Mervidia (12 page)

As Ambrose spun, undulating his tentacles to begin the long swim back to his cave, he saw several heads turn towards him, their eyes drawn by the motion of his departure.
Glancing back, he noticed that one was his brother, Thaddeus, finally seeing him for the first time. To his credit, the domo of House Tenebris was the only merwin whose jaw did not gape open, as they recognized who had been in their midst. Thaddeus simply nodded his head once, acknowledging his sibling’s presence, and no more.

The disappointment each
octolaide had in the other was clear in their eyes.

Chapter
Eleven

Mervidia is better off without Flinn wearing the Fangs,
Cassondra thought, as she held a crying Ghita in her arms after returning from Beryl’s funeral procession. Her mind was racing, the Queen’s funeral putting her on edge over Flinn’s death.
I removed him from the line of succession, so that I could rule with strength, be it as queen or royal consort,
she recollected.
I just didn’t think of how much it would pain mother.
Regardless of Cassondra’s familial fondness for both her mother and even for her dear sweet brother, she had done what was best for Mervidia.

The Divine Family’s rule must endure.
I will continue our line, and it will be stronger because of my actions. Flinn was weak. I did the right thing,
she thought, trying to convince herself yet again. Flinn, despite being an adult, had never truly grown up; he had been spoiled rotten by his aunt and more so by his mother, who had constantly doted upon him. The only talent her dim-witted brother could claim lay in his machi-born empathic abilities, which aided greatly in the care and training of the family’s frilled sharks. He had often worked alongside the shark trainers as they broke in the Royal Palace’s mounts, aiding in the drills by soothing the animals. It was commonly known that Flinn was even fond of the predators.
Ironic that the sharks he had come to love ended up devouring him,
Cassondra smirked, her bemused grin hidden in her mother’s hair, as she kissed the long bone-white strands that ended in gold, identical to her mother’s fins and body tendrils.

Flinn, you were so good with the sharks, because your brain power was on par with theirs, you simple-minded fool,
Cassondra reproached her dead brother.
Not the day before yesterday, I witnessed you on the floor of your room playing with the shaped-bone, miniature toys that we enjoyed as children over a decade ago
. Cassondra silently sneered, disgusted by Flinn’s inability to be the powerful, intelligent, and battle-hardened merwin that their father and uncle had been. Still, her heart ached for her mother in her grief and even a little for her deceased brother. Flinn, despite being daft and soft-hearted, had still been her brother. Cassondra had taken no joy in plotting her twin’s death.

Cassondra sat in the dark, stroking the older merwin’s pale hair
. The mourning sister of the late King Reth had ordered all the orihalcyon sconces removed from her room to hide her sorrow from all but her consoling daughter. Ghita dearly loved her twin children but had become overly attached to them after her husband’s death in a past house war. Cassondra remembered how morose her mother had become after her father Bravante, who had been Domo of House Mauve, was slaughtered along with the rest of their household. It had only been King Reth’s summoning of his sister, Ghita, and her children to the safety of the Royal Palace that had saved them from the bloody fate that had befallen House Mauve. The conflict had begun with a breach in its food contract with House Nori and two other minor seifeira houses, but the disagreement had quickly gotten out of hand. The seifeira houses exploited the trifling issue of the missed payment to make a statement about what would happen if anyone tried to cheat the city’s farmers. It had the chance of advancing House Nori in Mervidia’s hierarchy. Unfortunately, it had not worked out as they had hoped. While they had succeeded in destroying House Mauve, the seifeira houses had suffered too many losses, resulting in their becoming frail and shorthanded. Such feebleness in Mervidia did not last long. Their neighbors pillaged the houses, taking advantage of their debilitated states, and slaughtered any that got in their way. Only House Nori survived the engagement, although a shadow of their former glory, a tiny house forced to work the most dangerous parts of the kelp fields that yielded very little usable food.
Too many eager fish in the only secure region of the Deeps,
Cassondra thought.

After hearing the news of Bravante’s death, Ghita had wandered the halls of the Royal Palace like a specter, her white fins, hair and tendrils creating a ghostly image indeed.
It had been a whole waning season, the orihalcyon cooling and changing in color from orange to red, before Ghita had returned to herself and her duties. Damaris, still barren at the time, had gladly cared for the twins, her niece and nephew, while Ghita’s mind recovered. Ghita had always been grateful to Damaris afterwards for her help, and they had formed quite the bonded alliance, both eager to preserve the rectitude and power of House Lumen, the Divine Family.

