They didn’t get much closer, however, before they were intercepted by a pair of armored Atlantean guards, who darted up on the backs of giant seahorses to stop them.
“Halt,” one said. Echo almost laughed at the quaintness of it. “Go no farther.”
“It’s her,” the other guard said. “Princess. Welcome home.”
Echo waved a hand casually at them, as if she did this all the time.
“I don’t really call it home,” she said. “And no need for titles, guys. I’m just Echo.”
The guards looked at each other, then back at her.
“I honestly don’t think I can bring myself to call you by your first name, Princess. Protocol and all that.”
“What’s your name?” Echo asked.
“Dranis. Ma’am.”
“Oh no, I’m definitely not ma’am either,” she said. “Princess is less painful than ma’am.”
“I could maybe do… my lady?” Dranis said.
“We just keep digging ourselves deeper into an awkward social situation,” Echo said. “How about we just avoid calling me anything?”
“I will try,” Dranis said. His compatriot put a hand on his forehead and looked away as if ashamed of his partner. “I assume you wish to enter the city?”
“That was my hope, yeah,” she said. “I have my team with me. The ones who helped during the… Y’know. The thing.”
“We remember,” the second guard said. “You should know—the common folk speak warmly of you all, even though most never met you. Your companions all left quite an impression for a…”
“For heroes,” Dranis said, jumping in to save his partner from speaking.
“You were going to say something slanderous, weren’t you?” Echo said. “And if you ma’am me I might cry.”
“I was going to say surface dwellers,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s… I mean that’s an accurate description,” Echo said.
“It’s usually said as a slur,” Dranis said, giving his partner a heavy dose of stink-eye.
“Well then don’t say it to us again, I guess,” Echo said. “Even though we do dwell, like, on the surface. Anyway, can we go in?”
“This way,” Dranis said with a grand gesture toward the city.
They were led downward to the main gates, which Echo found somewhat hilarious given that it was possible to swim up and over the walls of Atlantis into the city proper. She’d asked her father about it briefly before they parted ways last, and he said it was a holdover from a city that had not always rested on the bottom of the sea. Much of the city was air-filled, either through powerful technology or equally powerful magic, but the walls themselves were nothing more than what they appeared to be, marking the edge of Atlantis in golden stone, carved with ancient, intricate reliefs of sea life and mythological figures.
I hate that I think this place is beautiful, Echo thought.
They were joined silently by an honor guard of sorts. Additional guards, some swimming and others riding seahorses or other exotic creatures, formed a vanguard around them as they approached the gates. The archway into Atlantis opened as they arrived, no message sent, no words spoken. The daughter of the co-ruler of Atlantis apparently still warrants some pomp and circumstance, she thought uncomfortably. So much for making a quiet entrance.
The honor guard led them down a thoroughfare to a central building, massive and ornate, where Echo knew much of the government did its work. It broke into tall, coral-like spires, which were broken up by windows lit from within. Again, a set of doors opened without a signal, and the two guards who first found them let Echo and her team inside.
Within, they found themselves in an underwater foyer, terminating in a set of steps that led up to an air-filled zone.
Dranis bowed.
“This is where we leave you, Princess,” he said.
“We talked about the princess thing, Dranis,” she said.
The guard smiled broadly.
“Well, we’re within earshot of people who would get mad at me for breaking protocol,” he said. “I apologize, and I leave you to their care.”
“Stay safe out there, Dranis,” Echo said. “Bad things are afoot. Or a-swim. Or whatever the Atlantean euphemism is for that.”
“Understood,” he said, backing away.
Echo made her way up the stairs and stepped from the water. Behind her, the bubble containing her friends followed, inching close to the landing. She glanced back and saw all four of the passengers watching her expectantly, unsure whether they should step out of the bubble.
When Echo turned forward, she saw why.
