Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

How can you change the mind of a person who must be kept ignorant of your existence? How can you convince him that although he does not know of you, and must not know of you, he is killing you? This was the peculiar situation of the Marish, the sea people, in a time long ago.

Although the land folk did not know it, beneath the sea lay vast kingdoms of richness and beauty, the most beautiful being the hidden palace of the Sea King. For as long as the Marish could remember the waters of their kingdom had been crystal clear, tasting of filtered sunlight and the amber joy of diatoms. But in recent years, clouds of foul sludge had drifted in on the currents from the land, and grubby tangles of trash snagged in the branches of the coral. People and livestock began to develop nasty fin infections and a peculiar cough.

Many of the Marish fled to deeper waters further from land, but it was clear that this was a temporary solution. Any sprat with a rudimentary knowledge of currents knew that the foulness would eventually spread further and further into the ocean and be carried all around the world.

The Sea King's scouts reported that the pollution was coming from a particular bay, into which emptied a very large river. The Landers had built a great city on the dry ground around this bay, and more settlements upstream along the banks of the river. In fact, the scouts reported, it was the capital city of a human kingdom, and the crown prince himself resided there.

“Perhaps,” said the King to his advisors, “it would be possible to appeal to this prince and reason with him, or at least negotiate.” But there was one seemingly insurmountable problem, so obvious that none of them even needed to remind him.  

According to an ancient and hallowed law, the Marish must keep their existence secret from the land folk. Long ago they had mingled freely—or as freely as was possible given that the Marish could not swim upon the land and Landers could not breathe under the water. But they had clashed, and one dreadful fact had become clear: Landers could invade the sea, but the Marish could not invade the land. This left them vulnerable and out of balance, and they were obliged to withdraw far out to sea, allowing the Landers at first to think they had been killed or scattered, and later to think that they had never existed at all. 

After generations, they had left their weighted underwater ships in the open ocean (for they needed gardens and housing just as we do, and the depths of the ocean were too black and cold for them to live or grow their crops) and quietly moved back to shallower waters, taking great care to hide their dwellings and avoid the sight of sailors.

“We could send anonymous messages in bottles, or by seagull,” suggested Phobos, the Sea King’s third child. “And pretend they came from a nearby kingdom.”

“A nearby kingdom would send a Lander messenger,” said the King.

“We could ask Ludmila the Sea Witch to go to him,” suggested Valentina, his second. “As a selkie, she can take the form of a Lander.”

“Her human form is a twisty-legged crone who can barely move upon the land,” the King reminded her. “Besides, she never leaves her cave except as a seal, and then only to bask on the rocks nearby.”

“And what kingdom sends a ragged old witch as a messenger?” added Phobos, still irked that his suggestion had been shot down. 

“We could ask her to cast a spell on this prince,” said Valentina. “A spell to change his mind, or to make him easily swayed. Or to force him to keep a secret.”

“How do you know she can do any of that? She just sits in her cave messing with herbs and bones and muttering to herself. I don’t know why we even bother to feed her.”

“Because she is a venerable and valuable member of our community,” the Sea King rebuked, his muscular chest heaving.

“Why don’t we go to her and ask her advice?” Keeler, the eldest, suggested. “She is very wise, and we would be better able to discuss our options if we knew what they were.”
 
Even Phobos had to admit this sounded sensible, and so they gathered a number of suitable presents and swam off to pay a visit to the Witch.

—

“What have you brought me?” The Witch poked her head into the bag, ignoring the respectfully gathered group around her. “Sinew. Roll cakes. Ambergris. Tanned shark leather. Wine! And honey! Did they fall off the back of a boat? You must want a really big favor.”

After she had removed, inspected and approved each item, the King explained their dilemma. Ludmila nodded impatiently. “Well of course you’re in a tizzy, it’s an impossible situation. If you ask me, it’s not doing you any good to hide from the humans. You would do better to let them know you’re there and not to be trifled with!” 

The King opened his mouth—he was speaking Landish out of respect and also because it was dreadfully awkward to speak Marish out of water—but the Witch interrupted. “I know, I know! The ancient war, your traditions forbid it, blah blah blah. Well, I have no spells that will compel silence, and the Cantrip of Control is slippery and tends to go wrong in the most inconvenient ways. I really don’t recommend it. You’ll just have to send someone in to influence this prince in mundane ways.”

“But how can we do this without revealing ourselves?” 

Ludmila thought. “I can make a potion that will replace your Marish…essential substance with Landish essential substance. It should take away your gills and tail and give you legs.”

“Should?” Keeler’s voice cracked.

“Well, I haven’t tested it on a Marish yet, obviously. What idiot would volunteer for that?” She cackled. “But the theory is sound. And it worked on the tissue samples. The thing is, I can’t guarantee that your bones and organs will form exactly as they should. You could end up lame like me—that means with a leg that doesn’t work right—or even with abnormal, non-functioning lungs.”

“So the person taking the potion could end up dead within minutes?” The King was trying to remain calm.

“It’s possible. Or they could be horribly crippled and unable to do the job you sent them out to do. And remember, even if you do end up with a perfect Lander body, you’ll still be on land all the time, having to hold yourself up in the air.”

“But we’re all very strong!”

“You’re strong swimmers. The muscles for that are different than for walking. Believe me, it’s a completely different experience. I would suggest doing special exercises for a few weeks first, or even months. Balancing on your tail, and such.”

“We need to do something about this as soon as possible. The herds will be returning soon from the north, and they won’t be able to breed with all this filth in the water. They might leave permanently if it’s like this for too long. Not to mention all the dying coral and the—well, you’ve seen it. And smelled it.”

The Witch shrugged. “Well, do what you can, then.”

“Is there an antidote that will reverse the effects of the potion once the mission is over?”

“Sure. You can make an antidote to any magical potion if you make it in front of a mirror and then take its reflection out once it’s done."

“I’ll do it,” Keeler said suddenly. He had gone eel-eyed, but his jaw was firmly set. 

“No!” gasped Ethos, the fifth child. “You’re the Crown Prince!”

“That is exactly why I must be the one to do it. The King must stay and rule the kingdom, but it is fitting that the heir go to treat with a prince of his stature, even if it must be in disguise. My father has other children, if something happens to me.”  

“You sure?” The Witch scratched her tangled mop, and a tiny crab fell out and scuttled away. “You really wanna risk ruining that pretty body of yours, just for some old tradition?”

He drew himself up. “It is my responsibility. And besides, I’m the only one of us kingspawn who is fluent in Landish.” 

Phobos scowled at the dig, but said nothing. It was true. The royal children were all supposed to visit the Sea Witch for regular Landish lessons, but of those old enough for this mission, only Keeler had bothered to go more than two or three times.

The Sea King heaved a sigh. “So be it.”

—

And so it was that Prince James' twenty-first birthday cruise was interrupted and blown off course by a sudden, suspiciously unseasonable storm. 

Keeler had carefully watched the festivities for an hour beforehand. Or maybe two hours, he wasn’t sure. It was fascinating. 

From below the water, the Sleipnir was a loud, irregular eclipse: an inky outline haloed by dancing dapples of golden light. When he surfaced for the first time, blinking at the sensory barrage, the first thing to hit him was the smell.

It was oddly familiar and yet unlike anything he had smelled before. It was a smell of burning, but not of wood smoke or ash or charred fish; after a moment, he realized that he was smelling not its spent prey but the fire itself. It rested comfortably in myriad glass jars of all shapes and sizes, daintily sipping on oil the way a court lady might sip wine. 

Keeler was consumed by love. He had met fire, of course, in the cavern of the Sea Witch, and watched it from a distance when surfacing, but never before had he seen it at home, in its own element, among its own people. Instead of desperate and ravenous, called forth at the will of others to devour and destroy, it was relaxed and charming.

He saw how it changed everything it touched, from the sun-seasoned wood of the hull, to the tanned faces of the guests, to the baked honey cakes arranged on platters; and he saw that change could be kind. From that moment on he did not fear the potion.

But he must turn his mind to more solid matters. He examined the guests and the narrow, crowded pool in which they swam, gliding perfectly upright. The colors were warm and strong: crimson and gold and bronze, cinnamon and vermilion. Keeler marveled at the sheer bulk and heaviness of the clothes, the way they hung and constricted and concealed instead of billowing up and out like gauzy fins. The dry echo that the guests’ feet made on the floor, the rustling of the clothing, the murmuring and laughter and occasional shouts, all had their own peculiar qualities.

A handsome dark-skinned Lander rushed toward the side and leaned over the edge; Keeler, fearing he’d been spotted, was already ducking under the hull of the ship. But it became immediately obvious that he had nothing to worry about—as long as he stayed away from the water in that area, anyway—so he resurfaced on the other side to continue his observations.

He must identify the Prince. It shouldn’t be too difficult, he figured. The spies who swum up rivers and canals and loitered under docks at night had reported that the Prince was said to have golden hair, to be “tall,” and to wear something called “spectacles.” 

