The Oyster Thief

by Sonia Faruqi

  “You’re mistaken,” Trochid said, glowering at Pericarp. “Far from being a murderess, my daughter is a savior. Just before your unceremonious arrival, she saved her brother Naiadum’s life in a most revolutionary way.”

  Coralline placed a warning hand on her father’s elbow. He did not know that a second criminal charge could easily be added to her name, on account of her defiance of the Medical Malpractice Act.

  “This is not a time for humility, Coralline,” Trochid continued loudly. “Everyone should know you’re a genius, the most brilliant mind this village has ever seen. Yes,” he boomed to the crowd, “Coralline gave Naiadum a solution of desmarestia and—”

  An uproar erupted, drowning out the rest of his words like a breathless, out-of-tune orchestra.

  Coralline whirled around to look at her mother. Abalone had been in the doorway earlier, but she’d retreated to the middle of the living room now, distancing herself from Coralline. When their eyes met, she looked at Coralline like she did not know her. Blinking back her tears, Coralline turned back to her father and Pericarp.

  They were glaring at each other, as though the first to break eye contact would be the one to lose the battle for mental domination.

  The waters swelled, and Pavonis swooped down suddenly, the gush of water from his descent pushing Pericarp into Trochid’s arms. The constable looked up at Pavonis’s gargantuan white belly, then, disentangling himself from Trochid, dashed through the door of the Costaria home. Coralline followed him in, as did Trochid, muttering under his breath. Pericarp slammed the door and leaned against it, his shoulders slackening with relief at having escaped Pavonis. But Pavonis’s head materialized in the window, his dark orb of an eye staring steadfastly at Pericarp. The constable gulped.

  “I’ll show you my son,” Trochid said, “back from the grave, thanks to Coralline.”

  Coralline trailed Pericarp and Trochid to Naiadum’s bedroom. Pericarp stopped in Naiadum’s doorway, his face blanching. Coralline considered the scene in the room from his perspective: a pale, emaciated merboy, passed out in the middle of the day. Pericarp bent to the floor and, with a long, shaking hand, collected the empty flask next to the door, his fingers clasping it gingerly at the neck. He placed it carefully in his satchel; it would serve as evidence, Coralline knew.

  “Show me your medical badge, please,” he said.

  Coralline could pretend to search for the sand-dollar shell, she could pretend to have misplaced it, but what would be the point of prolonging the inevitable? A part of her was relieved it was over, relieved she would no longer have to look over her shoulder to see if a constable was following. “I don’t have a badge,” she said.

  Pericarp looked at her apprehensively, then at Trochid, whose gaze had a manic quality. Appearing to deem himself safer outdoors than indoors, Pericarp swam out the front door. Coralline and Trochid followed him. The mob of neighbors slipped back just enough to create a wedge of space for the three of them to emerge.

  Coralline turned away from Pericarp, her hands behind her back, her wrists together. Her father started to protest, but she stopped him with a shake of her head.

  “Coralline Costaria,” squeaked Pericarp, “I pronounce you under arrest for the murder of Tang Tarpon and for defiance of the Medical Malpractice Act.”

  The clang of handcuffs around her wrists made Coralline think of the two ampoules of a sand-clock, neatly dividing the past and future. So excited had she been in Blue Bottle about her desmarestia discovery, about how it would change the future of healing, but none of it meant anything anymore. Naiadum was to be her last patient.

  “What’s going on here?” a voice demanded.

  “Ecklon!” Coralline said, as his silver tail arrived next to her and Pericarp.

  “Answer me, Pericarp,” Ecklon said.

  “Coralline Costaria has committed two crimes—” the constable stuttered.

  Ecklon held up a hand. Pericarp’s lips closed immediately. “A word, please,” Ecklon said. Before the constable could reply, Ecklon grabbed both Coralline and Pericarp by the elbow and, ushering them in through the doorway of the Costaria home, slamming the door in the faces of onlookers.

  “How long have you known me?” he demanded of Pericarp.

