Mer Manoa Book 3

  Tides of History

  Canticle VII

  In day-lit seas, shrouded by light,

  The Weaver pauses at her loom.

  The threads, many. The weft, complex.

  The edges, frayed, and afraid is she

  That when all are met

  That when all are joined

  That when thread is bound with thread

  When skein is bound with skein,

  Knots, tangles, chaos.

  Fingers resume their places,

  Clawed tips pluck the strings,

  To make music from light,

  To make light from life,

  To lead life with its song.

  So that all shall be met

  So that all shall be joined

  So thread shall be bound with thread

  And skein shall be bound with skein.

  Melody, harmony, chords,

  A hymn for the world to come.

  Canto VII

  Verse I

  Within the night and the day, fitted by the bounds of hours set to divide time into well-managed slices of an ever-flowing infinity, there came the moment in which a mer must sleep. For Marhyd din Linnea, head of the Crown Ministry and general source of inspired solutions to problems which her sisters in council had yet to comprehend, that hour was never the same from one to the next. When it was, when it may have been, or whether it would arrive at all--such was the mystery of life. So much was there to do, and only the seven hours of day and their seven sisters of the night. Sleep came to her when it must, and so it was that she awoke with a start in the middle of her office chamber, that bubble of fitted shellwork set into the cliff of Bryndoon.

  How long she had slumbered, afloat and untethered from the walls as from reality, her violet hair coming slowly loose in an errant current, it was difficult to say. Her memory was that it had been dark outside then, and so it was now. Her assistants had not roused her, and her stomach was not stirring from hunger, which led her to believe that not much time had elapsed.

  Oh, but she was getting old. The energy of youth was long past, and her impressive bulk had stolen much of the rest, though she was trimmer around the middle than she had been before the princess had departed and the palace had turned busy. The walls of the chamber were studded with message shells, etched words of request or report, of business or more business, like nothing her ministry had seen in a generation. It was a fulsome time to be alive.

  With one hand, she checked the shells pertaining to research efforts: new applications for runic grammar, new weapons to test in preparation of the rise of the next tide of abominations. Other shells detailed the sightings of monstrosities along the edges of Bryndoon's native waters, the Mere Le?na, as well as her homewaters of the Mere Tessra?. Presumably in others as well, though she paid those places no mind for now.

  The grand effort was deserving of its adjective. So much progress, so much change, and Marhyd could only imagine the consternation it caused Her Holiness, Mitera Yesca, and the other mitera of the Mother's Temple. War and conflict tended to have that effect, which she figured was the reason why the prestra and mitera of the Temple preached peace so forcefully.

  One shell included the sketched likeness of the newest breed of abomination, like an elongated lobster with needles for claws and a curved tail with scissors at the end. Peace was not the option here, and for her part, Ministra Marhyd was enjoying it all immensely.

  But now, a new shell. This one had arrived not long before her unscheduled nap, she felt, for its shape was familiar even if its contents were unknown. A report from her dearly claimed daughters, Mardith and Martella, sent the previous week to find the errant princess amid the sands of the Mere Almezzeb. What Her Highness was doing in the tent city of Mezzegheb, the ministra knew not, but it likely was not the sort of fun which she herself might pursue in that infamous harbor of iniquity. But what of her daughters...

  The ministra's eyes scanned the cramped lines of the shell once, and then once more as she processed the sequence of events they detailed. The words "Oh, my" escaped her lips as tiny bubbles of sound, to be followed by a froth of laughter as the violet-haired mer found hilarity in the tragic and unintentional.

  Oh! what a world it was, for such things to occur! It made her hope that the princess would remain on the far flows for a long time to come, if only for the surprises it would bring.

  Verse II

  The City of Mezzeret, as much a home to the wondering souls of the mer equmara as any place could be, was far from Bryndoon in so many ways, the least of which was physical distance. Where the capital of the manoa was still and serene in its harbor, the capital of the equmara was ever in motion, its pillars without walls allowing the waters to flow at all hours. Sand washed in from the surrounding dunes, or bundles of sargo and kelp from the gardens, only to be flushed out by the evening tides. From her borrowed space beneath one pavilion, Princess Rhiela min Anyis, of the House of Brandellyn, First Daughter Under the Firmament, let the cool waters flow past.

