I didn’t agree with what the resistance had done. Murder was wrong, period. But I wondered if having the Council in control was in the best interests of the Tarians anymore. I glanced surreptitiously at the elderly members of the Council, set in their ways and unwilling to bend. Change was coming, whether or not they liked it. And when the silt settled, I wondered how many of us would survive to see it.
#
I smoothed my fingers over the silky cloth of my dress where it clung in all the right places and panned out in a swirl of light material just above my ankles. Underneath, I wore tights of the same material.
“What did you say this was?” I asked Mirra.
“Gypsum cloth. Made by Mer-folk for Mer-folk. Amazing stuff. It holds its shape and expands and retracts in and out of the water. We make it from Eelgrass.”
“It’s got my vote. I really like how quickly it dries. I was definitely taking the singlet back with me when I went home. Mirra stood in front of the mirror beside me, using a small pot of smooth pink cream over her cheeks and lips to give them a certain glow and shine. Like the clothing, it was specially made and water resistant.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever been to one of these…what did you call it?” I asked, dipping a finger in the small glass pot and rubbing the cream between thumb and forefinger.
“You wouldn’t remember. This isn’t an event usually attended by small children. So you would have been too young before, but the Gladiator Wars have been going on for years. It’s one of the few festivals where no concessions are made for class or species. Everyone competes and everyone is on equal ground. It’s my favorite yearly festival.”
I glanced at my sister, lovely in a gauzy dark purple tunic and slightly lighter leggings that hugged her trim figure. Her long dark hair flowed in a silky waterfall to below her waist. I admired my emerald tunic and cream leggings. Bead work and small gems about the neckline and bottoms of the tunics and tights added sparkle and made us glitter as we moved.
I smoothed a light pink waterproof cream over my cheeks, giving them a much needed color.
“Do members of the Royal Family compete?”
She puckered her lips and applied more lip gloss. “They do. And yes, before you ask, I am as well. But we’ll get you settled on the royal dais before we leave you. Dael and I are both in several events, and Shade, too. Even the Captain of the Guard takes a turn. Pinna opted out again this year. It’s not her thing. She’ll be with you the entire time.”
I made a face. “Be still my heart.”
I met her eyes in the mirror and we both dissolved in giggles. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my other sister, but she wasn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute.
I took up a delicate shell necklace Mirra had loaned me, snapping it in place around my neck and admiring the lovely design. It was the perfect last touch. I thought about the Council meeting the night before.
“The Council is scared. They think the attack was an inside job.”
Mirra nodded, her smile slipping. “It was. I know.”
“They also think it was Seascrill. I don’t want to think that’s true.”
She gave a short laugh. “Why? It probably is. The Seascrill community has been wanting more power for years. The Council has made it their life mission to make sure that never happens.”
I didn’t miss the bitter edge to her voice. I stared at her, my confusion clear.
She rolled her eyes. “I know they think I was the leak, that I’m the one that betrayed us all. I’m Seascrill, I had opportunity and we all know I have plenty of motive because of what I am. So I’m the obvious target.”
“They’d also be dead if it weren’t for you. How many of them did you save?”
“Doesn’t matter. They’d say I was just covering my tracks.”
I shook my head. My sister had sarcasm down to an art form. “You know, part of me wouldn’t blame you if you did. It’s not right. Mer-folk rights shouldn’t be based on race or sex.”
Her mouth tightened, her eyes flashing to mine. “I would. Blame me if it were true. Sounds so good, doesn’t it? The Resistance coming to the rescue of the Seascrill, freeing them from hundreds of years of oppression. But it’s a lie. That’s not what The Dragon and the Resistance want. They just want to put their own leaders on the throne and make a different set of rules. And they won’t be better, not in the end. They’ll still keep the people under lock and key, doling out freedoms like a treat to the poor masses. The only difference will be that everyone will have to bow down then. My vote is for doing away with it all. Let the people have a voice and a hand in making the important decisions. Education shouldn’t be a privilege. And everyone should be able to marry who they want, regardless of social status or race or whatever.”
