The next morning, Izar had sneaked upstairs into Saiph’s bedroom while Saiph had been practicing piano with a tutor in the library, Maia hovering over him like an eagle over her nestling. Izar had discovered Saiph’s bedroom to be a zoo of stuffed animals—tigers, giraffes, pandas, leopards, on shelves that ran from floor to ceiling—but there was no Bumble anywhere in sight. Izar had nonetheless felt appeased by his visit: Given Saiph’s menagerie of animals, surely, he would not mind Izar’s keeping one. Surely, he would return Bumble soon.
That night, Saiph had returned to Izar’s storage closet and, eyes twinkling like fresh-cut grass, had handed Bumble back to him. Izar had grasped the teddy bear for only a moment, before dropping him with a gasp. Bumble’s button-nose had been dangling from a thread, one of his eyes had been missing, and white fuzz had been streaming out of his belly like rotting innards.
Izar’s hands clenched on stage in the press conference room, as though they continued to clutch Bumble’s remains. Saiph had destroyed Bumble because he’d known how much the teddy bear meant to him; Saiph would fire him because he knew how much Ocean Dominion meant to him.
9
Brother
As Coralline observed from a shadowed corner, her mother and Rhodomela eyed each other at the door with a marked vehemence. They were the same age, fifty, but Rhodomela—wiry as a strand of eel-grass—looked a decade older, Coralline noticed for the first time.
Rhodomela swept into the Costaria home, trailed by Trochid, whom Abalone had sent to The Irregular Remedy to fetch her. He had left home for the clinic hours ago; patients must have streamed in one after another for Rhodomela’s attention, Coralline thought, hence the delay in his return with her. He could easily have gone to another clinic, such as The Conventional Cure just next door to The Irregular Remedy, but he had waited, Coralline knew, because Rhodomela was the foremost black poison expert in Urchin Grove. It was her Black Poison Cleanser solution that had led to her achieving the title of master apothecary.
Rhodomela’s gaze fell on every part of the Costaria living room: the settees, Trochid’s desk in the corner, the dining table in the alcove, the large arched window overlooking the reef garden, the row of three bedrooms. Her glance seemed to cling especially to the wedding-day portrait of Abalone and Trochid on the mantel. Trochid’s hair had grayed at the temples in the two and a half decades since the wedding, but Abalone still looked just as golden as she had then. Perhaps Rhodomela was wondering how her own life might have looked had she married, Coralline thought.
Abalone led Rhodomela to Naiadum’s bedroom. Rhodomela brushed past Coralline without even greeting her, as though they’d never met.
In her black bodice, Rhodomela had been the only person inappropriately attired at the engagement party, but she was the only person appropriately attired in the aftermath of the black poison spill. Coralline’s orange-and-purple sequins dangled off her corset on loose threads. The tendrils trailing the hem of Abalone’s bodice had been white earlier but were black now and hanging straight down upon her scales instead of swirling about her when she moved.
“Black poison has gravely sickened at least two dozen people in Urchin Grove so far,” Rhodomela said in a monotonous voice, “and has rendered at least four terminally ill. In addition, there have been a minimum of three deaths. . . .”
Rhodomela was speaking of death and illness like it was a part of life—because it was a part of her life—but her staid recounting of casualties caused Abalone and Trochid to shudder. Coralline frowned at her former boss, wishing she would be more sensitive.
Rhodomela perched on Naiadum’s blanket exactly where Coralline always sat when she read him a bedtime story. She unlatched the clasps of her apothecary arsenal, her out-of-office medical kit. Coralline watched her anxiously, from the row she formed with her parents against the wall behind Rhodomela. Coralline glanced at the books on Naiadum’s bedside table—The Wrong Wrasse, A Little Merboy Named Anthias. She had not yet read these stories to him.
“Coralline,” said Trochid, “will you not bring your own apothecary arsenal to help Rhodomela?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Rhodomela replied, before Coralline could stammer out a response. Her head swiveled around, her nose looking especially hooked in profile. “Didn’t Coralline tell you? She doesn’t work for me anymore.”
Trochid’s mouth fell open. Abalone gasped. Coralline’s cheeks flamed, and she stared mutely at the opposite wall. It was the first secret she’d ever kept from her parents, and for only a short period of time—since yesterday. Her father, she knew, must be especially hurt, because he had always advised her on her career, but she had blocked him out as soon as something had gone wrong.
“Did you fire her out of revenge?” Abalone snapped, amber-gold eyes narrowed.
“Revenge for what?” Rhodomela asked, sounding as surprised as Coralline felt.
“Abalone!” Trochid said. “Let’s focus on our son. His life lies in Rhodomela’s hands.”
Rhodomela turned back to Naiadum somewhat stiffly. Just before Rhodomela’s arrival, Abalone had attempted to rub the grease off Naiadum—scrubbing him with the same ferocity with which she stitched fabrics—but she had only succeeded in smearing the slime deeper, such that Coralline hardly even recognized her brother. Rhodomela opened a vial of Black Poison Cleanser, lathered the salve onto gauzy pink swaths of pyropia, then rubbed it all over Naiadum, starting with his face and proceeding down to his tailfin. Everywhere it touched, it wiped spotless like magic.
The secret of her solution was that it was oil-based, Coralline remembered Rhodomela telling her, for only oil could conquer oil—water was too pure to dissolve it. The solution consisted primarily of derbesia’s green tufts ground with spatoglossum’s brown fronds, both of them among the most oleaginous of the algae.
When Rhodomela sat back, Coralline wished she hadn’t done such a thorough job with her brother, for it was impossible to mistake anymore that the yellowed, waxen figure on the bed was Naiadum.
Her cleaning complete, Rhodomela proceeded swiftly with her medical examination. She turned Naiadum’s wrist and pressed her fingers to it, to check his pulse. She pried open each of his eyes and scrutinized their whites. She turned his head and ran her index finger over his neck—his gill slits flickered, but just barely. She inserted a needle into the vein at his elbow and watched blood gush into the syringe. Holding the syringe under a microscope, she flicked it three times with her fingernail, then studied it.
“Black poison has contaminated his blood,” she announced. “It has clotted his organs, disabling their effective functioning. He will die within two weeks—before your wedding, Coralline.”
Izar buzzed his identification card in front of the scanner and pushed open the glass door, then paused midstride at the sight in the room.