Mervidia (32 page)

Their passion eventually satisfied, they floated down to the floor of the cavern and laid in a tangled mess of
her tentacles and his long red hair. Marin could feel Zane tenderly stroke her cheek with the back of his fingers and kissed her once more. She winced. Apparently in their passion, he had inadvertently bitten her. Zane adjusted his body so that the tiny radiance from the orihalcyon fragment, now resting un-ensorcelled on the cavern floor, illuminated the tiny cut on her bottom lip, and he could examine the wound.

“Sorry, my love,” he whispered, lightly touching her lower lip with a fingertip.

“I obviously didn’t mind at the time,” Marin said, smiling and licking the small wound with her tongue, trying to prevent any blood from escaping into the water around them. Attracting a predator was not what they wanted. Both were satisfied that the cut was minor and had already stopped bleeding. Marin snuggled up to Zane and rested her head on his broad chest. The neondra wrapped his arms around her, gently holding her to him. The two merwin grew silent, listening to each other’s breathing, which had become labored from their energetic activities and was only now finally slowing.

Glancing up, Marin noticed that the discarded orihalcyon cast elongated shadows of the
octolaide and the neondra on the wall behind them, the two intertwined shades creating the outline of one peculiar looking, hulking fish. It had probably been some strange animal that had burrowed into the rock to create the cave; its grey polished walls were too smooth to be natural. Zane had often spoken of his theory as to the cave’s origins. He thought that it had once been an offshoot of Kopawe, long since cut off from its flows by one eruption or another. Either way, the cave was small, with room for maybe four merwin if huddled closely, but perfect for two seeking a secret place to rendezvous.

After the two merwin had first slept together in that very cave, Zane had carved their initials into the rear stone wall, but Marin had cast a spell on the stone right away, forcing it to fold over the inscription.
She did not want to leave any evidence of their relationship to be found by a wandering merwin or one that had managed to follow them. It was the only part of the hollow that was not smooth.

“Thank you for meeting me here,” Zane said, breaking the quiet.
“I really needed this after the events of late.” Marin propped herself up on an elbow, so that she could see her lover’s face. There was great sorrow in his eyes. Marin thought she spotted a streak of grey in his usually unblemished bright-red hair, but the offending strand may have been just a result of the dim light.

“I heard that the Red Tridents arrived too late to
help House Stonegem,” Marin offered, hoping Zane would open up about what had happened. He was obviously troubled, but his visage grew more glum at her words, and she regretted bringing it up at all. “It was an honorable effort, Zane,” she said, trying to smooth over her mishap.
Too late
, Marin cursed herself; the contented feeling had fled from her lover.

“We did our best,” the
neondra said, sitting up and leaning his back against the cavern wall. Marin sat up as well and stretched her tentacles, arranging them until they lay more comfortably in a circle around her. Zane retrieved his belt from the rocky floor next to him and fastened it back around his hips. His bone dagger hung from it in its sharkskin sheath. “We were able to save an egg,” he said somberly.

“
One
egg?” Marin asked, with an inhalation that expressed her shock. “Only one egg survived?” she asked again, clarifying that she was not judging Zane but was simply surprised that the assault of the house had nearly been a complete slaughter.

“Well, there were two Stonegem
faera away on business. They were out of the house when the Palace Guard carried out Regent Iago’s orders,” Zane added, his gaze cast mournfully at the stony floor.

“
Former
regent,” Marin corrected. “Father said that the Coral Assembly stripped Iago of his title. He will spend the rest of his days in… well, in a cage.” Zane probably knew about the Royal Palace’s dungeons from his time in House Ignis or from his expansive network of Red Trident connections, but she was not going to be the one to inform him of their existence.

“Good, it is exactly what he deserved for showing such a blatant disregard for innocent lives,” Zane nodded as he spoke and met Marin’s gaze.
“Regardless, the faera and the egg are staying in my home tonight, until they can arrange to move in with relatives in the morning. One of the merwin is a female, and she has agreed to adopt the egg, raising the fry as if it were her own when it hatches.” He lowered his head again, sorrow weighing heavily on his conscience.

Marin moved her tentacles until the side of her hip rested against Zane’s.
She brushed the crimson wash of hair out of the neondra’s face and tucked it behind his ear. Holding his square jaw in her palm, she raised his chin. He raised his eyes, meeting her gaze.

“You did more than any other Mervidian would have dared,” the
octolaide female said. “You are brave and fair. Our city would be a better place if someone like you were in power.” Marin dropped her fingers from his chin and shifted her eyes downwards, a sudden realization drawing her attention away from Zane.

I could make Zane king
, Marin thought.
He has no real ties to the throne, much like me, but… Mervidia respects him. If he were seen as king, wearing the Fangs in the machi vision, the Coral Assembly would be likely to accept him as monarch. Then, he would take me as his consort. I wouldn’t be queen, but I’d be with the merwin I love and as close to the throne as my parents believe is possible anyway.

