“A two-year patent!” Antares exclaimed. His smile revealed tobacco-stained teeth, and his fist pounded the table, sloshing whisky over the rim of his glass. “Two years, before any other company can start mining the oceans for gold and diamonds. By the end of the patent, there’ll be nothing left for anyone else!” Antares guffawed, white smoke surrounding his mirth in the shadows of dusk. “Our stock price will sky-rocket when I announce our third division, Precious Metals and Minerals. When shall I hold the press conference?”
“We’re drilling oil again in a few days,” Izar said, thinking out loud, “on the fifteenth of July. The day happens to mark exactly two years since we began the Oil division. As such, I think the evening of the fifteenth—the two-year milestone of our second division—would be an opportune time to announce the launch of our third division.”
“That sounds fine,” Antares said. “But stock prices rumble when press conferences are canceled. A cancelation won’t be needed, will it?”
“No. I give you my word.”
Izar tried to avoid it, but his gaze traveled to the framed picture of Maia on Antares’s desk. There was a perfunctory aspect to her presence in Antares’s office—her picture was something necessary but not necessarily wanted, like the coatrack on which Antares’s black suit jacket hung. She’d had dark, shoulder-length hair, a haughty chin, and charred-kale eyes that Saiph had inherited. Though he’d been only three when he’d first met her, Izar still remembered how her face had cooled when she’d seen him—it had been like custard hardening. “He belongs to one of your mistresses,” she’d said to Antares, without anger, without vehemence, as though she were simply stating a fact.
“He’s the son of one of my fishermen,” Antares had retorted. “I rescued him from the clutches of merpeople. You’ll see an article about it in Menkar Daily tomorrow morning.”
Maia had been opposed to Antares’s desire to adopt Izar, but, for a reason Izar still didn’t understand, Antares had insisted. Maia had nonetheless continued to resent Izar’s “illegitimate” presence in her home. To keep him out of her sight, she’d given him a storage closet in the basement as a bedroom. She’d hired the best tutors money could buy for Saiph; Izar had had to make do with Saiph’s old school textbooks and uniforms. But Saiph’s grades had still rarely exceeded mediocre, whereas Izar’s had always been stellar, without his actively trying.
At school, Saiph and his friends had chased Izar as cats chase a mouse, and Izar had escaped like a mouse, darting into any alley, into any trash can, into any corner he could fit in. Antares had been the only one who’d been kind to Izar in those childhood years, but he’d rarely been home, returning home late every night, sometimes smelling of stale perfume. Izar’s moments with him had felt coveted and stolen, like crumbs of bread rather than a slice; he’d always felt hungry after, but crumbs were all he’d had.
By the time Izar had become an adolescent, his intellectual curiosity had shifted from his textbooks to the way things worked. He would sit on the floor of his storage closet, ringed by a fortress of rubble and parts. One night, when he was sixteen, Maia discovered him with his head and hands in the hood of her luxury car.
Tugging his hands out, she’d slapped his face.
“I just wanted to know how the engine works,” he’d protested in a hurt voice.
Antares’s car had pulled onto the cobblestone driveway just then.
“Your mistress’s son is trying to kill me,” Maia had snapped at him.
“I’m losing patience with you,” Antares had said in a tightly controlled voice, stepping out of his car. “I think you should visit a psychiatrist. I’ll take you to one myself tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother! I’m going to meet with a divorce attorney first thing tomorrow morning.”
But she’d never made it to a divorce attorney’s office—her car had exploded on the highway. She’d died instantly.
The Office of the Police Commissioner of Menkar had opened an investigation into the case. The prosecution had fought to send Izar to jail for life, but Antares had settled the case out of court: He’d paid moustachioed chief police commissioner Canopus Corvus half a million dollars to bury the case. Izar had felt as small as a worm in those days. Not only had he killed Antares’s wife, even if by accident—though, to this day, he could not fathom how his brief exploration had resulted in an explosion—but Antares had had to spend heftily to save him.
Now, Izar met Antares’s gaze across the mahogany desk. Antares’s steel-gray eyes wore a strange look—Izar knew they were both thinking of Maia’s funeral.
Antares had wept that day as Izar had never seen a grown man weep, as he hoped to never again see a grown man weep. It was at Maia’s funeral that Izar had learned that love could be contradictory and conflicting and flawed, and it was then that he’d determined that his love, if he were ever to love a woman, would be neither contradictory nor conflicting nor flawed—it would be a pure, clear river flowing consistently over both rocks and shallows.
3
A Constellation of Stars
Coralline tucked Naiadum’s blanket around his shoulders.
“Read me a story!” he demanded, his pudgy cheeks pink with anticipation.
“Yesterday, I read you The Wandering Cardinalfish,” she said, tousling his golden hair, so like their mother’s. “What would you like me to read you today?”
She ran her index finger over the spines of story books stacked on his bedside table: The Sneaky Snipefish, The Sly Sergeant Major, and The Legend of the Elixir.
Turning his head to examine the titles, he piped, “The Legend of the Elixir.”
Coralline had been hoping he’d select one of the other two, but she nodded and opened the requested book on her lap.
“The story of the elixir is the oldest legend of the ocean,” she read aloud in a deep voice. “The elixir is a life-saving potion made of starlight, prepared by a magician named Mintaka. Over the millennia, countless individuals have embarked on quests for the elixir, in order to save the life of a loved one, but only a rare few have succeeded in finding Mintaka and her elusive elixir. Even those who have succeeded are said to have been doomed, in a sense, for the elixir is a blessing that comes accompanied by a curse—”
“Is this legend a true story?” Naiadum asked, his amber-gold eyes wide.
“No one knows for certain, but I can’t imagine how it would be a true story. I can’t imagine how an elixir can be made of starlight.”
“Me neither.”
Coralline smiled. Though he was only eight, Naiadum sometimes thought like a detective, reminding her of Ecklon.
“Do you know anyone who’s found the elixir?” Naiadum pursued.
“No one has found it in my lifetime, but I did hear someone found it about thirty years ago. . . . Now, let’s continue with the story: The curse varies based on the individual—”
“I don’t like The Legend of the Elixir,” Naiadum pouted.
“I don’t blame you. I don’t understand why it’s even considered a children’s story.” Coralline fell silent for a moment, then said, “Do you know who I’m going to miss more than anyone else when I get married and leave home?”