The Sea Witch had explained that “height” meant the length of a Lander when stood upright, and those with a greater than average height were considered “tall.” When in a crowd, their heads would rise above the rest and be more visible. This was believed to be a useful—if not necessary—quality for leadership. 

“Spectacles” were two pieces of glass in a metal frame that attached to the face; somehow they bent the light and allowed a person with poor eyesight to see better. The popular imagination associated them with wisdom, possibly because being able to see properly made you more aware of what was going on. 

It wasn’t difficult to find the tall young man with fair hair and glass lenses over his eyes. The crowd swirled and spiraled around him, and the height did make him easier to spot, although there were taller men present. What the spies hadn’t mentioned was the Prince’s angular beauty, his warm smile, his languid, artless charm. How could someone like this be pouring filth into the ocean? He must have wicked advisors who were deceiving him, perhaps taking bribes, although why there wasn’t space enough on land for their trash Keeler couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was simply easier to throw it into the river and see it disappear.

His target sighted, Keeler dove back under and signaled to the weatherworkers to release the gathering storm. It would be a pity to ruin that beautiful ship and all the lovely things on it, but the safety of his people was at stake.

—

In the end, they didn’t even need to destroy the ship. The Prince refused to go below decks with the other nobles, and as the Sleipnir tilted wildly, he and two others were swept overboard. Keeler and his people had seeded the surrounding waters with a strong soporific potion, and after a few desperate gulps, the Landers swooned into the arms of the waiting Marish, who towed them toward the beach as the weatherworkers guided the ship away. 

They were careful to breathe only through their noses and keep their mouths and gills closed. Even so, things became slow and dreamy, flickering, slippery and smooth as the waves. Keeler held the Prince’s limp body against his, head just above the surface, mesmerized by the rough texture of his jaw, the planes of his face, his strange short hair, the droplets of water in his pale eyelashes. The sea had claimed his spectacles. The others had to call him in with sharp slaps of their tails on the surface of the water; they had already laid their Landers on the sand and pushed the water out of their lungs.

Keeler, as a prince of royal blood, and one particularly skilled in waterpulling, had no need for anything so crude as pushing on the man’s chest. He simply twitched a finger and drew the water out, like pulling a string. He had no similar skill with air, though, so he found it necessary to lean down, press his lips against the yielding ones below, and blow air from his own lungs into those of the Prince. Fortunately, this was not an unpleasant exercise. The Prince stirred and coughed, his eyelids fluttering, and Keeler uncorked the transformation potion. He must take it now, before the men awoke.

He heard the scrape of pebbles and became aware of a light moving towards him. A Lander! Keeler jammed the cork back in and hurled himself back into the water. There was no time to transform now; their plan was ruined. The last thing he saw before slinking back home in defeat was a veiled, white-robed figure bending over the fallen Prince. 

Chapter Text

“Well, Inky,” said Prince James. “What have we here?”

“I couldn’t say, your highness,” Encke replied. Everyone else pronounced the honorific with capital letters, but he was the Prince’s favorite servant and was allowed certain liberties in keeping with his presumed Moorish barbarity. In return, the Prince amused himself by mangling Encke’s name and pretending he had traveled all the way from distant Makhreb, instead of from his birthplace two miles away from the palace. 

Encke’s father, a great scholar exiled from his homeland for unwittingly meddling in court matters, often complained that there was no dignity in playing valet to a spoiled, foppish noble, and that Encke should be at university, earning his degree if not already teaching. Encke’s mother countered that there was even less dignity in scrubbing the floors and chamber pots of merchants, which she had been obliged to do while her husband had kept his precious hands clean turning the pages of books, and that she didn’t see him complaining about their pretty new house or his nice new clothes. For his part, Encke had no objections to the scholarly life, but he did object to poverty, and it seemed logical to him to make one’s fortune and connections early on when health and strength and beauty were at their height, and then, once established, settle down to study a subject of one’s choosing. And if he must serve someone while starting out, who better than the Prince himself? He might be…whimsical, but he was easygoing and generous.

The Prince studied the vision crumpled artistically before him on the sand, pale slender body only partially veiled by his extraordinarily long pale golden hair. “If he didn’t have legs—and very nice ones!—I might think him a stranded mermaid. Look at that hair!”

He crouched to feel for a pulse, and the youth stirred, turning over suddenly to blink up at him with wide blue eyes.

“And if you hadn’t turned over,” the Prince glanced down, “I might have thought you a lady. Although it’s not very ladylike to be sprawled nude on the beach like this.” He smiled, and brushed the sugarlike crust from the stranger’s face where it had pressed into the sand, his thumb straying over the tender, slightly parted lips. “Did you have a cramp while swimming? Or carouse a little too vigorously last night?”

The stranger drew breath to answer, but only coughed a little, raising one fragile hand to his throat in dismay. The Prince pulled him to his feet, where he stood with feet planted too close together and hands clutching his shoulders, wavering like a birch in the wind.

“Give him your cloak, Inky,” said the Prince. “He must be dazed. Perhaps sunstruck. We'll bring him home with us and nurse him back to health.”

—

When they arrived at the palace, Encke drew a bath and gestured to the stranger to enter, extending an arm to take back his cloak. The creature’s face relaxed and he stepped in without removing the cloak, sinking shoulder-deep into the water with a sigh. He looked up at them with a sweet smile, the cloak floating around his dainty head like a lilypad streaked with gold. The Prince laughed. “So modest! Like Melusine in her bath. Take care to wash his dragon’s tail gently, or he may drag you under the water and drown you.”

The stranger’s eyes widened, and Encke hastily gathered up the sodden cloak. He looked perplexed, and gestured at them to join him.

The Prince broke out into peals of laughter again, and told Encke that his doom was sealed. “You can play Andromeda and be the sea monster’s sacrifice. I’ll play bath attendant and hand you the sponges and soap.” 

Encke reminded himself firmly of his aged parents (fifty-three and fifty-one counted as aged, right?) and the house in the country that he would like to have someday: a house big enough not only for aged parents and the children that everyone kept saying he would one day want, but also for quiet corners where he could on occasion steal a few moments of blissful solitude. Blissful solitude was far over the horizon, though, and he restrained a sigh and stripped down. It wasn’t much different than the saunas of the Northlanders, after all. Probably. 

The stranger pulled away in alarm when Encke stretched out a tentative hand full of shampoo, but a thought crossed his face, and he touched his own hair experimentally, as if it were new to him. After a moment, he graciously inclined his head. 

The Prince helpfully explained that he would be more comfortable if he sat closer with his back to Encke, and the stranger nodded and shifted himself to sit between Encke’s legs. Not a language barrier, then. Maybe he was deaf-mute, and could read lips? But why had he been naked? And why on the beach? Who would go into—or onto—that stinking heaving beast of an ocean if they didn’t have to? Encke didn’t even like walking on the beach after that harrowing disaster at the Prince’s birthday party. Why must the Prince stay above decks, thereby forcing Encke and his other valet to stay with him? It was a miracle they hadn’t drowned when they’d been washed overboard.

Encke scooped up water in his left hand to wet the stranger’s scalp before gently rubbing in the shampoo. The foundling tensed, but after a moment he hummed happily and tilted his head back. Encke had never washed another person’s hair in this position, and he had to admit that it was relaxing, if you could manage to ignore the Prince’s avid gaze. 

That august personage had thoughtfully remembered that even beached mermaids required refreshment, and had sent for a light lunch, the components of which he continually pressed upon the stranger. “You must try this wine,” he insisted. “My father had it specially imported. It’s made by pledged virgins and aged for fifty years in a cave guarded by a sacred bull. Encke, would you like some too?”

“The gods of my forefathers forbid it,” Encke intoned solemnly. It had not escaped him that the Prince had used his proper name this time. 

“The gods of your forefathers are so strict,” the Prince pouted. “They forbid more things every day.” He took another sip.

“The path of righteousness is narrow as the blade of a scimitar, but he who treads it shall not be cut.” 

“What an intriguing image.” The Prince stared into the distance. “Like those wise men who walk on hot coals without burning their feet, but instead, a sword blade. Perhaps suspended above the flames, to remind the walker of what awaits him if he fails. I could see you doing it, Inky.”

The stranger leaned forward, gazing raptly at the Prince. Encke inhaled slowly, then picked up the sponge and began to wash his back. When he was done, he handed the sponge to the stranger, fervently hoping that the Prince wouldn’t decide to make him wash the man all over. If he brought up the gods more than once a day, the Prince tended to get peevish.

The stranger made a small surprised noise, then turned all the way around to face him, looking sudsy and expectant. Encke stared.

The Prince laughed. “He wants to wash your back, too! It’s only logical.”

