by Tobie Easton
He crosses his arms and doesn’t look at me, but he doesn’t say anything, either. Just takes his turn in silence.
“I’ve seen the way she talks to you, the ways she expects you to support her no matter what she does or what idea comes out of her mouth—you’re her safe place.” I duck my head to catch his gaze. “But you’re so much more complex than that, or than she wants you to be.” She wants him by her side any time she needs him to make her feel better but can’t get away from him fast enough as soon as he has something to say that she doesn’t want to hear, or feelings she’s not prepared to handle. Anger wriggles up inside me at the way she treats him, but I fight to keep it out of my voice. The second I say something mean-spirited about Lia, he’ll shut me down. And this isn’t about her, not really. It’s about Caspian. “There’s so much more to you than she will ever see.” I gaze at the planes of his face, at the emotions warring in his ocean blue eyes. “So much more than she will ever appreciate.”
My breathing deepens, my chest rising and falling.
The urge to lean in—to place my hand on his smooth cheek or bare shoulder—grips me. But giving in to that temptation would be too dangerous, too far, like the other night.
I lean away instead, forcing nonchalance. “It’s your turn.”
Caspian rises from his chair, his face a pensive mask. “It’s late. I should get going.”
Before I’ve even floated up from my sitting position, he’s at the door. I cross to him in a rush, only to halt next to him in the doorway.
“Too much truth?” My question comes out quiet.
“No. I needed it, I think. Now I just want to …” He gestures out the door, words failing him for once. We both look anywhere but at each other. “Nairolell.” Good night.
“Nairolell,” I echo, but he’s already swum out of the room.
Careful not to disturb any of the clipped-on pieces in their progress across the board, I pick the unfinished game of spillu up off the floor and place it on a table for later.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lia
This isn’t a game, but it is about strategy. My first strategy? An important day starts with a perfect outfit. And I know just the one.
If I’m going to break into the most high-security section of the palace and sneak out a centuries-old artifact cursed with evil magic, why, I need my most innocent-looking outfit.
When I meet my sisters on one of the lower stories, I’m wearing my white siluess covered in tiny puka shells. I haven’t tried it on in ages, but it’s no tighter than it was the last time. You’d think my boobs would have grown at least a little in the past year, but oh no. I’ve completed the look with rosy cheeks and baby pink lipstick. Sneaking past guards into the vaults? Who, me?
“Now, if anyone asks, remember to say we came down here for cooking lessons and got turned around. Unless we’re already near the vaults, then—”
“Tell them Caspian’s grandma sent us to check the endurance of the dry spell,” Lapis finishes Em’s warning. “Yes, we know.”
“It’s going to be fine,” I say, with more confidence than I feel.
“Should we consider waiting a week, just so we have time to go over everything again?” Em asks.
Amy shakes her head. “They finished cataloguing all the evidence yesterday. If we get the dagger today, we’ll have the best chance of slipping it back into the vault before anyone notices it’s missing.”
I rub my fingers over the small, cone-shaped mitra shell stuck firm into the bun of my hair, which is in a half-up, half-down style. This shell may look decorative, but it will soon be the thing that puts me on the right side of the law, even if only by a couple scales.
Em echoes my thoughts. “We’re not breaking any laws getting the dagger,” she says, more to reassure herself than Amy. “If they do open the dagger’s box and it’s gone, they’ll find—”
“Do you want to face all the questions they’ll ask us if that happens?” Lazuli asks. “Getting it out now is Lia’s best chance to use it to help Clay before anyone can stop her.”
If I can use it. I can. I can. I’ve been studying every revealing spell I can find. Just last night, I got my bedroom wall to reveal a secret passage to what once must have been the servants’ quarters for the private wing. (Now it’s being used for storage. “You can clean your own rooms and fetch your own snacks, just like always,” my mother told my sisters and me when we moved in.) And earlier this week, I got a beautiful antique bowl to reveal an entirely different design underneath layers of newer paint, and also got the walls of Em’s office to repeat the last besklili message she recorded. The whole room echoed with Em’s voice—it was astounding! Em made me promise never to use it without her permission, but the fact that I could pull it off means that I can get the dagger to reveal how to use it to help Clay, right? Right. Today, I just need to focus on getting it. “Let’s go.”
Em leads us forward to the entrance to the kitchen, where we’re meeting the final member of our team. I hadn’t wanted to let anyone aside from my sisters in on our plan, but we had no other option.
She swims toward us, her sleek dark hair standing out against the surrounding water and framing her slender figure.
“Hiya!” Staskia waves. “Are we all set?”
“Thanks for doing this,” I say.
“Hey, you and Clay are the reason my parents, me, everybody”—her gaze darts to Amy, and they share a not-so-secret smile—“won’t be floating at the top of the tank one day. If I can help you two, I’m in.”
I nod and duck my head, unsure as always how to take a compliment for breaking the curse. I can’t help the clump of tangled seaweed in my stomach at having Staskia going in with us for this.
