The Oyster Thief

by Sonia Faruqi

  The blackness coated first her fingers, then her arms, then her shoulders—a slippery, stinking layer—then it covered her scales and slipped steadily through the sequins of her corset to swathe her skin. It constricted her breathing—her gills were no longer flaring open and closed freely, but were fluttering weakly along the sides of her neck. It weighed down her tail, such that she had to swing with all her strength in order to move at all.

  She sought Pavonis’s wide tailfin in the blackness but could see no farther than her own fingertips. Knowing she wouldn’t last long in the low-oxygen environment, she swung her tail harder in order to arrive at the surface faster. The blackness became increasingly impermeable, a part of the water but also apart from it. . . . Her eyes closed, her head lolled, and her arms flopped down to her sides. I can’t afford to faint now, she whispered to herself. Both her life and Naiadum’s depended on her remaining conscious. Opening her eyes, she managed to force her arms back over her head. All of a sudden, her head erupted over the waves.

  She kept her neck submerged, so that her gills could continue to breathe (to the limited extent that they could in the black poison). The air whipped and parched her greasy cheeks and desiccated her eyes, turning her vision as gray and heavy as the sky that stretched above. A wave of blackness crashed over her head. She shivered uncontrollably, feeling as vulnerable as a turtle without a shell. She considered the ocean itself a shell—like a roof over the head, it formed a dense layer of protection, as well as separation, from humans.

  “Coralline!”

  The voice was unfamiliar, as was the face in the distance. It took her a moment to recognize Ecklon, for his face was smeared black; she probably looked the same to him, she thought. And his voice sounded different because he’d called her name in the air rather than water.

  Behind Ecklon, Coralline made out the triangular shape of Pavonis’s dorsal fin, as well as one of Menziesii’s white-spotted wings. Far behind them was a ship, retreating into the distance, a tower rising to the sky at its center. From her position, the men trodding about the ship looked like black sticks against the sun. She’d never seen humans before—their legs truly were as stodgy and graceless as she’d always heard. A bronze-and-black Ocean Dominion insignia glowed on the side of the ship.

  An object floated over to Coralline’s nose. Narrow and black, it was a pen engraved with the Ocean Dominion logo and a name next to it in block letters: Zaurak Alphard.

  She squeezed the pen with both hands, as though it were the villain’s throat.

  “Coralline!” Ecklon cried again.

  She slashed toward him, her head still over the water. But her progress was stalled, for she bumped into countless carcasses along the way: a northern puffer fish, floating with its yellow belly pointing skyward; a patch of tripletail fish floating on their sides; a leatherback sea turtle, the length of its carapace rivaling her own length.

  Only when Coralline reached Ecklon did she see that his arms were cradling a body. A small, limp form with a pudgy, blackened face. Only the edges of his tailfin still hinted at its earlier tawny color. Naiadum.

  The wall-to-wall carpet was not the standard, scratchy office floor covering; rather, it was an extravagant beige rug with an immense, bright-pink chrysanthemum blooming at its center. The walls of the press conference room were not a cold white, but were covered in a wallpaper of flying fish. And the chandeliers imparted a warm golden glow rather than an unfeeling fluorescent one. Floor-length windows stretched over one whole side of the rectangular room, and a slow sunset crept over the faces of the assembled men and women, bathing half of their faces in long, orange shadows.

  Reporters are like “rabid dogs,” Antares often said, like “a hissing herd of hyenas,” and the press conference room, with its spongy colors and soft swaths of light, was designed to try to sedate their senses.

  Antares stood at the center of a small stage at the front of the room. Saiph and Izar flanked him, standing along the two back corners of the stage, their hands folded before them in the manner of security guards. It had always been the role of the three of them to protect Ocean Dominion, but Izar had failed today, and his failure had endangered them all. The company he loved more than life itself stood liable to burst into flames all around him.

  Directly in front of the stage, reporters sat at the edge of their seats, their raised hands rupturing the air above them at abandon. It was not a scene Izar had seen before. At most Ocean Dominion press conferences, most chairs were empty; today, each chair was occupied, and a surplus of reporters crowded together along the fringes of the room. There must be two hundred of them, Izar estimated, their faces forming a sea of scorn waiting to drown Ocean Dominion. Izar felt as though he, Antares, and Saiph were defendants standing trial before a smug, self-appointed jury.

