by Amy Bearce
Corbin tilted his head and smiled that sweet smile of his. Of course he knew exactly what she meant without her having to explain.
“It’s not your fault, little sister. I’m really glad for you. You finally seem content with Queen. About time!” He nudged her shoulder.
Sierra shook her head and punched his shoulder. “Well, I hope you and Nell take care. I think she’s liked you for a long time, Corbin,” Sierra admitted. “She really cares for you, so I hope you two are happy.”
“I am! But you’ll always be my best friend, Sierra.” He tugged her braid, making her smile. “I’m glad you two have finally been getting along, though, you know?”
She did. It looked like she would get to keep her closest friend after all.
Saying goodbye to Corbin was hard. She didn’t want to let him go on without her. He was walking into danger, but he was an eager puppy, aglow with his certainty of goodwill toward men and all the optimism she’d had beaten out of her years ago. Sierra wished he had less of it, but if he wasn’t so hopeful, he wouldn’t be Corbin. She hugged him, resigned to this truth.
Nell clasped his hand. Sierra worried less with Nell at his side. She was no fool and knew the odds. But saying goodbye to her put a strange catch in Sierra’s throat, too. As Nell and Corbin walked off down the main path, their shadows merged for an instant. Sierra had to smile at the symbolism.
“You care for him, yes?” Micah’s velvety voice made her startle.
She raised her eyebrows. She thought it had been clear how she felt. “He’s been a brother to me.”
“But perhaps more than a brother?” Micah asked. For once, he wasn’t meeting her eyes. Strange.
Sierra blinked, pulse picking up at this unexpected line of questioning. “Uh, no. Not Corbin and me. Not that way.”
She blushed. Had Micah guessed she’d tried really hard not to think of him that way?
In case she’d been too obvious and embarrassed herself, she casually added, “I’m not looking to court yet anyway. It’s not the right time for me.”
There. Now he wouldn’t think she’d been pining after him and his big brown eyes. Which she definitely hadn’t been. Certainly not. And she really couldn’t afford to focus on anything as frivolous as courtship right now, so she was telling the truth, if not all of it.
Micah looked at Sierra for a long moment, making her skin prickle. “Maybe someday, then,” he said.
He spoke so softly she almost wondered if she heard him correctly, but then he turned to face the sea, obviously done speaking.
She didn’t know what that meant. Did he think she’d care for Corbin one day as more than a friend? She didn’t have time to find out or explain to Micah how wrong he was. Her mind was already turning toward their next task, as it always did. Phoebe needed help.
Sierra hunkered down on one of the slick rocks jutting out of the sea. The surf broke a mile out from shore, and the waters nearby were fairly shallow compared to the deep ocean, but she’d seen plenty of merfolk in similar eddies and coves before. Today, though, the water seemed empty. She grimaced and stole a glance at the rising sun. It sent sparkles across the water, as if it had nothing better to do than make life beautiful.
“We need to call one of them,” Sierra said. “Any ideas?”
She wasn’t sure where Queenie was. Sierra thought of her, focused on her and got a faint response, a sort of questioning, “What?” But Queenie wouldn’t be of much use in this situation, Sierra decided, and let their connection fade into the background.
Micah stared thoughtfully at the glass-green water, then squatted next to Sierra, dipped one hand in, and hummed slightly. He closed his eyes and stilled, sitting like a statue. He stayed in that position long after Sierra had to move to shake her legs out.
He stood without warning, eyes flashing open. “One comes.”
Sierra strained to see any merfolk, but she didn’t catch so much as a glimpse before one was suddenly there. Young and pale as an opal, he had gills slicing a dark line down each side of his throat. His age was hard to determine, but he appeared to be around the same age as Phoebe, perhaps a year or two older. Without the customary tattooing on his arms and torso worn by adult merfolk, this was clearly a child merman, often called a seawee. His dark green hair spread across his shoulders like kelp cascading down his back. His eyes were obsidian with a thin ring of green around the edge of each iris.
