Mervidia (36 page)

“Zane could do both,” Hasad interjected.
“He comes from a High House and has also gained the affection of the city with his Red Tridents.”

“Well, yes of course,” Penn said dismissively.
“But a marriage of someone from a High House, and so well-regarded by the common merwin,
to a member of the Divine Family
would surely unite the city and calm the populous.”

“Stop calling them the
common
merwin,” Zane interjected. The neondra had had enough of the High House’s contempt for the merwin they ruled. The Coral Assembly all turned to look strangely at the Captain of the Red Tridents, as though they had forgotten he was there. “It’s because of them that you sit up here in your chamber, or in your nice home, making decisions on their behalf. They built the houses you live in. They crafted the seats upon which you place your delicate tails. They harvest the food you eat. Without them, there would be no Mervidia.” Zane saw Hasad and Quag nodding their heads in response to his words.

“And without us,” Vaschel replied, as though speaking to a small child.
“They would have no laws. They would have no one to tell them what is required of them each day so that Mervidia can continue to survive. We protect them from the Deeps and from each other.” House Paua’s domo nodded at Penn. “Without us, Mervidia would quickly descend into chaos and disappear from the sea shortly thereafter. It would become a haunted ruin of tumbled stone, where a once great people used to live, destroyed by their own basic predatory nature. Without
us
, Captain Zane, there would be no Mervidia.”

Zane
, rage seething within his chest, glared at Vaschel. He wanted to grab the bloated puffer fish of a merwin and drag him to the Ghet, showing him what the rule of the great Coral Assembly had wrought upon Mervidia.
I should take him beyond the city limits into the Deeps and show him what true predators look like,
he thought.
Or better yet, take him to the kelp farms near House Ignis and make him harvest kelp to feed himself and the rest of Mervidia. I’m sure Lachlan would be happy to show him how to use a harvesting blade and actually get his fins dirty for once. Why am I even here?
Zane asked himself.
I think I would lose my mind with these pompous remoras attached to me day in and day out.

The thought of Lachlan caused Zane to halt his internal rant.
His friend, whose loyalty to his captain’s cause had cost the seifeira dearly, would not want Jade’s death to be meaningless. Lachlan, who had always thought of the greater good, would not have wasted this opportunity to make life better for all the merwin of the city.

Zane looked at Nayan.
“Yes, I do,” he said.

“Do what?” Vaschel asked, not making the connection between Zane’s declaration and N
ayan’s earlier question.

“I intend to claim the throne and wear the Fangs,” Zane replied, looking defiantly at the Domo of House Paua.

“And we will choose your consort,” Slone quickly amended.

Zane wanted to scream.
The constant scrabbling for power and influence was going to drive him insane before the Fangs had even been placed upon his head.
Leaving Ignis and leading a mercenary company is going to be a pleasant memory compared to dealing with these merwin,
Zane thought, looking around the room at the bickering Coral Assembly.

“But who?” Vaschel inquired.
“Ghita is far too old. She is past her time to provide an heir. ”

“Why does Zane have to be married to someone of
divine blood at all?” Kiva asked defiantly. “The Divine Family is what brought us to this point in the first place.”

“Yet it was a
faera who killed the queen,” Vaschel replied, looking pointedly at the Domo of House Perna.

“What of it?” Kiva fired back, her tail fins flaring out behind her.
“Had the Divine Family not become so corrupted, it wouldn’t have been necessary to cull it for Mervidia’s sake.”

“We can debate about who brought us to this point later,” Thaddeus interjected, looking plea
dingly at Penn and Slone. The Domo of House Tenebris appeared to want them to intervene between Kiva and Vaschel. When neither neondra moved, the octolaide representative sighed resignedly and continued. “What we need
now
is a king to show Mervidia that the city will survive. That we will move on from recent tragedies, no matter what their cause,” Thaddeus looked pointedly at Kiva and Vaschel. “We must be able to show our people that we can unite in purpose and intent. It is my suggestion that we put our support behind Zane and settle the matter of consort later, once the citizens have calmed down.”

Several of the representatives around the table looked at Thaddeus with mild looks of shock on their face.
Zane could only guess it had to do with the octolaide representative’s reversal of opinion. Thaddeus, according to rumor, had been a staunch traditionalist, always supporting the Divine Family and, up until recently, the status quo. His proposal that they support Zane had to come as a surprise to his progressive opponents on the Assembly and a blow to his traditionalist allies.

“Cassondra,” Quag blurted out into the silence following the
octolaide’s statement.

“What?” Slone asked, looking confusedly at the
grogstack. Every other merwin in the room wore a similar expression.

Quag was sitting on his seat like a great stone outcropping, unaffected by the arguments swir
ling around him. “We could marry Zane to Cassondra,” Quag explained. “She’s from the Divine Family.”

“Cassondra was banished,” Vaschel explained condescendingly.

Quag turned a baleful look on the Domo of House Paua, and the ethyrie blanched. In Vaschel’s lecture about how the Assembly had brought civilization to the city, he had briefly forgotten that one of the most dangerous members of the
savage
grogstack race was in the room with him. It was not in the ethyrie’s best interest to anger him.

“I know that,” Quag replied.
“So?” he asked.

“So,” Penn replied, in a much more respectful tone than Vaschel had used.
“She’s been sent to the Deeps. We don’t know how to find her, or even if she’s still alive.”

“The
grogstack might be able to find her,” Quag stated casually.

“What?!” Slone replied.
The neondra representative’s voice was equal parts shock and skepticism. “That’s not possible. Going out into the Deeps is a death sentence.”

