Mervidia (35 page)

I may be a more skilled ritualist than Uchenna, but I cannot best him in magical combat,
Odette thought, trying to decide what to do when he eventually found her. They would undoubtedly exchange heated words. The domo often resorted to magic before calming down enough to discuss things more reasonably. Uchenna’s temper was his weakness, and this time she doubted she’d be able to soothe him before he did something rash.
If I can get close to him…
. Her white webbed hand closed decisively around the dagger, and she handed it to a rear tentacle for safekeeping. No matter their history together and any possible bright future they might enjoy, Odette would
not
let Uchenna kill her daughter.

As she waited, Odette tried to steady herself.
She watched the dead squid float up in the water, released from its pinioned prison on the floor. It trailed wisps of red as its blood seeped from the rent where the dagger had been lodged.

It only needs forehead piercings and the creature
, barring its size, would not look much different from my husband,
Odette inwardly mused trying to lighten the situation. The squid’s tentacles floated limply in the room’s gentle current, and it stared blankly forward. An idea bloomed in her head.
I’ll need more than levity if I am to overpower Uchenna.

Odette took a deep breath and closed her eyes in concentration.
The kalku imbibed the blood-tainted water into her lungs, but she did not cough. Instead, she absorbed the blood into her body, using her magic to harness the life-giving fluid, snatching the last of its energy before it ebbed away along with the dead animal. Her body hummed with magic and her skin tingled warmly, as a minor surge of power traveled through her veins.

Odette opened her eyes, feeling at least partially revitalized.
Her vision was heightened, keenly sharp as she looked at her vulnerable daughter. Marin mumbled something inaudible in her sleep and rolled over in her bed. There was a strange outline of energy surrounding the younger octolaide that Odette would have picked up on sooner had she not been so tired. It was faint yet strangely familiar, a memory from Odette’s time caring for Damaris during the Queen Mother’s time of infertility. The octolaide’s eyes widened with realization. At least part of Marin’s plan unfurled before Odette like an opening sea blossom.

Clever girl
, Odette smiled, swelling with pride at Marin’s resourcefulness. The youngster was swimming along in the shadow of her mother and grandmother.
Bold… rash… but clever nonetheless... I will take your lead on this one though, daughter, seeing as I have no other choice. It might not have been the way I had chosen to get us to the throne, but still it is a sound plan. If only you had discussed this course of action with me earlier, we could have executed it better, together.
The sound of the door to the ritual room pounding open again refocused the matron on the present situation.

She heard Uchenna calling her name in the atrium, drawing the attention of Kwar and Jiva, who came up the tunnel again at their
domo’s shouts and hailed him. Odette could hear him questioning the guards right outside Marin’s room.

It was Kwar’s voice
that Odette made out saying, “We saw Odette not long ago. She was in the hallway, here at Marin’s chamber door.”

The kalku knew she had to at least try to talk her husband down first.
She straightened her spine, making sure to jut her hip out in an alluring way that elongated her smooth tummy. Odette affixed a sultry smile on her lips and splayed her tentacles wide in an attempt to hide the ritual behind her. He was looking for her and would hopefully not think to glance to the floor, not yet.
The ritual cannot be the first thing he sees,
she thought,
or there will be no negotiation
. The door began to open. She tightened her tentacle’s grip on the dagger, ready to strike with it at a moment’s notice, should their conversation turn to bloodshed.

Chapter Thirty-
Five

One of the Palace Guards standing outside the Assembly chamber’s doors gestured to Zane. “They will see you now.” The Red Trident captain had been waiting fretfully in the antechamber ever since Captain Raygo’s merwin had come to collect him at his home in the Ghet. Though he had not been told exactly why the Assembly had summoned him, Zane guessed it had to do with the vision he had seen.
Everyone had seen,
he mentally corrected himself.
The rest of the Red Tridents saw what I saw as well: me, sitting on the throne and wearing the Fangs.

As the Palace Guard had led him through the city, Zane saw the same bewildered looks on all of the merwin he saw.
The entire city shared the same vision. My contacts informed me that the Coral Assembly was going to have Damaris perform a prophetic ritual, but why show it to all of Mervidia?
It didn’t make any sense. The neondra knew that he was concentrating his focus on the actions of the Assembly to distract himself from the other question at hand. Did they want him to be king?
Could
he be king?
I’m not of divine blood. My house doesn’t even have a seat on the Coral Assembly. Great Deeps, am I going to be king?

The doors were opened before Zane
, and he had a brief moment to take in the room. A long plain stone table took up most of one half of the chamber. Eleven seats were arranged around the slab of unadorned rock. Five ornate chairs of spell-shaped coral sat on each side, while an eleventh rested at the far end. It was stone, larger than the others, and more elaborate. Inlaid high into the seat’s back was a depiction of the Fangs set in red coral.
That must be where the king sits. Where I might sit,
Zane thought, as a shiver of fear and excitement shot through his body.

T
hen the shouting reached his ears, tearing him from his contemplation of the Royal Chair on the Coral Assembly.

