by Sonia Faruqi
She hadn’t labeled the vials earlier and, in her faintness now, had mistaken dabberlocks for desmarestia, both of them olive-brown in color. No wonder she hadn’t recognized the screeching reaction in the flask.
She looked at Izar again. His back was rattling against the pebbles, which were rattling against one another, creating a discordant cacophony. He wasn’t dead yet, but he soon would be. Coralline had saved him from the fishnet, then poisoned him herself.
“I knew you could do it, Coralline!” Pavonis roared.
“You’re wilier and trickier than I ever imagined,” Nacre said.
“Let me warn you,” Altair whispered, “murder does not sit easy on the conscience.”
Coralline’s head swiveled, and she folded into unconsciousness, her cheek landing gently against Izar’s chest.
Coralline swam out the lobby of Big Blue Bed and Breakfast. Named and shaped after the big blue octopus, each of its eight arms formed a twirling, three-story tower, with the lobby of the hotel serving as the head of the octopus. It was the sixth hotel Coralline had tried in Blue Bottle. The concierge had just told her what they all had: With the Ball of Blue Bottle tomorrow night, there were no accommodations to be had anywhere in the capital.
Coralline looked at the buildings rising from the seabed all around her, the tallest among them more than twenty stories. Apartments, a novelty to her, were rather like shelves, she thought, except that instead of books, they housed people. Another intriguing aspect of Blue Bottle was its luciferin lampposts, which Coralline had never seen before. Luciferin lampposts were just like luciferin lanterns, except that their rods were long—at least twice her own length—and several large orbs dangled in clusters from each rod. Luciferin lampposts rendered the city bright despite the late hour.
Coralline swerved around a building called Needle-to-the-Sky, shaped like a column of beads, and she swam into the clearing where she had left Izar, Pavonis, Altair, and Nacre. Izar lay unconscious on the seabed, his face gray and his jaw taut, suggesting that he continued to suffer within even while he remained still without. His scales were neither indigo nor bleached, but, strangely, a shade in between—lilac—as though he was lingering mercilessly between life and death. Coralline pressed two fingers to the side of his throat; his pulse was so low, she had to close her eyes to hear it.
“Do you think he’s going to die?” Pavonis asked in an exuberant voice.
“Yes,” Coralline said, with a twinge of sadness. “I actually can’t understand why he’s not already dead, given that I accidentally gave him desmarestia.”
When she had risen from her faint, she had buried his platinum chip among the pebbles. Pavonis had suggested burying Izar with his chip, but Coralline had grasped Izar’s hand and dragged him to Blue Bottle with her. She didn’t want him to die alone.
“There’s no vacancy in any hotel,” Coralline told Pavonis now. “I’ll have to sleep here with all of you.”
“You’re reduced to homelessness!” Altair gasped, from somewhere in Pavonis’s shadow. His voice shrinking to a moan, he continued, “How I will ever face your father again, I can’t imagine.”
“Don’t worry,” Pavonis said. “I’ll remain awake all night.”
Coralline had disliked Bristled Bed and Breakfast, but at least it had provided a roof over her head. Now she felt a little like a lobster as she tried to settle among the rocks. She found solace in the luciferin lamppost directly above her, yet it also seemed to be spotlighting her homeless condition. In Blue Bottle, there were few loiterers—in contrast to the many she’d seen in Hog’s Bristle—but there seemed an abundance of constables. They were easily recognizable, wearing deep-purple waistcoats with the circular black seal of the Under-Ministry of Crime and Murder. She’d passed three constables already.
Turning her face away, she had rushed past each of them. The Constables Department of Blue Bottle might already have her details, including her portrait, from the Constables Department of Hog’s Bristle. They might already be on high alert for her.
Coralline could not afford to sleep; no, she’d better be prepared to dash away at a moment’s notice. She would remain awake all night, vigilant, alongside Pavonis, she decided. She fixed her attention on the luciferin lamppost above her, with its half-dozen immense orbs. Her gaze swung from one orb to the other, then back again, as over stars in a constellation. As long as she stared at them, she could stay awake. She tried to recall passages from Venant Veritate’s The Universe Demystified; that would help her remain awake. . . .
