Chapter 32
In Which Merulo’s Sister Is Very Intimidating and Large and Does Not Seem to Abide by Normal Social Standards. In Which that May Actually Work in My Favour, as I Am Realizing that Neither Do I.
And this is—COME ON, MOVE FASTER—this is where the train docks. Don’t EVER go inside the train, it’s nothing but rusted metal. Do you know what tetanus is? Do you know what a train is? A train is like a long car.”
I didn’t know what a car was, but lacked the heart to tell her.
Despite her imposing frame, her crooked nose (obviously healed from past violence), and those muscles, Hydna bounded about with the eager friendliness of a puppy.
I’d stopped trying to shape my replies to please her, as everything I said—no matter how foolish or petulant—seemed to bring her delight.
Most likely, I could thank Merulo for lowering her conversational standards.
“Moving right along now, this is—CAREFUL!” Hydna lunged at me, and I flinched, closing my eyes in brief cowardice, but she only yanked me back from the sinkhole I’d been about to step into.
“You’re a delicate little thing, so use your eyes, eh?
” was my rebuke, along with a shoulder-shattering clap on the back.
“I’m above the average height for men,” I said, pointlessly, for she’d already moved to the next attraction of Poseidon’s Family Fun Resort.
This section looked horrific, with its crumbling facades and time-bleached pigments bearing the ghostly afterimages of smiling aquatic creatures.
When Merulo and I first arrived, we’d emerged in the section of the resort used for housing visitors.
The tall, strange buildings radiated out from our newly designated library plaza for several blocks, before giving way to the amusement district.
It bewildered me that they’d built an underwater city solely for transient entertainment, though I didn’t doubt Hydna’s explanation.
Mentioning this to Merulo proved to be a mistake, as he said, “Yes, I imagine thinking is a great effort for you,” then banished me to spend more time with his sister.
Or rather to “provide that creature with whatever form of entertainment you see fit, so that I might be spared its company.”
“Hydna. Are you and Merulo not close?” I asked, remembering the exchange, then winced. I’d interrupted her explanation of a terrifying wheel that stretched many feet above us, complete with intermittently spaced chairs into which victims could be locked.
“Close?” She sounded baffled—and thankfully unoffended by my lack of attention. “Of course not!”
I squinted up at the dragon woman. She’d dressed herself in relics for the tour, having wasted God knows how much magic on their restoration.
A wide-brimmed hat embroidered with water droplets sat atop her massive skull, while a shirt stretched painfully tight over what might either be breasts or prodigious pectorals, its smiling fish distorted into a boggle-eyed monster.
Her baggy pants, which ended mid-thigh, burned an intense yellow-green that did not exist in nature.
It felt cruel to ask someone so playfully dressed this question.
“You are family. Shouldn’t there be some, you know, underlying love? ”
This was rather pious, considering that my own father likely fell asleep each night thinking of creative ways to kill me, but she didn’t have to know that.
“He’s a walking knife,” came her growled reply.
“Well, yeah.” I kicked at a loose piece of pavement. Intervening in the sorcerer’s various moods had gone some way toward thickening my skin, but I still shuddered at the waves of displeasure radiating from Hydna. “He’s a lonely guy, I think.”
“He’d be less lonely if he weren’t such a piece of shit.” She met my eyes without blinking, and I found myself mesmerized by their reptilian scarlet.
“You have to . . . I don’t know. Meet him more than halfway? He does want company.”
“But is too much of a bastard for company to want him back.”
“Exactly!” I said, delighted that she’d completed my thought. My excitement faded at her expression. “That’s neat that you can raise one eyebrow like that. Good control of your, uh, facial muscles.”
Hydna pointed to a circle of unicorn-sized crabs, complete with saddles, welded to a roofed platform. No half-shouted explanation followed; I’d succeeded in puncturing her enthusiasm.
“Those are cool,” I tried lamely. Then: “He’s been kind to me when he didn’t have to be. Merulo, I mean. Not that everything’s been perfect. I didn’t much like the whole ‘torture needle’ thing, but—”
“The what?”
“Hang on, I’m coming to a point. Merulo might make a lot of insulting, degrading remarks, and he is overly obsessed with killing God—”
“This is a defense?”
“Hydna, please! What I mean is that, brushing aside all those little details, he’s always been there when I needed him most. Like when Glenda shot me full of arrows, or slit my throat, or—”
“Who the fuck is Glenda?”
“Hydna, come on, I didn’t ask you what a car was.
” I rubbed at my stubble, wishing I could reach into my own head to pull my thoughts into order.
“Merulo will be there for you, too, if you ever need him”—and I hoped that was the truth—“so, it’d be good if you could both .
. . try.” At her contorted grimace, I added, “I’ll talk to him too, promise. Same speech!”
The dragon woman exhaled deeply. “You’re an annoying little man, Cameron.”
“Again, above average height.”
A hand landed on my shoulder, and she steered me with gentle force around a sunken pothole that could easily have swallowed a dragon. “You have any family?”
Damn. Forced to reveal my own hypocrisies. “Yes. A brother who idolizes me, and . . .” I hesitated. “A father who despises me.”
Skirting complete, she removed her hand. “Do you want me to kill your father and steal your brother?”
“No! Absolutely not.”
“I could do it, easy.”
“I know you could.”
“Painlessly, even.”
“Hydna!” I pleaded. At the furrowing of her brow, I remembered my manners. “Thank you. That is ah, very kind of you to offer. But the less contact I have with my brother, the better. I’d only stain him.”
We silently passed a towering metal track, which twisted high above in loops and dives. “S’pose it would be a bit much,” said Hydna. “To have two of you down here.”
I gave her my sternest frown. “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”