  She might wish them to flush away her names, the entire litany of birth and lineage and titles, until naught was left but Rhia, the vaguely anonymous friend and companion to a favored ally of the equmara. That little crab had left its shell, however, and like the tiny hermits, Rhia felt naked and exposed as she scrabbled to find a place that fit.

  Beyond the pillars, in the open waters of the city's central plaza, her friends had things of their own to do. She could watch them, at least. Sera had her own circle in the graded fundament, where the roguish red mer and her equmara lover listened to the words of a group of nine mers, eight of them manoa in all the colors found below the firmament, and the ninth a leondra matron who looked perfectly at ease in this place where no leondra ever swam ere now.

  All were come from the far end of the Mere Almezzeb, from Mezzegheb where the caravans stopped on their way through the Sands, and they sought refuge after what had passed in the tent city. On the strength of Sera's word had the chiefs of the equmara taken them in, transported them across the Mere Almezzeb. That same word kept Rhia safe in this city, even though...

  She hated the fact, hated the thought, hated herself, hated that she was the reason and the excuse for what had transpired there. So much destroyed, so many dead, all in search of her. Once upon a wave, Rhia would not have believed the ministra capable of such things, for all that the mer was strange of mood and habits, but the accounts of all witnesses came to the same nightmare, the same atrocities by Marhyd's agents.

  The elders here could not see her leave soon enough, Rhia knew, but they politely refrained from saying so. Just as she politely refrained from acknowledging that which went unspoken. They all understood.

  Of her other friends, Rook was nowhere to be seen. Doubtless the little orange mer was off studying something with her two new friends. It might even be a useful sort of something. Further along the curve of the plaza, the twins Jumie and Millie were up to a different sort of something all their own. The two mers of Valden had between them an extensive knowledge of stories and puppet shows, gleaned from their own grandmother's performances, and the two could put together a play with remarkably short notice. This was of importance as the eight mothers and solitary matron of Mezzegheb had brought with them some two dozen daughters, not all of them their own, from the crèche that protected and hid the tent city's embarrassing little secret.

  The orphelines, true daughters born in a city where none should be, without the gift of the blessed sacrament, had taken their precipitous departure from the orphanage of the Wayward Drift in proper stroke, happier to be with their true mothers, or else mers willing to be their mothers, out in the open. The equmara, for their part, found the school of young manoa daughters to be naught but charming, and a few had already appointed themselves aunties for the group.

  Their self-determined grandmother, the leondra known as Matron Mikayela, was a different matter for the elders to accept, but a few short words from Sera, followed by a bitter tirade from the matron herself, had set the matter straight. The strange sisterhood of the Wayward Drift had at least found a home in Mezzeret, and the mer who'd helped raise most of them, mothers and daughters, was not about to abandon them there.

  Rhia wondered how many times the matron and Sera had argued about this very thing, before the destruction beneath the tent had changed the flow of the old mer's opinion. She had the feeling that the answer would be 'plenty.'

  She envied them all, almost as strongly as she felt anger at Mitera Yesca and the other Temple representatives in Bryndoon for never mentioning this secret. Her Holiness had to know, the princess figured. It was too great a thing to be kept from all, well though it was hidden from mers who would not think to ask or to see. The truth of the blessed sacrament was taken on the word of the prestra, and the orphelines simply did not exist to those who did not wonder. It had taken her too long to accept the reality, herself, much to her shame.

  But for the prestra of the Mother of All, they who specialized in the blessed sacrament, the treatment of these poor girls was unconscionable. In her mind Rhia was already planning what royal edicts she would make in a future where she bore the Crown's authority

  The flow never stilled, but it could be directed, as by a body swimming up close. Rhia turned her head to smile at Ardenne as the hunter brought a platter of fruiting pods and edible grasses. In a smaller basket, there was some cut fish, freshly caught by Ardenne herself as their hosts were not fond of the taste of flesh.

  "Were you going to move anytime this evening?" asked the mer with the hair like fresh weed in the water. "Or would you rest against that pillar for all time?"

  "I do not think I would be so welcome," she admitted. It was not an unlikely guess; the mer equmara had suffered the wrath of the Crown for their independent spirits, and the ire of the Temple for surviving without access to the blessed sacrament. The broad-faced mers of the wandering flows had every right to mistrust her and resent her presence, and she knew that many did. "I may enjoy from afar."

