by Tobie Easton
I pout my lower lip. “Ruin all my fun, why don’t you?”
“I’m serious, Melusine. She’s my friend. Think about everything she’s been through this year and have some consideration.”
I stop swimming and turn to face him. I’m the one who’s been arrested, tried, convicted, ostracized. I’m the one who had her voice stripped from her body, had every movement dictated, found out her cousin planned to use her for her own agenda, and now I have lost the only real family I had left. “Everything she’s been through?”
“Yes. Not everything has to be a comparison. I don’t expect the two of you to bond over your hardships, but you’re living under the same roof, so you could at least stop rubbing salt water in each other’s wounds.”
“Have you told her that?”
“That shouldn’t matter. You should want to treat another person properly for no other reason than that it’s the right thing to do.”
Storms. He’s serious. He actually means that.
I don’t have the first clue how to respond to that, so I turn forward again and keep swimming toward the courtyard. I can feel his eyes on me as he swims next to me. Every once in a while the current picks up and we float a little closer together, his upper arm almost brushing against mine.
I’m not ready to play nice with Lia. I doubt I ever will be. But there is something real I can do for Caspian right now so he knows I’m truly listening to him, not jerking him around.
“I’m sorry I screamed at you in my room the other night. It was uncouth behavior that was beneath me,” I rattle off.
Now he’s the one who stops swimming to look at me. “So, what are you sorry for exactly?”
My fingers drum against the scales at my side, my gaze darting anywhere but at his face. I don’t know how to do this. “I just said. I’m sorry for the screaming.”
“Just the screaming?”
“And”—I remember the hurt in Caspian’s eyes earlier, and shame flares up my neck—“for what I said. For calling you names and saying we weren’t friends.”
A small, warm smile lights his face. I could stop there. He’d accept that. But … the honesty of his earlier proposal rises in my mind. Besides, if there’s anything I’ve learned about Caspian, it’s that he loves precise language. It won’t hurt me to give him the last little piece of what I really mean, will it? I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry for doubting your sincerity.”
He nods, his blond hair swishing in the water. “Thank you. I forgive you.”
I can’t remember the last time I truly apologized for anything. It doesn’t feel as awful as I thought.
Chapter Nineteen
Lia
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tell Clay through the bond. I should have thought of it earlier. I feel like an idiot.
Slow down, Clay thinks. I just read through the whole story again online and I don’t get why you’re so excited. What am I missing?
I rub the skin around my ear. In my zeal not to miss a single word of my family’s konklili copy of our cousin’s story, I pressed against the shell way too hard. But I barely have a second thought to spare for the angry red indentation on my face. Instead my mind whirls with the realization of the past hour, and it’s all I can do to string my thoughts into a logical order to communicate them to Clay.
We’ve spent so much time searching for every obscure mermaid transformation legend we could find, but we overlooked the most famous one. I was raised in the human world, just like you were, so even though the human writer Hans Christian Andersen bungled a few things when he first wrote the story down, I still always think of the human version: a Mermaid getting her legs. Of course, since I know all Mer get legs at puberty, I’ve always considered the real story to be a Mermaid getting permanent legs so her prince would never find out what she was.
Clay interjects, Right, yeah. I remember you explaining that. I get that her having permanent legs is a transformation, but how does that help us?
Because what do you call a Mermaid who has permanent legs? A human! She became a human.
I’ve never thought of the Little Mermaid as a human, but Melusine was raised Below by a family of udells. To her human-hating relatives who told her the story when she was growing up, one of its morals was surely the tragedy of the Little Mermaid using magic to become something as lowly and shameful as a human. I don’t want to offend Clay, so I don’t say that part out loud, but any udell would use the story as a warning to children against the ultimate betrayal—valuing humanity. So Melusine made the connection intuitively, when she referred to transforming Clay from human into Mer as a “reverse Little Mermaid,” without even realizing it.