“Maybe for you,” Quag responded, looking at the orange and black striped merwin.
“We go out there all the time.” Zane wasn’t sure, but it looked as though the grogstack was smiling as he spoke. Given Quag’s fearsome appearance and the abundance of fangs in his wide mouth, it was hard to tell.

“If she still lives, could your people really find Cassondra?” Vaschel asked, unconvinced.

“What Domo Vaschel means,” Penn said, trying to frame his question in a more diplomatic fashion, “is do you have merwin who serve you who could locate Cassondra?”

“I don’t have servants,” Quag stated plainly.
Despite his horrid visage, this time Zane could tell that the grogstack was irritated by the implication. “I do have friends who might be able to find her though. There are not many places she could go, if she stuck close to the city. If she didn’t go to one of those, then she’s probably dead and eaten by now.”

A sobering quiet fell over the room.
Cassondra had been banished from Mervidia, as a merciful alternative to execution, but Zane guessed that, on some level, all of the Assembly knew that they had sent the young ethyrie to her death. Simply killing her would have been a kinder fate. Zane looked at Vaschel and wondered if the Domo of House Paua was thinking of his son, imprisoned in the dungeons beneath the palace and thankful that Iago was in a cage and not the belly of several denizens of the Deeps as Cassondra likely was.

“It is a moot point,” Kiva said into the silence, bringing everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand.
“If we don’t put Zane on the throne, there won’t be anyone to marry Cassondra to, even if Quag and his people could find her.”

“But without someone from the Divine Family beside him, will the city accept his legitimacy to rule?” Penn asked.
“A member of House Lumen has sat on the throne since Mervidia was founded. Despite everyone seeing Ghita’s vision, there are some who will still question its veracity.”

“It’s a prophecy from the Divine Family itself,” Nayan said, still floating beside Zane.
“Who would doubt it?”

“It’s still a forced seeing,” Zane said.
“It could still have been flawed if done incorrectly.”

“What are you implying?” Slone said, angered by the insinuation.
“Do you think that we botched the ritual? Do you believe that we are that incompetent?”

Before Zane could reply, Kiva interjected.
“It wouldn’t be the first time the Assembly has fouled something up.”

“Perhaps it was interfered with?” Hasad speculated.
“Is that even possible?”

Many eyes in the room turned to Thaddeus.
House Tenebris had produced one of the most powerful kalku Mervidia had ever known and its members were greatly respected for their magical gifts. “I don’t know,” he said, consideration of the possibility causing a faraway expression to come over his face. “Uchenna, what do you think? You’re well-versed in the darker sorceries.”

Zane looked around the room but did not see the Domo of House Chimaera in attendance.
The leader of the Red Tridents found the octolaide’s absence odd, though he had never been present when the Coral Assembly was convened. He wasn’t sure if a member being missing was unusual or not. Though judging by the confused expression that rapidly made its way around the room, he surmised that Uchenna’s absence was atypical. Given their surprise, Zane also surmised that no one had realized that the Uchenna was gone until just then.

“Where is Uchenna?” Quag asked, an odd quality to his voice.
It reminded Zane of a fry who had lost his mother. The grogstack rose from his seat and began looking around, as if the missing octolaide would miraculously appear if he looked at the room from a different vantage point.

“That sneaky….”
Kiva’s words, their tone a mixture of irritation and appreciation, were cut off by a loud knocking at the chamber door.

Penn’s face became a cloud of rage and frustration.
The muscular neondra gripped the back of his seat so tightly that Zane heard the ornate spell-shaped coral crack beneath his webbed hands.

“I said we are not to be disturbed!” Penn yelled at the closed
, thick uklod bone doors, though he still swam to the entrance to open them.

Zane smirked.
It was common knowledge that the chamber doors of the Coral Assembly, in addition to being stout enough to prohibit most sound from traveling through them, had been ensorcelled to allow nothing that was discussed within to be heard from outside. Penn unquestionably knew this as well. Zane enjoyed the Domo of House Yellowtail’s irritation nonetheless.

The massive doors opened easily enough; the
neondra’s prodigious strength was aided in the endeavor by the quality craftsmanship with which they were hung. “What is it?!” the neondra demanded, once they were open. “I gave orders that we were not to be interrupted!”

“My apologies, Domo.” The Palace Guard saluted, holding rigidly at attention and his eyes straight ahead.
“There is… you should… I mean,” he faltered.

“Spit it out!” Penn commanded.

“You need to come see this, Sir,” the guard said finally.

“See what?” the head of the Yellowtails demanded.

“Please, Sir,” the ethyrie guard asked, breaking protocol. “I need you to follow me.”

Penn turned from the door to look at Zane and the Coral Assembly.
Despite his anger at the interruption, the domo was plainly intrigued.

“Well, let’s all go then,” Kiva said, irritated.
“The sooner we take care of this, the sooner we can get back to the business of putting Zane on the throne.”

Zane’s blood went cold.
They really mean to do this,
he thought.
I’m to wear the Fangs… and be married.
He wasn’t sure which frightened him more, until he considered that the wife chosen for him would likely be someone other than Marin. Suddenly, the latter was far more daunting than the former.
I’ll have to insist that Marin be my consort then,
he thought. The Assembly might traditionally hold the power to choose his bride,
but if they are desperate enough for me to wear the Fangs….

“Come along, Zane,” Nayan said gently ushering him out of the Coral Assembly’s meeting room and down the hallway to the large veranda outside.
They followed behind the rest of the Assembly. “Chances are high that this will be one of the first matters that will require your attention once you become king,” the jellod added. Zane swam along numbly, his mind adrift in the vast swirling ocean his life was about to become. The leader of the Red Tridents didn’t think this day could get any more bizarre.