Encke suppressed another sigh and turned his back. He felt warm legs sliding around him and a soft touch on his shoulder, and immediately wanted to die. The gods of his forefathers demanded his immediate removal from existence on the physical plane, please. Not here, not now, not with the Prince munching crackers and watching them like some kind of traveling circus. 

He closed his eyes and thought of moldy fruit, open-casket summer funerals, and his mother’s lectures. Somehow this only succeeded in giving them an erotic tinge. Why hadn’t anyone invented opaque bathwater? Maybe he should do that. It could come in different colors, and scents like lavender or spruce or jasmine. His mother had been an apothecary in the old country; she would know how best to prepare it, or, more likely, why it was impossible, or too expensive to bother with.

Encke talked distracting nonsense to himself until the sponge had covered a reasonable amount of territory; he then moved away and turned around again. He thought the huge black marble sunken bath excessive even for a prince, but at least there was plenty of room to maneuver in it. Eager to be done with this ordeal, he picked up the water jug, glancing at the stranger’s hair. 

The guest nodded, and turned his back again. Encke gently tipped the stranger’s head back, and, given his mysterious unfamiliarity with shampoo, thought it best to warn him to close his eyes. His voice came out lower and rougher than he had intended.

The Prince leaned forward. 

The water splashed down—what else would it do? Naturally, it gushed over the stranger’s hair and ran in rivulets over his face, down his exposed throat, and over the intimate ivory paleness of his bare chest. Glistening droplets clung to his coral lips and flaxen lashes, which was unavoidable and completely, boringly normal. 

The Prince abruptly excused himself and hurried out of the room.

The stranger blinked and gave Encke a bewildered smile. Encke jumped out of the bath and dressed faster than he ever had in his life.

—

The stranger revived from his mysterious ordeal (and from the mortifying ordeal of the bath, which he did not seem to have noticed), but he remained mute, frail, and unfamiliar with the details of normal life. He was like a mild-tempered baby, curious and surprised by everything.  

He could not seem to recall his name or where he lived, so the Prince decided to keep him. Upon hearing this, Encke’s mother commented that many beautiful youths, if discovered nude and unconscious on the beach by the richest man in the kingdom, might find it convenient to forget where they lived, but Encke thought that if this were the case, it was the best acting he had ever seen and deserved any rewards it might bring. There was no artfulness to be seen, no posturing or seduction. Although the stranger seemed capable of restraining his actions, the expressiveness of his movements and especially of his limpid oceanic eyes made his feelings perfectly clear. 

The Prince stuck with his first impression and dubbed the stranger “Melusine,” or “Lucy” when he was feeling especially casual. He made a special pet of him, and the lad followed him about like a puppy, but even at this bohemian court it was impossible for them to spend every moment together. It fell to Encke to teach Melusine how to live, both as a human being and as a member of the Prince’s retinue. It was a complex and baffling task, but he didn’t have the heart to resent it. In fact, he felt a strange protective impulse unfolding in his breast. It wasn’t the poor boy’s fault that something had rattled his brain, and he certainly wasn’t to blame for the Prince’s whims either.

Melusine was given the honor of a cot at the foot of the Prince’s bed, and on the first night he curled up on top of the blankets like a cat, placing the pillow carefully on the floor. Encke, realizing that the scope of the job was much greater than he had thought, got up from the little adjoining room where he spent his nights on duty (he traded shifts with the other valet, Praxis, a tall, saturnine man who, because of his eyepatch, was required to dress as a pirate and endure frequent jokes about booty), and showed the foundling how to brush his teeth and use the bathroom’s other facilities. Melusine seemed oddly upset by the toilet, but he allowed Encke to lead him back to bed and tuck him in.

It became immediately obvious that Melusine had only the most basic theoretical understanding of clothing, which explained his Edenic innocence in the bath. The Prince postponed a meeting with his advisors to watch Encke’s hastily prepared tutorial, helpfully suggesting that Encke demonstrate the donning of each article himself. Melusine paid careful attention, his face serious as he copied Encke’s movements. He was given a royal page’s uniform, which made him miserable, and the Prince exclaimed that of course he could not be expected to wear something so itchy and confining. This of course necessitated a series of new articles and further demonstrations, until they had found a style of clothing that suited both Melusine’s comfort and the Prince’s aesthetic tastes.

Melusine’s poetic thigh-length hair caught in every object and tangled itself like vines around the furniture; Encke set him down by the window with a brush and comb and carefully worked out each knot. As an only child who had always kept his own hair short, he had no idea how to braid, so he called out to a passing maidservant and asked for advice. She giggled so much he could barely understand her, but finally succeeded in teaching him something called a “fishtail.” Over the next few weeks, they received frequent visits from teachers eager to impart their sometimes questionable (in Encke’s opinion) wisdom. Melusine was sweet-tempered and docile almost to a fault, and his hair became the site of artistic experiments that no one would dare try on themselves. It was not uncommon to see him crowned with grapevines and shocks of ornamental grasses or adorned with complex interlocking braid loops twisted through with ribbons.

He didn’t even know that he needed to drink water. The same could be said for many people, but Melusine didn’t even understand that a parched feeling could be relieved by swallowing liquids. If he ate something dry or spent too much time in the sun, he headed for the bath or the canals by the palace steps. Encke had to teach him to understand his own thirst.  

Conversely, he was bewitched by fire; if the Prince was elsewhere and no one interrupted him, he would lie on the rug and stare at the fireplace for an hour at a time. Praxis told Encke that he’d once discovered Melusine feeding breadsticks to a candle flame, and it took half an hour to convince him that the flame was satisfied with its own wick and would become ill if given too much food. Melusine had pointed questioningly at the fireplace, and after a moment’s mental flailing, Praxis had pronounced the chimney fire a different species than the candle flame, with different nutritional requirements. This seemed too easily disproven to Encke, so he later “clarified” to Melusine that overfeeding fire would cause it to grow in size and become even hungrier, until it devoured everything in sight and then died. The foundling’s eyes widened, and he sat quietly, deep in thought.

Despite his ignorance, Melusine was a quick study; one seldom had to tell him anything twice. Once his basic needs were met and Encke was fairly sure that he wouldn’t burn down the palace, he turned his attention to language.

It was clear that Melusine understood both speech and body language, although he sometimes took longer to ponder spoken language and had trouble understanding any speech that was not blunt and plain—which is to say, most of the speech at court. Encke had grown up among many immigrants who struggled with a language learned in adulthood, and this pattern was familiar to him. This of course didn’t prove that Melusine was foreign, since he had also lacked basic knowledge that every human child should know, so it seemed likely that whatever event had deposited him on the beach had erased his memory…although it could of course be both. 

In any case, it was time to find out whether he was truly unable to use words, had for some reason never learned, or had simply forgotten how. Encke started with a simple broadsheet. “Can you read this?” he asked.

Melusine examined it intently, tracing the letters with his finger. He looked unsure.

Maybe that was too complicated. Encke picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the word LAMP on the slate. “Can you point to this object in the room?”

He frowned, looking frustrated, and shook his head. Suddenly he snatched the chalk and scribbled out a tangle of incomprehensible loops and flourishes.

Encke studied it. “I don’t recognize this alphabet.” He was being polite; it didn’t look like another alphabet so much as a drunken, illegible doctor’s scrawl or a little child’s imitation of adult writing. “Well, whatever it is, it looks like some kind of cursive. Would you like to learn print—the kind of writing that’s in books? It’s easier to understand.”

Melusine nodded eagerly.

“All right. We’ll start with the alphabet…”

Soon objects and surfaces in the Prince’s suite, as well as various other regions of the palace, began to sprout a curious type of new flower. It was white and rectangular in shape, having no petals or stem, and its center consisted of a carefully penned word. The Prince was delighted to find one pinned to the breast pocket of his favorite dressing gown; the label read PRINS JAMZ. Encke found a small NK on his jacket. Another was propped up in the largest window of the sitting room, the one with the best view of the ocean; it read simply: C. 

After the royal doctors had examined Melusine and determined that he was not deaf and there was nothing wrong with his tongue, teeth, or throat, Encke also decided to teach him to speak. Melusine looked nervous, but agreed to try. They began with the alphabet again. He discovered that his pupil could pronounce a majority of the letter sounds, but he had to say them very slowly and carefully, and a few particular ones such as K and G kept escaping him. From the faces he was making, Encke gathered that the reason he hadn’t tried speaking is that he was ashamed and frustrated by the way he sounded. 

Out of curiosity, and to give him a break, Encke asked him if he could sing. He was astonished when Melusine broke out into a vigorous sea chanty—breathy and accented, but a recognizable rendition. He finished an entire verse, looking pink and surprised, and Encke applauded in delight. 

“Can you speak in song, do you think?” he asked.

Melusine hummed doubtfully. “Aiiiiiiii don—“ He broke off and shook his head. 

Encke paused, unsure if he had stopped because of physical difficulties or self-consciousness. Then he realized it didn’t matter. “Do you want to practice it alone a few times and see what happens? So you can try it without someone there watching you?”

