Immerse

by Tobie Easton

  “Lapis is dating a guard, y’know,” Lazuli says.

  We inch forward.

  “We heard.” Awe laces Avon’s voice.

  “Sometimes I’m so jealous.” Lazuli pouts out her bottom lip. I reach the door first and the others cluster around me. “But I’m not really ready for a serious boyfriend.”

  Avon hangs on her every word, but Guard Two shifts his weight to his right foot, as if remembering he should be at his post.

  My hand rests on the handle.

  Don’t look at the door, don’t look at the door, don’t look at the door. I glare at Lazuli with huge, desperate eyes.

  “I just want to have some fun.” Lazuli moves closer to him as he prepares to turn around. “Keep my options open. Wide open.”

  His attention flicks back to her and she melts against his right side, angling him away from the door right when I pull the handle and open it as slowly as possible

  Lazuli lets out a loud sigh, but she needn’t have bothered; the hinges stay silent. As the door swings inward I usher first Em, then Amy and Lapis through it.

  “Would you guys lift me up on your shoulders so I can try to make out that design?”

  Lazuli’s voice grows quiet as I shut the door behind me. Silently, I join the others at the end of a small hallway, where a wall of salt water cascades in front of us, marking the border of this dry spell.

  With a steadying breath, I dive through it into the waiting water.

  And face a chamber full of lashing tentacles.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Melusine

  I’m scared I’m going to die.

  Of boredom.

  All I can say in favor of my schooling since I’ve moved into the palace is that it’s better than the Foundation school. But only barely. And only because swimming every day into a room with one person who’d rather I didn’t exist is easier than swimming into one filled with twenty people who feel that way. My current instructor, a private tutor whose wide-set eyes and thin, hanging mustache make him look like a carp, doesn’t bother to hide his dislike of me.

  “That’s enough,” he says, cutting off my recitation of the twenty factors that led to the ratification of the Secrecy Edict—before I even reach number seven. I spent all last night memorizing them, but he doesn’t care. It’s like he’s afraid of letting me talk too long, like maybe I’ll weave some spell between factors eight and nine if he doesn’t shut me up.

  I fall silent. After all, I know that I know all twenty factors—what do I care if he knows I do? I close my mouth, sit back down on the bench that runs along my side of the long, black basalt table, and raise an eyebrow at him.

  He pops up from the table the instant I sit, swimming back and forth on the other side and gripping his chin as if he’s lost in thought instead of trying to stay as far away from me as possible in the small room. I’m told it used to be a repair workshop before the palace refurbishment—where all the broken furniture and kitchen tools were hidden away. Fitting.

  The second our time is up, he says in his reedy voice, “We’ll continue tomorrow. Review the eyewitness accounts of the orstitii members who voted on the Secrecy Edict, and memorize the twelve initial obstacles to the edict’s widespread adoption, including their subcategories, so you’re prepared to discuss them.”

  Not that we will. He doesn’t wait for my response before zooming out the door.

  “Melusine?” A blond head peeks through the doorway.

  “Hi!” A smile tugs at my lips. What’s he doing here? His gaze drifts over the small room. I bet wherever he and Lia have class is big and bright. I look down at my kelp net bag as I swing it over my shoulder.

  “I was waiting outside. Are you all done?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “If you’re not busy, I’d really appreciate your help with something.”

  If it were anyone else asking, I’d find out precisely what he wanted before deciding whether to pretend I had plans for the rest of the day. “Sure. That should be fine.” The words are out of my mouth as soon as he asks. “I mean, I guess,” I add.

  “Thanks. My grandma really needs some extra fins today.”

  “Your grandma?”

  I’m not the type who goes around helping little old ladies. Then again, Caspian’s grandmother isn’t a little old lady. At least, not anymore.

  And she doesn’t want help. At least, not mine.

  “I told you to get Lia.”

  Her words are cold—ice hitting our chests as soon as Caspian and I swim into the bustling chamber nearly the size of a ballroom. A team of at least thirty Mer work throughout the room, some in pairs or small groups, some alone, some hunched over tables studying old paintings and diagrams, some huddled in corners or alcoves deep in heated conversation or debate, some floating up near the vaulted ceiling with shells pressed to their ears. A few in the center of the room test out spells while a colleague records the procedure in a conus shell.

  “Good afternoon, Olee,” Caspian says, but his politeness doesn’t melt the glare she’s fixed me with. “You said you needed help, so,”—he makes an inclusive gesture toward me—“I brought some.”

  “I told you to get Lia so the two of you could help together.”

  “We didn’t have class today and I haven’t seen her anywhere.” He squares his shoulders. “But Melusine is actually the one who can help us the most with this.” I can?

  “She can?” MerMatron Zayle crosses her arms over her ample chest, her auburn hair floating around her like flame and her glare never leaving my face. I can’t bring myself to smile at her, but she’s Caspian’s grandmother, not to mention extremely skilled at magic, so I don’t glare back.

  “You were going to have Lia go through submissions for new spell experiments and sort them, right?” Caspian asks her.

