grey assistants to mount another target before calling the other din Hillia forward. "Martella, if you would, please?" It was a command much like the first, playful and almost loving in its tones, but with something swimming within it that could not be ignored.

  No nod came from Tachiana din Hillia. The spiky-haired head did not even turn to look at the ministra. From Aysmin's perspective, it was difficult to say if the mer heard the command at all, except that she was already doing as told. In one elegant, emotionless gesture, Tachiana raised her right arm and its strange sleeve.

  She did not know what to expect from such an artifact. Part of her doubted that it was a weapon at all. From the sounds of her fellow duchesses, they were as shocked as she when the sleeve of stone unfurled in delicate layers, like the flattened tentacles of some bizarre anemone. Eight glowing points circled the young mer's hand, the tips of the tentacles crackling with flashes of purple interlaced with thin filaments of silvery force. And then the waters shook with eight percussive blasts. The sound did not come from Tachiana's weapon; it came from the wall. Heads turned and gasps followed as the damage became apparent.

  The target was encircled by eight craters, each deep enough to fit a mer's hand. The masonry was already crumbling, and the target fell from its place as they looked on. Part of the wall fell with it.

  "The kinetic force of flow," said Ministra Marhyd in a lecturing tone, "is nothing to yawn at. When concentrated properly, it packs quite the punch, as it were. "Thank you, Marilys, Martella. You may return to the lab."

  The two young mers did not nod, nor even salute. Pivoting in place, they swam back through the curtains to Marhyd's offices with an economy of motion. The other duchesses were too busy besieging the ministra with questions to notice or care, leaving only Aysmin to wonder.

  Depths. What had the fat mer done to them?

  *

  "Only what was asked of me, Your Grace," the fat mer answered later, in the privacy of her own quarters. Aysmin was perched upon a resting couch, ill at ease, but the ministra had her usual pleasant mood upon her. She even had a packet of her favorite kyun pods out as a snack. "Their aunt told me to make something out of them, and so I did. Would you like some?" She offered the packet to the duchess. "They really are quite good."

  "No, thank you. And I doubt that Tamur din Hillia would appreciate whatever it is you have done to her nieces."

  "Why? I have made them useful, dependable, and in the case of Martella, no longer addicted to tuli. I fail to see the problem."

  Not even a scowl could form on Aysmin's face. There was simply no good way to respond to this. She tried anyway. "You gave them new names."

  "So I did. Special designations for special projects. Does not the Guard do the same for such things, or is that merely another error in the old tales of adventure?"

  "We at least understand that it is a temporary designation and not a new name."

  The ministra's shrug rolled more than just her shoulders. "Honestly, the two of them are dear daughters. In fact, I was even thinking to adopt them, myself. It wouldn't be too hard to turn their hair purple -- not too different from Anyis's golden weed-wrap, I reckon, and Marai could use some sisterly support in these trying times."

  "You can't just..." Aysmin stopped herself and cleared her head with a sharp shake. The ministra would. She might even get away with it. Most of the damage was already done, and she was sad to agree that the din Hillia cousins were more manageable now. "And how is your daughter faring?" she asked, grasping for any change of topic.

  "Well enough. She's been working with the kitchen staff most days, though she insists on keeping to her room in the evenings instead of going out and socializing. Her Highness was a major part of her life, you know, and she is not adjusting well to Rhiela's absence."

  "None of us are, I would dare to say."

  Marhyd had another of her chuckles. "Except the mitera, of course."

  "Even she is heavy of heart, though she hides it well. It is the morale of all which concerns me. Sightings of abominations increase by the day, and already the city is filled with mers fleeing the outer settlements. Without Queen or Princess, we are grasping at bubbles to keep everything settled."

  "Did you send Grett out as I suggested."

  A beat of silence, a sigh of resignation. "Yes. Her and a small contingent, not even a full pod. They should be in the Mere Sangolia already. If the green-haired mer is in those waters, they'll find her."

  "And when they fail to catch her?"

  She meant to growl, but only sighed again. "Let us hope for the best."

  "And plan for the worst." The fat mer had her best face of business upon her. "We could send Marilys and Martella to retrieve our prodigal. Their training is almost complete, and should Her Highness be sighted anywhere besides the Mere Sangolia, then my informants will have it to my ears soon enough."

  "I... I shall keep that in mind, ministra."

  "Was there anything else you wished to discuss, Your Grace?"

  Nothing. Everything. Trying to keep stroke with the ministra was exhausting, and little Marai was not the only one to wish she could shut out the entire sea. To the mers of the Guard, Aysmin could show a brave face, a hardened heart, and a fearless eye. To the ministra, who could not and would not be fooled by pretenses, she could only break even.

  "Discuss things with me and Mitera Yesca before you plan anything new," she advised, though she knew it sounded more like a plea. "We must be as one in these times of uncertainty."

  "Of course, Your Grace. Of course."

  The scars of years past weighted her down as she left the fat mer's offices. It was all for the greater good, she told herself. They needed to push back against the abominations, needed to retrieve Her Highness, needed to survive this as a people united, because the alternatives... Aysmin shivered in the warm waters of the passageway.

  What she would not have given for an opponent she could fight properly, right there and right then.