Melusine cocked his head, and then nodded. “Aye,” he sang, then giggled. 

Encke felt a smile pulling up his own lips, for the first time in…well, a long time. Too long.

Over the next few days, he began to catch snatches of quiet, deliberate song from around corners. Sometimes he could make out most of the words, sometimes only one or two. Lists of animals or plants, individual sounds, imitations of phrases someone else had just uttered. Melusine was done with silence.

Encke would press himself against the wall and listen for as long as possible before making a noisy show of arrival. One day, in a burst of mad inspiration, he began to sing along in harmony before showing himself. Melusine’s song faltered briefly, but then continued. Still singing, Encke inched around the door and sidled up to Melusine, who was standing before an open book of poetry, sounding out the words. They shifted into a call and response format, alternating higher and lower tones.   

When the poem-song was done, Melusine leaned his head on Encke’s shoulder, loose strands of hair tickling his neck. Encke smiled and nestled his cheek against the top of Melusine’s head, and in that moment it suddenly felt natural to put an arm around him.

“Maaaay beee,” Melusine chanted in an almost whisper. “I khaaan….sin toooo…Prince soooon.”

Chapter Text

It was frustrating that one of the potion’s errors had been in whatever part of his brain controlled air speech, and that Ludmila’s handwriting had turned out to be so terrible that learning to read and write from her had been essentially useless (if only she’d had some printed books as well as handwritten journals!), but Keeler was pleased with his progress in the Lander language. He’d like to see Phobos do that well! 

He knew he needed to hurry, but he didn’t feel ready yet. He still had no idea how to persuade the Prince to stop the pollution. The Prince was kind and affectionate, but it was clear that he saw Keeler as an addled invalid who must be cared for rather than an intellectual equal. Speaking or writing to him about serious matters before he was fluent would impede his credibility and might even damage his relationship with the Prince. He probably shouldn’t have put all those labels all over everything, but he’d been so happy to be finally using words.

His people were growing impatient (not that some of them had ever been that patient in the first place). Several times now, Keeler had heard the rhythmic signal splashes and slipped out into the glittering night to climb down off the balcony and into the canal. They’d had to hide among the rushes, tapping the reeds softly in the long distance Pan-Mar language, as he could no longer spend much time underwater and they couldn’t see each other’s speech in the dark. Which was a relief, because Keeler was clumsy and ugly now, unfit for either world. 

Ludmila had been right about the gravity. Feeling anchored was rather nice when falling asleep, but all of his movements when awake had to be deliberate so as not to waver or quiver, and walking sent stabbing pains into his feet, legs and back. Sometimes when no one was in sight he would just sag against the wall, or even sink to the floor for a rest. He knew sitting on the floor was not done, but he also knew that he was considered wildly eccentric and no one would be alarmed or angry if he did. He wondered if the other Landers felt pain when they walked, but was a little afraid to ask. They must not. Why else would so few of them swim in the canal or the bay a short distance away? For that matter, why was Encke so reluctant to swim that he didn’t even like sitting in the bath? Did he hate all water? Did all of them hate and fear water, and want to poison it?

Maybe he could get information from Encke about the pollution so he’d be better informed as to where it came from and why it was being dumped into the river. He’d already inspected all the books he could find, but as far as he could tell none of them had titles relating to waste disposal. 

C IS BAD, he wrote in their next study session. At this point he knew that it was spelled “sea,” but he didn’t care. It didn’t make sense, and he couldn’t be bothered, and Encke knew what he meant anyway.

“Ugh, I know,” said Encke. “I hate it. I wish the palace were 50 miles inland. Although I hear the weather here is warmer because of the currents.”

NO! C IS TOILET! He emphasized by pinching his nose.

“It certainly stinks,” he agreed.

C WAS NOT TOILET. C IS TOILET NOW.

Encke frowned. “What do you mean?”

RIVER IS TOILET. FLUSH. THEN SEA IS TOILET.

“You mean something’s coming into the sea from the river?”

Keeler nodded.

“Oh. Hmm. Well, there are factories further inland, and some of them are in towns by the river. They probably dump things in—garbage and waste products and such.”

“Faaa…”

“Factories.” He wrote down the word. “Big buildings, like the palace, but instead of people living in them, they make things there. Or process raw materials, like lumber or coal. There are always things or substances left over that they don’t want, that would fill up the space or even poison them if they kept them there. So if they can’t burn them, they throw them in the river and it takes them away.”

“Away da sea!”

“Yes, eventually. I suppose.”

“Why…so much? Garbazh?”

“They’re making a lot of products. So there’s a lot of waste.”

“Why…a lod of produds?”

“To sell to a lot of people. There are a lot of people in our country, and a lot in other countries too.”

“Whad…they makhe?”

“All kinds of things. Most of the things you see in this room, they weren’t made in factories, but factories could make cheaper versions of them for people who aren’t princes.”

“Cheaper?”

Encke stared at him for a moment, then rubbed his forehead. “Less money. You do know what money is—okay. Money is, um. Coins. Like this.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a small engraved copper disk.  

“Oh!” Keeler had seen ones like that around shipwrecks, but no one knew what they were for. Ornaments? Game pieces? Some people liked to decorate their walls with them or make them into jewelry. He nodded expectantly.

“So, people trade with them. Say you have…pears, and I want one. I might give you one of these for a pear. And then at the end of the day when you had sold all your pears—sold means exchanged for money—you could take all the coins you got and exchange them for, I don’t know, a pair of chickens that you could get eggs from every day.

“And I know, your next question is why not trade pears for chickens directly. It’s because the person with the chickens might not have any use for a lot of pears. People usually just want one pear at a time, after all, not a whole cartload. Everybody accepts money in trade, because they can use it to buy anything and you don’t have to spend forever finding someone who has something you want AND also wants the thing you have. And there are big things, like houses and land, that you can only get for a lot of money. Unless of course you marry someone whose family owns them, or your ruler decides to grant you some.”

Keeler thought about this. By “land,” he must mean hunting and gathering and grazing rights? But it sounded as if he were talking about one person, not an entire clan. Why would one person need land rights? Didn’t they hunt or gather or farm in groups and then distribute the products to the clan? He’d assumed that the individual in Encke’s story was trading pears as a representative of the clan, but the Encke in the story had only wanted one pear. Why not let him sample a pear without trading for it? Even if he didn’t really intend to trade for a load of them and just felt like a snack, it wouldn’t hurt to establish good relations by showing off the quality of one’s goods.

As usual, he had to remember to phrase things in a way that didn’t reveal his knowledge of his own culture. It was exhausting. Or maybe that was the gravity and the effort of re-learning to speak a language that he now realized he had never had a very good grasp on in the first place. “People in…fadory…may…many things. For money. Do drade. For land. Or things.”

“That’s right. Although most of the people in the factory don’t make enough money to buy land or houses. Earn enough money, I mean. Actually making money is a crime.” 

Then where did it come from? He had to focus. “Why buy houses?”

“So you can have somewhere to live.”

“I live in palace. I don buy palace.”

“The Prince took you as his ward. That means he takes care of you, and you can live in his house, which in this case is the palace. If you wanted a house of your own, you would have to buy one. Or he might decide to give you one, which is more likely, since you don’t make money.”

“Where people live when no buy house?”

“If you’re lucky you might inherit a house when your relatives die. But otherwise you have to rent space in someone else’s house. Rent—that means give them money sometimes so you can stay in their house. Or if you don’t have the money, you just have to sleep outside.”

“Why not live in palace? So big. Many rooms…no one lives there.”

Praxis, walking in to get ready for his next shift, glanced at them with an unreadable expression, nodded politely, and headed into the valet bedroom to change. For obscure reasons, his shift and Encke’s often overlapped.

“There are too many people to fit into the palace. The kingdom is very big and there are many cities and many people in it that you haven’t seen. Even in this one city there are so many people that the homeless ones wouldn’t even fit in the palace if they stood up together.”

“Why no some live here?”

Encke coughed. “Well, the palace is the prince’s house, and even if he did let other people live here it would be complicated…he’d have to decide who to let in, and then the others might be jealous or think it was unfair.”

“Why no makh houses for people?”

He sighed. “Look, I’m no economist. I’m just a valet. Take my advice—don’t worry about it. It’ll give you a headache if you think about it for too long.”

He was probably right. Keeler wasn’t there to reform their trade system or their culture. He needed to focus on these…factories. Although it sounded as if the factories might be an important part of Lander culture. But if so, why had the pollution only started recently?

“Fadory…always make produds? And waste?”

“For as long as there have been factories, yes.”

“How much long?”

Encke tilted his head. “For as long as I can remember, but not much before that. Maybe 15 or 20 years?”