  Coralline had never seen Ecklon at work before. He had often seen her at work at The Irregular Remedy, when he’d collected her there for supper, but his work was necessarily of a more discreet nature. There was a natural command to him, she saw now, a clear authority—he did not raise his voice because he did not have to.

  “Hmm . . .” Pericarp glanced up at the ceiling, as though trying to not get distracted while he counted the years. “About six years, I suppose,” he stated eventually.

  “Precisely.” Ecklon nodded. “That’s how long I’ve been at Urchin Interrogations. In that time, I’ve apprehended plenty of criminals for you and your fellow constables. I have not merely directed you to them, but have brought them to the Wrongdoers’ Refinery in handcuffs. As such, I’ve done your job, or aided you with it, time and again. And I am the detective on Miss Costaria’s case.”

  He was using her last name, Coralline knew, so Pericarp would not detect they knew each other personally.

  “I intend to prove that the allegations against Miss Costaria are mistaken. I’ve never asked the constables of Urchin Grove for anything, but I ask you now to give me a week to solve Miss Costaria’s case. In this week, leave her on house arrest here instead of detaining her for trial at the Wrongdoers’ Refinery. If I am unable to prove her innocence by the end of this week, you can arrest her then.”

  It was not a coincidence Ecklon was requesting a week, for their wedding was in a week. If he could not prove her innocence by then, they could not marry.

  “When allowances such as house arrests are made,” Pericarp said, “guarantees are usually offered. What is your guarantee?”

  “If I cannot prove Coralline’s innocence, I will resign from my tenured post at Urchin Interrogations.”

  “No!” Coralline protested. Her own career was over; she couldn’t bear the thought of ruining his as well.

  “That is my guarantee,” Ecklon insisted, giving her a sharp look before turning back to Pericarp.

  “I accept your guarantee on behalf of the Constables Department of Urchin Grove,” Pericarp said. “I only hope you don’t come to regret it.”

  Izar looked out the window of Saiph’s office. Ocean Dominion ships stood anchored to shore far below. Even from the thirtieth floor, Izar could recognize each and every vessel—its make, manufacture, age, purpose. They were his stable of stallions, ready to gallop upon the waters at his orders, and he knew them better than he knew his men, for he had led their design and acquisition.

  Izar turned to Saiph’s desk, littered with papers and folders. He knew he shouldn’t pry, but he was co-president, and browsing the papers would help him catch up on what he’d missed in the only week he’d ever been away from Ocean Dominion. He opened a thick folder on the corner of the desk. Each page in it featured a map with a dot, along with a time, date, and coordinates of latitude and longitude. The most recent of them was from five days ago. But who was Saiph tracking? Izar wondered.

  His eye caught on a glint of red underneath a stack of papers. Shuffling the papers aside, he discovered a crimson-covered notebook. It was the journal recording his Castor experiments—the journal that made Castor replicable. The numbers and formulae on its yellowed pages were more personal to Izar than the contents of any diary he could have kept, for he had written each after painstaking trial and error. To discover his Castor journal so casually on Saiph’s desk made him nervous.

  The door opened.

  Saiph entered, trailed by three men clad in black. One of them had earlobes pierced by spears and was grinning through a shaggy red beard—Serpens. The other two had over-muscled arms and large, shaved heads—they were the men who’d accompanied Serpens on the waters, during Serpens’s attempts to kill Izar.


  The journal slipped from Izar’s fingers.

  “Hold him!” Saiph commanded.

  Serpens and the two lackeys approached Izar as one, while Saiph remained back, a small smile on his face. Drawing his fist back, Izar landed a punch on the ribs of one of the two bulldozers—it was like hitting a wall. Serpens’s arm darted forward, his fist landing on Izar’s stomach with the force of a sledgehammer. Izar gasped; each of the two lackeys clasped one of his arms. Something cold pressed between his eyebrows—he looked up to discover it was a pistol. Saiph cocked the trigger.

  “You know,” Saiph said, smiling, “I’ve been waiting to kill you ever since that first day Father brought you home, twenty-five years ago. I detested you from that very first day. I resented your presence in my home. I hated sharing Father with you. But you were brilliant, and Father felt convinced that you, and you alone, could invent underwater fire—and thus mine gold and diamonds from the bottom of the ocean—a breakthrough that would make us wealthy beyond measure. So, patiently, day after day, year after year, I waited until you invented your Castor. And then, just two weeks ago, you did.”