Cassondra shared in that desire; she too wanted to see their family’s power preserved.
Without the Divine Family’s enforced civility and resilient leadership, Mervidia would never have been erected out of the caves and surely would have destroyed itself with mindless bloodshed long ago,
Cassondra thought.
It is my duty to ensure that we continue to rule with strength, that my great grandfather’s creation of Mervidia not be undone. Sacrifices have to be made for our future generations to survive.

A soft knock at the door brought Cassondra back to the present and roused Ghita, who stopped her sobbing and sat up.
Perhaps it was the inky dark in which they sat or her fear of discovery, but Cassondra suddenly felt her heart thudding in her ears. Her mother’s fingertips pressed into her skin.
She’s more scared than I am,
Cassondra realized, feeling Ghita tremble and cling to her. The thought steeled her resolve.

“Who is it?” Cassondra called out, her voice steady and calm.

“Damaris,” a muffled voice supplied. “May I enter?”

“You may enter, Damaris of House Scarlet Crest,” Cassondra replied, using Damaris’ maiden title, unsure of what to call her now that she technically was no longer the Queen Mother.
Cassondra had briefly thought to use her council title of ethyrie representative, but that seemed awkward coming from a family member. Plus, Damaris was the last of her small unimportant house, and Cassondra knew mentioning that fact would be a clever slight. It was a subtle reminder of Damaris’ place, that she and Ghita now out-ranked her in Mervidia’s hierarchy, regardless of her council seat. House Scarlet Crest was an old house, but it had never been a High House. King Reth had married for love, a laughable decision in this era of deviousness and slaughter. So much had changed in only a year; Mervidia had become a darker place, if that was even possible for a civilization living in the Deeps. The remaining shreds of honor that had existed amongst the Merwin had died with their former king.

The door opened, flooding the room with the orange light
from the hallway. Cassondra and Ghita narrowed their white eyes against the brightness and focused on the ethyrie’s silhouette in the doorway. Damaris closed the door behind her, but not all of the light was shut out, as it had been before. She wore a long pendant with a fist-sized chunk of orihalcyon set in coral that illuminated the white skin in between her red-scaled breasts, giving her pale flesh an ocher tint. Cassondra welcomed the small luminescence, a stark contrast to the consuming blackness, but it cast deep shadows across the former Queen Mother’s face. Cassondra grew anxious at the sinister appearance it gave Damaris and the unpleasant look the matron gave the two huddled merwin.

The young female dismissed her fear.
I was careful,
Cassondra thought.
Flinn and I were alone when I told him mother and Aunt Damaris wanted to speak with him discretely by the frilled shark pen. No one saw me sabotage the gate, nor saw the pricked Culling fish bladder of blood I carefully stowed into one of Flinn’s pouches, before rousing him from slumber.

Cassondra had overheard Ghita and Damaris planning to put Flinn on the throne as a replac
ement for Beryl. Iago was not of House Lumen, and Cassondra agreed with the two older merwin that he should not be allowed to wear the Fangs. However, in her opinion, her brother was not the right pick for the throne either. Iago needed to be removed from power, but she, the last capable merwin in the line of House Lumen, should be the Queen of Mervidia, not Flinn.

“I may have come from a lower house,” Damaris said, acknowledging Cassondra’s minor slight, “but I, at least, was not huddled
bawling in the dark after I heard of my daughter’s passing,” Damaris admonished. Despite the rebuke, Cassondra breathed a sigh of relief that the sour look Damaris gave them was spurred by revulsion, not awareness of the young merwin’s treachery. The former Queen Mother flipped her bright red tail back and forth three times, swimming slowly over to the bed. She sat on its edge, letting her massive tendriled fins drape over the side. Damaris wore multiple bone rings embedded with violet diamonds, the rarest and most treasured gems produced from the Deep Mines, on the slender white fingers of the hand that propped her up on the blue kelp mattress. Cassondra thought the former Queen Mother’s delicate digits looked like spiny bejeweled claws, as they gripped the shadowed bedding and glittered in the tiny light of her necklace. The younger merwin was reminded of just how dangerous Damaris still was and that taunting her might not have been the wisest move. However, she hoped that the slight had made her appear refreshingly bold, so unlike how Flinn had been.

