Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

  “Of course. You’re Glisette. I should learn to listen closely when a flock of beautiful ladies enters a room. Cousin,” he said, laying a kiss on my hand as dispassionately as if he were stamping a seal on parchment. “Forgive me for not greeting you with warmth at the Realm Alliance gathering.”

  “You’re cousins?” Mercer asked. I had nearly forgotten that fact myself.

  “Third or fourth,” Fabian explained. “Practically every Ermetarius is a cousin of anyone with another royal name. The war against Tamarice united our ancestors, and most of their children ‘united’ as adults.”

  “Your visions didn’t offer that up?” I asked Mercer. He offered a guarded smile in return.

  “You must be Mercer Fye.” Glisette extended her hand to Mercer, and he pressed his lips ever so softly to her skin.

  “Let’s sit and eat,” Fabian said. “I’ve survived on wine and brandy for days.”

  “So that’s what you’ve been doing out at sea,” Kadri teased.

  “That’s not all we do. We explore the islands, tell seafaring tales, play drinking card games…and punish the losers in most interesting ways.” He offered her his arm. “Good thing you weren’t there; you might have been tossed overboard for a swim.”

  Kadri visibly shuddered at the thought as he escorted her to the head table.

  Glisette nestled her hand in the crook of Mercer’s elbow. He presented the other arm to me. I used the contact as an opportunity to study him as though I could harvest his deepest secrets from a lingering look.

  “Have you seen any other visions that may prove useful?” I asked him. “Anything further about the Lord of Elicromancers?”

  “I wish I had.”

  “Isn’t there something you can do to arouse a vision?”

  “As I explained before, I get ‘aroused’ rather spontaneously.” One of his brunet brows hitched a mischievous arc. “You witnessed it yourself…when I was sprawled out on a bed, utterly at your mercy.”

  The hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth made my neck flush with heat. Glisette peered around his chest at me, her eyes almost menacingly full of intrigue.

  “It’s not what it sounds,” I hissed at her, untangling my arm from Mercer’s.

  When we reached the table, Fabian remained standing while his guests settled into their seats. He clinked his knife to his glass goblet to grab their attention and said, “I am pleased you are all here. Normally my mother and father like to welcome our guests, but tonight it is my privilege. We all suffered losses in the rogue wave, and our city and country suffered a great wound. We have honored friends and strangers who made their graves in the depths. Tonight, we honor restoration and recovery. We honor new friendships. And we honor those who risked their lives to save others, even those who are not present to accept our gratitude.”

  Kadri pursed her lips. Fabian finished by raising a glass in salute, and after we all drank in unison, Kadri whispered, “He was out there looking for the girl who saved him. He’s obsessed. He fancies she’s a fisherwoman or a water sprite, I suppose.”

  As Fabian sat, he shot a glance toward the scarlet sun dipping over the sea.

  “Have you heard from your grandmother?” Rayed asked me as he fished a lobster tail onto his plate.

  “Not since she left Pontaval,” I answered. Her final rebukes lashed me again, a burning stripe across my mind. You foolish girls. You’ve done enough.

  I cleared my throat. “Have you received a missive from her?”

  “No,” Rayed muttered, his comely face creased with concern. “But she’s a highly connected and clever woman. She reminds me of my own grandmother, my dahtara. I’d count on Madam Braiosa knowing more than we do by now.”

  “You’re probably right,” I agreed. My resourceful grandmother might very well dig to the heart of Nissera’s predicament before others even knew where to break ground.

  I cleared my throat as the conversation tapered off, sensing the weight of Mercer’s attentions on me. I dared answer them with a glance, only to find him and Glisette engrossed with each other. Glisette was using some sort of palmistry party trick as an excuse to trace her fingers gently over Mercer’s upturned hand behind their wine goblets. Kadri and Rayed had begun quietly bickering across the table in their native tongue, so I resorted to staring at my food as though studying a masterpiece portrait. Finally, when the remnants of the meal were cleared away, I moved with the listless crowd out to the veranda.

