Directly in front of the stage, reporters sat at the edge of their seats, their raised hands rupturing the air above them at abandon. It was not a scene Izar had seen before. At most Ocean Dominion press conferences, most chairs were empty; today, each chair was occupied, and a surplus of reporters crowded together along the fringes of the room. There must be two hundred of them, Izar estimated, their faces forming a sea of scorn waiting to drown Ocean Dominion. Izar felt as though he, Antares, and Saiph were defendants standing trial before a smug, self-appointed jury.
Izar had spoken to Antares and Saiph just before the three of them had climbed onto the stage. Antares had hugged him and, with thick tears shimmering in his eyes, had said, “It’s too bad about the spill, but I’m happy you’re safe, son. I don’t know how I’d live if anything happened to you.”
Izar had hugged him back, but shame had lingered along the corners of his mouth. Speaking crisply, he’d given Antares and Saiph a detailed recounting of what had happened, mentioning both the collapse of the derrick yesterday and the explosion of the blowout preventer today. Antares had immediately given his assistant an order to dispatch a Secret Search team of five black-clad men to locate Zaurak and Serpens, neither of whom had been seen in the Ocean Dominion building or harbor all day.
“You won’t be safe until they’re locked behind bars,” Antares had said to Izar, “and so I will not rest until that moment. Guard your life at every step, son.”
Now, Antares nodded at a young, thin-lipped woman in the front row, whose hand was tearing through the air. “Your company spilled more than ten thousand barrels, or about four hundred thousand gallons, of oil into the ocean today,” she said. “The spill is so substantial as to be visible by satellite. Your market capitalization has collapsed by half a billion dollars. Do you think your fate will resemble that of Atlantic Operations?”
Izar felt himself bristling like a copper wire sparked end to end. It was insulting—comparing Ocean Dominion to a defunct competitor.
“We hope not,” Antares answered evenly.
From the streets thirty stories below, a chant floated up as a faint tremor: “Death to Ocean Dominion! Life to the ocean!” Nonprofit organization Ocean Protection had rallied hundreds of placard-wielding protestors on the streets below. They’d been chanting so incessantly that, to Izar’s ears, their mantra now sounded like a hymn with a catchy ring.
Antares nodded at a middling reporter. “Who is to blame for the oil spill?” the man croaked.
Izar had expected the question, but his knees still turned to jelly, and a sheen of sweat broke out across his hairline. The world would now know he was responsible.
“I, and I alone,” said Antares, “am to blame for the spill—”
Izar heard a suppressed choke; it had sputtered out of his own throat. He realized he’d crossed the stage to Antares only when Antares’s steel-gray eyes were staring at him impatiently—it was unprecedented for either Saiph or Izar to interrupt Antares during a press conference. They were sentries, not spotlights, their function ornamental.
Pens scribbled frenziedly upon notepads as Antares wrapped a ham-like fist over the microphone and turned it away from his face.
“I am vice president of operations,” Izar hissed in Antares’s ear, a hand cupping his mouth to conceal the movement of his lips. “Any error in equipment, or the men who manage it, is my fault. Tell them the truth.”
“Return to your place, son,” Antares said in a barely constrained voice, “and never question my judgment again.”
Resuming his location, Izar stared stoically at Antares’s back.
“In light of today’s events,” Antares boomed over the microphone, “I announce my resignation, effective immediately.”
Cameras flashed, one after another, lighting up shadowed pockets of the room like fireflies in the woods.
It was fortunate there was a wall behind Izar; otherwise, he would have keeled to the floor. His shoulder blades sagged against the wall, and an airless vacuum formed in his chest. Izar had once, years ago, asked Antares what he would do when he retired. “I’m not the sort of man who sits around and goes fishing, boy,” he’d guffawed. “I’ll retire when I’m in my coffin.”
Twenty-five years ago, Antares had saved Izar’s life by rescuing him from drowning by merpeople; today, Izar had paid Antares back by carving his coffin. Antares would live physically, but his professional death could just as well be his physical death. It had taken him thirty-five long years to build Ocean Dominion into the force that it was; it had taken Izar a single day to stab it. The oil spill was like a gash to the face of Ocean Dominion—even if the company survived the attack, a scar would always remain, as would Izar’s knowledge that it was he who’d wielded the knife.
How different the press conference had turned out to be from what they’d planned in Antares’s office just three days ago. Antares was supposed to have announced Castor and proclaimed the beginning of a new division at Ocean Dominion and a new era for the world—one lit with underwater fire. He was also supposed to have mentioned the two-year milestone for the Oil division.
“I will be succeeded by my son, Saiph Eridan,” Antares continued over the microphone. He began to ring out Saiph’s accomplishments—Saiph’s knowledge of the levers of government, his experience in management, his appreciation of the patent process—but the words floated over Izar’s head. His ribs felt as stiff as though they’d been flattened under Castor’s feet.
He glanced at Saiph on the other side of the stage. He was smiling courteously at the crowd, the corners of his lips edged with humility, his charred-kale eyes gleaming.
Since the day Antares had rescued Izar and kindled in him a fascination with fire, Izar had known his destiny lay with Ocean Dominion. Throughout his studies, in both school and university, he had moved from one assignment to another with impatient efficiency, excelling at them not because of any illusions of their having intrinsic value but because he’d believed they’d serve as stepping-stones for the purpose he’d start to obtain as soon as he arrived at Ocean Dominion. Saiph’s fondness for Ocean Dominion did not match his—Saiph’s feeling was like a swimming pool, pleasant but shallow; it was not the sea that sang daily through Izar’s veins.
But, of course, Izar had never expected to become president. He had always known that if there were to come a time when Antares retired, Saiph would assume the role of president. Saiph was Antares’s biological son, but it was more than that: Saiph wanted to be president; Izar had never once wanted it—the endless meetings, the appeasing of egos, the management of politics. At university, Izar had studied engineering; Saiph, management. Izar had found his niche in the engineering realm; Saiph, in the interpersonal. Izar was a technical man, with a tactical bent; Saiph built relationships strategically, like every day was a game of chess.
It did not bother Izar that Saiph would be president. What bothered him was that Saiph’s first executive action would, almost certainly, be to fire him. Izar could not expect Antares to know this, for Antares had never known Saiph as Izar had. Antares did not know, for instance, about Bumble.
In the first week that Izar had arrived in Antares’s home as a three-year-old, Saiph had descended into his basement storage closet bedroom and offered him a teddy bear, Bumble. Izar had accepted the round, mud-brown form gratefully and fallen asleep with Bumble in his arms. Over the next month, he had come to consider Bumble his comfort, his safety, his only source of familiarity in his unfamiliar new world, and had spent every minute, awake or asleep, with the bear. But then, one night, just as suddenly as Saiph had arrived in his storage closet to give Bumble to him, he had arrived to snatch him away. Izar had wailed for the bear, but Saiph had grinned and slammed the door shut behind him.