Verse V

  It was not true night, not yet, but the firmament had dimmed to a degree where the difference between the night and not-the-night had become an argument for the theosophists. Were she in another mood, Marai might have enjoyed the debate. In the moment, she could not find it in the waters of her heart to care. They had stayed longer in the grotto than was wise, chatting and laughing, admiring and appreciating. There had always been something to the princess that made Marai feel a different mer, even if for a short while, and on that day she cared not if the hours flowed past without remark. It was only when the gloom became impossible to ignore, when the light had ceased to shine through the gaps above and their little glow-lamp struggled to illuminate the waters around them, that she and Rhiela admitted that they should go. The princess led the way back through the tunnels to the palace proper, and Marai did not shut her eyes once for the entire trip. Her mind raced too fast, her thoughts flashed too brightly for her to take notice of the darkness. Rhiela's hand was warm in hers.

  A short, coiled sound rumbled across the narrow waters of the tunnel, cut off at either end by the noise-killing layer of mud. "Ah-ha-ha-ha," went the princess. "Perhaps we should have brought snacks with us? I hadn't expected to stay so long, but..."

  Marai's own stomach answered the call, and the two of them laughed together. "A visit to the kitchens, then?" the lavender mer suggested.

  "What would I do without you?"

  The answer was, as they both well knew, that some other mer would be officially assigned to watch over the princess, but it amused Marai to imagine her friend trying and failing to take proper care of herself. Their giggles trailed behind them as bubbles, all the way to the kitchens.

  It was past the dinner hour, if they held to strict meals in the palace anymore. With Queen Anyis so often in her chambers and Princess Rhiela so often out of her own, the customs had changed to accommodate the royal habits. Beneath the glow-lamps of the kitchen, a long plinth bore trays and plates of vegetable pods and sweet weeds, sealed pots of boiled fish and covered boxes of live shrimps for any to come and take away as they willed. An attendant floated near all evening, keeping away the cleaning crabs and other bottom-feeders. The mer tugged her apron and bowed to Rhiela as they made their choices and departed.

  It would have been nice if they could make their way back to the princess's chambers without seeing another mer, but that was not to be. One awaited them at the very entrance. From the way she floated in place, the manner in which her arms were folded and her eyes half-shut, Marai could guess that the young mer of the leondra had been in meditation for some time. The glow-lamp over the portal to Rhiela's chambers was one of the largest types the ministry could produce, and by its soft radiance they could see every detail of the leondra's face. The nose was broad, of course, and the face flatter than a manoa's. Long hair was braided down the back, the color of freshly turned sand, which matched the short pelt of fur that ran across the rest of the mer's body. Tiny bubbles caught between the hairs of her shoulders and arms, lending the leondra a luminous aura beneath the lamp. The mer wore no top, as was normal for the mothers and sisters of her folk, but the kilt around her waist bore the emblems of her rank in the Temple: a prestra novita, a younger sister in service to the Goddess.

  Marai felt the word now choking the princess's gills. It was not a nice one. A pat on the arm and a shake of the head told her friend everything the lavender mer might have vocalized. Rhiela rolled her eyes and released a sigh to shake the waters.

  Bubbles flew up as the leondra stirred. "Ah, Your Highness." The voice was the same husky tone as any prestra of the Temple, only younger and less severe. "I am sorry to intrude so, but you were nowhere to be found."

  "We were focused on my studies. Isn't that so, Marai?"

  "Oh? Oh! Yes!" she stammered. "S-studying our geometry in the far corridors--"

  "And practicing the chants for the big ceremony," Rhiela finished for her. "You would surely know the ones, Novita...?"

  It was the leondra's turn to be shy. "Ah... forgive me, Your Highness, but despite what my kilt may show, I am a novita no more. Recently was I promoted to the rank of prestra sacrista, and I have not yet had the opportunity to sew the new emblem on. Nehemi," she said with a bow.

  "The apologies should be mine, then, Prestra Nehemi." Princesses did not bow, according to the etiquette of Crown and Temple, but the incline of Rhiela's head carried the same significance. "To what do we owe the honor of your presence?"

  The young leondra straightened her back. "The Mitera wished to remind you of your scheduled audience with her at the last hour of the day... today..." Nehemi's voice trailed into hush as she realized the presence of the darkness and the glow-lamps. "Ah, I was not diligent enough... My sincerest apologies. Perhaps it is best I was slow in my sewing."

  The princess chuckled. "Don't worry. I grant you permission to blame me in full. The Mitera will know it to be the truth."

  "Rhiela..."

  "Shush, Marai. And... Prestra Nehemi, I do mean it. Please tender my apologies to Mitera Yesca and assure her that my lapse was in fact due to my diligence in study. If she wishes me to prove it, I will certainly do so at our next meeting. Now." The princess held up a tray. "Would you like something to eat before bearing my bad news to her?"

