“I come early and find that you’ve begun without me? Bad form, my prince! And just when I thought our peoples had come to terms of harmony!”
Michael opened his mouth to answer, but a movement from the table caught his eye. Arianna had stood and, before anyone could react, charged at the pirate and punched him soundly in the nose.
“You little vixen!” The pirate lord held the back of his hand to his face as blood trickled down and dripped onto his red coat.
Arianna pulled her fist back for another punch. Before she could loose it, however, Michael grabbed her from behind and pinned her to his chest, dragging her back several steps. Bras had half-drawn his own weapon when he suddenly found Lucas’s cutlass held snugly against his throat.
A few shrieks and many gasps sounded from his other guests, but Michael was more interested in keeping the pirate from murdering the mermaid than he was making his guests feel at home. Blast it all! This was not how he had planned the evening to go. But the only thing he could do to keep up the facade was to pick up the pieces and go on.
“This is how you treat your guests then?” Bras growled from beneath Lucas’s blade. “Allow whorish wenches to—”
“You will hold your tongue!” Michael roared.
The room went silent. Even Arianna stopped squirming in his arms and turned to stare up at him.
“You are here not because you are my guest, but because I found this!” As he reached into his coat, he bent to hiss into the girl’s ear. “Return to your chambers now and remain there until I come to deal with you later.” Perhaps he had been a little too friendly with her earlier for her to think she could take such liberties in his court.
As he spoke, ice formed in her blue eyes, and she shrugged his arms off. After straightening herself, she marched to the doors with her head held high.
Michael turned back to Bras.
“We had a contract!” Bras shouted. His hand moved to his pocket, but Lucas was quicker. In a flash, he had the pirate lord on his knees.
“If you mean this one,” Michael pulled the parchment from his coat and held it up for all to see, “then yes, you made an agreement with my grandfather. But my grandfather forgot that all contracts made in defiance of the Sun Crown’s oath are null and void.” Turning, Michael strode over to the large fireplace and threw the parchment into the fire. The room was deathly silent behind him as the parchment blackened and curled.
“You and your men will leave Maricanta’s waters and never return. You will avoid any sort of contact with the merpeople as well. And if you feel the need to defy such orders, my brother and his men will make sure you rue the day.”
Bras glared at him through dark eyes, then choked as Lucas’s arm holding the cutlass tightened visibly.
“Your navy is weak!” the pirate gasped, a bead of sweat running down from his neat, slicked-back hair. “You wouldn’t have the weapons or men to overturn even one of my fishing boats!”
“We’re strong enough,” Lucas said, turning the cutlass so that a few drops of blood were drawn from the man’s clean-shaven neck.
“Get rid of him,” Michael told his brother. “Then see to my guests. I have someone I need to attend to.” As Michael stalked away from his guests, he could hear more gasps and whispers as Lucas and his men dragged the pirate king away. Michael had planned an entire lecture on the evil of fraternizing with pirates, but he had another priority that needed tending to immediately.
Namely, an unruly mermaid.
18
Thumb Tucked Out
“Arianna!” Michael bellowed at her door. “You and I need to have a serious talk about propriety and what you will not be doing in my court!”
His fury wavered a bit, however, when Arianna emerged from her room, her face red and blotchy and her eyes brimming with tears. But he had to remain strong. So he crossed his arms and looked down at her with his most ferocious glare. “Do you care to explain yourself?”
She only watched him warily. Where she might have cowered earlier that afternoon at a sharp word, there was now defiance in her eyes.
“They may not know who you are,” he leaned down, “but I do. And a granddaughter of the Sea Crown should know better than to interfere in the political exchanges of any foreign dignitary, pirate or not!”
At this, her eyes turned icy again, and the girl balled up her fists and began to pace. Several times, she opened her mouth only to shut it again. A ridiculous part of him began to pity her. What torture constant silence must be. Her fair skin turned a deep red and she shook her head again and again. Then her eyes widened as she turned back and ran into her room.
Unable to stop his curiosity, Michael peered through the door to see her bent over at the little table. On the table was a thin flat rock covered by a green, fan-shaped leaf the size of a small serving platter. Arianna had pulled out a small knife and was rapidly carving lines into the leaf.
She was writing! In spite of his anger, Michael couldn’t help wondering how quickly she carved the words into the leaf. But why hadn’t she written before? She had been at the palace for two whole months. Then he looked down at her feet. A stack of similar green leaves sat beneath the desk. And each one was cracked and torn. As he realized this, Arianna let out a heavy breath and threw her knife against the wall before covering her face and leaning heavily on the table. Michael strained to see the leaf she stood over. It had cracked, too.
“Arianna,” he said, this time more gently.
In slow, shuffling steps, she gathered herself and went back out to stand before him. Her blue eyes were no longer brilliant in their shine, but tired and gray, like the sky after a storm.
“What did he do to you?” he whispered.
At this, the girl gave him an accusing look as if to say, What do you care? before turning and walking to the window at the end of the hall. This time, she made no attempt to use words. She only stared out at the sea.