Ghita released her daughter and sat up straighter.
“I am sorry, sister. I do not deal with death well,” the white-scaled matron said, rubbing at her eyes, swollen from crying. She used her webbed hands to smooth her hair, trying to compose herself. “Surely, you remember how poorly I handled Bravante’s passing.”

Looking at the emotional wreck that was currently her mother, Cassondra hoped that her
unblemished face, so unlike Ghita’s blotchy visage, was not too incriminating. She ran her webbed hands over her eyes like her mother had done, wanting to give the impression that she had been crying as well.

“I do, sister,” Damaris answered, her tone firm yet kind, “but tears and vacancy will not bring back the deceased.
We must move forward. We must be strong. The Divine Family must persevere.” Damaris’ poised gaze shifted from her sister-in-law to her niece. Cassondra felt her throat tighten nervously under her aunt’s blatant scrutiny. “Our plan has simply been altered, not obliterated entirely,” Damaris continued. “Our future now lies with Cassondra. Let us hope you are more fertile than I, child.”

Cassondra writhed with excitement on the inside, her fear of discovery forgotten.
For Damaris to be backing her now, she appeared to have gotten away with her murderous scheme.
Delightful!
She thought.
My plans are playing out perfectly.
Cassondra put her pink-webbed hands daintily in her lap and inclined her head to Damaris. “I
will
make you and mother proud,” Cassondra said. “Your trust in me is well-placed.”

“Yes,” Ghita began slowly, her voice steadying with every word, “our future now lies in Ca
ssondra, my beautiful daughter.” Ghita ran a loving hand through Cassondra’s long pink hair, but then she let out a long sigh and dropped her eyes. “I just wish I knew what happened to Flinn. Surely, his death was no accident. He worked with those sharks every day.”

“Mother,” Cassondra said, her tone smooth and confident, “a shark’s basic instinct, as you well know, is to hunt and to kill.
Flinn was foolish to think that they would not turn on him in time.”

“There is much truth in that Cassondra,” Damaris added, verbally supporting Cassondra’s words, but the former Queen Mother’s eyes said differently, as she coolly regarded her niece.
“The timing is just very… convenient.”

Does she know
? Cassondra thought. Her anxiety returned at once and clutched at her throat, threatening to choke her, but she swallowed her fear back down. She knew she must look strong and betray nothing.
She tests me, that’s all. Damaris may know or just greatly suspects, but she is choosing to back me anyway. Perhaps she agrees with me that Flinn would have been a failure as a king.

“At the upcoming Assembly meeting in three days,” Damaris continued, returning her gaze to Ghita, “you have my word, sister, that Cassondra will be my nomination for Queen.”
Ghita’s face brightened. Cassondra tried her best not to beam with exhilaration, keeping her composure and appearing quiet, demure, and malleable. “Nayan will second my recommendation, so it will be put to a formal vote. We still have a traditionalist majority on the Coral Assembly. The ethyrie will rule, as they always have.”

I
will
be Queen,
Cassondra thought, pleased with herself.
I shall wear the Fangs… in the end.

Chapter Twelve

Jade pumped her tail up and down quickly, driving her lithe form through the shadowy water.
She had her short blade in hand, but held it close to make her body as narrow as possible. It made her more vulnerable to a frontal attack, she knew, but it also made her body faster as she knifed through the water.

In contrast
, Lachlan, who swam beside her, moved his powerful tail up and down in long, sweeping strokes. Despite his more deliberate movement, the seifeira was able to keep pace with Jade as they pursued their quarry. She spared a glance at her lover out of the corner of her eye and could feel her blood flow a little stronger, aroused by the muscles that rippled beneath his tattooed skin. Dark black stylized sharks, interwoven with blue strands of inked kelp, danced across his flesh, as his muscles contracted and relaxed rhythmically. Two of the sharks lay across his upper chest like a mantle, while a third, much larger one, swam up his back. Amongst the predators were illustrated strands of sapphire seaweed, the legacy and pride of the seifeira, which waved back and forth as his sinewy torso undulated through the water.

Jade forced herself to focus.
There would be plenty of time to intertwine her tail with Lachlan’s after their hunt. She moved even more quickly, in the hopes that the sooner they caught the grogstack they pursued, the sooner she could grab the long, black-haired seifeira and take him for her own, at least until duty called him away again. Unfortunately, Lachlan’s best qualities were sometimes his most infuriating. He was loyal, and amazingly straightforward for a merwin. These traits took up much of his time and reminded Jade that, first and foremost, Lachlan was devoted to Zane and the Red Tridents. More often than not, the Tridents took precedence over Lachlan’s personal desires, which included Jade.

