Nova handed Yemi her father’s spear. “Drop this down there, and you’ll never see it again.”
“Heh,” Yemi laughed nervously. She hadn’t thought about that.
“You’re sure about this?” Nova asked.
“A few days. No longer than a week. And then we’re going home.”
They kissed, and the sensation felt new. Nova was a source of warmth in a cold dampness that soaked Yemi to her bones.
“It wasn’t two steps,” Yemi said when they broke away. It was a silly thing to mention, but anything would do to keep this from feeling like some terrible, permanent mistake.
“What?”
“The Torrine. You threw up after the first two steps, but you didn’t pass out until the fourth leg. Outlasted at least one guy.”
“Were you impressed?”
“Every day.”
Nova kissed her again. “Three days, or I’m sailing to find you.”
“Ladies, if we could get on with it.” Ursla had appeared, irritated, somewhere behind Yemi.
“Three days.” She nodded.
14
• YEMI •
They traveled south along the coast of Ixia, watching the barnacled hulls of fishing and merchant vessels drift by overhead in the early-morning hours. Ixian lore had made it seem like the world beneath the surface was teeming with sea giants, demigods of every stripe, each with a story. But the sea was mostly a dizzying deep-blue void. They were careful to stay near the rocks for when an exhausted Yemi needed any one of her hundreds of breaks. It was the swimming motion that came naturally to her. The stamina, not so much.
“Your mother really did you a disservice, keeping you from the sea all your life. Imagine a fish too tired to swim,” Ursla mused as they stopped in a cove just north of Chairre.
Yemi winced at the termfish, so used to it being wielded as a slur against her.
“You know, we don’t have to speak,” she groaned, dragging herself onto a flat of rocks near the beach. She never imagined pining for sun-warmed stone against her bare skin, but her body seemed to drink in the heat, converting it into energy and relaxing the muscles in her tail.
“I can’t seem to figure out the source of this venom you have for me,” Ursla said, head perched atop her hand.
“Can’t you?” Yemi replied, flexing stiffness out of the hand that had been clenching the spear this entire time.
“I considered it might be the coup, of course, which is justifiable. But we’d already met by then, and you were just as pleasant before as after.”
“Your reputation precedes you,” Yemi muttered dismissively.
“Is that all? Feels personal.”
Yemi stared off into the sky, watching clusters of dark birds alight on tall trees, until it became apparent that Ursla wasn’t going to stop blinking expectantly at her. “You manipulated my grandmother. Took a piece of her in exchange for something I believe you knew would unravel our world. And what’s happened since then, sinceyourcarelessness, has been years and years andyearsof violence. It’s robbed me of my family.”
“Really? What is it you believe I took?”
Yemi said nothing. She was being baited into a game. She knew better than to let the witch upset her, but her face began to flush all the same. Glimmers of ancient moments with her father and less ancient, intermittent joyful ones with her mother flooded her mind. Ursla said nothing, merely nodded as if Yemi had a point.
“Whatever history has taken from you, itdidgive you a throne,” said the witch. She started in a slow drift around the rock cluster, completely relaxed, whereas Yemi felt like a tick about to pop. She imagined activating her spear, dangling it into the water, and letting Ursla drift merrily into it.
“Did you get what you wanted? Out of that deal?” she demanded instead.
“Would it please you more if I said yes or if I said no?” Ursla asked.
