Pillars of the Deep Page 11

  “What do you want?” I asked, then caught myself again–it would seem I had no filter, nor tact, upon first awakening. I’d never been a morning person. And while there weren’t expressly ‘mornings’, here, evidently I still suffered from the equivalent. “I mean…what can I do for you, Your…Highness?”

  He scoffed. “I am only the regent. No need for such formalities. You might hear others use frilly terms, but it is not necessary. Coda will do.”

  He wasn’t actually serious, was he? I felt my blush deepening. He was probably just rubbing it in, and why shouldn’t he? I’d set myself up marvelously

  “I tire of the laborious moniker, anyway. It is so stiff and pompous, and there is a certain stigma attached. I should thank you, Stargazer, for suggesting such a catchy alternative. It has a ring to it, don’t you think?”

  He was serious. And then his own nickname for me re-registered. “You started it with Stargazer,” I attempted to save face.

  “Ah–but that is distinctly long-and-sweet. Very different implications than short-and-sweet.”

  “That’s ridi–”

  “I don’t make the rules, Stargazer. Like I said–not really the ruler people assume.”

  “I didn’t mean….” I started, not sure where I was going with it.

  “You didn’t mean what?”

  “I mean…I guess I can call you Coda.”

  “You already did.”

  He was so rubbing it in. A flare of good-natured defensiveness sparked me fully awake. “I’m bad with names, okay? And like you said–yours is a little laborious. I couldn’t remember all the dexi’s and exious’s.”

  “A frequent difficulty. Don’t trouble yourself. But please, do continue with the Codas. I’m fond of the change.”

  Very well, then. At least he wasn’t insisting I tell him about my dream. It would probably be wise to cave to his wishes and move on to other things before he got curious.

  “Then what can I do for you, Coda?” I revised. It sounded strange, felt strange, but in a daring, thrilling sort of way. I was on a nickname basis with the regent of Atlantis!

  Scandalous.

  “First, I was going to inquire as to how you enjoyed the circus, but it would appear you had quite a good time.” His grin widened, and I wondered what he meant, ‘appeared’. My frown must have belied my confusion; he took the liberty of inviting himself into my tower and swished closer to reach for something in my hair. Extracting a piece of iridescent confetti, he held it up for me to see.

  Oh. I hadn’t given any thought to cleaning up after the circus. Was there more where that came from? I reached to run my fingers through my hair myself, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Leave them,” Codexious–Coda–urged, a fond look dancing in his eyes. “They become you.”

  I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to dress up the plain-Jane persona I was so hyper-aware of lately with a little Atlantean luster. I left off my preening, making a mental note to get a hold of a mirror at some point to assess the damage.

  “Secondly,” Coda mentioned, clearing his throat, “I thought I might treat you to a wild, oceanic buffet, so you will not be helpless to fend for yourself during your stay. Your comment about not knowing what we eat stuck with me. I couldn’t leave you to starve.”

  Oh, how thoughtful of him. My stomach growled. “I would be much obliged.”

  “I just, you know, couldn’t have you going around eating jellyfish.”

  “Of course not.”

  Coda pursed his lips, then admitted, “That comment stuck with me as well.”

  I laughed, catching on to his sense of humor. “Well, I hope you didn’t lose any sleep over it. It would never be my first choice in cuisine, even if I were starving.”

  “That’s a relief,” Coda exhaled. Then he drew himself up and gestured with a flourish toward the window. “After you, Lady Deering.”

  As I flitted through the stone portal, I noticed Inaja hovering nearby. And I hadn’t thought I’d be so privileged as to run off on a secret outing alone with royalty, had I? I nodded toward the regent’s loyal escort, and he gave an almost indiscriminate nod in return. While he had been the one to point out my possible identity and may very well be responsible for my acceptance into the city, I wasn’t sure that meant he was one hundred percent in favor of my presence. Or perhaps it had more to do with the natural suspicion any bodyguard worth his sea-salt would hold toward a stranger spending time with his master. Or simply that he was the stoic sort, and it was impossible to tell either way.