Sensing Jade’s urgency, Lachlan surged forward as well.
Long black hair streaming in the water, the seifeira raised his hands before him, his spear held in line with his torso with one hand and a bundle of woven kelp held tightly in the other. With a few more powerful thrusts of his tail, Lachlan passed Jade, drawing closer to the fleeing grogstack. The seifeira, despite having been a farmer, was still a merwin, a predator of the Deeps, and he sensed that the end of the hunt was drawing near.

As their prey rounded the corner of a crumbling building in the Ghet, it came into the light of one of the rare orihalcyon lamps that hadn’t been pilfered or destroyed in the lower city.
Originally, a lantern had hung from the corner of every building in this part of Mervidia, but time and theft had removed all but a few. Jade caught a glimpse of thick black skin, a smooth eel-like tail and half a dozen tendrils trailing off of random places around the grogstack’s body. Despite herself, Jade’s lip curled in disgust. Grogstack were normally unpleasant creatures, but this one, either through continued exposure to large amounts of raw orihalcyon or a mistake of breeding, was truly monstrous. He was almost as foul as the decaying coral buildings he was using for cover in the hopes of losing the neondra and seifeira who were pursuing him.

As the grogstack swam out of sight,
Lachlan dove for the opening between two derelict buildings. Jade made to follow, but caught a hand signal from Lachlan and diverted her course. The Red Tridents practiced a secret language spoken with subtle motions of the body. A head tilt combined with a subtle tail flick or hand gesture allowed them to communicate without the need for words or the chance of tipping off their opponents. Developed by Zane, the unspoken language was of limited use most times in the dark waters of Mervidia, because it was dependent on each Trident being able to see one other. However, in certain instances, like this one, being able to silently relay a command to one’s partner without having to yell it across the water, where your prey could hear it, was most useful.

Jade swam higher, passing through the window of the top floor of the dilapidated three story structure between her and the
grogstack. Luckily, the bone and sharkskin shutters had decayed and fallen off their hide hinges long ago. The green-scaled neondra darted through the building’s upper floor, past the abandoned and rotting furniture within, and out the window on the other side. She then dove straight down, spinning as she did, so she could stop suddenly, facing the fleeing grogstack as it swam towards her. The dark-skinned creature had his misshapen head turned away from her, looking over his shoulder, searching for the pursuing Lachlan and nearly ran into Jade as she raised her short blade between them. At the last moment, the grogstack turned his head, saw the waiting neondra, and with milky eyes wide, flipped around in the water, putting his inky black tail between them in a desperate attempt to reverse his direction. Jade lunged forward, striking out with her blade, but only managing to score a passing hit on her opponent’s tail as he fled.

Ugly or not, the merwin was quick.

Not quick enough though, as it turned out. Lachlan rounded the corner, saw the oncoming grogstack and spun once, releasing the bundle in his hand as his arm came back around. The woven kelp net spiraled out from the seifeira’s webbed fist like the wings of a massive manta ray, engulfing the grogstack. The ends of the net, weighted with heavy rings of stone, passed over the grogstack’s head and then dropped rapidly to the ocean floor. Though the rings weren’t so heavy as to keep a full grown merwin pinned down, the net itself was large enough that it entangled the grogstack, immobilizing him momentarily, his arms and tail fouled in the strands of kelp. As he struggled to free himself, Jade grabbed the net, placing the point of her spell-hardened coral short blade against the back of the grogstack’s neck. The entangled merwin froze, ceasing his attempts to escape. Lachlan raised his own weapon, and pointed his spear at the grogstack’s heart, letting the tip hover inches from the other merwin’s chest.

“Nice work,” Lachlan said, addressing Jade, but keeping his eyes on their prisoner.
Even in the weak light filtering through the gaping holes in the buildings of the Ghet, Jade could see the seifeira’s chest heaving. Yet, despite his labored respiration, his voice was strong and steady.

“You as well,” Jade replied.
If Lachlan had not signaled for her to go over the building, the pursuit might have gone on much longer. She was confident that they would have been able to catch the grogstack eventually.
Why prolong the inevitable?
she thought.
There are better uses for our time together.
Still, she had been the one to spot the open windows on either side of the building’s top floor, making her path to intercept their prey that much shorter. Her part in the capture had been just as crucial as his.