  "You shouldn't need to." The hunter's expression was murky, but green eyes shimmered bright through it. "If they knew even half--"

  "It would not change their minds," she said. "Not all of them, at least. They might come to like me, Rhia, but still despise Her Highness the Princess Rhiela." Her gills flushed out a sigh. "It is what it is. What else is new?" A long, purplish tuber was crisp in her mouth as she bit off the end and chewed.

  "More mers are arriving soon," said Ardenne. "Wanderers, caravanners, other secret allies of the equmara. They're all frightened, and rightfully so, after what the ministra's weapons did to Mezzegheb." There was a pause as the two of them both shied from the memory of what mere words had conveyed when given by the refugee mothers who had witnessed. "We must decide what to do on the morrow."

  "To Valden?" That had been floated as an option, and Rhia thought it a good one.

  "Most likely, but we should hear what these other mers have to say."

  Yes, she supposed that they should. It was the wise thing, the properly royal thing, to listen to advice before making a grand decision. Rhia knew too well that it was something she need practice more, and especially when it was not her place to make the decisions. But for the evening, there was naught to do but chat with a friend and share a meal. It was something of a relief to have naught to do, and someone to do naught at all with.

  Verse III

  Rook was no stranger to the cycle of day and night. She and the passage of hours met from time to time to exchange notes in the form of dreams, but her life as a rune-crafter's apprentice in the Harbor of Bryndoon had made her more acquainted with the odd hours of the late night and early morning than most mers. The past few weeks of adventure had forced her into a more normal life of daytime activity, but she was happy to throw all that to the open currents when something of interest came along.

  Here in Mezzeret, with a roof over her head, rune-marked shells in her hands, and a space between her two new best friends, the orange-speckled mer once again lost touch with time.

  On her left, Blaer was organizing a new grammar out of their library of shells. She'd brought a lot's worth of the things with her out of Bryndoon, when it'd all gone muddy and they were out on the long current, but the equmara apprentices had their own--and different ones, at that. The broad face of the camfion lass was comical as her eyes crossed to stare at the space between thick-fingered hands. Syllables were sorted into chant, and a whirl appeared in accordance with the grammars of flow and ebb. The currents knotted themselves into a sphere of motion, a bauble of bubbles that danced in place. With a flick of one ear, the lass sent it rushing at the big rock at the end of their practice stall. The bauble smacked into the solid presence of the rock and exploded in a billow of froth.

  "Nice'un," said Rook. "Right 'n proper boom-y."

  "M'thanks," said Blaer. The equmara all had smiles as wide as their faces, if not wider, and round, pink cheeks as well. The lass had her head turned to accept a kiss on one cheek, and then the other. With a giggle, Rook followed up with one straight on the lips.

  "Ah, hey. Be ye forgettin' me?" said Elspeth to her right as the first kiss went on for a full measure. A kiss went to the splash of white across the lass's nose, and then a second to the mouth below it. "Mhm, mite good at this, Rooksie."

  "Oh? What'cher mean?" she teased back. "The workin' or the kissin'?"

  "Whyn't the twain?" said Blaer. Both camfion lasses giggled at that. Their hair--long and stiff, sprouting in a thick bar across their heads from front to back, but none on the sides--made waves as they shook their heads. "But who next, now that be an important question."

  Looking from one long grin to the other, Rook's own smile grew wide. The two were a pair, alike in that way that most equmara looked kinda like each other to her eyes, but she'd been picking up the neat little differences, starting with the big ones like Elspeth's nose-splash and down to the little ones like how Blaer's skin went speckled at the edges of where brown skin met the pale of her belly and under-arm. Both had the same passion for rune-crafting, which is what had brought them all together that first night in Mezzeret: while most of her friends had been flirting with their hosts, Rook had started on a talk about runes that took more than half the night, and then the rest of the night was spent in snuggles. That'd only been a few days ago, even if it felt like longer, but there was plenty of chances to learn more about the lovely pair.

  So, with that in mind... "Whyn't the twain?" she drawled, mangling the equmara accent as she turned their words back at them. Within a four-beat, she was shrieking with laughter as Blaer and Elspeth pounced, catching her in the middle of a snug embrace with plenty kissing for all, and more than one hand up a mer's vest. The turbulence of the waters had nothing at all to do with the grammar of ebb or flow, this time.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  She might've wished it to go on forever, or at least the shorter set of forever that was the night. It could've, at that, but for the jingling of shells on the approach to the practice stall, warning that someone was a-coming. Rook and her leman pair were disentangled and mostly presentable by the time their caller deigned to float in.

