Mervidia (23 page)

“Zane,” Penn began, his voice oddly accented with what
sounded to Lachlan like sadness and perhaps even regret. “I promise you that not a single one of my soldiers has put so much as the tip of a tail inside House Stonegem.” Had Lachlan not moved closer, he would not have heard the next words to come out of Domo Penn’s mouth. “Iago ordered the Palace Guard to get the name of the house that hired Beryl’s assassin or eradicate Stonegem if they failed to comply with his order. He…,” Penn hesitated uncertainly. Lachlan had never seen the Yellowtail commander waiver before. “We’re here to keep anyone else from getting involved. Stonegem has allies and we, the Queen Mother and I especially, don’t want this turning into a full-blown war. A panic could cause the whole city to riot.”

Though Lachlan could not see his commander’s face, the tilting of Zane’s head
portrayed his confusion. If it was over Penn’s manner or his words, the seifeira could only guess.

“We also don’t want to see Stonegem looted by bottom feeders either,” Penn explained.
“Scavengers would be swarming all over this place already, if we weren’t here to stop it, regardless of the frilled sharks still inside.”

“What!?” Zane asked incredulously.
“There’s
what
inside?”

Lachlan felt his stomach simultaneously float up to his throat and sink into his tail at the same time.
Before the seifeira could consider the horror that had taken place letting the frilled sharks loose inside the House Stonegem compound further, Penn hit him again.

“
Baby
frilled sharks,” the domo said, his voice thick with remorse. “Captain Raygo, under Regent Iago’s orders, loosed the baby frilled sharks into the building. The adults would have been too big to fit into the faera’s narrow escape tunnels.”

“But they’re untrained,” Zane replied, his voice suddenly
sounding weak. “They can’t be controlled. They’ll just….” The Red Trident commander lowered his gaze to the ocean floor. “There will be no way to….”

Penn started to raise his hand, perhaps to comfort his
old friend, but then thought better of it, instead crossing his arms across his broad chest. Lachlan had never seen the Domo of House Yellowtail look so small. Penn was a large merwin, powerful in both fin and influence, but he had been unable to stop the events ordered by his regent. He seemed somehow
less
in his impotence.

Zane’s head shot up.
“Penn, you have to let me by. You have to let us go in there. There might be survivors.” The desperate tone of the red-scaled neondra’s voice betrayed what he thought were the chances of such a thing occurring.

Lachlan’s own opinion concurred, but he kept
it to himself. He concentrated on the hope that some of the faera had survived and desperately pushed down any thoughts to the contrary.

“I have orders,” Domo Penn stated sadly.

“You have orders to keep out Stonegem’s allies and looters. We’re neither,” Zane pleaded. “We only want to go in to help whoever might be left. Please, Penn…,” Zane’s voice trailed off. There was a desperate tenor to his commander’s voice that Lachlan had never heard before. While the seifeira was glad that the rest of his fellow Tridents likely could not hear the desperate tone of Zane’s plea, it apparently infiltrated its way to something inside Penn.

The
domo hesitated for a brief moment, considering matters before replying more loudly than he had spoken before when conversing privately with Zane. “I have your word then, Captain Zane, that you will not interfere with the Palace Guard and that none of your merwin will loot the house?”

Zane and Lachlan bristled at the implication.

Penn lowered his voice once more. “I need to cover my tail here, Zane,” he said conspiratorially. “When I’m brought before Iago, or the Assembly, I have to be able to justify this.”

Zane nodded in understanding.
“Yes, Domo Penn,” the Red Trident stated formally. “You have my personal guarantee for the conduct of my merwin. We will not hinder the Palace Guard, nor will we remove anything from House Stonegem. We simply wish to aid any survivors.”

Penn, resuming his posture as commander of the Yellowtails, nodded once decisively and then turned to face his
soldiers. “Let them pass.”

“Domo?” one of the merwin asked, looking confused.

“The Red Tridents are fulfilling an agreement made between myself and their captain,” Penn stated unequivocally. “They have my permission to approach, and if need be, enter House Stonegem to aid those inside.” The domo eyed the questioning soldier a moment before continuing. “And you are to carry my orders directly to Captain Raygo yourself.”

