Verse VI

  Bubbles and froth, this place was a mess! Once and only once in the past, Rook had asked old Baba Rill about the tent city of Mezzegheb. The grey-scaled runeworker seemed to have traveled everywhere at one time or another, and Rook had figgered the old mer was the one to ask.

  Baba'd looked at her all queer-like and then said that there weren't no easier place in the nine seas for a mer to go and lose herself. Rook hadn't really cottoned to the meaning then.

  Now, the old mer's words made a whole lot more sense. Mezzegheb as a place wasn't that difficult to navigate. It was a city for the caravans, settled by the caravans, and so there was a certain order to its layout if a mer were to float on up a ways and give it a good lookover. But speaking as someone who until recently had made herself a living on the peddling of questionable rune charms in the back markets of Bryndoon, Rook had never seen so many ways of grifting pearl off a mer gathered in one place.

  "These prices are crazy," said her companion as they swam through the food markets. "Look at the prices on those things. I'm beginning to understand why a few pearl roots went so far at the gates."

  "Yeah, really." Rook was doing her best to ignore the numeral marked on the shingle shells. Small wonder that this row was less crowded than the rest: fun was cheap, but life was expensive. "Makes yer glad to have Ardy an' Red around, finding food for all of us."

  "Where to next?" asked the twin. So far, the two of them had passed the performance stages, watched the gaming tables long enough to know they didn't understand any of the rules, and avoided the merest scent of the tuli tents. That left a good third of the city left to explore, but a lot of that appeared to be private establishments, members and invitations only, with the approaches all watched by guards in local livery.

  Rook wasn't about to go stick her nose in that if she could help it. Not without some decent bribes in her hands. "Back to the tent and see how Ardy's doing, I suppose."

  Millie's lips pressed thin. "Yes, I guess we should..."

  "Don't like her much, d'yer."

  "We got off on the wrong stroke," the twin admitted. Thick arms crossed her chest. "And, well, I can't deny she's been a help in a lot of ways. Not so many as she's been a problem, though. Sometimes it feels like we're a string of salps getting tugged along by a turtle, like in Granny Lieza's stories."

  "Oh, I haven't heard that 'un yet!"

  "Well," said Millie as they swam along. "It goes something like this..."

  Until a week and a half ago, Rook hadn't known what a salp was, it not being a common food animal for mers in the city, but again thanks to Ardy's foraging ways, she'd had plenty of experience with the rubbery, free-floating things in their long community strings. The mental image of one such string mistakenly latching onto a turtle and getting pulled around will-she, nill-she was both entertaining and close to heart. And when the clever octopod came in to disentangle the entire mess, well... Rook could only hope their own messes were so easily resolved.

  "Oughta set yerself up a stage of something," she told the twin. "Really. Lotta mers wouldn't mind chipping in to hear a good story or three. How many d'yer know?"

  Millie rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Can't say, really. Granny Lieza told us so many, and I never did keep count. They're just fun. You know, passing the time in the workshop when you're stuck doing a basic task?"

  She thought she got the idea. Most of the work Baba'd ever given her in the old mer's rune shop was the basic, boring stuff, and she'd be sunk if she couldn't have used a funny little tale to help the time flow faster.

  Then again, the last time she'd been silly enough to get distracted while doing one of Baba's little jobs, she'd nearly destroyed a cookpot and gotten a scalding for her trouble. A mer had to be careful with runeworking.

  "Well," she said. "Dunno about that, but if'n I had the gift of gab like yer storytelling, I'd be making pearl fin over fluke. Why, sometimes I think to myself, Rook-my-miss, yer needing an extra something special, and bowl me with a bubble if I know what it is, but--"

  It was not a bubble that bowled her over. If she was going to speak proper-like, Rook had done more of the bowling, or at lest the not looking straight ahead as she swam. From the top of her orangey hair to the tip of her speckled tail, she was not that big of a mer, so it didn't take much to knock her around any.

  "Hang on there." Millie grabbed her shoulders as she tumbled backwards. "Oh, um, our apologies." The twin lowered her head respectfully to the bumpee.

