by Sonia Faruqi
“They won’t,” Coralline said. She surveyed the three men’s faces through the screen of froth—they were laughing at Izar, especially the red-haired one. “Yesterday, I thought the attack was random, but now, I think they’re targeting Izar specifically.”
Izar became perfectly still, his head lolling in the cradle of the net. An idea fell into Coralline’s mind as suddenly as a drop of rain upon the ocean: She could try something she’d never heard of anyone trying before. If it worked, Izar might live. If it didn’t, she might die.
“Do me a favor, Pavonis,” she called. “Lurch the ship.”
“Lurch the ship! Are you out of your mind?”
“Please.”
Her request was unfair, Coralline knew. Given his tremendous size, Pavonis was difficult to miss, easy to shoot. He recognized the danger, too, but, giving her a caustic look, positioned himself beneath the ship. At thirty feet long, he was almost the length of the ship itself. He became as still as a boulder—clenching his muscles and gathering his strength, Coralline knew—then he suddenly pushed himself up, his yellow-spotted back slamming against the base of the ship. The vessel rose askew over the waves and landed at an angle, the three men rolling over its platform like unmoored rocks.
It was exactly what Coralline had envisioned.
“Whatever you’re planning to do, Coralline, don’t!” Nacre cried from the satchel.
“Just look at Izar,” Altair added. “He’s already dead.”
Every one of Izar’s scales was bleached, Coralline observed with a small shock. But she’d seen him that way once before, she reminded herself. He’d returned to life then; he might again.
Smacking her tailfin right and left for propulsion, she cracked out of the water and into the air—first her hands, then her face, neck, torso, and much of her tail. The wind slapped her cheeks and flattened her gills against the sides of her neck. Her eyes started to bulge from the oxygen deficit, but her fingers managed to crook around the bottom of the fishnet and cling on.
Dangling by her arm, she raised her dagger and slashed through the weaves of the net, cutting through the side rather than the bottom in order to avoid gashing Izar’s scales by accident.
A bullet whistled past her ear. “You’re getting yourself killed for a dead man, sweetheart,” yelled the red-haired man. A bullet roared past her hip, but she managed to slash the fishnet one final time. Izar tumbled down through the gap, and they fell together into the froth.
Extending one arm in front of her, clasping Izar’s shoulders with her other arm, Coralline fled straight down. Pavonis dove in front of her, creating a well that helped reduce water resistance, for Coralline was fighting water resistance for both herself and Izar.
When they reached the seabed, she tried to flap Izar’s gills open with her fingers, but it was like trying to massage a heart into beating with one’s hands.
“He’s dead,” Altair said solemnly. Coralline glanced up to find that the seahorse had turned practically white himself, as though to pay his respects by trying to match Izar’s bleached condition.
“Look!” Nacre said, tentacles waggling in the direction of Izar’s tailfin.
His tailfin was twitching. It had to be a post-mortem spasm, Coralline thought, even though, in all her medical textbooks, she’d never come across such a spasm before. But then Izar gasped, and his eyes flew open.
18
The Chip
He had died. He had felt his heart squelch out its last pulse. Yet he remained alive. How, he did not know.
Coralline was staring at him with the attention of a doctor. Her expression made him think of the other doctor he knew, Doctor Navi, who had inserted the platinum chip in his wrist three years ago—that had to be it! That had to be how Serpens had found him! The platinum chip Doctor Navi had inserted in his wrist must be a tracking device.
Frowning at the waters above, Izar thought back to that day three years ago: In addition to Antares, Zaurak had visited Izar just before the chip-implant procedure. Doctor Navi and Zaurak had conversed at length in a corner of the room, out of Izar’s earshot. They had developed a rapport since the time of Zaurak’s leg accident twenty-seven years ago, and Izar had assumed they were simply catching up. But no, Zaurak must have been telling Doctor Navi to insert a tracking device in Izar. He must have paid him well for it, too. Doctor Navi had shifty eyes that scurred right and left like a rat’s—Izar could not imagine him as being difficult to persuade.
But this meant that Zaurak had wanted to kill Izar for at least the last three years, since the time of the chip implant. Why, Izar still couldn’t fathom.