  Izar had spoken to Antares and Saiph just before the three of them had climbed onto the stage. Antares had hugged him and, with thick tears shimmering in his eyes, had said, “It’s too bad about the spill, but I’m happy you’re safe, son. I don’t know how I’d live if anything happened to you.”

  Izar had hugged him back, but shame had lingered along the corners of his mouth. Speaking crisply, he’d given Antares and Saiph a detailed recounting of what had happened, mentioning both the collapse of the derrick yesterday and the explosion of the blowout preventer today. Antares had immediately given his assistant an order to dispatch a Secret Search team of five black-clad men to locate Zaurak and Serpens, neither of whom had been seen in the Ocean Dominion building or harbor all day.

  “You won’t be safe until they’re locked behind bars,” Antares had said to Izar, “and so I will not rest until that moment. Guard your life at every step, son.”

  Now, Antares nodded at a young, thin-lipped woman in the front row, whose hand was tearing through the air. “Your company spilled more than ten thousand barrels, or about four hundred thousand gallons, of oil into the ocean today,” she said. “The spill is so substantial as to be visible by satellite. Your market capitalization has collapsed by half a billion dollars. Do you think your fate will resemble that of Atlantic Operations?”

  Izar felt himself bristling like a copper wire sparked end to end. It was insulting—comparing Ocean Dominion to a defunct competitor.

  “We hope not,” Antares answered evenly.

  From the streets thirty stories below, a chant floated up as a faint tremor: “Death to Ocean Dominion! Life to the ocean!” Nonprofit organization Ocean Protection had rallied hundreds of placard-wielding protestors on the streets below. They’d been chanting so incessantly that, to Izar’s ears, their mantra now sounded like a hymn with a catchy ring.

  Antares nodded at a middling reporter. “Who is to blame for the oil spill?” the man croaked.

  Izar had expected the question, but his knees still turned to jelly, and a sheen of sweat broke out across his hairline. The world would now know he was responsible.

  “I, and I alone,” said Antares, “am to blame for the spill—”

  Izar heard a suppressed choke; it had sputtered out of his own throat. He realized he’d crossed the stage to Antares only when Antares’s steel-gray eyes were staring at him impatiently—it was unprecedented for either Saiph or Izar to interrupt Antares during a press conference. They were sentries, not spotlights, their function ornamental.

  Pens scribbled frenziedly upon notepads as Antares wrapped a ham-like fist over the microphone and turned it away from his face.

  “I am vice president of operations,” Izar hissed in Antares’s ear, a hand cupping his mouth to conceal the movement of his lips. “Any error in equipment, or the men who manage it, is my fault. Tell them the truth.”

  “Return to your place, son,” Antares said in a barely constrained voice, “and never question my judgment again.”

  Resuming his location, Izar stared stoically at Antares’s back.

  “In light of today’s events,” Antares boomed over the microphone, “I announce my resignation, effectiv
e immediately.”

  Cameras flashed, one after another, lighting up shadowed pockets of the room like fireflies in the woods.

  It was fortunate there was a wall behind Izar; otherwise, he would have keeled to the floor. His shoulder blades sagged against the wall, and an airless vacuum formed in his chest. Izar had once, years ago, asked Antares what he would do when he retired. “I’m not the sort of man who sits around and goes fishing, boy,” he’d guffawed. “I’ll retire when I’m in my coffin.”

  Twenty-five years ago, Antares had saved Izar’s life by rescuing him from drowning by merpeople; today, Izar had paid Antares back by carving his coffin. Antares would live physically, but his professional death could just as well be his physical death. It had taken him thirty-five long years to build Ocean Dominion into the force that it was; it had taken Izar a single day to stab it. The oil spill was like a gash to the face of Ocean Dominion—even if the company survived the attack, a scar would always remain, as would Izar’s knowledge that it was he who’d wielded the knife.