  Rook blinked a few more times than she needed, because something was obviously not working right with them. The two mers before her now, one with a peeved look as she rubbed her flank, were such a set that they might've been twins, too. Same sort of faces, thin and done up pretty. Same cut to their hair and trim to their fins. Same figure under their garland outfits, she noted with a twinge of envy. Only, one was the palest of pale, the very lass they'd seen in the performance circles earlier in the day, and her friend was the darkest of dark, so black that Rook's eyes had to add in shades of purple to convince her brain that some mer was floating there.

  So, probably not twins. But if Night and Day could be sisters born, then these two might be the same.

  A blush bloomed across Rook's face as she realized that she'd somehow snagged the end of a garland in the collision, and the pale-skinned performer's top was now threatening to fall away. "Er, um, sorry 'bout that,' she mumbled as she handed back the length of green.

  "You had better be," said her accidental victim in a stuffy accent like nothing she'd heard before. "If you should think for a moment that you could get this for free, without a single pearl in hand, why..."

  "She said she was sorry." Millie had Rook tucked between her elbow and flank. It was rather comfy for the orange mer. "It was an accident, plain and simple. No harm done, and well be on her way."

  The darker mer slapped her flukes off the ground to send herself between them. Grabbing Rook by the arm, this one cooed, "Now, no. We wouldn't want to have to call in the guards about this, now would we? You may call it an accident all you want, but you did grab Drazie's top without paying, and nearly pulled it clean away! That would be at least ten pearl, wouldn't you think?"

  "At the least, Delie," the one called Drazie echoed. "It's all up to the luck of the pull, of course, but I've known mers to put more than twenty pearl into the honor, and enjoy it fully."

  "But, but..." Rook squirmed, but she couldn't pull her arm free. "I didn't mean to! And yer gots the thing fixed back up already."

  "Sure she does..." The darker mer smirked, her lips a purpled line of amusement. Reaching over, that one yanked a different garland off of Drazie's outfit. This time, the entire collection of greenery fell away, leaving the other mer completely exposed. Not a bubble of shame stuck to Drazie's face, pale and clear beneath silvery locks of hair.

  After a three-beat of silent gawking, Rook realized that somehow the end of the garland had made it into her hands. "Wait, what's this...?"

  "Guards! Oh, guards..." The waters swelled with the lyrical call of the matched mers lifting their voices in song. "Oh, please help! They are getting so grabby down here..."

  A strong hand took Rook by the arm. Her first thought was to fight back, and she really did try, only Millie caught her free hand before the slap could connect. "Come on," said the twin. "We're out of here." Facing against the two performers, the mer of Valden grunted wordlessly and then pulled Rook along without bothering to care if anyone got in the way.

  Drazie sank to the ground, and even rolled a ways in the wake of the twin's sweeping flukes. Delie was singing to the high waters again, adding the word 'ruffians' to the chorus.

  Somewhere up above, Rook caught the sound of blow-shells, those spindly littl things the guards in Bryndoon would carry. Send a proper stream of bubbles through one and it would vibrate a call out upon the waters. The sound carried a surprising distance, but Rook didn't want to bet on how far off these were.

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  "On our flukes," she told Millie.

  "Of course they are." The twin pulled her around a corner created by the placement of two large tents. "Depths! This place is windier than a whirly-curly worm's chew-path!"

  That was true. Rook had no idea what that worm even was -- and now was not the time for another story -- but as they attempted to navigate fabric-draped passages on tuli-scented currents, it was hard to disagree with the comparison. Above them, the open waters beneath Mezzegheb's topmost wall sparkled with the glow of lamps, and it was so tempting to swim free of the closed-in maze of smaller tents...

  Millie kept her anchored down, hissing a warning as blow-shells sounded over their heads. After so many twists and turns, Rook couldn't say where they might be, and neither could the guards, for now. A break into the open waters, though, that would give the game away immediately.

  The two of them slipped behind a fold in the largest tent they could see, pulling at the fabric to hide themselves better. The whistling of the blow-shells faded into the distance, until the only sound was the fluttering of their own gills. "Are... are they gone?" asked Rook.

  "Not going to stick my head out to see."

  "Can't blame yer for that." She peeked, just a for a beat. The first thing she saw was red, and the sight made her choke on her own water.

  "Who's there?" a familiar voice sounded. The fabric ripped away, and old Red herself was staring at them with cold blue eyes. "What in all the indigo depths are the two of you doing here?"