Anyhow, the chip had enabled Zaurak to track Izar’s every movement, as by satellite. No wonder the derrick had fallen on Dominion Drill I precisely where Izar had been standing. Also, after Alshain had hurled Izar overboard, he must have spoken to Zaurak, but even had the giant not done so, Zaurak would have known Izar remained alive simply through the platinum chip. And so Zaurak had dispatched Serpens to the Atlantic Ocean to kill him. Because of the chip, Serpens had located Izar and hurled nets over him with precision.
Izar considered today’s ship attack from Serpens and Zaurak’s perspective: Izar had died in the fishnet, and so Serpens must believe he’d succeeded in killing him. Serpens had then seen Coralline bringing him down into the water—thus, the downward movement of the platinum chip would have been accounted for by her. But if Izar budged at all from his current position, Zaurak and Serpens would know he remained alive—because of the movement of his platinum chip—and they would hunt him again. If he swam deep, they wouldn’t be able to find him for a time, but, eventually, whenever he found the elixir, transformed, and approached shore, they would catch him like a homing pigeon. They wouldn’t let him reach Menkar alive.
In order to live, Izar would have to remove the platinum chip. It would be best to do it immediately, so that Serpens and Zaurak continued to believe him dead.
A shadow fell over him. Coralline reached a hand up and patted Pavonis’s endless white belly.
“Get out of the way, Coralline,” he said in a low, ominous voice.
Coralline opened her mouth as though to argue, but her lips snapped shut—even Izar could tell there would be no arguing with Pavonis in his present state, quivering with anger.
Previously, outside Bristled Bed and Breakfast, Pavonis had tossed Izar up and down until Izar’s stomach had churned; now, Pavonis’s stomach came down upon him, flattening him against the pebbles. Izar tried to push up against the whale shark, but it was like trying to dislodge a tractor. He felt like a balloon on the verge of popping.
“What are you trying to do, Pavonis?” Coralline cried. From underneath Pavonis, Izar turned his head to find Coralline’s bronze tailfin at his eye level, flicking worriedly.
“I’m going to squash the lies out of him. I’m not going to stop until he’s dead or every last lie is out, whichever comes first. Now, human,” Pavonis said, pressing down until Izar’s ribs creaked, “do you realize you’ve endangered us, not once but twice?”
“Yes,” Izar squeaked, his voice high-pitched, for even his throat was constricted by Pavonis’s weight. “And I’m sorry for it.”
“Sorry? Is that all you have to say? Did you know that your friends were shooting at Coralline? Did you know that she could be dead right now, at this moment?”
Izar must have died in the fishnet before the gunshots, so he had not heard them. He looked at Coralline’s tailfin again, still at his eye level—translucent at the edges, it was as delicate as a handkerchief. He imagined her bleeding to death, her scales turning white. A shudder ran through him.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated weakly.
“Now, human,” said the shark, his belly pressing down farther, until Izar’s shoulder blades were scratched against the pebbles beneath, “I need you to tell me the truth. What did those men want with you? And who are you, really?”
“He’s already told us, Pavonis, remember?” Coralline
said.
“I don’t remember.”
“He works at Ocean Protection, and Ocean Dominion is his enemy. That must be why they attacked him today.”
“Must it? Say it, human.”
Izar swallowed hard. Under no circumstances could he reveal to them that he belonged to Ocean Dominion. They would not forgive him; they would not accept him. He could not tell them the truth, yet he could not continue to lie either. Or could he? If Coralline removed the platinum chip from his wrist, a ship could not possibly attack them again. As such, although Izar had twice exposed them to danger by his presence, he would no longer be doing so if the chip was removed. He wanted to burn out his own tongue, but he repeated Coralline’s words in his high-pitched voice.
“How did they find you?” Pavonis demanded, doing a sort of jiggle above Izar, leading his scalp to scrape against the pebbles.
“I was just about to get to that,” Izar groaned. “On that note, I have a favor to ask.”
“Do you really think you’re in a position to ask favors?”
“Let him ask it, Pavonis!” Coralline said. “And let him rise.”
