The Oyster Thief

by Sonia Faruqi

  When Rhodomela sat back, Coralline wished she hadn’t done such a thorough job with her brother, for it was impossible to mistake anymore that the yellowed, waxen figure on the bed was Naiadum.

  Her cleaning complete, Rhodomela proceeded swiftly with her medical examination. She turned Naiadum’s wrist and pressed her fingers to it, to check his pulse. She pried open each of his eyes and scrutinized their whites. She turned his head and ran her index finger over his neck—his gill slits flickered, but just barely. She inserted a needle into the vein at his elbow and watched blood gush into the syringe. Holding the syringe under a microscope, she flicked it three times with her fingernail, then studied it.

  “Black poison has contaminated his blood,” she announced. “It has clotted his organs, disabling their effective functioning. He will die within two weeks—before your wedding, Coralline.”

  Izar buzzed his identification card in front of the scanner and pushed open the glass door, then paused midstride at the sight in the room.

  Saiph sat in Antares’s black leather chair, behind Antares’s grand mahogany desk, in Antares’s office. Izar’s hands balled into fists—he had a mind to grab Saiph by the collar and hurl him out of the chair—but it was not Saiph’s fault, he reminded himself. It was Izar who had forced Antares out of his own office and put Saiph in.

  Izar didn’t feel his legs stride across the cream carpet—they were silent wheels, conveying him to his hanging. He collapsed in the chair across from Saiph’s desk.

  Saiph slid a glass of whisky toward him. Izar shook his head. He wouldn’t engage in the weekly ritual they’d both shared with Antares; he wouldn’t pretend things were as they had been, when they never would be again. “Any update on Zaurak or Serpens?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I spoke with the Secret Search team just minutes ago. They have nothing.”

  Izar nodded, then swallowed hard before blurting out the hardest words he’d ever uttered: “Did you call me here to request my resignation?”

  “I wouldn’t accept your resignation, even were you to offer it.”

  So, Saiph wished to humiliate Izar by firing him.

  “I’ve always envied you,” Saiph said.

  “What for?” Izar asked, his eyes widening with astonishment.

  “Your mind. I’ve envied you ever since that day we met, when you built a precise replica of our family home, and I couldn’t.”

  Izar’s ear caught on “our family home.” Saiph had never before indicated he considered it their shared home; he had always made Izar feel like an unwanted guest, especially after Maia’s death.

  “I’m sorry,” Saiph said. The word seemed to have cost him something, for he tilted his head back and gulped down his full glass of whisky. He then looked Izar unflinchingly in the eye. “I’m sorry I made your life miserable. I’m sorry I never accepted you. I’m sorry for everything. Will you ever forgive me, brother?”

  “Yes,” Izar said at length, though he continued to gape at Saiph. Then he found himself grinning from ear to ear. A brother. After twenty-five years of intersecting with a stranger, he would finally have a brother. He’d never even thought he wanted a brother until now.

  “Good,” Saiph said. He leaned forward until his elbows rested on the desk, his navy-blue suit jacket taut over his shoulders. His hair, gelled back, glistened like a dune of sand. “I want you to join me in the role of president. I would like for us to be co-presidents of Ocean Dominion.”

  Izar had always recognized that it was at his adoptive father’s company where he worked, and he’d always known that Antares watched over him as an invisible, omniscient god even through the many floors that separated them—but he’d deserved each of his previous promotions, for they’d followed on the heels of specific accomplishments. There was no reason for him to be promoted from vice president to co-president today. “I almost drowned the company,” he reminded Saiph.

  “But you didn’t. And we both know it wasn’t your fault. It was an attack on your life, for goodness’s sake. I might well unintentionally drown the company, however, if I work alone. Our skill sets complement one another. I have the soft skills; you have the hard skills. I build connections; you build machines. You’re the motor of Ocean Dominion; I’m the grease. The company needs you. I need you. I know I’ll fail as president without you. I beg you to join me as co-president. Will you?”