  Kadri linked her arm in mine while Fabian, Mercer, and Glisette traveled as a flock ahead of us. “With silver dust in her hair and blue eyes, she resembles Fabian’s mythical mystery savior.”

  I snorted. “Glisette would have hauled sinking trunks of jewels and silk to safety before reaching a hand to help.”

  Kadri hiccupped with laughter. “You’re jealous.”

  “What? No, you are. I’m comforting you.”

  “I don’t care what Fabian does as long as he doesn’t tempt people to pity me. But he is most certainly tempting them tonight.”

  I watched Glisette lean back on the balustrade, laughing, fingers spread across Mercer’s breastbone. She slipped her other arm through Fabian’s as though she might drift away if unmoored from either’s touch.

  “I suppose I should reinforce my claim,” Kadri sighed. “People are already gawking at the three of them.”

  She approached the others, but I kept my distance. The act of adoring the fascinating elicromancers from afar was hardly new to me and left a bitter taste in my mouth. I thought of Jovie Neswick and that wrinkle of longing between her brows as she’d watched Ander dancing with one of his kind.

  Setting off in the opposite direction, I wove through clusters of people toward wide steps leading from the veranda to the beach. I noticed Brandar as he propped his wineglass on the balustrade, positioning himself to convince those watching that he was keeping an eye on me. We shared a conspiratorial glance before I journeyed down to the beach, pausing a few steps from the sand.

  The salty twilight breeze swept back my hair and carried a gray-and-black gull feather with a white tip, which I caught and pinned between my thumb and forefinger under the diffused glow of a metal lantern. There was something about the risk of testing my power here, near all these people, that made the magic within me froth up like sea foam, effervescent and pure.

  The pale tinge at the feather’s tip snuck down the fringe and took on a luster. The texture of the shaft crystallized beneath my touch. With sheer, dumbfounded admiration, I realized that the feather was hardening into a silver cast of itself.

  My chest swelled with pride. If I could do this again, tomorrow, in front of the leaders, I could convince the Realm Alliance to let me continue practicing. I wouldn’t have to lie to them. Unlike my father, I could return from my isolation, triumphant and ready to take on a role befitting my station and studies. I grinned madly at the stars that lit up the dusk.

  Then a twinkle caught my eye from among the rock formations between the flank of the palace and the shore. I squinted into the darkness and thought I glimpsed a massive gull perching on a rock, perhaps the very one whose feather had molted and drifted my way. But this figure was far too big, even bigger than a swan, and the light emanating from the palace reflected off its form in odd and unbirdlike ways. As if in a sudden panic, whatever it was flung itself off the rock, making a quiet splash below.

  Cocking my head to the side, I hesitated for a moment before tucking the feather into my neckline and jogging down the final steps to the beach.

  I picked my way over white sand and rocks until I reached the bigger formations. I had to hike a bit to reach the creature’s perch, venturing ankle-deep into cold pools of water to access footholds. By the time I found the spot, night had set in and I had to feel my way through the shadows where lights from the royal residence didn’t quite reach.

  My fingers groped along wet stone until I approached a little lagoon carved out of the rock, partially illuminated by lantern light fro
m a balcony up above. Whatever I’d seen was probably long gone, considering it either swam or flew, and I had ruined the hem of Kadri’s skirt. I plunked down on a ledge and pulled the silver feather out of my bodice to study it in the peace of my alcove of solitude.

  Another glint of white flashed in my periphery. It could have been a fish splashing out to nip an insect, but I wasn’t convinced. A strange suspicion led me to lower myself to my hands and knees—Kadri would never let me borrow anything again—and stare deep into the pool, heart flittering.

  For a moment, the only traces of a presence in the lagoon were the faint ripples sloshing. And then a pale shape emerged from the dark end, where light from the balcony didn’t reach. My eyes adjusted to the moonlight again and I gasped.

  The head and shoulders of a woman rose above the surface. Hair so fair it was almost white framed a pale face with shockingly blue eyes, and faint silver scales dappled either side of her chest from the water to the hollows of her collarbones.

