by Sonia Faruqi
How differently the day would have passed had he been on land. At Ocean Dominion, each hour of his day fell immediately upon the next, like a domino. And this day would have been more fast-paced than most, for it would have been his first as co-president. He’d never taken a single sick day from Ocean Dominion, let alone a day of vacation, and now, on his first day as co-president, he was missing. It was shameful. Saiph and Antares must be worried sick about him. What would they think if they saw him like this?
His gaze shifted to the scratched, full-length mirror on the wall. He’d swept past it intentionally when he’d entered the room. He hadn’t encountered any mirrors over the course of the day, and it had been for the better, for he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of looking at his reflection. But now, he crept out of bed and sidled toward the mirror.
His reflection was that of a stranger. A scaly tail started at his hips, narrowed where his ankles had been, then flared out, turning transparent at the corners. Gill slits formed diagonal cuts on both sides of his neck, opening and closing in parallel.
In the restaurant Taeiniata with Coralline, he had lulled himself into thinking he was safe, that he’d left his enemies behind on land, but he saw now that his enemies were not the primary danger he faced; his body was—the possibility that he might be like this for the rest of his life. He punched the mirror with his platinum-chipped fist.
The luciferin orbs glowed too mildly for Coralline’s tastes—their bacteria had probably not been recently replenished. Most merpeople slept in the dark, or nearly dark, but she liked her luciferin orbs bright all night long—they were the galaxies she admired as she drifted off to sleep. She’d loved watching them ever since she was a mergirl, but she hadn’t understood why until she’d read The Universe Demystified. “The stars tell us that no matter what happens to us,” Venant Veritate had written, “no matter whether we live or die, the universe will continue to exist.” Coralline found there to be something steadying and humbling in that fact.
A thump sounded at the window.
She turned her head sharply, her heart in her throat. But then she remembered: Pavonis had said he would visit. She moved toward the central of the three tiny windows, extended a hand through, and felt soothed when her fingers found his snout. Luciferin orbs needed oxygen to glow; she needed him.
“The nefarious human’s windows are closed, but I’ll speak softly in case he overhears.” In a voice just above a whisper, Pavonis continued, “Do you have Tang Tarpon’s invitation to the Ball of Blue Bottle, or does he?”
“I do.”
“Good. It’s the guiding clue we have on our elixir quest at this stage. Izar has served his purpose by getting you through Tang’s door, just as we’d planned. We don’t need him anymore. In the morning, I’ll tap on your window to wake you up, and we’ll leave Hog’s Bristle without him. When he wakes up, he’ll find all of us gone.”
“But it doesn’t feel right to abandon him,” Coralline said hesitantly.
“Doesn’t it? Not only is he a human, but he’s a human competing with you for the elixir. Do you think Mintaka has a shop full of elixirs, one for each visitor? I think not. And you must get the elixir instead of Izar. Our only goal at this stage is to save Naiadum—not to worry about whether Izar will get his hideous legs back. But that’s not the only reason I want to be rid of him.”
“What else?”
“As I told you when we met him, I wouldn’t take my eye off him. And I didn’t. I kept one eye trained on him practically continuously throughout the day. There’s something he’s not being honest about; I feel it in my bones. He’s keeping a secret from us, one that would change everything.”
“If you say so.” Coralline yawned.
“Fine, don’t believe me. Who do you think killed Tang?”
“I can’t imagine. But it related to his elixir curse: Beware of the serpent. Oh, Pavonis! When I was trying to save Tang, I was worried about being in defiance of the Medical Malpractice Act; I never once thought there might be a murder charge against me.”
“Has Ecklon told you the investigative process for murder cases?”
“Yes,” Coralline said, picturing Ecklon as she spoke. “If that loiterer truly suspects me of murder, he’s required by law to visit his local Constables Department within twenty-four hours and fill out a form with my colors—black hair, blue-green eyes, bronze scales. With the form in hand, the constables of Hog’s Bristle would visit the local branch of the Under-Ministry of Residential Affairs and sift through the Register of Residents of Hog’s Bristle. They would make a list of all mermaids in Hog’s Bristle with my colors. Only upon ruling out each of them would they move on to mermaids from other settlements.”