The Yellowtail quickly snapped to attention, placing his fist to his chest in salute.
“Yes, Sir!” he replied, cycles of discipline overpowering his doubt. “Right this way, Captain,” the merwin said, gesturing for Zane to follow him.

The Yellowtails parted, giving the Red Tridents a wide berth.
Zane stared at Penn. It was only for a short period of time, but the tension in the water between the domo, the Captain, and their soldiers made it seem like days to Lachlan. Zane saluted Penn, who returned the gesture, ending the meeting in a mutual show of respect.

Lachlan
released water he hadn’t realized he had been holding in his lungs.

Circling his forefinger over his head,
Zane signaled for the Red Tridents to advance. The remaining stragglers, who had assembled at their commander’s home, had arrived and fallen silently into formation. The red-finned neondra swam forward at the head of his soldiers, his crimson hair streaming behind him. Zane kept an eye on Penn, and his hand near the bone dagger at his waist, as he passed by. The Red Tridents followed, their eyes and manner mirroring that of their captain’s.

The Yellowtail that Penn had sent to escort them swam out ahead
to meet with one of the Palace Guard before the Red Tridents arrived. They were out of Lachlan’s hearing, but the black-scaled seifeira could see, even in the dim light, that the conversation was not a pleasant one. The Yellowtail made a series of terse gestures with his hands, followed by a very obvious pointing in Zane’s direction. The Palace Guard, an ethyrie with elegant flukes and rich purple-colored scales, looked in the direction indicated by the Yellowtail and his eyes went wide. The ethyrie quickly said something to the Yellowtail and then darted away towards House Stonegem’s compound.

“He said to wait here while he speaks with Captain Raygo,” the Yellowtail relayed once Zane had come close enough.
Penn’s soldier wore his nervousness openly, his brow creased and his eyes constantly darting between Zane and the Red Tridents behind him.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Zane
simply replied and continued forward. The neondra captain no longer looked furious. Instead, he wore an expression of quiet determination, which was somehow much more frightening to Lachlan.

“Captain,” Lachlan said, trying to keep his voice quiet, while still making sure that his co
mmander heard him. He wasn’t sure how well he had succeeded on the former, but the later was obviously effective.

Zane turned to look at the
seifeira, ire burning in milky-white eyes. “Yes, Lachlan?” The words were spoken with a tone as sharp as the captain’s teeth. “What is it?” he said, the muscles along his jaw tight.

Lachlan took a deep breath of water and then proceeded.
“Far be it for me to question you, Sir. However, it may behoove us to swim gently in these churning waters.” He lowered his voice further and edged forward, before he spoke next. “I can’t imagine Captain Raygo is happy with the orders he carried out either, but from all that I have heard, he is a merwin of honor. Perhaps if we approach him as an ally rather than an adversary, he will be more cooperative, Sir.” Lachlan returned to a more proper position and posture, as was appropriate for a subordinate beside his captain.

“Always the practical one, aren’t you Lachlan?” Zane replied
, ceasing his forward motion. The red-hued neondra meant it as a joke, but considering the circumstances, his voice held not the slightest hint of mirth. “Very well. We’ll wait,” Zane turned to eye his Yellowtail escort. “For now.” The ominous tone in the Red Trident captain’s voice caused the Yellowtail soldier’s tail to twitch nervously.

Luckily, for all involved, the
Palace Guard who had been sent ahead to Raygo returned in short order. “Captain Zane,” he began, using the neondra’s title, though he did not salute. “The Palace Guard has pulled back to a safe distance until the shark handlers arrive with the proper equipment to recapture and transport the sharks back to the palace. Captain Raygo has agreed to Domo Penn’s recommendation that you and your… companions,” the ethyrie’s tongue tripped over the word, “be allowed to enter the area to help any survivors who may still be inside.” Two things were very clear in the purple-scaled merwin’s tone and manner, as he delivered the message. The first was that he did not agree with the news he was delivering, but he was duty-bound to deliver it. The second was that he doubted that there were any faera left alive in House Stonegem for the Red Tridents to help.

