by Skye Malone
I hesitated. “The water thing. And before you ask, no, I don’t know anything more.”
Ina turned back to Chloe. “So what is it?”
Chloe glanced between us. “I’m not really sure what you mean,” she said cautiously.
“Things feel different around you,” I explained. “Like… like there’s a charge to the water.”
Her brow rose.
“It’s not so much right now,” I tried.
“I can’t even tell it’s there anymore,” Ina added.
I gave her a frustrated glance before continuing. “I noticed it the first time I saw you, though. You were on the beach with that human guy. The one in the water yesterday. Your feet touched the waves and…” I shrugged. “I could feel it.”
“Me too,” Ina said. “And I was a mile or so away.”
Chloe stared at us.
“I’m guessing you didn’t know, though,” I finished.
Her expression didn’t change.
“What did Dad think about all this?” Ina asked into the silence.
“He’s the one who put the guards on her.”
“Huh. Well, um… what about Granddad? Maybe he’ll know something.”
I paused. “Jirral’s here? You’ve talked to him?”
She had the grace to look embarrassed. “Not yet. But he sends me letters occasionally. And he’s back in the area now. Has been since last week.” She shrugged. “I was going to tell you. I just…”
I looked away. I could understand why she hadn’t said anything. Even if I hadn’t been in Santa Lucina, it wasn’t simply a question of seeing him.
It was a question of whether or not any of us would want to.
I let out a breath, feeling the pressure of Chloe’s confusion as she looked between us. Everything else aside – and ‘everything else’ contained a lot – Jirral was one of the most connected people I knew. He travelled the entire ocean and counted as friends more people than I’d met in my entire life. If anyone had heard of somebody like Chloe, it’d be him.
Even if I’d rather have discussed this with the Sylphaen than him.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“A house near the city wall.”
“That close?”
“I think he wants to try to make peace with Dad again.”
I watched her for a moment. She shrugged.
Taking a breath, I shook my head and then glanced to Chloe. “Care to meet more of my family?”
She looked skeptical. I couldn’t blame her.
Not knowing what else to say, I headed for the door. The guards would probably want to come – something that would upset Jirral to no end. But there was no way to get them to stay here, so we’d just have to deal with it.
Which was sure to be fun.
Grimacing, I swam out of the room.
Chapter Six
Chloe
With guards surrounding us, I trailed Zeke and Ina down the hall. The girl looked like her brothers – all dark hair, sapphire eyes, and features so sharp they could probably cut something. Unlike what wrapped my stomach and chest, the opalescent gunmetal of her scales ended at her hips, where they became skin again. A faux-bikini top of scales covered her chest, the back of which gave up the illusion and twisted off across the silver sheen of her skin like an exotic tribal tattoo. An amused smile hovered around her lips, the expression reminiscent of Niall, as if the world was a joke out of which she was determined to get the most enjoyment she could.
And she was royalty. Her brothers were royalty.
I’d been talking with, and swimming with, and generally following royalty.
No matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, any more than I could understand what Zeke had said about me and the water. How could I be doing something and not realize it? Sending a charge through the ocean strong enough that Ina had felt it over a mile away?
It didn’t make sense.
I turned with them at the archway, swimming down past level upon level of the palace. The whole building was enormous, to the point that the White House and Buckingham Palace could probably have taken corners and still barely made a dent in all the room to spare. How it went unnoticed at the bottom of the ocean, I didn’t know, except I was starting to suspect that like the lights and the veils and the fact I had a long tail where my legs should be, there was probably some kind of magic involved.
Though again, that should have been impossible.
Like everything else.
I shook my head, trying to stop my thoughts from spinning. We were heading for a larger door at the end of the hall, and the plants blocking this one were easily twice the height of all the others I’d seen. Without much more than a nod to the guards hovering on either side, Zeke and Ina pushed by the green stands of leaves. Two of the guards with us went ahead of me, with the others waiting to follow behind.
Attempting to keep from looking nervous, I swam after Zeke and his sister. Beyond the door, sand and rock stretched out for a hundred yards, decorated with torches and carved stones and ending at a wall with a glittering veil rising from its top. I looked back as we left, seeing the enormity of the place for the first time.
It was a mountain.
Or most of a mountain. In the pale blue twilight created by the torches and the reflection from the veil, I could see the slope rising above the ocean floor, until distance and the water obscured it. Windows peppered the rocky sides, with swaying plants in all of them, while dehaians darted from opening to opening, weaving across the mountainside as though it was just another way of getting around the palace.
“He’s about a block shy of the outside wall,” Ina said.
I turned back as Zeke nodded and glanced to one of the guards. The man went ahead of us, and then did something to the veil.
The bubbles parted like a curtain. Zeke and Ina swam up, cresting the top of the wall and continuing on. I followed them.
And then I had to work not to stare.