Her voice hadn’t risen. Our conversation was private for our ears only. But her passion had her eyes bright with determination.
I nodded, stepping back from the mirror for one last look. “You’re right, of course. But what’s happening here is happening above as well. It seems like there’s always got to be something to set people apart. It’s almost like a competition to see who can develop and enforce the craziest rules to control everyone they don’t agree with. It used to be a race thing, now it’s become more of a Magical or Other thing. Certain shifters, for one, are looked down on, while others are considered more powerful and are seen as having a higher station. It’s stupid. I sometimes wonder if the people are just bored and looking for excitement—something to get their blood boiling. They ought to try surviving a battle with a Juggat Dragon. Because when you are fighting one of those buggers, it doesn’t matter who you are, it’s how you wield your weapon of choice and how fast you run.”
Mirra blinked, one eyebrow raising. “A what?”
I gave her a saucy grin. “Never mind. Later. I’ll tell you a bedtime story to fuel your worst nightmares.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sweet talker. How can I resist a promise like that?”
Pinna was waiting for us in the outer room, clad in light pink and wearing enough bling to light up a room. She’d gone all out. I wondered if that was why she had opted out of competing herself. She didn’t want to break a nail or mess up her hair.
She looked us both over critically, and I had the distinct impression we hadn’t measured up in her eyes. She sent me a tight smile. “You ready?”
We headed for the door.
#
The arena for the Gladiator Wars was on the outside practice fields on the east side of Tarus. The field was ringed with ample places to observe the competition, with not one conventional Onlander bench in sight. Instead, what looked like row upon row of armchairs with no bottoms ringed the stadium on three sides. Noticing my curiosity, Pinna spoke up.
“They are called rests. A lot more comfortable when you have fins and a tail.”
Close to the middle of the field were a selection of deep purple rests that had been sectioned off, with silken colored material erected on either side to block viewing in or out of the royal ‘booths’. I’d have much rather been out with the masses. I needed nothing more to remind me of what I was…and wasn’t. I was certain Mirra felt the same. But the self-satisfied look on Pinna’s face as she relaxed back in a bright pink rest told me she was right at home being treated as the royal princess.
I chose a front row rest and relaxed back, my fins and tail moving freely below me. I was quite comfortable as Mirra joined me and we looked down on the infield of milling competitors.
“I have a few minutes before I need to be down there, so I can point a few things out, give you a little background,” she offered.
Pinna interrupted, “Maybe she isn’t interested in hearing about a bunch of contests. They mean nothing, anyhow.”
I glared at her rudeness. “Maybe ‘she’ wants to hear what Mirra has to say,” I hissed.
Pinna’s nose went into the air, and she looked away, miffed.
Mirra smirked and pointed. “See, look down there, to the left
. See that series of floating silver discs and hoops? It’s set up as a target course. It’s used to compete with hand bows, bolts, and cerulean orbs.” She saw my confusion.
Abruptly, she brought up her hand, and I watched in amazement as a small, deep blue orb of swirling energy formed in her palm. It reminded me of the fire that Sadie drew using her magic back home. Only this was no flame, but rather a twisting ball of writhing electricity.
“What can they do?”
She laughed. “Well, they can knock whatever they hit out cold. The power contained in one of these comes with an electric shock. We pull from the genes of the Moray Eel and condense it into these little discs. Just you wait and see me compete with them. I’m pretty good.”
I stared at the churning blue lights, flashes of gold and red bleeding through its center. It was pretty, but I knew better than to reach out and touch it. “What else?”
The light winked out, and we looked back at the field. “Well, there will be hand to hand combat between competitors, just exactly what it implies. Knife throwing, trident wars, though the power in them is reduced to nothing more than a small jolt. We want to win, but not kill off our opponents. Counter-productive and all,” she joked.
She went on, “And races, too, to test speed and endurance. I compete in those as well.”
