Verse VI

  Behind the fa?ade of the Temple of Bryndoon, past the clever architecture and well-formed statues of the Goddess which greeted the lay mers with open arms, there was the promontory known as the Stone of the Faith. Crissed and crossed with passageways, it was ever a busy place as prestra of all ranks went along their business, but few ever stopped within it. Most every spot of importance and utility lay outside the Stone; its passages merely connected through it.

  Opposite the grand temple face, there was an open clearing of stone pavement filled with soft sand, carried laboriously from the home waters of the Mere Kamazon and carefully sifted to provide the softest bed upon which to set the leondra tents. Unlike the flappy structures the manoa used for travel shelters, the tents of Kamazon were formed of stiffened kelpen slats fashioned into curtain-like walls that encompassed a prestra's personal cell. The walls curved towards the top, pulling inward until they resembled an urchin puckered up for the evening. There were no flow-holes, for the space between kelpen slats allowed the fresh water to flow in freely. There was no entrance save through the top, nor any way to seal away the world. No prestra would need that.

  Curled upon the sand at the bottom of her cell, the prestra sacrista Nehemi min Noemi pondered. There were myriad things she should have been doing instead, but her thoughts weighed heavy and her heart heavier. In her hand she held the 'Lament of Hirami min Barabba,' gifted to her by Mitera Yesca, and though the light was dim within the slatted tent, her fingers read the etched letters as well as her eyes. She repeated the words of one verse to herself, matching voice to the texture beneath her fingertips:

  O! what cruel kismet

  O! what price,

  Of pearls made sanguine in

  My sister's grasp, her final

  Treasures a memento of the life

  A fatal trade for the future.

  Little Zakias, piece of my heart,

  Who fits the lacuna, never now filled

  I weep, I cry, I give ululation every day.

  The tragedy, this loss,

  Mothers and daughters, never again,

  For what purpose?

  For what goal?

  The world to come,

  The world that was,

  So they tell me.

  For this, your lives in vain.

  For this, your deaths in glory.

  The world is dead.

  The world is renewed.

  What sanguine pearls

  In recompense for our loss.

  It was rough, raw, so unlike the delicate poetry of the Mere Kamazon and yet indelibly leondra. Nehemi's heart ached for this mer of so many generations past. Her mind wondered at such need to cry out, to blame the waters and the fathoms from firmament to abyss until finally there came acceptance of the facts, acceptance of the reality.

  Hirami min Barabba, ancient mitera of yore, had the benefit of knowing what had come of her loss in the end. Nehemi was not so self-assured. She could not put to words why she had felt so close to the guard, Shalar min Shandra, nor why a single, senseless death affected her so. All she had were the mitera's word that she would understand, given time, and a shell of poetry that said much the same.

  Too much time spent reading. Too much time lost pondering. She let the shell fall to the sand. On the morrow would she begin packing her things in earnest, for the pilgrimage was soon to set out. Soon would she see the Mere Kazahn and perform her sacred duties for all the mers of the city of Valden. Then would her life have meaning. She would not live her life in vain, nor would she let Shalar's passing go unremembered.

  There was a list, etched upon a soft shell by her own foreclaw, of names she could recommend to prospective mothers who had yet to decide. Shalar was the first upon it.

  May the poor mer's spirit live on in memory.

  Verse VII

  What was she expecting? Rhiela could not truthfully say. The mer equmara had never come up as a topic of conversation in any of her lessons, beyond the bare facts of their existence and an event in the distant past referred to only as the Fugitives' War. And even that last detail had been hard-won, nestled deep within a splendidly dull treatise on military tactics which her Aunt Aysmin had bade her to read the year before. Rhiela could not even say for certain who had won that war, if it had indeed ever concluded.

  The only certitude she had was that nothing the fat-tailed equmara could do might ever match the splendor of Bryndoon's shell exterior when it caught the final rays of light from the evening firmament. That was a beauty, she felt, with which nothing could compete.

  The great mass of green traveled for the day and through the night, and in the darkness Rhiela dreamed of her dear home and dearest Marai, who awaited her still. The shell domes gleamed through morning, noon, and into the evening as they played with little Tilly the octopod and shared stories over tasty treats. The day was just about to end with a delicious kiss when the rolling wake of reality forced her out of slumber and into the dim green light of a new day.

  She grumbled through the breakfast of pod fruits and kelps provided by their hosts, and some time later grumbled more as Ardenne helped disentangle her from the passenger moorings when it came time to leave. As they disembarked from Morag Head and got their first glimpse of Mezzeret, Rhiela came to a simple but staggering conclusion of the sort one never seemed to want first thing in the morning: that it was possible to outdo the efforts of another without ever competing in the same waters.