  “Yes!” Izar beamed. Whatever he’d expected in this meeting, it was not this. He’d been wrong about Saiph. He’d judged Saiph as an adult on the basis of his actions as a child.

  “Good.” Relief swept over Saiph’s chiseled cheekbones.

  Izar gulped down the whisky Saiph had poured for him, relishing the trail it burned from his throat to his belly. His only regret was that Antares was not here, with him and Saiph, at this moment.

  “In a few months,” Izar said, “when the oil spill is old news, when reporters are chewing the bones of some other carcass, let’s find a way to bring Father back.”

  Izar realized only belatedly that he’d referred to Antares as his father. When they were boys, Saiph had punched him every time he’d used the word, threatening also, “I’ll cut your tongue out if you ever call him Father again.” The word had assumed a ponderous, prophet-like quality for Izar since then; it had meant too much to actually pronounce.

  Saiph sat back in his chair and smiled at Izar; he must have noticed Izar’s use of the word. “It’s a good idea to bring Father back,” he said agreeably. “We can be the Trio of Tyrants again!”

  They chuckled.

  “Let’s you and I reconvene here first thing in the morning to devise a strategy,” Saiph said. “Also, I’ve gotten your office cleaned for you.”

  He was referring to the office Antares had had built for Izar two years earlier on this very floor—the office Izar had rejected in favor of remaining Zaurak’s neighbor in the basement, like a mole rat. Izar had foregone sunshine and status for the man who’d tried to kill him. His windowless underground office had been so dilapidated that he’d never thought to show it to Ascella. He would show her his new office next week, he decided.

  “How’s Ascella?” Saiph asked.

  “Well. We went to Yacht two days ago for her birthday. I got her a bracelet.”

  “Are you planning on a ring as well?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “You’re more predictable than you think, Izar.” Saiph grinned. “I’m afraid I’ve taken after Father myself in the fidelity department!”

  “Will you be my best man?” Izar heard himself ask.

  “I’d be honored.”

  Saiph stepped out from behind his desk and hugged Izar. They’d had a fragmented childhood, but they’d have a companionable remainder of their adulthood, Izar thought to himself. Side by side, they would conquer any challenges Ocean Dominion faced.

  Coralline stared at the luciferin orbs traveling the ceiling, imparting a white-blue glow to her room. Just the day before yesterday, she’d explained to Naiadum how luciferin orbs worked. There were so many more things she wished to explain to him over the years, so many more bedtime stories she wished to read to him.

  A sob broke out of her, and she pressed the palms of her hands into her cheeks to squelch its sound. But the stink of black poison was strong in her fingernails. Disgusted, she moved her hands away and pressed her face into the pillow.

  She could not shake the images from her mind: her father crying after Rhodomela’s diagnosis, his shoulders quaking—not even when he’d lost his hand had he cried, yet he’d wept inconsolably at the thought of losing his son; her mother yelling, “It’s all your fault, Coralline! You promised you’d find him, then you forgot all about him!”

  Coralline had become an apothecary so that she could save the lives of those she loved, but she was now no longer an apothecary, nor, even had she been, could she have done anything to save Naiadum—his was a fatal case. Prevention is always better than cure—that was the primary precept of apothecaries�
��but Coralline had neglected it. She alone had had the power to prevent everything that had happened. If only she’d found Naiadum instead of edging away upon Rhodomela’s arrival—like a coward. If only she’d screamed when she’d seen the band of blackness, instead of remaining silent—like a coward.

  A thump sounded at her window. She turned to the shutters, her eyes round with alarm. Who could be visiting her after midnight, when all of the village lay in a perturbed sleep? The thump was pursued by another, then another, hard and insistent. She saw no choice but to answer the visitor, otherwise her parents, who’d fallen asleep only with difficulty, would wake up, their room adjoining her own. With a tremulous hand, Coralline pushed back her blanket and crept out of bed. Unfastening the shutters, she blinked through the horizontal slits.

  “Took you long enough!” a voice hissed. “Black poison has made this horrible village even more horrible.”