A royal escort awaited her, guards in gold and green armor, tridents in hand and swords at their hips. Standing amongst them, beaming at her proudly behind his elegant, curly beard, was her father, Rhegis. King of Atlantis. Or, Echo corrected, whatever you call someone who shares rule of a place with his sister.
A complicated mix of resentment, annoyance, joy, and pride wrestled in her chest as she looked upon her father for the first time in months. She wanted to be angry with him, desperately wanted to not forgive him for everything that happened before, but her dad was smiling at her like she was the center of his universe, and Echo couldn’t help but smile back. Somehow, this made her even angrier than she already was.
She turned to her friends and made an exaggerated “get out of there” gesture with both arms. Artem stepped from the bubble smoothly; Barnabas with a bit of a process, seemingly catching his coattails on the force field; and Yuri almost face-planted as he moved from bubble to platform. Muireann calmly exited as well, and with her leaving, the bubble winked out of existence.
“I missed you, Echo,” Rhegis said.
“I… right,” Echo said. “I guess the king doesn’t usually just meet guests at the door regularly.”
“Not regularly, no,” Rhegis said. He turned a less high-voltage but still warm expression on her friends. “Welcome back, all of you. I see you have a new companion?”
Muireann bowed her head politely.
“I’m called Muireann, your grace,” she said. Echo spotted Artem and Barnabas swap a confused look at how easily Muireann slipped into a proper courtly tone.
“Well, Muireann, welcome to Atlantis. Any traveling companion of my daughter is free to walk these halls,” Rhegis said. He returned his attention to Echo. “I’d ask what brings you here unexpectedly, but I suspect whatever it is, this isn’t a simple social call.”
“Yeah, um,” Echo said. “Yuri found something, and, ah, can we talk? We should talk. Maybe not in the hallway.”
Rhegis nodded.
“I suspected as much. A room is being prepared. We’ll get you fed and you can tell us what you and your friends have found.”
Chapter 14: A collection of facts
I don’t know about everyone else, Yuri thought, struggling to fit his broad frame into an Atlantean-style chair, but I am ridiculously uncomfortable.
They’d been led to a large open room, lined with windows on one side overlooking the city. Inside, several people already waited, some of whom looked vaguely familiar, people they might have come across when they first came to Atlantis the last time.
A large table dominated the room. A wide variety of food had been laid out, little of which Yuri could identify, let alone get up the courage to eat. He watched as Artem eyed different fruit-like objects, picked one up to examine it, and then gingerly ripped it open and began to eat it. Echo watched which items her father chose and copied him. Barnabas ignored all the food and went right for a carafe of something dark and unpleasant-looking.
Yuri took a guess at cubed fish he thought looked a bit like sushi he’d had before, popping it into his mouth and swallowed without chewing. Yup, definitely some sort of sushi fish, he thought. I wish I liked sushi.
“Yuri,” Rhegis said, sitting down at the head of the table. The other Atlanteans followed Rhegis’ gaze. Yuri felt his skin grow hot. “I understand you found some of ou
r soldiers.”
“I did,” he said. “They washed ashore. I went to Echo before coming here because I thought it would be better if you heard it from her.”
“Your entrance into the city was probably more pleasant because of that decision. I understand your hesitation. Can you tell us where you left the bodies?” Rhegis said. “We want to send people to retrieve them for proper funerals.”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” Yuri said. “I can explain where.”
Rhegis thanked him as the door to the chamber opened, interrupting. In strode Reina, Rhegis’ sister and Echo’s aunt. They all had reasons to hate her, but Yuri stole a glance specifically at Artem. It had been Reina’s assassin who killed Artem’s husband. I should hate her too, Yuri thought. It was that same assassin who hired the were-sharks to attack the Island of Unwanted Things, where Yuri contracted lycanthropy from a bite. Maybe a few months ago he would have hated her, but after all the time he’d spent learning from Whitetip—who, Yuri hoped, would not run afoul of the Atlanteans when they came to retrieve the bodies—he’d come to see the value in his ability to transform as well. The experience of changing haunted him, and he was still more than a little afraid of himself when he was not in human form, but there were worse fates.