  Elder Alo?ssa was usually more fleet of fin, what with the extra pair of flukes that she and all the other equmara had in front. The old mer knew her students well enough to tarry at the appropriate moments. "Mother's flow be, young'uns," said she. "Rightly abed at this hour, ye should all be. A-sleeping," she added, turning her head to place her left eye's full glare on their snickering selves. "Getting good practice in the runes, at least?"

  "Great practice," said Elspeth.

  "Excellent!" Blaer agreed.

  "Learnin' a new thing every beat," Rook confirmed. "Lots 'a things to study."

  Elder Alo?ssa rolled her eyes as further giggles added to the froth above. "Sure enough to truth. But I figgered it a safe bet ye'd all be here, so a surprise I am a-bringing. Plenty of visitors have we this day and night, a-coming from all over the seas, and one haps to be an old acquaintance o' mine, whot I haven't seen in many a year. The two of us used to study the runes together as well, back then."

  "The runes and nothin' else?" teased Elspeth.

  "Nothin' more I be a-telling ye all," said Elder Alo?ssa. "But hey, she's here. Show her the utmost respect, young'uns."

  The figure of a mer floated on the threshold to the practice stall, a crooked old manoa in a kelpen cloak, with greyed hair billowing back behind. Rook knew that cloak. She knew that crooked form. She knew the hair and the face and the eyes and Mother of Pearl, those eyes were lookin' her way and she only now was realizin' that her vest was unbuttoned straight down the front like the equmara lasses', even if it hadn't started that way, and...

  "Um, hey, Baba." Somehow, she managed to wave and smile without her heart busting out of her chest, or likewise her chest bursting out of her top.

  "Wait a bit, you mean..." whispered Elspeth out the side of her wide mouth.

  "She's your...?" Blaer blew out on bubbles from her other side.

  Rook did and Baba Rill was. She hadn't seen the old mer since before Her Highness's party in the palace, the one what had gone muddy so fast that there'd been no time to say a fare-yerself-well before she was on the fast float to distant seas. But there Baba was now, looking her over with that sour face that could've been bad, could've been good, but was still more likely bad after all.

  "Um, glad to be seein' yer all right," she stammered onward. "Like, yeah, we left in a right hurry, yer know, and couldn't spare the time... but er, yer know that, yeah. And... um, need to thank proper for the shell library, cuz it saved our necks more'n a few times, yeah..."

  Oh, bubbles, she couldn't tell what the old mer was thinking, but she knew herself to be a right mess just then. The stroke of Elspeth's front fluke along the sideline of her tail-flank near to made her shriek before it could calm her down.

  "Hmph. Seein' how busy yer bein'." The words were truly Baba's, through and through. "Right sort 'a busy, though? Yer puttin' the shells good to work? Hm? Show me what'cher learned, child."

  A surprise test, again so like Baba. The waters of her mind were a-froth with the frantic sculling to find something to show, something to impress, and for lack of much better in her head right then, Rook focused on the very thing she and her new friends had been working on earlier. Not the bursting bubbles, but rather something more fun to use on another mer. Among other uses, and her mind caught on one that wouldn't embarrass her.

  From her mind to her fingers, with nothing in the middle. Time to think, time to talk, time to panic, so she didn't give herself the time. With her imagination, she painted circles of runes around her fingertips in eddying spirals of flow and ebb that grew and expanded as their grammar fitted together to give orders to the waters around them. Completed, the rune-working stretched from her wrist like an extra hand, and then as an arm stretching across the way to pick up a handful of loose stones. She quickly sorted out the three roundest pebbles of the right size and twirled them in circles, like she was juggling them in the palm of one hand. Then, with a flick of an ephemeral wrist, she tossed the pebbles at the big target rock. One, two, three--ping, ping, ping.

  With a deep flush of water through her gills, Rook dismissed the phantom hand and awaited judgment.

  Baba Rill's face was old and craggy, her hair gone all white with a shadow of vanished color, but the eyebrows had kept their original hue. Those two wriggly orange worms now climbed the mer's forehead. "Huh, hain't seen much like to that ere now. Did'jer find that in the shells?"

  "Um, no, Baba," she admitted. "Well, some 'a the ebb runes, yeah, and then Elspeth 'n Blaer here, they had some 'a the flowin' runes, so we were workin' on how to fit 'em together, and..." She gulped back her water. "Done good?"