  Mezzeret was laid out upon a flat plain of stone and sand, bounded by rocky hills all around. Above each hill there arose a twin to Morag Head, or rather triplets, quadruplets, more mountains of green above than there were rocks of black and grey below. Mers swam up to the great expanses and down to the neat pattern of white-stone buildings upon the plain. Each structure below was studded with tiny points of color, and as they all descended Rhiela could see that those points were shells of myriad hues, set in patterns that pulled and fooled the eyes until she could see the ghosts of images swimming upon those flat surfaces, shifting as they passed by and their vantage changed.

  The open areas were swept clean, either by current or by hand of mer, with none of the detritus of civilization, the broken bits and half-eaten husks that a mer might toss aside, confident in the facility of the bottom feeders to remove them. Rhiela had never much thought of the fundament beneath her flukes, but someone here did. Many someones, in fact, and so thoroughly that it made her aware for the first time of a way in which her own beloved city was lacking.

  Rhiela was ready to hate the mer equmara for that. No other reason was necessary.

  "Coo-ee, what a place," said Rook as they swam down together. "Think maybe they's got a spell or runic artifact that directs the flow down there? Cleans and clears and everything? Might be we could use sommat like that back home."

  "I do not know what you are talking about," she replied stiffly.

  "Sure, yer place up high, prolly can't see it, but Yer H... er, yer gotta see things from where I'm swimmin', an' that's the back end of the peddler row, full 'a the junk the nicer neighbors don't want. Gets to be right-o mucky down there. Old Baba'd be real interested in a good cleaning tool."

  The orange-speckled mer's bubbly excitement was as annoying as it was contagious, and Rhiela caught herself nodding along to Rook's guesses as to this or that, of how things might work or how they could be adapted. She even volunteered a few ideas in spite of her mood, in spite of her unease.

  There were a few things which every equmara appeared to have in common, judging from the ones she could see in passing. They all seemed to have colors in a spectrum of brown to black, often dappled with white to form individual patterns. No blondes or russets, as might be found in Brandell, nor any of the more vibrant colors of Le?siatran ancestry. No greens like Ardenne, for that matter. To counter this, the equmara wore untold variations of braid and bead atop their heads, or dangling threads through pierced ears, or stacks of bracelets.

  Very few wore anything directly over their chests, though many of the outfits did have the woven architecture to support them from below. Rhiela did her best not to stare, truly she did, but it was hard to miss getting an eyeful, even by accident.

  Glancing over, Rhiela could see Ardenne blushing a furious red, and a grimace passed over the hunter's face as she kept a hand on her stomach. "Ah, I am not feeling well," the green mer admitted. "Perhaps the currents shook me too much on the way in."

  She offered an arm, and the hunter took it, clinging all the way to her shoulder. The need to concentrate, to focus on guiding two bodies at once, helped take her mind off her annoyance at the city and its inhabitants.

  *

  A small, focused flow of water carried the syllables of Sera's name past her ears. She smiled but did not turn her head to see until the familiar form of Rohaise settled into a steady stroke beside her. "It has been a busy few weeks," the equmara commented, still as carefully aimed notes.

  "You have no idea..." she whispered back. A break in her stroke pulled her further behind her companions as they were led to the visitor quarters, and she could face the other mer without worrying about anyone overhearing. The songs of the equmara stirred the waters too much for general sounds to carry far. "I have missed you," she said to Rohaise.

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  "And I, you." The equmara took her hand as they swam on. "And worried, too. The patrols went crazy mere days after last we parted, and I had to quit the Mere Le?na entirely. Whatever did you stir up from the mud this time?"

  "Still working on that," Sera admitted. "Brought friends to help, though."

  "So you did..." Rohaise turned her broad neck to watch the mers swimming ahead of them. "Any among them a leman, perhaps?" she asked in the usual blunt manner of the equmara.

  A snort escaped her nose. "Them? Nah. Couldn't keep up with me if they tried."

  "Ah, I thought perhaps the burnished brown one with the rack. Surely she catches the attention."

  Laughter and indignation conspired to choke her on her own water. "Depths forbid. Rhia is... let's say a bit of a prude. Shoulda seen how scandalized she got when I was tellin' about equmara hospitality."

  "Oh really..." The average equmara had an amazing set of lips on her face, as Sera could say from pleasant experience. They could pull back in an instant to show teeth, or wriggle around as mirth flowed out. Quite dexterous, too. Most anything a manoa could do with her fingers, an equmara would do with her mouth. Suffice to say that an equmara smile was a broad and garulous thing, as Rohaise was showing now.

  "Don't be too awful 'bout it," Sera warned. "Brownie's an annoying chum at times, but she means well."

  "High praise, coming from you."

