“Thank you,” said Kai, in that same hush, before he turned to Os. “Wait until I break the surface before you help Eda down.”
Os nodded, and with little more to do, Kai kicked off his boots and socks, climbed atop the railing and stepped into the air. The breeze tugged uselessly at him as he fell, one last weak attempt to stop him before the waters closed over his head. And then Kai was submerged at long last, his own momentum dragging him down, down, down.
For the first time in nearly six hundred years, Kai swam.
It was agony.
His gills peeled apart, and immediately flinched shut at the burn of the salt dragging past his tender flesh. He forced them open with a flex of his throat muscles, nearly gagging at the surge of searing water that sang through his throat and into his blood. A familiar dry pulse followed, a wildfire catching through his veins as every fibre of his being called out for the Mother. One screeching, keening plea for the mercy of Adhlas, for Her blessed waters and the magic he had lost. The tug of the tide hurt in a way that didn’t quite fit his earthly body —yet it was not entirely unwelcome. The weightlessness. The rush of the water over his skin and the hush of the cool, dim world around him. Even with all that empty space within—those caverns the magic should have rushed to fill—he felt the subtle changes in his body. Felt the way his gills, with a painful stuttering start, finally bloomed open to accept the saltwater into his blood, his lungs stilling with one dull throb, his pores smoothing and extremities slightly stretching until he moved through the waves like a bird in the skies, and soared for the open air.
Kai broke the surface with a gasp, the pain waning somewhat as his gills sealed.
He was still blinking saltwater from his eyes when another body split the waves by his side, two more following in quick succession. With one last glance at the sailors peering somberly over the ship’s edge, Kai turned and ducked beneath the water, this time bracing himself for the pain. It hit him faster, yet in a weaker wave, washing over him and dissolving into the sea as he propelled his body into the depths. He found Eda first, her white hair a beacon in the shadowy waters; it whipped and pulsed like ghostly seagrass as she turned her head to him, and even this farfrom the sun’s reach, he could see the tension etched in the deep lines of her brow.
Kai drifted to her side and kicked upright, bodily instinct taking over as his legs pulsed slowly back and forth, holding him steady against the gentle movement all around them. He took Eda’s outstretched hand, and she used his grip to anchor herself, dragging her small frame closer. Her hand went to the base of her throat and splayed there; not strictly necessary at this distance when Kai could see her lips moving, but it was so deeply ingrained in them all that the movement became muscle memory. The water carried one’s voice in such a way that it sounded from all around, so it was second nature to a Merrow—to hold your throat so others knew you were speaking. It was an unstated courtesy, a part of speech as natural to them as parting your lips or drawing a breath. All the same, the easy, familiar gesture sent a bittersweet shock right through him—and for just a moment, the brine on Kai’s tongue might have been the crisp water of the Laune.
“A cage,” said Eda, her waterlogged voice lower and slower as the words dragged over Kai’s skull from all sides. “We’re swimming into a cage.”
Kai’s gaze slid from Eda’s pinched expression to the row of chains behind her. Pulled taut by the buoys above them, they disappeared into the unfathomable depths, their anchors wreathed in shadows. Beneath a mossy coat of algae, their links glinted dully in the diluted sunlight that filtered from above, giving the vague impression of a large, sunken prison. Despite the relative warmth of the Dhaliaan waters, a shiver stole through Kai’s body, and his hand squeezed reflexively around Eda’s.
“It’s just a boundary,” he said, his free hand stiff against his own throat. The waters around them stirred, and Alun appeared at Kai’s side with a grimace where his typical grin should be.
“Ominous, isn’t it?”
Drifting into place beside him, Os gave a slow nod, but his hands remained at his sides, away from his throat; there was nothing more to say. Especially when Al made another pulse forward and held a hand up to still them.
“The sentry’s approaching.”
Kai peered into the shapeless swirl of dark waters beyond the boundary until one shadow detached itself from the mass, drifting to the fore of his vision. Kai’s gills tightened, unease settling heavy in his chest. The way the shadow moved through the waters was—wrong. They did not part them, as any Merrow would, with powerful legs and arms, overcoming the pull of the tide with inherent strength. They moved like an eel. This shadow did not trouble itself to force a straight path toward them, and somehow, its approach was all the more swift. It undulated, weaving side to side with the roll of the waters around it, a serpentine dance through the darkness. The tightness in Kai’s chest knitted down his spine, every muscle coiled until he was treading the water with stilted, strained movements, barely keeping his place against the push and pull of the tide.
“Alun,” he said, low as he could, unwilling to spare the hand to reach for his too-tight throat.
In his periphery, Al’s head shook. The barest tic, a shocked, half-frozen gesture. Slowly, his friend turned, eyes wide, the white ring of them stark against his dark skin. His hand lifted to cup his mouth; to trap as much sound as he could when he spokehis next words, muffled by the weight of the ocean and his own trembling palm.
“That isnotthe sentry.”
Alarm flooded Kai’s gills, thick as smoke and burning hot. Half-choked with panic, he dropped Eda’s hand, surging forth in front of Al—to do what, he could not say. He only knew, in that moment, that he needed to put himself between his people and whatever threat was snaking through the waters toward them. But just as he opened his mouth, poised to order Os to drag Eda back to the boat, the shadow paused. Its figure in the water went entirely, impossibly, still, not a single muscle working to hold its place in the waves. Slowly, with a long, sinewed arm, the shadow reached up, pressed its spindly fingers to its throat—and spoke.
“Clan Cumhaill. Do not be afraid.”
The voice washed over them, deep and slow and brittle, as though years of breathing through salt had crystallised the speaker’s throat. For a long moment, Kai’s mind would not supply a response. His panic had suffocated him, the tension in the water a stopper to his gills, starving his brain. He dragged in a cool pull of water as the figure began to move again, weaving closer, legs whipping to one side, then the other. They stopped just beyond the chains, and a ripple of diluted sunlight passed over their features.
The creature before him was Merrow … and not. Everything about him wasmore, was—
Too much.
His gills were painful slashes in the length of his throat, pulsing like the wings of a bird with every slow breath. His eyes were bulging and black, swallowed whole by gleaming irises. His fingers, where they still rested on his own neck, were long asdaggers, a thin membrane webbing one finger to the next. And with each weak pass of the sunlight over his translucent skin, an odd glimmer caught Kai’s eye.
Scales.
He has scales.
“You are Kai Cumhaill, are you not?”
The Merrow man blinked, thin lids flicking over his fathomless eyes. He tilted his head, and his hair pulsed with the movement, billowing behind him, white strands almost green with algae. Kai forced down his shock, made himself swallow; with saltwater stinging all the way down, he bowed his head and lifted his hand to his throat.
“I am.”
It was an effort not to stare, not to catalogue the unfamiliar features of the Merrow before them, but Kai made a fair attempt. He pushed at the water around him, swirling his body halfway to gesture to his people. Alun’s gaze darted away as though he’d been caught mid-gape, but he forced it back to nod a slight greeting. Oswalt had had the wherewithal to draw Eda behind him in the tense moment before the stranger spoke—but his jaw had since gone slack in a rare show of transparency, shock etched plainly across his face. Eda, however, was peering past his outstretched arm with narrowed eyes.