“Phew. That means we have time on our side. Constables may take a few days to even start investigating the mermaids of Hog’s Bristle, let alone finish.”
“Yes, but if they were to somehow come in possession of my name, that would change the nature of the investigation. With my name in hand, they would find my details in the Register of Residents of Meristem, including my home address and portrait. They would share my information with all Constables Departments across Meristem. In that case, I would be safe nowhere—because they would have my portrait, constables would be able to recognize me from one look at my face.”
“That won’t happen,” Pavonis said quietly. “But, for the sake of argument, let’s say it does. Let’s assume the worst-case scenario: that you’re found guilty of Tang’s murder. What then?”
“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life in the Wrongdoers’ Refinery.” Coralline shuddered.
She’d never been inside the Wrongdoers’ Refinery but had heard plenty about it from Ecklon. The prison windows were tiny, he had said, and there were five bars across every window, like gill slits across the neck, to make escape all but impossible.
“Can we pin Tang’s murder on Izar?” Pavonis suggested.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Coralline said, both impressed and perturbed by his thinking. “But I was seen holding the dagger, so I can’t see how we’d pin it on him. At worst, because he was with me, he would be considered an accomplice. But even if constables were to catch him, they wouldn’t be able to find any information about him in the Register of Residents of Meristem. If unable to identify him, they would have to release him within twenty-four hours. It’s a law of the Under-Ministry of Crime and Murder, Ecklon told me, called the Identification and Anti-Detention Act.”
“What a tragic law. Anyhow, enough of crime and murder for one night. What do you think you’ll learn at the Ball of Blue Bottle?”
“I don’t know. Tang was stabbed mid-sentence, just as he was about to utter the name of the merman we should meet at the Ball.”
“That’s too bad, but I hope you’ll be able to identify the merman once you get to the Ball.”
“I hope so, too.”
“Regardless, our mission now is to get to the Ball. Blue Bottle is a long distance south, and the Ball is in only three days. Be prepared to swim energetically tomorrow.”
With that, Pavonis departed, and Coralline fastened the shutters across all three windows.
15
A Dagger
A thump sounded. Again and again.
Coralline sat up in bed. The blanket around her was not the lush, black-and-white one of her bedroom but a scratchy, stuffy, mildly odorous thing—she was not at home but at Bristled Bed and Breakfast. She darted to the shutters of the central window and tugged the pane open.
“Took you long enough!” Pavonis hissed. The waters behind him, the little of them that Coralline could discern behind his girth, were not yet bright—the time of day was early morning. “There’s a problem,” he pronounced. “A big problem.”
“What?”
“Constables. They’re here, looking for you.”
Coralline’s heart skipped a beat then resumed at a frantic pace. “What do you mean—”
“Who saw the constables first?” s
aid Nacre, crawling onto the windowsill from the exterior wall.
“Nacre was the first to see the constables,” Pavonis acknowledged impatiently, “and she alerted me. The constables swam into the lobby of Bristled Bed and Breakfast and spoke to the concierge, a different merman than the one last night—a fortunate thing, otherwise he might have directed them straight to your room. I can’t fit anywhere, but I asked the Minions to enter the lobby through a window and eavesdrop on the constables—”
“Asked? More like ordered!” a voice protested. Coralline couldn’t see him, but Altair’s voice was coming from somewhere in Pavonis’s shadow, at the level of the seabed. “I eavesdropped not because I enjoy stooping to the level of snoop,” the seahorse continued, “but as a sacrifice for the good of the team.”
“Stop pretending you’re above everyone and everything, Pole Dancer!” Nacre scoffed. “I, for one, am loud and proud about my two interests in life: snooping and snoozing.”
