by Megan Derr
*~*~*
There were two days left, and Seree was ready just to drown himself and call it done. Worse, he was thinking of contacting his grandmother. Oh, the way she would laugh at him—and set him up to suffer a fate far worse than death. The revenge she had not been able to enact upon her traitorous daughter she would happily enact upon her despised grandson.
His father would kill him.
No matter how he looked at it, he was dead. Seree scrubbed at his face in frustration, then dropped his hands and went back to cleaning his knives. They didn't really need it, but the motions made him feel better, reminded him he was not normally so hopelessly incompetent.
He picked up a clean white cloth and gave the knives a last going-over before tucking each into its sheath: White for healing, violet for calling, blue for exchange, green for deception, yellow for protection, orange for binding, red for pain, black for sacrifice. Each knife took years to earn, longer to truly understand.
When they were clean, he replaced them on his back and shrugged into his jacket. Three days, and his options were nonexistent. All he really needed to decide was how he wanted to die: the sea, his own hand, a bargain with the witch, or let his father strangle him for acting no better than his sisters.
He was going to murder Lana; it was all her fault. He hoped father had locked her up and given the key to some dolphins. They lost everything, especially when told not.
Father …
There was an idea. Slightly better than the sea witch, anyway. Lectures and being laughed at hadn't killed him yet. At worst it would just make him wish he were dead and that could only help the situation.
By the Savior, he was never again saving his sisters from anything. The next time one of them blundered into trouble, she was on her own.
Well, there was nothing for it. He probably should have conceded defeat much sooner, but Savior did he hate looking like a fool in front of his father. Heaving a sigh, Seree left his room and walked slowly through the palace.
He walked slowly primarily because he kept peering into every open door he passed, hoping to see the prince who had studiously avoided him the past few days. Every time he had tried to inquire as to where to find him, he'd been informed that the prince was busy and would see him when he had time.
Seree was not certain what to think about that. He was going to die because he couldn't kill Aimé, and the bastard wouldn't even see him? Perhaps he was all too typically human, after all. But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn't true. Under the circumstances, Seree really could not blame him. Only miss him.
Finally exiting the palace, Seree traveled around the city and then down to the miles upon miles of beach until he found the secluded little nook where he had first come from the water. He removed his knives, then stripped out of everything save his breeches, and retained those really on the unlikely chance someone came along. Modesty, he had found, was better to have when explaining one's stranger behavior to humans.
He pulled his sheath back into place, happier to have it against bare skin, the supple straps moving with him. Wading into the sea, he stopped when he was about hip deep. First, he drew his orange-bladed knife, pricked his thumb and let blood drip down to coat the blade. Then he drew it through the water, channeling his magic into a spell to calm the waters so that all was still around him.
The spell took and poured through the blade, spilling orange spell-water into the sea, spreading out, and the water shimmered as it let itself be bound to stillness.
Sheathing the orange knife, he drew the violet one and cut his palm. As his blood spilled and swirled in the water, he sliced the blade through it and said, "King of the Deep, a word if you please."
His father's image appeared in the slit, a much older version of Seree: the blue-black hair was threaded heavily with white, the dark green eyes much deeper, much more lined with age. But he was still a long way from dying, still proudly and ably wore the crown of the ten seas. "That's not how that summoning goes."
"I'm not saying 'I beg you hear my plea' to my father," Seree snapped. "If this is how you're going to act, then never mind. I don't need your help."
"Oh, stop thrashing," Meris said with a laugh.
Seree stepped back as his father accepted and finished the spell of calling, strongly reconsidering summoning his grandmother instead. Water splashed about, nearly knocking Seree over despite his precaution, and then the King of the Deep was before him. He looked concerned and amused, and Seree definitely should have gone with the grandmother who hated him. "Seree, the last time you came to me with a problem, you were still a boy and had to be dragged in by my guards and forced to hold still."
"I still maintain I could have managed that giant squid on my own," Seree said tersely.