  How different the press conference had turned out to be from what they’d planned in Antares’s office just three days ago. Antares was supposed to have announced Castor and proclaimed the beginning of a new division at Ocean Dominion and a new era for the world—one lit with underwater fire. He was also supposed to have mentioned the two-year milestone for the Oil division.

  “I will be succeeded by my son, Saiph Eridan,” Antares continued over the microphone. He began to ring out Saiph’s accomplishments—Saiph’s knowledge of the levers of government, his experience in management, his appreciation of the patent process—but the words floated over Izar’s head. His ribs felt as stiff as though they’d been flattened under Castor’s feet.

  He glanced at Saiph on the other side of the stage. He was smiling courteously at the crowd, the corners of his lips edged with humility, his charred-kale eyes gleaming.

  Since the day Antares had rescued Izar and kindled in him a fascination with fire, Izar had known his destiny lay with Ocean Dominion. Throughout his studies, in both school and university, he had moved from one assignment to another with impatient efficiency, excelling at them not because of any illusions of their having intrinsic value but because he’d believed they’d serve as stepping-stones for the purpose he’d start to obtain as soon as he arrived at Ocean Dominion. Saiph’s fondness for Ocean Dominion did not match his—Saiph’s feeling was like a swimming pool, pleasant but shallow; it was not the sea that sang daily through Izar’s veins.

  But, of course, Izar had never expected to become president. He had always known that if there were to come a time when Antares retired, Saiph would assume the role of president. Saiph was Antares’s biological son, but it was more than that: Saiph wanted to be president; Izar had never once wanted it—the endless meetings, the appeasing of egos, the management of politics. At university, Izar had studied engineering; Saiph, management. Izar had found his niche in the engineering realm; Saiph, in the interpersonal. Izar was a technical man, with a tactical bent; Saiph built relationships strategically, like every day was a game of chess.

  It did not bother Izar that Saiph would be president. What bothered him was that Saiph’s first executive action would, almost certainly, be to fire him. Izar could not expect Antares to know this, for Antares had never known Saiph as Izar had. Antares did not know, for instance, about Bumble.

  In the first week that Izar had arrived in Antares’s home as a three-year-old, Saiph had descended into his basement storage closet bedroom and offered him a teddy bear, Bumble. Izar had accepted the round, mud-brown form gratefully and fallen asleep with Bumble in his arms. Over the next month, he had come to consider Bumble his comfort, his safety, his only source of familiarity in his unfamiliar new world, and had spent every minute, awake or asleep, with the bear. But then, one night, just as suddenly as Saiph had arrived in his storage closet to give Bumble to him, he had arrived to snatch him away. Izar had wailed for the bear, but Saiph had grinned and slammed the door shut behind him.

  The next morning, Izar had sneaked upstairs into Saiph’s bedroom while Saiph had been practicing piano with a tutor in the library, Maia hovering over him like an eagle over her nestling. Izar had discovered Saiph’s bedroom to be a zoo of stuffed animals—tigers, giraffes, pandas, leopards, on shelves that ran from floor to ceiling—but there was no Bumble anywhere in sight. Izar had nonetheless felt appeased by his visit: Given Saiph’s menagerie of animals, surely, he would not mind Izar’s keeping one. Surely, he would return Bumble soon.

  That night, Saiph had returned to Izar’s storage closet and, eyes twinkling like fresh-cut grass, had handed Bumble back to him. Izar had grasped the teddy bear for only a moment, before dropping him with a gasp. Bumble’s button-nose had been dangling from a thread, one of his eyes had been missing, and white fuzz had been streaming out of his belly like rotting innards.

  Izar’s hands clenched on stage in the press conference room, as though they continued to clutch Bumble’s remains. Saiph had destroyed Bumble because he’d known how much the teddy bear meant to him; Saiph would fire him because he knew how much Ocean Dominion meant to him.

  9

  Brother

  As Coralline observed from a shadowed corner, her mother and Rhodomela eyed each other at the door with a marked vehemence. They were the same age, fifty, but Rhodomela—wiry as a strand of eel-grass—looked a decade older, Coralline noticed for the first time.