“Coralline!”
Her eyes snapped open. The voice was Pavonis’s. She followed the direction of his eye.
A merman hovered at the outskirts of the clearing. He had a gray tail, towering shape, and bulbous nose. His waistcoat was a deep-purple color. He was a constable, here to capture her! Coralline bolted upright, her hands over her heart. But as she continued to look at him, she saw that his waistcoat was not deep purple but a glistening navy blue—the kind of waistcoat a merman might wear to supper at a nice restaurant.
An aquamarine-tailed mermaid hovered next to him. She was dressed like Coralline had been at her engagement party—in a high-necked bodice shimmering with sequins, except that hers were red and green rather than the orange and purple Coralline had worn. Abalone had said she’d designed the bodice after the latest fashion in Blue Bottle—it seemed true.
“My name is Limpet Laminaria,” began the merman, “and this is my wife, Linatella.” His voice was aloof, formal, a voice of obligation rather than warmth. “We live just here.” His hand beckoned to the building Needle-to-the-Sky. “Are you in need of a place to stay the night?”
“Yes.”
“You’re welcome to stay with us, in that case,” said Linatella.
“Thank you!” Coralline beamed.
Deneb Delphinus read the press release yet again, but he still could not make sense of it.
Izar Eridan, co-president of Ocean Dominion, has died. Saiph Eridan will be the sole president of Ocean Dominion from this date forward.
“I am more saddened by my brother’s loss than anyone can ever know,” Saiph Eridan has stated. “We are still uncovering the details of Izar’s death. They will be shared as soon as they are available. . . .”
Deneb himself had saved Izar twice—yanking him out of the path of the falling derrick on Dominion Drill I and grabbing his arms the next day to prevent him from plummeting through the borehole. How could Izar have died?
Shaking his head, Deneb dropped the press release into the bulletproof tank of water below the platform under his feet, as though drowning the announcement would make it disappear. The paper floated away from Castor.
Deneb found the robot terrifying—the most lethal thing he had ever laid eyes on. His hands were clammy to even stand above Castor, for he had the sense that he was standing above a time bomb. No one had told Deneb this Invention Chamber belonged to Izar, but he had known it from the scar along Castor’s jaw, matching Izar’s own.
Why me? Deneb asked himself. Why do I have to be here?
He had not been given a reason. He had been summoned to a manager’s office, handed a new identification card, and told to guard the contents of the room on the floor B2. As soon as he’d entered the room, he’d understood why it needed guarding—not just because of Castor but because the room was highly flammable, with hundreds of flasks of combustible chemicals lining the walls. The place was an underground explosive device, a dynamite bomb of sorts. If it fell into the wrong hands, Ocean Dominion could burn to the ground.
And so Deneb found it ironic that he’d been told to guard it, for his were the wrong hands.
He traced a finger over the mermaid tattoo across his forearm. He had gotten the tattoo because he thought mermaids were beautiful. And he’d joined Ocean Dominion because he wanted to see a mermaid. But, despite all his trips on the waters, despite perching like a gull on the rails for long hours, he hadn’t yet seen a single mermaid in his two months a
t the company. They dove down at the sight of ships—they considered humans the enemy. And his fellow crewmen considered him a fool, mocking him for his tattoo.
Deneb descended the ladder to the side of the tank of water. Earlier, it had been difficult for him to even walk in this Invention Chamber, with all the landmine-like tripping hazards everywhere—rounds of bullets, ores of iron, sheets of magnesium. He had tidied the place up, feeling rather like a laboratory assistant. Now, in the cleared space, he strode to the shelves of combustible chemicals.
