The open water suddenly had a floor only a few feet beneath her. Luminous green-gray sand stretched for miles, dotted with shelled scavengers scuttling over remnants of deader things. Smaller carcasses gave way to massive skeletal structures of mandibles and bared teeth, alabaster ropes of sea serpent spines with scant scraps clinging to their pin bones so thin they looked like film more than flesh.
Well, found the bones,Yemi thought.
The outside of the sea witch’s den was marked with black rocks with vague forms carved into them as if the mason had quit their commission. A green glow marked its entrance, algae spinning at the center of concentric whale ribs outlining the mouth of a cave. Yemi kept her humming to a minimum here, for fear of waking some guardian creature in the dark.
Kelp swayed in the mouth of the cavern as she entered it, and Yemi followed bends in the path until it emptied into a round roomilluminated by jellyfish floating near the high ceiling. Shorter archways shot off from this central chamber in all directions between towering shelves filled with obscure objects. Ursla sat on a stone throne the shape of an actual chair, not a chaise like Helene’s. She seemed distracted and held her head like it hurt.
“Ursla?” Yemi called gently. This felt like a place for quiet. Compared with the opulence of her temple, her monument in Sol, this also felt like a place for loneliness, the physical embodiment of the exile Yemi felt within herself.
The wall behind was lined with kelp that tickled her back unsettlingly unless she moved farther into the center of the equally unsettling room.
“I have to leave,” she said when Ursla didn’t acknowledge her.
“So do it, then. Please,” Ursla groaned.
Yemi watched her curiously. It was the first time the witch wasn’t ready with a quip. Something in her seemed broken. Tired.
“I—something’s happened, and we need to talk,” Yemi tried again.
Ursla looked at her for the first time, a glower of violent impatience. “I do not have the patience for your little melodrama today, so if you could get to your point?”
Yemi pressed on. “You said you can’t take the Mer throne; someone of royal blood would have to give it to you. Does that have to be Helene, or is it something in my power?”
Ursla squinted. “You’d qualify. Why?”
“Helene,” Yemi said, relieved. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Poor thing’s got a bug in her ear, I hear. A century of loneliness can do such unfortunate things to a person.” Her posture had changed to something bordering on interest.
“Well, she’s unfit. Went into absolutely incoherent hysterics. Paranoid and stealing Ixian ships because she thinks they’re looking for Mer or something. I haven’t been able to parse that out. She won’t help me because she thinks I want her throne for myself. Half your people—”
“Ourpeople,” Ursla corrected.
“Half of them are starving monsters in the dark being used in exchange for the promise of a moment’s sunlight.”
“It’s not your kingdom. Why do you care so much?”
“There’s a woma—merwoman. The steward’s daughter. She deserves a future. So do the rest.”
A salacious grin began to creep over Ursla’s face.
“And I’m sure the fishing is gone from the north because Helene thinks she’s punishing my mother. She’s fucking around in both our worlds.”
“Looks like she isn’t the only one.”
“Enough.” Yemi’s teeth clenched. “If I gave you—gave youback—the throne, you could set this right. My question is this: What can you offer me in exchange, by way of returning me to the throne you helped steal?”
Ursla hesitated, her fingers now tapping on the arms of her throne. “You realize you may be the only queen in history to ever back a coup.”
“Yes, yes,” Yemi said impatiently. “I have to get to Muris urgently. My people are waiting for me there, and the people here, for all I know, are hunting me. So if we can do this as quickly as possible—”
“How is it that you’ve overstayed your welcome so fast? Is it a talent?” Ursla smiled that maddening smile.
Yemi was incredulous. “Fine. Forget it. I should have known you’d have nothing to offer but your tricks. No wonder you can’t get people to acknowledge you even exist anymore.” She turned to leave. Maybe this was possible with Muris’s army and whatever allies she had left in Ixia after all.
“I admit I thought you might consider taking the sea throne for yourself,” Ursla called after her. “You’d have an easier path down here than up there.”
Yemi turned back in time to see the witch drift off her throne and glide along the cracked mosaic floor toward a wall of shelves off to the right.
