Abalone’s lips drew into a thin line.
“We’ve never worked a day in our lives, have we, Violacea?” Epaulette said, without turning her head to Violacea.
“We certainly haven’t,” she said, giggling.
“How goes your sewing, Abalone?” asked Epaulette.
“It goes well.”
“Strange, the way things are in your humble home,” Epaulette drawled. “The wife with overworked hands, the husband without a hand.”
Violacea laughed uproariously, as though she’d never heard something more original.
Abalone’s eyes narrowed to slits. “How smug—”
Coralline laid a hand on her mother’s arm. Her mother’s temper was like a corset with loose strings; any provocation, and it would unravel; once it did, the strings could not be rejoined, and the outcome would be a scandal, even if undeserved.
“Your family will never be good enough for ours,” Epaulette snapped. Her gaze turned to Coralline. “You will never be good enough for my son. There are still two weeks left to the wedding; there’s still time for Ecklon to come to his senses and choose Rosette over you.”
“Yes, it is my daughter who deserves him!” Violacea said.
“If I have my way,” Epaulette continued, “this garden will be as close as you and your family”—her gaze darted between Coralline and Abalone—“ever get to my Mansion!”
Coralline had never cursed before; to avoid doing so now, she bit her lip so hard that she tasted blood.
Epaulette and Violacea fluttered away arm in arm to greet other guests, the pace of their swim slow and ambling, as though no unusual words had been spoken. Coralline, Abalone, and Sepia sipped their wines in silence. Sepia rarely stopped talking, in Coralline’s experience, but even she seemed to find herself at a loss for words.
A waiter arrived, bearing a platter of devil’s tongue. Coralline loved the red algae, but she shook her head—she had no more appetite, knowing that Epaulette would have sent him over. Sepia collected a fistful of the slippery red flaps, and Abalone plucked up two. “Naiadum loves devil’s tongue,” she said, casting a glance about the garden. “Hmm . . . where is my little angel?”
Coralline looked for Naiadum’s tawny tail. There were only a few children in the garden, clustered together noisily, but her eight-year-old brother was not among them. She turned her head to look at her mother again; though her neck swiveled slowly, the movement felt lightning fast, as though her head might come unhinged.
“Now, we have to look for your brother.” Abalone sighed. “Will you find him, or shall I ask your father to search for him?”
Coralline’s gaze found her father on the other side of the garden, beside a pair of swaying sea fans. He was laughing with a merman she did not know, gesturing animatedly with both arms, a care-free aspect to his manner she hadn’t seen since his haccident. “Let’s not trouble Father while he’s enjoying himself,” she said. “I’ll find Naiadum.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now, excuse me while I swim up to your father and remind him to conceal his stump behind his back. I don’t know why he can’t remember my social etiquette instructions—oh, goodness! What is the Bitter Spinster doing here?”
Coralline followed her mother’s gaze toward an emaciated mermaid arriving at the fringe of the garden. Her decanter almost slipped from her fingers. How dare Rhodomela attend her engagement party after firing her!
“I can’t believe you invited the Bitter Spinster!” Abalone shrieked. “And I can’t believe she’s wearing black, the color of mourning, even at this time of celebration. Oh look, she brought her older sister, Osmundea, with her.”
Osmundea shared Rhodomela’s dark hair but otherwise bore little resemblance to her. Her tail was indigo rather than black, and her face was more pleasantly contoured, with wide-set eyes and full cheeks. A short, faded scar lined the side of her lip.
“What a sorry spinsterly pair,” Sepia said.
No one greeted Rhodomela or Osmundea. Instead, mermaids cleared out of their way, forming a vacuum around them, as though spinsterhood were a disease contractable by proximity.
Rhodomela’s black gaze found Coralline.
Coralline slid aside and away, without a word to her mother or Sepia. She placed her now-empty decanter on a passing waiter’s tray and snatched up another decanter of parasol wine. Swerving around a corner of the Mansion, she found herself behind it. There was no one there. She saw only juvenile red crabs skittering among the pebbles and a common cuttlefish propelling itself upward by its frilly fin, camouflaged partially by its zebra-like stripes. Relieved to find herself alone for the first time all morning, Coralline leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and shifted up and down sharply, feeling a pleasure-pain from scratching her sequined back against the smooth black shale.
Love is a farce, Rhodomela had said. Perhaps the master apothecary was right, Coralline thought now. After all, Ecklon still wasn’t here, long after all the guests had arrived, all the guests except Rosette—Coralline’s eyes flew open. Ecklon was likely somewhere in the Mansion. If he was with Rosette, Coralline might be able to catch him red-handed by peeking through the windows. If he was cheating on her, it would be better for her to know it now, so that she could leave him—though the thought of leaving him made her heart feel like it would shatter into a million pieces. . . . Could she bear to see him cheating on her? No, but she had to know.
He wasn’t the only one who could be a detective.
She shifted to the nearest window, along the bottom left of the first story. The room was a guest bedroom, and it was empty. Her tailfin flicking ever so gently, she crept toward the window next to the first—its shutters were drawn. She continued on to the next window, and the next. Half of the Mansion’s windows were open, featuring guest bedrooms or spacious armoires, and the other half were shuttered.
But then, there! Through a window on the third story, she saw him. He wasn’t alone.
A few clouds had gathered overhead, softening the glare of the sun, dampening the day.
His hands on his hips, Izar continued to stand where he had all morning, in the shadow of the derrick. Men bustled about Dominion Drill I all around him, making him think of bees buzzing about a hive.
Their sun-roasted faces bent to the equipment in concentration, they anchored the drillship in Zone Ten, the site of the oil drill today. In Ocean Dominion’s map of the Atlantic, neat squares divided the entire ocean from north to south pole. Izar had chosen Zone Ten for this day because Ocean Dominion had done little in the area in recent years, except for a coral reef dynamite blast about seven months ago—a failed project in which they’d caught few fish, but a merman’s hand.
Through a borehole in the moonpool on the base of the hull, four men lowered a riser into the water, a high-tension steel pipe with a diameter of close to two feet. The eight hands of the four men moved with the symmetric collaboration of a spider’s legs. Machines aboard Dominion Drill I shrieked and shouted as the riser powered deeper and deeper into the ocean. Many men wore earmuffs to block out the racket, but Izar didn’t mind it. Despite the clamor aboard, the penetration into the ocean floor would be smooth and soundless below; he’d designed it that way, to reduce the possibility of interference from merpeople.