Praxis’s voice came through the half-open door. “The King struck a deal with certain merchant companies during the war, allotting them land for factories and reduced taxes in exchange for supplies that aided the troops. After the war was over they kept the land and maintained or increased their profits by passing on the tax expenses to their customers, buying cheap, shoddy, dangerous equipment, hiring children and immigrants to work at reduced wages for long hours and discarding them for new ones when they get injured or sick…”

Encke swiveled to look in surprise.

“But what would I know? I’m just a valet.” He emerged from the bedroom, tying a patterned red kerchief around his head, and vanished on business of his own.

There had been a lot of unfamiliar words in that speech, but Keeler thought he had the general idea. The factories had been created to help with a war, but then afterwards had been used to get more goods and land for the people who ran them. And the rulers hadn’t stopped it.

“Why Prince no stop fadories do bad?”

Encke cast his gaze down. “I don’t know. I’m sure he has good reasons. But listen, you shouldn’t ask questions like that. It’s not your place or mine. We’re lucky to have our positions and we should be grateful for them instead of trying to meddle with things we don’t understand.”

Keeler wanted to slap his tail, but he didn’t have one anymore so he stood up abruptly, reeling until the sparkling blackness cleared away from his vision, and stalked out to the balcony to jump off into the canal. The reeking, oily canal that was still better than the reeking, oily thinking of someone he’d thought he could trust.

—

He’d swum out to the bay so he could be in proper salt water and wouldn’t have to constantly dodge around boats and waterfowl and trash, but then had to swim right back through it all to avoid the pain of walking back on land. It was bearable as a human, with no taste buds on his skin and a massively diminished sense of smell, but it was exhausting and unpleasant and did not improve his mood. He was so slow and clumsy and weak in the water now, he was ashamed to be seen by anyone, Marish or Lander. Why hadn’t he listened to the Sea Witch? Well, he had, but she’d never warned him that even an essentially “successful” transformation would be like this. Maybe there was no way she could have explained it.

Keeler took a deep breath and scolded himself as he began to climb the marble steps, leaning heavily on the railing and trying to ignore the stabbing pain shooting up from his feet. He shouldn’t complain. He was alive and reasonably healthy. He wasn’t visibly deformed or unable to move around. The Prince had taken him into his household and shown him kindness and favor. Even Encke had been patient with his ignorance, although it was probably only for money. Did Encke even talk to anyone if there was no money to be had for it? 

He trailed nasty canal water all the way to the bathroom and drew a bath, wadding up his wet clothes in an inconsiderate pile on the floor for someone—hopefully Encke—to pick up. He shampooed and rinsed his hair before filling the tub, then sat there glowering, picking loose bristles out of the bath brush.

“Come back to land, Melusine,” the Prince’s warm voice called from the doorway. “We miss you. Although of course you always look charming in your natural state.” He was leaning against the door frame with his shoes off and the collar of his shirt open, smiling in a way that looked a little sad.

Keeler rose up to his feet—forgetting again to do it slowly, and blinking through the black haze—and accepted the Prince’s proferred hand, and then the towel he offered. Such a strange item, meant only to remove traces of water from the skin and hair! He had to admit that being dry was warmer, though, and wondered if Ludmila would like one. He patted his hair and body with the towel, and opened the little chest by his cot for the ivory silk dressing gown that the Prince had given him. He knew now that nudity was considered proper only when one was in the water, but he didn’t feel like wearing an entire suit of clothes right now.

“Let me comb your hair,” said the Prince. “Everyone else has had a turn—why shouldn’t I?”

Keeler sat down on the footstool, and the Prince sat on the window seat behind him and gathered his hair up into a bundle. “I combed my mother’s hair once when I was a little boy, and I remember her saying that you had to start from the ends and then work up toward the top.” The comb made a soft hissing noise as he talked. “Of course her hair wasn’t anywhere nearly as long as yours. Yours is like those ladies’ in the hair oil advertisements. It almost doesn’t look real. But I can tell it is.” He stroked Keeler’s head, the heel of his hand brushing his ear, and Keeler made a happy sound and leaned into the touch. “One could almost drown in it.”

He worked his way slowly up, talking quietly about this and that, and Keeler finally began to relax. Once in a while the comb caught a tangle, but it was worth it overall, especially once it reached the scalp and he could feel the pleasant gentle scratch of it. After a few minutes the Prince set down the comb and picked up the hair again, letting it run through his hands like water from the faucet. 

“I should braid it now, shouldn’t I? Or maybe not, it’s still wet and you might catch cold. I’m not sure how to do it, anyway—I’m certainly no dressing maid, and I wouldn’t want to leave you with an unbecoming style.” He twisted the hair into a rope and coiled it around Keeler’s head. “There, now you have a crown, like me! But that’s a heavy thing to wear. Better let it go free and do as it pleases.” He sat back and tapped his fingers against the window, restless as a caged animal.

Keeler turned and looked up at the Prince. He had removed his spectacles, and the sadness in his eyes was so profound that Keeler couldn’t help but reach up and stroke his face. The Prince smiled at him, and Keeler took this as permission to wrap his arms around him and rest his head against his shoulder. He had guessed right, because after a moment he felt a hand stroking his hair. “Do you think married people can be happy? If the marriage was arranged by others? I can’t tell if my father is happy. His face is like a stone. My mother sang sad songs, but some people like those even if they’re happy. She didn’t weep or lie abed all day, but she didn’t smile that often either. Perhaps it was the gravity of her position. When I was a boy I thought there was an actual weight that settled on you when you became king, like a load of invisible bricks. I have dreams, sometimes, of being pulled down into the water by those bricks.”

Keeler held him tightly. The Prince was the only one who could possibly understand what he was going through! Encke only had to take care of himself. He was never in pain. He didn’t have to worry about letting everyone down.  

“Someday I’ll become king, and I’ll be responsible for the entire kingdom instead of just this one province. But before that I have to marry advantageously, and produce heirs like my father did, in case something happens to me before then. I don’t even want to marry. It sounds so grim. If I were allowed to choose, I would choose that little novice who saved my life on the beach when I was swept overboard. She was so sweet and kind and pretty and lively….she reminded me of you, in fact. I can’t imagine her turning grim or cold. But she must be pledged to the Mother, or soon to be. Sister Reliant, she was called.

“My father has informed me that the wedding will be in two weeks. I’ve been engaged to the princess of Ethania for nearly a year now, but they’ve received a tempting offer from our greatest rival, and my father wants to snap her up before her father changes his mind.”

Keeler went very still, but the Prince didn’t seem to notice. 

“I’ve never even met her, can you imagine? I’ve seen her portrait, of course, but those all look the same. You wouldn’t even recognize me from mine. But her kingdom is in the good graces of the Emperor, and they have coal and minerals and such that I’m told we need.” He kissed the top of Keeler’s head. His breath smelled of wine. “So I’m sorry to say that things will be changing around here soon. You can stay, of course, but once I’m married it would be too awkward to have you sleeping in my bedchamber. She’ll need her privacy, you understand. And I’ll have to spend a lot of time alone with her, at least at first. I’ll try to spend some time with you beforehand, but there will be so many preparations this week, we’ll all be running around like lunatics.” 

Keeler looked up at him again, and his face was actually blurring and shifting. What was happening? The Prince touched his cheek. “I know. It hurts when things change. But don’t cry, darling—it’ll be all right.” 

Keeler blinked, and the gentle, smiling face before him was solid again. Solid, and very close. He leaned closer still…

“Encke! You startled me. Don’t you remember how to knock?”

Keeler, abruptly deposited back onto the window seat, swept his hair over his shoulder and looked away.

“I beg your pardon, your highness. The tailor is here to measure you.”

The Prince sighed. “So it begins. Send him in…”

—

This time they were all there in the reeds: Valentina, Phobos, Deimos, Ethos, Luna, little Helios, and even the King his father. They made a funny-looking group, but no one was laughing.

Phobos was still a cuttlefish, though. You look bizarre, he tapped. What happened to your hair? It’s like dried grass. I bet you can’t even sting with it anymore. Not that you could sting very well with yours in the first place, it was so long. He preened his shoulder-length hair with a smirk. The little twit knew it was a myth that hair length was inversely proportional to potency, but he just had to get his digs in.

Lander hair doesn’t sting, Keeler told him patiently. I don’t need to sting anyone at the palace, they’ve all been very nice to me. And for your information, the Landers think my hair is beautiful. They tell me so all the time and they like to decorate it with flowers and ribbons and knots.

They’re probably just making you look even stupider so they can laugh at you behind your back.

Stop it, Phobos, said Valentina. It’s natural for Landers to look stupid. They don’t notice it.

Deimos cut in. Phobos, if you were a Lander your hair would look like a deflated sponge. But tell me, Keeler, what became of that cute one-eye? You should bring him down here and teach him to swim. Or I could. He smiled in that way of his that managed to look simultaneously innocent and unsettling.