Zane hadn’t known what to expect
, as the doors to the Coral Assembly’s chamber were opened to admit him, but it wasn’t this. He had anticipated indifferent silence, scowls of anger, or looks of quiet condescension. What greeted the neondra, however, was the sound of a multitude of loud voices arguing… about him. As the entranceway closed behind him, the rumbling of the uklod bone on the stone floor did not divert the assembly’s attention, as caught up as they were in their debate.

“It’s ridiculous!” Slone shouted, his orange and black striped fins waving with the vehemence of his words and the gesticulations that went with them.
“He’s a nobody. Worse, he’s a nobody that turned his back on his own house.”

“In order to help the city as a whole,” Hasad replied, his voice strong but remarkably calm in the face of Slone’s vociferous tirade.

“In order to help himself, you mean,” Vaschel interjected. “He left his house in a vain attempt to garner glory for himself, because he knew that House Ignis would never rise high enough to give him the power he wanted.”

“I don’t think your
vast
influence extends into reading the minds of other merwin,” Kiva retorted snidely. “Or am I mistaken? Do you have some hidden talent from your distant and tenuous connection to the Divine Family that you can now see into other’s heads?”

Vaschel’s pink and red hued fins turned dark with anger.
He opened his mouth, clearly preparing to unleash a verbal assault on the faera representative, when he was interrupted by Quag’s deep baritone voice.

“Let’s ask him,” the
grogstack said, his voice cutting through the water and silencing the Assembly’s spirited argument about Zane’s future. The room went quiet as all eyes turned to the neondra, who was floating silently just inside the chamber, to the shock of many. He floated on the narrow side of the table near the doors; the only side with no chair.

The leader of the Red Tridents froze, a bristlemouth suddenly realizing it had attracted the a
ttention of a much larger predator. The most powerful and influential merwin in Mervidia looking at him left him momentarily paralyzed. Zane recovered quickly though, bending at the waist to bow before the Assembly. “Thank you for the honor of receiving me, Members of the….”

“Oh stow it,” Penn interrupted.
“You know why you’re here. Apparently, the whole city knows why you’re here.” The Domo of House Yellowtail encompassed all of Mervidia with an expansive gesture. “Just come out with it.” Penn crossed his arms across his large, bare chest.

“Come out with what?” Zane asked.
His nervousness was temporarily overshadowed by this irritation with his fellow neondra.
I thought we had come to an understanding, Penn. But, clearly that has been as forgotten as our Culling together.

Nayan swam forward, her translucent lower half billowing out and constricting,
propelling her across the room to float beside Zane. “Do you intend to take the throne and wear the Fangs?”

Zane gulped water, his neck gills flaring wide open.
He had never met the jellod representative before today. According to her reputation, she was a soft-spoken diplomatic merwin, the calm voice of reason and mercy on the Coral Assembly. He had not expected her to be so blunt.

“Well, I… of course
, we have to consider… especially with the…,” Zane’s voice trailed off.

“Oh, spit it out boy!” Slone shouted.
“Tell us you wish to wear the Fangs, so we can all agree it’s a horrible idea and move on to a solution with a little more common sense behind it.”

“Wait one moment,” Hasad said, before Zane could reply.
“You say you want to use common sense, so let’s apply some here.” The seifeira looked at everyone in the room. “Mervidia needs a leader who appeals to everyone, not just us. Zane has ingratiated himself with his Red Tridents to the common merwin.”

The young
neondra objected to the word
ingratiated
, but couldn’t find his voice quickly enough to object before the faera representative replied.

“He’s from House Ignis, as well” Kiva added.
“His family name will carry some weight with the other High Houses.”

“He left Ignis,” Vaschel retorted.
“The other High Houses won’t look too kindly on that.”

“You never really
leave
your house,” Thaddeus rejoined.

“Your brother did,” Penn said, looking keenly at the
octolaide representative.

“I don’t think Ambrose is the best example of…,” Thaddeus began.

“We are getting off topic, my fellow Assembly members,” Nayan said, her serene tones somehow heard above the louder voices of the Domos of House Tenebris and House Yellowtail. Zane felt an odd wave of warm water emanate from the jellod next to him and wondered if she had used her machi talents to make herself heard above the din.

Clearly, there is more mettle to Nayan than the rumors suggest,
Zane thought. The neondra looked around the room in the intervening silence. Normally, he was quite skilled at reading his adversaries and picking them out from amongst his allies. However, that was during combat.
This is an entirely different arena,
Zane realized.
Though just as deadly and the stakes are much higher.
These were waters he had never swum in before.

Hasad seemed to be on his side, as
was Domo Kiva, but, according to Lachlan, the head of House Perna always had an agenda of her own. Whatever her reasons for supporting Zane, he could be certain that they benefitted her in some way.

On the other side of the debate were Slone, who clearly opposed Zane’s ascension to the throne, and Penn, with whom Zane had apparently used up whatever goodwill existed between them after the massacre of House Stonegem.