“Do they have separate races for Mer-men and women?”
“Nope, we compete together. I plan to win that one. It would be my third year in a row.”
“We’ll be cheering you on from right here,” Pinna added drolly.
Mirra glanced up, one brow raising in sardonic disbelief. “You will? Shout my name to win?”
“Well, I’ll be yelling at Mirra, but my eyes might be on all those broad shoulders trying to catch you,” she added, a small cheeky smile tilting her lips for once.
Mirra smiled back. “We girls do have our priorities.”
With a sudden flip of her tail, Mirra turned to go. “Hey, I’m up in a few. I’ll be back when I’m done.” And that quickly, she was gone, leaving me alone with Pinna.
We watched her join the others on the field.
“She’ll win. Seascrill are crazy fast compared to Sylvans,” Pinna said.
From a distance I could pick out Dael, broader and taller than most of the other men on the field. As we watched, Mirra joined him. He turned at her approach, his smile broad when he spotted her. I didn’t miss how close she swam to him, their shoulders bumping in the smooth current. The look she gave him when he turned to watch the start of another event was visible even from where we were. I wasn’t the only one paying attention.
“Delusional is what she is. Thinking he can be interested in her. The council decreed you and he would marry years ago. She hasn’t got a chance.”
I shot her a hard glance. “And I don’t suppose my own wishes have any bearing in any of this?”
Pinna sniffed. “Of course not. We may be the Royal Family, but we aren’t in charge. The Council runs things.”
It was the first time I’d heard any sign of discontent in her voice. I’d always assumed she was in total accord with all decisions the Council made.
“And how about you, Pinna? What do you want?” I asked, curious all of a sudden. We had talked little, my youngest sister and I. Despite our blood ties, we were polar opposites in too many ways.
“To marry well, support the Council in all things, and to have peace in Deep Lake,” she said, as if she’d spent time in front of a mirror rehearsing. I stared at her haughty face, alabaster cheeks smooth as porcelain and just as cold.
“That’s what’s expected. It wasn’t the question. What do you want?”
She looked away. “That doesn’t matter. I prefer not to waste my time hoping for something I can’t have.”
“You mean the crown, don’t you? I’d give it to you if I could. You would be better for it than me. Not that I see what the big deal is. You get to sit on the throne, look pretty and make nice with the masses as they admire your ‘queenliness’. It’s not like you have any power to change anything for the better. I haven’t been here that long, but even I can see how unhappy the people are with the way things are in Tarus. They are tired of having their every move controlled by Tarus Council.”
“It’s always been that way. We’ve never known any different.”
“But maybe you should.”
She opened her mouth to say more and then snapped it shut. She nodded towards the field. “Look, they’re getting ready to start.”
I turned to stare at the open field. Mirra was gathered there with Dael and about eight other Mer-men and women. Most of them were Seascrill, with a few Sylvan thrown in.
Pinna caught my expression. “The Seascrill will lead the pack. Sylvan are stronger and more muscular, but less quick. Usually,” she added, with a small smirk.
“Where do they race to?”
“They’ll race once around Tarus. It’s no holds barred.”
And then they were off and I had no time to ask her what she meant. She was right. Even as I watched, the pack divided itself quickly, the Seascrill edging ahead in a blur of light lavender fins, the flash of their light bodies straining for speed. I gasped when the second place swimmer suddenly swerved straight into the back end of the leader, a Seascrill male who went tumbling end over end, losing momentum as the rest of the pack overtook him in a second. I caught a flash of dark purple. Mirra was in fifth place, behind the pack of Seascrill. Tailing behind her flashed three Sylvan, two men and a woman.
I looked at the original leader, struggling to retake his first place position in the back of the pack. “Is that legal? Seems like cheating.”