He didn’t lose the person he loved the most in the world.
Artem watched Reina with a burning gaze, but said nothing, ropey forearms folded across his armored chest.
“Well, this is awkward,” Reina said, sitting down close to, but not directly beside, her brother, and not particularly close to her niece, either.
“Yuri, Echo told me you said the Atlantean soldier you spoke with before he expired said whatever attacked them came from ‘the Scar?’” Rhegis said, ignoring his sister.
I know we’re at the bottom of the ocean, but this room just got cold, Yuri thought.
“Yeah, that’s what he told me,” Yuri said. “I’m sorry I don’t have more information. He was barely hanging on when I found him and… I don’t think I could have saved him.
“Nobody’s blaming you for that,” Rhegis said. “If whatever killed him took out his entire squad, it’s fortunate he made it away to warn anyone at all. And, unfortunately, we have some mounting evidence that this was not an isolated incident.”
As he said this, the doors opened again. Yuri recognized one of the men entering as the old spymaster they’d met when they snuck into Atlantis that first time. He looked harried.
“Keeping things from me again, brother? I thought we were finished with cloak and dagger nonsense,” Reina said.
“This is new information that came to Grimmin’s attention very recently. We didn’t want to worry anyone without further investigation,” Rhegis said. He gestured for Grimmin to sit down, but the old spy made an awkward motion with his hands as if to say he’d prefer to stand.
“I only just informed his grace today,” Grimmin said. “Our patrols found a dead afanc and the ruined corpse of one of our seahorses, most likely the mount of one of the men who washed up on the surface.”
“Today,” Reina said. “And how long have you known?”
Grimmin looked to Rhegis, who nodded.
“No more than forty-eight hours, your grace,” Grimmin said. “Long enough for an autopsy on the seahorse, and to send out a scouting party to follow up.”
“We can’t rule this city equally if you keep things from me, brother,” Reina said.
“I’m sure you have pockets full of secrets you’re not sharing with me, Reina,” Rhegis said. “And given what Grimmin discovered, I’d beg you to leave the petty infighting alone this time.”
“Petty infighting? Don’t project onto me, Rhegis. You’re the one whose spymaster is running scouting missions no one else knows about.”
“How about we hear what Grimmin found so we’re not all sitting around the table in suspense like a bunch of idiots?” Echo said.
Rhegis looked mortified, Reina scandalized, Grimmin like he was fighting back an inappropriate smile.
Barnabas burst out laughing.
“Okay, right then,” Grimmin said. “Let me just fill everyone in.”
He described the mystical exploration of Poseidon’s Scar, the depth they went to, and the empty, massive nest they’d found deep below. All infighting went quiet as he spoke. For all their squabbling, Yuri could tell that the council and the ruling siblings put their differences aside when there was a clear and present danger to their home.
Yuri raised his hand.
“You said a dead afanc?” he said. He felt all eyes in the room turn on him. Catching Reina staring, he gave her his most awkward smile.
“I… so I fought an afanc last time,” he said. “Like, hard. That thing wasn’t dying easy.”
“This boy fought an afanc?” one of the councilors Yuri couldn’t identify said.
“This boy’s more than he appears,” Rhegis said. “Everyone in my daughter’s cadre is.”
“Yeah, I got infected with were-shark lycanthropy while trying to keep the queen from killing my friends,” Yuri said, then held up a hand apologetically. “Water under the bridge, though, no hard feelings. We’re cool. But like, you know were-sharks, right? We’re pretty much indestructible, and I bloodied the afanc’s nose pretty bad, but he was still alive and kicking when I left.”
“When my men found him, he was shredded into bait,” Grimmin said.
“Well, that’s terrifying,” Echo said. “That’s like finding out someone chewed up a school bus.”