As if sensing it, Amy swims up next to me as we all head left, away from the kitchen toward the round porthole on the far end of the hall meant for staff only, and whispers, “Stas doesn’t know about you-know-what.” My sireny. “Just that we need to exercise your legal right to access that dagger, and we need to be sneaky about it so you can help Clay. She wants to help. It’s her choice.”
The tangled seaweed loosens a little. But only a little. It had been Amy’s idea to involve Stas, and the rest of us hadn’t seen any way around it, but I don’t like putting anyone else, especially someone Amy’s age, at risk. At least we’ll only need her for the first fin of our mission.
We dive down two more levels, where the white coral walls sparkling with ice give way to more practical gray limestone. It’s almost time.
“Left,” Amy whispers, and we turn the corner. “Right. Right.” Since most of these halls are storage for things like holiday decorations and half-broken furniture from before the palace renovation, there’s no one down here. Certainly no guards, not when they’re spread so thin already. We don’t see a soul.
But that’s about to change.
“One more left.”
The familiar whoosh fills our ears before we see its cause. At the end of the hallway, an entire wall cascades with the glassy magic of a massive dry spell.
For additional security, all the evidence resides beyond this dry spell, not only for improved preservation but also because most palace staff who would have reason to come down here don’t have strong leg control. Fortunately, I crushed that problemo last year.
Em has always been as diligent about leg control as everything else in her life, and the twins think about sex so much, they could run a marathon in stilettos.
But … “You sure you’re okay?” I ask Amy, who got her legs most recently of all.
She nods. “I’ve been practicing two hours every night. Plus …” Her gaze skates over to Staskia, and she blushes. “We’ll both be fine.” The two of them lace their fingers together.
We all tighten our sarongs and transform. Soon, we’ve stepped through the rush of the spell and stand in an identical, empty limestone hallway on the other side, patting ineffectually at our staticky hair—
all except for Lazuli, whose locks flow down her back as smooth and silky as ever.
“I’ve been experimenting with mixing my own shampoos,” she says in response to our dropped jaws. “I finally found a combo that combats the evapo-frizz. And it smells like cake batter. I’m thinking about selling it around the palace.”
But Lazuli’s entrepreneurial efforts will have to wait. All of us narrow our focus to the one lonely door on this side of the dry spell.
And to the electronic keypad lock above its handle.
Staskia steps forward. “MerMatron Welle in the electrical department built this. She used to teach the elective on Human Tech Familiarity at the Foundation school in the grottos. She’s the one who recommended me for my internship.”
The keypad blinks up at me with its insistent red light. Five small, raised buttons stand in a perfect vertical line in their steel frame above the door handle, waiting for someone to press them in exactly the right order.
“You can also press two or even three buttons at once, which makes the number of possible permutations skyrocket.” Admiration colors Staskia’s voice.
“So, you know the code?” My fist balls and releases at my side.
“Are you kidding? MerMatron Welle wouldn’t tell that to anyone without clearance.”
“Are you going to rewire it?” I ask.
“Rewire it? Dude, I’ve only been interning with her for a month. What do you think I am, some kind of science prodigy?”
When we asked Stas to help, she said she could get us past the lock but that she still had to figure out the details. This morning, she promised she had it covered; now I’m not so sure. “Then how are we getting in?” My question has a shrill edge, and beside me, my sisters share worried glances.
“By understanding how this little culprit works,” Stas says, giving it a pat. “See, when you type in the correct combination, the levers on the inside move, allowing the door to unlock. What we really need to do is move the levers, just enough. Lucky for us, they’re metal.” She digs in the pocket of her sarong and pulls out what looks like a scrap cut from a T-shirt tied tightly around … something. “It’s a magnet.” She pulls out a second one, similarly wrapped.
“Where did you—”
“From the library. I checked out the biggest encyclopedia konklilis I could find ’cause they had the strongest magnets on the bottom to keep them on the shelf. These should be strong enough.”
“Should be?” I swallow.
Staskia lifts the first wrapped magnet to the upper right side of the keypad’s steel frame and the second one to the middle on the left. Holding her hands steady, she lets go of both at the exact same instant. They stick.
We all hold our breath.
Nothing happens. The red light continues blinking. Stas bites her lips and my shoulders tense. Is that it? We can’t get held back now—we haven’t even started yet.
Amy shoots Stas an expression that might be meant as encouraging but just looks nervous. Stas holds up a finger and leans her ear closer to the lock. She shifts the left magnet a little up, then down.
Beep.
Red dies and green blinks to life.
“You’re a mastermind!” Amy plants an elated kiss on Staskia’s cheek.
“Thank you, Stas,” I say, pressing as much feeling as I can into my words so she understands the full weight of my gratitude. “As soon as we’re through this door, you swim to the kitchen and say what you need to, then head straight back upstairs.”
Stas nods and says to my sisters, “If anyone asks, you guys spent all day with me and Amy in Amy’s room listening to music. I’m going to grab a platter of lobster tarts from the kitchen with enough for six in case anyone saw us down here, then head back up.”
“Thank you.” This time, the words come from Em. Without Stas letting herself get seen down here, we wouldn’t have an alibi if we get questioned before I have a chance to make it to Clay with the dagger.
