Canticle III

  In a long-lost sea, so near yet so far, the Weaver of Light pauses.

  Her task is not yet complete.

  It shall never be complete.

  But, it comes together.

  Four strands now bound, a fifth intersecting.

  Two strands still twined but separate from the rest.

  Others float past, still uncertain.

  But still.

  But still.

  Slowly it comes together.

  The strands seek one another out.

  They need one another.

  Once examined, twice sure.

  The Weaver of Light continues.

  Canto III - Sea of Confluence

  Verse I

  It was the early morning hour, and barely that. The light of the firmament was a thin, silvery line at the crest of the cliffs. Only by the light of the scattered glow-lamps could a mer see anything at all.

  "Yer still be serious 'bout this?" asked Rook. The little orange mer fidgeted with the ties on her duty apron.

  "I can be nothing but serious." Ardenne stared up at the wall of stone and shell-work that dominated the Harbor of Bryndoon's northern face. The palace was impressive up close, especially from the base where the servants' entrance was located. Already the place was bustling, a-thrum with the urgency as mers of all colors hurried to put the finishing touches on the day's preparations.

  "Come this far, haven't we?" Sera added. Her hair had been bound back into a tight knot, and a silt-grass kerchief covered her head. Now she was helping Ardenne do the same with her mess of hair. The two of them had slept with their braids wrapped in oil-grass to darken them, but the colors would still be obvious if anyone looked too closely, so as much as possible got tucked up and away.

  As far as Rook was concerned, this was all crazy business, which was why she was so excited now. Palace work was nothing new; most every young mer in the city did it at one time or another when the court had its festivities. By the end of her first share of duties, the shine had worn well off. But this, this was adventure like what she might hear from the tellers in the marketplace, who made their pearl by entertaining others with stories of the impossible.

  And it was real, this time. It was real, and she was in it up to her freckled forehead. While Red and Ardie were off on Baba's errand, she and the old mer had gone over plans of the palace tunnels. Rook had never questioned Baba's information, though she often wondered at the depths of her teacher's knowledge. There was more to learn from her than just how best to fix a rune-marked pot.

  So there she was, dressed up in a servant's frock and apron, trying not to snicker as Ardie fumbled with the ties. The outfit was made from finny-foot hide. A pale, plain brown, it was serviceable, resilient, and unremarkable.

  A cool morning flow brushed over Rook, sending a shiver across her skin. She muttered a canto-ripple she'd learned from Baba, a short twitter of a tune to activate the warming amulet she kept next to the skin of her chest. The coldest currents seemed to come right before dawn, and Rook could hear complaints in the distance as other young mers were caught briefly in the path of the chill. Red and Ardie hadn't noticed it at all. The other mers' toughness amazed her.

  "Ho-kay," she said once they were all properly outfitted. "Got'cher shells right here. Keep 'em in yer front pocket once we're inside. Not likely that some'un will ask to see, but it might happen. We're registered as unskilled attendants, which means we gotta lift 'n carry a lot at the start, then serve up them foodstuffs what they give out at the main party. That's also our best time to slip out, since all the toffs 'll be distracted with the chitty-chatty. Even the ministra 'll have to float in for a bit, which means she won't be where we'll be going."

  "And you're sure you know the way from there?" asked Sera.

  "Red, Red, yer be wounding me! I assure yer ladies, Baba would'n'a ever let me in on this if'n she weren't sure I could remember all the routes. Blindfolded, if'n it's necessary!"

  "Alright, we believe you." Ardie was looking at her shell. "Just... why are we using these names?"

  "It wouldn't be a real koh-vurt mission if we used yer real names, now would it?"

  "This isn't a game." Somehow, the quiet voice of the green-haired mer was worse than yelling. Rook was used to being yelled at. Sometimes she'd joke that it was the only way Baba knew how to communicate. The old mer's booming anger was big and fanged like the moray, but easily dodged. The muted hurt in the hunter's was thin but barbed, like the spines of the urchins up on the ridge. Not as obvious or immediate, but the pain lingered for much longer.

  "Nah, nah, never said it was," she hastened to say. "Buh-but what'cher gotta understand is that the palace clerks, they got the means to check up on stuff if they gotta." Rook's mind raced to keep up with the supply of words now rushing out of her mouth. "So, so, Baba had to make some good stories to back up those shells yer be using. And when it all goes muddy, the palace is gonna check those shells and not be able to get one whit of useful knowledge outta them, right?"

  "Also what I asked her for," Sera assured the other mer. "But what about yours?"

  "Oh, mine's a fake, too. Been using it for years now. Anyone asks, the name's Luka, got it? And the two of yer are my friends Redina and Aredi, recently in from the backwaters." Rook waited for the two of them to nod. "Alrighty then, let's get to work!"

