The answer dawned on me, and I stopped moving. The silvery mermaid crashed into me, setting off a chain reaction behind her.
“I’m sorry, love,” she said, smoothing my hair as if to repair damage. “Sorry,” she added to the line behind her.
Meela grabbed my hand and pulled me onwards.
The guards hollered at everyone to keep moving. Meela waited until they’d averted their attention again before speaking.
“Lysi, what?”
Her expression told me she felt my fear. I tried to calm myself. She didn’t need to know the extent of Adaro’s labour camp. It would only scare her.
“Nothing.”
“Notnothing!”
To my dismay, the silvery mermaid whispered, “I hear there’s magma. It keeps killing everyone, erupting in random places. Gets worse, the more they dig.”
“Dig? Who? You mean us?” said Meela.
“He gets non-military civilians to help,” I said. Now it made sense why most of these captives were older. “I knew about the camp, but—I never knew what they were doing.”
The silvery mermaid said, “I hear it’s so deep that the only light comes from those trench fish. You can’t eat those, obviously, so everyone’s starving.”
“Plus, the guards have tempers like tiger sharks,” said her husband. “The pressure and rationed air is enough to drive them mad. They’ll kill anyone who’s gotten too bloody to keep digging.”
I wanted to reassure Meela that these were just rumours. But when it came to Adaro, rumours usually turned out to be true. I recalled the stories of deaths and disappearances growing up—rumours that turned out to have disturbing patterns.
The situation was devastating. The labourers were miserable, the guards were miserable, yet all of them would keep obeying orders. They would stay down there until they died. Of course, if everyone revolted at once, there’d be no stopping them. But that would never happen. There was too much fear, too much uncertainty about whose side anyone was on. That was why the armies kept fighting. That was what kept everyone at the labour camp. That was what kept us fighting this war.
The merman beside Meela scoffed.
When we all turned to look at him, he said, “It might be a hagfeast down there, but we all know the reason, don’t we, ‘ey?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Why is Utopia facing food shortages?” he said, seeming to find new energy. “Why are we losing lives every time we go near a beach? Who is brutally attacking us with iron? I’m ashamed I was ever one of them.”
Meela gaped. I wanted to cover her ears before they could spew more horrors at her, when the last thing he’d said sunk in.
“You’re a former human?”
The treatment of former humans had come up a lot lately. Under Adaro’s reign, the subject was taking a terrifying direction. Resistance to this had been what unified the guys who’d tried to assassinate Adaro with me. They’d all been related to former humans who had been mistreated. One of them was a former human himself.
My stomach twisted. I still had not told Meela about Nilus. The knowledge that her big brother was alive swelled in my conscience, growing worse with each passing day. After finding out days prior, I’d sworn I would tell her as soon as I got a chance. Now, several chances seemed to have come and gone, and still I couldn’t bring it up. All these years, Meela had assumed her brother was dead. I was the only one who knew he was alive and that he was a merman.
The problem was that I didn’t know where Nilus was, if he’d been captured, or worse. What if I told Meela he was alive and then we found out he’d been killed since I last saw him? I would be dropping a bomb on her for nothing. She had already been through so much in the last few days—forced to abandon everything she knew and everyone she loved. I couldn’t put more stress on her.
“We’re all former humans, aren’t we, ‘ey?” said the merman.
“You are—I mean—we are?” I said.
“Except maybe her.”
He nodded towards the end of the group, where a mermaid with a bright orange and blue tail swam a little apart from everyone else.
My heart leapt. That was a southern mermaid. She was like the ones I’d seen from the Moonless City. Like the Reinas.
“Wait,” said Meela, apparently struggling with her thoughts. “How can you … Sure, people are overfishing, but you said Adaro is keeping everyone in Utopia on a curfew. Food shortages in Utopia have nothing to do with humans—”
