Breakwater

by Catherine Jones Payne

  But he didn’t deny that he killed her.

  The horror of it all gripped my mind, and I had to focus to keep from shaking.

  “Did. You. Kill. Her?”

  “It was an accident. I was just trying to scare her. Please don’t tell anyone.” But his voice sounded flat.

  “What have you done?” I dragged my fingers through my hair and suppressed the urge to vomit. My head spun.

  “Why does it matter? She’s just a naiad. You of all people shouldn’t care.”

  Panic gripped my throat. “Just . . . a naiad?”

  “Please, love.”

  I jerked away from his touch. “What? You’ll kill me too if I say what you’ve done?”

  “Of course not,” he said, but his eyes narrowed in a way that sent cold fear hurtling through my chest. He raised his hand as if to caress my cheek, but the movement seemed jerky and forced.

  “I-I can’t.” I turned around. “I just need to be away from you.”

  I darted to the other side of the courtyard and tried to quell the panic overwhelming me. What had just happened?

  I gagged and struggled to slow my pulsating gills. Surely he hadn’t just killed someone.

  The courtyard closed in on me, and I tried to focus on a bright red anemone to steady myself. Would he hurt me?

  And then I realized it didn’t matter. Not after what he’d done.

  “Jade.” He came up behind me. “If you’d just—”

  “We’re done.” My voice raised in pitch. “I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

  “Love, be reasonable.” He laid his hand on my shoulder. “We’re getting married.”

  “Don’t touch me!” I hissed, darting forward.

  He lurched toward me, spun me around, and pulled me toward him, his fingers digging into my forearm. “Jade, the naiads have taken so much from your family already. Don’t let them take this.”

  “Father’s death was an accident.” How dare he? I wrenched my arm from his grasp.

  “Was it?” He locked eyes with me.

  I clenched my shaking hands to still them. “I don’t know. I can’t . . . just shut up and go away.” My gills fluttered uncontrollably, and my heart pounded.

  “You won’t go to the inspectors?” he asked.

  “That’s all you care about?”

  He didn’t say anything, but his jaw tightened.

  I turned and fled into the house, past Rhea’s flirtations and Yvonna’s smile, and out into the canal, where I came face-to-face with my mother.

  “Jade, what’s the matter?” Mother asked. “You look like you’ve seen a harpy.”

  My gills flared, and I reached for her arm to steady myself. “We have to go home. Right now.”

  “Jade, what—”

  “We have to leave!” I yelled.

  She stared at me. “If I don’t go to the party, Yvonna will see it as a slight.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Alright.” She took a long look at me. “Did you and Tor have a fight?”

  “I don’t ever want to see his face again.”

  She scoffed. “Don’t be foolish.”

  “Mother, please.” My voice trembled.

  Her perceptive brown eyes searched mine. “Well, I suppose that is your right. Though I do hope you have a good reason. An engagement is not something to be ended on a whim.”

  I glanced down at my ring and pulled it off my finger. “Can you return this to Yvonna?”

  She closed my fingers around the ring. “Take a day.”

  I shook my head and whispered, “He killed a naiad.”

  Her eyes widened. “What did you see?” She drew me into a comforting embrace. “What happened?”

  I glanced back at Yvonna and Felix’s house and murmured, “Home.”

  She nodded, and we turned around and began the short swim home, passing several other nobles who were dressed for the party. They gawked at me as they swam by, but Mother waved them off with a huff.

  When we entered the refuge of our coral house, she turned to face me. “Start from the beginning.”

  I sucked water through my gills with a slow, shuddering groan. “Tor killed a naiad girl. I saw her body.”

  “Did you see him kill her?”

  I shook my head. “But he admitted to it. Said he was trying to scare her. He thought I wouldn’t care because of what happened to Father.” I gripped the edge of the table. “I’m going to throw up.”

  Mother ran a hand over her face and swam over to gaze out the window at the canal. “This is grave. It could destabilize everything we’ve worked for over the last ten years. The king won’t convict Tor over the death of a naiad servant. He can’t. And when he doesn’t, the naiads will riot in the canals. And after all the disappearances, too.” She rubbed her temples. “I’m so sorry, my dear. I’ll return the ring to Yvonna.”

  “We have to tell the inspectors. He can’t just—”

  “I’ll see that King Stephanos knows of his indiscretion. He’ll be quietly demoted and sent on patrol in the far reaches, near the deep ocean, for the remainder of his time of service. I’ll make sure his career is over. He would have become High General, you know.”

  “He murdered her!” I screeched.

  A gentle whoosh sounded to my left. I turned my head and saw my younger brother Benjamin frozen at the bottom of the vertical corridor. I tried to still my trembling chin to smile at him, but I couldn’t control my face.

  “Wait, what happened?” he demanded.

  “Come here, urchin,” I said, holding out my arms. He threw himself into my hug. “Everything’s alright. Tor and I aren’t getting married anymore, but you and Mother and I are just fine.”

  His back stiffened. “What did Tor do?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say.

  Mother sighed. “He killed a naiad.”

  I winced but reminded myself that Benjamin wasn’t a little kid anymore. He deserved to know.

