Verse III

  There was a short list of mers in this city who Sera wanted to see. There was a far longer list of those she did not want to see, or be seen by. Even with the snood to hide her hair color and the general murk to make her scales less obvious, the rogue was all too aware of how easy it was for anyone who knew her to pick her out. A few tail-lengths downcurrent from where she'd left Ardenne and the others, she pivoted onto a different flow entirely, one that hooked around the outer edges of the tent and back to where the locals dwelt.

  For all the mers under the tent, it was rare to say that any actually lived beneath it. The Grand Tent of Mezzegheb was the proverbial place for those with no other anchor, mers who never grew sargo on their flukes, as the saying went. There were the noble Houses of the Mere Almezzeb, of course. Those lineages squabbled and argued, and yet they shared the viceroyal residence like the close cousins they were. But the residence was not actually under the tent; rather, it enjoyed the fresh, clean currents of another rocky prominence not far to the south. The Almezzeb Guard made its barracks there, and the leondra of the local temple as well, so none of the mers in charge actually lived under the tent.

  That only left the mers who had nowhere else to go. Sera slipped along the side of a stout, nondescript tent whose kelpen canvas showed no sign of purpose. After a five-beat of listening at the seams, she was sure that those within were not on her long list, and so she pulled the shell string to announce her presence.

  "Yes, yes, who... oh, my!" A mer had stuck her head out and was now staring with deep purple eyes to match the highlights in her hair. "There's a color I haven't seen in ages."

  "Hey, Lyneve," said Sera. "Got to town, thought to say hello."

  "And get all the gossip, right?" The mer known amongst her friends as Lyneve snorted a bubble. "Get in here. Drazie's out on her business, so we've got a while open."

  That was good to know. She through the slit in the canvas with as little movement as possible, and the material hardly swayed with her passing. The inside of the tent was the opposite of its outer face. There was no doubt that this space had a purpose, and it was home. Food pots and fish baskets hung from the top wall, and simple hammocks served for sleep or repose as their occupants did other things. There were a dozen of the kelp-knot beds, but only one was currently in use.

  "Hello, Klara," she said. "How are... ah."

  The pink-haired Klara looked up from shell of poetry she'd been reading, and she was not alone. A tiny body clung to her front, swaddled in simple bandages so as not to float away. The young mother put a finger to her lips and smiled.

  "Ah," Sera repeated, but more quietly. "Congratulations, I suppose? Wasn't expecting..."

  "None of us were," said Lyneve. "So it goes."

  "How much longer until...?" She let the question meander out onto the waters.

  Klara's smile twisted sour. "Not much longer, I'm afraid. Not going to let me off easy this time." She cradled her sleeping daughter. "Not any easier the second time around, either."

  "No, don't suppose it would be..." A shiver hit her body, nerves going chill from top to tail. "Look, I know neither of you've been interested in the past, but..."

  "Still aren't," said Lyneve. "Here's home, such as it is."

  "Got that." And depths, how she wished she did not get it. "But, ah..."

  Lyneve looked her up and down with all the seriousness of an effective older sister. "In trouble again, are we?" she asked.

  "Not the way you might think," Sera assured. "And might be we all are. Wanted to stop by, drop a word of caution 'fore swimming on. Dunno what all's gonna happen, but it's gonna get muddy. First sign of trouble, swim for the Drift. Going over there soon anyway, right?"

  Klara nodded sadly.

  "Yeah. Got friends who'll be watching, if it all goes bad. Just..." She gulped back her water. "Just want you all safe, okay?"

  "Even Drazie?" Lyneve snorted.

  "That one can go suck a puffer and dance off the sleepy-dreamies." She didn't bother wiping the scowl from her face. "So sure, don't tell her. But anyone else, well, just keep your eyes open. And..." Now her face softened as she looked back over to Klara. "Does she have a name yet?"

  "Kimina," the pink-haired mer admitted. "Know I shouldn't've, but I wanted her to have something from me, even if..."

  Sera and Lyneve both nodded. They got that, too. The red mer stayed for a few verses longer, chatting and gossiping and getting the useful news on many others not currently present. Soon enough she was saying her farewells and repeating her cautions. There was danger on the currents, and she still was not sure what she was going to do about it.

  But maybe the next stop would help there.