He didn’t speak but gestured to the water.
Micah said, “He can talk under the surface but not above. He understands we need passage to the fortress. The adult merfolk could not come, but this seawee was intrigued. I suspect he is adventurous, so we’ll have a chance to convince him to help.”
Sierra stared at Micah, realizing she’d need to go under the green water to hear the seawee’s response. The cold green water. In her clothes, because she sure wasn’t taking them off in front of the little merman and Micah.
The ripe smell of dead fish and rotting seaweed along the rocky coast wrinkled her nose, but she took off her coat and then laid it by the rocks. She decided to only lower her face under, even though her bottom would stick up in the air in a far from flattering fashion. Her embarrassment faded fast, though, as she dipped her hand in the water. She yipped at the frigid temperature.
The seawee made a strange chortle through his gills. He patted the water impatiently, gesturing with a welcoming smile. He wasn’t all that different from them, at least the part above surface, even with dark green hair. The bottom half of his body was a long, green fishtail. The scales glittered in the sun shining through the shallow water. Yet his appearance seemed natural in the ocean like this. Sierra had certainly seen stranger. She glanced back at Micah, who sat on the largest boulder still in human form wearing the dreaded borrowed clothing. He shrugged.
She took a deep breath. Leaning forward, she plunged her face in the water. The icy temperature forced several bubbles of air out of her mouth. Water leaked in through her tightened lips, tasting of salt. She kept her eyelids squinched shut, hating the way sea water always stung, but when cold, wet hands reached up and grabbed her biceps, her eyes snapped open.
His hair turned light green under the water and streamed out around his head like a halo. His eyes were piercing, completely black now, deep, shadowed pools in that pale, pale face. She struggled, but it was too late.
“Don’t worry. It’s better this way,” the seawee said, clearly in her ear, a ringing undertone to his voice. Then he pulled the rest of her in the water and swam rapidly toward the bottom.
he seawee pulled Sierra down, down, down, turning the sun above into a pale, watery disc. She thrashed in his muscular arms as the powerful strokes of his tail sent them zooming straight to the sandy bottom of the ocean cove.
“You’ll be fine, m’lady. Take a breath and see,” he said.
Likely story. Her lungs burned, but Sierra continued to struggle. He held her there, bubbles trickling through her mouth in panic as she gazed upward. She spotted Micah, face horrified, peering into the shallows. His head was turning this way and that, trying to spot her.
He was remarkably easy for her to see despite the water between them. He jumped in with a sudden splash. Clearly swimming wasn’t a common faun activity because he began to sink while throwing his limbs around ineffectively. But even as he sank lower, he continued looking for her. Sierra tried to yell, losing more precious breath. He turned to see her, and he tried kicking her direction, spinning slowly in the water He’d never reach her before she ran out of air.
“Trust me. Breathe,” the seawee told Sierra.
She looked over her shoulder at him, eyes wild and furious.
“No, truly, I swear to you, if you are with me and I so choose it, you can breathe underwater. You are with a creature of magic who has vouched for you, so we will share with you this secret that few humans ever learn.” The words were clear, not garbled or gurgly like they should have been.
She didn’t believe him, but it
didn’t matter. She’d either die from lack of oxygen or from drowning. Her body refused to give up without a fight, and even though she tried to stop, she couldn’t prevent her lungs from trying to take a breath. They simply had to expand.
The cold water swirled into Sierra, into her chest cavity. With that horrible chill, she expected to die. Her only thought now was that Phoebe would never be rescued, and Sierra was so heavy she didn’t even need the seawee to hold her on the ocean floor. She waited for her lungs to reject the water, waited for the burning coughing and choking that should have come but hadn’t. Micah was still thrashing and sinking, but Sierra sat quietly on the bottom.
When the seawee sensed her quietness, he released her. He darted over to Micah. One touch of the seawee’s hand and Micah stopped fighting. Some magical communication, Sierra could only guess. The seawee pulled Micah along, and then they were all on the ocean floor, in a situation more bizarre than she could have even imagined.