  Cold trails of sweat ran down Izar’s back.

  “Immediately, I commenced on my plan to kill you, working with Serpens. It was he who loosened the tower on your drillship. It fell during the drillship check precisely where you were standing, because the platinum chip in your wrist made such precision possible. Had you been crushed that day, as I’d planned, it would simply have been treated as an accident. But you survived. The very next day, I orchestrated my second murder attempt: Serpens switched out a blowout preventer, in order to sink your drillship. But even that you managed to survive.”

  “You were willing to kill innocent men in order to kill me,” Izar said quietly. “And you were willing to kill Ocean Dominion’s reputation as well, through the oil spill.”

  “I wouldn’t hesitate to kill the whole world in order to kill you,” Saiph said cheerfully, his eyes glinting like burnt grass. “But anyhow, after the two failed murder attempts, I knew I would have to be careful, so that no one should suspect me of anything. I decided to make you co-president, in order to show the world that we were aligned both personally and professionally.”

  How readily Izar had believed everything when he and Saiph had last spoken in this very office—Saiph’s apology for never having accepted Izar, for having made his life miserable, Saiph’s claims to want to be a true brother. Izar had even asked Saiph to serve as his best man at his wedding to Ascella.

  “If you had managed to kill me,” Izar said, “people might still have suspected you, in the form of Castor. They might have deduced that you did not want to share with me the wealth that I created.”

  “No one would have suspected me of anything. The patent for Castor is under my name, not yours. The world would simply have believed I invented him, not you.”

  Dazed, Izar looked down at the crimson-covered journal at his feet. The patent was the only area of Castor’s life in which Izar had played no role, because Antares had assigned the matter to Saiph from the beginning. Izar had always assumed the patent would be under his own name, for he was the inventor.

  “For my third murder attempt, I decided you should be killed in the water. That way, everyone in Menkar would think you’d simply disappeared. These two buffoons holding you placed that tin on your desk, leading you to the trawler of Alshain Ankaa. I paid that giant to hurl you overboard, which he did, but instead of drowning, you transformed.”

  The maps Izar had just seen on Saiph’s desk—it was Izar whom Saiph had been tracking.

  “Only later did I learn that Alshain was not only a contract-hire murderer,” Saiph continued, “but also a magician of sorts. He creates potions that enable human-merpeople transformations, as well as potions that create memory lapses during these transformations. For whatever reason, he must have decided to save you instead of killing you. He must have assumed the ocean would offer you refuge from your enemies on land, and he must have given you a potion to transform you.”

  “He didn’t give me a potion.”

  “If you insist.” Saiph shrugged. “Nevertheless, Alshain did not know about your platinum chip. I knew you hadn’t drowned because I was tracking the chip in your wrist, and I could see its movement. I decided I would simply kill you in your merman form. It should have been straightforward enough, but it wasn’t, because of your mermaid companion—Coralline, isn’t that the name you just told me?”

  Izar swallowed hard.

  “The first time Serpens caught you, Coralline cut you out of the fishnet. The second time, when Serpens pulled you out over the waves, she actually leapt out of the water to slice you out of the net. But you’d already died by then, Serpens was certain. Evidence seemed to indicate it as well—for your platinum chip fell still. But, it seems now, you figured out that you were being tracked, and you managed to find a way to extract the chip without killing yourself in the process. I wouldn’t be surprised if Coralline helped you with that as well.”

  Coralline. Ever since Izar had seen her in the arms of her fiancé outside the Telescope Tower, it was as though a sheet of mist had fallen before his eyes, blinding him. It evaporated now at Saiph’s words, as under the glare of headlights. At risk to her own life, Coralline had repeatedly saved him. Izar should not have left Meristem without speaking to her—there must be an explanation for the scene he’d witnessed outside the Telescope Tower. He would return to her, he decided now—if he lived. He would fight for her; he would cast aside his pride and beg her to choose him over Ecklon.