  Verse IV

  Time was slippery as an eel in Mezzegheb. The fabric firmament of the great tent blocked all view of the real thing as the light shifted throughout the day, and swarms of glow-lamps kept the interior at a perpetual state of twilight. There was enough to see by, but Rhiela min Anyis, of the House of Brynduin, First Daughter under the firmament, could have done without the view. Or the tour. Or the entire experience of being there. But she was only one mer among five, and this was no place to be alone! So as the group schooled along, so did she.

  If only they would school along with more alacrity.

  "Whoo-ee, lookit that," Rook was saying now. The orange mer motioned everyone over to one round depression in the foundation of the city, where the great anchoring stone of the tent provided a natural sort of theater. Mers of every size and color rested along the outer rim, and more floated above. It took some poking and peeking around this wall of flesh and scale before any of them could see what Rook was on about.

  In the center of the stone theater, a mer had settled in place. Glow-lamps circled around her, providing a mockery of the day's light in this murky place, and beneath that light, the mer gleamed. Every inch of her was the purest of pallor, from hair of silver to scales of pearl. The only colors were the chips of blue in her eyes and the garlands of green entwined around her arms and body. It seemed impossible for such a one to exist, and in that impossibility was born the sort of beauty that none could ignore. Rhiela found herself unable to turn her eyes from the performance as it began.

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  There was a song, a gentle crooning without words that echoes across the limited waters of the theater. It bounced and wrapped around the mers of the audience, and many joined their own voices in harmony as the pale mer continued. It was no music as the princess had ever studied, and while it was... interesting? she supposed, it was not an art she would think could attract such attention.

  And then the first garland of green was tugged at, drawn taut by an alabaster arm and offered to one of her many admirers. A single pearl was given in exchange. Without a break in the song, the rough caravanner who had paid for the honor now pulled gently. The pale mer twirled, creating a small current as the garland spun her about. Then that strand of green was gone, pulled free of the mer's costume, and she was offering another. This time, the honor was sold for two pearl, and the singer spun faster.

  Three garlands were offered, taken by three grinning sisters in Valden livery for the sum of a dozen pearl, and their tugs were not so gentle. The pale mer twisted and turned, never pausing in her melody as the first garland of the three came off, then the second, and finally the third... and there was nothing left. The mer holding the lucky garland swam in, took the performer's hand, and the crowd parted to let them pass. Laughter and rude comments from the other garland-bearers left little doubt as to where the lucky mer was headed.

  "Whoo-ee," Rook repeated. The little orange mer was stuck on Jumella's back, though the twin did not seem to mind the speckled arms around her waist and chest. "Ya don't see the likes of that back home."

  "Thank the Goddess," said Rhiela, though she kept her grumbling low, for local waters only. Was it not sung in the litanies of old that the first and greatest gifts of Cythera were love and beauty? That these should be treasured and nurtured, for the glory of all? And yet, a niggling whisper of thought insinuated, what was this display if not a celebration of both...

  No! She shook her head violently, whipping bubbles from those traitorous brown tresses. This, this perversion attached a price to the gifts of the Goddess, cheapening them.

  Was fifteen pearl really so cheap? the whisper continued.

  Rhiela wished that her own head could screw off, like some doll of shell and kelpen fabric, so that the insidious little voice could be removed, plucked from the garden of her thoughts like the noxious weed it was. She could not look at the stage another heartbeat, not even as the gathered mers cheered the arrival of a new performer in garlanded green. Pushing away with a heavy stroke, she left Rook and the twins to their filthy interest. The three of them could...

  She paused upon that thought. The three of them. And herself made four. So where was... ah. Rhiela spotted a familiar shade of green after a heartbeat's search. Ardenne's hair blended with the dusk and the kelpen fabric walls of Mezzegheb, but there was just enough contrast of hue for a friend to notice. The hunter appeared to be curled in upon herself, her tail wrapped around until nothing but the top of her head was visible.

  Oh, this did not bode well at all.

  "Ardenne?" She sent the name on a focused wave across the waters. She did not doubt her own accuracy, that the word reached its intended ears, but the other mer did not react. "Are you okay?" Bending down from above, Rhiela carefully poked at green tail flukes. "Ardenne, please. You are scaring me here, and this place is unnerving enough as it is. Speak to me."

  There was a harsh gasp, a flurry of bubbles released under duress, and then, "Sorry. I am, I am not feeling my best right now."

  The princess considered that for a moment. "Well, we have not eaten anything here -- not that I would trust the food, mind you -- and it is rather sudden to be catching anything. There is no telling what is floating in these waters, but..." She stroked the hunter's flukes, as her own mother once had long in the past to calm a daughter's night terrors.

