Chapter 14 #2
“Maybe, little fish. Maybe. But I could have chosen better company.” Ursla swam in front of her to look her directly in the eye.
“A word of advice: If you ever want to understand anything truly worth understanding, you have to start thinking much, much bigger than these petty little revenge fantasies.”
The shadows of boats overhead gave way to a string of floating wreaths Yemi trailed back to the pier.
Prayer wreaths? she thought. They should have been coming from the landing south of the Rock.
“Wait,” she said and moved to the surface.
Dahlia had come down from the Rock to hold ceremonies among the general public.
She shouted her warbled prayer from behind an ornate harpy eagle mask as Lord Cerro wafted smoke over blessed flowers and fruit the rest of the Kept placed in the bay.
The train of offerings was longer than Yemi had ever seen it.
This is what it’s like to be a ghost, she thought.
She was lost to the world and watching through some ethereal screen as it went on without her.
The sadness she felt was tempered by the opportunity she saw to swim up and drag Dahlia underwater by her ankles.
The heavy mask would do the rest of the work to drown her.
Perhaps she could launch her spear from this distance.
Was it still harpooning if the target was on land?
No.
Her mother popped into her head. Just a flicker, some memory from a dinner, long enough for Yemi to think.
Be smart. Kill Dahlia now, and she’s a martyr. Dorian and Cerro would carry the torch for her.
She had to destroy them all.
Ursla hovered near her, looking on with a self-satisfied smirk.
“This pleases you, does it?” Yemi said, still trying to shake her thoughts of murder. “Flowers and fruit.”
“It’s a start,” Ursla said with a shrug. “You’re welcome to do better.”
Yemi took off again toward the south, leaving the witch to catch up.
She stopped beyond the Fanged Coast, squinting up at the top of the Rock to see her mother’s monument still standing among the gardens.
Drop-blossom petals streamed past it and into the sea.
Knowing she was this close to her parents and feeling this peace was one of the main reasons she needed so badly to get back home. “How much farther?”
“Not much if you’re done gazing wistfully at things,” said Ursla.
“Then let’s get on with it.”
They came to a reef wall out in the middle of nowhere, teeming with sea creatures that had no interest in what they were doing.
The wall extended beyond the depths Yemi could see in any direction around her and turned to sharp cliffs above the surface.
Ursla stopped them at a tunnel spewing warbled, warmer water out of its mouth.
“This is where I leave you,” said Ursla. “You’ll find Abyssa through there, but I can’t follow.”
“What? Why?” said Yemi.
“Hardly relevant, is it?”
Yemi scoffed. “It’ll be relevant if I’m turned away because your magic brought me here.”
It was Ursla’s turn to take offense rather than dish it for once. “My sweet, treacherous little urchin, if you don’t get what you want here, it won’t be on me.”
Yemi groaned. The last thing she could afford was to be turned away after coming this far.
What could keep as powerful a being as Ursla from going wherever she damned well pleases?
And then it dawned on her. “Wait. Kindred spirits. You’ve been banished.”
Ursla shrugged it off. “Think of it less as ‘banishment’ and more of a separation of church and state. I am the church.”
Yemi laughed. “I didn’t know gods could be banished. If you created Abyssa, why is someone else ruling it in the first place? And how are they able to banish you?”
“How indeed.” Ursla chuckled grimly. “That deal is ancient. You can ask Helene all about it. But suffice it to say the throne has to be given by someone of royal blood. It cannot be taken.”
“Right,” Yemi said, not particularly caring. “Well, how does this work? How do I find you when I’m done?”
“That direction.” Ursla pointed west. “Look for a cave in the sand flats. Follow the bones.”
Yemi’s glee over Ursla seemingly having gotten what she deserved floundered at the idea of crossing a graveyard to find her again. She was likely who had killed the things that lay there.
“You should know, before you meet her, that the Mer queen isn’t the most…
stable of creatures,” Ursla told her. “It isn’t her fault, poor thing.
She was never suited to rule, but it was the position your grandmother’s departure left her in after Triton died.
She does her best. But as a result, the world I created for our people is faded.
It’s vanity that keeps your line in power.
Our people could flourish under me, but they would rather crumble. ”
Familiar, Yemi thought, mind drifting to Dahlia and Ixia.