  Her human aspects appeared small and delicate, but the tail that composed her lower body nearly circled the perimeter of the pool, ending in vibrant flukes with flowing tendrils. The silvery blue at her hips gradually deepened to a saturated violet along her tail, whose thick scales glinted like coins in the moonlight.

  ORDS stuck in my throat. The creature, wearing an expression of cautious vigilance that mirrored mine, did not move. This gave me time to recover from shock and think of the mother-of-pearl tablet that had yet to be deciphered. What if the creature departed and chose never to return?

  I froze, fearing that a flinch might banish her to the infinite darkness of the open sea.

  But a foot scraped on stone behind me, and in one swift movement her supple body heaved over the ledge into the black water below.

  I whirled around, readying a curse for my ever-present Neutralizer. But I found Mercer, his features clear in the light from the balcony.

  “Was that a—?”

  “A sea maiden!” I planted my hands on the ground and clambered to an upright position. “No one’s seen one in nearly a thousand years and you scared her off.”

  To get a view of the sea, I had to maneuver my way past him on the narrow ledge. The familiarity with which my body was forced to skim across his should have coerced him a step sideways, but he didn’t budge. Looking out from the ridge and scanning the tides below, I saw no hint of my quarry. But the toe of my sandal caught on the uneven surface, nearly pitching me to the rocky swells below. Mercer gripped my upper arm, tethering me to safety.

  I ducked away and started on the treacherous path to the beach. Somehow, I managed to reach level ground with nothing but a few scrapes and a broken sandal strap. I could feel Mercer traipsing behind me, finessing his way over the jagged route with ease.

  “She didn’t flee or attack when she saw you,” he said, passing me up and turning to face me, spraying my shins with sand. “That means she’s sociable toward humans. She might come back.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve had plentiful visions of sea maidens to inform your opinion?” I asked, stopping at the base of the stairs to snatch off my broken sandal.

  “I’m sorry. I only followed you because I thought something might be wrong.”

  “On the contrary, I—” I reached to retrieve the seagull feather from my bodice and realized I’d left it at the lagoon. It occurred to me that Mercer must have been watching me to notice me wandering off. My feelings about that landed somewhere on the vast spectrum between flattered and suspicious.

  “After the banquet, I’ll find a way to get my hands on the contract,” he said. “We’ll sneak back and see if she returns.”

  “Why must we sneak?” I asked, gripping the banister. The banquet guests had gathered in clusters on the landings; some were parading drunkenly down the beach in the other direction. “Don’t we want the Realm Alliance to know she’s here?”

  He combed back his wheat-brown hair. “At best, humans view sea people as specimens to study. At worst, trophies. If word gets out, someone might try to hunt her down. And a conflict with the sea folk is not pleasant. In my…at times, sea folk wreaked havoc on anyone who dared wade in deeper than the ankles. During the worst periods of human–sea folk relations, there were pods of them sabotaging travel and trade at every port.”

  “Oh,” I muttered, thinking of the sea maiden’s magnificent tail. A splendid sense of mystery and otherness had glimmered about her. It made me shiver as the breeze trailed its lukewarm fingers across my nape.

  “They’re just like us,” he went on. “They protect their own and hold grudges when they can’t. Hopefully we can find out what that blasted contract says before something else happens. She might even speak a bit of Nisseran, if she’s as sociable with land folk as she seems.”

  “But—”

  “Meet me back here when the guests are gone.” Mercer hurried up the steps to the veranda.

  * * *

  When the music and the hum of conversations finally stopped competing for dominance, Kadri and Glisette prepared to retire. I muttered an excuse about having lost a bracelet on the beach, and they blinked their bleary eyes before starting upstairs without me. I hadn’t seen Brandar since he’d watched me descend to the shore, and in the midst of the revelry, no one seemed to consider my need for a custodian.

  The sky had cooled to the black-blue marking the wee hours. The metal lanterns swayed in a wind that skimmed across the sea, and by their light I wandered back down the beach until I found a quarter-moon-shaped rock on the shore.