  *

  As Ardenne followed the little orange mer through the servants' portal, something made her pause. It was not fear or nerves or any other sort of reservation on her part -- though any of those would have been understandable -- but rather the oddest of sensations now running down her back. Faint and electric, it traced a crooked line along the curve of her spine before disappearing. She shook her head. The excitement was getting to her. Once they had found her mother, she would be glad to quit these waters entirely.

  Verse II

  There was a special moment when the world was new and the mind refreshed. The breaking of the first hour of the morn was not it, as Rhiela had long since decided. Unfortunately, it was not for her to say when she would rise from her hammock this morning. It was her eighteenth birthday, after all, which came with all manner of activities to prepare for more activity. She might have hoped to escape it this day, as she had so many other days in the preceding weeks, but alas, it was not to be. Awakened before the first shimmer of dawn upon the firmament, she'd been scrubbed, trimmed, and fitted to within a thumb's length of where her sanity ended.

  Marai, at least, had the freedom to float back and enjoy the spectacle through which her beloved friend was put. Her role as companion and fatebound sister to the princess was important but had no special requirements for the ceremony to come.

  At the moment, Rhiela was being fitted with the raiment appropriate for a presentation before the temple elders. Yards of sheer blue fabric, made at great cost from the binding frills of a particular mussel in the Mere Tessra? and dappled by use of some runic process held dearly by the artisans of Hale?wa, it crisscrossed her chest and wrapped around the hips before flowing down the tail like a second set of flukes.

  For all its simplicity, it took some time to wrap the princess properly. The first hour of the morning had passed, and they were well through the second hour by the time everything was tied and pinned into place. Marai's stomach was reminding her that they had missed breakfast, and she was not surprised to hear a hungry gurgle emerge from beneath Rhiela's layers of blue. Nodding to the maids, she left to see if she could talk some tidbits out of the palace kitchens.

  The main corridors, one layer behind the palace fa?ade, were crowded as she had rarely seen them before. While the ceremony was to be held at the temple, the feasting and games that came after it would require most of the public areas of the palace. There were scores of things to move to and fro. Leisure hammocks, designed for repose and not for slumber, had to be attached to the walls. Decorative statuary needed to be rearranged or stowed away in the back rooms. Stores of victuals had to be processed, cut, mixed, or heated so that they would be ready in time. All of this meant that the halls were packed wall to wall, up and down and left and right, with mers. Bright scales flashed under the light of the palace glow-lamps, while hair was uniformly bound beneath kerchiefs for the sake of safety.

  Marai took her own lavender braid and wrapped it carefully around her neck and chest, wringing the end of it with both hands. She flushed water back and forth across her gills as she considered the crushing flow of bodies in the main passageways. There was a quivering that started in her elbows and vibrated its way up the tendons and individual threads of muscle to her shoulders. A shudder took her chest and shook her head in base fear. So many mers... Rhiela was not here to help; that was the problem. She needed to be strong for the both of them; she needed to do what was needed. It was not so far to the kitchens, really. A few tail-lengths at most. If she could only squeeze in...

  "Excuse me, do you need help?"

  She somehow kept from choking on her water or strangling herself with her own braid. Someone floated behind her. In her nervous gaze forward, she had neglected the rear. Her twist and turn in the water was slow and careful, because she feared to fall over backwards otherwise. Only then could she see who had spoken.

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  Three mers, clad in the plain frocks of hired labor, looked back at her. They had large bags slung over their shoulders, lumpy in the way a mass of clams might be. The smallest of the three was mottled orange and white, with hair and speckles that showed Arkhalan lineage, she noted. Next to that one was a reddish mer with a sharp blue gaze -- Le?siatran, from Tessra?? Some mers of Hale?wa had similarly vibrant coloration.

  Then her eyes took in the third mer, and for a beat she thought her heart really would stop in her chest. Lean and muscled, with shoulders rising to a sculpted neck and a strong jawline, those deep green eyes, and that hair... The braids which poked out from beneath that kerchief were dark in the gloom of the passageway, but Marai was certain that in a stronger light they would prove to be the verdant hue of the shallow grasses.

  Her attack of the nerves was forgotten. Now she merely needed to quell the tremors of excitement. Oh! if only Rhiela were here! she thought. Their statue, made flesh!

  "Um, are you alright?" Another question from this vision of... not beauty -- she had studied the contours of that face deeply enough to know there was little of the classic beauty in it. Femininity was not quite the right word, either. A singular term rose from within the depths of her memory, floating on snippets of old poetry borrowed from her mother's library: muliebrity. That low alto had a vibrant, visceral edge to it that made her want to swoon where she floated.

  Then the actual content of the question registered in her brain, and she stammered, "Y-yes. Thank you. J-just, I... the kitchens... so c-crowded."