  She turned to me. “We can’t bring the naiad back.”

  “But justice—”

  “Is a great ideal. We live in the real world.”

  Benjamin looked from Mother to me. “You can’t say that. If he killed someone, he has to go to trial.”

  “I’m sorry about the naiad,” she said, “but I’m more concerned about the future of the other two thousand naiads in this city who will all be at risk if this gets out.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I threw my engagement ring at the wall, and it sank to the floor. With a strangled sob, I darted out the door and into the canal.

  Five minutes later, I arrived at Aunt Junia’s house.

  “Aunt Junia? It’s me.” I pounded on the door.

  Aunt Junia—a short, heavyset mermaid who shared Mother’s cerulean hair and brown eyes—opened the door and, with one look at me, guided me inside. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowed.

  Sobbing, I poured out the whole story.

  She pulled me into a tight hug and shook her head. “You poor girl. And right after the engagement.” She drew back to look me in the eye. “My sister’s a good woman. The best of women. But today she’s wrong.”

  I nodded, biting my lip. “I-I’m afraid Mother isn’t turning him in because she’s angry with the naiads about Father’s—”

  “Don’t say it. It isn’t true. Your mother has done more than anyone else in this city to protect the naiads over the last three years. You’re absolutely sure Tor killed the poor thing?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared at my hands. A horrible thought seized my mind, and I tried to suppress the shiver that ran down my body. “The missing naiads. At least four in the last six months. You don’t think Tor could be . . . ”

  Her eyes widened. “I can’t imagine,” she murmured. A long pause stretched between us. “But you never know,” she said finally, a distant look in her eyes.

  My lips tightened, and I stared up at the ceiling, focusing my gaze on the bioluminaries that bathed the
small parlor in a gentle light. “If he’s killing them, I . . . I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t go to the inspectors.”

  “Well, then, there’s only one thing to do.” She nodded at me. “Maybe my sister is right. Maybe the courts will fail to convict, and the naiads will riot. It’s still not our place to cover it up. Even if this girl is the only one he’s killed. Throw the consequences to the depths.” Magma bubbled in her eyes.

  My spine tingled.

  “Now, let’s hurry,” she said. “These things are time sensitive. He’ll probably try to hide the body. The inspectors will call it another disappearance if they can’t recover her.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the canal. We took a right and swam as quickly as we could in the direction of the inspectors’ office, which lay near the king’s palace at the center of the city.

  In the background, the palace’s pink and turquoise coral spiraled almost to the surface of the water. The sight always took my breath away, but in my distress, I hardly noticed it.

  A friendly stingray descended into the city and hovered in the water in front of me, but all I could see was the naiad’s face. She’d looked somehow familiar.

  I shook it off. It didn’t matter. Not yet.

  Sooner than I’d imagined possible, we arrived at the inspectors’ office. Aunt Junia hesitated on the threshold. “Jade?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell them your mother didn’t want to report Tor. The mer and the naiads have coexisted so uneasily, and I believe she doesn’t want to upset that balance. Her intentions are good.”

  I nodded.

  After another moment, Aunt Junia pushed open the door and swam into the small, dim room on the other side. Just being there brought my grief for Father crashing down on me. I closed my eyes to steady my nerves and then followed her. The room hadn’t changed in three years—plain, gray walls uncluttered by even a hint of decoration, a functional table on the left-hand side topped by three clean stone tablets for note-taking, and a corridor that led to a set of back rooms.

  “Excuse me?” Aunt Junia called out.

  A slight current brushed against my skin just before a sallow, dark-haired merman emerged from the back of the corridor. He wore the crimson wrap and black sash of the inspectors.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, his expression neutral.

  Aunt Junia looked at me.

  My voice sounded hollow as I said, “I’m here to report a murder.”

  Chapter Three

  The inspector’s hand jerked as he reached for a stone tablet and a graphite scrib to write with. “I see. Victim?”

  “I-I don’t know. A naiad. Red hair. Probably a servant.”

  “Any ideas about the perpetrator?” His jaw twitched.

  “Captain Tor of the Royal Mer Guard.”

  He dropped his scrib, and it sank to the floor. “That is quite an allegation. You are certain?”

  I nodded.

  He pursed his lips. “And you are?”

  I furrowed my brow. “My name’s Jade. I’m—I was engaged to Captain Tor.”

  “Ah.”

  I fidgeted as he paused, staring at me.

  “You’re sure that Captain Tor committed a murder?” he asked. “No action will be taken against you if you were to realize now that you’d misremembered. But I must warn you, his family is powerful. If this turns out to be a petty lover’s squabble, I—”

  “Excuse me?” Aunt Junia’s eyes smoldered as she thrashed her fin against the floor. “Jade is the daughter of Advisor Cleo and a mermaid of excellent character. Do not impugn a lady of the court so casually, sir.”

  He lowered his gaze. “I beg your pardon, ladies. But I must ask again: You are certain?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Where did this take place?” He stooped down to pick up the scrib and resumed scrawling on the tablet.

  “I came upon him and the body in the courtyard of his parents’ home.”

  He continued to jot down notes.

  “He called it an accident,” I said. “He asked me not to go to the inspectors.”

