Sarai reached up and brushed her fingers over her lips, smile stretching her face as she stared at the rapidly disappearing ripples where Ydri had been. She hadn’t expected that—she should have, should have realized long ago—she hadn’t known she wanted it, but oh, how she had wanted it. She fell back on the sand, closing her eyes again, and imagined Ydri’s hands on her cheeks. How soft her hair would be when Sarai’s hands ran through it—
“There you are!” Gretchen’s voice cut through her thoughts, and Sarai struggled to her feet, dress soaked from the waist down by the rising tide, and gaped at her cousin. “Oh my goodness, Sarai, what were you thinking, sitting in the water! They’re going to get you again, you just wait!” Gretchen bustled over to her and pulled off her cloak, tossing it around her shoulders, as Sarai stepped back onto dry sand. “The queen wants to see you!”
Sarai wrapped the cloak around herself. “What? What do you mean, the queen? I already spoke with her once today. I can’t handle royalty twice in an afternoon.”
Gretchen grabbed her by the hand and tugged her toward the grass at the edge of the sand. “She wants to speak with you, Sarai. She probably wants to thank you for saving the city. And I am not letting you walk in there looking like some kind of pauper with those wet, dirty clothes. Now come on!”
Sarai let herself be tugged toward the castle.
THE QUEEN SAT on her throne, regal and glorious, and Sarai froze at the entrance to the great hall, staring as her new skirts swirled around her ankles. The guard nudged her forward and she stumbled in, curtseying deeply as she caught her breath.
It had been different in her personal reception chamber. She’d been more approachable there, more of a human, and now Sarai couldn’t even see the kind woman she’d met earlier. This was a gorgeous, untouchable goddess before her, and she swallowed around the panic in her throat.
Guards stood on either side of her, their chainmail shining in the light from the tall windows on either side of the throne. A single bright glittering shaft poured over the queen, dousing her in brilliance. Sarai suddenly understood what the old tales meant when they described knights willing to lay down their lives for their queens. In this glorious moment, she’d be hard pressed to refuse anything the queen asked.
“Approach the throne,” said the guard on her left, and Sarai swallowed and edged forward carefully, keeping her eyes on the ground. The aisle seemed miles long, hundreds of eyes watching her on the long approach. She was suddenly very glad for the new dress Gretchen had forced her into. She finally reached guards at the front of the hall and curtseyed again at the edge of the long, purple carpet lining the center of the room.
“Come closer,” said the Queen, beckoning, and Sarai did, moving carefully to the steps of the dais, keeping an uneasy eye on the guards who watched her just as carefully as she watched them.
“You’ve done a great service to our people,” said the Queen, and her voice was kind, intimate, and Sarai felt herself relaxing involuntarily. “We would like to reward your vigilance and your determination.” She gestured to the porter standing in the corner of the hall and he came forward, holding out a small leather drawstring bag. “First, we are granting you the title of Protector of the Shores and land from which to watch over the ocean.” The porter handed Sarai the bag and she took it gently. “We have not filled this position for many decades, but the king and I want you to serve us at the edge of the water.”
“Open it,” the porter said quietly. “That shows acceptance of the gift.”
Sarai nodded, grateful for the instruction, and opened the drawstring.
Out of the bag, she pulled a key, ornate and heavy brass, on a leather thong.
“Take this as well,” said the Queen, stretching forward and handing her a small silk pouch. “If you ever need to warn us again of something so dire, please use this for entry into the castle. It will get you past the guards and to my personal staff with no questions and no delays. Marla knows your face and knows you carry my favor.”
Her eyes were warm in her smooth, deep-brown face, and Sarai smiled shyly, opening the pouch. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I won’t let you down. I promise.” Inside the bag sat a gorgeous ring: a large dark blue stone set in shining silver and inscribed with the queen’s personal seal. Beside it sat a letter, the outside reading “Open once you’ve arrived in your new home.” Sarai stared at it for a moment, then met the queen’s gaze. The queen raised her eyebrows and Sarai swallowed, smiled, bowed, and allowed herself to be led out of the castle. The porter smiled at her kindly.