  Pavonis. Coralline could hardly see him because of the darkness, but she would have recognized him even had he not spoken, from the strong ripples created by his arrival. She reached a hand through the shutters to touch his face and felt comforted when her fingers found his snout. His head itself was larger than the window frame, so he angled himself to it diagonally, such that one eye was looking at her through a slit in the shutters. She would normally have pulled open the pane of shutters and stayed with him at the window, but, drained from the events of the day, she returned to her bed and pulled her blanket up to her chin.

  “I have an idea,” Pavonis announced.

  “What?” she asked with little interest.

  “We can save Naiadum through the elixir.”

  “The elixir is just a legend, Pavonis.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Well, I don’t understand how an elixir can be made of starlight. And a quest for the elixir is known to be foolhardy.”

  “Foolhardy is a league above cowardly.”

  “I am a coward, Pavonis! When a ship passes above, my first inclination is to hide under a table.”

  “That may be your inclination under ordinary circumstances, but not necessarily under extraordinary circumstances. You saw the ship from the waves today, the ship that spewed the black poison—you didn’t hide; you stayed.”

  “I suppose,” Coralline said glumly.

  “Beyond saving your brother, I have another motive for my elixir quest recommendation, as I’m sure you’ve guessed.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “I’m itching to leave Urchin Grove. We never managed to make it on our North-to-South Expedition after your graduation from Urchin Apothecary Academy, but we can make it on this expedition, this . . . Elixir Expedition, let’s call it. Let’s leave tonight, before anyone rises.”

  “But where would we even begin our quest? How would we find Mintaka, the magician who makes the elixir?”

  “Hmm. Let’s begin by swimming over to that fiancé of yours and enlisting him in our Elixir Expedition. Given that he’s a detective, I’m hoping he can make himself useful—”

  “Well, I wouldn’t dream of leaving without him!”

  “That makes one of us. Now get out of bed, Coralline.”

  Coralline thought back to a day at Urchin Rudimentary, when she’d been summoned to the principal’s office. She’d been fourteen, and a merboy in her class had shoved Naiadum, then two years old, during playtime. Naiadum’s arm had gotten scratched against a stone, and he’d wailed to draw Coralline’s attention away from her lunch of felty fingers. Despite being a head shorter than the bullying merboy, Coralline had hurled herself at him and pushed him down into the sand. Her face had been just as startled as his—she hadn’t known she’d been capable of aggression until then, when her brother had been hurt.

  Now, while Naiadum was hovering on the brink of death, she was lying comfortably ensconced in her bed. She was responsible for Naiadum’s condition. Therefore, even if it killed her, it was her responsibility to find a way to save him. Flinging off her blanket, she leapt out of bed.

  From the doorway, Izar looked about his office: the staid black desk, its surface scratched; the chairs, new but already worn; the faded blueprint of Dominion Drill I tacked to the wall with pushpins. For the first time, he understood why he’d always found himself comfortable in this shabby, underground space—it resembled the basement storage closet from his childhood.

  His conversation with Saiph had been a shot of adrenaline. His legs pulsed with energy, but his office seemed too cramped to contain it, so he continued to hover in the doorway. There was a gray tin on his desk, he noticed suddenly, just a little bigger than a tissue box.

  His neck swerved right and left so sharply that a muscle creaked across his shoulders. But the dimly lit corridor was empty. It was the middle of the night; the men had long gone home. He turned back to the tin, his breath turning low and deep, blood pounding in his ears. The tin must be a third murder attempt on his life. But he’d just spoken with Saiph, who’d just touched base with the Secret Search team, and they had not yet found Zaurak or Serpens. That meant there must be another man involved—a Third Man.

  Izar shrugged out of his gray suit jacket, dropping it to the floor. He uncuffed his blue, starched-cotton shirtsleeves and rolled them up to his elbows.

  In three long strides, he was behind his desk, in his chair, his gaze unveering from the tin. Its weight would give him a clue. He picked it up gingerly, his fingers leaving tracks in the dust. It was light; from all the dynamite he’d designed for coral reefs, he knew it was unlikely to contain an explosive device. Placing the tin in front of him, he flicked its lid up with a thumb.