  “There’s no way in arctic waters I’m letting her”— she fills “her” with venom—“do that. Some of the submissions are for dangerous spells—or are based on dangerous spells. That’s precisely why they need to be sorted, so I can review the ones that may prove threatening. I can’t have a convicted … criminal”—her pause is barely perceptible but she stopped herself from saying siren, interesting—“anywhere near those.”

  “I know,” Caspian says. “But anyone who’s had some basic magical training can do that.” He sweeps his hand in another wide gesture at the team of people working around the room. “In the meantime, that pile of Mermese scrolls is growing higher and higher because I’m the only one who can go through them and tell you which ones are worth sending to the linguistics department for translation. If we had someone else helping who knew written Mermese”—he inclines his head in my direction—“we’d get through them twice as fast.”

  His grandmother puts her hands on her hips, right above her lush, garnet tail. “The entire reason I asked you to sort through those scrolls was to look for any that might contain references to useful spells we can adapt. Spells ancient enough that we don’t have shell records of them. You want me to put someone convicted of trying to murder people using ancient spells in charge of that?” Her eyes, the exact ocean blue as Caspian’s, bore into him.

  “Of course not.”

  Something in me withers a little that even Caspian, who is the closest thing I have to a fr—to an ally in this palace, doesn’t think I should be trusted with those scrolls.

  Do I trust myself with them? I don’t like that I don’t know the answer, so I turn my attention back to Caspian’s words instead.

  “I was thinking I could separate out only the scrolls on healing potions. There’s no potential risk in letting her read those.”

  His grandmother’s lips purse, but she doesn’t immediately spear this down, so he continues. “Besides, she knows much more about potions ingredients than I do. She’ll sort through those much faster.”

  I straighten, my chest lifting. “My father was a medic,” I tell her. “I spent a lot of t
ime helping him mix potions for his patients.” I don’t know why I’m trying to convince this woman to let me spend the rest of my day working, except for the earnest, determined expression on Caspian’s face as he speaks up for me.

  Besides, she doesn’t think I can do this, which makes me grit my teeth with the need to prove her wrong.

  “Yes,” she says, speaking to me for the first time. “I’ve seen the effects of one of your potions.”

  The love potion that almost killed Clay. The love potion I mixed and slipped into his tea when I couldn’t break Lia’s sireny. Guilt, hot and sickeningly familiar, rises up from my belly to my throat as I stare up at the woman who saved him from my horrible mistake. I bow my head. “Tallimymee.” I thank her using the most respectful word I can. It’s all I can say.

  Caspian breaks the heavy silence that follows. “Olee, you said healing potions should get top priority so we can send them in for translation and get them on the schedule as soon as possible. Think how much more quickly we could do that with her help.”

  She doesn’t look at him. The full weight of her gaze still rests on me. I force myself to meet her eye, to let her see the emotions swirling within me. It makes me feel exposed, vulnerable to attack. But I don’t look away.

  “Level One scrolls only,” she says to Caspian. “Nothing higher. And she sits where she can’t so much as glimpse the others.”

  Caspian flashes me a victorious smile. Its twin spreads across my face. “Yes, Olee,” he says.

  “And you bring Lia here as soon as you can to help sort through those new shell submissions. We’re getting extremely behind.”

  Oh, so she’ll trust Lia to sort through spells even though she knows Lia sirened? How is that fair? She’s giving you a chance, too, a voice whispers in my mind. Right now.

  I’m struck full force by the urge to show her—and to show Caspian—I can do this. I can be useful. I can be an asset.

  Once she brings Caspian the towering stack of Mermese scrolls, he and I settle at a long table against the back wall. I can’t sit next to him since I’d be able to read over his shoulder, so I sit across the table and down a ways, just close enough for him to reach out and hand me a scroll whenever he comes across one on a healing potion.

  I have to unfurl each scroll carefully as some of them are so old, the algae crumbles along the edges. But I can’t help running a gentle finger along the Mermese symbols. Some are so exquisitely drawn it’s almost painful to think what we lost as a culture when written Mermese fell out of use.

  I come across a line that’s blurred. I squint at it, running through different possibilities, but it’s no use. “I can’t make this out,” I say to Caspian. Then, “Would you mind?”

  He gets up from his seat and swims over the table between us. In seconds, he’s floating behind me, his arms resting on the tabletop on either side of me as he peers over my shoulder. I point to the smudged line, and one of those bare arms presses against mine as he leans in for a closer look at the text. I suck in a breath at the unmatched sensation of skin against skin. Concentrate, I tell myself. But his chest hovers so close to my back that the warmth of him penetrates the thin, gauzy fabric of my siluess, and his clean-shaven cheek almost touches mine. When I try to take a steadying breath, I inhale the crisp scent of him. Like sun-drenched kelp and brine, with just a hint of writing ink.

  “Hmm …” The sound rumbles next to my ear, deep and thoughtful. “Something about covering the infected area with … moss? Or mud? The preservation magic in the wax has degraded and the ink’s been washed away. What a shame. I guess it’s little wonder we switched to recording our voices in konklilis as soon as we figured out how.”

  I look again at the beautiful, intricate symbols, skimming them with my fingertips. Art across the page. “It kind of … aches though, doesn’t it?” I whisper.