On the day of the oil spill, Izar had told Deneb that mermaids would not exist much longer. Deneb had not understood Izar’s words then, but he understood them now. From having read Izar’s crimson-covered journal, its yellowed pages spilling with notes and formulae, he had come to learn that Izar called this room his Invention Chamber, and that, in this Chamber, Izar planned to produce an army of Castors that would plunder the ocean floor for gold and diamonds—meanwhile extinguishing the civilization of merpeople.
Deneb could prevent it all, if he chose. He could save the mermaids he so adored. All he would have to do would be to light a match and throw the flame upon some combustible chemicals. Then Castor, the crimson-covered journal, this Invention Chamber, the thirty-floor bronze-glass building itself, would all blaze like a bonfire.
A clanging noise made him jump. He glanced at the floor, for the sound seemed to have come from just below his feet. It had sounded like someone was trying to rattle a door open. But the floor below this, B3, was accessible only to the president of Ocean Dominion—Saiph, at present—and was known to be empty. No, Deneb must be mistaken. His long hours alone in the Invention Chamber must be playing tricks with his mind. The clang must have issued from the maze of pipes in the ceiling, for they burped and gurgled constantly, to his irritation.
Turning his attention back to the flammable liquids and powders, Deneb pulled a set of matches out of his pocket.
19
Enmity
The rug to his side of the bed was white pile. The windows were shuttered, but the blinds were pink rather than the usual shades of gray he’d seen so far. An ornate copper dresser stood along the wall, scattered with miscellaneous hair combs and ropes like the kind Coralline used to tie her hair, along with a bowl of little pewter-colored shells. Two books were stacked to one side of the dresser: A Hair Dresser’s Collection of Ultimate Updos and Egregious Egregia: A Novel.
The room was cloyingly feminine but cozy. Last Izar remembered, he’d been lying on the pebbles, swallowing the anesthetic Coralline put to his lips—
Coralline. She lay wrapped over the right side of his body, he saw, her head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. Her arm lay over his chest, and her hair cloaked both of them over the blanket.
A confused smile spread on Izar’s lips. Their first night, in Hog’s Bristle, they’d taken separate rooms; their second night, in Rainbow Wrack, they’d shared a room, but he’d slept on the floor; now, at the culmination of their third night, here, wherever it was, they were sharing a bed, and she was in his arms. He seemed to have done himself a great service by being unconscious.
Izar glanced at his wrist. It was covered in some sort of gauze and tied with red strings.
He lifted his hand from the blanket with caution. Pain did not prickle through his nerves, even when he slowly, experimentally, started to flop his hand about and angle it. Coralline was clearly good at her job, despite her low confidence about it.
She stirred. Her head rose from his chest, and her gaze struck him with the force of a collision. She sat up, declaring, “You’re alive!” She was wearing an ivory chemise with short, slit sleeves that fluttered about her shoulders. She threw the blanket off both of them. Looking down at himself, Izar saw with a small shock that she had unbuttoned his waistcoat before putting him to bed.
Was it possible something had happened between them that he could not remember?
Coralline shifted to hover horizontally over him. She looked as though she were levitating above him, held up by invisible strings from the ceiling. Her eyes roved over him as though he was an object—he did not mind being an object, he found. Like a slippery fish, she was entirely unpredictable, Coralline.
Through his undone buttons, she pressed her hand flat against his heart, her long locks falling upon his face. Even the ends of her hair were soft and supple, and there was a particular, sweet scent to them as they tantalized his nostrils. His hand rose to twirl a strand of hair around his finger, but she shifted to the side.
Her eyes darted from his wrist to his face; their blue-green color made him think of water swirling at the base of a teacup. “I’ve made a major medical breakthrough,” she whispered.
His stitches had faded well into his skin, and the skin around them was not even puckered, as though the chip-extraction had occurred not a day, but months, ago. His wrist had fully recovered.
Coralline tried to delineate the mechanism of her medication. Desmarestia was acidic, and sea oak was saline; the latter must have neutralized the acids of the former. Desmarestia was the pivotal ingredient in the reaction, but its potency and power made it poisonous when swallowed by itself. The acid kelp was so universally reviled that no apothecary had ever experimented with it before, not even someone as unconventional as Rhodomela.
