Meela shot him a blood-red glare.
Our captors fell into position among the surrounding guards. I glanced to their weapons, the marlins, and then to Meela. She gave me a meaningful look. I shook my head once to indicate it would be unwise to try and escape.
“Keep going,” barked the young mermaid.
The group travelled southwards, taking us with them. An elderly couple with silvery hair fell in behind us, watching us cautiously.
Heart still pounding, I seized Meela’s hand, determined not to be separated. She squeezed back, but her attention was elsewhere.
Her eyes flicked from guard to guard. We would have to find an opportunity somehow—maybe when we stopped to rest. But for now we were surrounded on all sides, trapped between shallow floor and sunlit surface.
After some time, a low chatter picked up among the guards, and I risked a small whisper to Meela.
“Are you all right? How’s your tail? Is anything sore?”
The merman on Meela’s other side overheard me and eyed her. “What’s wrong with your tail, ‘ey?”
He had sunken cheeks, long, grey hair, and a tremulous voice that cracked like driftwood.
“Nothing,” Meela snapped. “I’m fine.”
She went back to observing the group. I raked my senses over her and decided she was telling the truth.
I peered across her to the merman. He was casting an appraising glance over us.
“Why is there a curfew?” I said.
He glanced shiftily to me, then fixed his beady red eyes ahead as though he hadn’t heard me.
“We’ve been on the battlefront,” I said.
He didn’t respond. His shoulders were getting more hunched, making him look ancient and frail. I might have felt bad for him if I wasn’t so desperate to know what was going on.
When I kept staring, he said, “We have to be ready for anything, don’t we, ‘ey? What with His Majesty’s armies on the move.”
On the move?
“Has he started advancing on the Atlantic?”
“No.”
“Where is he now?”
The merman twisted his fingers, eyes darting as though searching for an escape.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re allowed to talk about what’s happening, aren’t we?”
He glanced at the guards, pressing his lips firmly together. Was any discussion of the king discouraged, then? So much had changed, even in the few tidecycles I’d been away from Utopia.
The silvery mermaid behind us spoke up. “Everything else is united under the crown. Now he’s using the, uh—serpent—to move humans away from the coast.”
She pronouncedserpentas though speaking of the incarnation of death. I supposed the thing was even more terrible to those who didn’t know where it came from.
Then again, apart from witnessing its reawakening on Eriana Kwai, did I even know where it had come from? The real legend was as much a mystery as how it could be destroyed.
“The entire coast?” said Meela, her attention now on the conversation. She still hadn’t reverted to a normal state.
“That’s his plan, last we heard.” The mermaid looked to the merman next to her, presumably her husband. He offered a reassuring smile.