“So, let me make sure I understand this,” Reina said. “We have a dead giant sea predator, a number of our men murdered, and a giant empty nest deep in Poseidon’s Scar. Do we have any evidence all these things are connected? I’m not disagreeing, necessarily—I’m just trying to take a larger view now that we have the pieces on the table.”
“Yuri,” Rhegis said. “I hate to ask such a… grim question, but how were our men injured when you found them?”
Yuri’s stomach turned into a pool of acid remembering the sight.
“They were ripped up pretty badly,” he said. “Lots of, well, they looked like bite marks.”
“Half-moons, roughly this wide?” Grimmin said, holding his hands apart about a foot and a half.
“I mean, it was hard to tell,” Yuri said. “But yeah, they were half-circle bites, like that. And lots of pointed puncture marks. Not the triangular style you’d…. um, see a shark make.”
Grimmin looked to Rhegis, who frowned, and then turned to his sister, as if having a silent conversation.
“Oh, no,” Echo said. She put a hand on Artem’s shoulder since he’d sat closest to her. “The bodies on the ship.”
“What bodies on what ship?” Yuri said.
“You came across more corpses?” Grimmin said.
Echo threw her hands up, frustrated.
“I didn’t even connect everything,” Echo said. “We found a derelict ship on our way here.”
“Half-moon bites,” Artem muttered. “Gods, how did we not notice that until now?”
“We didn’t know about the dead creatures here,” Echo said. “And we hadn’t reconnected with Yuri yet so…”
“Were there no survivors?” Rhegis said.
Muireann stood up.
“Sir, I was on the ship, but locked away when the attack happened. Something climbed aboard the vessel and murdered everyone on board. They might have killed me too if the captain hadn’t locked me in a cabin for my own protection.”
“From the attackers?” Rhegis said.
Muireann wrinkled her nose.
“From the crew, to be fair, your grace,” she said.
Reina exhaled heavily, but not in a judgmental way—Yuri caught himself staring at the expression on her face, which seemed almost empathetic to Muireann’s story.
“What concerns me, if I may,” Grimmin said, taking the floor. “We have several attacks now that seem to indicate a swarm of some sort. The bodies I’ve seen almost look like something yo
u’d expect from piranhas, except the bodies weren’t consumed, just violated with bites. But that nest I saw through the scrying spell… something big lived there.”
“How big?” Echo said.
“I… I can’t really say. Why do you ask?” Grimmin said. “Do you know something?”
“I had a vision. Again. By the way, do Atlanteans have visions all the time or is this the whole human/Atlantean DNA thing acting up again?” Echo said.
“Visions are not common,” Reina said. “But some of us have them. What did you see?”
“You say that like you’re not mocking me, Aunt Reina,” Echo said.
“That’s because some of us have visions, niece Echo,” Reina said, a slight curve of a smile forming in the corner of her mouth. “You saw something?”
“I couldn’t make it out clearly, but it was big, and… I want to say it was lumbering through the water. Not swimming, really. More like plodding along, you know?” Echo said. “And it looked at me, with these big orange eyes, and then I woke up. That’s all I saw.”
The room went quiet for a moment. Finally, it was Reina who broke the silence.
“We need to look up the history of Poseidon’s Scar,” Reina said. “There must be something in the ancient archives about it.”
“It might be the best place to start,” Rhegis said.
“You have a library down here?” Echo said.
“Of course we do,” Rhegis and Reina said simultaneously, both sounding equally offended.
“How do you have a library… under water?” Echo said.
“Magic, darling,” Reina said. “Not that we haven’t had a few flooding incidents.”
Again, Barnabas laughed in appropriately loudly. Reina shot him the dirtiest look Yuri had ever seen.
“Oh, yes, laugh about that, magician,” the regent said. “After all, our last library flood was a direct result of someone damaging our prison, causing foundation cracks across a tenth of the city.”
“Oh,” Barnabas said. “Sorry about that. Um, need some help looking through the archives? I’m a bit of a speed reader.”
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