“The house is to the east of town,” he said, handing her a map. “Congratulations on your title. You’re landed now.”
Sarai looked up at him, not understanding.
He smiled. “You hold a royal post, and the land that goes with it, my lady. You’ve all the rights of the nobility.” His smile widened. “It’s the smallest royal holding I’ve ever seen, but it’s a royal holding, nevertheless.”
Sarai gaped at him. “Oh, no. I’m no noble, sir. I grew up on a pig farm. I can’t be a lady.”
He shrugged and pointed at the crest of the hill in the distance, a smudge of a building silhouetted in the afternoon light. “Whatever you say, my lady.”
She gave him her hand automatically when he held his out and blushed when he raised it to his lips. “I’ll leave you here to enter your new lands.” She stared after him until he disappeared around a bend. Then she turned and nearly laughed with relief at the sight of Nicholas leaning against the wall just past the gate. “Hello,” he said. “I hear you’re a hero these days.”
She shrugged. “The queen gave me a house.” It hadn’t quite sunk in that she had a job, and a title, let alone property. She was a noble. She held a royal post.
He held out his arm. “Well, then, my lady, would you care for an escort to your new domain?”
She snorted but took his arm.
“So tell me,” he asked as they stepped onto the road leading to the gate to the cliffs. That little house in the distance grew bigger with every step. “What will you do as official Protector of the Shores?” He pushed the gate open, nodding to the guards, who nodded back and smiled at Sarai. “Will you be battling sea creatures? Negotiating with kraken?”
Sarai glanced behind them to make sure the guards were out of earshot. “I think I’m going to be an intermediary with the merpeople,” she admitted. “If they sense something else coming, they can warn us.” She smiled. “I’m hoping in time we’ll establish trade, but for now, it’ll likely be information and defense. They told me they can handle the kraken for us. Apparently, they’ve been interceding on our behalf with them for hundreds of years.”
“You’re joking, right? There’s no such thing. Mermaids are one thing. Mermaids I’ll believe. But the kraken?”
“One nearly got our ships when the first colonists came, apparently. Ydri said they convinced it not to eat our people. I guess it almost got the whole fleet until they got it to leave.” Sarai paused and pulled her arm from Nicholas’s to consult the map as a broad field of waving beach grass spread before them, a path stretching to either side of it. “I think it’s this way.”
Nicholas looked over her shoulder at the piece of paper the porter had given her. “I know this place,” he commented. “I used to watch for ships from here. If it’s the house I think it is, it had a wonderful view of the water.”
Sarai followed as he turned off the path and onto a track barely visible from the main road, beginning the climb up toward the cliff. “I can’t imagine you as a wild child roaming the hills,” she commented. “Not very noble, my lord.”
He laughed out loud at that, sending a small flock of sandpipers into the air. The gulls in the low scrubby bushes beside the path were unfazed. “I wasn’t exactly feral, Sarai. I needed an escape sometimes from the pressures of court life, that’s all.” He smiled faintly. “I’d wander up here, stare out at the ocean, and imagine I was an explorer and had just found the wreck of the
Corona. Then I’d come back a hero.”
They crested the hill, the ocean stretching out deep blue before them, shading to turquoise capped with white foam breakers near the shore. “You wouldn’t have found a wreck,” said Sarai, staring out at the distant horizon.
“I know,” said Nicholas. “I knew they were much too far to reach. But I still dreamed about it.”
“They’re not down there at all,” said Sarai.
"What do you mean, they aren’t?" Nicholas stopped in his tracks and turned to face Sarai.
She grinned. “Ydri said they never sank. Just got separated in the storm.”
"It's established fact, Sarai. They're gone. They’re all at the bottom of the sea somewhere." He shook his head. “Maybe your mermaid friend heard the stories wrong.”
“She was there, Nicholas. She saw it. They live for hundreds of years, maybe even more. I believed her. They’re out there on some other land mass, surviving and thriving.”
She could see the gleam of excitement in his eye as he processed what she’d said. He was fascinated by history, she remembered, and by information about the place their ancestors had come from. There was so little information that even though he didn’t yet believe her, she could tell he wanted to.