Regardless, Zane replied politely, but the
resentment in his voice was hard to miss. “Please pass my thanks on to Captain Raygo. If he should need to speak with me in the future, relay to him that I can be approached directly for a face-to-face meeting.” The Red Trident captain let the implications of his words float in the water for several long moments, before moving on towards House Stonegem. The merwin under his command followed.

Chapter Twenty-
Four

The stones in front of Cassondra’s face were too close, almost touching her nose. Startled and wondering how she came to be in that position, the ethyrie placed her hands to the cool rock and pushed away. She flicked her fins to help propel herself farther away from the wall and passed backwards through an octolaide that had been behind her. Cassondra was like a ghost, a disembodied spirit moving through a solid form, and her travels left her face to face with Marin of House Chimaera. The two young merwin had crossed paths many times, both being from High Houses, and had often waited together for their family members outside the Coral Assembly meeting room. Marin did not see the ethyrie. She looked to be in pain and was concentrating on something else that was in front of her.

Cassondra realized, by
her ethereal dreamscape and Marin’s lack of reaction to her presence, that she was having a machi premonition whilst asleep. Dream visions were much more intense and revealing than waking omens, but they also required a great deal of effort on the machi’s part. When asleep, a merwin’s mind naturally wandered, and the machi needed to focus all her efforts on staying within the vision, which would constantly blur and threaten to fade away. Participating in these nighttime escapades, which happened more often than Cassondra would have liked, did not allow the merwin’s mind to rest, often resulting in a poor night’s sleep.
Lovely,
she thought
sarcastically.
Another day that I will awake exhausted and still have to participate in the activities required of me.
The machi would not abandon the vision though.
It could be something important,
Cassondra thought,
trying to fortify her resolve.

Sounds became more audible, and the room took shape to her vision-waking eyes, as Ca
ssondra absorbed the scene playing out before her as if it were a theatrical performance. Marin was crying, her face red and eyes swollen. The octolaide’s head tentacles were wrapped around a hand and a larger suckered appendage, both of which were choking her. Marin’s strangled sobs were getting weaker, and Cassondra heard muted yelling behind her.

The fuchsia
ethyrie tendrils on her hips twirled lethargically, as Cassondra used her tail fin to rotate her body around to get a better look at what was happening in her vision.
One can glean much from a vision, but she has to pay attention to the details and push down her fear,
Cassondra reminded herself, as she pushed her pink hair out of her face with a webbed hand. While she could not be harmed when observing such sights, machi dreams were often still terrifying nightmares, horrible possibilities of the future. So many Merwin assumed the Divine Family’s foresight was a gift. Cassondra believed differently.
More like a curse,
she thought.
Who wants to have nightmares that come true unless action is taken to change the future? Sure, I do have restful nights, but I go to sleep, knowing and dreading that I might have a vision. Since I hit puberty, when my talent awoke and my visions began, I have gone to bed afraid… afraid of what next hardship will befall the Merwin. At least the visions give my family something interesting to talk about at breakfast,
she thought sardonically
,
especially if we have the same vision.

Cassondra put such thoughts aside and tried to focus on the room’s furniture and its other i
nhabitants, which remained a blur to her until she chose to actively focus on them. It was tempting to let the dream fade, but her duty to her people, to keep them safe, kept her there.

The space was a sleeping chamber, evident by the small but heavily pearl
-encrusted bed against one wall. It had a headboard of two arching bones over smaller spindles of the same material. Cassondra turned her attention to the other merwin in attendance. Her mouth opened in horror as she recognized Marin’s father, Domo Uchenna, as the merwin strangling his daughter, one hand and a tentacle held firmly around her gills and holding them closed. His other hand was held up behind him and glowed a putrid-looking green, maintaining some sort of kalku spell by its unpleasant appearance. Domo Uchenna’s flushed face showed the strain of his split attention, although his enraged eyes firmly held Marin’s dying gaze.

