Mervidia (16 page)

Chapter Seventeen

“Perhaps you should buy a bigger bed,” Marin teased
, wrapping her tentacles around Zane’s rich red tail and drawing him closer. The young octolaide placed her delicate fingers on Zane’s arms, her small hands having no hope of encircling his large biceps, but she gripped them tightly nonetheless; it was another way for her to anchor herself to the neondra. “This one is too small.” Her grin was an alluring mix of play and mischievous promise; a dangerous vortex that threatened to draw Zane in with an even stronger pull than the octolaide’s tentacles.

The captain of the Red Tridents didn’t care
why Marin had him in her embrace; he was just glad to be in it. “And how would that look to my soldiers?” Zane asked, grinning as he gently stroked her cheek with a calloused hand. Marin had been raised and pampered in one of the High Houses, yet Zane noticed that she didn’t mind the rough feel of his hands. “I am supposed to be an example of how the houses, both low and high, can live and work together, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. I shouldn’t be flaunting some large ostentatious bed in front of my subordinates, just because I can afford it.” Despite his jovial tone, there was some truth to what Zane was saying; a captain should endure, or enjoy, the same conditions as his soldiers. “Besides,” he said, also pulling Marin closer, “why would I, an unattached merwin, need a larger bed? It’s only
me
sleeping here, after all.” He grinned roguishly and moved his head forward to kiss her, but she pushed him away with her arms.

“Don’t be that way,” Marin said, her voice irritated, but Zane could hear an undercurrent of remorse in her words.
“You know how things are. My house….”

“I know about your house,” Zane interjected quietly, trying to placate her.
“And I am fine with it,” he grabbed her chin and forced her to look into his eyes. “Really,” he stated with honest conviction. Marin had just as many reasons to keep their relationship a secret as he did. Her father, Domo Uchenna, would be furious to find out his daughter had been sharing a bed with someone not of
his
choosing. He would be especially irate to discover that it was Zane; a merwin who had chosen to leave House Ignis behind to live in the Ghet and found his own mercenary company. To many of the High Houses, Chimaera included, Zane was foolish at best and deranged at worst. What he was attempting to accomplish with the Red Tridents flew in the face of cycles of Mervidian tradition. Zane had been born to one of the High Houses. He had thrown away his birthright in House Ignis to lead the Red Tridents. Its members were drawn from all over Mervidia, from houses high, low, and even the houseless.

His actions were seen by many as those of
a merwin who had clearly lost some of his mental acuity. Even amongst the lower houses, some thought that Zane was upsetting the status quo too much. They feared it would be them who bore the brunt of the wrath of the High Houses and not a scion of House Ignis. However, his merwin believed in what he was doing.
Mervidians could, and should, pull together
, he thought,
regardless of their house, to protect the city as a whole and stop the infighting that is causing their great civilization to destroy itself.
More importantly, though, his soldiers also believed in
him
. That trust strengthened him on the rare days that his own faith in his cause waivered.

However, the knowledge that he was involved with the
blood heir of House Chimaera, the second highest house in Mervidia, had the potential to cause doubts as to how committed Zane actually was to turning his back on a life of privilege. He needed to be wholly committed to leading an army made up of those who also believed that the house of their birth should not be the most important guiding factor in their life.

Zane looked into Marin’s eyes, smiling.
“I know that if your parents found out about us, there would be a race between the two of them as to who would kill me first,” he said jokingly. He was trying to lighten the mood and Marin’s heart, but there was a core of truth to his words that made even him a little nervous. Her face showed the same trepidation. Marin’s mother and father were two of the most powerful kalku in Mervidia. The slow and painful ways in which they could kill him were various and many.

He didn’t want to think on Marin’s parents overly much, nor did he wish to reflect again on the report he had received earlier regarding Jade, one of his most trusted merwin.
Instead, he concentrated on the beautiful merwin in his bed, and the things he would rather be doing right now than discussing her parents murdering him or the death of one of his Red Tridents.

He placed his hands on her waist.
He kissed her several times along the base of the long tentacles that sprouted from the back of her head like a mane of hair. His lips traveled up her neck to her long ears that swept back from the sides of her head, similar to a seifeira’s but with much more elegance. They were not spined like a seifeira’s, but smooth, with a single cartilaginous ridge across the top. He placed a hand behind her head, interlacing his fingers into the short slender protrusions there; vestigial appendages that never fully developed into proper tentacles. As he kissed her fully on the mouth, he felt Marin’s head tentacles shudder and then wrap themselves around his wrist, holding his hand in place.

After a moment he pulled away and looked into her milky white eyes.
The nostril slits in her tiny flat nose pulsated open and closed; a clear sign that she was enjoying herself as much as he. His eyes traveled to the tiny fin, a modest ridge really, that rose from her smooth forehead and tapered gently back across her skull to join with the tentacles at the back.

Marin is a rare and beautiful creature,
Zane thought to himself.
People should tell her that more often.
As he opened his mouth to do just that, he heard a pounding at his front door.

Marin quickly disentangled from Zane, freeing herself from his grasp and darting across the small room.
Despite her slender frame, the young octolaide woman was surprisingly strong. Floating in the water, arms folded across her chest, she still managed to look imperious, despite being startled by the late night visitor.

Zane smiled to himself.
How did I get so lucky as to catch such a lovely fish in my net?
he wondered.
Even caught by surprise, she is still in command of the room.
My
room,
Zane noted. Barring great misfortune, when Marin became the Domo of House Chimaera - and he had no doubt that she would hold the title regardless of whom she married - the young kalku woman would be a force to be reckoned with.
Those poor souls on the Coral Assembly won’t know what hit them,
he chuckled mentally.