  Rhodomela swept into the Costaria home, trailed by Trochid, whom Abalone had sent to The Irregular Remedy to fetch her. He had left home for the clinic hours ago; patients must have streamed in one after another for Rhodomela’s attention, Coralline thought, hence the delay in his return with her. He could easily have gone to another clinic, such as The Conventional Cure just next door to The Irregular Remedy, but he had waited, Coralline knew, because Rhodomela was the foremost black poison expert in Urchin Grove. It was her Black Poison Cleanser solution that had led to her achieving the title of master apothecary.

  Rhodomela’s gaze fell on every part of the Costaria living room: the settees, Trochid’s desk in the corner, the dining table in the alcove, the large arched window overlooking the reef garden, the row of three bedrooms. Her glance seemed to cling especially to the wedding-day portrait of Abalone and Trochid on the mantel. Trochid’s hair had grayed at the temples in the two and a half decades since the wedding, but Abalone still looked just as golden as she had then. Perhaps Rhodomela was wondering how her own life might have looked had she married, Coralline thought.

  Abalone led Rhodomela to Naiadum’s bedroom. Rhodomela brushed past Coralline without even greeting her, as though they’d never met.

  In her black bodice, Rhodomela had been the only person inappropriately attired at the engagement party, but she was the only person appropriately attired in the aftermath of the black poison spill. Coralline’s orange-and-purple sequins dangled off her corset on loose threads. The tendrils trailing the hem of Abalone’s bodice had been white earlier but were black now and hanging straight down upon her scales instead of swirling about her when she moved.

  “Black poison has gravely sickened at least two dozen people in Urchin Grove so far,” Rhodomela said in a monotonous voice, “and has rendered at least four terminally ill. In addition, there have been a minimum of three deaths. . . .”

  Rhodomela was speaking of death and illness like it was a part of life—because it was a part of her life—but her staid recounting of casualties caused Abalone and Trochid to shudder. Coralline frowned at her former boss, wishing she would be more sensitive.

  Rhodomela perched on Naiadum’s blanket exactly where Coralline always sat when she read him a bedtime story. She unlatched the clasps of her apothecary arsenal, her out-of-office medical kit. Coralline watched her anxiously, from the row she formed with her parents against the wall behind Rhodomela. Coralline glanced at the books on Naiadum’s bedside table—The Wrong Wrasse, A Little Merboy Named Anthias. She
had not yet read these stories to him.

  “Coralline,” said Trochid, “will you not bring your own apothecary arsenal to help Rhodomela?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Rhodomela replied, before Coralline could stammer out a response. Her head swiveled around, her nose looking especially hooked in profile. “Didn’t Coralline tell you? She doesn’t work for me anymore.”

  Trochid’s mouth fell open. Abalone gasped. Coralline’s cheeks flamed, and she stared mutely at the opposite wall. It was the first secret she’d ever kept from her parents, and for only a short period of time—since yesterday. Her father, she knew, must be especially hurt, because he had always advised her on her career, but she had blocked him out as soon as something had gone wrong.

  “Did you fire her out of revenge?” Abalone snapped, amber-gold eyes narrowed.

  “Revenge for what?” Rhodomela asked, sounding as surprised as Coralline felt.

  “Abalone!” Trochid said. “Let’s focus on our son. His life lies in Rhodomela’s hands.”

  Rhodomela turned back to Naiadum somewhat stiffly. Just before Rhodomela’s arrival, Abalone had attempted to rub the grease off Naiadum—scrubbing him with the same ferocity with which she stitched fabrics—but she had only succeeded in smearing the slime deeper, such that Coralline hardly even recognized her brother. Rhodomela opened a vial of Black Poison Cleanser, lathered the salve onto gauzy pink swaths of pyropia, then rubbed it all over Naiadum, starting with his face and proceeding down to his tailfin. Everywhere it touched, it wiped spotless like magic.

  The secret of her solution was that it was oil-based, Coralline remembered Rhodomela telling her, for only oil could conquer oil—water was too pure to dissolve it. The solution consisted primarily of derbesia’s green tufts ground with spatoglossum’s brown fronds, both of them among the most oleaginous of the algae.