  Was it? She wasn't so sure. Liking Brownie min Front-Bubbles was a thing beyond her, but it might've been that she had a grain of respect for the princess. More than when they'd first mer. Maybe. Sera would not confirm, but she would amply deny it if asked. Swatting Rohaise smartly on the mer's thick tail, she changed the subject instead.

  "You remember Ardenne, right? She's been through a lot, even since you met her. Tell everyone that if she says no, to leave well enough alone. Don't want to push her."

  "Understood." Rohaise's mane of hair drifted behind her as she nodded. "I would ask, but we shall all hear it in the morning, I suppose. But first, to the visitors' party! Will you be interested in joining me later for a more private welcome?" The equmara's wink was almost as emotive as her smile.

  "Thought you'd never offer." Sera's own wink spoke far more without words. As the equmara swam off, her mind turned to happier things, to pleasant distractions from the events of the past few weeks.

  Ah... it was good to be home.

  Verse VIII

  When she and her sister had left their homewaters for the distant reaches of the seas, Jumella had known to expect strange and unusual things, odd customs, and unfriendly attitudes. The mers of Mezzeret were certainly unusual, but there was nothing unfriendly here. The five of them were escorted halfway across the city's plateau by what could only be described as a parade of mers, most if not all of them about their own age. It was an excellent way to see the city and, she suspected, an equally good way for the city to see them.

  Jumilla got into the stroke of it soon enough, taking any opportunity to flex an arm and show off muscle. If she were to be honest, Jumella caught herself doing the same without even thinking about it. The mer equmara seemed to delight in swimming and streaking past in flashes of speed, with whistles and song to compete for the attention of their guests. It would have been impolite not to react.

  When they arrived at their destination, a rounded building of fitted stones and a cloth dome rising above, it was to find a party waiting.

  "Come, come, no sense in letting a good welcome go to waste," Sera urged them from the rear. The red mer stroked forwards, waving them on with her flukes. She seemed more at ease than Jumella had ever seen her before.

  It made her wonder if she and her twin came off as tense to the others, being away from their home as they were.

  Tense or not, their hosts intended them to relax. There was food in plenty, kelpen wraps and weed pastes, fruiting pods and chewing roots. Nothing of flesh, fish or otherwise, and to her relief there was no tuli, either. Each of the guests was paired with a host, and Jumella spent the afternoon hour chatting with a young equmara named Anslee about life in the Mere Kazahn.

  "Coo..." Anslee was saying. "And the galda, they really do have those long scales down their arms?"

  "And up on their heads and down their backs," Jumella confirmed. "They're used to help with diving and lofting on the hot currents. Or to signal their mood. My sister and I had to make do." She placed a hand to her forehead and flashed her fingers to demonstrate. "And we'd go lofting and diving with kelpen cloth sacs on our backs when we were young. Different tools for a different job, like with those flukes you've got on your waist."

  "Yea, I can see that." The equmara considered her own side-fins, fluttering them around in circles as broad as her accent. The mers of Mezzeret all spoke in half-song tones with the vowels stretched long, it seemed like. "I'd love to meet a galda someday. We don't get in too close to the hot mountains."

  "And the galda don't ever leave them." Jumella nodded. "But things change in time. We all hope to see the travel bans lifted eventually." Inwardly, she felt a pang of regret. One of the very reasons why she and her sister traveled the greater currents now was to observe and report back to the galda elders, eventually, but she did not know what those wise souls would think of it all. It surely seemed as though she and Jumilla had drifted into murkier waters than any could have expected.

  "So how do they kiss with those beaky mouths?"

  Blink, blink. Her eyes did the speaking for a beat. "Ah... they don't, I suppose. At least, not that I have ever seen, but they are serious and private mers..."

  "Darn, and here I was hoping you could tell me what it was like to kiss one."

  Another long beat passed. "Unfortunately, that sort of relationship between manoa and galda is not met with approval in Valden." And it was almost entirely on the manoa side, she knew. That was one of the unspoken truths of their life as they grew up. Though their mom raised them well to be galda in all but scales, she and her sister couldn't risk getting into that sort of relationship with their friends in Valden. Openly, at least, and that was hardly satisfactory. She did not doubt that this was one more factor behind their journey year abroad: to find someone who would accept them properly in a romantic sense. She preferred not to dwell upon that.

  "Huh, so sad." Anslee leaned in, snuggling up against Jumella's arm. "Love's a thing to share. Doesn't make sense to tie it all up like that."

  She would need to be denser than the little urchin of Granny Liese's stories to miss that hint. Glancing around carefully, Jumella could see her twin getting cozy with her own host, though the two were still only talking. Rook appeared to be deep in discussion with a pair of equmara over something quite exciting to her, while Rhiela sat to the side and nodded. Ardenne was off in a corner, talking with an older mer in less flamboyant clothing. Sera was nowhere to be seen.

