by EJ Altbacker
“Yes, Mariner Prime!” he exclaimed. “I live to serve you! I mean—I live to serve the king! It seems I am very tired, Mariner Prime, forgive me.”
“On your way, then.” Whalem shook his head after the commander left. Some in the armada probably did have more loyalty to him personally than to Finnivus, even though it had been five years now since Romulus swam to the Sparkle Blue. But Whalem would not use that loyalty, as some had asked him to. He could no more betray Romulus’s wishes now than when they’d been young. And Romulus had always wanted his son to be king. “Now if only Finnivus would believe that,” he muttered silently into the current. Whalem thought the young king was going to have him seasoned and served for lunch for disagreeing with him earlier. That the young pup would even think about bloodying the waters further after their crushing victory made Whalem’s stomach turn. And this was also after the disgrace they had committed against AuzyAuzy Shiver!
AuzyAuzy was the only shiver that could have given the Indi armada a tough time. Finnivus had never liked Prince Lochlan, or his father. He was jealous of AuzyAuzy Shiver and its reputation in the Big Blue as the most honored shiver. And golden-hued Prince Lochlan was loved and respected by everyone. While the body of his father, King Lochlan, had been found, the prince’s had not. So many sharkkind had been killed in the frenzy during and after the battle that Finnivus was sure the golden great white was swimming the Sparkle Blue. That was the reason behind Finnivus’s attack—he hated Prince Lochlan. Well, that and the fact that Finnivus was a power-hungry fish who wanted every sharkkind and dweller in the ocean to bow before him. Whalem felt his stomach turn. Such dishonor! Such disgrace! He would never feel clean again after witnessing the horrors Finnivus had wreaked upon AuzyAuzy.
Finnivus had none of his father’s mercy, grace, or intelligence. Indi Shiver needed replacements for its mariners who had died, were injured, or grew too old to fight. Killing a group of disorganized and terrified enemy sharks when a battle’s outcome was decided was a strategic blunder that showed bad leadership. The best way to turn a beaten shiver into loyal Indi mariners wasn’t to terrify them with cruelty.
If only the battle had ended just a bit earlier! thought Whalem. Every fin flick the king delayed had put more blood in the water, which every Razor Shiver shark would remember. Swimming to the royal court, Whalem sighed. Such a waste.
Finnivus watched as the decorator crabs and fish wove Indi Shiver symbols into the greenie which grew in the area. “Pfah!” the king grumbled. “What a low and lowly place this is! Isn’t that right, Tydal?”
“No place in all the Big Blue is as glorious as your own Indi homewaters, Magnificence,” answered the brown-and-yellow court fish. “But we do try.”
“Try harder,” was the king’s bored reply.
“Immediately, Your Highness!”
Finnivus gave a noncommittal grunt. Whalem suppressed a smile as he thought of Tydal’s nickname among some of the armada: First Court Toady. The epaulette shark was required to see to every tiny detail that tradition dictated. He did his work well.
Whalem nodded at the king’s Line, all friends of Finnivus. Their parents were Indi royalty, as evidenced by their intricate tattoos. The young sharks had been secretly against Finnivus taking his rightful place on the throne, but now hovered under his belly like remora. Five years ago, these supposed friends thought Whalem should take the throne when Romulus died.
Whalem knew this wasn’t because of their tremendous respect for him as their first in the Line. No, it was because he was more than seventy summers old and had no children. If he became king, one of them would rule within a few years. Thankfully, the others of Romulus’s old Line sided with Whalem and voted to make Finnivus king. They weren’t here anymore, though. Whalem was the last of the old guard, kept in position because he remained undefeated in battle, and Finnivus was a superstitious fin.
“Three cheers for King Finnivus!” yelled the second in the Line, a tiger.
“Finnivus Victor once again victorious!” the third cried immediately afterward.
Whalem especially disliked it when they did that: one yelling something, followed by another emphasizing the point in a different way. They were being sucker fish! But Finnivus didn’t seem to notice. The king flicked his pectorals, preening. “Oh, please! I—I mean, we—only do what we are meant to!”