  No matter. I’d already told Coda I had no intention of overthrowing his kingdom, and I certainly had no intention of showing any aggression toward the man himself. Aside from having no motive, he could knock me silly with a single slap of his fin. No, I had no designs to tangle with any lithe mermaid–except maybe the miscreant youth, if they threatened any more helpless sea creatures–and certainly not with one scarred as ornately as Codexious.

  He led me through the city again, and then out past the fringes into the open ocean. We swam through thickets of many-colored seaweed before Coda concentrated our route into a glistening cave. Succulents and mushrooms coated every inch of the floor, walls, and ceiling, their botanical veins and rubbery edges aglow with more under-the-sea magic, casting rippling prisms of purple, green and blue throughout the cozy cavern.

  When would the quaint wonders of this underworld cease to leave me breathless?

  Of course, seeing as ‘breathless’ was the entire theme of my stint below the surface, I could expect the pattern to continue for quite some time.

  “Everything you see here is edible,” Coda informed me. “Except for one deviant species. Do not ever eat the spotted mushrooms. You will be violently sick if your palate is anything like that of the common mermaid.”

  “Duly noted,” I replied, my curious fingers straying to cup one of the adorable, spiny succulents. “Do you eat the spines, too?”

  “No–pluck off any spines before eating. Here, try this.” Choosing a tiny, glittery pumpkin-shaped fellow from the spiky garden, Coda picked out the fiber-optics-like spines before handing me the fruit. I bit into the sage-colored specimen that remained, finding it juicy and sweet, the flavor somewhere between that of a pear and dragon-fruit.

  I shrugged my eyebrows in approval. That one was pretty tasty.

  “That one is called agasha fruit. One of my favorites.”

  I nodded, finishing off the fruit. “I like it. What about the mushrooms?”

  As it turned out, the mushrooms were a more fascinating delicacy even than the succulent fruit. I expected something earthen, but as I bit into foamy lavender, something strikingly akin to pancakes filled my mouth–sweet and buttery, the spongy texture nearly identical.

  Nostalgia coated my tongue, melting down my throat. I could smell the browning batter wafting down the hall to my room at home, could hear the sizzle of the pan. The memories came laced with a sense of security, of Mom. She’d always made the best pancakes–had perfected the art because she cooked them religiously every Sunday from the time she was divorced to spite Vince. Apparently he’d berated her their entire marriage about the terrible mother she would be if they ever had kids, because she ‘couldn’t even cook anything other than grilled cheese’. And she may not have been much of a chef, it was true, but she’d passionately and vengefully mastered pancakes.

  We’d slathered them in too much butter, doused them in syrup, stacked them five-high and competed over who could eat the most or who was least sticky in the end, and to hell with what Vince had said–she was a great mother.

  Another shoot of guilt budded inside me for embarking on this quest with no more than a dodgy phone call as my goodbye, but I stopped the thought, telling myself I wasn’t Vince. I hadn’t left her for good.

  “Do you find that one disagreeable?” Coda asked, sounding mildly concerned. Only then did I realize I’d stopped chewing and was clutching the remainder of the mushroom a little tightly, and the faraway lo
ok crimping my face likely appeared perturbed.

  I wiped the look from my face, pushing the memories away. “No, it’s delicious. Even better than the ag…” I looked to him for confirmation, and he chuckled.

  “Agasha fruit.”

  “Yes. That. Both are good, but this…this is my favorite.”

  His chuckle deepened. “You’ve tried a grand total of two. Out of, oh, two hundred?”

  I shook my head. “This is my favorite. I know it.”

  “All right, all right. The Stargazer knows what she likes. That’s good. Still, you should at least try some of the others.”

  “Of course.” I nibbled on the pancake mushroom as we perused the rest of the garden, Coda pointing out the ones he favored that he thought I might like to try. It was like trying to select a piece of chocolate from one of those gorgeous assortments, each morsel delectable and just as tempting as the last.

  Inaja waited politely outside as we sampled the cavern, and by the time we were done I had gorged myself on fruit and exotic flavors of mushroom foam.

  “Do they keep?” I wanted to know, eyeing a cluster of the lavender specimen that tasted so much like home.