“I said no holds barred. It becomes an all-out war before they are through.” Even as she spoke, several swimmers collided in the middle, and Mirra and the rest of the pack skirted agilely around them. Mirra picked up speed, and now she was in third. Dael led the Sylvans behind her, but he was slowly gaining. And then they were out of sight, swimming around the back side of Tarus. It would be several moments before they emerged on the other side and raced for the finish line where they’d started. Anything could happen. All eyes swerved to the other side of the city, waiting to see who was in the lead for the home stretch.
It seemed like forever before several shouts from those closer to that side of the arena told us they were coming.
They flashed into view, trailing a white blur of bubbles in their wake from their furiously moving tales and fins. Mirra was in the lead and pulled out ahead. Right behind her, in the middle of a pack of Seascrill, was Dael. As I watched, several Seascrill hit him from both sides and I waited for him to lose momentum and tumble aside from the impact, but Dael was brutally strong. Instead, he threw up two elbows, and it was the Seascrill that went flying. And then he was gaining on Mirra. They were less than a hundred yards from the finish line when Mirra realized how close Dael was. With a grimace of determination, she pulled up a last burst of speed, crossing the finish line a full tail ahead of Dael, who was a clean second.
Pinna hissed at my side. “Show off! He’s the king elect, she should have let him have it.”
I watched them swim to a halt and Dael clapped Mirra on the shoulder. She whirled and threw her arms around his neck, laughing up at him. Even from several hundred yards away, I couldn’t miss the longing in her expression—or the warning in his, as he politely set her aside.
“I don’t think Dael would want to win that way,” I observed. Pinna’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t respond.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of competing events. Mirra came in second behind Shade in the hand bow obstacle course. The hand to hand combat kept us all on the edge of our armrests as Shade and Dael matched up. In the end, Dael won, but it was clear they were both evenly matched. Mirra joined us in between events, but her smile was gone, her eyes broody. Dael was missing and didn’t show the rest of the afternoon after he finished competing. I wondered if one was related to the other, but I didn’t
pry. Maybe later I’d ask when we were alone.
I stuck to a safer topic. “Can anyone train on the practice fields with the guards?”
“You can, absolutely. And you should. Your skill on land might be impressive, but you could stand to learn a few things about underwater combat.”
I grimaced. She was right. I needed to bone up on my mermaid skills.
“You can come with me tomorrow if you like. We can set you up to practice, see what you know and can pick up.”
“I want to learn more about those cerulean orbs. They remind me of what my friend, Sadie, does with fire. If it’s the same idea, maybe I can use them back home, on land.”
She nodded. “Actually, they work almost the same in or out of water. Energy, unlike fire, doesn’t care if it gets wet. Water actually amplifies the effect.”
I could hardly wait. It was one skill I planned to own so I could show Thomas and Sadie. My smile faded, and a hard lump settled in my gut. If I was ever allowed to leave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tarus was a Sylvan town. Outsiders were welcome to visit, as long as they knew their boundaries and didn’t outstay their welcome. Tarus Council guarded the sanctity of Tarus carefully. The Seascrill community came and went, taking advantage of the goods and services the open market provided, but they made their home outside its walls on the westernmost edge of Deep Lake. They lived in a little known cave system that tunneled below the lake bed and emerged in a mile long warren of pools and caves above the waterline and beyond its shores. Unknown to any human or Magical, few Sylvan knew of its existence either. Seascrill had made the system of Misen Caverns their home for hundreds of years. It was well hidden and gave them an opportunity to use their Onlander legs and remain within feet of the water world they were born to.
The system of caves was heavily occupied by the families of the Seascrill, but there were a few rooms, smaller and closer to the entrance, that remained unoccupied. They were suitable for meetings when they were called for. Tru stood there now, gazing hard-eyed over the expectant faces of those gathered to hear his words. They trusted he had their best interests at heart. Not all in the room were Seascrill. At least a quarter of those gathered were Sylvan. All were masked to conceal their identity from curious eyes. They had more than just their positions in the Tarus government to safeguard—their very lives depended on their anonymity.
Rule 9 Academy Series Boxset: Books 3-5 Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy (Rule 9 Academy Box Sets (3 Book Series) 2) Page 60