What would Rhodomela say when Coralline told her she’d invented an unparalleled healer, a miracle medication? Rhodomela would apologize for having fired Coralline; she would plead for her to return. Coralline would demur at first, just to make the master apothecary squirm, then she would accept, on two conditions. First, she would request to skip a rung in her career, to travel straight from apprentice apothecary to senior apothecary, without the intermediate title of associate. Then, she would request a tripling—no, quadrupling—of her wages, from fifty carapace per week to two hundred carapace.
Coralline’s tailfin quivered with anticipation; she could not wait to make a dramatic comeback at The Irregular Remedy.
“As a result of having treated you with desmarestia, a poisonous algae,” she gushed to Izar, “I’ll be able to get my job back—with a raise and promotion. Thank you!”
“Thank you,” he said huskily.
Following the direction of his gaze, she glanced down to see that she was clad only in her chemise; she’d been so stunned at his being alive that she hadn’t paid any attention to propriety. Now, she bolted under the blanket. When she’d entered this guest bedroom last night, dragging Izar by a hand, it had seemed cruel to make him spend the last night of his life on the floor. So she had deposited him in bed and had unbuttoned his waistcoat to check his heartbeat. Modesty hardly mattered where a dead male was concerned, and she’d been unable to resist changing into her chemise for her comfort.
“Don’t look at me as I change,” she warned Izar now as she sprang out of bed. Full of zest, she slapped her tailfin to her backside, feeling herself shrouded in a brilliant, invisible glow in the wake of her medical discovery.
The day called for celebratory color, and she browsed her satchel with twittering fingers. But there were only two corsets she hadn’t yet worn on the Elixir Expedition, and the more vibrant of the two was hardly vibrant at all: It was a sleeveless honeydew with tawny strings.
Once she was ready and had turned around to face Izar, he rolled out of bed. He shrugged off his waistcoat and swung his arms through another he found in his satchel, a stiff sable piece with spirula shells for buttons. “Could you help me do up the buttons?” he asked Coralline, holding his wrist out as explanation.
Coralline frowned. As far as she could tell, the joint was fully healed, but perhaps Izar feared overextending it. Flitting over to him from across the bed, commencing with his lowest buttons, in order to align the two halves of the waistcoat, Coralline inserted the tiny white shells through the slits. By the time she’d slid the last spirula into its buttonhole, at his collar, her cheeks were flushed, as they had been when she’d unbuttoned his waistcoat in Rainbow
Wrack.
“After you,” Izar said, opening the bedroom door with a flourish. Coralline slipped into the living room, trailed by him.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better!” came Linatella’s voice from the kitchen.
Coralline had liked Linatella and Limpet’s apartment at night, and she found that she liked it even more during the day. It was a home rather than a hotel, for one; in that sense, though they shared little direct similarity, the apartment made her think of her own home in Urchin Grove. Second, it was brightly lit: Dozens of windows, the size of supper plates, were carved into the walls, offering a tenth-story view over the capital. Third, placards with inspirational proverbs dangled on the walls: Scratch the surface of your dreams; like a whale, you were born to make a splash.
Even had the apartment been a hovel, Coralline would have been happy in it, because if constables in Blue Bottle were searching for her, they would be looking in hotels, not homes. Linatella and Limpet Laminaria were, without their knowledge, harboring a fugitive from the law. A part of Coralline felt guilty to be putting them in such a position, but another part felt relieved—they would come to no harm from harboring her, and she would benefit.
“Limpet’s gone to work,” Linatella bubbled, “but I have some breakfast ready for you.”
“Thank you!” Coralline smiled.
She and Izar swam to the dining table and took seats across from Linatella. It had been difficult to tell at night, but Coralline saw now that Linatella was buxom and pretty, perhaps in her mid-thirties, with waist-length white-gold hair and a somewhat maternal manner, such that Coralline felt as though she was in the home not of a stranger but of an older cousin.