You’re the ones who dragged me from my house, as I was discussing with my Red Tridents ways to keep riots from breaking out in the city,
Zane thought, annoyed.
If you don’t want me to be king, a position I never would have sought out in the first place, then why bother summoning me here, taking me away from trying to clean up the mess you all made?

Nayan’s support was behind the seeing ritual that had swept over the city, rather than with Zane himself, but the result was much the same.
By all accounts, the jellod had unwavering faith in the Divine Family. Any vision that came from one of its sons or daughters, no matter who it said would wear the Fangs, would necessitate her backing. Thaddeus, on the other hand, seemed to be wavering back and forth, as though some internal struggle were making his own decision hard to reach. Zane thought it might have something to do with the octolaide’s brother, who had left House Tenebris in much the same way Zane had left House Ignis, but it was impossible to be certain.

Quag simply stared at Zane, the Grogstock’s expression unreadable.
The huge merwin’s milky white eyes watching him made the neondra uncomfortable; a shark regarding a fish and trying to decide if it was hungry enough to put forth the effort to eat it.

“We all agreed that we would perform a seeing and use the knowledge gathered by the gift of the Divine Family to determine who should wear the Fangs,” Nayan said.
Again, there was a strength in the jellod’s convictions that belied her gentle demeanor.

“We didn’t agree to be bound by it though,” Vaschel countered.
“We can’t base the future of Mervidia on vague premonitions.”

“There was nothing
vague
about it,” Kiva replied, her eyes filled with ire as she looked at the Domo of House Paua. There was something else between the faera and the ethyrie that Zane was unaware of; however, it had plainly led to a fair degree of animosity on Kiva’s part towards the former regent’s sire. “Ghita’s vision clearly showed Zane on the throne, wearing the Fangs, and bearing a Red Trident. We
all
saw it, or do you deny that you saw it as well, Domo Vaschel?”

The head of Mervidia’s most powerful house looked like he wanted to refute Kiva’s assertion with every fiber of his being
, but Vaschel could not bring himself to do so. He shook his head slowly, mumbling, and lowered his gaze to the long stone table before him.

“I didn’t hear you!” Kiva said, hammering her opponent with her words.

“No!” Vaschel yelled back, raising his head once more and staring venom at the tiny faera. Much more quietly he said, “I saw what you saw,” his voice sounding small and uncertain after his vehement reply.

“Need I remind all of you that the whole city saw the vision?” Nayan said filling the silence that followed the Domo of House Paua’s affirmation.
No one replied to the jellod’s words. Only Quag reacted at all, shaking his head, not understanding that the question had been rhetorical. “It would be useless to even attempt to deny who sat on the throne of Mervidia in Ghita’s vision,” Nayan continued. “All of Mervidia saw clearly that Zane was wearing the Fangs.”

Ghita?
Zane wondered silently.
I thought Damaris would have led the ritual. Why did they use King Reth’s sister, especially in her current state?
The neondra began to wonder if the distraught ethyrie had somehow infected the ritual with her grief.

“But not who ruled beside him,” Vaschel responded.

“Pardon?” Nayan replied.

“What?” Zane said pulled from his contemplations.

“If we are to proceed with this madness, Zane will need a consort, will he not?” Vaschel said, his voice gaining confidence with each word.

“Well, of course,
an heir is one of the first priorities of a new monarch,” Nayan said uncertainly, not understanding where the Domo of House Paua was going with his line of questions.

“Wait a moment,” Zane tried to interject, but was quickly dismissed by Vaschel with a wave of his webbed hand.

“We can choose who to make his consort,” the pink and red finned ethyrie stated.

“Don’t I get…,” the Captain of the Red Tridents began before being interrupted once more.
Zane was beginning to get irritated, first by the gesture of dismissal from Vaschel and then being cut off midsentence once again.

“Traditionally, the Coral Assembly reserves the right to approve of the king or queen’s co
nsort, yes,” Nayan said, her tone still sounding confused.

“So,” Vaschel said, a smile growing slowly across his face.
“We pick a consort for Zane who actually knows something about ruling the city.”

“Someone who would serve as your puppet, of course,” Kiva replied, the same malicious look still in her eye as she regarded Vaschel.
“Like your son, but maybe someone a bit smarter this time?”

The Domo of House Paua opened his mouth to hurl a venomous retort, but Penn spoke before he could reply.
“Someone from the Divine Family would be ideal,” he stated. “That way, we would garner the support of the High Houses and the common merwin at the same time.” The yellow-finned neondra rose up from his chair, swimming around behind it, and placing his webbed hands on top of the ornate piece of furniture’s back. Penn, normally stoic, looked agitated. His mood seemed to be a combination of excitement at the idea of marrying Zane off to a member of House Lumen and frustration that matters were taking so long. The Domo of House Yellowtail was a militarily minded merwin, used to swift decisive action. Cycles sitting on the Coral Assembly had apparently done nothing to change that mentality.