Michael took a deep breath and blew it out slowly before rubbing his eyes. Can nothing go simply these days? he asked the Maker. Then, walking over to where she stood, he turned her so that she was looking at him again.
“You would have had no way of knowing this,” he said, “but I called the pirate lord here to tell him that I had discovered my grandfather’s contract with him. And that I was breaking it.”
Arianna couldn’t have looked more surprised. Of course she’s shocked, you moron, he chastised himself. Your people made war on hers for five years.
“Just . . . in the future,” he shook his head, “please leave the court dealings to me. At least until you’re back in your own court. And when you get the inclination to hit someone again,” he took her hand gently and curled her fingers into a fist, “do it with your thumb tucked out.”
19
Figures
Though there was none of the spark or romance Arianna had once dreamed of, she did find that she and Michael came to some sort of truce following the pirate incident. He no longer sent her cold looks down the table, and she no longer went out of her way to avoid him completely.
Likewise, her life settled into a somewhat enjoyable routine. She certainly still missed her family, and she never went to bed without trying to glimpse some sign of her aunt through her window, but even so, Arianna found herself eager to awaken in the mornings, excited to spend her days with the girls. Once she was truly convinced that the prince did not mean to humiliate or torture her or even order her from the palace, she found a quiet peace in knowing what each day would bring and expecting the same from it the next.
Suppers were a particular delight. The enjoyment she had found that first night in being surrounded by others did not dwindle. On the contrary, she found that they thrilled her, filling her with energy in a way she hadn’t known before but had somehow always longed for.
The servants were far more accepting of her than she would have ever expected. Unlike her parents’ servants, who went out of their way to avoid talking to her, the castle servants were ki
nd, even if they were still a bit cautious. The maids would dare a smile whenever they came to change her bed clothes. Cook and his daughter would often slip Arianna and the girls little bites of supper long before it was done, if they visited the kitchen at the right time. The palace footman was a gentleman always, bowing to every woman even if she wasn’t royal, not that he could have known Arianna was. Even Master Russo, the nervous palace steward, would acknowledge her whenever they crossed paths.
There was one part of her life, however, that still irked Arianna more than she could express, and that was her inability to write to the others. When she’d first brought her waxy leaves up to the surface, Arianna had been so thrilled to communicate that she began to write an entire letter to the prince, telling him of all that had taken place so he would know she meant his family no harm. The letter had been so long, however, that she was unable to finish it that first night. She had awakened the next morning keen to finish, only to find that her waxy leaves had dried and cracked overnight.
She had thought of using parchment, of course. Merpeople and Maricantian written language was the same, so communicating with her hosts should have been simple. But the week she had arrived, Arianna had come across Bithiah scolding Claire and Lucy for using their uncle’s writing parchments to sketch on.
“Do you think this parchment is without cost?” she had sternly asked the girls. “Your uncle cannot run the kingdom without parchments, and parchment is very hard to find these days. No, you had best run along and be glad it was me who caught you instead of your grandmother.”
So parchment was out of the question. She had continued on in silence, staying busy with the girls as she demonstrated figures for Claire and numbers for Lucy. Then Lucy would read to Claire, and Claire would correct her when she needed it, with Arianna looking on. After lessons came the midday meal, for which Prince Michael often joined them. During the meals, he and Arianna would exchange polite smiles as he teased his nieces. Then she and the girls would play in the afternoon and get ready together for supper in the evenings.
One evening, three weeks after the pirate incident and nearly three months after she had arrived, Arianna had just put the girls to bed and was walking past the prince’s study when she heard voices coming from inside. The door was open, and Arianna could see several figures gathered around a desk near the window. Never one to miss a group gathering, Arianna slipped in through the open door and crept silently to a large, red plush chair hidden in the far corner. She’d discovered the spot a few weeks before and decided that it would be a good place from which to observe the humans, unnoticed. But until tonight she hadn’t had the chance to watch anything interesting.
Prince Michael was leaning against the wall with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Prince Lucas was pacing, and Master Russo was wringing his hands.
“I’m not daft, Lucas,” Prince Michael said. “I know your men need the money. But I can’t give it to you until the Council votes upon it first.”
“For the first time in three years, we come upon some money. Michael, my men are floating in rusty buckets!”
Arianna retreated further into her chair so he wouldn’t see her. Obviously, this was not a social gathering. But leaving now would draw their attention and interrupt whatever argument they were having. Arianna was stuck.
“Your Highness,” Russo twisted his long mustache so hard Arianna wondered if it might not break off, “it is not such a large sum as to turn heads. Surely we can notify the Council of Lords after the ships have had their repairs made.”
“No, we’re doing this the right way. You may have the money once I’ve notified the lords. It’s how we’ve done it for generations. We’re not—”
“Hang the law, Michael!” Lucas roared, whirling to face his brother. “If you truly want us to pose any sort of threat to the pirates, now that you’ve ensured Blas’s hostility, you need to make sure my men don’t sink!”
“Master Russo,” Prince Michael’s voice was suddenly quiet and sent a shiver down Arianna’s back, “please excuse us.”