Settle down, everyone, his father tapped. We’ve heard about the marriage, Keeler. This is really bad. The selkies finally decided to speak to us again, and they told us that the marriage contract involves more supplies for this kingdom’s factories, and new factories both here and in Ethania. If you can’t stop it, or get the Prince to change the terms, things are going to get much, much worse.

The Prince feels…trapped, Keeler said after a moment. He doesn’t want to marry a stranger.

Good! That’s encouraging. Work on him, then. Tell him to make his own decisions.

He feels it’s his duty. That he can’t escape it.

Nonsense! Nothing’s threatening his kingdom. His king just wants more power.

I don’t know. Keeler rubbed his forehead. I still barely speak Lander intelligibly. 

Well, the King said, we’ve thought of that. Deimos, give him the knife. 

Keeler gasped.

CAREFULLY, now. 

Deimos smiled again and produced a wicked crystalline blade, which he handed to Keeler along with a shark-leather sheath. It was clearly one of his own make—his particular skill was shaping and hardening water into a form that never melted unless he told it to, and he was fond of creating knives just to hurl them one by one—but it looked different from his usual toys. It was smaller than most, and thinner, with a needlelike point, and faint blue runes flickered on its surface.

We got Ludmila to enchant it, the King told him. One of those carrots of control, or whatever you call them.

“Cantrips,” muttered Deimos out loud.

Shush. He’s been studying Landish lately, I don’t know why he decided to be diligent all of a sudden…anyway. There are rules to this, so listen carefully. 

If you scratch someone with that knife, they have to obey whoever possesses it. But it’s tricky. They have to understand you, first of all, so if they close their eyes and stop their ears with wax you can’t make them obey. If you don’t tell them not to flee or attack you, they can do that. 

They’ll be forced to do exactly what you said, not what you meant to say, so if there’s more than one possible interpretation, they can just pick the one they like. And you have to be there with them to give an order—you can’t send a message. 

And…any order you give them will expire eventually, if you spend too much time out of their presence. How much time? She said it varies. It depends on how resistant they are and how difficult it is for them to obey your order. It could be a week, it could be five minutes, who can say.

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t sound very useful, Keeler said. 

That’s what Ludmila told us, but we don’t have a choice at this point. You have to make it work, somehow. If you can do it without the knife, excellent. If you have to use the knife, so be it. He handed Keeler a tiny vial. Here's the potion to undo your transformation.

Father, I don't know if I can--

We know you can do it, son. The King patted him on the shoulder. Tides be with you! 

Valentina lifted up little Helios to kiss him on the cheek, and then they all sank into the black water. Except for Deimos, who whispered, “Scratch that cyclops for me! Make him go swimming in the bay. And tell him not to bother with clothes this time.” He laughed silently when Keeler rolled his eyes, and dove away with a splash.  

—

“Oh my,” the Prince said when Keeler locked the door. “Have I been neglecting you?”

“I…miss…you,” he pronounced, shaping each word with care. “Too…many…people.”

The Prince beamed. “You’re talking! You must have been practicing behind my back, you sly thing.” He set his account book down, removed his reading glasses, and patted the bed next to him. 

Keeler nodded, and climbed up to nestle close.

The Prince wrapped a comforting arm around him. “Did Inky help you? He is such a patient fellow. Oh, what’s wrong? Did you two quarrel?”

He sighed. He didn’t want to talk about Encke, and not only because his name had that stupid K sound in it. 

“You mustn’t be cross with him. He has his hands full with the wedding, and I am so contrary.” 

Keeler laughed in spite of himself. 

“Was there something you wanted to talk about?” Warm fingers stroked his shoulder. Warm, forbidden, soon-to-be-lost fingers. 

“I…want…” He swallowed, and turned to cup the Prince’s face in his hand.

“Yes?” 

Before he could lose his nerve, Keeler leaned forward and fitted their mouths together, just holding still for a moment. He didn’t even know how humans kissed, what they liked. He pulled back after a moment, but the Prince followed and caught him again, pulling him in like a rip tide. They clung together, mouths sliding over each other with an exquisite, almost painful slowness, and Keeler pulled him down so he could feel the gravity of the Prince’s smooth, heavy body pressing him into the bed.

“Mmh, why didn’t we do this before?” he groaned between kisses. “I was a fool."

Keeler laughed, then gasped as that hot, demanding mouth moved away from his lips and along his jaw to his throat. He felt the familiar shape of the Prince’s shoulders and back, and his hands moved down to the less familiar rounded split area where the tail should begin. 

“Cheeky,” the Prince gasped. He sat up and took Keeler’s wrists, placing the hands on his thighs instead while he pulled off his shirt and vest. Keeler didn’t mind at all; this was an equally intriguing set of places to explore. “What a bother clothes are. I see why you don’t much like them.”

Clothes were good for hiding enchanted knives, but only if you kept them on. Keeler took quick advantage of the distraction to slip the thing out of his pocket as he pulled the shirt over his head and shoved it under the pillow. Then he was free to lock eyes with the beautiful, strong man clasping his ta—legs with his own. 

He couldn’t look away. His hands groped blindly for contact, sliding among grooves and hollows until they reached cloth. They hesitated, then one moved downward to the urgent, straining place, stroking what lay within as if it were coaxing out the hidden member of one of his own people. Maybe that was why Landers wore clothes.

The Prince uttered a deep groan and rutted against his hand, eyes closing. “Please—”

“Say to me…you never go.” He should be using the knife. He should be using it right now.

“Never—I’ll be with you always.”

Keeler smiled. 

—

The Prince’s head was on his chest, the Prince’s hand was in his unbound hair, the Prince’s legs were tangled with his, and they drifted together in a tide of honey under the rippling silk waves of the sheets. 

Keeler wanted to let his eyes close, but he knew if he did he would find himself thrown up on the beach with his mission undone. He groped for words, but they scattered from him like minnows. 

They slowly became aware of a knocking on the door.

“No,” moaned the Prince into Keeler’s bosom. “Go away.”

The knocking paused, then continued.

He staggered to his elbows, hair tousled and falling in his eyes. “Duty calls. Stupid duty. I hate it.”

Keeler caught him. “You have choice.”

“Why yes, I suppose I do. I could jump into the sea and drown myself.”

“No!”

“Or you and I could run away together and become…shepherds or something. You could dress up in skirts like a lusty shepherdess and play with my crook all day.”

Keeler paused. He wasn’t sure what a shepherd was or what that last sentence meant, but running away together was an intriguing idea. “Yes.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. But for now….” He dragged himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, and fumbled for his spectacles. “We’d better get dressed before whoever that is out there wears out his knuckles.”

—

The Prince was admittedly very busy, but it was the very morning of their departure and he still hadn’t run away with Keeler yet. Maybe they would run away together once they reached Ethania, or perhaps he meant them to take one of those little boats that lived on board the ship? In any case the trunks were loaded up (including one for Keeler, who had turned and left the room when he found Encke packing it), and soon so were the Prince and Keeler, along with Encke, Praxis, and a few dozen others. Encke immediately clutched the rail and closed his eyes, breathing hard.

The Prince patted him on the back. “Poor Inky, he has no stomach for the sea. Go to your cabin and lie down, Inky, you’ll feel better if you can’t see everything rolling.”

Encke choked a little. 

“I’ll be fine up here. The weather is perfectly clear.” 

He bowed, clutching his stomach, and staggered off. Keeler was almost tempted to feel sorry for him. Almost.

“The poor thing already hated the water, and he never really recovered from our shipwreck,” sighed the Prince. “It’s too bad he couldn’t stay home. You can go unpack, Praxis,” he added. “Unless the sea air has left you with the urge to plunder some booty.”

The Tiberian’s broad jaw tightened. “Your Highness,” he gritted out, bowing and turning to stride away.

Keeler leaned on the railing and watched the glassy, rolling roof of his home, so close and yet so far away. “You have no fear of the sea,” the Prince observed, placing a casual hand on his shoulder.

He shook his head, smiling. 

“Bold of you. Did you know there are monstrous squid in the depths that could crush this boat in their hundred arms? And a whale so large that just a small part of its back is the size of an island? It coats its back with sand and waits for plants to grow. Sailors dock there, and once it feels the heat of their campfires it dives down, pulling them into the deep forever. Some men even claim there are beautiful maidens with the tails of fishes who sing in sweet voices to lure sailors to their deaths. No? You still smile? Saucy thing.” The Prince leaned close to whisper in his ear. “Perhaps I should drag you below the surface myself and do unspeakable things to you.”

Keeler glanced sideways and licked his lips, breathing a little faster.

“Oh, that’s it! You’d better start running now, because when I catch you, I’m going to rip your clothes off on the spot.” He slapped Keeler on the place just above his legs, and Keeler took off, not even caring about the daggers shooting up his ankles.