Natural rock arches and spires of skyscraper proportions spread out before me, their walls twisted and curved as though shaped by centuries of gently eroding water. Windows and doors speckled their sides, with plants blocking the entrances. Tall streetlights lined the pathways between the houses and shops, and their blue-white flames reflected from the rainbow colors of ore buried within the stone walls. A veil as large as the sky arched over the entire city, the distant bubbles twinkling like stars as they caught the torchlight.
“Nice, huh?” Ina said.
I blinked and looked over to find her and Zeke watching me.
“How…” I cleared my throat. “How does all this stay hidden?”
Zeke glanced to his sister and then shrugged. “Magic.”
I swallowed. Right.
“This way,” Ina said. She swam down a twisting path between two stone arches bigger than any of the buildings in my hometown.
Zeke paused, still watching me. “You okay?”
Drawing a breath, I nodded. We followed Ina.
Conversations and music carried from within the buildings we passed, if the enormous structures could be called that. Behind curtains of tall green leaves, I could hear children calling to their parents and people laughing. Every so often, a dehaian would slip out from between the leaves, only to stop and bow the moment they caught sight of Ina and Zeke. Their gazes trailed us when we swam on, the curiosity at the guards and my presence blatant on their faces.
Minutes later, the lower reaches of the veil came into view. I couldn’t see anything past it; the bubbles were more numerous here and their glitter obscured the ocean beyond. But through gaps between the buildings around us, I spotted the low wall of boulders that formed its base, the ring of which continued onward, surrounding the entire city.
At a shorter block of stone a few streets away from the barrier, Ina slowed. Blue torchlight flickered in the gaps between the leaves on the windows, though unlike elsewhere in th
e city, this place was silent.
Ina glanced to Zeke, and then approached the nearest opening in the wall.
“Hello?” she called.
No one answered her.
She cast a quick look around. “Granddad?” she tried.
“Ina?” came a deep, hoarse voice.
A hand pulled the leaves back to reveal a weathered face with dark blue eyes. Gray hair long enough to brush his cheekbones hung from the man’s head in loose strands, and old scars puckered the skin of his chest and arms.
At the sight of Zeke, the man paused, a cautious look replacing the nascent friendliness in his expression. “Zeke.”
“Jirral.”
I glanced over. Zeke’s voice was cold, and his face matched the sound.
The old man’s gaze took in me and the guards before returning to his grandson. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk to you,” Ina told him.
“Talk to me,” he repeated, still watching Zeke. “And you brought guards.”
The muscles jumped in Zeke’s jaw. “Not our choice.”
I could see the disbelief in the man’s eyes.
“Granddad, please,” Ina said. “They’re here because of her, not you. And she’s why we need to talk. Can we come in?”
He paused, his gaze twitching to me. “They stay outside.” He jerked his chin at the guards.
Ina glanced over. The nearest one hesitated, and then bowed his head.
The old man backed from the opening, allowing us to enter.
A bleak room greeted us, with hardly more than empty walls and a fireplace to its name. The ceiling was lower than I’d seen in most dehaian spaces so far, which meant it was almost normal height for a human. A bag was placed in the corner and a stone chest sat nearby, but beyond those two small features, the place was utterly bare.
Ina looked around, a hint of sadness darkening the normal humor in her eyes. “How’ve you been?” she asked quietly.
Jirral paused as the leaves closed up behind us. Pity softened his hard expression. “Fine, poppet. What’s this about?”
Ina looked to Zeke. He didn’t take his gaze from the nearly empty room. “We’ve got kind of an odd question,” she sighed. “Have you ever met anyone who, you know, does strange things to the water? Makes it feel different around them?”
The old man glanced to me with the same piercing gaze that Zeke’s father possessed.
I tried not to look too nervous.
“How so?” he asked.
“Like there’s electricity in the water,” Ina said. “Like a charge is running through the whole ocean.”
“Is this why there were guards on her?”
“Sort of,” Ina allowed.
Jirral waited. She grimaced.
“Care to help me out here?” she asked Zeke.
Pulling his attention from the room, Zeke glanced to her, his face tense. “Dad put guards on her because Ren thinks she’s a spy,” he supplied shortly. “He didn’t believe me when I said she was being chased by a group of Sylphaen and needed our help.”
His grandfather’s eyebrow rose, and Zeke’s mouth tightened. “We don’t know if it’s related to them,” he continued, “and it’s practically undetectable now, but every time Chloe’s gotten in the water,” he nodded toward me, “there’s been this strange feeling like Ina described. We need to know if you’ve ever heard of someone who could do that.”
The old man paused. “Not that I recall.”
“Alright then.” Zeke turned for the door.
“Zeke,” Ina protested.
“So that’s it?” his grandfather asked. “You just leave?”
“What else is there?” Zeke retorted.
“Conversation? A chance to talk? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“And? You’ve known where to find us. You’ve been sending messages to Ina, for pity’s sake. It obviously wasn’t that complicated.”
“Ina made it clear she wanted to talk to me.”
“Yeah, well, Ina’s always been more forgiving than I am.”
His sister made an angry noise. Zeke ignored it, heading for the door.