The steward bowed and gave Prince Lucas a long look as he left the room. As soon as he thought they were alone, Michael turned to his younger brother.
“Don’t ever talk to me in that way in front of our staff again.” Michael’s voice stayed deadly. “You know I value your opinion, but they will not respect me if you don’t.”
“But for once, will you simply do something not because it’s dictated to you but because it is right?”
“I am trying to uphold the law! That is right!”
“The law was meant to aid us in keeping the peace! We weren’t meant to serve the law so completely as to abandon common sense! There are always exceptions.”
“Look around you!” Prince Michael made a wild gesture with his arm. “If I could, I would sell the rest of our belongings! I would sell Mother’s dresses and jewels, and I would give it all to your men with gladness. But as it is, I have hardly enough coin to keep us and your men fed for the next two weeks, and announcing our distress to others by bypassing the proper channels will only make our need public knowledge.”
“That’s just the thing! You have the money now. And as soon as our creditors find out we have even this little amount, they’ll be banging down the door to demand it. By the time we ask the lords for permission, the Tumenian king and the like will have caught wind already!” Prince Lucas held his hands out, palms-up. “Without weapons, my men can do nothing to protect our people.”
The silence following this speech was a long one. Prince Michael went to the window and stared out, his shoulders set as he folded his arms. Prince Lucas rubbed his eyes as he leaned his elbows on the large stone desk.
“The law is all we have that separates this government from falling into disrepair,” Prince Michael finally said. “Without it, we have nothing left!” With that, he stormed out.
Arianna looked back at Prince Lucas to make sure he was still leaning over as she stood and took a few steps toward the door.
“Don’t judge him too harshly.”
She stopped and looked back at him in surprise. How long had he known she was there?
“He was handed a war-torn kingdom far too young with far too little help.” Prince Lucas stood, suddenly looking tired.
Arianna really wasn’t sure how to respond. Though Prince Lucas had been one of the few palace inhabitants kind enough to address her directly since the day she’d arrived, it was only ever to do a little flirting or ask her some silly question that couldn’t be answered, the same as he did to everyone else he met. But now his eyes had deep circles under them, and his shoulders drooped. His hair was mussed badly, and his clothes looked bedraggled. And though she had thought him imposing the first time they’d met, despite his being slightly shorter than his brother, Prince Lucas suddenly looked older and more tired than any other man of twenty-one years Arianna had ever seen.
“My mother might be the interim queen, but she despises the responsibilities,” he continued, leaning over to straighten the ink jar he had upset earlier in his outburst. “All my brother has ever done is try to pick up the pieces and fit them back together the best he knows how. Even when he is a fool about it.”
And as quickly as he had begun talking to her, he was out the door and Arianna was alone. She turned to leave as well, but a stack of parchments on the desk caught her eye. Curious, Arianna stepped closer to examine them.
The stack of parchments was full of numbers in red ink. Treasure numbers, she realized as she examined the rows and columns. It wasn’t hard, thanks to her aunt’s training, to make out which figures were for what. As the columns went down, however, the writing became sloppy and the ink blurred across the page.
As though the writer had fallen asleep while subtracting. This thought nearly made Arianna giggle until she realized that many of the figures were wrong.
Before she had considered its wisdom, Arianna took the quill in hand and helped herself to one of the ink
jars. She hesitated, however, before touching the quill to the parchment. She had never written with a quill pen. Claire and Lucy practiced their numbers and letters with their fingers in the sand. Even if she fixed the mistake, would it be legible?
Two broken quills and many red splotches later, Arianna found that she could hold the quill just well enough to drag thin red lines across the page without her numbers being completely unreadable, and it wasn’t long before she was too engrossed in correcting the page’s errors that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her.
“I don’t think my son has been polite enough to share with you the punishment for divulging royal information, so I will do so now.”
Arianna turned so fast that she slipped and fell back against the desk. Queen Drina and Prince Michael were standing less than an arm’s length away. And though the prince hadn’t been the one to speak, his hazel eyes were colder than Arianna had ever seen them.
“I bring you into my house,” the queen continued. “I give you employment when I cannot afford to do so, and this is how you repay me!”
It wasn’t a question she was asking. It was a sentence of guilt, Arianna realized. She looked at Prince Michael for reprieve, but there was none.
As Arianna righted herself, however, and straightened her dress, something hot began to burn in her belly. It was barely there at first as she tried to understand why the guilt was threatening to crash down on her. But the longer the prince looked at her with those unfeeling hazel eyes and let his mother shout on, the hotter the sensation grew until Arianna could no longer contain it.
The stupid man could have his privacy for all she cared, and suffer his own mistakes. And his mother’s. She had committed no ill. She was no criminal. And she was done.
Pulling herself up to her full height, which wasn’t very impressive, Arianna grabbed the parchment from the desk and shoved it at him before stomping out of the room.
Silent Mermaid: A Retelling of The Little Mermaid (The Classical Kingdoms Collection Book 5) Page 12