  Nehemi accepted a small pot of stewed flounder, cracking the seal and slurping down the contents in a single gulp. "My thanks. Your Highness is truly a kind and generous mer. Wish me the best. Mother of All bless."

  "And Her blessings to you as well," Rhiela affirmed as the leondra swam off.

  "Oh, I hope she does not get into trouble over this," said Marai.

  The princess shrugged. "Mitera Yesca knows me as well as anyone who isn't you. I'm sure Nehemi will be fine. Now," the golden mer continued. "Shall we dine in the comfort of our own hammock?"

  Her stomach and her smile both signaled an affirmative. "That would be wonderful, yes."

  Verse VI

  Sera the Red once had a poem composed for her, a fact which brought her pride and embarrassment in equal measure. It was only a few years before, not long after she had met her first lover in one of Mezzegheb's public tents. That mer, several years her senior and wise in the world, had fancied herself a poet and a maestra in the art of love. Sera had soon learned that Anitha was in fact neither, but even after they had drifted apart, she kept the memory of those few lines in her heart:

  Even the firmament above us all,

  Does change its colors from time to time.

  Dusk's red like your hair's exquisite fall,

  To your eyes' shimmering blue sublime.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  It was doggerel then and it was doggerel now, but true doggerel nonetheless. Red hair was not so out of place amid the mixed lineages of the Mere Almezzeb, but hers was a particularly striking shade when she let it out of the binding nets to flow freely in the currents. The deep blue of her eyes bespoke ancestry from the Mere Tessra?, though she could not say much about that. Of the things she did know, the ways of turning heads and gaining attention floated high among them.

  As did the opposite manner, when she needed it.

  Now was one of those times, and so her hair was braided, coiled, and confined within a snood of woven kelp. Her skin, face, and scales were patterned with patches of muck from the silty bottom. In the half-shadow of the approaching night, with her body still and limbs drifting, Sera made herself practically unseen. Only her eyes showed through, like two little fishes swimming in a pair.

  There was a great deal of effort put into remaining unseen, and the red-haired mer preferred not to do so without good reason. At the moment, Sera could count about twenty such reasons: a pod of soldiers in the carapace armor of Bryndoon, gathered near a small train of baggage floats. They had not spotted her yet, nor would they in the fading light of the firmament. Already the glow-snail baskets hung from stakes in the fundament around them, filling a limited area with light at the expense of seeing anything beyond it.

  Sera let her body drift with the flow, trusting it to carry her along the edge of the plume-grass stands. No strong movements, no stroke of the flukes would send vibrations that might alert the soldiers below to her presence. Discovery would have been an inconvenience at any time, but in this particular moment it would be very bad in deed. A full pod was made of twenty-one soldiers, including the commanding officer. It would not be much longer before they realized that they were one short.

  She might commend the green-haired mer. She might curse her instead. The job of tailing the Bryndoon mers was about to become far more difficult.

  A week ago she had arrived in the Mere Sangolia, only a day behind the five pods of guards sent by the Crown and Ministry. Sera's ride back was due to pass by in three days' time, and as yet she had no idea just what the soldiers were here to do. Neither did they know, she felt. One by one the scattered communities of the Grandest Reef had been contacted, and tribute was collected. That was hardly a task for three pods of soldiers, much less five.

  Three days were spent in fruitless tail-chasing before she noticed that one pod in particular was always going off in some other direction, or riding currents that took them the longer way around the reef. They were the slowest to begin packing, as well. This morning's excursion to the southern plume-grass fields had been their last. Sera still did not know what that had been about; the trails were too close and narrow for trailing, and she'd had to lose them in the greenery.

  And after that, she'd had to... Ah, best not to dwell upon that, she felt. The green-haired mer had needed the help.

  The slow drift of the current had pulled her a safe distance from the soldiers, enough to allow her some freedom of movement without fear of anyone feeling the noise. With a twist of the flukes, Sera turned so she could keep her eyes on the camp as she stroked backwards. The light from the soldiers' lamps dominated the scene, illuminating the pod and its supply floats clearly. Out of habit she took one last quick count.

  ...eighteen, nineteen, twenty... twenty-one.

  Her flukes skipped a stroke, so quickly did she freeze in place. Soldiers were a chatty bunch, especially when on a cushy detail out in the backwaters. Over the course of the past week, Sera had come to know the face of every soldier, learned their names and loves, their interests and quirks. It was Emera whose throat had gotten skewered earlier in the day: Emera, a whiner and a bully who had been intentionally shucked in the grass by her pod-sisters as a joke. Sera had heard them laughing about it afterwards, just before she'd needed to abandon their wake for the second time that day. She had seen the body drifting to the silt a few hours later.