Zane bent over until he was peeking up at Marin.
It was his turn to console her. The ruby-finned neondra brushed her head tentacles aside, a tender gesture offered in hopes that she would look at him.

“What troubles you, Marin?” he asked gently.

“Father thinks that Ebon will be chosen as king,” she lied; she couldn’t tell him of her family’s plan to sway the seeing ritual or her plan to appropriate it. No one could know, especially him. He was too honorable to accept the Fangs garnered if he suspected foul play was involved. “Or, they believe that I could be selected as consort to the chosen monarch, since Cassondra has been exiled for causing her brother’s death.”

“Wait… Cassondra has been exiled?” Zane asked
. Marin grew angry; he wasn’t concentrating on the most vital detail in the matter at hand. Zane seemed to catch on, perhaps recognizing her irritation and realizing his error. “Never mind,” he said, focusing back on his lover. Disappointment clouded his face and a frown settled on his lips. “You would allow yourself to be wed to someone else?”

“I’d have no choice, Zane,” Marin said.
“You know my parents. I am just a tool to them, a way to reap more power for House Chimaera. They don’t care about my feelings.”

“What do
you
want, Marin?” Zane asked, his tone agitated but the question poignant.

“I want to be Queen,” Marin said, her tone heated and her voice rising with defiance.
Zane’s wilted look reigned in her lust for power though. “But, I would choose you as my consort, Zane. I… love you,” she finished, stumbling on her final words, sounding weak by Mervidia’s standards, but such words were safely spoken in a rocky hole in the seafloor.
That felt good to say,
Marin thought.
Finally, I was able to tell him how I feel
. It was the first time she’d spoken the words aloud and she felt relief. Her neondra lover’s face relaxed and then brightened. He kissed her lightly.

“I love you too, Marin,” Zane said, his tone not the least bit anxious.
In fact, his voice was confident.

Yes, Zane, you wear the Fangs
, Marin thought.
Rule Mervidia as the First King did, with strength and fairness… with me by your side.
Marin’s heart began to throb with excitement at the idea, her course of action decided. A smile cracked her lips, a rare occurrence these days. She kissed Zane and roused her tentacles, as she arose and gathered up her things.

“Must you go so soon?” Zane asked, disappointment plain on his face.

Marin picked up her mother’s dagger and tucked it back into her belt. She mumbled a word of power, followed by an exhalation across her hand, as if she were blowing a kiss. Bubbles cascaded down from her hand and enveloped the piece of orihalcyon on the cavern floor. Once again, the hot stone was encapsulated in a single bubble. She turned to answer Zane, as she picked up the glowing stone.

“I have much to do to prepare
for the morrow. The Coral Assembly is doing a formal machi ritual in hopes of selecting the new king, and I must be ready… for the outcome,” the octolaide replied, quickly covering for the slip up. Her smile still turned up the corners of her mouth, “I will see you again soon, my love.” Marin swam into the neondra’s arms and kissed him deeply. As swiftly as she had approached him, she swam away and out of the cave, leaving Zane in the dark.

Chapter Thirty-Two

As he sat
waiting at the long stone table, the tip of one of Uchenna’s tentacles twitched nervously.
What in the Deeps is taking Damaris so long?
he wondered, looking around the Coral Assembly’s meeting chamber. The octolaide did his best to hide his anxiousness from the rest of the representatives gathered around the table and, given the circumstances, felt as though he was doing an admirable job. Despite his and Odette’s careful planning, there was still the slight chance that things could go awry.
If we’re discovered interfering with the Assembly’s seeing….
He put such cynical thoughts aside and forced himself to remain calm. The only indication of his unease was the twitching of one of his tentacles, and that, thankfully, was hidden beneath the table. His apprehension about acting nervous was assuaged somewhat as he looked around the room. Everyone seemed to be experiencing the same feelings of disquiet in one way or another.

Uchenna saw Nayan and Vaschel look
ing repeatedly at the closed doors to the Assembly chamber with uncertainty and then back at the gathered representatives, as though trying to gauge their moods. Slone and Penn were continuously flexing their webbed hands around the hilts of their blades. It was a nervous tic that Uchenna had seen in the warriors before, though rarely had they displayed it at the same time. Meanwhile, Quag, never one for social graces, was loudly and continuously drumming his long claws on the hard stone table in his impatience. It was a monotonous clicking noise that was beginning to wear on even Thaddeus’ usually stoic demeanor. Several times Uchenna caught the octolaide representative looking out of the corner of his eye at the grogstack, his mouth tight with irritation.

Only Kiva seemed untouched by the nervousness permeating the room.
The faera floated serenely above her chair, her face calm. There may have been the hint of a smile on her lips, but given the merwin’s diminutive size and the distance between them, Uchenna couldn’t tell for certain.