  “So you didn’t see the murder?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to need you to describe your conversation with Captain Tor in greater detail.” He trained his cold, slate-gray eyes on me.

  I stumbled through the rest of the interview. By the time we concluded, numbness reached all the way down to my fin, like I had sunk to the darkest depths of the ocean beyond the breakwater.

  I tried to chase away the memories of the last time the inspectors had interviewed me in that room. That time, I’d been with my mother, and I still couldn’t quite believe my father was gone.

  My gills flared as Aunt Junia and I swept out of the office and into the canal.

  “I’m sorry that was so hard,” Aunt Junia said. “It was the right thing to do. I’m proud of you.”

  “Is it worth it?” I asked. “Wrecking Tor’s life? He’s right. She was just a naiad.”

  “Shh. Don’t say that. You’ve lost a lot, my dear. We all have. But if we give in to naked hate, we’re no better than the liberationists who killed him.”

  I caught myself shivering. “I know. That’s what Mother always says, too.”

  Maybe someday I’ll believe it.

  “Besides,” Aunt Junia said, “your father’s death might have been an accident.” Her voice fell flat.

  An accident. That had been the official line handed down by my mother and the king, but everyone knew better.

  As we drifted back toward my home, one question weighed on me. “What will we tell Mother?”

  “The truth.”

  “She’ll be angry,” I said.

  “She’ll be uneasy. There’s a difference.” She winced and rubbed her wrist.

  “Are you alright?”

  She nodded. “Aches and pains. Just wait twenty-five years for your turn.”

  We turned down another canal, past a school of silver fish and into the upper-class neighborhood I called home. Far too soon for my liking, we approached the house—one of the smallest and simplest on the canal—that I shared with my mother and brother.

  “I’ll come in with you,” Aunt Junia said. “Just in case you need backup.”

  I pushed water through my gills. I don’t have the energy for a fight. When I opened the door, the house lay quiet. “Mother?” I said.

  We found Mother sitting in one of the woven hammocks around the dining room table, her tail and fin tucked underneath her. She looked up at Aunt Junia and me with a bone-weary smile. “I thought you two might be together.”

  I gazed at her as she set down a small webbed-foot dragon sculpture. Father had given it to her for her birthday the year before he died.

  “You went to the inspectors, then?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  She sighed. “Me too. I hope I’m wrong. I hope the courts do convict him. I think.”

  Worry lines radiated from her eyes. She hadn’t looked this exhausted since the months following Father’s death.

  I hesitated. “I hope it doesn’t become too much of a public embarrassment for you. We’re associated with his family because of the engagement, and a lot of the mer will think I shouldn’t have turned him in. I don’t want this to taint your career.”

  “There’s nothing to be done about it now, and those sorts of considerations shouldn’t matter. Besides, I’m in the king’s good graces.” She made eye contact with Aunt Junia, and something—I wasn’t sure what—passed between them. “Our family can weather any current.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “Get some sleep, dear.” Aunt Junia reached out and squeezed my arm. “I suspect tomorrow will be a difficult day.”

  Relieved, I darted up the corridor to my room without a backward glance at either of them.

  I closed the seaweed screen that separated my room from the hallway and removed my wrap with painstaking precisi
on. I doubted I’d ever wear it again, but I hung it up carefully all the same.

  Reaching for my thin sleeping wrap, I struggled to quiet my thoughts. In one evening, everything is different. Again.

  After an uneasy sleep plagued by nightmares, I woke up to yelling.

  Disoriented, I stretched out quietly and listened. The commotion emanated from the first level of the house. After a moment, I recognized Yvonna’s voice.

  “Do you have any idea what kind of scandal your tramp of a daughter has brought down on all of us?” she screeched.

  Mother’s voice was as hard as steel. “You will apologize, madam, for such a characterization of my daughter, who is not the guilty party here. The last time I spoke with the king, murder was anathema in Thessalonike.”

  I edged toward my door. When I poked my head through the seaweed privacy screen, I found myself face-to-face with Benjamin. I reached out and grasped his hand.

  “It’s okay,” I mouthed.

  He squeezed my fingers.

  “A naiad servant girl is worth ruining all our lives?” Yvonna screamed from below us. “That’s skub, and you know it.”

  “I’ll have you thrown out of my house if you continue to float here and insult me and my daughter. I returned the ring. We’re no longer bound together as family. Go in peace.”

  “The depths we aren’t,” thundered a baritone voice.

  Felix. I liked Tor’s father even less than his mother.

  “The marriage will go forward as planned. Jade will go to the inspectors today, recant her story, and have Tor released.”

  Mother scoffed. “Or what?”

  Felix spoke again, his voice quieter. I strained to hear but couldn’t make out his words.

  Mother’s voice rang out, startling me. “I would like to see you try. Leave my home immediately, or you will answer to the king.”

  Yvonna and Felix harrumphed and uttered another muffled threat, then all fell silent.

  They must’ve left. “Are you okay?” I whispered to Benjamin.

  “Mother has it under control,” he murmured.

  “I think they’re gone now. I’m going down to talk to Mother, okay? I don’t think she wanted you to hear any of that.”