  He doesn’t hesitate an instant. “Every time I see a scroll.” He turns his face so he can look at me, and it’s so close up, the sight of it is almost as blurred as the text. Almost as beautiful. “We’re lucky,” he says, “to be able to read it.”

  “We are.”

  He hesitates, lingering close for a long moment, then returns to his seat. Only once we’re far apart again can I muster the focus needed for the task at hand. I’m determined to do this job right, and after several minutes spent reading the text in front of me, I get lost in the words.

  Knowledge from the ancients … so fascinating. I’m digging through secrets lost to time—and I get to help uncover them. Some of these scrolls are simple remedies we’ve always known, like a cream made from an easy mixture of trench root and whittle weed for soothing the skin after a sea urchin sting. But some of them are recipes for potions to treat diseases that today’s Mer consider untreatable. Diseases that are even worse now that the curse is broken. Restoring immortality erased all afflictions caused by age, but any Mer suffering from other painful ailments now face an eternity without relief. Granted, the more potent the potion, the worse the side effects can be, but the potential treatments in these medical scrolls definitely merit more research.

  If even a few of these mixtures turn out to be more than archaic nonsense—if even one or two of them could be adapted by today’s medical researchers, they could help so many Mer. An image rises in my mind of an old neighbor who was nice to me back when my family was staying with my Uncle Axenus on the outskirts of Diskkana. The man suffered from halophobitis, an autoimmune condition Mer can develop in their early teens that affects the way the body processes the salt in ocean water. It causes horrible pain, making even basic daily tasks excruciating. My neighbor could hardly ever leave his bed, and there was nothing in any of my father’s potions bottles to help him. Now I hold a possible treatment for halophobitis in my hand. Something stirs deep within me at the thought.

  An hour later, I’ve worked out a system to maximize my efficiency. Maybe I can come back again tomorrow after class. If Lia isn’t here, that is.

  When I happen across a particularly elegant turn of phrase, I read it aloud to Caspian, and he closes his eyes for a moment in admiration. He looks so handsome then, so calm and natural among the scrolls. As he hands me the next one, our fingers brush. Electricity runs from my hand directly to the base of my neck. It makes me wish I could sit closer.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Lia

  I wish I could be anywhere far away. The blood-red, glowing body of the translucent crown jellyfish spans the entire ceiling. Its tentacles hang down like ironic party streamers—y’know, if my idea of a party was a living alarm that could get me arrested by armed guards.

  Lapis inches forward while the rest of us stay pressed against the wall. I so wouldn’t want to be her right now. As I stare up at the undulating, gelatinous body looming above us, I want to whisper to Lapis that I’d understand if she decided to back out, to turn around.

  Except, there’s no around to turn to. By now, Lazuli will have left the way she came, which means our only way out without getting caught is that side door we saw on the plans that—I peer through the slashes of red—wouldn’t you know it, lies on the far end of the left wall, near the central doors leading to the coveted vault.

  We’re trapped, and the only way out is through.

  “Are you okay?” Amy’s voice shakes as her gaze darts between Lapis and the jellyfish.

  Lapis nods too frantically, fear lurking in the shadows that pass over her face in stripes as the giant mass above us shifts its bulk.

  “What you have to do,” Em says, fighting to sound in control the same way our mother does in stressful situations, “is weave your way through so you can—”

  “Tides, Em, I know!” Lapis snaps. She shakes out her hands as she exhales. “I got this.”

  While my eyes scan every inch of the space, hunting for another escape route, a burst of water hits my side as Lapis gives her sparkling blue fins a mighty kick.

  I gasp.

  She swer
ves immediately to her right to avoid a wallop to her shoulder, then dives low as another tentacle lashes above her.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the palace authorities are protecting nuclear weapons. These security measures aren’t meant to kill intruders; those tentacles won’t fry Lapis like a fish stick if they hit her. What they will do is set off every alarm in this place.

  The instant one of those slashing crimson ropes so much as grazes her, our friend up there will turn from red to crystal clear and put on the flashiest light show in the ocean. Blinding, bioluminescent blue light will twirl across its umbrella-shaped body and dance down all its tentacles at once.

  In nature, this response scares off the jellyfish’s predators by lighting up the area and attracting larger creatures to come after the predator, so the jellyfish can escape. But here, those spinning blue lights will hit the light sensor in the upper corner at the room’s far end and alert the guards within five seconds. If we were authorized to be in here, the guards could ignore the signal and we could swim right through to the wide double doors no matter how many times we touched the tentacles and set off the blue lights. But we didn’t sign in, so one bitty bit of flashing blue will send them—and their spears—rushing right for us.

  When we plotted this out using the building plans, Lapis made it sound so easy. You know how flexible I am. Just ask Beck, she’d said with a wink. Now, with what must be at least twenty whip-like tentacles flicking around her, I feel like an idiot for ever thinking this could work.

  Amy grabs my hand and squeezes. An idiot who has put my family in danger.

  Em, Amy, and I can only watch—and hope—from against the wall, as Lapis twists her body round and round, over and under.

  I suck in salt water through my teeth as the very tip of her fin nearly hits red, fluttering away at the last second.