“How much longer do we wait?” Hasad asked impatiently.
The blue-scaled seifeira had always been a patient and practical merwin, but even his forbearance was wearing thin. “There is a large harvest of kelp that is due to come in soon, and I need to be there to oversee it.”

“If we don’t have a new king soon, your plants will be the least of your worries,” Vaschel r
eplied, the pink and red ethyrie’s long flowing tail flukes fluttering angrily.

“It won’t matter who wears the Fangs if we’ve all starved to death waiting on the Queen Mother,” the
seifeira replied. The glowing esca dangling from the tendril sprouting from his forehead bobbed with annoyance as he spoke.

“Hasad brings up an excellent point,” Uchenna interjected, his voice calm, betraying none of his nervousness.
“As important as this ritual is, we all have matters that require our attention.”

“Perhaps we should delay the seeing then?” Nayan proposed, her bulbous lower body gently pulsating beneath her to maintain her place in the water.

“No,” Uchenna said, more quickly than he had intended.
Odette already has the materials gathered and the sigils inscribed to commandeer this damn seeing. It needs to happen now,
he thought to himself. To the others gathered in the room he said, “Vaschel spoke truly. Mervidia needs this. With the Queen’s death, Iago’s arrest, and Cassondra’s banishment for murdering her brother, the city is in upheaval. Our people had barely begun to mourn Beryl’s passing before they were hit with the shock of House Stonegem’s destruction and Flinn’s tragic demise. Mervidia needs to see a ruler on the throne, wearing the Fangs, to restore calm to the city. The Coral Assembly must show the people that things are returning to normal, before the whole city begins to panic.”

“Any more than they already are,” Penn added.
“I am receiving reports, more and more frequently, of altercations in the streets. For now, the numbers involved are small, but that’s how things like this start. Given time, I believe they will grow.”

“And soon,” Sloane added.
The neondra representative was nodding in agreement, his wide orange and black striped fins swaying with the gesture. “Though I doubt my reports are as accurate as Domo Penn’s, they say much the same thing.”

“Then perhaps we should proceed without her,” Thaddeus said, speaking for the first time since the Coral Assembly had gathered that morning.

Uchenna looked at the octolaide representative, working hard to keep a look of curiosity from his face.
Where did this change of heart come from, Thaddeus?
Uchenna wondered.
Usually, you are such a staunch defender of the Divine Family and the status quo. Could it be that you are coming around? Have you finally pulled your head far enough out of House Lumen’s nether regions that you can see the current beginning to shift?

“Who would
be the seer then, if not Damaris?” Nayan asked. She looked at no one in particular as she posed the question, instead addressing the Coral Assembly as a whole. Beside her, the seat reserved for the ethyrie representative remained conspicuously empty.

“Ghita,” Vaschel suggested.
“Her gift is almost as strong as her brother’s was.” Nods of agreement and assent quickly followed the ethyrie representative’s statement.

King Reth’s power of foresight
had
been as strong as any merwin who had worn the Fangs before him, but Ghita’s gift was very nearly a match for the late monarch,
Uchenna thought to himself.
Had he not ascended the Throne of Mervidia, his sister would have been a worthy substitute with regards to the Divine Family’s gift.
However, Ghita ultimately had not proven to be emotionally resilient enough to bear the weight of the Fangs, as Reth had. Uchenna wondered if the late king’s sister was up to the task now, but he had little choice other than to agree with Vaschel.
The seeing
must
happen today,
he thought.

“Vaschel is right,” Uchenna said, eliciting a minor look of shock from the head of House Paua and several others around the table.
The representatives from House Chimaera and the former regent’s father rarely agreed on anything, much less voiced it where others could hear.

Again, Kiva did not respond, verbally or emotionally, to his statement.
The faera representative had floated strangely quiet above her chair for the entire meeting. It was quite a change from the last Assembly meeting, where she had been screaming for Iago’s blood. Had he not been so preoccupied with his own schemes, Uchenna would have been most interested as to what had softened her demeanor so. More pressing matters took precedent over his curiosity.

“For Mervidia’s sake, the seeing must happen today,” Uchenna stated.
The octolaide looked to Nayan. “Is Ghita up to the task?” he asked. “Can she perform the ritual in her sister-in-law’s stead?” The kalku looked pleadingly at the jellod machi.
Please say yes,
he begged silently.
Otherwise our scheme is going to end up a pile of rancid fish crap on House Chimaera’s floor.