  A half-shell lay there, with long, flaunting beige ridges and dark-pink fan-like ribs. The shell would have been somewhat heart shaped had it not been broken precisely in half. The line of the break was sharp enough to maim; it was a crude version of a dagger, Izar decided. He had never seen this half-shell before, and yet he had . . . but where? And when? Holding it up to his face, he swept its point just over the ridge of his scar. Could it have been this very half-shell that had gashed his jaw, twenty-five years ago? If so, perhaps the Third Man was telling Izar that, just as his biological parents had died, so he would soon die. As his jaw had been cut open then, his throat would be cut open soon.

  Placing the half-shell on his desk, Izar returned his attention to the tin. An amber scroll lay in it, its material as thick as cardboard but, fortunately, a little more flexible than cardboard. He unrolled it carefully. Words were written upon it, but they were as indecipherable as washed-out scratches on a tree trunk. He’d never seen material like this before—that meant it must have come from the water. But what could merpeople have written upon it? And why was it on his desk?

  Maybe it was a death note. In fact, in all likelihood, it was.

  Izar picked up the final item in the tin: a small card, the size of a business card, but without any words—just coordinates, latitude and longitude. It could be the location of the Third Man. Maybe he was taunting Izar to come out and find him. Maybe the contents of this tin were clues for Izar to solve his own murder mystery.

  His feet tapped the wheels of his chair until the half-shell beat a faint tune on his desk, until the scroll started to roll away. His hand caught the scroll before it rolled off his desk—in that moment, a thought flew across his mind: Merpeople paper should be legible underwater! He raced to the restroom one door away from his office and held the bottom-right corner of the material experimentally under the spray of the faucet. It started bleaching a yellow pigment into the sink, like it was bleeding a pus-filled death. He yanked the scroll away from the sink, cursing. How could water damage that which was meant to be read underwater?

  He heard a thud—it sounded like someone somewhere in the building was slamming himself against a wall. But between Izar, in the basement on B1, and Saiph, on the thirtieth floor—though he would have gone home by now—there should have been not a soul. Where could the sound have come from? And who could it be
?

  The Third Man. Perhaps he was trying to leave the building, now that he’d placed the tin on Izar’s desk. Izar would not let him leave Ocean Dominion alive.

  Quiet as a panther, he stepped out from the restroom into the corridor, and looked about, beads of sweat sprouting on his brow. But the hallway was empty—not a shadow, neither to right nor left. Izar heard another sound—a rattle, like someone was wrestling against his chains. It had come from below. He strode into his office, placed the scroll on his desk, then fell flat to the floor in the position of a push-up, as he had on Dominion Drill I when he’d been looking down through the borehole. He pressed his ear to the floor and, eyes shut tight, listened. A faint clang again—definitely from below.

  That made even less sense than if it had come from above.

  Hurrying out of his office, Izar stomped to the end of the hallway. He flashed his identification card in front of the scanner to the private elevator. Jumping into the ramshackle cage, he pressed B2. As soon as the bars parted, he bolted into his Invention Chamber. But no one was there except for Castor. He breathed a sigh of relief, for the Invention Chamber was the most vulnerable part of the company—a raw, open kidney—because of its shelves of flammable fluids.

  A sputtering sound—Izar’s gaze flew up to the maze of intestine-like pipes in the ceiling. But this gaseous noise was different than the sounds he’d heard earlier.

  He shut the door to the Invention Chamber and returned to the private elevator. His index finger hovered over B1, then dropped down to B3, the floor accessible only to the president of the company.

  With a small shock, Izar realized that he was now president of Ocean Dominion, along with Saiph, and so the floor should now be accessible to him. He pressed the B3 button so hard that its crimson light flickered out. The ramshackle cage closed and descended. When the elevator came to a halt, Izar flashed his identification card against the interior scanner, but the bars did not part.