Nick stared, entranced.
My God.
There are so many of them. I never even
guessed.
Liam bumped into his back, pushing him
down a bit. “Welcome to the Bright Water Grotto,
chuisle
,” he said, wrapping his hand around Nick’s and squeezing
gently. “Welcome home.”
Lady Eine turned, tail swishing neatly.
“Commander Kasos, why don’t you take my son and his mates to the holding cell
so that the Bearer may inspect the creature,” she said. “Afterwards, bring them
to my home.”
“My lady.”
Kasos bowed.
“This way, mers.”
Aidan and Liam showed Nick how to wrap
his arms around their shoulders, pulling him along easily as they swam after
the triton. The quartet dove deeper towards the mer city, edging off towards a
plainer, utilitarian-looking building on the outskirts. A number of tritons were
on guard around it, and the two at the entrance pounded their tridents in what
Nick guessed was a salute at Kasos’s approach.
“I’ll be honest with you, Bearer. I’m
surprised we were able to capture the creature,” he said over his shoulder as
they swam through the entrance. Nick got a brief look of a busy anteroom before
Kasos turned into a corridor guarded by more tritons. “It’s usually kill or be
killed with them. I don’t like the fact that this one didn’t fight to the
death.”
He flicked his tail to halt himself,
pausing in front of the only proper door Nick had seen so far. “Bearer, I ask
that you do not approach the creature or try to examine it without letting my
men restrain it first,” he said. “Its appearance is bad enough, but its venom
is deadly.”
Nick felt Aidan and Liam tense. “Trust
me, I won’t go near it.”
With a nod, Kasos shot the bolts on the
door and opened it, gesturing for them to enter.
The room was constructed from blocks of
stone that looked rougher than the ones used on the outside. One half was
blocked off with thick bars of the same metal as Kasos’s armor. A glassy
barrier lay just beyond the bars, isolating the water in that half of the room.
Beyond the bars floated a nightmare. At
first glance the ilkothella appeared to be a hellish mating between a mermaid
and a shark, with more than a little zombie thrown in for flavor. It was half
again as large as a merman, with ragged hair that had turned a sick sort of
grey, and its distended mouth contained at least three rows of razor sharp
triangular teeth. Its eyes were oversized as well and totally black, with no
sign of a sclera. Greyish-green skin blended into a scabrous tail section, with
whole areas of scales worn off. The creature’s breasts hung loose and empty
against its ribs, and the large, flat nipples looked cracked and painful.
It swam slowly back and forth in its
cell, nursing a crusted wound on its side. As Nick entered, it paused and
turned that oversized head towards him. A slow welter of bubbles streamed out
of its mouth.
He started floating towards the
transparent barrier, but Aidan’s hand on his arm stopped him. “Nick.”
“Right, sorry.”
Liam tapped the Rod on his back. “How
close do you have to be to use this?”
“Good question.” Nick reached over his
shoulder and unsheathed the Rod.
“Pythia?”
The golden snake raised its head, tongue
flickering out to taste the water.
Within arm’s length would be best, but I can
do a gross analysis from here.
“Gross is right,” Aidan muttered. “I’m
staying right next to you, baby.”
“I know. Just let me concentrate.” Nick
held up the Rod and concentrated on the ilkothella. It stilled, staring back at
him.
Images fluttered through his mind,
studies of mer organs from the inside out being compared to the creature in
front of him. Already he could detect massive disruptions to the circulatory
and pulmonary systems.
He tried to narrow his focus and study
the ilkothella’s bloodstream, but the mental image wouldn’t resolve.
Pythia, I need to examine its circulatory
system at higher magnification.
I’m afraid I can’t do that, Nicholas.
You’ll
need to be closer to do that.
He started to move, but Aidan’s grip on
his arm stopped him. “No closer, Nick,” the mer warned.
“I have to. I can’t do fine anatomical
work at this distance. Look, it’s got bars and a big-ass sheet of glass between
us—”
The ilkothella
shrieked,
the sound ripping through the water like a living thing. Nick dropped the Rod
and slapped his hands over his ears, curling into a ball from the icepick jab
of pain in his eardrums. The triton and mers copied him, shouting in anguish.
The sharp agony slowly dimmed.
Grimacing, Nick reluctantly pulled his hands from his ears, staring at the
ilkothella. It had started pacing again, but it now wore a smile. “Fuck. Yeah,
no closer,” he muttered to himself, ducking down and grabbing the Rod.
“That’s enough.” A grim Kasos hustled
them out of the room, shutting the heavy door with a slam. “I didn’t know the
damned things could do that,” he said, rubbing an ear and wincing. “I’m all for
killing it now.”
Part of Nick agreed with him. “We can
learn more from it if it’s alive,” he said reluctantly. “Is there some way your
people could rig up some sort of restraints with a tight-fitting muzzle? I
don’t think it can make that loud of a noise if it can’t open its mouth.”
The triton commander scowled, but
nodded. “It’ll take us a day to come up something strong enough. I’ll talk to
the engineers, get them started on it.” He gestured to Liam. “In the meantime her
ladyship requested your presence at her home with your mates. I’ll have some of
my men escort you there while we work on the restraints.”
Liam didn’t look thrilled, but nodded.
“Thank you, commander.”
With an acknowledging grunt, Kasos
guided them back through the labyrinth of corridors to the station’s anteroom.
“Bearer, I’m issuing you a propeller,” he said, gesturing to a nearby officer.
The officer nodded and brought over something that looked like a small portable
fan in a dark green casing with a hand grip on either side. “That way, you
won’t be dependent on your mates to get around the grotto.”
The officer handed the propeller to
Nick. “This power button in the right grip turns it on and off, and you can
increase or decrease speed with the slider bar on the left grip,” he explained.