“The house is a few hundred yards around the bend,” he said finally, pointing ahead. “I need to do some research. If you see your friend—” he shrugged. “Ask her how we can find them. Please.”
“I will.” She waved as he hurried off, then turned toward her new home.
The house stood on the cliff, high enough up that it hadn’t been touched by the storm, and Sarai’s hand shook as she inserted the key into the lock. The place was small, neatly furnished, but the best part was what she discovered when she went out the back door: a long, narrow set of steps carved into the cliff face leading to the beach below. Opening the pouch, she pulled out the letter and sat on a rock to read.
Dear Sarai,
As I have said, you have our deepest gratitude for your persistence and your work to safeguard our home. Now I have another task for you, one which may not be so simple. The merpeople share a border with us just as much as the other realms on land, and we must understand them better than we do. You shall be our ambassador to them, our negotiator and cultural liaison. If we are able to form a treaty with them, we must. Please know you have our blessing to offer peace and free trade to our aquatic neighbors.
I am sorry I cannot give you this position openly, but the time is not right. It is not ours to reveal, this secret world beneath the waves. I know you understand.
The queen’s signature scrawled across the bottom. Sarai folded it gently, tucking in in the drawer of the small table beside the door before stepping back outside.
She climbed down the staircase carefully, standing on the warm, wet sand in her bare feet, and called out across the ocean, “Ydri? Are you out there?”
Her voice carried across the water, blending with the rushing of waves, but a deep green tail broke the surface in the bay, and Sarai grinned as the shape came closer.
“You have returned,” said Ydri as she bobbed in the deep water over the coastal shelf, and Sarai waded into the water once again, tugging off her fancy new clothes and tossing them up on the beach. Gretchen would throw a fit if Sarai ruined another perfectly lovely dress. “Is all well?”
“I wanted to see you,” said Sarai. “The queen wants me to make a treaty with your people, eventually. She wants us to declare you an official neighbor and, hopefully, an ally. I don’t know how many people will believe it, but it’s a start.”
“That will take many years,” said Ydri. “But perhaps I could bring you to our court, as a guest this time, rather than a subject? It is not only your traditions that must change, but ours as well. And with the authority your ruler has given you, perhaps our leaders will listen to us. It will certainly change the required protocols.”
Sarai stepped from the raised shelf, treading water beside Ydri. “I’d like that.” She shifted closer, feeling the changing currents from Ydri’s fins and tentacles as they gently stirred the water. “I’m sorry about before. I understand why you wanted me to leave, I do.”
“It is I who should be sorry.” Ydri reached out a tendril and wrapped it gently around Sarai’s hips, holding her up in the water, and she relaxed against it, letting her arms and legs drift. “I care for you, Sarai. I did not want to lose you then, and I don’t want to lose you either.”
Sarai reached out, resting her hands on Ydri’s shoulders. Ydri froze, then relaxed, a pleased smile breaking across her face. “I want to be part of your world,” said Sarai. “And I want you to be part of mine. The spell you did to bring you to land, can you do it again?”
“I can,” said Ydri. “It only lasts a few hours, but it is not too taxing.” She curled her arms around Sarai’s waist and drew her even closer.
“I’d like you to meet our queen,” said Sarai. “And I’d like you to meet my friends, see my city.”
“I’d love that,” said Ydri and pulled her closer, tugging their lips together as she pulled them both down under the water. She hummed a note deep in her throat, and the water turned crystal clear to Sarai’s eyes and gained that strange warmth she knew meant she could breathe. She pulled back from Ydri, keeping her hands curled around Ydri’s shoulders and stroking her fingers over Ydri’s warm, smooth skin.
“What now?” She asked.
Ydri smiled. Her tentacles pulled Sarai closer as they sank down, down, down in the sea. “Now we see if the land can live with the sea. Let’s start with you and me.”
As the water darkened around them, Sarai pressed her lips back to Ydri’s own.
