Breakwater

by Catherine Jones Payne

  “Why don’t we talk in the courtyard?” That smug grin hovered on his lips again, but the raw pain in his eyes tore at my heart. “I’ve so enjoyed our time there.” He gestured toward the back door.

  I set my jaw and swept forward through the door and into the courtyard. My eyes traced the bioluminaries on the courtyard wall and settled on the single, solitary seahorse at the feeder.

  Tor followed me and closed the door behind us. I turned to face him.

  “I have it on good authority that you’re going to make me another offer of marriage,” I said.

  He scoffed. “And why would I do that?”

  “To brush everything under the rug. Reintegrate yourself into polite society. It’s so much easier to overlook a murder if we can all pretend it didn’t happen.”

  He moved toward me. “Say your piece. Unless you’ve just come to try to insult me.”

  “No,” I said, backing away. “I don’t suppose I have.” I fell silent, trying to decide how to begin.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I’m waiting.”

  “Is my information good?” I asked. “Are you planning to ask again?”

  “A marriage might benefit us both. I doubt I could stand to wake up next to your face for the rest of your life, though.”

  My hands went cold. “Is that a threat?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Be real. You don’t want to be stuck with me, either.”

  I thought of a lifetime shackled to Tor and grew nauseated. “I won’t marry you. I can’t.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I’d be willing to discuss an engagement. Just for the public’s benefit. We would quietly break it off in about a year.”

  “How magnanimous of you.” He yawned and glanced at his mother’s fire coral garden.

  “You really did do it for your father, didn’t you?”

  He jerked his head back toward me. “What did you say?”

  “I know that your father’s hiding something,” I said. “And you prize loyalty to your family and comrades above everything.”

  “What do you know about loyalty?” he asked, his voice tight. “We were getting married. We had committed our lives to each other.”

  I closed my eyes. “We were engaged, not married. But I didn’t come to fight.” When I looked at him again, he nodded for me to continue. “It’s in your family’s best interests to put this whole episode behind you as quickly as possible.”

  He kept his voice even. “If you think my father is involved in something he shouldn’t be, why are you jumping at the idea of an engagement?”

  “I want the violence to stop,” I said. “There have already been too many deaths, and more people are getting hurt every day.”

  He snorted. “You can’t put a tincture back in an uncapped bottle.”

  “I’ve heard rumors from a credible source that an engagement between you and me would help pacify the mer. That they’d leave the naiads alone.” I hesitated. “But I have one more condition.”

  “What?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Your father stops kidnapping and selling naiad women.”

  He froze, his gaze locked on me.

  I searched his face, and my heart fell. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  His jaw tightened, and he drummed his fingers against his cheek.

  “Please tell me you tried to stop it,” I whispered.

  “Do you think I wanted any of this to happen?” he hissed.

  “He can’t be allowed to continue. We can fix this. He can buy back the naiads he’s sold and set them free and swear not to do it again. I won’t breathe a word.”

  Tor’s gaze traveled downward to the floor, and he froze.

  When he looked up, I didn’t like the look in his eyes. I suddenly felt glad I’d brought the dagger.

  “Ah, sweet Jade. Always the selfless one. Tell me,” he said, clenching his jaw, “did you and Alexander become lovers before or after you sold me out to the inspectors?”

  My forehead wrinkled. “What are you talking about? Alexander and I aren’t—”

  “Sure.” He glowered. “You know, you could’ve just broken up with me when you decided you wanted out of our engagement. You didn’t have to have me brought up on murder charges.”

  “I wanted out of our engagement the moment I learned that you’d killed Anna. I hadn’t talked to Alexander in years. We reconnected in the naiad quarter when I went to pay my respects to Anna’s sister.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  Fury roiled in my chest. “I’m offering you a way out of the depths to which you’ve plunged yourself, and you treat me with sarcasm and contempt?”

  He lurched forward and grabbed my wrist. “You ruined my life,” he hissed between his teeth, “and now you waltz into my parents’ house and threaten my family?”

  I held my head high. “You ruined your own life.”

  “Why the depths do you care so much about that naiad harpy? You should hate the naiads after what they did to your father. But you don’t care whom you betray as long as you get your way.”

  I jerked my arm away from his grasp. “My father spent his life advocating fair treatment of the naiads. I’d betray his memory if I gave in to hate.” My left hand wandered up to the dolphin pendant that lay underneath my wrap.

  Tor lashed out and gripped me—one hand on my shoulder and the other on my throat. His fingers wrapped around my gills, and he slammed me up against the courtyard wall.

  I struggled against his grasp.

  “You know, Jade,” he murmured. “I could ask you to marry me. We could announce our engagement, and everything could go back to normal. But so many people in the city hate you right now. So many people have motive to kill the little naiad-lover. Weren’t you attacked in the canal the other day?” He chuckled. “Maybe I won’t get my old life back this way, but it seems so much more satisfying to see your lifeless body thrown to the depths.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  My dagger. I fumbled with my left hand in the folds of my wrap. I need my dagger.

  Then I pictured Father’s face as he left the house that fateful day to try to broker peace. Always remember to be brave, he’d said, then he’d squeezed my hand and swam out the door for the last time.