The Little Mermaid became human, Clay repeats, trying to piece my point together.
Which means, by the end of the story, she was no different than you.
Yeah, but she didn’t turn into a Mermaid at the end, even though her sisters wanted her to. She died.
Yes, she died because she refused to turn back into a Mermaid. Not because she couldn’t. She chose. Which means there’s a way.
Oh my God.
Right? There’s a way. We just have to figure out what it is.
Clay thinks back two simple words: the dagger.
The dagger?
Think about it. In the story, the Little Mermaid’s sisters go to the Sea Sorceress and beg her to turn their sister back into a Mermaid. If the Sea Sorceress—Himeropa, right?—if she could have just transformed her back all by herself, she wouldn’t have needed the dagger. Instead—
Instead, she made the sisters trade in their beautiful hair for the obsidian dagger! I finish. Ondine explained it all to me when we cast the spell to return Clay’s memories—because we based it on the spell the Sea Sorceress used to imbue the dagger with power.
The power to change a human into a Mer.
You’re right, I tell Clay. We have to get that dagger.
I wish I could take a bath. I need to think. But since this whole place is practically a bath, I don’t know where to go. We have some high-pressure showers in a section of the palace where two currents collide for whenever someone gets especially dirty, but I wouldn’t call those relaxing. The natural hot springs would be a great choice, but they lie outside of town in the volcanic region, and until we find Mr. Havelock, I’m not allowed beyond the palace walls.
I miss my house. I miss my bathtub and my fluffy robe. I miss feeling safe.
But this isn’t the time for a pity party. I just need a place where I can gather my thoughts, and I’m sick of being cooped up in my bedroom. Going out on the balconies isn’t permitted anymore; guards are stationed on each one now, using them as vantage points to watch the surrounding city streets.
Maybe the little sitting room on the third floor.
I wind my way there through the labyrinthine hallways of white coral, but after three minutes spread out on the green silk settee, my tail resting over the gem-encrusted edge, I can’t focus. Voices drift in on the water from the councilors’ chamber every time someone opens the door. This sitting room lies in the working wing of the palace, and one of the committees must be in session next door. I wonder which one. There are so many new committees these days, deciding everything from the best way to adapt a human-inspired record-keeping system to which new building projects to fund. I try to block the voices out and narrow in on my own thoughts.
“Gentlemen, this squabbling isn’t constructive.” Em’s voice reaches my ears. She’s employing the same authoritative tone our mother uses. “Remember, our goal in the coming weeks is to solidify an updated constitution that all of us can agree upon. I suggest we use the original constitution as our base and only revise where necessary. Now, let’s all listen to section 393.”
Silence falls as the door shuts, but moments later an outburst of muffled argument reaches such volume that not even the door blocks it out. I need a new spot.
I head back in the direction of
the family wing, swimming down through the vertical row of portholes until I reach the ground floor then veering left where the hall arches open into a small, interior garden. Purple vines climb the white walls, and red flowers the size of my torso burst open, their pointed petals blooming wide and spilling fragrance onto the calm current. Tall kelp stalks twist upward, thick as tree trunks, and bright yellow fish nestle among their leaves like birds in trees.
I let my head fall backward until I’m floating on my back through the garden, staring up at the ceiling of transparent quartz in diamond-shaped panes. I steer my thoughts to the dagger. The last time I saw it was at the trial, when a court official carted it off with all the other evidence. That means now, it lies locked away somewhere in the Foundation’s evidence vault. It’s up there while I’m stuck here at the bottom of the ocean under heavy guard. Could I sneak on land? Maybe pretend I forgot something urgent for my college applications? I stop my mind from even swimming in that direction. I might be able to pull off a trip on land, and maybe even into the Foundation itself, but attempting it would be way too selfish. If Mr. Havelock really does plan to use me in some dangerous spell, I wouldn’t only be endangering myself by sneaking away from my guards but my entire species.
