“If it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t have been attacked at all,” Lancier interjected.
“Well, now they know it’s dangerous to attack,” Moran stood up and straightened to his full height. All his tentacles slid off the table and laced the hem of his robe. If you don’t remember what he’s wearing underneath, he’s as handsome as a deity.
“In case another armada arrives, call me,” he said as he left.
His new advisor, hunched at the entrance to the hall, looked like a creature of the sea himself. Apparently, all officials would soon be replaced by such creatures. What else can one expect when the country is ruled by an assembr? Or what else do they call the children of marriages between sea-dwellers and earth princesses?
Theon stared after him with only one thought. He must be overthrown before he floods the place.
The Union of Nineteen
She dreamed she was already in the temple of the sea god. The priestess’s outfit was like a robe, and for some reason she was wearing a crown with sharp prongs and large pearls on her head. The pendants of the crown rest on her forehead.
The place is empty, except for the statues. There are nineteen of them. She didn’t count, but she knew the exact number from somewhere, as if someone had whispered it to her. The sea god himself was nowhere to be found. There was on the mosaic walls, only a ligature of symbols. The interior of the temple is circular, surrounded by powerful columns. Statues are nestled between them, each in its own niche on an elevation. They all depict slender girls with scales and fins sprouting from their bodies, like mermaids. Or are they statues of mermaids standing with their tails on pedestals? Desdemona squinted, trying to see. All the statues are half-fish, half-woman. Their faces are all beautiful. Marble lips rounded as if in a whisper, marble fingers making some sign. The statues seem to be trying to tell her something.
In the middle of the hall is a large deep pool, also round. Something is moving in it. The water inside it is murky and greenish, and suddenly a voice calls out from it.
Desdemona wants to move towards the water. The voice urges obedience. It is indeed the voice of a deity. She rushes to the call and suddenly discovers that instead of legs she has a scaly mermaid’s tail. It’s impossible to stand on it. She falls, tries to crawl forward to the pool, but for some reason her fins are bleeding. A bright trail of blood is left on the floor of the temple. It folds into some kind of symbol. And someone in a scarlet cloak and carrying a sickle appears nearby. The sickle is swung in an attempt to kill the only living mermaid in the temple, and the statues watch.
Desdemona wakes up from her nap. She must have dozed off in the luxurious royal carriage that had been sent for them. Somehow its body resembled a giant shell. It was probably hence the dreams, inspired by associations with the sea.
On the way Candida was talking non-stop about the new king’s love for all things related to the sea and the depths of the sea: shells, coral, even dried jellyfish. Where had she heard such nonsense? Desdemona could not imagine how one could be fond of collecting dried jellyfish or starfish. One old man-neighbor was into it, and it ended in tragedy. His corpse was found covered, not with dried, but with live jellyfish.
The sea is not to be trifled with. And it is especially with the natives of the deep. The dream of the mermaid’s tail wouldn’t go away. Desdemona even lifted her skirts to check if her legs were not fused and not covered with scales.
“Have some decorum!” The stepmother was indignant.
Who would have heard such a thing from a woman who goes to all sorts of lengths to arrange a lucrative marriage?!
The carriage stopped at the front entrance to the palace. Desdemona was glad she was wearing her best dress, green with yellow trim and puffed sleeves. Of jewelry she had only enamel medallion with a portrait of her mother and a simple diadem with a pendant-pearl, falling on the forehead. Candida was covered in jewelry, but she could not outshine the other guests arriving at the palace.
It was difficult to get out of the shell carriage. The footman sent to fetch them had to put his arm around Desdemona’s waist. His hands turned out to be sharp and cold. They even scratched the corset slightly. It felt like he had blades under his gloves.
Among the guests, Desdemona noticed several of her friends, who had also come from the province. They didn’t even nod to her.
“It is competition,” the experienced Candida explained to her. “All the girls of your age are vying to be the young king’s bride. If he doesn’t choose one, there will be a fight over him.”
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t properly marry a princess from another state to gain the support of some neighboring power. Aren’t dynastic marriages in fashion anymore?”
“What support does he need, simpleton? He just defeated an enemy fleet himself! With such skill, he’ll conquer all the neighboring states and take their princesses as concubines. But to establish himself here in Aquilania, where he has not lived for many years, he needs to marry a local noblewoman.”
And Candida, it turns out, was well versed in politics. Apparently this was required to catch the next husband at court. Her husband hadn’t died yet, but Candida liked to say that in his condition he didn’t live long anyway, which was true. The healer warned that it was dangerous to go near her father. There is a great risk of contracting a deadly marine contagion. Desdemona had to avoid visiting him. At the last visit to the bedroom of her father, she was able to notice the puffy, like a toad, eyelids, puffiness of the limbs, as if drowned and scales on the skin.
Indeed, it looked like a sea sickness. That was the name given to all the unknown but fatal diseases brought by aquatic life. She doesn’t want the brothers to catch something like that while swimming.
The approaches to the palace were illuminated by rows of torches fixed in brackets on the walls and parapets of the bridges. They resembled an orange-colored milky way.
“Once they used to leave torches here even in the daytime and light fires on the shore to scare away the aliens from the sea,” someone whispered in Desdemona’s ear. “And now the guest from the sea himself rules in the royal palace.”
Desdemona turned around. It was not to her. She heard bits and pieces of someone else’s dialog, and the speakers were standing far away from her. Both wore the robes of counselors.
“He is a son from the sea, not a guest.”
“What difference does it make? He is not of the humans. He will bring doom to us all.”
“So far he’s brought victory.”
“The evil spirit first pleases people into believing him, and then he will unleash his claws. We must be on our guard.”
“For now, we all revel in his triumph. From the wrecked armada, the waves have carried piles of precious things ashore. They’re being collected to be taken to the palace. Had the king not been a sea demon, all the riches would have sunk with the armada. Even pearl divers can’t retrieve the sunken treasure. One must make friends with the sea-dwellers. They’re good for you.”
“They’re also bad. The Armada wouldn’t have attacked us if they hadn’t known about our king. He will attract many enemies here.”
“It’ll flood everyone. And we will collect the bounty carried away by the waves.”
Desdemona did not listen further, for some hunched creature in a pilgrim’s cloak suddenly separated from the guests and made a sign to her to be silent. It had creepy, scaly, gaunt fingers. There were six on each palm. It held one of them up to its greenish lips.
Who let a pilgrim into the palace? Surely he must have come from the temple of the sea god. What if he had been sent for her?