  "Um, hi, Red..." said Rook. "Um, yanno, we were just asking ourselves that very question. Millie, sez I, why are we in fact here? Is it, um, the flow of the currents or, or blind chance, or..."

  A rough, calloused hand ended her babbling. Rook tried to say "Thanks" through the fingers, but only blew bubbles.

  "We floated into some trouble," the twin admitted.

  Red's gills shimmered with a flush of bubbles as she sighed. "What kind of trouble?"

  "The kind that likes to make more trouble by calling the guards on a mer for funsies." Millie growled. "After shaking us down for a few pearl. What kind of place is this?"

  "Exactly what I told you it to be," Red replied. "Well then, where'd you leave the others?"

  "Rented a tent space," said Rook as she pried the fingers away from her mouth. "Ardy was feeling poorly."

  Red hadn't exactly been smiling, but now she really wasn't. "Oh, what is it now..."

  "Can't rightly say, only it ain't too much fun for her." Rook shivered her nerves straight. "Um, think you can get us all back wi'out the guards catching on?"

  Blue eyes narrowed. "You two didn't start the problem?"

  "Nuh-uh. No way, no how."

  "I learned my lesson," said Millie with one arm across her chest. "It was all on those two mers. Oh, what were their names. D... D something, the both of them. One a pale white, the other all dark."

  "Drazie and Delie," said Rook. "I think that's what they said."

  "Oh. Them." Red's face softened a punch, but her eyes were harder than ever. "Always a pair of funge-brained lackwits, but sounds like they're meaner than ever. Well, then. Let's make sure they don't see us on the way out."

  "We're leaving town?" Nothing could've sounded better to Rook right then.

  "Did what I came for, so time to hit the currents." Red let out one last sigh of exasperation. "Before anything else happens."

  *

  Even after much time spent in distant waters, Sera knew the space beneath Mezzegheb's great tent like it was the back of her hand. It did not take long to navigate a crooked route back to where the others were resting, cutting through tents or over performance stages with a swift disregard for the formal boundaries. The three of them were there and gone faster than most would notice, if any of the tuli-licking caravanners even looked up from their diversions.

  The local merchants and dancers could have told a different tale, but they themselves were too preoccupied with their caravanner guests to raise a complaint for a nuisance so swiftly gone. Word did flow; that was unavoidable, but Sera kept her kelpen snood tight around her hair, and her face behind a wide-spread hand. Perhaps that would have been enough if they hadn't swum right past a familiar mer's performance spot. One blue eye caught the satisfied smirk on Drazielle's face in a single frozen beat of the short span of their passing.

  The performance had only begun, and the garlands were all in place. Drazielle wouldn't squeal -- not to the guards, nor about anything of importance for another hour at least. Business was business in Mezzegheb.

  Sera wouldn't, couldn't, trust them to have any longer than that to make their exit. Sunken depths, but she wished this little adventure could have led them anywhere but here.

  Verse VII

  The light of the firmament shone at an angle down through the waters of Bryndoon, and the shell-work chambers of the palace caught the afternoon radiance, pulling it through translucent walls to create a diffuse, warm illumination. From the inside, the chambers of the princess were awash in pinkish orange.

  Upon the broad hammock of baleen and kelpen fabric, Marsa restlessly lay. Lavender hair -- more of a brown now, due to the lighting -- floated unbound around her as she rocked in a stray current. Beside her were a dozen flat shells, the final cantos of the writings of Dierdre min Thesia. She had meant to read them again that day, but so far they had been better served as playthings for Tilly. The little octopod made a game out of stacking them and then tugging on Marsa's hand to get her attention.

  "Mhm, yes?" she murmured. "Oh, thank you. You truly are a marvelously smart little thing, aren't you?"

  It was hard to read Tilly's eyes with their weird, sideways pupils, but the -bloop- she made seemed happy enough. With the flick of a tentacle, the shells scattered, to be picked up and arranged a different way.

