"Which is?"
"Aren't we as nosey as a sailfish. Not the wall-polyp the captain reckons you to be."
"Small talk might as well relieve the boredom."
Gliding along the perimeter of the cell like an uninterested goldfish cruising its bowl, she favoured Durgay with a lingering inspection. “I'm rooming with somebody infamous, a local celebrity no less. You're the dude who killed that stuck up Merprincess."
"I didn't. My ineptitude got her killed. There's a difference."
"Dead is dead. They should be decorating you for the deed, instead of plonking you in here."
"That's harsh, girlie."
"I'm biased against the royals, oldie."
"Just what have you been incarcerated for?"
"Saying no to a merman who doesn't handle rejection well."
Durgay checked her out in return. The unrevealing murk doing nothing flattering for the mergirl's looks, the piqued Fisher resorted to silhouetting her with a discreet sonar scan. Small for her age, which bordered on twenty, her outline was femininely disproportioned. Whereas Princess Lorea busted out with merwomanhood, this commoner lass appeared short-changed in the breast department. Not that Durgay minded. Smallness aside, her boobs were anatomically perfect; lusciously rounded, youthfully pert...
Durgay brushed off the impure thoughts arousing his mind. Was his recent incarceration responsible for him lusting after any member of the opposite sex as jailbait? Had his thus far brief stint in prison turned him into a sex-crazed inmate already? Or was his deep-seated lonesomeness merely drawn into the open by the imminence of death and her distracting proximity?
Unwilling, or unable, to examine his awakened sexual desire, he probed deeper with his sonar, undressing the mergirl's outer layers and finding her innards uncorrupted by disease. Cetari “x-ray vision” proved a vital fishing tool, conferring the capability of culling at a distance ailing fish from their fighting fit schoolmates.
"I'm as healthy as a seahorse, you old perv,” the mergirl said, cottoning on to Durgay's male scrutiny. Amusement, not outrage, flecked her recognition.
Embarrassed at getting caught, Durgay quickly looked away, his clicks degenerating into awkward mumbles. “Never really appreciated cave architecture before,” he muttered, lamely running his hands over the striations of rock corrugating the curved walls.
"Don't pretend to be all prim and proper,” she said. “Unwanted mermale attention is what landed me here. You at least are gentlemanly enough to feel guilty at being a lecher."
Durgay harrumphed. “Najoli, right? I can guess what your crime is ... too sassy in public.
"And you're just oozing charm yourself,” she rejoined, poking out her tongue. Pity her rudeness went unseen in the murk.
That effectively put an end to their conversation. Each unimpressed with the other, the uncommunicative roomies staked a claim to one side of the grotto, drawing an invisible demarcation line down the middle that separated their patches of individual gloom.
Prison becomes so much more unbearable when you are not chummy with your cellmate.
* * * *
The mutual aloofness lasted until nightfall. Idly floating, listening to the sunset fish chorus start up, Durgay heard Najoli carefully sweep the cave floor with sly sonar pulses. The returning echoes pictured by her interpreting mind were of the odd shell and meatless fishbones discarded from recent meals.
"Dinnertime will be shortly,” Durgay courteously informed her. “I believe mackerel is on the menu tonight."
"Did the guards tell you that?” Najoli asked, continuing to scour the bone littered floor with softly clicking sound waves.
"Indirectly. I overheard them bellyaching before you arrived. They're fed the same fishes we are."
"When does the shift change occur?"
"Right after dinner. The new guards start on a full stomach, the old ones go to sleep with a bellyful of the same. Just what are you up to, missy?"
"Working on a way outta here."
Mortification gripped Durgay. “You can't escape!” he protested. “That's illegal."
"We're incarcerated and you're worried about bending a rule."
"Breaking the law, more like it,” he stated, putting her right.
"Have you always been a stickler for the rules, Durgay?"
"Pretty much all my life.” Sneaking the Merprincess into Harvest Shallows was the only blot on his otherwise spotless record.
"Get ready to break more than the one rule soon,” Najoli warned him. “When are the incoming guards relieved?"
"I'm not going to tell. You'll just get me into deeper strife."