At Staskia’s signal, I pull down on the now unlocked door handle.
It clicks open.
I expect a wave of relief, but instead my nerves somersault higher at all that awaits on the other side.
As I hold the door ajar, Stas grabs the knotted T-shirt fabric and pops the magnets from the steel frame without having to scrabble at them with her fingers to pry them free. Smart girl.
With the red light back on and blinking steadily, she disappears back out the dry spell’s shield as Lazuli leads the rest of us onward.
Since this whole area used to be a series of safes for the royal family’s most valuable belongings, we emerge into what, according to the blueprints, was once a small closet for rare, sealskin coats and siluesses studded with priceless jewels. Empty hooks still line the walls.
“Wait here.” Lazuli pulls her scandalously short sarong lower on her hips and smooths her perfect hair before walking around the corner. Sticking as close to the wall as a suckerfish, I peek one eye out to watch her progress.
“Princess!” exclaims one of two guards stationed in front of the next door. “How did you get in here?”
“With the code, duh,” she answers in Mermese with a lighthearted giggle. “My parents sent me.”
“Do Their Majesties require assistance?” the other guard asks, his shoulder muscles rippling as he grips his spear more tightly.
“No, but I do,” she says in a voice as silky as her hair, which she tosses over her shoulder with studied casualness, revealing more of the creamy expanse of chest above the deep V of her siluess.
I totally have to practice that move in front of the mirror later.
“I’m here to test endurance.” Guard Number One’s green eyes widen to sand dollars. “Of the evaporation spells,” she clarifies, like she knows what he was thinking and approves. “Have you two noticed anything”—she runs her tongue along her bottom lip—“wet down here?”
“Wet?” repeats Guard Number Two.
“Yeah, wet,” she says again, drawing out the word and hitting the consonants.
“No, Princess,” says Guard Number One.
“Then I’ll report back that the spells are holding up fine. Thank you both so much for your help.”
“That’s it?” Guard Number Two asks, with a slump of those muscular shoulders.
“Yeah,” Lazuli says, like she’s sorry to go, too. “Y’know, I’ve never been down here before. It’s really cool.” Her gaze roves over the sprawling, stone room, then lands back on the guards and roves over them, too. “You two guard this whole place?”
“Well, there are a bunch of other security measures—”
“But we’re the only guards. Guarding everything down here, yep. I’m in charge. I’m kind of training Avon here.”
“Hey!” Guard Number One, Avon, shouts.
“Wow, that’s so much responsibility.” Lazuli walks to her left, closer to Guard Number Two, and Avon moves toward them, leaving his post on the right side of the door. Guard Number Two is too busy trying not to stare at Lazuli’s bare legs to notice. “You guys must be really good at your jobs. And really brave.”
“Any time anyone with clearance wants to swim through that doorway,” he says, pointing with his thumb behind him but not turning his head, “they have to go through us first.”
“We write down their names right here,” Avon says, waving his clipboard as he swims closer to Lazuli. “In English,” he brags.
“Cool,” Lazuli coos. “But it’s blank,” she adds in ditsy confusion as she nods at the clipboard.
“Oh! That’s just because no one has been in today. We don’t expect anyone for a few more days, but as soon as they come, any police investigator or government official who wants to go in there has to sign in with us first.”
“My Uncle Kai and Aunt Rashell must trust you a lot,” Lazuli says. “I’m glad you’re keeping us safe. Do visitors have to check back out?”
“Naw. Once they’ve been recorded going in, t
hey’re free to leave through the side exit ’cause we already have their info.”
Bingo! That’s exactly what we thought when we studied the blueprints and saw the narrow side door in the next chamber.
Concern flashes across Guard Two’s expression, like maybe it was against protocol to let that last part slip, but Lazuli pretends she wasn’t paying attention.
“This room was originally for artwork, right?” she asks, turning to face the now-bare walls.
His expression relaxes. “Yeah, it was for the royal family’s personal collection. They told us that in training. The family stored framed pieces and sculptures down here, then moved them upstairs on a rotating basis so all the fancy people staying at court would have something new to look at.”
“Sculptures, huh? So that’s why this room is so big.” She glances at the two guards on that last word. “What’s the design up there supposed to be?” she asks.
“What design?” Avon walks to her side, searching the wall, his back now to the rest of the room. That’s one …
“Carved up there.” She points toward where the ceiling meets the wall. “Don’t you see it?”
Guard Two stares up to where she’s pointing, moving close to the wall and squinting—abandoning the door. That’s two!
I gesture to Lapis, Em, and Amy. We walk into the room, open space on every side. Since the smallest noise will give us away in a second, we move at a sea slug pace. For once, I’m glad no one wears shoes in the dry rooms.
“I don’t see anything, Princess La … um …”
“I’m Lazuli,” she says, turning around so she faces the guards—and us—while they still face the wall. “Lapis is my sister.”
“You’re way prettier.”
Lapis throws a glare at Guard Two’s back, but I nudge her forward. Almost there, almost there.
Lazuli’s flirtatious giggle floats into the air, filling the room. We’re directly behind the guards now. One over-the-shoulder glance and we’re skewered.