  "We're headed that-a-way," said the orange mer. "How's about yer show us the way? Yer got the look 'a some'un who knows her way 'round here."

  Marai nodded at that, her braid coming loose and whipping behind her enthusiastically. She let the three mers lead her into the busy hall. They shielded her from the crowd with their bodies as she pointed out the different rooms which branched away from the main passage. In one of those rare verses of her life, she felt just as safe as if her fatebound sister were there beside her.

  Verse III

  "An! Do! Tri! Fa!" The syllables were short, but they left a long wake behind them. Emerging from the throat of the sergeant-at-arms at full force, they shot across the practice ground faster than any projectile. They found their marks in the delicate ears of the newest pod of recruits. Old words were they, deformed by time and the vagaries of memory as they were passed from one generation of mers to the next. Only in context were they recognizable as numerals.

  "Pen! Si! Seb! At!" With each bark, the recruits shifted positions, their swords moving in unison through the basic forms. The waters quivered with the swish-swish-swish of the thin blades' passing, but still the sharp little syllables punched through.

  "Non! Zen! Lev! Tel!" called Shalar min Shandra, Shalar of the long knives, as the recruits went through their motions. The guard in red and gold shook her head at each misplaced thrust, catching blades upon the edge of a knife and correcting their course. Not once did she skip the beat of the counting tune.

  Watching from a distance, Aysmin din Laerta, life-sister to the Queen, Duchess of Bryndoon, and commander of the Home Guard, surveyed her charges. Her one good eye was shark grey and hard as sword-metal. There was a story told to new recruits by veterans that the Duchess never showed emotion in that eye, saving it instead for the left one, hidden behind its abalone shell. Aysmin thought such tales amusing, although she never let on. An itch rose along the scar that crossed her face, but she did not scratch, did not break from her stance of command as she oversaw the Guard's newest members being put through their strokes.

  "Sa! Fo! Fi! Sit!" This was the last practice before the grand ceremony, when this newest of pods would join its seniors to accompany the princess in her procession and present their arms in salute as she left the temple. Some of the recruits had arrived mere days before this, much to Aysmin's annoyance. Still, with one or two exceptions, they had all come together quickly.

  "Sep! Ock! Nop! Wen! And... present!" called Shalar. The recruits stopped straight in the water, swords to their breast. The guard swam up and down the row, nodding at some and prodding at others to correct their posture.

  The pair from Valden would have to stay towards the rear, Aysmin had decided. The taller one was decent enough, or at least would be once she had some proper training in form, but her bond-sister was about as useless as the urchin she resembled. There were times she regretted the tradition of allowing the daughters of the Greater Houses into the Guard as legacy recruits. Even now, Tachiana din Hillia could hardly hold her weapon steady.

  "And... dismissed!" Shalar declared.

  "Pretty little dolls, are they not?" came a comment from behind the duchess's back. "Precious toys, all set in a row."

  "I wish I could challenge that assessment, ministra," Aysmin replied without a rearward glance. "Were I could, Shalar would have a month or two to put them in shape." She watched her charges as they returned to the barracks to rest before the event. Some of the recruits were decidedly more skilled at swimming away than they were at moving in place, as proven by the speeds with which they dismissed themselves from the training ground. Shalar stayed to practice her knife forms. "Then, perhaps, things would be different."

  "That is true, Your Grace. One must have a chance to break the toys before they can be rebuilt, yes?"

  Now she turned to face Marhyd's smug little grin. "Are you bored, ministra? Or have you developed a sudden and heretofore unnoticed interest in military discipline?"

  "Oh, perish the thought of that." The fat mer chuckled. "Her Holiness has asked me to stop by and see how your preparations are progressing. So she said. Really, I think it was all a simple ruse to get me out of her way for the hour."

  A grin briefly touched Aysmin's lips. "Undoubtedly."

  A cool current washed over her scales from an odd angle. Glancing to her right, the duchess could see a mer hurrying towards them at a brisk stroke. One of the ministra's assistants, it would seem: a thin, colorless mer whose hair and scales blended with her official jacket to present a uniform greyness. A wide kerchief kept her hair in place, and its leading fringe came almost to her eyes. When the mer tilted her head down, the weave obscured her face completely. The assistant pulled up short and made a deep bow. "Your Grace, Your Wisdom."

  It had always impressed Aysmin that, for all her quips about military discipline, the ministra could enforce such formality amongst her assistants at all times. The collection of grey-clad mers never spoke out of turn, never raised their voices, and never cracked jokes. Only Marhyd was allowed those privileges. The ministra was showing no humor now as the mer whispered in her ear.

  "If you would excuse us, Your Grace, but I must away."

  "Trouble? I could send a guard."