  The door opened. A figure with pale-gold hair entered, wearing a tailored, cream-white dress and cream-white stilettos. A band of light blazed from her wrist, flashing sparkles across the room—the diamond bracelet Izar had given her on her twenty-seventh birthday. “Why did you ask me to come here, Saiph?” Ascella asked nervously, looking from Saiph to Izar.

  Saiph did not turn around to look at her. Instead, he smiled at Izar. “The man in her shower that night was not Tarazed but me.” Removing the pistol from Izar’s forehead, he drew back his other arm and punched Izar in the gut. Izar would have doubled over, but the two lackeys were clasping his arms so tightly that his back remained as straight as an ironing board. His head, however, hung, his gaze coming to rest on the heels of Ascella’s stilettoes, each like the needle of a clock. The needles moved, as she came to stand directly behind Saiph.

  “Don’t hurt him!” she cried. Izar’s gaze rose slowly to hers. “I’m sorry, Izar,” she said, her frost-blue eyes imploring.

  It’s not your fault, Izar wanted to say, but he could not speak because of the burning sensation in his gut. The same way Saiph had fooled Izar, he must have fooled Ascella. Izar wondered whether she wore the diamond bracelet he’d given her not because of its thirty-thousand-dollar value but because she still cared a little about him. “Leave, Ascella!” he managed to croak.

  Her hand wrapped around the doorknob, her face ashen, but Saiph whirled around. He pointed the pistol at her forehead and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot made Izar jump. A drop of blood fell onto her stilettoes, then she folded to the floor like a ragdoll, her eyes wide open, blood trickling down her face, such that she looked like a mannequin crying tears of blood.

  Shaking, muttering to himself, Izar thought of Bumble, the teddy bear from his childhood. As Saiph had given Bumble to Izar twenty-five years ago, he had given Ascella to Izar a year ago, introducing him to her. Now, he’d killed Ascella, just as he’d killed Bumble then.

  The pistol arrived again on Izar’s forehead. Izar’s arms stopped straining in the grasp of the lackeys, and all tension drained from him. He succumbed to death.

  “Serpens got a good look at Coralline,” Saiph said softly, “when she leapt out of the water to cut you out of the net. Black hair, bronze scales, turquoise eyes, young and pretty. I’ll kill her at her wedding. Thank you for telling me, Izar, that she’s getting married in a week at Kelp Cove in Urchi
n Grove. I’ll find a way to get the precise coordinates for the venue and kill her there.”

  With every word Izar had uttered to Saiph about Coralline, he had cast a fishnet over her. If she died, it would be his fault. “I’ll do anything you want,” Izar pleaded. “You can keep Castor’s patent—I won’t fight you for it; I won’t fight you for anything. I’ll invent anything you want me to. Just don’t hurt Coralline.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not an option.”

  “Kill me, not her.”

  “I’ll kill you both, brother. I’ll kill her at her wedding through you—through your Castor. Then I’ll hurl her dead body at your feet and watch as Castor torches you to death with that arm of his. You and Coralline will not be together in life, but you’ll be together in death, in the form of your ashes.”

  Saiph laughed, his mirth echoing against the glass walls.

  26

  The Shadow of Death

  Will you read me a story?” Naiadum asked in his most persuasive voice.

  He deposited The Bizarre Tale of the Barred Hamlet in the region of Coralline’s stomach, atop her blanket. He then smiled at her like a young salesman and bounced eagerly in his chair as he waited for the story.

  Coralline looked at him as an apothecary: Though his cheeks were not yet full, and he was not nearly as pudgy as he had been, his face had, in the last four days, regained a healthy measure of its color. He was recovering well.

  “I’m sorry, Naiadum,” Coralline said. “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

  She’d said the same yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Before the Elixir Expedition, she had swum into his room every night to read him a story; now, he came to her room every night begging for a story and always left without one.

  “Are you sick?” Naiadum asked, his chin quivering.

  “No. I’m just tired.” Coralline tried to reassure him with a smile, but what appeared on her face was not so much a smile as the isolated movements of muscles near her mouth.