  Baba was shaking her head, and it took her a moment to realize the old mer wasn't showing her a nope. "Rook, child... said I hain't seen much like to it, yes? And here I seen most 'a everything. That weren't a thing from any shell, cuz ain't no shell what has it, and that's good, child. And you did it saying nothin' at all."

  "I did?" Somehow that fact had escaped her. Too busy actually doing the thing to notice how she was doing it.

  "Not a word," Elspeth confirmed. "Wave o' the hand, and whoosh."

  Her old teacher had settled upon the sand of the practice stall and patted a nearby patch in invitation. Rook placed her flank on the fundament and a beat later she was joined by Elspeth and Blaer, the three of them as clustered together as propriety would allow. Since this was Mezzeret and they were equmara, this meant that one of the pair was practically in her lap at any given moment. Her cheeks burned hot as she felt the gaze of her teacher push at her, but she didn't tell them to stop. Threading her fingers through Elspeth's stiff-haired mane was soothing, even as the rest of her was right dead from nerves.

  "Er, so, what'cher..."

  "Just a story," said Baba. "Yer story, Rook. What'cher been doing since yer left that morning?"

  Nothing to do but tell. Her lemans were all ears, long and straight and practically in her face as they wiggled. So she started with the party, telling the girls all about the fancy goings-on and about how they'd met that one mer, Marsa, and so Her Highness, too. Then it was how she'd managed that light-up grammar in the deep tunnels, and the big old cavern behind the cliffs what had all the fancy glitters and the green-haired statue. Baba stayed quiet through it all, but the old mer's eyes shouted questions, even before Rook told about how she'd messed up a heating grammar on purpose and then shoved the frothing boil down an abomination's throat, which'd killed the thing right proper.

  She accepted cheers and kisses from her girls right then, no complaints.

  After that was the escape from the Mere Le?na, a thing Baba herself had helped along, sending extra goods with the twins for the pick-up on the far side of the harbor heights. The shell library had been in with it all, and so Rook talked about how she and Her Highness had split the collection to study between them, and how they'd worked to make grammars like Rhia's black ice shield or her own pebble shooter.

  Baba nodded at that. Rook had the feeling that Her Highness was going to have an interesting first time chatting with the old mer, and more soonish than late-ish.

  But the flow of the tale was now on the Mere Almezzeb, and the things she'd done to destroy little abominations along the way, like sand-traps and hot bubbles. She reported how she and the twins had worked together to fix the lamp at the Wayward Drift, and then how she'd gotten some old jetsam out of storage there what turned out to be useful as a heater, sorta, and then how she'd used that against the giant starfy what used to live in the Flowing Gardens before Ardenne had killed it all proper dead, just the day before yesterday. Her tale ended with appreciative applause from her lasses, and looks approval from their elder.

  "Hmph, adventure." Baba was always a tough sell, no fooling. "All yer wanted of it?"

  "More'n I thought to want," she admitted. "But it's got its perks." Her friends perked up at that, and they all held in giggles.

  "S'pose it do, at that." Her teacher scratched at greyed-up hair. "Been good for yer, though. Gotta give it that. Come a long way, truth. Almost sorry I never trusted yer with the big grammars before this."

  "Really?" It was hard to believe her ears.

  "Yeah, but still glad I didn't. Give yer somethin' like that, next thing is our roof gettin' blown straight to the firmament, and then the ministra's little sharks come our way." The words gave way to a miracle: the old mer's face cracked into a smile. "Proud of yer, though. Really, truly, ever an' always, child."

  "Th-thanks, Baba..." Was it the first time this had happened, her teacher praising her so? For the words, perhaps not, but for the sentiment... That feeling whalloped Rook between the ears right good. When Elder Alo?sa suggested they all get to bed and actually sleep for the night, Elspeth had to give a shoulder while Blaer took the tail, pulling her back to the cozy nook they were sharing with her. It was a nice fit for two, but three only worked if they were all mighty friendly with each other. Wrapped in arms, fins, and flukes, their improbable threesome soon drifted to sleep.

  But in Rook's head, Baba's words echoes through the waters of dreams: Really, truly, for ever an' always.