The
ethyrie looked in the direction of Domo Uchenna’s outstretched hand that was casting the spell, seeking its target. Cassondra’s mouth dropped farther open, seeing Odette held against the opposite stone wall, her octolaide fingers clawing at some unseen menace wrapped around her throat. She was being choked as well, but with magic it seemed instead of by a physical hand. Her black tentacles writhed wildly like angered eels, as she struggled uselessly against the hex that held her captive. Both of the octolaide females were filling the room with ink, as their bodies instinctively reacted to the danger, trying to hide from their assailant. The dark fluid was amazingly dense and was rapidly rising from the floor to the ceiling, as it flowed steadily from under the octolaides’ black tentacles.

Looking briefly at the flagstones before they were obscured, Cassondra saw glowing purple runes inscribed in a circle, interspersed with chunked orihalcyon ore; a ritual of some kind, still radiating with eerie
energy. The ethyrie had some education in kalku magic, as was common in her magical studies. She recognized two of the inscriptions; the easiest to discern was the Fangs, a spiky-looking headdress, and the other was two bones crossed, signifying death. Before the circle was enveloped by ink and shrouded from sight, Cassondra saw a bone knife still protruding from a dead squid. Cassondra cursed; soon she wouldn’t be able to see anything in the room at all. The viscous liquid was rising farther, already concealing the thrashing tentacles of the expiring octolaide females.

Before the ink completely
enveloped the room in darkness, there was a loud crash. The solid bone door shot inwards, hitting Domo Uchenna full in the chest and interrupting his murderous endeavors. The male octolaide, carried along by the door’s weight and force, crashed into a piece of coral furniture, a dressing table by the look of it, and shattered it into pieces against the stone wall.

Domo Uchenna picked himself up, red blood stain
ing the water from a deep cut on his lower lip. His mouth spread into an angry sneer that showed his sharp white teeth. Cassondra followed the domo’s gaze. She saw another octolaide in the doorway that she didn’t recognize. The stranger lacked eyebrows, a feature commonly missing from most of his race, yet his small nose looked smushed like an impact with a hard surface had flattened it. The octolaide wasn’t deformed or ugly, but he certainly was not the most handsome octolaide Cassondra had ever seen. The merwin carried a staff of bone, topped with a large black pearl. He was using it as a physical weapon as well as a magical tool, alternately bludgeoning and magically dispatching the house guards that continued to swarm him. Once in the room, the kalku sorcerer put an end to the attacks though, tapping the door frame with his staff once at the top and once on the floor below. The action raised a magical, semi-translucent purple barrier in the entrance that left the guards outside bashing at it uselessly with their weapons.

“Get your
tentacles off my daughter you egocentric piece of fish crap,” the stranger stated, his tone even yet commanding; all of his ire focused on Domo Uchenna. Cassondra seemed to be the only one in the room to look surprised at the familial revelation, as the bedchamber was fully consumed in the ink’s pitch darkness.

A magical war erupted in the room despite the blinding fluid.
She could feel its power like an electric ray charging the water to attack nearby prey. The skin of her dream body tingled, causing the ethyrie to shiver. Even in her dream state, she could feel the life-draining force that was kalku sorcery, knowing that every corporeal creature in the room was being drawn upon for fuel to power the dire spells. The energy arced back and forth, snaking through the water, and even though she was not actually there, she still felt her heart jolt every time a spell shot across the room.

The clamor grew louder, as
the guards beat more desperately on the invisible barrier….

Cassondra awoke to the very real sound of someone banging a weapon on her door. The ethyrie sat up in her bed, her long tail slipping out of the woven, blue kelp blanket and wrapping around the bone bedpost to hold herself in place.

“Cassondra of House Lumen,” a resolute voice called through the door.
“Open up. By order of the Coral Assembly, you are under arrest.”

The
ethyrie was still shaking off her prophetic machi dream and did not reply, as disoriented as she was. Her heart spasmed with each impact on the door, as it had in reaction to the magic being cast in her vision. Using the tucked covers to keep her in bed, she pulled them up to her chest in a comforting gesture, as she tried to force herself fully awake. Her mother’s familiar voice at the door finally broke through her vision induced haze.

