Chapter 13
Thirteen
Kaden
Two tidesdays since his last meeting with Saeryn and Kaden was finding out what exactly his uncle was up to.
In the interim, he had kept Kaden busy with assessing the presence of sea creatures and scoping out the seafloor around the queendom and reporting back to him with any obstacles or potential threats they posed.
It was low noontide and he left Adrielle and Cyrus’ chambers.
Their remarks when he told them about his new position had made his ears ring.
“Use that and make the council listen to you,” was Cyrus’ response. “Speak up for what you feel is right. Maybe you can learn a thing or two from these council meetings if you ever find yourself a monarch.”
“I don’t trust him,” Adrielle said. “He wants you close to him for a reason; I’m not sure I like what that reason might be.”
He still heard their voices when he swam into the throne room where Saeryn was waiting for him. “You asked for me, Uncle?”
“Yes. I wanted to thank you for a job well done with your reports on the past two tidesdays. I have compiled what you told me, met with our sentinels and Shangjiangs, and we have made the decision to build defenses against landwalker attacks.”
The back of Kaden’s neck prickled. “Why was I not asked to go with you? As your high advisor, I should be at your side for meetings with the military, and to know what you’re doing.
” How in black depths was he supposed to advise Saeryn properly if Saeryn kept him in the literal dark? So much for valuing his input.
“You were busy,” Saeryn said, pressing his lips into a white slash. “I just informed you of our plans.” Then, slower, like Kaden was a numbskull, “to build defenses against landwalker attacks.”
Kaden gritted his teeth. “Why are you so worried about human attacks? Other than Angie, no human has been spotted around here since my mother’s death.
” It hit him. “Wait, you aren’t thinking of retaliating against them, are you?
” He dropped his shoulders and loosened them, rolling out his wrists.
His uncle looked so innocent that he was inclined to believe him. For now.
“Sentries and sentinels have gone missing. My sister, your mother, gone. The landwalkers started this. They will not get away with it.” Saeryn’s expression hardened.
No, not again. “Starting a war with them will do more harm than good. We’ve experienced that firsthand.
At least consider protecting ours, keeping the sentries and sentinels away from the surface.
Pull back your patrols and scouts.” Kaden crossed his arms over his chest. “Why not seek answers from them? Find the responsible human and bring them to justice.” Yet, his uncle wasn’t wrong about feeling the way he did and reacting.
Kaden shook with uncontrolled frustration and irritation. He could not let his uncle do this. Couldn’t let him start a war.
“Listen here, Nephew.” Saeryn bit out and clenched his jaw.
“I don’t need to seek answers from them.
What will they say? You think they’ll admit to killing our queen?
” He jabbed an accusing finger at Kaden.
“I will keep our sentries patrolling. There have been shark attacks on the rise for us because of a lack of yu, that the landwalkers take from us by the thousands. I don’t need you to talk me out of it and I never said we were starting another war. ”
He strongly implied it though, and Kaden recoiled.
“You’ve never confronted them. You don’t know what they’re capable of.
” His mind flashed to two years ago. Seeing his brethren strewn up on the seaboard.
Mermaids and mermen mutilated and thrown back to the sea for shayu.
The humans finding their palace and spearing the mer in cold blood.
It made his gut churn and roil with disgust and pain.
“I’ve seen the cruelty they’re capable of. Look what they did to Cyrus.”
“Cyrus will be fine because Raina is one of the best healers I know.” Saeryn cut in.
“Both our sides suffered too many casualties. It’s not worth it.”
“Then what do you suggest? Have a nice chat with them? You think they will learn their lesson that way?”
“We should work together with the humans and find out who’s responsible. Not all of them are hostile toward us.”
“They. Killed. Your. Mother. And your father.” A flush the color of Saeryn’s tail spread over his neck and cheeks. “We must keep our people safe. Do not let your feelings for a landwalker get in the way of what’s right.”
“I know. I understand why you want to retaliate,” Kaden whispered. “I want justice served too. But there must be another way that doesn’t involve sending our sentinels and sentries to their death.”
“It’s what the people want.” Saeryn’s words bounced off the rounded ceiling and stained-glass windows.
Kaden jerked his head and shoulders back.
Saeryn’s dark expression shifted as quickly as it came and he relaxed his posture.
“I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I know you’re trying.
” He waved Kaden off. “You’re dismissed. I have other matters to deal with.”
“What matters?” Kaden’s eyes narrowed.
Saeryn didn’t respond and gave him the briefest gesture of farewell as he left.
Kaden’s stomach rumbled when he left the throne room, his gut clawing at him with hunger pangs. He’d been so consumed with his tasks the past tidesday, he hadn’t taken a moment to eat.
He swam to the pantry, two halls down from his quarters, and swiped a handful of candied sea peaches, and with his free hand, a palmful of salted, jellied seaweed. The sea peaches were soft and chewy and the tart sweetness danced on his tongue.
On his way out he stopped mid-chew.
A group of sentries from the training quarters, guarded by four sentinels, brushed past him with nothing but a single nod of acknowledgement from two of the sentinels Kaden recognized, all eight of their faces stony.
He took a bite of jellied seaweed and followed them.
They moved like they had someplace important to be, and with Saeryn’s words lingering in his mind, he wanted to know where.
He wasn’t to go near the surface, but he had to see what they were doing.
He paddled while keeping a safe distance behind them yet keeping their tailfins in sight.
The group circled the peak of a seamount range and swam in between a passing hujing pod, the large black and white animals passing overhead.
Kaden dipped beneath the deepest-diving one, their white underbelly in view as they glided away.
Swimming through a seaweed forest and a bed of smooth, hard seagrass, Kaden kept pace.