Pavonis jiggled some more, quite fervently, before reluctantly moving away with a swing of his tail. Izar lay there, rubbing his ribs. When he could speak again, and his voice was almost normal, he said, “There’s a platinum chip in my wrist that’s a tracker. That’s how they found me, and that’s how they’ll find me again—and kill me, unless you extract it, Coralline.”
Coralline plopped down next to Izar on the pebbles, her tail extended in front of her. She pressed the skin of his wrist with her thumb, first gently, then hard. Her eyes widened as she felt the small slab of metal. “I would help you if I could,” she said, “but the chip appears to be a part of your bone itself. Its extraction would require slitting your veins, which would, quite possibly, kill you.”
“I’d rather die at your hands than theirs.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I believe in your skills.”
“You shouldn’t. I don’t have a medical badge.”
“Are you afraid you’ll get in trouble legally?”
“No. You don’t have any underwater records, so, even if you die, a murder charge cannot arise against me.”
“That makes me feel better!” He smiled, hoping to tug a smile to her lips as well, but the set of her mouth remained somber. “You’re clearly competent at what you do, Coralline,” he persisted. “You helped both my shoulder and my hand with your salves.”
“You don’t understand. Surgeries are performed in clinics, not open water. At present, I have only my apothecary arsenal with me, which contains only a limited number of implements. Also, surgeries are performed only by apothecaries who are at the level of manager or master. I’ve never operated on anyone before. I was a lowly apprentice, and even in that role, I managed to get fired.”
“Why were you fired?”
“My boss, Rhodomela Ranularia, said I wasn’t thinking for myself. She said I was relying too much on my medical textbooks. On this note, I don’t have any of my textbooks with me at present. For a procedure as delicate as this, I would have liked to consult Smooth Scalpels as well as Snip and Stitch.”
“Well, if your boss thinks you don’t need textbooks, I’m sure you don’t.”
“That wasn’t the only reason I was fired,” Coralline said, her cheeks reddening. “I have a flaw considered fatal in my profession.”
“You enjoy killing patients?”
“No.”
“Torturing them, when no one’s looking?”
“No. This isn’t a joke, Izar. I’m afraid of blood. It acts as a sort of tranquilizer for me. As soon as it enters my nostrils, I feel dizzy. It’s possible I’ll faint during your procedure.”
“If you don’t extract the chip, I will certainly die,” Izar said quietly. “If you do, I may live. My fate is in your hands.”
“What do the three of you think?” Coralline asked. She looked from Pavonis to Altair, his tail wrapped around her pinky finger, to Nacre, on her right shoulder. The four of them had left Izar twenty feet below on the seabed, but Coralline still spoke softly, in case he could hear. “Should I help Izar by removing the chip?”
“You’ve already helped that ingrate more than enough,” Pavonis rumbled. “You have an instinctive desire to save everyone you encounter, and while this instinct might be helpful to you in your career, you need to remember that your role now is not that of an apothecary. You need to be single-minded on your elixir quest if you want to save your brother. Yes, we are not at the Ball of Blue Bottle yet, but still, sometimes I look at you and get the sense that you’ve forgotten why we’re out here anyway. The elixir and its attainment must be foremost in your mind at all times. Whether the human lives or dies is not your concern.”
“I would like to offer another angle,” Nacre said. “We could use all the help we can get on this Elixir Expedition. You seem to be assuming the Ball of Blue Bottle will mark the end of your quest, Coralline, but I believe the Ball will form the gateway to the greatest test of your life. And I think Izar will help you triumph in that test. As such, my vote is that we keep him alive.”
Coralline glanced at Altair.
“I’m simpler in my views,” said the seahorse. “To me, it seems wrong to let him just die, human or not. If you can help him live, I think you should.”
“I think so, too,” Coralline said.
“Well, I hope the surgery kills him!” Pavonis huffed.
Coralline patted his side, then swam down to Izar. “I’ll do my best to remove your chip,” she said, “but I can’t promise you’ll live.”