“I’m curious how receptive you think she’ll be to this alliance.
Didn’t you call yourself the Mer Queen? See, I might find that offensive.
‘Who is this girl with legs to take my title?’ I’ll bet you didn’t even know the real Mer queen’s name.
If someone like that had come to me, there’s not a trick I wouldn’t have you turn to gain my favor. ”
“I’m better at diplomacy than you might think,” Yemi replied, though hearing it out loud, it did seem like a problem.
“You’ve been a joy thus far,” Ursla said with a laugh. “Off you go.”
Yemi left her, tightening her grip on her spear in case she was being directed into the mouth of some legendary creature.
The other side of the reef wall was a labyrinth of giant fan coral in shades of orange and violet that formed a series of walls between the city and the rest of the sea.
She zigzagged between the massive screens, diving ever deeper and finally losing the sunlight inside a tunnel rimmed with glowing anemone.
Hydrothermal vents belched clouded pockets of warmer water that stung her unadjusted eyes.
She blinked furiously, barely dodging the rocks narrowing the path.
Her humming became wildly, anxiously staccato in hopes it would keep her from spearing herself on a stalagmite.
It was entirely possible she was being led into a lair of some sort; the tunnel was too narrow to bear the traffic of a city.
A spot of light appeared at the end of the tunnel, and she emerged through it to find a sprawling turquoise metropolis made bright by the glittering sunlight far overhead.
“Oh,” she gasped to herself. She was hovering over a trench that might have been a road, lined with sandstone buildings built into or carved from the surrounding rock.
These were not the caves of lesser creatures.
This was the inspired architecture of a people with a concept of art and aesthetic.
Their clean lines stood out against wild gardens of coral and sea greens.
All avenues led to a massive pink honeycomb structure the shape of a rosebud at the center of the city. She knew a palace when she saw one.
She clenched her fist around her spear. Part of her regretted this experience without Nova.
And yet the stillness of the life here, the sheer absence of it, alarmed her.
It was beautiful but not vibrant in the ways her grandmother had described.
It felt like a mirage, and Yemi wondered if Ursla was capable of such an elaborate illusion.
She bobbed to the distant surface of the water to get some sense of where she’d ended up.
Tall, jagged rocks formed a ring around the city as if it were at the heart of a giant crater.
If it was enclosed with the only entrance deeper than any Man could ever discover, it was as protected from the elements as it was from their imaginations.
There was still little movement in the world below her, though, as she made her way to the palace. Save for the dozen or so heads that peeked curiously upward out of windows and doorways after her, the city from this angle seemed almost deserted.
Was she so obviously an outsider? She thought she knew this feeling—the sneers disguised as smiles, whispers in the streets, rumors of her gills, her animal teeth behind her human lips.
She thought she knew what it was to be Mer in a world that insisted she was.
And now that she looked the part down to her bones, she was still quite clearly something else.
The closer she got, the more the palace seemed to morph before her eyes, splitting apart until she realized it was not a single bulbous structure, but a network of coral towers reaching for the water’s surface like branches of a great pink tree.
She navigated toward what appeared to be an entrance, a hollow the shape of a lotus petal manned by a single broad-chested guard with an obsidian trident and a spotted whale’s trunk. His dark eyes flicked past her in a bored sort of way before returning with an aggressive squint as she approached.
Yemi plied her best smile and nodded to him in polite deference as she introduced herself. “I am Yemaya Blackgate, Me—the queen of Ixia, great-niece to Mer Queen Helene. I need to speak with her.”
In the brief lull of their conversation, nervousness set in. He was silent as he gave her a once-over—a thrice-over, really—scanning the length of her body from shining black shark’s tail to the braided pineapple piled atop her head.
Ah, she remembered. The hair’s probably the giveaway.
She began to fidget.
“Well, friend?” she ventured, dipping her head into his line of sight to draw his eyes back to hers. “How about it? Is she in?”
He blinked, startled, as if she’d just spoken for the first time. “Wait here,” he grunted in a gruff baritone, sparkling, serrated teeth crisp on the t in wait.
“Of course,” she agreed and watched as he disappeared into the abalone mirage of a hallway behind him.