Ospodine turned his head a fraction and dipped his chin even less in acknowledgement of her presence. “I wondered if you might join me.”
“Don’t be coy, syr. You knew I would.” She set the lamp down. “I’ll not play this game of yours. You know I’ve some knowledge of the merfolk and their language, and I know you’ve been spying on me. Why?”
His smug demeanor took on a more contemptuous quality. Brida was reminded of their confrontation on the beach when he’d touched her elbow before yanking his hand back as if discovering she had fleas. “I think your knowledge of the sea people goes beyond understanding a few clicks and whistles, wouldn’t you say?”
She refused to respond to his baiting. The idea that he might have observed her making love with Ahtin in the cave sent a surge of bile into her throat. She held it back by virtue of silent outrage. “Why?” she repeated.
Disappointed by her flat response, he gave up baiting her. “Because you’re a means to an end.” He pointed to her skirt pocket. “You brought the flute you used at the castle this time, didn’t you?”
How had he known she carried it with her?
As he seemed in the mood to answer her questions, she pulled the flute from her pocket to show him. In the darkness, it seemed to glow softly in her palm, bleached ivory with a touch of magic humming through its striations. “How did you know?”
Ospodine didn’t try to snatch the flute from her as he had at Castle Banat, content to stare at it with the same avid expression he’d worn then. “The flute’s value to you is that your father made it, yes?” He continued when she simply stared at him. “It’s far more than the clumsy desecration from a land dweller’s carving knife.”
Brida clenched her jaw to stop herself from sniping at him in return.
He turned back to survey of the Gray. “The bone he found came from the sleeping deep, off the remains of a being so ancient the oldest of the Elder races were infants, when humans themselves weren’t even the lickspittle of a lesser god’s afterthought. It’s the remnant of an ancestor from where all sea people came. The mer, the yastri, the kyzyn.” His sneering glance raked her from head to foot. “And somehow you, a filthy land dweller, ended up with it. The gods laugh.”
Stunned by the revelation that there were other kinds of merfolk, Brida hid her surprise and returned his contempt with a once-over stare of her own. “Are you not a man with legs?” He spoke as if he were somehow separate from—and better than—those with whom he shared ground.
“Not always.” He waved a hand down his front. “Before I became this abomination, I was like your lover. A merman of the Gray.”
Brida lost the battle to remain impassive and gaped at Ospodine. She struggled to find words, shocked to her soul by his disclosure. Fluke or feet, this snide, arrogant creature was nothing like Ahtin.
Once her initial shock faded, she adopted a more stoic expression, one that no longer fooled the smirking Ospodine. “You still haven’t truly answered my first question.” She was a means to an end. What end?
“I need you to play the last two notes of that four-note tune. This flute will play them, and they will spread across the waters so that all the herds hear and know you call.”
While Brida had no intention of offering up the flute to him, she was curious. “Why can’t you play it?”
A bitter smile twisted his mouth. “Because I rejected the sea to walk the land. The flute recognizes this and rejects me in turn. No music, no notes will come from it if I tried to play.”
His forthrightness carried a hidden edge to it. Brida sensed there was more to this than a merman abandoning his heritage to walk among men and later regretting it. Something much darker. Something terrible enough that the long dead remains of an origin ancestor refuted him.
“The merman won’t come,” she said, refusing to speak Ahtin’s name. Ospodine had already helped himself to enough of her privacy. She pretended continued ignorance of the four-note tune’s meaning. His request for her to play only the last two made her glad she’d warned Edonin of his interest. Those notes were her name.
He shrugged. “I don’t care about your lover. It’s hisapI want.”
Never before had Brida wished her instincts had been wrong. But they weren’t. This wasn’t some trophy hunter looking for a mythical creature to hunt and kill for profit or fame. Ospodine hunted with a more personal purpose. A more singular one, and it centered not on Ahtin but on Edonin. She shuddered inwardly, so very glad she had followed her gut and warned the matriarch about him.
Certain Edonin would ignore the summons, no matter how far or deep the flute’s voice carried across the Gray or how many merfolk heard it, Brida didn’t resist. “If she answers, will you then leave me be?”
“Yes.”
Again his reply carried the knife’s edge of a lie, an unspoken“Unless…”Brida glanced back to where Endel waited for her. She didn’t think he’d be much help in a physical altercation with Ospodine. He was younger than the nobleman, bigger, but she knew without a doubt who was the more dangerous of the two. Still, she felt better having the guard there.
She took her time wiping the salt spray off the flute before playing a short lullaby to warm up the instrument. Ospodine shifted impatiently from one foot to the other, but stayed quiet. A glimmer of moonlight reflected in his eyes, revealing a hint of eye-shine at their edges. He might have forsworn all of his heritage. Not all of it had forsworn him.
The flute throbbed under her fingers at her first exhalation of the two notes, as if welcoming a long-lost loved one. Unlike previous times when Brida had played the entire four notes of Edonin’s message to her, the flute released the notes of theap’sname in an undulation of sound that swept across the rocks and out to the Gray.
Waves caved in on each other as if to capture the name and embrace it. Brida played Edonin’s name several times until the very air around her hummed with the summons. Far in the liquid glass wilderness, something answered in a voice not of sound but of vibration that made the rock beneath her feet shiver.
Still, theapdidn’t appear.
Ospodine’s rapturous expression soured, then blackened. Brida stepped back. “Summon your lover,” he practically snarled at her.
Brida glared at him. He was mad if he thought she’d use the flute to bring Ahtin here. Did Ospodine think her so stupid that she didn’t readily see his objective? If he couldn’t entice Edonin to answer him, he’d lure her. “No. I’ve done as you wanted, played the two notes. Whatever I’m calling chooses not to answer.”