"Even I couldn't manage that. You are going to be executed for murder. I think it's safe to say that's the epitome of trouble.” Staying on the same tack, she frankly asked, “Do you want to die?"
"I've made my peace with Nupterus. I am prepared."
"Given a choice, wouldn't you prefer to live?"
"That choice was taken out of my hands by the king."
Najoli stiffened. “So take it back from him and be your own merman."
Durgay clutched his head. Why did yakking merwomen always give him such quandaries? “I am a Seaguardian,” he persisted, feeling a migraine coming on.
"Who's so blinded by duty, his servitude so deeply entrenched, he can't think for himself. Is your former position in the Fisher community going to halt a Seaguard executioner ramming his trident into the back of your skull when commanded to? Take a chance and shoot for some freedom before you're too old to enjoy it."
"Can't miss what you never had,” Durgay grumped back. “Are you a free spirit, Najoli?"
"I'm as liberated as any merwoman can be."
"And yet this independence you claim is so beneficial has resulted in us sharing a cell. Freedom of choice mustn't be all you crack it up to be."
"Maybe I'm not the best example. But don't let my rotten luck put you off from taking the plunge. What have you to lose?"
All his life Durgay strived to be a model Fisher, rising to a position of general respectability, his wavering self-esteem propped up by his reliance on duty. Stripped of that anchor, he was awash in a sea of doubt with death the only certainty.
Does it really matter where or how I die, whether at the hand of a Castle Rocker or elsewhere? My life on Bounty Reef is over before I'm even killed.
"The next guard change coincides with day-up,” he supplied.
"Smart choice,” Najoli commended him. “After the dinnertime swap, we'll take out the replacement guards and be on our sneaky way. I doubt anyone will bother checking on two sleeping inmates before dark falls back to the Deep."
Durgay raised a genuine concern. “How do you propose dealing with the minders outside the cave mouth?"
"Bash them over the head with this,” Najoli revealed, at last finding the product of her search. She proudly hefted a fist-sized chunk of basement rock, which at some stage had loosened and broken off the wall to lie unfound on the cave floor until Najoli picked up a use for it.
Finding the makeshift cudgel dumped into the palm of his hand, Durgay dropped it as if it were a porcupine fish. The lumpy rock returned to its resting place, camouflaged by the grotto's inky bowels. “You're not to kill either of them,” he instructed Najoli.
Retrieving her prize, she replied, “Perish the thought. I only want to knock them out. You're the convicted murderer in here. Are you able to restrain your killer instinct?"
"You're still alive."
Najoli tittered. “You do have a sense of humour beneath that rigidity."
Deciding it best to start up a watch over the drowsy guards, Durgay edged close to the invitingly doorless cave mouth. “You remind of another mergirl,” he whispered back into the darkness.
"I'm a merwoman, thank you very much,” Najoli huffed. Slighted as she was, she could not contain her curiosity. “Who might this sister be?"
"Princess Lorea. She also was a pain in the tail."
* * * *
; The changeover happened without incident. Right up until the departing guards swum out of sight, off for their dinner. Najoli jumped the nearer of the two substitutes before he settled in, clouting him on the back of his head with her rock. Initially shocked more than hurt by the assault, he turned curiously and got whacked in the face for his trouble, rolling senselessly forward in the slow motion ballet liquid density made of underwater action. Najoli thumped him a third time on the noggin to ensure he stayed out of action.
Forced to take on the leftover guard, Durgay pounced like a catfish from behind, bear-hugging him quickly into submission. Stunned by the notion of a prisoner actually wanting to escape, the subdued merman flopped about in Durgay's crushing arms like a limp jellyfish, too amazed to call for help. Twirling his speechless compatriot about face, the veteran Fisher head-butted then slammed him face first into the rock wall. He collapsed like a deflating puffer fish.
Towing his unconscious cargo by the tail into the cave, Durgay divested the jailer of his coil of seagrass twine carried as standard equipment for roping disobliging prisoners. Tying him hand to flukes, he deposited him at the rear of the cell, repeating the procedure with Najoli's victim. To her he directed, “There should be a pile of seaweed strands just outside the entrance. Fetch me two.” Using them to gag the exchange prisoners, Durgay was pleased enough to forget his original misgivings. “That should keep them from sounding the alarm. Where to now, Najoli?"