“Enough with your nonsense, Minions!” Pavonis snarled. The glassy circle of his eye hardened as his gaze swiveled to each of them, before rushing back to Coralline. “The constables have a warrant out for your arrest for the murder of Tang Tarpon.”
“B-but how?” Coralline stuttered. “How do they even know my name?”
“I don’t know,” Pavonis replied.
“If they know my name,” Coralline said hoarsely, “it means that they have my portrait, or will have it soon, which means they’ll recognize me on sight.” Her mind was whirling, but she tried to calm down and rationalize through the situation as Ecklon would. “They have no motive,” she said.
“But they do,” said Nacre. “They believe you were trying to rob Tang and stabbed him when he refused to give you carapace.”
“But that’s absurd!”
“I agree,” said Pavonis, “but we have to stay focused if we want to make it out of here. They’re checking all the rooms, starting with room number one.”
Coralline was in room number forty-two; that bought her a little time to escape.
“I looked for potential exits last night,” Pavonis said, “but it was dark, and it was tough to tell. I’m going to circle this place now and try to find you a back door. Once I find it, you’ll hear my dual thumps in the corridor outside your door. Slip out of your room as soon as you hear them, then I’ll guide you out of this labyrinth through further taps on the walls. In the meantime, pack your satchel and close your shutters, in case constables decide to peek through windows.”
“What about us?” Altair said. “Where will we go?”
“Given the murder charge,” Nacre said, her tentacles waggling down in his direction, “we’re safer with the Ogre than with Coralline. Bring your snout to the wall, Ogre, so I can climb on it. As for you, Pole Dancer”—she laughed—“you’ll have to get inside the Ogre’s mouth!”
Pavonis glowered at them but touched his snout to the wall, so Nacre could crawl atop it. When she was settled, she looked like a red-and-white bump on his head. He then opened his mouth for Altair to enter; the seahorse did so tremblingly.
“Don’t worry, Altair,” Coralline said. “You’ll be separated from Pavonis’s throat by the filtering pads in his mouth.”
That didn’t seem to bring Altair any consolation. Pavonis closed his mouth, gave Coralline one last look, then left. She closed her shutters with quivering fingers. Then she swam to the dresser in a daze and changed out of her chemise into the sky-blue bodice with cloud-white ribbons that Ecklon so liked. It was an outfit for a happy day, a happy time—ill-suited to today—but she wore it so she could pretend he was with her.
She packed and closed her satchel, finding that its zip moved as smoothly as an eel. Something was wrong—missing, rather. When she’d first packed the satchel in Urchin Grove, it had been so full that she’d had to tug at the zip to get it to budge at all. What was missing?
She opened the satchel and rummaged quickly through its contents. She should have heard the jangle of carapace, but there was not a sound. Her carapace pouch was missing.
When had she last seen the golden purse? Not last night, when she’d paid for this room, because she’d paid with a moon snail shell and wentletrap shell that she’d kept aside, in an outer pocket, for easy access. No, she’d last seen the pouch in Tang Tarpon’s home: She’d taken it out of her satchel in order to extract the apothecary arsenal beneath. In her rush to leave Tang’s home, she must have forgotten it there. Her full name was stitched onto the fabric of the pouch; that must be how the constables knew it. And the pouch must be the reason they thought she’d tried to rob Tang.
How could she have forgotten the pouch there? And what would she do now over the remainder of the Elixir Expedition? Not only was she suspected of murder, but she had not even a moon snail shell to her name anymore. Where would she sleep? What would she eat?
The doorknob turned. Her head swiveled toward it. How could the constables be here already? Could someone have given them a clue, leading them to skip most other rooms and arrive directly at her door? But the door did not open, despite their efforts with the doorknob—she’d locked it, of course. She thought the constables would rap on the door and announce themselves, in which case she would be required by law to open the door—but not a word transmitted through the oval slab of slate. Instead, the doorknob kept moving—were they picking the lock?
They were—the door opened suddenly. Coralline put her hands up.