Finnivus loved the royal we, but didn’t always use it correctly.
Whalem sighed as his eyes slid to the now nearly invisible Tydal. The brightly colored court shark could hover perfectly still and seemed to disappear through sheer motionlessness. Probably a good trait to have for a court fish when Finnivus got angry, Whalem thought.
Finnivus slapped his tail enthusiastically against the Speakers Rock as the seasoned head of Razor Shiver’s leader was brought to him on the back of a sea turtle. Whalem used the tide to drift farther away from the meal. It turned his stomach. Though Indi Shiver had a past tradition of eating an enemy shiver’s leader, Romulus had never, ever honored it. But Finnivus brought the ritual back. Whalem shuddered as Finnivus ate with gusto.
“Oh, this is delicious! I can’t wait to see who I’ll get to eat next!”
A prickle of fear marched down Whalem’s spine. Had he made the wrong choice when he refused to be king of Indi Shiver? One poor decision, one tail stroke out of place, and it could be his head on that dining platter. Whalem shivered.
“GRAY, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE WORST IDEA you’ve ever come up with,” Barkley said as they waited in a thick kelp bed outside of Slaggernacks. It had taken most of the day to carefully creep through the greenie from Coral Shiver’s hiding place and skirt Goblin’s territory to get safely into the neutral area around Slaggernacks.
“Quiet,” Gray whispered.
“I didn’t think you could top your other classics,” the dogfish went on. “You know, like when you got banished from Coral Shiver? Or when you decided joining Goblin Shiver was a good idea? Or when you listened to Velenka instead of me? How about when you—”
“Shhh!” Gray said as he bumped Barkley in the side. “Quit being such a tail bender, will you? We have to do this.”
“Why? Why do we have to?”
Gray looked at Barkley. “Because it’s the right thing. And you know it.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” the dogfish grumbled.
“Could you at least be more quiet in your dislike?” Barkley made a face that Gray pretended not to notice. “There they are.” Sure enough, Goblin and Velenka were swimming into the back cave at Slaggernacks. “Don’t forget the fish,” Gray told Barkley as he left the greenie.
The dogfish shook his head and muttered, “This is so dumb,” before grabbing the huge sea bass. Barkley was right. This wasn’t smart. But it was a calculated risk that Gray hoped would work out.
Barkley dumped the plump bass by the door. Trank gave him a nod and led them inside as a large octopus dragged the tasty fish away.
The dogfish shook his head and waggled his fins nervously. “Such a bad idea.”
When they got to the cave where Goblin and Velenka were, the reaction was immediate. “WHAT ARE THEY DOING HERE?” shouted the furious great white. He gnashed his teeth so hard that one cracked off.
Velenka was just as agitated when she saw Trank. She had double-crossed and imprisoned the stonefish.
“Relax, Velenka. This isn’t what youse think. And youse, too, Goblin,” Trank said.
Goblin glared balefully at Gray. “Didn’t I teach you anything?” he seethed. “At least challenge me to a snout-to-snout fight.”
“Some other time,” Gray told them. “Razor’s dead.”
“What?”
“Are you hard of hearing?” Barkley asked sarcastically.
“One day I’ll eat you, doggie!”
“Like you wouldn’t for no reason at all,
” the dogfish replied, churning the water with his tail. “Suck algae, you big bully.”
Trank swam between them, little fins turning dainty circles as dust and debris fell from his upper body. “No one is doing anything to anyone in Slaggernacks unless Gafin says so! Youse get me?”
Goblin leered at the small fish. “Think you can slow me down if I wanted to do something?”
Trank motioned upward with a fin. “Not me, personally. But it just so happens it’s not just me, personally, that’s here.”
Everyone looked up. Hundreds of urchins and poisonous dwellers including blue-ringed octopi and stingrays hung on the ceiling of the cave. If Goblin attacked, there was no way he’d get out of the cave without being stung many, many times.
The tension in the room vibrated in Gray’s lateral line and spine, but the great white didn’t charge. He motioned to Velenka and she broke the silence. “How do you know Razor’s dead?”