  Tor constricted my throat and gills tighter, but that didn’t seem nearly as important as the revelation I had in that moment.

  Father knew he might die that day, and he went anyway.

  My anger at Tor melted away just as I managed to grip the handle of my dagger, and I let my hand fall away without drawing it. I would make the choice that Father made. That the ancient Queen Jade had made.

  I would rather die than hate, even a skub like Tor.

  The water around me turned gray as my vision weakened. The dagger slipped out of my wrap and sank to the sand. Tor glanced at the blade and loosened his grip.

  “Well, then, what did you bring with you? Did you plan to exact your own revenge?” He released me and shoved me down toward the floor.

  My hands rose to my neck, and a deep soreness throbbed from my gills to my spine.

  “I keep the dagger with me often,” I managed to choke out. “You never know when you might come across thick kelp or overlander netting.”

  He grabbed the dagger. “I’m sure that’s why. But I think the king might find it interesting, don’t you?” He grinned. “I think taking this to the king might be even better than killing you.”

  “There’s nothing illegal about carrying a dagger to cut kelp.”

  “You were planning to do a lot of kelp cutting in that pretty little wrap, weren’t you?”

  I fell silent. Talking hurt my throat, and it wasn’t going to do me any good anyway.

  “Yes. This is better. If I were you, I wouldn’t even think about publicizing our little conversation. It’d be a shame if your brother had an unfortunate accident. I trust you can show yourself out. Don’t try to snoop. Mother’s home.”

&nbs
p; He left me crumpled on the seafloor, still rubbing my neck. A sob lodged in my injured throat, but I clutched the dolphin pendant and whispered, “So be it.”

  “Jade?” Yvonna closed the courtyard door and swam to my side. “What the depths are you doing here?”

  I met her narrowed gaze and gestured to my neck.

  She furrowed her eyebrows.

  “Tor tried to kill me,” I whispered.

  She rolled her eyes. “Not this again.”

  “Tell me you can’t see his fingerprints on my throat,” I hissed.

  She tightened her lips and eyed my neck. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  I pushed myself up from the sand and floated upward. Every movement deepened the pulsating ache in my throat. “Do you know that your husband is kidnapping naiads and selling them as slaves?”

  She started, squinting at me. “What are you going on about?”

  “Your son confirmed it for me. It’s the reason he killed Anna. She’d stumbled on it and threatened to expose Felix.”

  She lifted her chin. “Didn’t you learn anything last time you spread lies about my family?”

  “Why did your son murder Anna?” My voice croaked.

  Her forehead wrinkled, but she recovered herself just as quickly. “You’re asking the wrong person, I’m afraid, but if she was in the habit of chasing blackmail, I’m not surprised she got herself killed.”

  “Yvonna—”

  “I’d hate for you to ask too many questions—you might find out firsthand why she died.” She lazily traced her hand down her throat. “You really must be careful out there, Lady Jade. It’d be a shame if you met the same fate as your father.”

  “Please excuse me, Lady Yvonna,” I said. “I don’t associate with harpies.”

  I composed myself and drifted through the courtyard door into Tor’s house, holding my head high so that the servant wouldn’t see how broken I felt. With measured, even flicks of my feathery fins, I swam to the front door and into the canal.

  I wondered if Tor would bring my dagger to the king directly or simply take it to the inspectors. I shrugged. He’s mad if he thinks the king will act against me for carrying a dagger.

  When I was halfway home, I started laughing—a frantic, hysterical laugh that sent a mother hurrying across the canal to shelter her small child with her cloak.

  Tor can’t go to the king or to the inspectors himself. He’s under house arrest. He’d have to send a servant.

  The servant who’d been on duty when I arrived hadn’t seemed to be making any preparations to leave, so Tor was either making empty threats to scare me or waiting for a more dramatic moment to turn me in.

  Unless he’s too worried the inspectors will discover Felix’s slave trading during the investigation. I moved forward again and admired a particularly vibrant blue tang. Or maybe he wants the inspectors to haul me out of the house in the middle of the night.

  As my emotions flattened, I concluded he was delusional, though part of me wondered if I was being optimistic. After all, he only had to claim that I’d drawn the weapon on him—which I’d come quite close to doing, if I was honest—and the inspectors would have to investigate it.

  Proving that I’d drawn the blade would be more difficult. Impossible, really, unless Yvonna or a servant claimed to have seen it. Especially since I had a bruised throat—or I would soon, anyway—and he didn’t have a scratch. If it comes down to my word against his, well . . . he’s a convicted murderer.

  I shrugged. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I wondered if I should go to the inspectors to report Tor’s assault on me.

  When I reached the turn-off that would take me down to the inspectors, I swam resolutely toward my house instead. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—risk anything happening to Benjamin. And I didn’t have the energy to answer the inspectors’ intrusive questions, anyway. I couldn’t even imagine explaining myself to Mother.

  When I opened the front door, Mother was sitting in her hammock at the table, resting her face in her hands. I slipped past, murmuring that I had a headache and needed to lie down, grateful that my wrap covered any bruising on my neck.