  She was not sure how long she'd been stuck in the chamber with only Tilly for company. The days passed faster than she could bother to count, and Marsa sometimes doubted that the outside world still existed. The light through the walls dimmed and darkened, only to return stronger the next morning, but if she relied solely on the evidence of her eyes, in the manner of the great theosophists of classical thought, there was no proof that anything existed at all but herself, the room furnishings, and the octopod. Food arrived at the door with the regularity of the tides, but by whose hand, she could not see. As she chewed her food, her thoughts would arrange the facts of the evidence between her teeth to theorize the existence of providers outside her personal existence, teasing out conclusion after logical conclusion to prove or refute the thesis of loneliness, only for the meal to end and with it, her philosophical connection to the greater waters beyond the chamber.

  The door was neither locked nor sealed. Only, she did not feel any urge to quit the place, nor any duty which would require her to leave. Every job she had been given in the palace, every job for her entire span of years, had revolved around the princess, around Rhiela, and in the midst of the royal absence she had... nothing much at all. Vague memories of work in the palace kitchen flitted through the waters of her mind with hardly any wake left after. All that floated in there was the quiet, dominating sense of inutility.

  As if sensing that thought, Tilly blooped out a request for scritches along the stretchy, smooth skin of the octopod's forehead. Tentacles curled in delight as the request was granted.

  So, there it was. In this moment, her one reason for existence was the care and comfort of a grateful octopod. Marsa almost smiled as one of Tilly's tentacles wrapped affectionately around her wrist. There were worse jobs.

  A faint chime disturbed the waters of the chamber, sending a brief, faint shimmer across her skin that could almost have passed ignored and unnoticed, save that a part of her heart had been waiting for it, aching for it for uncountable days now. The calling shell was removed from its hidden spot behind the shelves, and Marsa tapped it lightly with her fingers so that it would be willed into life.

  "Hello?" she said softly into the open mouth of the shell.

  "Marsa!" echoed the voice of the princess, soft but strong. "Oh! I was afraid we'd reached the limits of your wonderful runework."

  "Apparently not." A smile did turn her lips now. Her efforts to copy and complete one of her mother's overlooked projects had turned out far better than expected. Given the grammar of the runes involved, she was not sure if the shell even had a limitation for distance, but every day without the voice of the princess had made her fear that the limit was found. "Is everything going well over there?"

  A faint mumbling and grumbling could be heard. "Yes. Well, no. But yes. We're all fine, but I think I shall not be gracing Mezzegheb with my presence again anytime soon."

  "You're in the tent city?" Marsa had heard stories about the caravanner's paradise -- who had not? -- and she did not think she would be taking it so well if she were to visit.

  "Yes. A thoroughly despicable place, a veritable reef of, of..."

  "Perfidious iniquity?" she suggested.

  "Sure. That. Thanks, Marsa, for your beautiful way with words." Another grumble echoed across. "And to top it off, Ardenne's fallen ill. It must be the water in here; the currents are truly awful at washing out the taste of tuli."

  Her tail, flukes dangling limply off the side of the hammock, flailed a beat at the name. Marsa had not been down to their secret place, had not seen the wondrous statue, since the morning before Rhiela's precipitous exit from the palace, and for unfortunately good reason. She had yet to tell Rhiela what her own mother, the Ministra Marhyd, was supposed to have done to the cavern ruins. Rumors had floated past her ears a-plenty in the days soon after the palace had shaken from the inside out, but she had not the nerve to confirm them in the empirical manner.

  "Ah, I hope that she feels better soon," Marsa said, in lieu of any bad news.

  "Yeah, really. We're supposed to be heading out to open water soon, and..." The shell offered up a minor swear word. "Sera and the rest are back, so I need to cut this short. You take good care of yourself, okay?"

  "Yes, Rhiela..." She nodded happily as the shell chimed that the connection was cut, for she knew she would hear the princess's voice again.

  At no point in the next hour did she realize the new purpose her body found after the royal call. If asked, she might say that she had gone to sleep early, as the light of the firmament dimmed to nothing, for that was all she could remember.

  Tilly the octopod would tell a different tale, if only she could speak more than just -bloop-. It did not happen every night, but when her friend with the food went limp and stiff at the same time, the octopod knew to retreat to her spot behind the kelpen pillows. The friend would swim off, and then return before the light did. Tilly might -bloop-, might caress a slackened hand with a tentacle, and yet get no scritches until full morning's light came to bring the friend back to herself.

  Such nights were never good, the octopod had decided.