“Let me talk to her first,” Ghita pleaded with the merwin outside Cassondra’s door.
One guard mumbled some contemptible remark, which Ghita apparently did not appreciate. She raised her voice saying, “You are arresting a member of the Divine Family. Show some respect!” There were a few grumbles, but the insistent knocking ceased. Cassondra sighed and took a deep breath, as if drinking in the blessed quiet.

There was a light, much more pleasant, knock that Cassondra assumed was her mother’s dai
nty hand, rapping on the bone door.

“One moment please,” Cassondra called, dropping her covers from her bare breasts.
Flicking her tail fin, she swam to her dressing table and donned a crimson kelp cape, commonly worn by machi healers, though not usually in such a bold color. The ethyrie had had it made anyway; the rich red beautifully accented her pale skin, as well as her pink hair and fins.

Cassondra swam to the bone door, unlocked it, and cracked it until just a sliver of her mother’s f
ace was visible in the narrow opening. Having confirmed that the merwin was indeed who she was anticipating, Cassondra opened the door wide enough for Ghita to slip in. While her mother did so, the younger merwin gave the Palace Guards in the hallway a scathing look.

So eager to please
, Cassondra grimaced, as she briefly regarded her arresting escort.
At least, they are intensely loyal to Mervidia. If only they knew that I am as well.

As they looked her up and down, t
he guards’ manners spoke of their duty in their stern expressions and scrutiny of her person. They all wore variations of thick clam shell armor on their heads, shoulders, torsos, and as reinforced skirts around their hips. The inner iridescent part of the shells decorated the facing of the armor, giving them all an attractive ceremonial mien. The Palace Guard directly in front of her wore a clam shell breastplate that was laced with eel skin on the sides, allowing him to breathe freely. On his shoulders were matching conchs that circled up on either side of another spiraling shell that served as a helmet, complete with an official-looking plume of red kelp affixed to its top.

Cassondra shut the door in his face.

“What is going on?” Cassondra turned and asked her mother, who had swum in and settled on her daughter’s dressing stool. Her mother’s distraught expression made the younger ethyrie’s hands take on a nervous chill.
Was I discovered
, she thought,
as the instigator of Flinn’s death? How? I was so careful.
She struggled to stay calm and see what her mother had to say before she went swimming to conclusions.

Ghita was wearing only a pale green kelp bandeau around her small breasts,
and her long white tresses were neatly braided and accented with pearl-tipped bone pins. Her face looked worried, but the redness of grief around her eyes no longer marred her visage.
She’s taking Flinn’s death better than father’s it seems
, Cassondra assumed, but upon thinking further on it…
No, she’s just focusing on keeping our family together and retaining possession of the throne.
Flinn’s death, the loss of her own flesh and blood, her sweet, stupid baby boy, still wears on her. She is just keeping her feelings better hidden for once.
King Reth’s sister looked composed for the first time in quite a while; the ethyrie usually let her emotions overwhelm her, resulting in crying sessions that could last for days. Granted, Ghita
had
been forced to deal with great sorrow in her life, so her breakdowns weren’t entirely trivial or unwarranted.

“Iago did something horrible,” Ghita stated, trying to stay calm, but Cassondra could tell she had so much on her mind that she was skipping over details.
The white-finned merwin looked up and straight into her daughter’s eyes, and her voice rose with panic, “He’ll
never
be king now.” Cassondra thought about asking what had happened but decided she really didn’t care. Iago’s removal from power fit perfectly into her plans, regardless of the means of how it came to be.

“So I will be named
queen?” Cassondra asked, but immediately thought better of the question, considering the Palace Guard outside waiting to arrest her.

“P
erhaps,” Ghita answered excitedly, her anxiety fading. “Ebon is King Reth’s direct heir, regardless of who his mother is. If you are not named Queen directly, you might be wed to Ebon and made his royal consort. The more traditional members of the Assembly will want Divine Family blood on Mervidia’s throne one way or another.”