  Verse IV

  In the years since Sera had quit the crèche, and then all of Mezzegheb soon after, she had found frequent hospitality with the mer equmara. The long-faced, broad-smiled folk of the high flows excelled at hosting, as long as a mer was determined to be a good guest, and she'd been the best she could ever be. When in Mezzeret, or wherever else they may need, she shared hospitality with a equmara named Rohaise, and never was she happy when they need part. Their reunions were always the merrier for it, and especially that day, when her strong-tailed leman had returned from a survey of Mezzegheb's waters with Sera's entire family of orphelines in tow. The two of them had spent a lovely afternoon together, negotiating safe harbor and teaching her crèche-sisters how things flowed in their new home.

  It had been wonderful, and as soon as lights were turned out across the city, she'd repaid the kindness tenfold to her lover. In the waters of now, like to past the midnight hour, the two of them snuggled in a well-padded hammock within Rohaise's personal nook. The equmara had only a loose idea of privacy and property, not to mention the general lack of walls between the many pillars of Mezzeret, so those mers as yet daughterless and unwed tended to stake out convenient locations wherever they could be formed, for those nights spent at home. Rohaise had her nook high in the corner of one building's roof, tucked between pillars and fenced off with a hammock that was sized for two to enjoy. Of all the many and varied places she had across four seas, it was the one Sera always looked forward to seeing again.

  Alas, it also meant that she was easy to locate within Mezzeret, by any who knew her at all. She was stirred from a dream where she and Rohaise were cuddling, to awake to the night where they were still cuddling, but this time there was also a pebble thrown at her flanks with deliberate force.

  "What?" she hissed. The syllable sped down on a string of bubbles, and a beat later, a series of notes rose upon a straight line to her ears. A call sign. The sigh quelled in her chest. It took a special sort to insist on codes and call signs even in friendly waters.

  Very friendly, as Rohaise proved to be when Sera had to pull herself free. The equmara was in her prime, with strong arms to hold a lover through the night--and how the red mer would have preferred to stay! A hand passed through the stiffened mane of hair, and a sweet word passed to a twitching ear before the sleepy mer would let go.

  "This had better be good," she grumbled as she descended the short fathoms to the fundament. In midnight's murk, she could make out the silhouette of a manoa by one pillar, but it wasn't until the glow-lamp was shaken to life and light that the details became clear. "Ah, it's you. Greetings, Megael. What a surprise."

  Whether it was a pleasant one remained to be seen. Megael's face spoke otherwise, but that was always the case. The mer with drab brown hair had the look of a lass born unhappy, and the gesture to follow her held naught but business. They were well away from the pavilions of the city center and into the weeds before the other mer said anything at all, and happy words they were not: "What in the depths of the indigo hell are you doing here?"

  "Sleeping. Has to happen sometime, even here in Mezzeret. Might recommend some for yourself, Meg."

  "Who has time for a muddy night of sleep when the seas are gone mad! Did the funge finally eat your brains out, Red? Hm? We hear you're planning a thing in Bryndoon--in the palace, no less, and without a by-the-by to let us know!--and next we all know, there's five mers what are wanted for a royal kidnapping! What in all the depths?"

  Yeah, should've done better at telling the madams of the Free Flow what was afloat. She'd passed word by one of her caravanner contacts, but not soon enough for any mer to pull her back by the flukes and tell her, tell them all, how stupid a plan it was. Completely on purpose, of course. Didn't want cooler heads to get in the way of a good plan.

  Not that Megael was one of the cooler heads. Far from it. The temper behind that mud-daubed face bubbled hotter than Rook's rune-crafted cooking pot. "Kidnapping! Really! And you brought her here."

  "Eventually."

  "Eventually? Eventually, she says!" The Free Flow agent shook the waters with her thrashing flukes, sending bits of weed and grass to floating in the evening currents. Her voice remained dangerously low as she continued with, "Your mistake was to not slice her throat wide open on the Bryndoon heights and be done with the royal funge for well and good."

  Knew it was coming, and even so it made her cringe. "Wrong time, wrong place, wrong situation. Also, didn't wanna give her the satisfaction after she tried to do it to herself." Even now, the thought of min Brown-on-Top made the rogue wonder at how crazy life could be. The princess had done it as much as a threat to their lives as to hers: they all knew that if royal blood were to mix with the currents, then no frenzy of sharks would compare to the wrath of the Crown soldiers as they came after. It'd been hard enough dealing with Grett and her pod in the Mere Sangolia as it was.

  "Do it now," said Megael. "Better place, better situation. Never a wrong time."