  Twenty-one in the camp. Twenty plus one. If that one was not the luckless Emera, then who was it?

  Blue eyes darted back and forth, checking each soldier in turn. One of them would be different, she thought. One of them would not belong.

  One of them was wearing neither helmet nor carapace. Her hair shone brown and silver under the lamps, and there was something not quite right in the way she slumped against one of the floats. Whoever this mer was, the soldiers must have picked her up after Sera was forced to back off of their wake. A local, then.

  Sera the Red pushed herself away with a slow, strong motion of the flukes. There was nothing for her to do here, not with darkness falling from the firmament. The night-feeders would be out in force by now. Answers would have to wait for the light of day.

  Verse VII

  Night in Valden was more a matter of habit and custom than of actual light or the absence thereof. The myriad industries of the crater continued regardless of hour, with always a mer with her hands on tools and her mind on the current project. Thus was the galda way, the steady production of goods to trade with the manoa caravanners and officials.

  It did not make it any easier to sleep, knowing all that. Jumella and Jumilla lay on their beds, in the room they had shared for as long as their memory was deep. There were portals in the over-walls, set high above, that would allow light and current entrance as readily as any mer, but for now they were covered with mats of kelpen weave to keep the sound mostly out. In the relative peace and quiet, it should have been easy to sleep.

  "This is really happening." Jumilla stared at the over-wall with its colored stone insets. A project of their childhood. It was forever etched in her mind, but still she committed it to memory one last time. "Tomorrow..."

  "Will come soon enough," snapped her sister from the other bed. Jumella stretched against the stiff boards of coral and whalebone, softened by kelpen cushions. "Until it does, it is merely another day. Remember the tale of the wise floatten."

  "Spare me, sis." The floatten was a fish not seen by any galda, but known only through stories shared by the caravanners. A huge and grotesquely proportioned thing, it bobbed around in the middle of the emptiest seas and did mostly nothing all day long. Granny Liesa had found a tale to tell in that, another funny story for the old galda's puppet shows. The floatten spent so much time in wise concern of the days to come that it never managed to finish a thing.

  If the moral were any more obvious, Jumilla might have whacked her sister with it. "Story time, huh?" said she. "Then I'd remind you of the shuffle crab, what never worried at all until its worries came calling."

  "Remember the starfy, then..." her sister rebutted, and then the debate was entered with enthusiasm, using the proxies of Granny Liesa's old fables to argue one way or the other. So many stories they had heard, so many taken to heart, that the two of them could well have argued anything from any side with just the names of the different creatures mentioned.

  "So..." Jumilla said after a dozen or so familiar references. "Are we ready to talk about this for real?"

  A beat of hesitation, then: "Yes."

  "Good. What in all the indigo depths are we doing?" Jumilla shifted uncomfortably against the spine of her bed. "Aside from looking for more comfortable sleeping arrangements. Do you think it's true what they say about manoa hammocks?"

  "That they actually bend?" A chuckle bubbled from Jumella. "We can hope. I would like to experience that."

  Jumilla joined in her sister's amusement. "One item for the list, then."

  "You're keeping a list?"

  "Yeah, in my head."

  "Best not to forget it, the way the little green slug once did."

  "Spare me, sis..." The waters of the room stilled to silence, and neither twin spoke. For her part, Jumilla could not choose what to say. So many possibilities flitted through her skull, so many thoughts, but never the words to go with them.

  Her twin found them first: "What do we do if we cannot find her? What do we do if we can?"

  "Either way," said Jumilla, "we come home and tell Mom all about it in the end. It's the start that I'm more worried about."

  "Elshia said--"

  "I know what she said," Jumilla snapped. "...sorry."

  "It's all good."

  The liaison to the galda had given some good advice, some good suggestions that were now all the sisters had by way of a plan. Seventeen years before, when first the abominations came to roam the seas, the Mere Tessra? had seen the worst. Jumella and Jumilla were but two of many left motherless in the confusion that muddied the waters of that time. Of the survivors, perhaps a third had come to Valden, to settle upon the rim among the shell-work domes of the local manoa. Others had joined sisters or cousins in Hale?si, but the city of the plain was small and welcome to only a few. The rest had gone to Bryndoon. If their birth mother was still alive, then she would have passed through that city. The same held true of anyone who might know of her fate.

  Jumilla wished that this made her feel any better. "Are we... do you think we're ready for this?" she mumbled. The words were too soft to carry far, to travel any further than her own sister's ears.

  "I think that we are," Jumella assured her.

  Through the kelpen mats above, the sounds of industry were softened, muted to become the common lullabies of their childhood. The two sisters settled back and let the vague noise lull them finally into the slow currents of slumber.