"Anyplace but here."
"Didn't you think your escape plan right through to the end part, such as a suitable spot we can flee to?"
"I hadn't thought that far ahead."
Durgay rumbled his censure.
"I honestly expected you to chicken out,” she said by way of an excuse.
"That makes two of us."
"You don't hold a very high opinion of yourself."
"Things tend to go wrong in my life ... a lot."
"Durgs, you are such a pessimist."
"To you, I'm Durgay and a realist."
"Whatever. I got us out. You're the master escaper around here. You must've picked up some useful tips getting out of the Landhopper lagoon."
"Only one and that's not really applicable here; don't work with animals."
"Definitely unhelpful,” groused Najoli.
"I don't see you spilling over with a sequel of great ideas."
"I'm fresh out. But I know somebody who is creative."
Najoli zoomed off up the reef's sloping foundations, Durgay trailing dubiously. Concealed against the backdrop of ebony rock, the shadowy ascenders threw caution to the current and raced out of the gloomy Deep into the blackening sea with abandon, swapping one kind of darkness for another. Beaconing globs of bioluminosity shone unblinkingly from cave maws as Castle-rock lit up for the night. Drawn sideways by one particular exterior lamp blazing gemlike from the sparsely populated base, the mergirl ducked readily into the lowermost cave condo.
Recognising the tiny planter of faded corals out front, Durgay stated the obvious. “This is Ochar's place."
Poking her head out of the opening, her stern expression made angular by the light-fish illumination overhead, Najoli carped, “Get inside quick, before anyone clicks you."
"This is the first place they'll check,” the unhappy merman moaned back.
"We'll be long gone by the time the captain of the Seaguard thinks to look for us here."
"Swimming to Nupterus only knows where."
Reaching out and yanking him indoors, she amended, “To whatever destination my grandmother recommends as a suitable hideout."
Durgay's incredulity nearly made him tongue-tied. “Ochar's your grandmother?” he managed to blurt.
"Great grandmother actually,” Najoli returned, hauling the unresisting merman further into the coldly lit grotto. “Or is that great, great grandmother? No matter. She's family, so will help. Hullo Grammy."
Her thoughts lost in sifting through items of memorabilia, Ochar slowly looked up, her expression one of befuddlement as the Cetari couple drifted into her abode. Their unannounced entry stirred the seawater, making the free-floating lanterns sway crazily. Durgay she recognised, but the slip of a mergirl hovering in the dancing lamplight seemed a complete stranger.
"It's me, Grams. Najoli. Bealie's girl."
"Bealie...” Ochar mouthed incomprehensibly, clumsily rotating the cowry ornament in her gnarled hands.
"She's Grandpa Jemta's oldest daughter."
"Jemta. I named a son of mine that."
"And I'm his granddaughter, Bealie's youngest,” Najoli reiterated in an exasperated whistle.
Dropping the forgotten shell, Ochar swept the youthful merwoman up into her grandmotherly embrace. “Yes, you are Najoli. I haven't seen you since you were fin high to a lobster and I bounced you on my tail. You're all grown up, my dear."
Squished by the outpour of love, Najoli gurgled, “You haven't changed a bit, Grams."
"Getting more forgetful by the day,” Ochar bemoaned. Putting Najoli back at arm's length, she glanced maternally at Durgay. “Tell your old granny, when did you hook up with him?"
Durgay fielded that question. “We share a common interest; evading the authorities."
"Ours is a troubled story, Grams, and I don't want to involve you any more than we have to. Suffice to say, we're swimming from the law and on the look out for a place to float low in."
"Hide out here,” the supremely elder merwoman invited.
Funnily affectionate, Najoli lightly touched Ochar's forearm. “The offer's appreciated, but not practicable. We sorely need directions to a more permanent solution. Durgs and I must vacate Bounty Reef quick smart."
"Durgs?"
"Don't encourage her,” Durgay clicked grumpily.