“I saw it,” Gray told the mako, her blacker-than-black eyes boring into him. “Half his shiver went to the Sparkle Blue. The rest were taken.”
“Taken by whom? Why should I believe anything you say?” snorted Goblin. “What kind of game are you playing?”
Barkley shook his head. “You should have just let them drift right into that whirlpool.”
“They call themselves Indi Shiver,” Gray persisted.
Goblin snickered. “Indi’s homewaters are halfway around the Big Blue!”
“They fight in coordinated formations and would take your mariners apart in a fin flick,” Barkley said. “Turns out your little playtime practice drills are good for nothing!”
Gray slapped the dogfish with his tail. “Barkley! You’re not helping.” He turned to Goblin. “But he’s right. Even at our best—with ten times our numbers—the fight would be over in minutes.”
“What do you mean by our best?” the great white sneered, showing his teeth again.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Barkley.
Gray smiled at both of them, a little embarrassed. “I, umm, didn’t mean that, I guess.” He looked at Goblin and Velenka. “But I know what your shiver can and can’t do. And what Indi Shiver did to Razor and his bulls was nothing short of . . . horrifying.”
Goblin chuckled. It started as a slow rumble but then grew and grew. “Only a turtle like you would say that Razor being eaten was horrifying.”
Velenka gave Goblin a calculating look. When she saw Gray watching, it vanished. “Maybe we should listen to the meal of the message. Razor and his bulls were smashed by some shiver.”
“Right. By Indi Shiver.”
“Whoever they might be,” Velenka told him.
“Why are you really here, pup?” Goblin snapped his jaws, his triangular teeth scraping their serrated edges together. “You want to make nice so I forgive you?”
Barkley shook his head and muttered, “Such a bad idea.”
“I’m here because you did teach me a few things, and for that I’m grateful,” Gray said to the barrel-shaped great white. “I’m here because your shiver sharks aren’t evil and don’t need to die. But lastly, I’m here because I think no one, not even you, deserves what happened to Razor and his shiver.”
Goblin’s gills pumped in and out, hate making his eyes glow in the darkness of the cavern. While Gray hadn’t been expecting the great white to get all weepy and say everything between them was okay, this wasn’t the reaction he’d envisioned.
“I told you once, pup, our homewaters are worth fighting for. If you don’t understand that, I never taught you anything. Come on, Velenka.” Goblin swam past Gray brusquely, his crescent-shaped tail slapping Barkley in the face on the way out. The dogfish took it in silence.
When Velenka left, Gray asked her, “Will you talk with him?”
“I’ll try,” the mako replied. “It’s good to see you.”
“Feel free to keep moving, sister,” Barkley told her.
“How do you know we won’t wait for you outside?” she said to Barkley with menace in her voice, her pitch-black eyes boring into him.
Barkley just smiled. “Because I made a deal with Gafin and your friend Trank. If I go missing, you get a visit when you least expect it. So you better hope I stay healthy.”
Velenka glanced warily at Trank, who was speaking with some other stonefish on the far side of the cave.
“Did you really do that?” Gray asked Barkley after the mako had gone.
“Of course not!”
Trank swam over to them. “If I knew the meeting was gonna be that tense, I woulda charged youse more.”
Gray and Barkley swam out of Slaggernacks soon afterward. They scooted into the cover of the greenie and made their way to the landshark wreck. “That didn’t exactly work out,” Barkley commented.
“I did what I had to,” Gray told him.
“So, what’s next?”
“I think it’s time we make the introductions between Rogue and Coral.”
“Finally.” Barkley gave Gray a stinging tail slap to his belly. “An idea I can really get behind.” The dogfish tore through the greenie as fast as he could.
Gray gave chase, the tension of the meeting melting in the crisp current. “Oh, you better swim!”