THE WISPY CLOUDS scuttled across the bright-blue sky in a brisk wind driving westward across the ship’s bow. Sarai leaned on the rail, closing her eyes and breathing in the salt-smell she’d missed so dearly. Even on the coast in her perfect little house, the scent wasn’t quite the same as the smell of the air on the open sea. No stench of cooking fish, no hot tar and sawdust from the shipyards: just salt and sea and freedom. They’d rowed from the harbor, the sailors flying up and down the lines as they unfurled the sails, and a pang shivered through her. She loved it up there in the ropes, loved the freedom and power of a giant ship like this one in her control. But she’d traded that life for a slightly different one. Her hands ran over the fine cotton of her dress, practical and well-made, over sturdy leather boots. Her hands were gloveless against the wood, her hair twisted up in a bun, and she could breathe easily in the bodice, her chest not constricted by the makeshift corset she’d worn on the Blessed Angeline or the formal women’s wear she’d been expected to don at the castle.
Being seen as a man had given her certain opportunities, certain freedoms, but she was happy as a woman, once she was allowed to do the things she wanted to do. She’d take getting to be herself over getting to frolic in the ropes.
Of course, once they were out over the ocean, she might take a turn in the crow’s nest. But she could wait to scale the mast until she got to know the crew a little bit better and got an idea how they’d take their patron on the ropes.
The rail shifted beneath her elbows as someone leaned beside her and she looked up to see Nicholas’s long, scruffy face beside her. He’d traded his usual rich fabrics for a wool coat in a sensible shade of brown, and his usually carefully coiffed hair was wind tossed as he smiled at Sarai.
“You look different.” Sarai smiled at him. “The sea agrees with you.”
“Semi-nobility agrees with you.” He reached out and fingered the soft blue fabric of her sleeve. “Though this is going to be uncomfortable once the spray soaks through, I wager.”
Sarai laughed. “I’ve got pants in my cabin.” She shook her head. “I have a cabin.”
“You’re not a common sailor anymore. No hammock in the hold for you.” He patted her shoulder. “You’re a titled citizen, and part owner of this fine vessel. Don’t you forget it.”
&nbs
p; “You didn’t have to do that,” said Sarai, turning to face him. “You really didn’t. I would have been happy as a sailor, or even as a passenger.”
“And you didn’t have to save the whole city at great personal risk to your reputation.” He shrugged. “Besides, I don’t know nearly enough about sailing to run this ship.”
“That’s why you have a captain.” She waved at the bow, where Captain Yu stood and conferred with the quartermaster.
“No, that’s why I have a partner with shipping experience,” he corrected. “So I know if the captain’s just blowing smoke when he tells me things. Besides, you’re the one with the contacts.”
Sarai leaned into the rail, scanning the water’s surface. Somewhere out there was Ydri and her sister, waiting to lead them to their lost brethren to the south. And somewhere beyond them was a whole wide open sea, filled with people and places she couldn’t begin to imagine. Somewhere out there was the homeland they’d left three centuries ago, maybe still in the grips of the war that had forced their ancestors across the ocean, and maybe not. Maybe they’d found peace. She’d find out someday. That might be their next adventure—she and Nicholas and Ydri.
The waves rippled a few yards off the side and a dark-green face burst through the waves, effortlessly pacing the ship’s movement. Sarai grinned at Ydri, who met Sarai’s gaze with her own.
The shore was nearly gone in the mist behind them, its buildings and beaches fading into nothingness as the sails caught the open water’s brisk wind. Sarai lifted her face into the spray and smiled. “Are you ready to meet her?” she asked Nicholas, who followed her gaze into the sea.
“She’s here?” He squinted into the water and gasped. “There’s something there! Is that her? That’s your mermaid?”
“She’s not mine.” Sarai leaned over the rail, admiring Ydri’s long, lithe form as she cut through the water, matching the ship’s speed effortlessly. “She’s her own. Or maybe I’m hers.” She grinned as Ydri grabbed hold of the handle Sarai had installed in the side of the ship and pulled herself up to the window. She swung it open with a lithe tentacle and slid inside. “Come on.”
Surface Tension Page 10