“The lower
button here reverses flow direction—use
that if you have to stop quickly.”
Nick hefted the device. “You get humans
down here a lot?”
“No.” The officer grinned. “It’s what
mers with tail injuries use to get around.”
“Thanks.” Nick gave the mer equivalent
of a wheelchair a dour look. “I think.”
At another order, two armored tritons
fell in at their sides, and the five of them swam out into the street. “Hold
the propeller out in front of you like a steering wheel,” Liam instructed,
“then push the power button.”
Nick slid the Rod into its holder and
held up the propeller, hitting the power button. He was suddenly yanked forward
by the strong pull of the device. “Whoa!”
Liam swam up to him. “Are you all
right?”
“Are you kidding me? This is so much
better than a shark!”
His mate grinned. “I’m glad you like it.
Let’s go.” He set off, and Aidan and Nick followed with their guards in tow.
Between controlling the speed of the
propeller and keeping up with the group, Nick didn’t have much time to study
the buildings around him, but what he did see looked like a cross between
The Lord of the Rings’
Rivendell and a
steampunked riff on
20,000 Leagues
Under
the Sea
. The predominant architectural element was
the column, and most of the buildings had an open, organic feel to them with
gentle curves taking the place of straight lines.
Liam guided them to a residential area
close to the center of the city, coming to rest outside a large elegant
structure that looked like a miniature version of the Parthenon. “Here we are.”
Nick noticed the surly look on Aidan’s
face and grabbed his hand, squeezing it. “Let’s just make nice for his mom and
get out of here, okay?” he murmured. “How bad could it be?”
Aidan pulled him in, kissing him on the
temple. “Bad.”
****
Aidan was wrong, Nick quickly learned.
It was worse.
“I do hope you’re enjoying your fish,
Bearer,” Lady Eine said. “I’m sorry the first course wasn’t to your taste.”
He looked down at the large pile of raw
tuna in front of him.
Think of it as
sashimi, dammit.
He managed a polite smile. “It’s great, thank you.”
As it turned out, mers ate Roman style,
lying across a kind of floating shelf anchored to the floor by chains. The shelves
were arranged in a circle so that the diners could chat while they ate, and
food was brought into the room by servants. Unsurprisingly, sauces were
nonexistent, and the food tended to be a variety of fish and different kinds of
edible undersea plants.
At least the tuna had been an
improvement on the still living crabs that had been the meal’s first course.
He’d swallowed hard as Eine, Liam, and Aidan tucked into their crabs with
relish. It was no different from tossing a lobster alive into a pot of boiling
water, he tried to tell himself.
But at
least the damn thing is dead when you actually start eating it.
Eine was still watching him.
Dammit.
He picked up a chunk of tuna and
bit off a piece, chewing stoically. The fish was obviously fresh so the taste
actually wasn’t bad, but he still would have preferred some soy sauce and
pickled ginger.
She smiled. “I was hoping that you would
tell us the tale of how you met my son,” she said. “The Oracle had foretold
that he would be mated to a la—to a male of the land. We’re all dying to find
out how he met you.”
He glanced at Aidan and Liam. The
panicked looks on their faces prompted him to improvise. “Aidan had to take
shelter in a cove during a bad storm,” he said. “That’s where I met him. Liam
came by the next night looking for him.”
“Really?”
She nibbled a
bit of tuna. “And you weren’t surprised at all to find out that you’d been
handed over by the Fates to a pair of creatures whose existence you hadn’t
believed in until that moment? Or are you one of those charming humans who
always believed in mermaids?”
Oh, this was a minefield. “I admit
,
finding out I was an
agapetos
came as a surprise. But now that we’re together, I wouldn’t trade them for the
world,” Nick said carefully, giving his mers a reassuring smile. “As for
merfolk, I did consider them to be mythical because I hadn’t seen any evidence
to the contrary until recently. Now that I know you exist, I think it’s great.
Just from the little I’ve seen of it, it’s obvious that Bright Water is a
stupendously gorgeous place, and your technology is incredible.”
“Yes, it arose as a direct result of
having to hide ourselves from your kind,” Eine said tartly. “Humans have had a
millennia-long habit of looting and pillaging people they see as weaker or less
human. As we aren’t human at all, I can only imagine what your world would do
to ours if they learned about it.”
He had to give her that. “I know my
people don’t have the best track record when it comes to dealing fairly with
other cultures,” he said, toying with a piece of fish. “But we’re working on it.
Things are getting better every year.”
Liam’s mother gave him a thin smile.
“Hm.
Perhaps in a few centuries we may be able to come out
of hiding, then.”
“Mother, have the Elders approved my
leave of absence?” Liam cut in quickly. “If I’m going to be spending time on
land, I’ll need to put my studies on hold temporarily.”
Eine made a dismissive gesture. “I see
no reason why you should need to do that,” she said. “The Bearer can obviously
survive in our world, and in any case he’d be much safer here. There’s no
reason for any of you to return to the land.”
Nick watched Aidan and Liam exchange a
quick look. The damned thing was
,
she had a point. “I’m
afraid I have to go back, Lady Eine,” he said carefully. “For one thing, I have
to continue my studies with Chiron.”
“Who can appear here just as easily as
he can on
land.
”
His temper started to rise. “Plus I have
to arrange to move out of my apartment and bring all my belongings down from
Chicago. Not to mention my dog is at my cottage and I can’t just leave her
there.”
“Dog?”
“It’s a pet animal, mother,” Liam said.
“Like a moray.”
Eine waved a slender hand at that. “Oh.
Well, we can always find you a pet here.
Perhaps a nice
octopus?”
“I’m not staying,” Nick said bluntly.
The circle went quiet. “I see,” Eine
finally said
,
the words slow but sharp. “But you have
no problem keeping my son in your world.”