I can’t risk that, no matter how tempting it is to get my hands on that dagger a-sap. I’ll need to let the dagger sit in that evidence cabinet until the authorities apprehend Mr. Havelock and I’m allowed to visit land again. Regret lances through me at the thought of breaking the news to Clay, but he’ll understand. He wouldn’t want me to risk my safety or anyone else’s by evading my guards with Mr. Havelock on the loose.
But what about Clay? Yes, he’s under guard, but since he isn’t supposed to remember Merkind, the guards have to keep their distance. Even if he’s being careful, he’s not as safe as I am. If I could make him Mer, he could stay here in the palace where it’s safer until the authorities apprehended Mr. Havelock. Plus, the sooner I can make him Mer, the sooner I can start teaching him defensive magic, so he can protect himself. As a human, he’s defenseless against a powerful Merman like Melusine’s father. It’s my fault he’s a target, and the longer I wait, the higher the risk of Clay getting hurt.
If I can’t go to the dagger, maybe I can bring the dagger to me … but how? I flip onto my stomach and careen in a circle around the stone statue of a smiling manatee in the center of the garden. Whatever plan I come up with can’t be anything like when I searched the Foundation illegally for restricted konklilis on sireny, or when I saved Clay from Melusine by breaking the law—and my conscience—by sirening him. I trace the face of the statue with my fingers. If I’m going to get the dagger, I can’t break the law this time. I need be smart about this, both for my sake and for Clay’s. Getting Clay immortality won’t mean much if we have to spend it behind bars.
But how can I get the obsidian dagger—which is not only a piece of evidence in the most famous trial of modern Mer history, but also a dangerous, cursed artifact created with illegal magic—without breaking the law?
I propel myself forward with a kick of my tail, disrupting a school of damselfish that flurry out of a nearby rocky reef. Time to head back to the varellska. This time, after I glide through the ornately carved doors of sunken ship’s wood, I head to an aisle in the back I’ve never explored before: the section on the Mer legal system.
When I swim back out through those varellska doors, I’m bursting with information. A plan starts settling into place, one grain of sand at a time.
I make my way toward my room, and with each flick of my fins, I change my mind about whether what I’m thinking is even remotely pull-off-able. But if I can pull it off—and that’s a ginormous if—I definitely can’t do it by myself.
I can start by myself, though. If I can’t get the dagger out of the Foundation and down here to the palace, nothing that comes afterwards will matter.
I take a sharp left, and my tail steers me straight to Uncle Kai’s office in the working wing of the palace. With Aunt Rashell back Above since the coronation, running the Foundation police and visiting here most weekends so she can serve as our family’s envoy on the Foundation board, Uncle Kai is the one in charge of heading up the new police force Below and training all the new recruits so our officers won’t be spread so thin.
Unlike my parents’ office, my uncle’s isn’t a dry room. After knocking, I swim into its watery, Spartan interior. He floats on his back above the desk, listening to a besklili (that’s like a konklili but for inter-office memos) and recording his notes into a knobbed whelk shell.
“Dal deet roliiga, Lia. This is a nice surprise. Everything okay?” He gestures to the bench along one wall then dives to the bottom of the desk, which is more like a round cabinet that stretches halfway to the ceiling and contains layers of drawers in different sizes. He picks two appropriately sized drawers and files the shells away.
“This’ll just take a minute,” I say, but I sit anyway, and he settles at the other end, facing me. “Have we made any progress toward finding Mr. Havelock?” I ask.
“Ah, so that’s what this visit is about.” Uncle Kai narrows his eyes at me, like he’s assessing whether to comfort me or give it to me straight. I sit up as tall as I can and try to look mature. “Not much, unfortunately. But we’ve compiled a list of all his known surviving family here Below, as well as of the few places he frequented on land. We have officers stationed in hiding at each location in case he makes an appearance, and we’ve released his physical description to them across the low-frequency waves.”
“Any sign of him yet?”