  It did not have nearly the same pleasant effect here. Ardenne shuddered and shook breaking the local water with a tortured gasp. "No, please... I, ah, the mood is wrong. It..." The green mer reached for the words. "The current of my blood beats fast and... and every, any touch is too much. I-I am sorry, but..."

  Her hands were already removed from her friend's flank. "No, no. It is I who should apologize. Only, what brought this on?"

  Mutely, Ardenne raised an arm to point at the performance theater. Another of the sisters in Valden livery was swimming off with a petite young mer with blue scales of Le?siatran stock. "Wrong..." The word floated in the water between them.

  "I am not so much a fan of it, either," admitted Rhiela. "To think anyone could find entertainment in that, that..."

  Green hair shook, and not in pain. "No... something is wrong with me." Another gasp broke the water. "A, a pain inside. Or... not quite pain, but not good. I don't know..."

  She let a few choice words flow. "Can you swim?"

  "N-no."

  Nor could the hunter float properly, it seemed. A lady should not cuss the way she wanted to now. She would need help.

  "Wait a moment." It took too many moments to drag the twins and Rook away from the theater area, much to her dismay and annoyance. None of them had as yet thrown away pearls on cheap thrills, but she mistrusted the look on Jumilla's face as they finally pulled away.

  "She's ill, then?" said Jumella, finally grasping what Rhiela had been hissing in their ears.

  Mother of All, this place was a bane to both morals and mind, if a mere dance could reduce her friends to gibbering idiots like this. "We need to get her somewhere secluded." Her patience was far shorter than the few heartbeats it took for anyone to react. Slapping her hands together once, twice, thrice, Rhiela resorted to her most royal tones when she said, "Now, ladies!"

  Between them, the twins could carry Ardenne, despite the feeble protests of the hunter. Few places on her body did not seem to provoke a response, and the feel of so many hands upon her had Ardenne in shock. Or at least, that's what Rhiela thought to call it. So much went on in the hunter's mind that she found difficult to understand.

  Rook scouted ahead, braving the busy currents under the tent in search of calm. "Oy!" the orange mer called. "Cheap hammocking o'er here! Move a tail and get Ardy in!"

  At the edge of the hospitality area, as Sera had named this wholly unwelcoming span of waters, the fabric walls hung closer together, flapping along the bottom as the currents flowed through. The little space which Rook had found for them was the barest definition of a sleeping chamber, with poles for hammocks, a few pillows stuffed with kelpen weave, and little else. "Got it for the rest of the day," Rook told them. "Three pearl for the lot of us."

  "Not too bad," said Jumilla.

  "Yeah, gathered this kind of place is for the tuli-lickers after they gots too much on the tongue," said Rook. "And, um, might be they gots even less by the time they wake up. Lady what runs the place seems a little..." The orange mer shrugged and waggled her hand back and forth. "Just sayin', think she was disappointed how only one of us is completely in-dee-spozed at the moment."

  The twins shared a look of worry, and after a beat Rhiela took her own share of it, too. "We could all use a rest," came the royal decree, "until Ardenne is feeling better, at the least."

  "I'm gonna keep looking outside, if'n it's all the same," Rook told them.

  "Why? We need to school together."

  "Begging yer pardon, Yer... er, Rhia, but we gots to be careful 'round these waters, right? And, and!" the orange mer continued. "Part 'a being careful is ree-con-ay-sonce." The big fancy word was accompanied by a wobbly grin. "Now, whatever's ailin' Ardy there, it's gonna take time to get over, and that's time what could be spent figgerin' out what to avoid in this here crazy place. So!" Rook concluded. "So! We catch two fishes in one net. I do the ree-con-ay-sonce, and you keep this handy-dandy base 'a operations for me to return to so's I don't lose yer. Sound goody?"

  "I'll go with her," said Jumilla. She glanced to her twin. "If you don't mind staying?"

  "Not at all," Jumella replied. "Stay safe out there."

  "Always do." Jumilla ignored the roll of her sister's eyes as Rook tugged her away by the wrist.

  In more normal times, Rhiela would have had a terrible feeling about this. Now, it was just a part of her life. It would be stranger to have a good feeling. To her surprise, she found herself hoping the red mer would return soon, so they could all leave this mad tent. But until then, she could wait and see what the reconnaissance duo discovered.