Nayan considered Uchenna’s question for several long, agonizing moments before respon
ding. “Normally, I would say to let her recover from the series of emotional shocks which she has received over the last few days, but I understand that the situation is dire.” The jellod looked significantly at Penn and Slone, acknowledging the information they had presented regarding the state of Mervidia. “I believe that Ghita is still strong enough to be the ritual’s seer.” Sighs of relief sounded around the room. “However,” Nayan interjected, “it is not my opinion that truly matters. It is Ghita’s. If she does not feel she has the wherewithal to take Damaris’ place, then I will have to respect that, as will we all.”

“We have no choice but to ask her,” Kiva said, finally
entering into the conversation. “Since, it looks as though Damaris will not be joining us.” The faera’s tiny grin grew faintly, pulling further at the corners of her mouth as she spoke.

Uchenna
remained curious as to the faera’s source of mirth, but he had more pressing matters at hand to which to devote his mental energies. “Ask her, Nayan,” the octolaide said, couching the statement somewhere between asking a question and issuing an order. “Please,” he added, when she scowled briefly at him.

“As you wish,” she said, her voice betraying the pity she had for the mourning Ghita.

And be quick about it,
Uchenna mentally decreed.
Once Odette prepares her own ritual, the components won’t stay viable long.

Odette anxiously fingered the latch on the small coral cage holding the vampire squid, waiting for the pulse of energy that would let her know that the Assembly had begun their seeing. The arcane surge would then be her signal to start her own ritual, one that would skew the prophetic ceremony to House Chimaera’s benefit.

Around her slender neck hung a vial of blood coral, its surface lightly scraping her skin with each breath.
A small taste of pain to keep the senses sharp,
she mused. The flask’s true purpose, however, was much more practical. Within the container was the intermixed blood of Odette and her kalku husband. Both had been gathered that morning, before Uchenna had departed for the Coral Assembly meeting. The thick red fluid was slowly seeping out of the blood coral vial, onto the pale skin above the female kalku’s full breasts, and then into her body through the abrasion caused by the bottle itself. It kept a constant blood connection between the two octolaides, which would alert her to the ritual’s commencement. More importantly, it would act as the conduit between their two bodies through which she would work her own ritual and leave the Coral Assembly none the wiser, as they proceeded with the seeing to choose Mervidia’s new king.

Odette, not usually one to be so self-aggrandizing, couldn’t help but smile at her own cleve
rness as she checked again on the arcane materials arrayed carefully around her in the ritual circles. The basic shapes had been laid down permanently into the stone floor many cycles ago by Uchenna’s Grandfather. He had carved two concentric circles into the rock and then inlaid them with violet coral, which he had crushed to a fine powder and sealed in place with magic and merwin blood. In between the rings was left an empty space two hand-spans wide. It was in this gap that Odette had inscribed the runes and placed the orihalcyon ore as well as other items needed for the spell of interference. She would slip, unnoticed, into the Coral Assembly’s seeing and substitute her son’s image for whatever merwin the ritual would normally have conjured.
Ebon will wear the Fangs, and they will all think it was the Divine Family’s gift that guided my son towards the throne.

Marin scrambled around her room, quickly inscribing the sigils of power she would need for her interceding ritual onto the flagstone floor of her room. She dipped the small piece of sponge attached to the end of a slender bone rod in her left hand into the bottle in her right. The chunk of soft porous material came out covered in a viscid glob of crimson shot through with swirls of black. As she drew the rune for the Fangs, she mumbled dark words of power, infusing the blood and ink of the squid she had killed with kalku magic. The liquid turned purple, seeping deep into the stone beneath it. The result was more stain than it was writing, the sorcerous energy sealing the inscription temporarily into the rock. The desiccated corpse of the squid floated off to the side, a bone dagger still protruding from its lifeless body, forgotten.

Marin, normally meticulous in keeping her rituals and the space around them tidy, ignored the dead sea creature floating around her room.
She was focusing all of her energy and concentration into carefully inscribing the runes while, at the same time, making sure she flawlessly recited the words of power that infused them with kalku sorcery. Her father, a harsh and unforgiving teacher, would have been appalled that she had left the squid’s corpse floating about.

A
sloppy ritual is the sign of a weak and disordered mind,
Uchenna’s voice echoed in Marin’s head.
This is not some game, daughter. We are shaping the life force of the sea itself, bending it to our whims with the power of our will. The slightest distraction can bring about disaster.

Marin suppressed a smile, fearing that it would alter the precise enunciation needed for each and every word of the spell used to seal the ink and blood in place.
Oh, father,
she thought.
If you knew what I was doing now, the cleanliness of my ritual space wouldn’t even be on the list of why you’d be angry.

As the young
octolaide kalku moved to inscribe the next rune, the Sigil of the Crossed Bones, she allowed herself a tiny, satisfied grin. The irony of using the sparse knowledge, which her father had deigned to impart to her, against him was not lost on her. For one of the first times in her life, she was not afraid of his condemnations. If things worked out the way she planned, she would never have to worry about her father’s disapproval again.