  “For a while. Go ahead–collect some samples for your quarters.”

  Don’t mind if I do. I could feel his amused gaze as I plucked a generous bushel of only the lavender pancake mushrooms, but he made no judgments as we headed back out to sea. The amusement doubled, however, when my harvest proved a hindrance to my already-challenged swimming abilities.

  “Here,” Codexious came to my rescue, snatching a thready strand of seaweed grass from the indigo wilderness and reaching for my overflowing arm-full of fungi. Bemused, I handed it over, and, one piece at a time, he threaded it onto the strand with some clever knotwork, tying it into a necklace. Wavering closer to lay it over my head, he let it settle around my shoulders.

  For the first time he was close enough that I could see the texture of the sterling hashes raked across his chest, and it was far too tempting to reach out and touch his gaudy, burnished body, just to confirm it was real. But I curled my fingers into fists and resisted, the ocean suddenly a shade warmer between us. And then I felt the brush of his fingertips against my neck as he bestowed the necklace, lingering to arrange it just a hair longer than necessary, and I had my confirmation. A whisper of goosebumps flurried down my arm at his ultra-smooth touch. I tried not to focus on his naked torso, but how did you ignore an exotic dancer inches from your face? He bathed me in the butterfly-effect of his fin, belly-dancing his washboard, sequined abs in front of me. Erotic by nature.

  Mercifully, he returned to an appropriate distance, turning back to the path before us like he was completely oblivious to the effect he had. Did he know how beautiful he was? Never had I tried to imagine the wiles of a male siren, but now I knew what it must have been like for any man who had ever fallen prey to the sweet seduction that lurked beneath the waves. Everything about the hybrid creature before me was enrapturing. Both masculine and gorgeous, rugged with scars but decorated like a fairy king. Every kind of appeal, wrapped up in one package.

  Inaja cleared his throat behind me, and I flinched back into motion

  We’d meandered for a time when Codexious dealt a subtle bend to the lighthearted tune of the outing, and said, “Tell me something. You mentioned, upon first making your case in the throne room, that you knew an artifact taken as architecture in your human realm was actually a crown.”

  Oh. This was about to get serious. The real reason he’d brought me out here? Or just an aside? “Yes,” I confirmed cautiously.

  “How do you know this?”

  I hemmed and hawed over what to tell him. I didn’t exactly have irrefutable evidence. “My dreams,” I repeated, remembering I’d mentioned such, though not in detail. “In my dreams I see a beautiful coral-pillared crown, detailed with an abalone mosaic and an aquamarine crystal pinnacled at top center. In my dream, it always was a crown. It wasn’t until they–the humans–recovered it from the sea that its size became apparent, and everyone else saw it as a piece of architecture.”

  He gave a small laugh. “Yes, size is rather an irrelevant box to put yourself in when you are the omnipotent mistress of the sea.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but waited for him to continue, as he’d clearly brought up the subject with the intention of going somewhere with it.

  “Well, you are right,” he confirmed. “It is a crown, evidently now a wayward relic. Wandered off because Amphitrite, queen of the sea, is dead. You heard me say the heir to the Atlantean throne is a complicated matter, that no longer simply has to do with next-of-kin inheriting the throne, which is why I am not considered ‘king’ in succession to my late father. And that is because…the throne of Atlantis has largely been a meaningless symbol, in the wake of Atlas’s death, because Atlantis itself became part of a greater jurisdiction when it sank into the ocean, Amphitrite’s reign outranking anyone who ever aspired to rule Atlantis, and Atlas’s prolonged power as a monarch was always really just a gimmick to pacify him while he yet lived. But now that they are both dead, it is the sole remaining symbol of royalty and leadership under the sea, and has become the figurehead for whoever should succeed Amphitrite for the rule of the entire underwater kingdom–that is, every corner and depth of the Abyss from here to the edges and core of the earth.”

  My brows elevated. I saw what he meant about the larger scope of the issue. “Oh.”

  “As you can see, rather a more involved matter than simply letting my father’s next-of-kin rise to the occasion.”