  "No." Sera made the syllable as firm as she could. "Not just cuz the equmara granted her full hospitality, even after she fessed up. No, not at all."

  The other mer was searching her face by the faint light of the firmament at night. "Red, we go well back, yeah?"

  "Seven years now, I think."

  "Know each other pretty well, you'd say?"

  "Well enough to name your natural hair color, Meg."

  "Helped pull you out of that mess in Mezzegheb."

  "Yep."

  "Kept the viceroy's guards from doing you in, how many times?"

  "Three." Had to learn how to defend herself for the times after that. The Lady din Casima, viceroy of the Mer Almezzeb, was a mer to hold grudges, as the mess in the tent city well showed. "Changes nothing. Brownie's still more useful to us all alive, 'stead of sliced and carved."

  "And the moment she's not?" demanded Megael. "Hm? Well?"

  Nothing to do but stare out into the open fundament beyond the city's edge, where silt, sand, and grass faded into the distance. No good answer, and she didn't know which bad answer would come out of her mouth if she dared open it.

  "Hmph. The madams of the Free Flow will hear of this, Red. Don't think they'll be any happier to hear you gone soft and funged in the head."

  The madams would believe whatever Megael told them. Perhaps it was time to give the dour mer something else to say. Or perhaps she would speak for herself, to herself, at herself, and let Megael be merely a witness. There'd been an itch in her heart to share, but none to hear whot hadn't been there to see it. "We destroyed an abomination the other day. Massive, powerful. Could 'a wiped out a pod of soldiers, easy, and it was just the six of us. Seven," she amended. Her arm ached at the memory, even if the city's healers had told her it wouldn't bear scars. "Rhia had this magic shield trick what saved my skin, and she doesn't even like me. But she'd do it again."

  "So what. You gotta be grateful? To a royal?"

  "You'd demand the same." Sera blew out her gills. "Demanding the same right now, right? Tell the madams whatever, Meg. Just, tell 'em to wait and see. Stuff's out and about, what they don't wanna mess with. That's my job, and the princess comes with it."

  Megael's final words rippled with anger and contempt, no matter how polite they were in meaning. The dour mer was the only one Sera knew that could make "Go with the Flow" an insult, a curse, and a threat to life and limb. She watched the mer slip off into the murk of midnight, and even when she was satisfied that the agent was on no direct current toward Rhia's guest nook, she sat on the fundament at the edge of the weeds and grass for a few measures longer.

  Depths take it, but had she gone soft? All that talk of free action and destroying the Crown, was it all empty bubbles? Perhaps they were, she thought. Perhaps she needed a thing what to fill the bubbles with and give better, stronger ideas. Or maybe she was popped out of her mind and needed to sleep. The arm was only half-healed, no matter how it looked. So she sat and stared out into the vast, empty haze.

  A click bounced off of her, as hefty as Megael's pebbles if not as solid. Her ears turned to trace the echo back to the source, who was swimming several fathoms above her. "Hey," she called to the pink delphin. At her wave of welcome, the cetacean descended to her depth. For one of her kind, Pinky was on the small side. Still outmassed any mer under the firmament, though. Slashes and scars showed where the healing grammars had been needed after the battle in the gardens. One pale line ran askew of the dorsal fin, and that was where Sera rubbed with her fingers. A happy squeak was the reward for her efforts.

  "Can't sleep either?"

  -Squeak- The rounded forehead bobbed. No mer could say how much the delphin understood when they spoke to her, but Sera would bet it was more than any thought.

  "Got a few beats?" More like a measure to sing the worries of her heart out upon the waters. The notes were meek, quiet, fading to the froth of the evening noise within yards of where she sat, but the delphin listened. Once or twice, Pinky added her own notes to the music, as if to support the sadness in her heart. Twenty-four years she'd lived, the last seven of them often adrift and alone by choice, and few were the mers she'd ever trust with the important little secrets. Megael knew some, but was hardly a supportive soul. Rohaise knew more, and loved her in spite of it. Her friends, the friends she never thought she'd have, they knew nothing at all, and Sera was afraid to say. But to Pinky, she told it all, and the delphin kept it safe.

  Song concluded, Sera kissed her confessor on the forehead, hugged the blubbery bulk, and returned to her lover's hammock with a lighter heart.

  Megael thought that no mer would ever change, because she herself could not. Sera was happy to know differently, now.