—

The voyage existed in some dreamlike space outside the world. Keeler barely had a moment to think, certainly no time to brood or worry. Wherever he went, the Prince pulled him into corners, devouring his lips and licking his neck, seizing him by the waist or hair and slipping a hand into his trousers. He found himself bent forward over barrels and backward over coils of rope, pressed up against walls or on his knees, perpetually sore but aching for more. Encke was too seasick to stop them and Praxis too prudish to look. No one else dared take notice. The knife slept at the bottom of Keeler’s trunk, and his mission kept it company. If he heard rhythmic tapping on the hull in the night, he pressed his ear to the Prince’s chest and let his lover’s heartbeat drown it out. 

When they reached Ethania, there was no time to talk with the Prince, much less run away together. The princess Abele, named for the white poplar tree that graced her kingdom’s banner, had not yet made an appearance; she was being educated abroad and her ship had been delayed. In the meantime, the Prince was constantly occupied with ceremonies and festivals and tours and private meetings with the King of Ethania and his ministers. At night he was too exhausted for more than a quick, furtive kiss before they retired to their separate rooms, and Keeler, who as a member of his retinue was expected to attend many of these functions as well, was often in so much pain that he could barely remember how to speak anyway. 

Encke, on the other hand, was determined to talk to Keeler, and because he only had to attend the events half of the time, he was impossible to avoid completely. He finally found Keeler soaking his feet in the sunken bath of his guest room, too exhausted even to take off his overly elaborate clothes. Keeler turned to glare at him, then wilted against the wall in defeat, closing his eyes. 

He could shuffling and scuffing behind him, and then twin splashes as Encke sat down next to him. “Melusine.” 

“No.”

“Please. I’m sorry. I know what I said seemed…harsh, but I didn’t mean to put you down or keep you from…thinking about ethics. I was only worried about you.”

Keeler cracked an eye open.

“Those kinds of questions can be…dangerous. Even for someone like you. There are people who think our country should have a different king. There are people who think there should be no kings or princes at all. These people have to hide because they’re considered a danger to the Prince.

“What I’m worried about is…some people at court don’t believe you’ve lost your memory. They think you’re just pretending, so the Prince will keep you and you can have a life of luxury. I know! It’s ridiculous and insulting. But that’s how courtiers are. They always think the worst. That part isn’t the worrying part, because they don’t really care whether you’re telling the truth. They just like to gossip.

“But if they heard you talking like you did that day, they might mistake you for a member of one of these groups that doesn’t like the Prince, and think that you pretended to have lost your memory not so you could get a good life but so that you could get near the Prince to spy on him or hurt him. Then they would consider you dangerous and you could be locked away forever, or even tortured and killed. Do you understand?”

Keeler sighed and slapped the surface of the water with his hand. “I..am..nod stupid. I don’ say that with other people.”

“Oh.” Encke paused. “But you did say it when Praxis was there.”

“He won’ tell. He doesn’ like the Prince. An’ the factory took his eye.”

“What? Did he tell you that?”

“He didn’ have to.”

“Hmm.” Encke sat and thought for a moment. “Do your feet hurt?”

“Mmh?”

“Give me your foot.” He patted his knee.

Keeler pivoted and suspiciously lifted a foot into his lap, and Encke took hold of it and began to do something with his fingers that rearranged all the sinews from the soles up. Keeler squeaked and sagged back against the wall. “I’m nod gon’ ged in the bath with you again,” he informed Encke.

“What?! I never asked you to!” Encke’s cheeks looked redder.

“You didn’ have to.”

“You’ve spent far too much time at court. You’re getting just as cynical as everyone else.”

“I zhus’ learn.” Keeler closed his eyes for a long moment, enjoying the appalling things Encke was doing to his foot. “Did you know…thad firs’ day…the Prince wanted us to…do more than a bath?”

“Melusine!” He opened his eyes again just to see Encke’s shocked expression. “Uh. Well. Yes. Did you?”

“No. Nod then. Bud I do now. I thin’ he hopes I find someone to play with when he marries. Bud he’s enough for me.”

Encke placed the foot back in the water and held out his hand for the other one. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I worry about you.”

“Hmph!”

“Royalty are…different from you and me. They have different lives, different pressures, different responsibilities. Sometimes I think they don’t…feel the same way we do.”

Keeler giggled. 

“I don’t mean like that! I just mean it changes a person, living that life.”

“I’ll be fine.” He glanced sideways. “If you rub my bakh.”

Encke snorted. “You’re terrible. Come here.”

—

The Princess Abele’s ship had finally arrived, and with it, Keeler’s sense of the reality of his mission. He hunted the Prince with the singlemindedness of an orca, and finally managed to slip into his room as he was changing, just after Praxis left to go fetch something. 

“Oh, Melusine! Have you come to rescue me from this waistcoat? Why must they make them so infernally tight?”

Keeler straddled his lap and unbuttoned the offending garment.

“Oh! Mmmh. Melusine, you know—you know we don’t have time now.” The Prince belied his own words by running his hands up Keeler’s thighs.

“We khould…have all the time. If you don’t marry her.”

“Sweetness, you know I have to do it. If I refused it would cause a diplomatic incident, and my grinning hyena of a brother would step in and marry her to save the deal, and then I’d be disinherited and he’d get the throne instead of me. And then how would I take care of you?” 

You were never wavering, Keeler thought in a cold white rage. You just wanted to get a few quick fucks in before you had to get married. And then a quiet fuck here and there afterwards, once your brood mare is pregnant. He let his head droop to the Prince’s shoulder in submission, wrapping his arms around him while slowly easing the knife out of his sleeve.

“I know,” murmured the Prince, patting his back. “It’s hard. Oh, Praxis, there you are!”

Keeler reeled back to his feet, and Praxis glanced at him, face blank. Had he seen the knife?

—

Encke came to dress him for the wedding. He carried a glass of wine with a strange smell to it. “I was supposed to give this to you without saying anything, but I figured you should make your own decisions. It’s a sedative, to make you calm during the ceremony. If you don’t drink it, I might,” he added wryly. “It also helps with pain.”

Keeler looked at the glass, shrugged, and downed the entire thing. Encke reached out and carefully wiped away an errant smear of potion from the corner of his mouth. 

The wedding was a merciful blur, a jostling kaleidoscope of trumpets and flowers and lace and glints of sunlight on metal. They were herded back onto the ship and there was music and dancing and then fire in small glasses again, beautiful fire, just like that first night. 

The Prince lurched up to him out of the throng, his arm around the shoulder of a small, slender wheaten-haired maiden with laughing dark eyes. There were silver diamond shapes on her white dress, like the marks on the bark of the poplar tree in the banner. “Melusine, can you believe it? My lovely bride Abele is that very same Sister Reliant who saved me when I was cast ashore. Fate works in miraculous ways!”

The blameless thief stepped forward. “I’m very happy to meet you, Melusine, and I know we shall be the best of friends.” She leaned in to kiss him on both cheeks in the Ethanian way, and whispered so that only he could hear, “I think I have seen you before, and I may owe you a debt.”

“What was that?” the Prince queried.

“A secret,” Abele replied archly. “Even a married lady must have some mystery about her.” She winked at Keeler and steered the Prince away.

Keeler picked up one of the glasses of fire, and drifted off to the railing to stare at it.

—

The guests had left, and the fire had drunk its fill of oil, and the ship had moved slowly out to sea until the twinkling lights of Ethania seemed as distant as the stars in the sky. Keeler hid himself and kept watch on the majestic crimson and gold tent that for this night served as the marital bedchamber. He was perfectly empty, a pearly, hollow shell. 

He waited until the muffled laughter and sighs had ceased, and then waited some more. He was fully prepared to wait another hour or two, but the tent flap opened and a white-clad, barefoot figure emerged. He watched her meander slowly toward the bow, face turned up to the sky, and lean against the railing like a moth lighting on a tree.

He climbed out of his hiding place and slipped into the tent on silent, burning feet. The Prince was already asleep, limbs asprawl and chest bare. There was a little bruise just below his collarbone, and Keeler knelt down and reached for it, his finger hovering just above it in the air. The sea rushed into his mind. He drew the knife from its sheath, glittering and cold, and the runes read him and told him what he must do.

Chapter Text

After the wedding, Encke had been so busy overseeing the transport of their luggage back onto the ship, negotiating with the Princess Abele’s ladies-in-waiting as to the unpacking and placement of various items, and keeping an eye on the Prince that he had no time to find Melusine until after the festivities had begun to die down. He had been afraid that his seasickness would force him to place all the work on Praxis’ shoulders, but an Ethanian herbalist called Vicks had given him a bottle of an amazing potion that banished it altogether. 

Encke had caught a glimpse or two of Melusine from across the deck, and his glazed expression suggested either shock or the continued potency of the sedative. Or, come to think of it, it could mean that the sedative had worn off and he was in pain again. For the hundredth time, he cursed the selfish prick who had done this and would likely never answer for it. 