Two orange tails filled the doorway, then the door closed. The mermen were not attired in the deep-purple waistcoats of constables; their breast pockets did not carry the circular black seal of the Under-Ministry of Crime and Murder. These mermen were not constables. Instead, they were the mermen Coralline had seen lingering just outside the door of Bristled Bed and Breakfast last night. Their eyes traveled over her now in parallel, from the tip of her tailfin to the top of her head and back down again.
“There are constables in the corridors,” Coralline said, trying to control the tremor in her voice. “They’ll arrest you if you try anything.”
“I think they’ll arrest you, mermaid,” said the fat merman, his jowls juddering. “I reckon she’s a criminal on the loose, Sparus; otherwise, she wouldn’t have put her hands up when we entered.”
“I reckon you’re right, Eliphus,” said the skinny merman, Sparus. “Otherwise, she would also have screamed by now. Go ahead, mermaid, scream if you dare.”
Coralline’s lips parted, but no sound emerged. If she were to scream, constables would hear her and arrive at her door. But at no cost could she risk capture—if they caught her, she’d be detained at the Wrongdoers’ Refinery indefinitely, awaiting trial for days or weeks, unable to continue on the Elixir Expedition, unable to save Naiadum. No, she could not scream. Now that she was suspected of breaking the law, she could no longer expect it to protect her.
Eliphus’s and Sparus’s mouths prickled into smiles.
“What shall we do with her?” asked Sparus.
“Let’s start by slashing her corset off,” Eliphus suggested. He extracted a dagger from his waistcoat pocket and rotated it in his hand. “We can kill her after we’re done with her.”
As stealthy as squids, the two brothers approached Coralline from out of the shadows of the doorway.
Every nerve in her strained to flee, but there was nowhere for her to go. As an apothecary, she’d focused so resolutely on enhancing the survival of others that she had never bothered to learn any survival skills herself. She retreated slowly through the small room. All of her senses were alive. She felt acutely aware of every object in the room—her satchel, the desk, the bed, the mirror, the luciferin orbs, the pillows. But nothing could help her. She had no dagger, no voice, no Ecklon, no Pavonis.
But there was Izar, in the adjoining room. She’d been planning to leave before he awoke, but what if she woke him up now? He might help her. But how could she wake him up? She would have to make a noise loud enough for him to hear but low enough no
t to draw the attention of anyone else at Bristled Bed and Breakfast. But how? She looked at the wall separating their rooms. The topsy-turvy desk stood against the wall. If she hit the desk repeatedly with her tailfin, the desk might thud against the wall, and the noise might wake him up.
She sidled toward the desk and jumped when her shoulders grazed the wall behind. The shale was cold, but she pressed her back to it in order to get as far away from Sparus and Eliphus as she could. They arrived easily to either side of her, though, clasped one of her arms each, and jerked her forward, away from the wall. Sparus positioned himself behind her and grabbed both her wrists in one hand, pinning her arms to her sides. But her tailfin remained close to the edge of the desk, fortunately. She slapped the desk. It didn’t thud against the wall. She flicked her tailfin harder. The desk thudded gently against the wall this time. She flicked her tailfin twice more; the desk hit the wall with a light, grating tempo.
Eliphus hovered in front of her. His stubby fingers twirled with the lace along her neckline, a swollen smile across his lips. His other hand landed on her cheek, sticky and clammy, and his lips pressed upon hers. She turned her head away, but he caught her chin and pressed his mouth to hers again. She bit his lip.
His face separated from hers. His eyebrows formed shaggy swaths, and a vein throbbed in his temple. The back of his hand landed hard across her jaw. Her neck turned so sharply, it creaked. Her head reeled; the room spun. But, trying to focus, she continued to flick her tailfin against the desk. Her tempo was weakening, though, as she herself was.
“I’ll teach you a lesson,” Sparus hissed into her ear from behind. He squeezed her wrists so hard, a small scream escaped her lips. Her wrist bones were close to splintering in his grasp.