  “Have you made a decision about the king’s request?” she asked before I could float up the corridor.

  I nodded, running a hand through my fuchsia hair. “You’re right, Mother. I can’t marry him. I can’t even announce an engagement with the understanding that we’ll break it off.”

  My voice was hoarse from Tor’s grip around my throat, and I hoped she’d conclude I’d been crying.

  He’ll kill me if I keep him close. Just like he killed Anna.

  The tension in her face seemed to soften. “Get some rest. You’ve been under a lot of stress, and a long nap is the best remedy for a headache.”

  I nodded and fled up to my room, but I didn’t sleep. Though I felt numb, I couldn’t quiet my racing thoughts.

  A few minutes later, I heard Aunt Junia enter the house. “How’s Jade?”

  “Troubled,” replied Mother in a soft voice, “but that’s no surprise.”

  “She’s in a very difficult situation. The king’s request was hardly fair.”

  “She told me she can’t marry him.”

  “Good,” Aunt Junia murmured. “Has His Highness reached a decision about the riots?”

  “A few of the naiads used daggers against the mer. And everyone is afraid of what the naiads will do if they are emboldened. If it came down to street fighting, the naiads’ water-casting powers puts them at an advantage.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Aunt Junia said slowly.

  “The king isn’t ready to expel them yet, although some of the nobles are joining the rabble’s cries for expulsion. Not many, though.” She gave a tired laugh. “Generous of them, isn’t it? When they rely so heavily on their naiad house servants?”

  I couldn’t quite make out Aunt Junia’s response.

  “But,” Mother continued, her voice ragged, “I think it’s safe to say that the naiads won’t revolt again after they endure the king’s wrath tonight.”

  King’s wrath? I chewed my lower lip. What does she mean?

  I wanted to bolt down the corridor and demand clearer answers, but I couldn’t admit I’d been listening. I doubted she’d wanted me to hear any of it in the first place.

  My heart pounded. Whatever the king had planned, the naiads needed to know about it. I wondered if it would affect the naiads hiding in their homes or if the rebels would bear the brunt of it. Maybe the naiads who’d killed Father would finally receive their due. Then I shook my head. Father wouldn’t want justice like this. Not if it looked more like vengeance.

  My whole body felt cold. I listened for a few more minutes in case Aunt Junia pressed for more information, but they shifted into a conversation about Aunt Junia’s recent visit to the physicians.

  “They say I’m just suffering from enervia,” said Aunt Junia.

  “Thank the tides,” murmured Mother.

  “Well, I suppose.” Aunt Junia chuckled. “I mean, I’m glad I’m not dying.”

  “Can they do anything for the fatigue and pain?”

  I glanced between my window and the curtain that connected my room to the corridor. I grabbed a cloak to wrap around myself, unhooked the shutters, and slipped out the window into the dim canal.

  Whether Pippa wanted to talk to me or not, she needed to know that something big was coming. Something the naiads will never forget.

  I quirked my lips. At this point, sneaking into the naiad quarter is starting to feel as natural as swimming with Kiki.

  I crossed the canal that separated the naiad quarter from the rest of the city, peering out from within the folds of my cloak and scanning the empty canals.

  I still heard shouting from deeper within the quarter, but I didn’t see anything that seemed like an immediate threat. Not that it made a difference. I’d committed to warning Pippa no matter what. And Miriam. And Alexander . . .

  I thou
ght about Alexander, and a small smile danced across my lips. It had been an awful few weeks, and I’d do anything to go back and change the way things had turned out, but I didn’t regret finding Alexander.

  I’d go to the ends of the ocean for a chance to be yours, he’d said.

  As I flitted from canal to canal, trying to avoid interaction with anyone, naiad or mer, I found I already knew my decision. I would choose Alexander and leave the city with him. We could go to Marbella, where nobody knew my name, and start again.

  I could only imagine Mother’s reaction. She’d tell me I was rushing things.

  In a way, she was right. But I’d grown up with Alexander. It wasn’t like I’d only known him the last few weeks.

  And there’s not much left for me here in Thessalonike. I can’t imagine I’ll get an advisorship or even another marriage proposal after all this, especially not if I’m accused of wielding a blade against Tor.

  Better to start over.

  Relief flooded me. Everything would be okay.

  I rounded the corner into Pippa’s canal.

  “Jade?” a voice called from behind me.

  I stopped swimming and whirled around. Alexander. “You scared me!” My voice had gotten a little stronger, but it still warbled from Tor’s attack.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know.” I grabbed his hand. “Come on. We need to get off the canal. I think the Royal Mer Guard are coming to put down the riots. We have to tell the naiads.”

  His eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

  I hesitated. “I think so. Yes. From what Mother said, I can’t imagine what else it could be.”

  “Go down to Pippa’s, explain the situation to her, and get out of here. I’ll spread the word.”

  I clutched his hand more tightly. “I—I can’t go home if you’re in the canals warning people. I have to know you got back safely. Spread the word as fast as you can, and come find me at Pippa’s.”

  He held my gaze and raised one of his eyebrows.

  “And after all this, let’s swim away together,” I said. “To Marbella, maybe?”

  A grin spread across his face. “Really?”