  Which brought her back to Anslee, who was looking up at her with warm, wide-set eyes and a shy grin. Jumella had been trying to ignore how nice the equmara's open vest looked on her, but... here in this place, that was certainly impolite. So, leaning down, she expressed her appreciation in the best way she could figure.

  Anslee giggled. "Don't kiss much, do you?"

  "First time," she admitted, feeling pink around the edges.

  The equmara winked. "Come on, then. I know a room nearby where I can give you a few pointers." Jumella let Anslee take her by the hand and lead her off. She caught a glimpse of Jumilla's surprised face right before her twin's own host started snuggling harder.

  So for once, she was the one diving deep without looking. Or rather... Jumella kicked up a beat to wrap a strong arm around Anslee's waist. Not without looking. She could see exactly where this could lead. Strange waters, strange customs. And very friendly attitudes.

  *

  It took more than a few beats for Rook to pick up on the stillness. Like the waters where she sat were humming and buzzing with chatter fit to hide an entire room's worth of sound away, and that didn't stop when the rest of the conversations did. If anything, her friendly chat with the equmara lasses sitting to either side only got more animated. The three of them were deep into the details of one of the caloric runes from Baba's shell library when Rhia happened to say, "Oh, there they all go," in that sort of unhappy-but-not-sad tone that Her Highness had when something annoyed her.

  "Whassat?" She looked up and around to find that the four of them were all the mers in the chamber, schooled together along one resting couch. The twins had vanished, and Ardenne's flukes were just now disappearing around a corner. "Huh. Guess they're gettin' an early night of it."

  "Something like that." Her first new friend on the left, Elspeth, had a funny little giggle to her. The new friend on the right, Blaer, echoed with a laugh of her own.

  Rhia, though, she wasn't laughing and she wasn't smiling. "I cannot believe this..." the princess muttered. "Our first night in a strange city, and, and..."

  The details were knocking together in Rook's head like a gnarled bit of grammar, but she came to a conclusion sooner rather than late. "Oh. Yeah, right. Sera mentioned all that, din't she. Well, can't blame a mer for bein' friendly-like, right?"

  "And we do love being friendly around here," Blaer said with a smile that stretched her mouth from the left ear all the way to the right. "But Rook, you were saying about that rune?"

  "Oh yeah, well, yer gots to look at it this way, I'm a-thinkin'. It's drawin' the heat from one direction, so..."

  It was a fun conversation to be having, and they'd been having it ever since Elspeth and Blaer had mentioned that they were training to be runeworkers for the big floaty-plants. Those things required some muddy-massive workings to move at all, and Rook hadn't ever met a mer with as much to say about the kinetic forces of flow and ebb with their various runes. The surface of the stone couch was marked with smudges of mud and fruiting pod pulp as they'd drawn out diagrams and grammars to illustrate their points, with Rook adding in a little something whenever she had one to give.

  Likewise, the equmara lasses loved to hear about her tricks with runecraft, oohing and aahing as she described some of the stuff she'd put together recently. Sand still stirred from when she'd demonstrated that bit of whirly-swirly grammar what had smacked those abominations outside of Mezzegheb.

  "I shall be heading to my hammock, then." Rhia was up and stroking away even before she said it. "Enjoy your chat, Rook. I'll see you at least bright and early in the morning, I suppose."

  "Fair night, Rhia. So..." she continued once Her Highness was gone. "Yeah, turns out that if'n yer use that rune to pull all the heat away from a spot, then..."

  The three of them were huddled in together, head to head to head, as she marked out the grammar in crude strokes. Pretty was something it weren't, but she got the idea across. Elspeth had suggestions for flowing runes, while Blaer knew the ebbing runes to a tee. When they were done, the diagram was still a right mess, but it had a surprise waiting in one corner.

  "It looks like you've turned a heat rune into a chill rune, almost." Elspeth's broad nose rippled with amusement. "Mite complicated way of doing it, but interesting true. Would it work, do you think?"

  "Only one way to know for sure." Blaer pushed off and grabbed both their arms. Momentum pulled them all up, over, and across the threshold of the room in a tangled knot of arms and flukes. It was a miracle they didn't break anything when they hit the far wall of the passage. Only their composure took a right bump to it. The giggles propelled them all the way to wherever the equmara lasses were taking her.

  Rook wouldn't have thought this would be how her evening would go, but she'd go muddy if she wasn't going to enjoy it as much as she could. Elspeth and Blaer, she decided, were just the sort of fun she'd been missing. She hoped everybody else was having as good a time. Even Rhia in her hammock all alone.