BECAUSE GRAY HAD BEEN THERE BEFORE, HE was able to lead his friends to Coral Shiver’s new homewaters even though the entrance was well-hidden. The trick was to approach from the east and look for the rock formation shaped like an upside-down lobster tail someone had named Rock Lobster. Once they got there, a shiver shark Gray didn’t know led them into the hidden swimming lane and through the long fronds of green-greenie. Barkley and the other Rogue members followed single file until the path widened into the secluded reef. The shiver shark told them to wait there until Quickeyes was informed of their arrival.
Shell tapped Striiker with his flipper. “Hey, do I look okay?”
“What do you mean?” the great white asked, genuinely confused. “You look like you always do.”
“You’re sure? Do I have a mackerel head in my teeth or anything?”
Striiker sighed and didn’t answer, flicking his tail instead.
“You’ve been edgy all day,” Barkley told Shell. “Don’t worry. These fish are family.”
“But my ex-family attacked your family,” Shell replied, his tail switching right and left. That was true. Goblin had used sharkkind from Razor Shiver to do his dirty work.
“We’ve been through this,” Gray said. He knew his mother wouldn’t blame Shell for Razor Shiver’s actions, but to be safe he’d sent word that they would be coming with an ex–Razor Shiver bull shark before their visit. He couldn’t be absolutely sure how everyone else would react, and he didn’t want any surprises. “It wasn’t your fault, Shell.”
Quickeyes and Onyx swam over with Gray’s mother. There were introductions all around, and then Rogue Shiver toured the reef. It had interesting coral formations that shined with ghostly yellow and blue hues. The sea moss covering the rocks underneath was light green and fluffy as it waved back and forth in the current. It wasn’t their old reef in the Caribbi Sea, but it was nice.
They heard Yappy before seeing him. The little sea dragon came tearing through the greenie where he’d been hunting, shouting, “It’s Gray and Barkley! It’s Barkley and Gray!”
“Not again,” muttered Onyx to Quickeyes at the same exact time Barkley said it to Gray. This made everyone chuckle as the little dweller zipped between Gray and Barkley.
“I knew it was you two when I heard your voices, on the account of it is actually you two!” Yappy exclaimed. “Have you guys seen the coral on the other side? It’s pretty gilly, all right! Pretty and gilly, I mean! How do you think coral got its name? I mean, what if we called it gracklenut? I supposed coral sounds better than gracklenut, though.”
/> Snork, the sawfish, chimed in. “Gracklenut sounds more like that rough kind of orange-greenie. Maybe we could start calling that gracklenut!”
“That’s a great idea!” said Yappy, his attention now thankfully focused on Snork. “Who are you? Have you named many other things?”
“My name’s Snork,” he answered. “I’ve always wanted to name things, but never got around to it.”
“You definitely should find the time. I can tell you’d be good at it. Why, I’ll bet we could go around the reef, and you would name three of four things right now. Do you want to?”
“That sounds like fun,” Snork replied. The pair swam off to the amusement of everyone else.
“So that’s Yappy,” Mari remarked.
“Yep,” Gray said, nodding.
Barkley motioned with his tail at the retreating figures. “That’s a dangerous combination.” When everyone laughed, he added, “I’m serious. Those two? They might never stop talking. Ever.”
“Snork seems like a good fin,” Quickeyes told Gray. “Like the rest of your new friends.” After that, the discussion grew more serious. Onyx took Shell off to the side, and they spoke intently by themselves, probably about Shell’s history with Razor Shiver. When they returned, the blacktip seemed at ease with the big bull shark.
For some reason, Gray’s mom and Mari were talking. A lot. After every other sentence, they glanced Gray’s way and chuckled.
A horrible thought hit him. The bucket story! What if his mom told Mari the bucket story? When Gray had been a young pup, he’d explored a galleon—a different kind of landshark ship than the one Rogue Shiver lived in now—and gotten his head stuck in a bucket. It was wedged on so tightly Prime Minister Shocks had to get help from the octopus clan to pull it off. Everyone had called Gray buckethead for a long time after that. His mother and Mari laughed again, but louder. “Not the bucket story, Mom,” Gray muttered to himself.
“So, what do you think?” Quickeyes asked Gray. “Will you and Barkley join our Line? You’ll be third, he’ll be fourth.”