Meris' slow grin spread across his face, and he reached out to pat Seree's cheek affectionately. "Nothing at all like your sisters, hmm? So whatever is the matter that you would actually call me all the way up here to discuss it? Has something gone awry with the curse you're breaking for Lana?"
"I can't kill him," Seree said. Despite himself, he immediately felt better just being able to discuss it. "He's not the kind of human that deserves to die."
"Oh, I see," Meris said. "Those are words I do not often hear from you—though I hear them from you more often than from your cousins."
"I don't kill every human I come across, and I can't help that most of the ones I come across deserve to die."
"So what makes this one special?"
Ignoring the amused look on his father's face, Seree began to explain, ending with, "And he knows about us. His great grandmother was Beltana."
Whatever Meris had been braced to say when Seree finished was immediately forgotten in his surprise. "Beltana? Are you certain?"
"He told the story exactly, and he is not the kind to lie. He's the great grandson of Beltana."
"But even before that, you did not want to kill him," Meris said pensively. "Your story got a bit murky there when you got to the night on the beach." His eyes glinted knowingly. "Clear that up a bit for me."
"You are a sun-addled bastard," Seree said flatly. "This is precisely why nobody likes you."
Meris snickered. "This is why my children all dislike me, which I am reasonably confident means I am doing my job as a father."
"If you're just going to make fun of me, then I'll find someone else to talk to," Seree said, losing all patience and feeling slightly hurt. He was going to die and his father was making fun of him. Typical. His entire family had gone sun-mad. Or maybe they were drinking squid-ink wine again.
He started to turn away, but Meris' large, firm hand wrapped around his forearm and stayed him. "Calm your waters, son. I do not want you to die, and I would never tease you so if I truly thought you were in such desperate straits. Law forbids I kill or harm your grandmother, but I will not let her kill one of my children, you know that. But I don't think that is necessary when the curse is much easier to break than that."
Seree opened his mouth, then closed it again. "What do you mean? You know how to break the curse? As easily as that?"
Looking amused again, Meris replied, "Seree, you're the best warrior in my palace, I daresay in my kingdom. You've served me faithfully since you were a boy, always there when I needed you—no matter what the reason, no matter what the cost."
"Yes," Seree said, because obviously—what else was he supposed to do?
"Did you know I sent your cousin Trel to land the other day over in the seventh sea?"
Seree stared at him, confused by both the odd turn in conversation and the amount of wine his father must have drunk to think that was a good idea. Trel was hopeless when it came to acting like a human. Most of the others were. Seree had more knives than his father had warriors he could completely trust to go on land.
"You weren't there," Meris said defensively. "It was him or the other cousin."
His cousins numbered in the alarming digits, but Seree knew who he meant. But
he really wasn't interested in discussing his sharky cousin. "I see. What does this have to do with my dying in two days? By the time you come to your point, I will be dead."
Meris sighed, but he still sounded entirely too amused for Seree's taste. "My point is that, of all the men and women at my disposal, you are the only one who can pass as human with ease—who has no trouble being human. You know the ways of not just one sea, but of all of them. Your knowledge of them surpasses even mine. More and more of your duties involve going to land, despite the pain it must cause you."
Seree opened his mouth, closed it, and then finally said, "As you say, no one else is good at it. I'm the best."
"No one endures that sort of pain over and over again just because they're good at pretending to be human," Meris said. "No one suffers that amount of pain, time and again, for something they absolutely hate."
Huffing in irritation, Seree said, "So what, I do it because I like it?"
"You like being on land, Ser," Meris said. "I wondered if you knew it, and decided you must, because surely at some point in all these years you would have figured it out. Clearly, I gave you too much credit. Do you remember the way you used to demand bed time stories from me as a child?"
"No."
Meris smiled at him. "Your favorites were of those who journeyed onto land. You loved the story of Beltana, especially. After your mother died, you didn't want story times any more. You grew up way too fast and spent