Her vision remained strangely clear under the water, perhaps a part of the seawee’s magic or maybe because of the plentiful sunlight that reached this depth. A fish darted by like a bird might above, its yellow and red scales flashing in the sun. Kelp and seaweed dotted the ocean floor, along with the garbage of the humans from the city. The beauty was still there, though obviously stained. Sierra met the child merman’s eyes, suddenly ashamed to be human. She wished she had forced Corbin and Nell to stay with them. Corbin would have loved to experience this, but all Sierra wanted was to get out of here and reach Phoebe.
“Welcome to our world beneath the waves, human and faun. My name is Tristan. You need help, I understand, to reach your sister?”
Sierra nodded and explained their situation, even though it felt strange to place their hope in the hands of a child only slightly older than her sister. But he was the one who came to the call. Tristan the seawee listened carefully, saying nothing until Sierra finished.
“You ask us to take a tremendous risk. My father would not agree, I’m sure. Bentwood keeps a group of merfolk in a cage beneath the waters of his keep, forcing the rest of us to work for him. Should the human Bentwood learn of our role in delivering you to your sister, his prize, he might hurt them as repayment.”
That was true. She couldn’t argue.
“What do you offer us in exchange for this great risk?” Tristan’s eyes were like a night sky devoid of stars, black against the emerald water.
What could she offer him? She was one girl, only a fairy keeper.
“If she destroys this man’s stronghold, wouldn’t that set your people free?” Micah asked, completely nonplussed to be having a conversation on the ocean floor. His shirt billowed out from his chest, and his dark hair waved in the currents.
The seawee appeared to give this some thought. “It would free our people who live in this area, which is better than freeing none. Our people have been forced into servitude at almost every port, so I cannot argue your point. The eldest mermen have long talked of a rebellion, but they fear the loss of the others. I doubt they will ever take action,” the seawee said, rolling his eyes. “If your intention is to overthrow this bottom-feeder who abuses our people, then I’ll deliver you with all speed to the fortress, no matter what my father might say. Things cannot go on as they are. It is my future at risk, too.”
There it was. The bottom line: their world was broken. It was drying out, shriveling, cracking, imploding. Sierra thought about the nectar, the runners, the slavery, the thieving, the brutality. If she could sneak her sister out of there, she would. That was the plan, in fact. But then what? They’d be on the run forever. Aluvia was big, but not that big. Things couldn’t go on as they had been. Something had to change. And a quiet escape wasn’t likely.
She drew herself up as straight as she could, given that she was floating. “I expect I will have to call on the fairy queens to attack the people of this port to save my sister, yes.”
Tristan nodded with satisfaction. Any magical creature understood the likely results of that scenario.
They sped through the water so fast that a steady stream of bubbles rushed across Sierra’s skin. The young merman held her and Micah’s hands and pulled them along in his wake as if they weighed nothing. She supposed down here, in a way, they didn’t.
The journey was surreal, cloaked in silence except for the soft swish of water swirling past them. They went deeper, the sunlight fading until only faint streaks of light touched the coral and tangled plants growing along the bottom like a small forest. She could almost swear the seawee’s skin itself seemed to glow with its own dim light, illuminating their passage. Sierra found she was thankful, so thankful, for Micah’s presence. He believed in her, which was even more important than ever now that she’d been plunged, so to speak, into a rebellion. Her mission had unexpectedly gotten bigger. It was a burden, but one he seemed willing to share with her. She filed the thought away and focused again on the task before her now. Sierra wanted to help the merfolk if she could, but Phoebe was her reason for living.
In a matter of minutes, they reached the edge of the fortress, the peak that jutted out the farthest into the sea. Crumbling, algae-covered rocks anchored the fence lining the entire peninsula. But this far under the water there were holes where the rock had crumbled away from the stress of a thousand earthquakes.
“Up that hole, there.” Tristan pointed to a dark, narrow channel.