  "It's not that sort of problem, thankfully. It is only that a project that I had believed could be kept until after the festivities has now taken an odd turn." The fat mer broke the local water with a dramatic sigh. "Always to business, I am afraid."

  "The curse of age and responsibility," said Aysmin.

  "You have no idea..." Marhyd was uncharacteristically somber for a beat, only to shake her head and flash the duchess a toothy grin. "Such times we live in. Until later, Your Grace."

  Verse IV

  The kitchen chambers were the sort of place that Ardenne could understand when someone told her about it, but which made no sense at all when she actually saw them. A place to prepare food. It was simple enough. Villages on the Grandest Reef often had a community table with pod fruits or sweet tubers left by a mer for any who wanted them. She and her mother had sometimes contributed fish or shells from the far ends of the reef. But none of that could compare to the coordinated motion of the Bryndoon palace kitchens.

  Mers in white aprons had relieved them of their burdens, the kelpen bags open and empty almost before they fell to the floor. Mussels were heaped upon one table, awaiting their turn in the leather cooking pots. Cockleshells were cracked upon another. A dozen or more small cages kept fish ready for butchery, and one end of the chamber was so full of kelps and grasses that it could pass for a field itself. A ways away from the hunter, Rook was helping to herd a flock of small lobsters into a pen

  "Here, work." A rod was shoved in her hands, and then she had to learn how to move the rune-crafted pots into and out of a hollow in the wall. The waters within it were uncomfortably warm from the runes of heat now cooking the mussels.

  The lavender mer, Marai, had her original errand in hand. With a wave and a happy grin, she mouthed a promise to Ardenne to stop by later. Then she was through the portal to the main passageway, showing none of the fear which they'd seen in her earlier.

  "Our new friend's sweet on you," Sera said on a thin stream of bubbles as the two of them worked the pot-holder rods.

  Ardenne grimaced and brushed back a lock of hair that had strayed from the kerchief. "She's cute, I guess, but..." But she wasn't used to this sort of attention. But she had more important things to do than flirt. But...

  "If she asks you to go off with her a bit later, say yes."

  For a moment, the hunter thought the other mer was joking, but those blue eyes were serious. "Um, why?" she asked.

  "Rook's got the route in her head and all, but no bearings in all this hubbub." The red mer waved towards the chaos of fin and scale that was the main palace passageway. "Need to find a spot called Cecily's Gate. Your new friend might just know the way."

  It was not a bad plan. Ardenne was simply unsure whether it was a good plan. She was even less certain of her thoughts and feelings on it. Aside from the surprise kiss she'd received from Lyrika -- and had that only been a week and a half ago? -- she'd never been pursued in a romantic sense. Had never really considered herself pursuable, if she were to be honest. The lavender-haired mer's giggly nervousness left her confused and adrift.

  Speaking of whom, Marai was floating back their way now, tugging at her braid and biting her lower lip.

  Depths. Ardenne swore quietly. What was she supposed to say to this little mer that she'd just met? Why did Sera even think she might know what to say? The red mer had already swum off to give them some privacy, and that was the last thing Ardenne wanted right then. If there were anything in all the seas she needed right then, it was a friend to keep her from stuffing her flukes in her mouth.

  Amber eyes flicked back and forth as Marai worked up the courage to speak first. "Um... it occurred to me that I should inquire as to whether you would happen to be doing anything once the festivities of the day have come and gone?" The words came out in a burst of bubbles, so ornate and politely toned that they made no sense.

  After taking a moment to parse the sentence and assume she knew the meaning of all the words involved in it, Ardenne shook her head. "I'm afraid that, ah, my friends and I shall be leaving earlier than most."

  "Right after the ceremony? During the banquet?" Two more streams of words rushed together in nervous haste. The next sentence followed in a staccato burst: "It's just, I... my, my freh--that is, I'd like to, to meet later a-and introduce you t-to my friend... If that's okay?" The last few syllables squeaked themselves out.

  "Yes, well... but my friends..." Ardenne waved a hand in the general direction of Sera and Rook, who had found themselves a new job sorting clams.

  "They can come, too!"

  She let a sigh pass. There was no way to get out of this conversation gracefully, or even in a moderately less embarrassed state, and Sera was right; they needed help getting their bearings. "Okay," she said. "Alright. After the ceremony, before the banquet. Where..."

  "Second hour of the afternoon, in the garden atop the Pillar of Queens," Marai confirmed. The lavender mer grabbed Ardenne's hands and held them close to her chest. Her face was flush with emotion as she giggled. "Thank you, thank you! Rhi... my friend and I will be waiting."

  And with that, the mer snagged another laden tray of sweet pods and cracked cockles, swimming off with her prize before the hunter could get another word through her throat. A beat later, she'd disappeared into the chaos of the passageway.

  Ardenne was left to wonder what she'd gotten them all into now.