“Who would that be?” Marin asked, giving Zane a heated look.
“It seems entirely too late to be receiving visitors.” Her brows were knit together in ire.

“What?” Zane asked, taken aback by her pointed question.
“You don’t think that’s…, that I would…, not when you’re.…” He quickly shut his mouth, realizing he was making the situation worse by babbling about it. Zane took deep breath to calm himself before beginning again in his attempt to assuage Marin’s angry assumption.

“I assure you,” he said plainly, “that I am just as surprised at a visitor at this hour as you are.
However, my guess is that it is an important matter that has to do with the Red Tridents. Otherwise, my guards would not intrude upon my privacy so late in the evening, especially when I gave them
explicit
instructions to leave me undisturbed tonight, after you appeared at my door.”

Marin’s brow relaxed, though she kept her arms crossed in front of her shapely bare chest in irritation.

Zane felt some of the tension that had suddenly sprung up between his shoulder blades fall away; tension he hadn’t realized was there until it disappeared. The young octolaide believed him.
A good thing,
he thought to himself,
since it’s the truth.
Marin’s parents were frightening without a doubt, but their daughter was not one to be trifled with either. She undoubtedly showed potential to surpass even their prodigious magical talent someday and someday soon. Despite her growing powers and her parents’ callous manner, she still seemed to be on the path to becoming a better merwin than Uchenna and Odette; a glimmer of light in the sinister abyss of House Chimaera.

Zane grabbed his sharkskin vest from where it lay on the floor and swam from his bedcha
mber. He pulled the garment on over his head and then carefully drew the curtain closed behind him. He checked to make sure that none of his personal quarters, and more importantly anyone in them, was visible from the main room of his house.
The last thing Marin and I need is her getting caught here,
he thought to himself.
Jade almost spotted Marin the last time she…,
Zane’s internal voice came to a sudden stop. His mind replayed the report he received earlier that day regarding the young neondra woman under his command. He stopped swimming all together, simply floating in the middle of the room as his brain tried to come to terms with what had happened.

Another insistent knock at the door drew him from his reverie.
Pull yourself together, Zane
, he admonished himself, fastening the last ties of his thick sharkskin vest. Inwardly, the captain of the Red Tridents welcomed any distraction from Jade’s death and the part he felt he had played in it. Such thoughts were one of the reasons that he had been happy to see Marin earlier that evening. She had arrived unexpectedly at the concealed door on the side of his house. He would have been thankful for anything to distract himself from the onus of leadership, even if just for a little while, but her presence was particularly welcome. The octolaide woman’s charms had been just the balm he needed to soothe his mind and spirit.

Zane opened the front door and a startled Lachlan floated before him, his large tattooed fist raised to announce his presence again.
The seifeira’s neck gills were open wide, gulping water into his body. Lachlan had apparently hurried there and was still recovering from his effort. Zane felt his stomach go cold as he regarded Lachlan.

“Come inside,” said the leader of the Red Tridents, looking over Lachlan’s shoulder to see if
anyone had accompanied him. Other than the two guards posted outside, he appeared to be alone.

Lachlan opened his mouth to speak, but Zane silenced him with a wave of his webbed hand.
“Not outside,” he said. “Come in. We can talk privately.”
As privately as one can in Mervidia,
Zane reminded himself cynically.

The
seifeira gave him a frustrated look but complied, swimming obediently into the house. Zane looked at the two guards posted outside his door and nodded to them. “Is he alone?” the commander asked, to confirm his own observations.

“Yes, Sir,” the larger merwin posted at the door replied, his voice deep and resonant.
His bald head creased slightly with an unasked question, though he said nothing.

“Good,” Zane replied, causing the guard to look even more confused.
“We are not to be disturbed.”

Zane’s lingering irritation at the interruption of his time with Marin, and the discord it had caused between the two of them, must have shown on his face.
The captain had the door already halfway closed before the guard responded with a hasty salute and a “Yes, Sir.”

At least he has the decency to look embarrassed,
Zane thought. The neondra quickly pushed his feelings of annoyance aside. The guard outside was a good merwin, loyal and quite capable of following orders. For him to allow Zane to be disturbed spoke of the urgency of Lachlan’s visit.

Zane turned to face Lachlan and found the merwin hovering anxiously in the middle of the room, his hand to his chest in a salute.
“Sir, I am sorry to come at so late an hour, but I bear important news that could not wait until morning. The guards outside told me of your orders not to be disturbed, but I insisted on seeing you. They are not at fault, Captain.”

A smile creased Zane’s face.
He couldn’t help it. Even now, Lachlan was concerned for his fellow Red Tridents; worried that they might be reprimanded because of his own actions. Zane’s heart ached looking at the seifeira and the news he would have to share with him.

“I have discovered the identity of the queen’s assassin,” Lachlan blurted out, before Zane could stop him.

The neondra commander swam closer to Lachlan. “Not so loud,” Zane said, his voice low.

Lachlan shot his captain a confused look.
“Captain?”

Zane placed a hand on Lachlan’s shoulder, and the
seifeira’s look of confusion deepened. “Even here,” the neondra indicated his home with a wave of his hand, “we can never be too sure who is listening.
Mervidia hears all
.” It was an old saying, but true nonetheless. Zane took his hand from the seifeira’s shoulder. The neondra’s eyes darted quickly to the curtain of his bedchamber and back again. Lachlan did not appear to notice the captain’s furtive glance.