Sierra’s skin crawled to look at it.
“If you swim up the hole, you will surface in a small eddy inside the fence where Bentwood’s men try to grow tiny clams for easy harvest. The clams never seem to flourish―because we keep taking them at night and letting them grow wild in the ocean.” He laughed, a sparkling sound that demanded a smile in return. “They leave the area empty of guards quite often, since there is no strategic attack point they know about on this side of the peninsula. It’s the best I have to offer. I will come by later to see if you need help, but I cannot make any promises.”
His offer was more than they had dared hope. Micah and Sierra exchanged a triumphant glance. They had a secret way into Bentwood’s fortress, a way he and his guards knew nothing about. Corbin and Nell would reach the port’s main square soon, but Sierra had no way to let them know that she and Micah were in place. Sierra’s fairy couldn’t come underwater, but she called to her, trying to use the new wordless link between them to help her track them.
Queenie! Sierra ran her fingers along her keeper mark and hoped the fairy heard. They would need her soon. They had a lot of work to do today.
he courtyard was empty except for the tiny ocean pool from which Sierra and Micah arrived. Sunlight burned bright against eyes already used to the darker water. The very lack of people around the area made her instantly nervous.
Micah touched her back and whispered, “This is far too open.”
It was true.
Two stone columns stood to their right, leading into an open-air breezeway. Walls lined the path like towering giants along either side. Sierra had traveled this walkway before, as her father’s daughter during a visit between the leading families. The cobblestoned lane wound around and around until it reached the square in the center of the port where all public meetings were held. There wasn’t a straight path in this city. The roads all spiraled and turned in on themselves in crazy, convoluted ways, much like the mind of the man who designed it. Port Iona had been a tiny dock falling into disrepair before Bentwood took over and built it up. It still held a few sacred altars from the ancient druids and a library where, supposedly, scholars from around Aluvia had come to study. Bentwood didn’t care anything about old faiths and knowledge of long-gone people, though. He had business sense. Too bad he had no soul.
According to Nell’s sources, Phoebe would be down in the lowest level of the main operation building, which meant turning left instead of right. Sierra expected to see guards along each fork in the path, but she didn’t. Their absence made the space between her shoulder blades scream wi
th tension. Knowing Bentwood, surely he had guards on duty everywhere on the peninsula. If the guards weren’t here, where were they… and why?
“Do you think Corbin’s gotten his petition heard in the square?” Sierra asked. Perhaps the guards had been sent to maintain order while the elders held court?
The bizarre idea of someone petitioning for justice here would be like a free carnival to Bentwood’s people. Sierra was sure they had shown up in droves. Someone was probably selling toasted nuts and cider along the side, too.
Micah was silent for a moment. “I fear it will be less of a hearing and more of an execution.”
His choice of words made her stumble on the rough cobbled path.
She spun to face him, the blood draining from her face. “You really think they’ll kill him? I thought maybe they’d laugh at him and send him away. Maybe send him to the dungeons for a fortnight, at the worst.”
Micah shook his head. “I have thought upon what you’ve said and what the seawee said. His story of the merfolk’s plight strengthened my fears. The man you’ve described is ruthless. If I wanted to stop any and all questions about my authority, I would do something drastic, wouldn’t you?”
Panic shot through her. Micah made too much sense. Horrible, perfect sense. She should have known how Bentwood would respond. She’d watched Jack deal with him for years. Guilt burned like a forest fire, blistering. She hadn’t even believed the elders would listen to Corbin, but figured it’d at least be a good distraction while she snuck in. The ground should open up and swallow her whole. Dear, sweet Corbin. She may have thought it was a waste of time before, but Micah crystallized the situation. Corbin couldn’t speak before the elders. And Nell! She would go down with him. Not even her fighting skills would be enough to prevent their capture.
“We’ve got to stop them!” The words exploded out of Sierra. Maybe it was already too late. No. It couldn’t be. Her resolved hardened. Bentwood was going to do something drastic? She was going to do something drastic.