Another two hundred fathomspans upward and he caught glimmers of the moon’s rays filtering through the sea. They were nearing the surface.
His head broke through the water, frothy waves lapping around his shoulders.
In an instant, glacial air and a salt spray met with his skin, jabbing at his head and shoulders in an unrelenting grip. The sentries were swimming away from him, only their heads visible.
Kaden moved to the nearest rock and climbed atop it, keeping them in sight.
They circled a land mass ahead of him. Why did this area look so familiar?
He leaned forward, focusing his gaze.
The sentries were circling the docks, empty and foreboding in the night. Angie’s family’s docks. His grip inadvertently tightened, his fingertips digging into the slick, cold, rocky surface. Heaviness weighed down the pit of his stomach.
Diamond-like stars sprawled across the night sky above.
Darkness weighed on him like their impending war, and it was his hope that as twilight always transitioned into day, light and peace awaited both the humans and mer at the end of their fight.
The midnightsong was melodious and soothing, joined by howls and grunts and growls of distant animals.
Chilly, winter air enrobed and embraced him and he shivered. Strange how he was acclimated to the cold of the deep sea, but not the air. One more circle of the area later, the sentries disappeared under the surface, presumably to return to the palace with their findings.
Kaden slid down the rock and followed suit.
If they wanted to use the docks as a point of attack—
The thought made his head spin.
Saeryn left after Kaden followed the sentries and sentinels to the surface and he didn’t find his uncle again until the next tidesday.
“Why are there sentries patrolling the docks?” he asked, the moment Saeryn finished talking to the sentinel in his throne room.
“Why were you at the surface?” Saeryn crossed his arms as he floated a tailspan across from Kaden, his fingers tap-tap-tapping his biceps, caudal fins sweeping back and forth in a show of impatience.
Kaden placed his arms behind his back, gripping his left wrist with his right hand, and cursed under his breath at Saeryn dodging his question. “I saw a group of sentries and sentinels leaving when I was at the pantry and I wanted to see where they were going.”
“And you got your answer?” Saeryn arched an eyebrow.
Kaden rubbed his face. “I did. Which is why I asked why they were patrolling the docks.”
“I asked them to go and look for landwalkers. Caution them not to come into our territory.” Saeryn’s gaze flickered around Kaden’s face before finally looking him in the eye.
That made no sense. “Why would you send them to the surface to warn landwalkers? There are plenty of sentinels patrolling the queendom. A human wouldn’t be able to sneak past them. And humans wouldn’t be able to understand them without our magic.”
“Are you questioning my orders after you defied me and went to the surface?” A raging tsunami roared in Saeryn’s gaze.
Kaden shut up.
“Because you’re family, I’ll let this go for now. But if you want to keep your high advisor position, don’t let me catch you going to the surface again, you hear? It’s for your own safety.”
Kaden gave a begrudging nod and left. He was tired of this.
Tired of being made to feel like he was crazy for simply asking his uncle’s plans.
Of having his questions dodged or given half-answers.
Flashbacks struck of his failed attempts to talk to Serapha and Aqilus two years ago.
Now he had a chance to make his voice heard, his concerns known to the council, as Saeryn’s advisor.
From outside the throne room looking in brought back memories from the day Kaden watched his father speared.
Seeing his mother tidesdays later as she held court—her expression that day was burned into his mind as if he had seen it only moments ago.
She kept her head high, but an aura of sadness had haunted her—the subtle twitch on her eyelids, as if she held her emotions hostage beneath them, her tail gripping the throne like she was afraid it would slip out from under her.
He had now lost both of his parents, and there was the possibility of another war.
It was all his fault.
Aqilus and Serapha would never have died, and Cyrus would not have been caught and now infirm, had he not been involved with a human.
He headed for the royal cemeteries.
Serapha and Aqilus’ final resting places were side by side, dressed in their royal jewels and crowns. Like Ning, Angie’s mother, they looked peaceful.
Kaden rested a hand over the glass coffin holding his father.
He remembered how a group of humans had tossed the dead mer back into the sea tidesdays after his father was killed, to the mercy of the tides and predators.
Sentinel patrols had gathered as many as they could, wrestled some from sharks’ jaws and returned them to their homes, and thank the Goddess Aqilus was among them.
“Mother, Father, I’m sorry. Cyrus is still infirm, and when she thinks nobody is looking, Adrielle weeps her salt-tears for him.
” He bowed his head, dullness pulsing in his chest. “This was my fault and I’ll make it right. I’ll avenge the both of you.”
He bowed his head to the two of them and moved to the king and queen’s inner courts, a cove where they held meetings and gatherings away from the public eye.
The rock and coral furniture, smooth walls for writing on and sparse smattering of chairs made of unblemished rock, were draped with crimson-and-gold coverings.
Glass and gold sculptures of various yu species and depictions of mer playing, reading, and dancing were pinned to the walls, giving the space a more genial feel.
The empty hammock swayed with the currents.
The sculptures, trinkets, and daily care items were carefully stashed away into their proper places, not even the corner of a trinket out of place.
The work of Saeryn’s new palace keepers, no doubt.
A brief shimmer drew his gaze to the opposite end of the room, invisible fingers squeezing his heart, and he forced down the swell of emotion threatening to rise.
The impeccable glass sculpture of their family still stood proud against the closest rock face. The king and queen had had it crafted shortly after Kaden was born. Aqilus and Serapha pressed close together, Serapha holding a child Cyrus’ hand, and Aqilus cradling a newborn Kaden.
Unable to bear the memories any longer, Kaden departed the coves.
His arms and tail weighed heavily as he left and he drew his arms closer to his body.
The sadness and sensations of feeling lost cloaked him like a giant youyu’s tentacles drawing him to his death.