"Have either of you eaten?"
He continued on his sour note. “Nope, we skipped dinner due to bad timing."
"I'll cut you some bonito steaks, freshly caught this morning and dropped off by a generous Fisher lad. There's plenty to go around."
"We'll take it to go,” Najoli told Ochar as her grandmother agedly swam to her larder. “Can't dawdle, Grams. Please point us to the nearest reachable hideout. There's gotta be a secluded shelf below an islet down in the southern waters we can make our own.” She abruptly found herself pulled to one side by Durgay.
"Your Grammy has trouble remembering her own name. Can we count on her guidance being accurate?"
Overhearing his concern while wrapping up the tuna snacks in seagrass netting, Ochar remarked, “Even though I have lapses in memory, me lad, I'm not deaf. I've forgotten more knowledge than you've ever retained in that doubting head of yours."
"It's your haziness that worries me, Ochar. That's a big ocean out there. I don't want to take a wrong turn and wind up being swept out to sea on the back of a wild current. The “C” in Cetari stands for coastal, not crazy."
"Crazy sums up Cerdic nicely,” sighed Castle Rock's senior citizen.
"You've heard about the king's invasion plans, I take it."
"Hasn't everyone?” interjected Najoli.
"The whole reef is nervous about Cerdic's ambitions,” Ochar gave away. “His brother was a wiser, kindlier ruler. As I remember him, Anwhorl would never have gone off half-cocked to goad the Landhoppers into all out war, even with the provocation of losing a daughter to them. He would not let a father's grief and rage prevail over the welfare of his merpeople."
"Then why doesn't everyone just get together and tell King Cer-dickhead to back down!” steamed Najoli.
"Because Cerdic remains our Merking and duty is loyalty,” the oldish merman recited.
"That's your answer for everything, Durgs."
"Durgay's fidelity showcases the rest of our unbending community,” interposed Ochar. “They'll faithfully follow their king to the ends of the ocean, even if it means the death of the Cetari. But if Durgay can change his inflexible thinking, there may be a trickle of hope for Castle Rock yet."
He challenged Ochar's
assessment of him. “I've not changed."
"You've been pardoned then. If not, that'll make you an escapee, ergo refuting the judgment imposed by your monarch. Which marks you a mutinous traitor."
Shooting Najoli a daggered glance, Durgay grimaced. “I see that your streak of brainy independence runs in the family."
Najoli smirked devilishly. “Mother never loses an argument either."
Finished packing edibles, Ochar handed the food parcels to her granddaughter twice removed. She answered Durgay's querulous look with a sly smile. “You'll be carrying something else entirely."
"Aside from my guilt."
Rummaging through a pile of paraphernalia junking up a rounded corner, Ochar fished out from the bottom of the heap of coral oddments a trident thinly crusted with a film of red algae. She proffered the weapon to Durgay, unashamedly handling mermale symbolism.
He rashly waved it away. “I couldn't possibly handle another merman's tool."
"This belonged to my husband. The thought of consigning his most prized possession to the Deep alongside his body was unbearable. It has kept better value as a memento, a daily reminder of my wonderful merman. No point now, as I can't even picture what's-his-name's face. My memory sports mores holes than a sponge.” Sad, careworn eyes implored Durgay. “Take the gift. A trident shouldn't languish unused. It'll comfort me having her great grandsire protecting Najoli, in spirit anyway."
Durgay resisted. “I can't. It wouldn't feel right."
"Valour alone won't defend against pesky sharks."
"You can't transfer ownership of a trident,” he persevered.
"Borrow the piece indefinitely then."
Bowing his head, the reluctance sliding from his shoulders, Durgay sensibly accepted the generous token. “I'm honoured,” he said, taking the slime-coated haft in his grasp. “Mind if I clean the goop off first?"
Apologetic, Ochar laid her hands on a shell scraper. “Housekeeping was never my thing,” she admitted, as the gratified merman started scuffing in what was plainly a labour of love.
With Durgay keenly engaged in his chore, Najoli prompted her older relative. “We head south then, Grams?"
Three Times Chosen Page 13