Uncle Kai shakes his head, his expression apologetic. “Not yet. But I’m sure your parents told you they’re offering a substantial reward for his return as well as for any information that leads to his capture, so you can bet your last bonnet shell every bounty hunter in the Seven Seas is on the lookout for him.”
A memory surfaces of the vicious, thick-muscled bounty hunters I saw looting the remains of a battlefield last year, picking through bloody bodies like it was nothing. I wouldn’t want anyone that merciless and treasure-hungry after me, that’s for sure.
“We’ll find him.” Uncle Kai reaches out and squeezes my shoulder.
“I know. It’s just …” Here we go. “… the longer it takes to find him, the more scared I get.” Hey, it’s the truth, so I may as well use it to my advantage. I look up at my uncle with wide eyes and bite my lip. He might be the father of a daughter, but he doesn’t have any experience actually raising one. I’m hoping he’ll be less wise to the puppy-dog face than my dad would be. But he’s still a smart man, so I move on quick. Thinking back to the conversation I overheard between my parents, I add, “And the more critical people will be of my parents’ new reign. It’s important that everyone feels safe if they’re going to trust our family to lead them.”
These must be among his primary concerns, because his expression turns grim. Time to cast my net.
“So, I just … well, I had an idea. I thought it couldn’t hurt if the investigative team reviewed all the evidence from his trial again. Not all the officers trying to find him worked on his case—you, for instance. You might notice something by going over the evidence, like his potions and his written Mermese notes on the ritual, that could, I don’t know, offer a clue about where he might be.”
Once the words swim out of my mouth, I hold my breath.
If he says no, I have no clue how I’ll ever get that dagger out of the evidence vault.
“Lia,” his face is serious as he holds my gaze, “I think that’s an excellent idea.”
Ah! Score! A genuine smile spreads all the way up into my cheeks, but then Mr. Havelock’s conniving, angular face flashes in my mind’s eye and flips my stomach.
“I really hope you catch him soon, Uncle Kai.”
“We will, litlee,” he says, using the Mermese word for niece like it’s a promise. “Don’t you worry. I’ll oversee the transport and analysis o
f the trial evidence myself.”
“Really?”
“You bet.”
I had wanted to keep this conversation low-key, so it wouldn’t feel like a big deal to him, but as I picture the authorities apprehending Mr. Havelock again, I throw my arms around my uncle. He’s so much bigger than I am that, as he squeezes me back in a protective embrace, I feel like a little girl, like someone who all the bigger fish could easily keep safe.
But now it’s my job to help keep Clay safe by getting Project Mud underway as soon as I can.
When I pull back from Uncle Kai’s massive arms, I ask, “What will your department do with the evidence once it gets here?” careful to keep my tone casual now.
“Oh, no need to be nervous. We know some of those items are powerful. Those potions ingredients he was arrested with …” He lets out a low whistle that pierces the water. “With Havelock still on the loose, we won’t be taking any chances. As soon as the transport comes in, we’ll put all the evidence with the palace’s other valuables under our highest-level, multi-pronged security.”
That’s exactly what I thought he’d say—and exactly what I was afraid of.
Asking him for any more details would make him suspicious, so I thank him again and leave. But learning what all those security measures entail and how to get through each one to access the dagger now dominates my thoughts. My success will depend on whether I’m willing to take a risk I’ve been protecting myself from for a long time.
“Lia! Careful!”
“Huh? Oh!” On my way to my room, I come to a halt seconds before colliding with Amy and her … big sack of shells? “What are those? Can I help?”
“Can you get the door?” She nods toward her bedroom, and I pull open a door made of pink sea glass.
“What are those?” I ask again once we’re in her room and she’s tied the sack to her travertine nightstand. A closer look at the sack now that it’s not half-hidden behind Amy’s arms tells me it’s full of conus shells—some black, some tan, orange, burgundy, spotted, striped, and all different sizes. “Are those shell messages?”