Hopefully, Melusine would revive a bit after a good sleep. If Encke could get him to sleep. If Encke could even find him in the first place. He had looked everywhere he could think of (barring ridiculously small hiding places like the insides of barrels) and no one he talked to had seen him lately. He’d even called up to the sailor in the crow’s nest, thinking it the sort of place that Melusine might climb to if he were feeling restless and distraught. No one seemed to understand why he was worried, and he couldn’t bear to express his underlying fear, lest that somehow make it real: that Melusine might have jumped overboard in despair. Or even fallen by accident, made slow and clumsy by the potion and whatever wine he might have drunk at the festivities. 

Encke hadn’t checked the Prince’s tent, of course, but that was another disturbing possibility. It wasn’t exactly a place that he could check, though, at least not until morning. He prowled about the ship uneasily, this time beginning to look in more cramped, out-of-the-way places. 

When he came back on deck and saw the princess standing by the railing, he saw his opportunity. Before he could reach the tent, though, the flap opened and Melusine padded out, his face serene and his white shirt and trousers piebald with spatters of black blood.

Heart pounding, Encke instinctively looked around for witnesses. The only other people in sight were the Princess and the man at the helm, and both were at a distance with their backs turned. He ran forward, hissing, “Melusine! What have you done.”

Melusine blinked slowly at him like a cat, and pulled the shirt over his head. “Whad..I had to.”

“No. You absolutely did not have to. No one has to do something like that.” 

He stepped out of his trousers and drawers, palming something from the pocket. His feet were already bare. 

Encke’s vision began to swim. “Melusine. I don’t know what to do.”

Melusine smiled gently. “My name is nod Melusine. Farewell, Enkhe. You were a ghood friend.” He downed the contents of a little vial he’d been hiding in his hand, and leaped over the side.

Encke lunged for him, but missed by inches. He saw the pale form plunge like an osprey into the sea, and doubled over, clutching the rail. He couldn’t swim—would he have any chance of saving him if he dove in? Would anyone even let them back on board if he did? Had Melusine taken poison before he jumped?

Suddenly an ivory head broke through the waves and Melusine’s—not-Melusine’s—delicate face tilted back to smile up at Encke. He raised a coy finger to his lips and dove back under. A flash of silvery scales and gleaming fins followed him. 

How, thought Encke, could I have been so stupid? Hazy images from the shipwreck came back to him, the face above his with moon-colored hair and strange throbbing marks on the neck, the cool salty lips. Glancing aside and seeing another, similar figure bent over the Prince. He had thought it a dream brought on by lack of air, mixed with memories of the white-hooded priestesses who had rescued them. And what am I going to do now? I can’t betray him. Even if he betrayed me.

—

Moving without thinking, Encke grabbed a darkened lamp, tied the bloody clothes around it in a bundle, and tossed it over the side. The splash sounded loud to his ears, but no one seemed to notice. He entered the tent and saw the Prince lying in the bed as if asleep, his forearm thrown over his eyes and a strange glass knife protruding from his bloody chest. Encke’s stomach heaved despite the potion. He was glad that Melusine had waited until the Princess had gone outside. No one should have to wake up to this.

He took a deep breath—immediately regretting it due to various smells—and pulled out the knife. Then he pulled the coverlet over the Prince’s body, so the Princess wouldn’t have to see him.

He drifted numbly back to the entrance, stepped through the tent flap, and promptly bumped into Praxis.

—

“I killed the Prince,” Encke announced before he could lose his nerve.

“What?!” Praxis’ usually deep voice cracked. “Why?”

“I don’t know. He was annoying me.”

“That is not a good reason.” 

“I know.”

He frowned. “Did something happen to Melusine? I haven’t seen him lately.”

Encke took a deep breath. “He jumped overboard. I couldn’t stop him.”

Praxis searched his face. “Ah. I’m sorry.”

They stood there for an awkward moment. 

“Well,” the Tiberian said, “ironically, this puts a wedge in my plans. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me the knife and let me say I did it?”

“Why?”

“Because I came here to kill him myself.” He produced a knife of his own, entirely mundane but just as sharp.

“Couldn’t take any more pirate jokes?”

“I wouldn’t kill someone for pirate jokes. But for what he did to my friends and me, and was about to do to thousands more, yes, he needed to die.”

“I see. And what were you going to do after you’d killed him?”

“Announce it and then stab myself, I guess. I know it’s weak of me. I should hold out for the public execution, but I don’t know if I’d be able to stand the torture beforehand, and I don’t want to give anyone away.”

Encke blinked at him. “And you still want to do that even when someone else killed him and is ready to confess?”

“Well….it’s not that I want to, but people need to know that the cause is important enough to die for.”

“You know, I think there might be a way for—oh shit.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Princess Abele. “It is very rude of you to assassinate my husband on our wedding night. Don’t you know you should wait the customary forty days?” She was very pale and her hands shook a little, but her black eyes were fierce.

“I’m sorry,” Praxis said. “The deal, you know. It’s not final until both kings sign it, but they were already getting ready to build the new factories.” He pulled a scroll case from his pocket. 

Encke grabbed Praxis’ arm and steered him backwards. “I’m sorry, too. But he was…not a good man. I really think we did you a favor.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’ll have to take your word on that, as you did not give me a chance to find out for myself.”

“Believe me. We were his valets. We know.” 

Their backs hit the railing. 

Praxis cleared his throat. “Would you mind screaming? We need to make our speech.”

—

“And now,” Encke announced after Praxis’ unbelievably long-winded lecture, “we will return our bodies to the sea that birthed all life, and commend our souls to the Mother. May she have mercy on us!” He couldn’t believe he was managing to stay balanced on the railing like this. That potion was amazing.

Praxis frowned. “I thought you hated the water.”

“Just go with it, all right?”

“Fine. Nice knowing you.” He stepped backward and plummeted toward the waves.

Encke took a deep breath and followed.

—
 
For an achingly long time, he thought he really was going to drown. Then he remembered to open his eyes. Off to the side, Praxis was flailing as a delicate dark-haired merman latched onto his mouth, wrapping his arms around him and bearing him swiftly away. Other shadowy forms were drawing near, and suddenly there was Melusine, strong and graceful, pale hair floating in billowing, oddly translucent waves around him. He looked surprised.

Encke, running out of air, flailed as well. Melusine surged forward and locked lips with him, pushing air into his lungs. Encke clung to him and closed his eyes, feeling the rush of the water around them and the rhythmic movements of the powerful tail. Lifegiving if not exactly comfortable air continued to issue from his savior’s mouth; it was somewhat like breathing with your head fully under the covers. 

His consciousness slowly dimmed, and he drifted into something close to sleep.

—

Melusine’s mouth drew away, and Encke felt sand against his back and a cool breeze on his face and arms. He gulped in fresh air and opened his eyes; the stars were fading and a faint light shone from the horizon. “So what is your name, then?” he asked once he could speak.

The merman thought for a moment, smiling. “I can’t say it out of the water, unless it’s in Pan-Mar. Then it’s—” he tapped a few times on Encke’s chest. “I guess in your language it might be…Keeler? To lean over very far, like a boat?”

“You sound different,” is all Encke could think to say.

“Oh, yes! It feels so much better to be back in my own form. Ordinarily I have no trouble speaking—that was one of the effects of the potion that changed me, along with the pain. I didn’t know your language as well as I thought, though.”

Encke struggled up to his elbows and looked for Praxis. He was lying a little ways off on the beach, covered by a heaving, narrow blanket of black-haired merman. He seemed to be quite awake and also quite busy. 

Keeler laughed. “That’s my brother Deimos. He is shameless, isn’t he? And yet, we could learn something from him.” He looked down at Encke, lips slightly parted, and brushed the sand from his face.

Encke raised a tentative hand to stroke the back of Keeler's head, and he closed his eyes and shivered. The hair felt oddly slippery and delicate, and Encke’s fingertips began to prickle, sending a trail of tingling heat up his palm.   
 
“Better not touch it for long,” Keeler murmured. “You aren’t used to it, and I…might forget how to control myself.” 

Encke dropped his hand, and Keeler dipped down for a kiss that suddenly felt just as urgent as the one that had saved his life.

—

Princess Abele’s belly swelled from her one night of wedded bliss, and she became regent for the Prince’s unborn heir. Although no one could question her many virtues, she was decidedly eccentric and unpopular at the King’s court, for she stopped the construction of the very factories that had been a condition of her union with the Prince, and forced the owners of existing factories to pay their workers better and make other expensive and inconvenient changes to their equipment and manufacturing processes. But as the mother of the heir and a person of sound mind and body, she could not be legally ousted, and the common people loved her. 

She was uncommonly fond of sea bathing, and of long walks along the beach, which no longer smelled as foul as people remembered. Sometimes when she swam in the bay, more heads were counted in the water than had gone in, or would later come out. But many people bathed in the sea these days, and no doubt the extra heads belonged to children of the local fisherfolk, who learned to swim before they could walk, and who, the old wives whispered, had more than a little seal’s blood in their veins.