“Suck eel eggs!” the captured
grogstack spat. “I’m not telling you two Red Spears anything.”

Jade pushed her blade against the back of their prisoner’s neck a little harder, causing a tiny cloud of blood to bloom from the merwin’s skin.
“
Tridents
, you disgusting piece of fish crap,” Jade retorted. “We’re the Red
Tridents
. If you’re going to insult us, a move I would think would be very unwise at this point, at least get our names right.” Jade put more pressure behind her coral blade, just to drive the point home.

Unsurprisingly, the
grogstack moved forward, away from Jade’s weapon, but was brought up short by the point of Lachlan’s spear poking him in the chest. The seifeira regarded their prisoner with a curious look that furrowed his wide brow. “More importantly,” Lachlan asked, looking intently at the grogstack, “how do you know we’re Red Tridents at all?”

Jade thought about Lachlan’s question for a moment and arrived at the same conclusion he had.
Neither one of them currently carried their namesake weapons; both the Queen Mother and Zane had insisted on the utmost discretion. As such, Jade and Lachlan had left their red coral tridents behind, opting for their usual weapons of choice; a short blade for her and a spear for him. Jade prodded the grogstack again. “Answer him,” she growled.

The entangled merwin suddenly looked more uncomfortable, if such a thing was possible.
As it sputtered for a moment trying to come up with an answer, Lachlan motioned for the grogstack to be quiet.

“Not here,” Lachlan said, looking at Jade and then glancing significantly at the derelict buil
dings around them.

Jade, catching the
seifeira’s meaning, looked around at the rotting dwellings and nodded her head. As the sand that had been stirred up by their confrontation began to settle, she could see a few pairs of milky eyes watching them from the dark recesses of the rotting buildings. Jade had trouble believing that merwin still lived in such squalor, but she couldn’t dispute what her own eyes showed her. Though these merwin
survived
, the most important tenet of Mervidian culture being continued existence, part of Jade wondered what such a life had cost them. She guessed that some were barely better than the monstrous grogstack they had been pursuing. The neondra withdrew her blade from the grogstack’s neck and drove the pommel of her blade into the back of the creature’s head. The prisoner looked dazed for a moment, before a second blow rendered the grogstack unconscious.

“I always forget how thick their skulls are,” she said, sheathing her blade and gathering up the ends of the net.

Lachlan shook his head, raising his spear. “Was that really necessary?” he asked, though the smile on his face belied the admonition of his words.

“We can’t have him seeing where our bolt-hole is, now can we?” Jade replied.
Towing their captured quarry behind her like a net full of bristlemouths, the emerald-scaled neondra began swimming back the way they had come, her long green hair, gathered into a tail, streaming behind her. For a moment she was able to spy the Royal Palace in the distance, over the top of a partially collapsed building. She guessed the crumbling structure had, at one time, been someone’s home and wondered if that someone still lived in the ruins; hiding now in fear from Lachlan and her. The contrast between the shining palace, nestled in with the other sprawling stone estates of the High Houses above, and the run-down coral homes of the Ghet below was jarring from her perspective down here in the slums. From where she swam, the decaying buildings reminded her of the skeletons of fish, devoured and then discarded to settle on the seafloor below. The carcasses had then been picked clean by the scavengers and bottom feeders that still lived here. She looked at her seifeira companion as he swam up next to her. She imagined for a moment Lachlan ending up like the muckmouths that skulked in the ruined buildings. His own house had been destroyed and the survivors scattered to the Deeps’ currents, but some had found refuge in other houses. She shook her head at the thought.
He is too strong, too much of a fighter to end up like these pitiful creatures that barely deserve the name merwin
. Zane had recognized the seifeira’s formidability and quickly recruited him for the Red Tridents.

“No,” Lachlan answered.
“I guess we can’t.” The seifeira stretched out his free hand, reminding Jade of the question she had asked of him. “Would you like some help?” he offered.

Jade regarded Lachlan, a determined look in her eye.
“No, I can manage just fine on my own, thank you very much,” she said, a wry grin turning up the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, I know you can,” Lachlan replied, a smile appearing on his face as well.

There was a glint in his milky eye
s that conjured up pleasant and fervent memories. Jade pushed those remembrances aside though, concentrating on the matter at hand. As they swam through the dark passages between the crumbling buildings of the Ghet, Jade forced herself to keep her eyes on the windows they passed and not the well-muscled tail of the merwin beside her.
That will come later
, she promised herself.