  Despite my fear of unknown creatures teeming in the deep, I sank my feet into the salt water, letting it sting and then soothe the blisters I’d earned hiking and dancing. I scanned the peaks and arches jutting out from the beach but saw no white hair or shimmering scales. There seemed little chance the sea maiden would appear again.

  Mercer joined me after a quarter hour, toting the tablet halves in a blanket. Their smooth ridges and iridescent swirls gleamed purple and gray in the moonlight as he uncovered them and hunkered next to me.

  “Did you have any trouble?” I asked.

  “Not at all. Fabian helped me.”

  He had so easily earned the prince’s trust. “Why did you misrepresent your objective the day I found you at the inn?” I asked. “You said you wanted a reward, and then you turned it down. Did you simply want somewhere to stay and meals to eat?”

  Mercer tilted his head. “I didn’t want to seem too eager to share what I knew, or you might have thought me mad and made sure I never set foot in front of the Realm Alliance. Pretending to want something in exchange gave me an excuse to withhold the truth from you so I could give it directly to the leaders.”

  “What is the truth?” I asked. “Are you who you say you are? Mercer Fye, an elicromancer from a northern village so remote its name isn’t worth mentioning?”

  “I am who I say I am,” he said. “And I’ve seen what I say I have.”

  “So you truly believe Devorian resurrected the ‘Lord of Elicromancers’?” I asked, pedaling my feet through the water.

  “Don’t call him that unless you want to sound like one of his blind followers,” Mercer said in a low voice. “But stars help us if that’s the case.”

  “How do you know so much about the…?”

  I stopped abruptly, for his body had gone rigid. His shoulder blades pressed together and the gray film slid over his eyes. I bit back a gasp of shock.

  This could be a trick of elicromancy, I thought. Mercer Fye could be a fraud meant to make fools of us all.

  “She’s coming back soon,” he said, blinking the clouds from his eyes. “The sea maiden.”

  “Do your visions predict what’s to come, as well?” I taunted. “Are you conveniently a Prophet now?”

  Mercer’s expression was opaque.

  “Who are you, really? What do you want? Tell me the truth.”

  “I’ll tell you. But you won’t believe me.”

  I pursed my lips, in
viting him to test me.

  “I am a Prophet,” he said. “I don’t have visions of the past, but of the future.”

  “Why wouldn’t I believe that? My cousin was an Augurer—”

  “Just listen,” he said, gesturing for me to hush. “My visions of the tyrant weren’t visions. I lived through his reign.”

  “What are you saying? Just be forthright!” My tone rose to a desperate crescendo. I had only hours left in Beyrian. I wanted to use them wisely: either getting answers about the contract or practicing for my demonstration.

  “I lived during what you would call the Archaic Age, and back then the—”

  “The Archaic Age?” I laughed, but it sounded terse and forced. “The Archaic Age ended over a thousand years ago. The people of that time didn’t even speak our language.”

  “No, they didn’t. But the boy who grew up watching the future play out behind his eyelids did. He had to learn to listen, otherwise he would never understand his prophecies. Some were just plain visions without significance. Others were revelations of events that would change the course of history.”

  I scoffed, refusing to relinquish my skepticism. “You’re saying you survived the Heroic Age with its Elicrin War, and then the Mortal Age as well? I’ve never heard of elicromancers living that long, not without turning to dark magic eventually and then facing execution for treason.”

  “I’m eighteen years old. That I didn’t lie about.” So melancholy was his tone that a corner of my mind realized that the thankless boy I’d encountered slurping oysters at the inn was only one sliver of a whole person, an intentionally exaggerated sliver.

  I shook my head as though the information would settle better with a little nudge. “If that’s true, how did you get here?”

  “I’m trying to answer that myself.” He splashed water on the back of his neck.

  “I’ve heard of portals that span both distance and time,” I murmured. “One of my ancestors could open them. Perhaps you passed through one?”