“Zeke, stop,” the old man snapped. “Stop this. For ten years, you’ve been acting as if I wanted this to happen, just like your father and your brothers and everyone else short of Ina here. Give it a rest. I did everything I could for Miri. Everything. You think I wanted things to turn out the way they did?”
“You let them take her!”
I blinked at the rage in Zeke’s voice.
Jirral was silent for a heartbeat. “If I hadn’t, they would’ve killed her on the spot and taken you or Ina in her place. I–”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do. I know how they operate.”
Disgust twitched across Zeke’s face. “No kidding.”
His grandfather’s face darkened. “I will not defend myself to you, Zeke. Not about that. Not when your father–”
Zeke swam for the door.
An infuriated noise left Jirral. “I know about the Sylphaen,” he called.
I looked back toward him as Zeke paused.
“There are rumors, out in the Prijoran Zone. Rumors that they’re back.”
Zeke didn’t turn around. “And do you know anything more than that?”
The old man took a breath. “They’re careful. Given that they were nearly exterminated a century ago, they’ve taken to staying well out of sight, so I can only go on the whispers I’ve heard. But there are stories they’re trying to find allies among the outcasts and the mercenaries. That they’re trying to start over again.”
“Start what?” Zeke asked.
“Their ‘cleansing’. Their new world. The Sylphaen were mostly destroyed by the time I was born, but I know what my father said they were like in his day.” He sighed. “A cult without any law or morality but their own. Their nonsense was tangled up in old legends, stories of ancient disasters and landwalkers, and some doomsday tale regarding both.”
I swallowed. Jirral’s gaze flicked to me, catching the slight motion.
“They were merciless, though,” he continued with barely a pause. “The shadow court of every territory and province from here to Lycera, ‘disappearing’ any man, woman, or child they felt violated their code. They’re obsessed with dehaian supremacy, believing that anyone who ‘consorts’ with humans or anything of the land taints our supposed purity, and back then, they had the numbers and the power to enforce that idea.”
He glanced to me again. “But as to why they’ve fixated on your friend here…” He watched me with those blue eyes that seemed to just see right through everything. “What was it they wanted from you?”
I looked to Zeke, discomforted. I didn’t know this man. True, he was related to Zeke and Ina, but then so was Ren. Given that, and the tension between him and his grandson, I wasn’t exactly certain I could trust him.
And that was assuming I even knew what to say. The Sylphaen had called me an abomination. They’d called me the daughter of a landwalker whore. They’d said a lot of things, and if Jirral was right, that probably had to do with their obsession with dehaian purity or whatever.
But they’d also injected me with drugs to make me change and talked about a ceremony. They’d dragged a bunch of human girls under the water and killed them, simply to figure out which one was me.
And before he’d died, one of them had said something about a Beast waiting…
I shivered. I didn’t want to say that. I didn’t even want to remember it. And telling a man I didn’t know about what’d happened, a man that Zeke didn’t really seem comfortable around…
“They’re crazy,” I replied with a tense shrug.
Jirral’s mouth tightened. “And this thing my grandchildren say you do?”
I tried for another shrug. “I don’t–”
“That it?” Zeke cut in.
The old man turned to h
im. “I want to help here, Zeke. If they’re after her, then you need to make Torvias understand: the Sylphaen won’t stop. They were single-minded as hell in their heyday, and I doubt they’ve changed. If they learn she’s here, you’re all in danger.”
“Dad has the royal guard out looking–”
“What were their stories?” I interrupted.
They both looked to me, and while Zeke seemed cautious, Jirral’s eyes just narrowed.
“The doomsday stories,” I pressed.
“Old myths,” the man said. “Stories of beings called landwalkers, people that looked human but were actually the opposite to us in every way. In these stories, landwalkers and dehaians had once been the same. We travelled deep inland without getting sick, and they swam in the ocean just as we do. But some ancient event split us apart, creating these distinct sides.” He paused. “The Sylphaen believe in all that, except to them, the landwalkers are impure – worse even than humans – and thieves who stole our ability to stay above land. They want to take that back from the landwalkers. They think that if they don’t, the landwalkers will try to take our abilities instead, and somehow, the result will recreate the disaster and bring our world to an end.”
Zeke made an annoyed sound. “So in short, their beliefs are psychotic and so are they. Which we already knew. Thanks for the information.”
“Insane or not, the Sylphaen believe it, and that’s more than enough to make them dangerous.”
Grimacing, Zeke looked away.
I shivered.
“Do you know anything about this?” Jirral asked me.
Awkwardly, I glanced to Zeke. “N-no, not really. I was just curious.”
I could read the doubt in the man’s eyes.
“We should go,” Zeke said.
“You need to tell Torvias,” Jirral insisted. “Make him post extra guards around the palace.”
Zeke glanced to Ina. “Maybe.”
He turned, pushing aside the leaves blocking the door.
“It was good to see you again,” his grandfather said.
Zeke hesitated, and then swam from the room.
“It was good to see you too,” Ina replied quietly.