  “But you are his next-of-kin?”

  “I am. His firstborn son. Coincidentally also Amphitrite’s first-born grandson, Atlas being her only child, so if it were a matter of family I would inherit the throne regardless of it representing Atlantis or the greater reaches of the sea.”

  “Wait.” I shook my head, gesturing for him to back up. “You are also Amphitrite’s grandson?” I remembered learning something about Amphitrite in mythology class, but did not recall enough of her family tree for Coda’s claim to align neatly in my head.

  Coda nodded. “Amphitrite–queen of the sea, wife of Poseidon, mother of Atlas.”

  I nodded. “And Poseidon bequeathed the kingdom of Atlantis to his son, whom the island was named after.”

  “Correct.”

  “And Atlas was…not a mermaid. Which…has something to do with why you are not necessarily first choice to rule the ocean?” I took a guess. “Because you are not full-blood oceanic?”

  “Ah–no. I am full-blood oceanic.”

  “Okay.” I frowned, trying to keep up.

  “A bit of history, to clarify the matter–Atlantis was originally a kingdom of the air and land, as you know, an island above the surface, bequeathed to Atlas, son of Poseidon, and originally had no standing whatsoever under the sea. And you are correct, my father was not ‘mer’. Mer-creatures did not exist during his reign. Not even in the case of Amphitrite’s chosen form. But I digress… Atlas, a half-god, human in appearance, ruled his kingdom until he grew gluttonous, greedy and depraved, his people becoming corrupt, and in a fit of rage over Atlas poisoning the purity of the utopia, Poseidon stripped him of his power and plunged his kingdom into the depths.

  “Atlas and his people survived initially, due to various underwater breathing devices their society already employed, as well as by residing in technologically advanced underwater pods, but it could not last. But Amphitrite, mother of Atlas, took pity on her son, and in response to his pleas granted him and his people the gift of underwater survival, rebranding them as half-fish beings. Mermaids.”

  And now we were into the part of the story that no one knew. Atlantis was not only a lost utopia sunken into the depths, but the birthing place of mermaids, thanks to the infamous family drama that always seemed to be at the crux of things among the gods. It was a classic case of “Moommmmm, Dad sank my kingdom!”, and the regular species-altering history that ensued.
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  “So Atlas was granted life beneath the surface, thanks to a mother taking pity on her child, and to let him retain some dignity she allowed him to play king of his city, still, ruling over his coven of mermaids even though her fathomless communion with the ocean trumps all other powers in the sea. And for a time he lived, and loved, and bore children with his harem of mer-wives–I being the firstborn, and first grandson to Amphitrite. I grew up thinking it meant something, but when my father died, the illusion that was allowed him of ruling anything under the sea, anything under Amphitrite’s jurisdiction, went with him. Upon the moment of his death, the symbol of Amphitrite appeared on the throne, leaving no question as to whose power really permeates every inch of the depths.

  “Until now. Amphitrite is dead, and while I may seem like the obvious next in line for the throne, the sea will not accept me. She has always been ruled by, and identified as, a female spirit. You’ve heard it, I’m sure. Sailors call the ocean a ‘she’, always have. Amphitrite was not only queen of the sea, she was one with the sea. And the sea will only accept a woman in her stead.

  “Which is why, in the wake of Amphitrite’s death, and as her royal next-of-kin who cannot technically inherit her throne meant for a woman’s spirit, I must take a wife. Thus, we have gathered in Atlantis for me to scour my prospects and choose a queen.”

  Overwhelmed by the info-dump of lore and politics, I stared. “The ‘bit of a competition’ that you mentioned,” I guessed.

  “Precisely.”

  I took a breath–really just a mouthful of water–and let it out in a rush. It gurgled through my lips. “That’s quite a responsibility.”

  Coda sighed. “You have no idea. I can’t even begin to tell you of the ugly ambition that has possessed every mermaid from here to the farthest reaches of the ocean. They have all become catty, jealous selkies, and I tire of the lot of them. I’m afraid the process of ‘choosing’ has gone on for some time, my opinion of any erstwhile candidate thus far soured.”