He grinned at her. She did not smile back. To increase her chances of success, she would pretend she was Rhodomela. The first thing Rhodomela would have noted, were she here, was that the arrangement was unprofessional. Had there been a surgical bed, even if a makeshift one, Coralline would have hovered vertically next to Izar. Now, in the absence of a bed, Izar was sprawled over the pebbles, and she had no choice but to hover over him horizontally.
She opened her apothecary arsenal next to him. She pressed his wrist again and, with her pen, drew a black rectangle over it to mark the boundaries of the chip. Then she extracted a vial of anesthetic from her case and emptied it into his mouth. He winced as he swallowed it, but, in a matter of moments, his eyes closed.
Drawing a deep breath, as though she was about to slit her own wrists, Coralline extracted her scalpel from her case and made an incision over one side of the rectangle she’d drawn. Blood oozed out. Her fingers trembled. Focus, she told herself sternly. She cut along a second side of the rectangle, then a third. His blood flowed now like the ink of an octopus—it invaded her nostrils.
Coralline forced a tiny pair of clippers through the hole she’d made in his skin. The clippers soon encountered the chip and grasped its edge, but it was as embedded in his bone as olivine stones in her hair comb. She loosened the chip’s edges painstakingly with her clippers, then tugged again, and again. The chip released its hold on him abruptly. Breathing a sigh of relief, Coralline dropped both the bloodied chip and the clippers onto the pebbles.
“This is the perfect opportunity to kill him,” Pavonis said from above, speaking softly, as though to convince her the voice was coming out of her own subconscious.
Coralline extracted needle and thread from her arsenal and turned back to Izar’s wrist. The five fingers of his hand suddenly swelled to ten. She blinked; the ten became five again. She shook her head—it felt as light and loose as a jellyfish. She felt herself drifting downward, such that she was almost lying atop Izar, scale to scale, shoulder to shoulder. No longer possessing the strength to hover horizontally over him, she sat down on the pebbles next to him, her back slumping, her tail extended in front of her.
She was not just faint-headed; she would soon faint, she recognized. From the numerous occasions on which she’d fainted before, she knew she had only minutes before her min
d would force a shut-down—minutes in which to stitch, salve, bandage, and anti-infect, tasks that would otherwise consume the better part of an hour.
“Skin is just a fabric,” Nacre said encouragingly. “Pretend you’re a seamstress, like your mother.”
Coralline thrust her needle into Izar’s skin. Stitch upon stitch she made, concentrating on each tiny cross as though it were a universe in and of itself. When it was all complete, she sat back and surveyed her crosshatching. The sutures were messy and crooked, but they were serving their purpose: They stopped the bleeding. At least he would not die of blood loss.
Blinking heavily, Coralline unlidded her vial of toothed wrack salve and dabbed the balm onto his wrist. She then sheared strips of pyropia with her snippers, wrapped the gauzy swaths tightly over his wrist, and tied it all in place with two strands of spiny straggle.
Her vision blurred into overlapping circles. She pinched her hand to remain conscious for the final step, anti-infective. She dumped the contents of her vials of sea oak, golden-brown in color, and dabberlocks, olive-brown, into a flask, and clamped a stopper atop the flask. The two algae sputtered and spewed upon contact—they sounded like they were shrieking at the top of their voices. She had once prepared precisely this anti-infective before, but the reaction had been far milder then, more of a simper than a screech.
She must be hallucinating, her mind exaggerating the reaction.
“Kill him, Coralline,” Pavonis whispered from above.
Coralline cradled Izar’s head with one hand and emptied the contents of the flask into his mouth with the other.
At last the operation was complete, she thought, sitting back dizzily, her hands to either side of her on the pebbles to prevent her from collapsing flat on her back. Though she was disbarred, she had now reached a new level as an apothecary—she had performed her first surgery. Rhodomela would be proud—
Izar’s arms shuddered and his tail quaked, his body writhing as though in the midst of an internal attack. Such writhing was known to occur only after consuming desmarestia. But Coralline hadn’t given Izar the acid kelp. Her head jerked down to the row of vials in her apothecary arsenal. There was the vial of desmarestia, untouched. Picking it up, she looked at it until her eyes crossed, and the tip of her nose almost touched the vial. She gasped.
